Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop the Attack on Iran

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(Sun, 11 May 2008 16:32:24 -0500 (CDT)) --- Published on The Smirking Chimp (
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Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop the Attack on Iran

By Gary Leupp

Created May 11 2008 - 10:15am from Dissident Voice

May 9. I read tonight a brief article by Philip Giraldi posted on the
American Conservative website: "War with Iran Might Be Closer than You
Think"

www.amconmag.com

"There is considerable speculation," writes the former CIA officer, "and
buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has
agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods
[Revolutionary Guards]-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi
militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near
Tehran."

Giraldi provides details. He reports that the meeting came as "the direct
result" of Hizbollah advances in Lebanon in recent days. (Recall that the
U.S. State Department lists the Shiite organization Hizbollah as
"terrorist" and as a tool of both Iran and Baathist Syria. In fact it is
probably the country's largest and most popular political party and has
built significant ties with some Christian and Sunni groups. Hizbollah's
rapid seizure of the Muslim sections of Beirut, accomplished with little
resistance, may have been deliberately provoked by the U.S.-backed
quasi-government of Lebanon when the latter shut down the party's private
communications network.)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to Giraldi, was the only senior
official present urging delay. That suggests that the military is not
enthusiastic about a widened war in Southwest Asia, but that the other
regular members of the NSC (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as well
as President Bush and Vice President Cheney) are willing to provoke just
that.

They will do what they do with the solid backing of Congress, the
presidential candidates, and the mainstream press which if history is our
guide will for a time shape shockingly malleable public opinion. Yes, I
fear that we (most of us) will be fooled again.

The Congress has passed near-unanimous resolutions against Iran, endorsing
the administration's unprecedented designation of a component of a
nation's military as a "terrorist organization." House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi will be on board the program. Recall how after the Democratic
victory two years ago she capitulated to AIPAC by stripping from a
military spending bill the requirement that Bush seek Congressional
approval before attacking Iran. (That was after she'd pointedly declared
that Bush-Cheney impeachment hearings were "off the table." And after Rep.
John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee and sometimes
maverick, bitterly disappointed those pinning their hopes on him by going
along with the Democratic leadership's line. And after the Democrats had
made it clear they weren't serious about ending the war they'd been
elected to endshowing us how very well the democratic system works in
this country.)

John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton (all of whom agree that an
attack on Iran is "on the table") will publicly approve. The media will
call upon the same "military analysts"/military industry consultants who
have been disseminating Pentagon propaganda for pay since 2002 to explain
why the attack is justified and necessary. The main talking-point has been
decided: "Iran is killing American soldiers in Iraq." Public opinion polls
will show the public divided, but a majority in support of the action
because, regardless of their feelings about the war in Iraq, they want to
"support our troops" and after all, Iran was asking for it by interfering
in Iraq and attacking us.

All the "exposure" that so many journalists and academics have tried to
provide for years will have failed to prevent another illegal attack on a
sovereign nation based on lies and bound to produce more outrage against
the U.S. throughout the world. A cruise missile strike on an alleged
training camp site won't end there. It will be designed to provoke an
Iranian response and legitimate further U.S. attacks, not only on Iran but
Syria and Lebanon, probably in coordination with Israel. Some in Israel
badly want the U.S. to behead all their main enemies in the region before
their good friend George Bush leaves the White House. If that means
regional chaosclashes between Iranian and U.S. forces, the fall of the
Maliki puppet regime in Baghdad (which actually is friendly with Tehran
and says it's playing a positive role in Iraq), the collapse of Shiite
cooperation with the U.S. occupation, Iran-Iraq border clashes, U.S.
forays into Iranian territory, the closing of ranks in fractious Iran
against the imperialist assault on their countryso be it!

If it means renewed war in Lebanon including Israeli invasion, an Iranian
shift from supporting U.S. puppet Karzai to Iran's longtime enemy the
Taliban in Afghanistan, active Syrian support for Sunni forces in Iraq,
the disintegration of the fragile Sunni-"Coalition" alliance against
al-Qaeda in western Iraq as the region descends into a Shiite-Sunni warso
be it! If it means the use of nuclear weapons against Iran to try to cow
its leaders and people into accepting a U.S.-Israeli blueprint for the
regionso be it! If it means the unthinkable in the U.S.--a return to the
draftso be it! All of this will at least have prevented the "nuclear
holocaust" that the neocons, Cheney and Bush have been insisting the
Iranians plan to inflict on the Jewish state unless they are stopped now.
(No matter that all the U.S. intelligence agencies in their National
Intelligence Estimate on Iran published late last year agreed that Iran
does not now have a nuclear weapons program. And no matter that the
Ahmadinejad quote about "wiping Israel off the map" has been exposed as a
lie by Juan Cole and others.)

