By Chris Hedges
An attack on Iran, which
Israeli and Bush administration officials appear set to carry out if
Iranian uranium enrichment is not halted, would ignite a regional war
in the Middle East and lead to economic collapse and political upheaval
in the United States.
“In short and simple
terms, we would be plunged into a depression that would make the Great
Depression of the 1930s in which I spent my childhood look like boom
times,” said William R. Polk, former professor of history
at the University of Chicago and a member of the Policy Planning Council
under President Kennedy. “Industries would fail, banks would collapse,
government revenues would dry up, universities would have to close,
health care, even as limited as it now is for roughly 75 million Americans,
would virtually cease. In short, something like [what] the South suffered
at the end of the Civil War would plague the country.”
The passage of vast amounts
of oil and liquefied gas through the Persian Gulf would be disrupted.
Iranian attacks, carried out with rocket- and bomb-equipped speedboats
and submarines, would be deadly and effective. A classified Pentagon war game in 2002 simulated these swarming
attacks by Iranian speedboats packed with explosives in the gulf; the
Navy lost 16 major warships, according to a report in The New York Times.
Iranian oil, which makes up 8 percent of the world’s energy supply,
would instantly be taken off the market. And oil would jump to over
$500 a barrel and perhaps, as the conflict dragged on, to over $750
a barrel. Our petroleum-based economy would come to a halt.
Israel would be hit by
Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. Hezbollah, with its new store of
Iranian-supplied rockets that allegedly can reach any part of Israel,
including Israel’s nuclear plant at Dimona, would enter the conflict.
Israel would lash back. Terrorist attacks on U.S. targets would become
frequent. U.S. casualties in Iraq would mount as the Iranians rained
missiles down on U.S. bases and installations, including our imperial
city, the Green Zone. Chaos and mayhem would grip the Middle East. The
world financial markets would go haywire.
“Even at today’s
price, as you know, 14 airlines have gone out of business while others
are hovering on the brink of bankruptcy and most have curtailed service
and laid off personnel,” said Polk, one of the country’s leading
scholars of the Arab world. “At double or triple today’s price,
none could fly unless nationalized. A whole range of other industries
would be quickly drawn into the quicksand. Ironically, war would push
America into a form of socialist economy.”
The U.S. economy is already
tottering. We recently witnessed the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, and there are
fears that as many as 150 banks could fail over the next 12 to 18 months.
There will be 6.5 million foreclosures over the next five years, according
to Wall Street analysts. The government is furiously pumping billions
of taxpayer dollars into private corporations to keep them afloat. The
Congress bailed out the shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
These bizarre “government-sponsored enterprises” own or guarantee
half the mortgages in the country-some $5.1 trillion. The Federal
Reserve evoked rarely used emergency powers to put billions of taxpayer
dollars at risk to stop the meltdown of a non-bank, Bear Stearns, which
it never regulated. More than $300 billion has been written down so
far. Losses, by the time we are done, could exceed $1 trillion.
The already staggering
debt generated by the war in Iraq would mushroom with an attack on Iran.
Fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, we would soon be struggling
to pay off a debt of at least two or three times the present amount.
This is a weight the U.S. economy cannot bear, especially as the dollar
tumbles against the euro and other major currencies. The government
has borrowed abroad roughly a quarter of our annual national income
in order to pay for the Iraq debacle. We have been told for the first
time by a sovereign fund (South Korean, one of the world’s largest)
that it will no longer buy U.S. Treasury bonds. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the final cost
of the war in Iraq, once all the hidden costs are added up, could be
as high as $7 trillion.
“Financial capitalism
is crashing,” wrote independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader.
“So the lights are on late in Washington’s Federal Reserve, SEC
and Treasury Department trying to figure out how socialism (your tax
dollars and credits) can once again bail out these big-time gamblers
with our money. … Reckless, self-enriching capitalists get on your
knees and thank the rescuing Washington socialists, for without them,
you would surely be in chains.”
A war with Iran would
also have grave political consequences. The specter of millions of Americans
driven out of their homes, no longer able to afford basic necessities,
out of work and enraged, would, as it has throughout history, embolden
messianic right-wing and proto-fascist movements. Given the potential
for social unrest, basic freedoms would be curtailed and in some cases
abolished in the name of order and national security. The radical fringes
of the Christian right could rise up with a vengeance. They would happily
ally themselves with an assortment of oddballs, lunatics and corporate
behemoths from Blackwater mercenaries to frightened capitalists at Halliburton.
It was economic collapse, along with a climate of fear and instability,
that was used to build the fascist and communist movements that plagued
Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union during the last century. These same
forces led to the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. We are not immune
to these distortions.
But maybe those who advocate
a war with Iran know all this. Maybe this is what they want. Maybe they
understand that a war with Iran would finally kill off our weakened
and anemic democracy. Maybe they see this as the dawn of a new era,
an era when the last impediments to a global totalitarian capitalism
can finally be removed and we can all be ground under the corporate
jack boot, from Shanghai to New Delhi to Ohio. There are huge corporations
that make obscene profits from human misery. They run our health care
industry. They run our oil and gas companies. They run our bloated weapons
industry. They run Wall Street and the major investment firms. They
run our manufacturing firms. They also, ominously, run our government.