Jamilah Hoffman
So it’s seven thirty in the morning and I am barely awake. The Today
Show is on and I am startled by what I’ve just seen. Al Roker is
reporting from in front of a missile silo. Am I dreaming? Why is the
weatherman visiting the country’s largest nuclear arsenal? I’m not sure
what the weather has to do with the Minuteman III missile, which, by
the way, can carry three nuclear war heads, but I do know government
propaganda when I see it, even if it comes in the form of the jolly
weatherman.
I attended the national conference held in Berkeley, California and one of the presentations that challenged me was over Iran. We learned how the U.S. is closer to attacking Iran now than ever before during Bush’s time in office. We can see the onslaught of propaganda coming in from the top levels of government that mirrors the push for an attack on Iraq that happened in 2002 and 2003. We are confronted with the enormity of doing all we can to stop an attack in the first place, rather than simply framing our actions on what happens after an attack has occurred. But of course, energy should be spent on both.
But I want to go back for a minute. I awake to a reality I wish were a dream. The weatherman is reporting from Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. Hillary Clinton wants to obliterate Iran. Obama has no problem attacking Iran, albeit with some soothing words and Michael Gordon of The New York Times has published an article with unnamed sources about Hezbollah training Iraqis in Iran. Here we go again. I feel like I’m living in crazy land but this is all real. 
The text of Gordon’s article is full of accusations by unnamed “American officials” and no questioning of what those sources are putting forth. This has raised the alarm of many including that of Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com who wrote that,
“Gordon’s reporting is as predictable as it is uncritical and unreliable. Any time the administration ratchets up its war-threatening rhetoric with Iran, Gordon pops up with a prominent article that does nothing other than repeat Government claims as fact.”
This comes at the same time that John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, went on Fox News continuing his push for an attack on Iran. Even though he admits that an attack on Iran would involve risks, he says that the risks of not doing something are far greater.
“I think this is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do. Then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.”
This made me think that John Bolton must be running for the democratic nominee for president. He sounds just like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama! When people who served in the upper levels of the Bush regime and those running, not to reverse that program, but to in fact, through their own platform continue to further that program, start sounding the same, we must realize we are that much closer to an attack on Iran and that we must do all that we can to prevent it.
I was struck by something that Matt Lauer said at the end of Al Roker’s weather report. A weather report that was given inside of a nuclear silo no less. Lauer added, to the agreement of the rest of the anchors on the show that,
“The pressure the people who work there must be under.”
Pressure? He wants to talk about pressure? How about the pressure the people who live under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation must feel? Mr. Lauer, try that pressure on for size!
Jamilah Hoffman is a young World Can’t Wait organizer in Houston, who is “determined to leave this world a better place than she found it”.