If Benjamin Netanyahu is Israeli prime minister at the time of the planned
attack on Iran, a time of apocalyptic confusion might be the perfect
opportunity to empty the West Bank of its Palestinians. This NSC agreement
"in principle" to attack Iran is an agreement to risk all these
ramifications, confident that the press and politicians will cooperate.

* * * * *

So often in recent months I've started to write a column exposing some
recent lie (or at least some report pertaining to Iran or Syria that
strikes me as obvious neocon-generated disinformation) only to give up
midway through. Not because of writer's block, fatigue, or even the
thought that "Someone else has already written this, or someone like Alex
Cockburn or Justin Raimondo or Scott Ritter or Gordon Prather will in the
next day or so." It's more a matter of despairing at how much exposure can
accomplish.

A friend of mine was saying last month, "People are 'exposured' out.
They're "Chomskyed" out." He was speaking about young antiwar activists
mainly, but his point was that people who know what's going on are eager
to act on the knowledge. To paraphrase Marx, the point is not to expose
the world, or have it further exposed to you, but to change it.

The readership of sites like Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, and
Antiwar.com know the main points. They know that Dick Cheney, the most
powerful vice president in history (and the most secrecy-obsessed among
powerful figures in U.S. history), has made his office the hub of a cabal
of neocons hell-bent of effecting "regime change" throughout Southwest
Asia by the end of Bush's second term. They know that the Office of
Special Plans fabricated "intelligence" to terrify the masses and gain
support for the invasion of Iraq. They know that U.S. intelligence has
actually concluded that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and that the
UN's IAEA scientists have found no evidence for one. But they also know
that Cheney insists that he knows there's one, just as the neocons such as
Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen know there's one. Just as top Israeli
officials know there's one as they demand U.S. action against Iran. They
know there's a huge anti-Iran propaganda campaign underway very similar to
the one that preceded the lie campaign leading up to the Iraq War now in
its disastrous sixth year. They know that the U.S. is funding terrorist
groups to carry out attacks in Iran. They know that the administration's
allegations about a Syrian nuclear program are highly dubious.

They know that there are conflicts between the traditional intelligence
community and the neocons, and that the latter draw upon a coherent
(Straussian) philosophy that justifies the "noble lie" in order to induce
the foolish masses to support what the "wise"who must conceal their real
objectiveswant them to support. They distrust anything the administration
says about Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan...

Yes, they're "Chomskyed out."

Maybe we need to shift the focus of exposure a bit. From the particular to
the general. From nasty individuals to nasty institutions. From the
symptoms to the system.

What's worse? Cheney and his attorney David Addington crafting a document
in November 2001, bypassing routine staff review before receiving Bush's
signature, which denied "foreign terrorist" suspects in the U.S. access to
any courts and allowing for their indefinite detention? (This was exposed
by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker in the Washington Post last summer.) Or
the failure of the elected officials in Congress to even start impeachment
proceedings against Cheney and Bush?

What's worse? John Yoo writing up his torture memos in 2002 as a Justice
Department employee, as eventually exposed in the mainstream press? Or the
decision of the trustees of the University of California, Berkeley to hire
him as a law professor in 2003?

What's worse? Judith Miller's willingness to funnel disinformation to the
American people through her NYT articles before and after the Iraq
invasion? Or the Time's willingness to publish them, and now those of her
sometimes co-author Michael Gordon, cheerleading the coming Iran attack?

The Congress, the Justice Department, academia, and the press are all
complicit in imperialist war and attacks on the Constitution. Does this
mean the system isn't working, or that it's working all too well?

Is the system supposed to expose itself, through congressional hearings,
investigative reporting, war crimes trials? Or is it, serving the small
minority it's designed to serve, supposed to simply tolerate exposure (in
the name of freedom of the press) while saturating citizens with
propaganda? (If the exposure ever gets widely enough disseminated, and
threatens to undermine its objectives, it can always "kill the
messenger"or at least accuse the writer of undermining national security,
abetting terrorism, etc.)

Voting for "antiwar" Democrats two years ago didn't end the war. Even
millions in the streets, peacefully demonstrating as the system
encourages, didn't prevent the assault on Iraq over five years ago. Now
there's no feasible mainstream-political recourse to stop an attack on
Iran. And little time to mobilize mass demonstrations against it. It will
come as a thief in the night, presented to the American people as a fait
accompli. As the Bush-Cheney cowboys ride off into the sunset, smirkin'
and grinnin' and slapping each other's backs, the people will start to
pay.

A character in Bertolt Brecht's The Beggar's Opera asks what's
worserobbing a bank, or owning a bank? The system itself, that is to say,
is the criminal product of wrongly acquired wealth, much of it obtained
through imperialist war. Exposure alone, no matter how voluminous,
eloquent and persuasive, will not change it.
_______

About author

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative
Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on Japanese
history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

"Tom Davos" (tomdavos@yahoo.com).

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