Do We Have The Courage To Stop War With Iran? (By Ray McGovern)
By SusanUnPC on September 1, 2007 at 3:42 PM in Bush/Cheney, Current Affairs, Intelligence, Iran
By Ray McGovern for OpEdNews.com
Why do I feel like the proverbial skunk at a Labor Day picnic? Sorry; but I thought you might want to know that this time next year there will probably be more skunks than we can handle. I fear our country is likely to be at war with Iran—and with the thousands of real terrorists Iran can field around the globe.
It is going to happen, folks, unless we put our lawn chairs away on Tuesday, take part in some serious grass-roots organizing, and take action to prevent a wider war—while we still can.
President George W. Bush’s speech Tuesday lays out the Bush/Cheney plan to attack Iran and how the intelligence is being “fixed around the policy,” as was the case before the attack on Iraq.
It’s not about putative Iranian “weapons of mass destruction”—not even ostensibly. It is about the requirement for a scapegoat for U.S. reverses in Iraq, and the White House’s felt need to create a casus belli by provoking Iran in such a way as to “justify” armed retaliation—eventually including air strikes on its nuclear-related facilities.
President George W. Bush’s speech Tuesday lays out the Bush/Cheney plan to attack Iran and how the intelligence is being “fixed around the policy,” as was the case before the attack on Iraq.
It’s not about putative Iranian “weapons of mass destruction”—not even ostensibly. It is about the requirement for a scapegoat for U.S. reverses in Iraq, and the White House’s felt need to create a casus belli by provoking Iran in such a way as to “justify” armed retaliation—eventually including air strikes on its nuclear-related facilities.
Bush’s Aug. 28 speech to the American Legion comes five years after a very similar presentation by Vice President Dick Cheney. Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 26, 2002, Cheney set the meretricious terms of reference for war on Iraq.
Sitting on the same stage that evening was former CENTCOM commander Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was being honored at the VFW convention. Zinni later said he was shocked to hear a depiction of intelligence (Iraq has WMD and is amassing them to use against us) that did not square with what he knew. Although Zinni had retired two years before, his role as consultant had enabled him to stay up to date on key intelligence findings.
“There was no solid proof that Saddam had WMD…I heard a case being made to go to war,” Zinni told Meet the Press three and a half years later.
(Zinni is a straight shooter with considerable courage, and so the question lingers: why did he not go public? It is all too familiar a conundrum at senior levels; top officials can seldom find their voices. My hunch is that Zinni regrets letting himself be guided by a misplaced professional courtesy and/or slavish adherence to classification restrictions, when he might have prevented our country from starting the kind of war of aggression branded at Nuremberg the “supreme international crime.”)
Cheney: Dean of Preemption
Zinni was not the only one taken aback by Cheney’s words. Then-CIA director George Tenet says Cheney’s speech took him completely by surprise. In his memoir Tenet wrote, “I had the impression that the president wasn’t any more aware than we were of what his number-two was going to say to the VFW until he said it.”
Yet, it could have been anticipated. Just five weeks before, Tenet himself had told his British counterpart that the president had decided to make war on Iraq for regime change and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
When Bush’s senior advisers came back to town after Labor Day, 2002, the next five weeks (and by now, the next five years) were devoted to selling a new product—war on Iraq. The actual decision to attack Iraq, we now know, was made several months earlier but, as then-White House chief of staff Andy Card explained, no sensible salesperson would launch a major new product during the month of August—Cheney’s preemptive strike notwithstanding. Yes, that’s what Card called the coming war; a “new product.”
After assuring themselves that Tenet was a reliable salesman, Cheney and then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld dispatched him and the pliant Powell at State to play supporting roles in the advertising campaign: bogus yellowcake uranium from Niger, aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment, and mobile trailers for manufacturing biological warfare agent—the whole nine yards. The objective was to scare or intimidate Congress into voting for war, and, thanks largely to a robust cheering section in the corporate-controlled media, Congress did so on October 10 and 11, 2002.
