Iran 1
Every day takes us a step closer to the implementation of the Bush Administration's plan to bombard Iran. The mainstream media offer cheerful encouragement for this strategy, presumably meant to rally public support at a time when this has never been lower and meant to consolidate and extend greater US military and economic control over central Asia.
This could not be a more provocative - and dangerous - course for the US government to take.
Iran is not - as Iraq was in 2003 - a country already devastated by bombings, malnutrition, environmental disaster - a country without any means to defend itself except through desperate guerrilla action (including the first suicide bombings in the country's history). No, Iran is a country of 70 million people with a well-organised and equipped military. It is a country that - even if defeated in conventional terms (in itself, hardly a certain outcome given the remarkable military failures of the US-UK invaders in Iraq) there can be no doubt that there would be a giant increase in terrorism (in the limited, mainstream media sense of the term, which outright excludes the state terrorism of the US and UK, et al). The result would be a much more dangerous world than it already is - possible irretrievably so, given the involvement and/or proximity of several nuclear powers (US, UK, Israel, Russia, Pakistan, India).
As a Canadian, I can appeal to my government to condemn any military actions against Iran - I can criticise my country's current and connected military intervention in Afghanistan and its rhetorical and material support of the invasion of Iraq. But I can't appeal to the US government not to attack.
What are you who are Americans going to do to try to prevent further slaughter in the region and consequent horrors (including more Draconian domestic policies)? Maybe writing your members of Congress and your President seems like an empty gesture, but it's a start.
If you've ever seen the Doomsday Clock that appears on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, maybe you agree with me that since the Cuban Missile Crisis it has never had more reason to be close to Midnight. And that means Midnight for all of us.
This could not be a more provocative - and dangerous - course for the US government to take.
Iran is not - as Iraq was in 2003 - a country already devastated by bombings, malnutrition, environmental disaster - a country without any means to defend itself except through desperate guerrilla action (including the first suicide bombings in the country's history). No, Iran is a country of 70 million people with a well-organised and equipped military. It is a country that - even if defeated in conventional terms (in itself, hardly a certain outcome given the remarkable military failures of the US-UK invaders in Iraq) there can be no doubt that there would be a giant increase in terrorism (in the limited, mainstream media sense of the term, which outright excludes the state terrorism of the US and UK, et al). The result would be a much more dangerous world than it already is - possible irretrievably so, given the involvement and/or proximity of several nuclear powers (US, UK, Israel, Russia, Pakistan, India).
As a Canadian, I can appeal to my government to condemn any military actions against Iran - I can criticise my country's current and connected military intervention in Afghanistan and its rhetorical and material support of the invasion of Iraq. But I can't appeal to the US government not to attack.
What are you who are Americans going to do to try to prevent further slaughter in the region and consequent horrors (including more Draconian domestic policies)? Maybe writing your members of Congress and your President seems like an empty gesture, but it's a start.
If you've ever seen the Doomsday Clock that appears on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, maybe you agree with me that since the Cuban Missile Crisis it has never had more reason to be close to Midnight. And that means Midnight for all of us.
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