By Dennis Loo
When batterers explain why they beat
up their partners, their classic line is that “she made me do it.”
We are being proffered a similar excuse
about why our government is gearing up for a war on Iran.
Like the 6″2″, 235 pound husband
who finds it necessary to bust up his 5″ 3″, 110 pound wife because
she represented such a terrible threat to his manhood, the sole imperialist
superpower, a country that spends more on military weaponry than all
of the rest of the world’s countries combined, the most powerful nation
to ever stalk the earth, considers a country that has 140 out-of-date
aircraft and a navy of mostly small vessels, its gravest enemy.
The Bush White House and the two major
party nominees for president, John McCain and Barack Obama, are all
giving us the batterer’s defense.
That repeat offenders such as Bush and
Cheney should be operating from the same playbook that they used with
such success to justify their war on Iraq – and that their Third Term
Replacement, McCain, should be doing the same – comes as no surprise.
But that the great “change-we-can-believe
-in”- Obama should be rattling the sabers and threatening Iran with
military attack comes as a surprise – or even shock – to many.
In his first major address since wrapping
up the Democratic nomination, Obama stated his views to the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) in no uncertain terms:
“The Iranian regime
supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It
pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race,
and raises the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists”
The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate
this threat.
“We knew, in 2002,
that Iran supported terrorism. We knew Iran had an illicit nuclear program.
We knew Iran posed a grave threat to Israel”
“[L]et there be no
doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table
to defend our security and our ally Israel.
“That is the change
we need in our foreign policy. Change that restores American power and
influence.”
*
“Let there be no doubt,”
Obama says.
Who could disagree?
Let there be no doubt
that a war is brewing when both the GOP and the Democrats are threatening
war and justifying it on the same grounds.
Let there be no doubt
that when the contest becomes one in which both parties are trying to
prove that they are the bigger friend of Israel – “I’m his best
friend.” “No, I’m his best friend.” – that a deal
has been struck and that barring a large enough
mass movement against their schemes, here and worldwide, but especially
here, then war it surely will be.
And what is the casus
belli this time?
Weapons of mass destruction.
Mushroom clouds over America.
Giving material aid to
those who are killing Americans.
*
Never mind what the NIE
said. As Bush and Cheney told Israel, the NIE report that found that
Iran years ago abandoned their nuclear weapons program, “doesn’t represent our views.”
Never mind that they
used this WMD lie before about Iraq and have been caught in their lies
before the whole world.
Never mind the fact that
the Americans being killed in Iraq are there as foreign occupiers
and wouldn’t be getting killed if they were back on U.S. soil tending
to levees and bridges and natural disasters.
Never mind that the war
on Iraq was a fabricated war based on literally hundreds of lies and
that the real attackers on 9/11 they have not captured because, as Bush
said, “they”re hiding.”
Never mind that the gravest
war crime of all, according to an American judge at Nuremberg, is to
attack a country that has not attacked you: “[t]o initiate a war of
aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the
supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in
that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.'”
(Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of
German Major War Criminals-Nuremberg, Germany 1946.)
Never mind that Iranian
men, women and children laugh and cry just like us, go to work, make
dinner, hug their parents and play in the streets and in their yards
just like us.
Never mind that our lives
are not more precious than theirs.
*
La plus ca change, la
plus la-meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Many people, including
close friends of mine, think that a war on Iran would be insane and
that even Bush and Cheney aren’t that crazy.
My question now is: do
you think Obama is just as crazy as the madmen at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue?
And how crazy would we
have to be to follow one of these misleaders and war mongerers?
How crazy would we be
to forego using the one real power that we have – to demonstrate,
to act independently as THE PEOPLE, and create a political atmosphere
in the whole society that forces the hand of these profiteers, plunderers
and phony peacemakers?
How crazy would we be
if we thought that our only choice instead is to tag behind and
cheer on – PICK ONE, it’s your democratic right –
- the Republicans
in the White House who are laying the groundwork for, positioning military
forces for, lining up Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Oman as allies, and assuring
Israel that war is coming, and soon; - the GOP candidate
in the wings, John ” bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” McCain,
who is assuring Israel that he is their biggest fan, and threatening
war on Iran, and soon; OR - the Democratic
putative nominee “Change We Can Believe In” Obama assuring Israel
that he is their biggest fan, and threatening war on Iran, and soon?
Isn’t democracy American-style
wonderful?
Like Henry Ford, we can
have any color we like as long as it’s black.
Except in this case it’s
red.
Blood red.
Dennis Loo is an awards winning
sociologist, co-editor of Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush
and Cheney, Cal Poly Pomona Associate Professor of Sociology, WCW National
Steering Committee Member, Declare It Now originator.