This past week saw the president himself, with that same kind of support, pushing a new product—war with Iran. And in the process, he made clear how intelligence is being fixed to “justify” war this time around. The case is too clever by half, but it will be hard for Americans to understand that. Indeed, the Bush/Cheney team expects that the product will sell easily—the more so, since the administration has been able once again to enlist the usual cheerleaders in the media to “catapult the propaganda,” as Bush once put it.
Iran’s Nuclear Plans
It has been like waiting for Godot…the endless wait for the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear plans. That NIE turns out to be the quintessential dog that didn’t bark. The most recent published NIE on the subject was issued two and a half years ago and concluded that Iran could not have a nuclear weapon until “early- to mid-next decade.” That estimate followed a string of NIEs dating back to 1995, which kept predicting, with embarrassing consistency, that Iran was “within five years” of having a nuclear weapon.
The most recent NIE, published in early 2005, extended the timeline and provided still more margin for error. Basically, the timeline was moved 10 years out to 2015 but, in a fit of caution, the drafters settled on the words “early-to-mid next decade.” On Feb. 27, 2007 at his confirmation hearings to be Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell repeated that formula verbatim.
A “final” draft of the follow-up NIE mentioned above had been completed in Feb. 2007, and McConnell no doubt was briefed on its findings prior to his testimony. The fact that this draft has been sent back for revision every other month since February speaks volumes. Judging from McConnell’s testimony, the conclusions of the NIE draft of February are probably not alarmist enough for Vice President Dick Cheney. (Shades of Iraq.)
According to one recent report, the target date for publication has now slipped to late fall. How these endless delays can be tolerated is testimony to the fecklessness of the “watchdog” intelligence committees in House and Senate.
As for Iran’s motivation if it plans to go down the path of producing nuclear weapons, newly appointed defense secretary Robert Gates was asked about that at his confirmation hearing in December. Just called from the wings to replace Donald Rumsfeld, Gates apparently had not yet read the relevant memo from Cheney’s office. It is a safe bet that the avuncular Cheney took Gates to the woodshed, after the nominee suggested that Iran’s motivation could be, “in the first instance,” deterrence:”
“While they [the Iranians] are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for a nuclear capability, I think they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent. They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons—Pakistan to the east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west, and us in the Persian Gulf.”
Unwelcome News (to the White House)
There they go again—those bureaucrats at the International Atomic Energy Agency. On August 28, the very day Bush was playing up the dangers from Iran, the IAEA released a note of understanding between the IAEA and Iran on the key issue of inspection. The IAEA announced:
“The agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has therefore concluded that it remains in peaceful use.”
The IAEA deputy director said the plan just agreed to by the IAEA and Iran will enable the two to reach closure by December on the nuclear issues that the IAEA began investigating in 2003. Other IAEA officials now express confidence that they will be able to detect any military diversion or any uranium enrichment above a low grade, as long as the Iran-IAEA safeguard agreement remains intact.
Shades of the preliminary findings of the U.N. inspections—unprecedented in their intrusiveness—that were conducted in Iraq in early 2003 before the U.S. abruptly warned the U.N. in mid-March to pull out its inspectors, lest they find themselves among those to be shocked-and-awed.
Vice President Cheney can claim, as he did three days before the attack on Iraq, that the IAEA is simply “wrong.” But Cheney’s credibility has sunk to prehistoric levels; witness the fact that the president was told that this time he would have to take the lead in playing up various threats from Iran. And they gave him new words.
The President’s New Formulation
As I watched the president speak on Aug. 28, I was struck by the care he took in reading the exact words of a new, subjunctive-mood formulation regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions. He never looked up; this is what he said:
“Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.”
The cautious wording suggests to me that the White House finally has concluded that the “nuclear threat” from Iran is “a dog that won’t hunt,” as Lyndon Johnson would have put it. While, initial press reporting focused on the “nuclear holocaust” rhetorical flourish, the earlier part of the sentence is more significant, in my view. It is quite different from earlier Bush rhetoric charging categorically that Iran is “pursuing nuclear weapons,” including the following (erroneous) comment at a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in early August:
“This [Iran] is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon.”
The latest news from the IAEA is, for the White House, an unwelcome extra hurdle. And the president’s advisers presumably were aware of it well before Bush’s speech was finalized; it will be hard to spin. Administration officials would also worry about the possibility that some patriotic truth teller might make the press aware of the key judgments of the languishing draft of the latest NIE on Iran’s nuclear capability—or that a courageous officer or official of Gen. Anthony Zinni’s stature might feel conscience bound to try to head off another unnecessary war, by providing a more accurate, less alarmist assessment of the nuclear threat from Iran.
It is just too much of a stretch to suggest that Iran could be a nuclear threat to the United States within the next 17 months, and that’s all the time Bush and Cheney have got to honor their open pledge to our “ally” Israel to eliminate Iran’s nuclear potential. Besides, some American Jewish groups have become increasingly concerned over the likelihood of serious backlash if young Americans are seen to be fighting and dying to eliminate perceived threats to Israel (but not to the U.S.). Some of these groups have been quietly urging the White House to back off the nuclear-threat rationale for war on Iran.
The (Very) Bad News
Bush and Cheney have clearly decided to use alleged Iranian interference in Iraq as the preferred casus belli. And the charges, whether they have merit or not, have become much more bellicose. Thus, Bush on Aug. 28:
“Iran’s leaders…cannot escape responsibility for aiding attacks against coalition forces…The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops. I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”
How convenient: two birds with one stone. Someone to blame for U.S. reverses in Iraq, and “justification” to confront the ostensible source of the problem—“deadeners” having been changed to Iran. Vice President Cheney has reportedly been pushing for military retaliation against Iran if the U.S. finds hard evidence of Iranian complicity in supporting the “insurgents” in Iraq.
President Bush obliged on Aug. 28:
“Recently, coalition forces seized 240-millimeter rockets that had been manufactured in Iran this year and that had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups by Iranian agents. The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased in the last few months…”
QED
Recent U.S. actions, like arresting Iranian officials in Iraq—eight were abruptly kidnapped and held briefly in Baghdad on Aug. 28, the day Bush addressed the American Legion—suggest an intention to provoke Iran into some kind of action that would justify U.S. “retaliation.” The evolving rhetoric suggests that the most likely immediate targets at this point would be training facilities inside Iran—some twenty targets that are within range of U.S. cruise missiles already in place.
Iranian retaliation would be inevitable, and escalation very likely. It strikes me as shamelessly ironic that the likes of our current ambassador at the U.N., Zalmay Khalilizad, one of the architects of U.S. policy toward the area, are now warning publicly that the current upheaval in the Middle East could bring another world war.
The Public Buildup
Col. Pat Lang (USA, ret.), as usual, puts it succinctly:
“Careful attention to the content of the chatter on the 24/7 news channels reveals a willingness to accept the idea that it is not possible to resolve differences with Iran through diplomacy. Network anchors are increasingly accepting or voicing such views. Are we supposed to believe that this is serendipitous?”
And not only that. It is as if Scooter Libby were back writing lead editorials for the Washington Post, the Pravda of this administration. The Post’s lead editorial on Aug. 21 regurgitated the allegations that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is “supplying the weapons that are killing a growing number of American soldiers in Iraq;” that it is “waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible.” Designating Iran a “specially designated global terrorist” organization, said the Post, “seems to be the least the United States should be doing, giving the soaring number of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq.”
As for the news side of the Post, which is widely perceived as a bit freer from White House influence, its writers are hardly immune. For example, they know how many times the draft National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program has been sent back for redrafting…and they know why. Have they been told not to write the story?
For good measure, the indomitable arch-neocon James Woolsey has again entered the fray. He was trotted out on August 14 to tell Lou Dobbs that the US may have no choice but to bomb Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons program. Woolsey, who has described himself as the “anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,” knows what will scare. To Dobbs: “I’m afraid within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they [Iran] could have the bomb.”
As for what Bush is telling his counterparts among our allies, reporting on his recent meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy are disquieting, to say the least. Reports circulating in European foreign ministries indicate that Sarkozy came away convinced that Bush “is serious about bombing Iran’s secret nuclear facilities,” according to well-connected journalist Arnauld De Borchgrave.
It Is Up To US
Air strikes on Iran seem inevitable, unless grassroots America can arrange a backbone transplant for Congress. The House needs to begin impeachment proceedings without delay. Why? Well, there’s the Constitution of the United States, for one thing. For another, the initiation of impeachment proceedings might well give our senior military leaders pause. Do they really want to precipitate a wider war and risk destroying much of what is left of our armed forces for the likes of Bush and Cheney? Is another star on the shoulder worth THAT?
The deterioration of the U.S. position in Iraq; the perceived need for a scapegoat; the knee-jerk deference given to Israel’s myopic and ultimately self-defeating security policy; and the fact that time is running out for the Bush/Cheney administration to end Iran’s nuclear program—together make for a very volatile mix.
So, on Tuesday let’s put away the lawn chairs and roll up our sleeves. Let’s remember all that has already happened since Labor Day five years ago.
There is very little time to exercise our rights as citizens and stop this madness. At a similarly critical juncture, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was typically direct. I find his words a challenge to us today:
"There is such a thing as being too late…. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity…. Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”
A shorter version of this article appeared originally on Consortiumnews.com
Author’s Bio: Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his 27-years as a CIA analyst, he chaired NIEs: he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
(small, medium and large sizes; for both dogs and cats)
+ 
I doubt very much whether Zinni could’ve done anything to prevent war. So many others in positions of influence tried and it didn’t even make a dent. However, it would’ve been the right thing to do if Zinni had spoken out and he should’ve. Everyone should speak out, or else we will become complicit in our silence.
Zinni could join other generals in staging a coup.
To be honest, I feel quite hopeless. I don’t believe the majority of the Democrats will stand up to Bush, or that he would pay attention if they did.
“NIEs dating back to 1995, which kept predicting, with embarrassing consistency, that Iran was “within five years” of having a nuclear weapon.”
Five years - that would be ten Friedman Units.
Delia, I feel hopeless too - and very desperate.
I simply don’t know what to do. And I don’t know how to break through the apathy that I see all around me. People go about their lives as if nothing is happening.
My co-workers weren’t even aware that Bush gave a speech last week clarifying his intention to wage war on Iran soon. When I pointed it out, they all shrugged. But it wasn’t because they wanted to go to war. It felt more like, well there’s nothing I can do about it. I felt they were shrugging out of resignation, not apathy.
I don’t know, Leslie, maybe. Or maybe a combination. Whatever or whichever it is, it is the main thing that made attacking Iraq inevitable, and that makes the impending attack on Iran also inevitable. The administration is out of control, the “opposition” party is right with them on it - just listen to Obama and Hillary on Iran! - and the people shrug and go about their business.
I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do.
Roll up our sleeves, Ray says - roll up our sleeves and do what?! Where? With whom? I started rolling up my sleeves in early 2002, and it has made exactly zero difference. I am feeling more and more that the time has come to pack my bags, gather my assets, and get the hell out before it is too late. I don’t want to be part of a country that behaves the way this one does.
One of the tragedies was — as Chris Hedges points out in the piece above — 10 million people marched against the war with Iraq, the most in human history. But media coverage of the protests was scant and marginalized. That’s crucial because the effect of the demonstrations is weakened if they don’t get the coverage they merit.
So what do we do to get ourselves heard?
Then there’s the spin on protests. I was working during the WTO protests in Seattle, but did witness what was really going on. (One reason being that the city buses wouldn’t drive through downtown, and I got dumped off about four miles from my home with no way to get there, so I walked and walked.) The national spin on the WTO protests was SO off-kilter and false. Or it was ignored — e.g., Nightline never did one single segment on the protests. Examples of what I personally witnessed:
1) the “anarchists” who threw rocks through store windows were allowed to do so by the police, who stood by and watched. I saw that happen, and heard a local TV news reporter state that fact, which I never heard reported again by anyone in the media.
2) the vast majority of marchers were older union workers — my daughter marched with nice older pot-bellied guys from the steelworkers union, for example.
3) the marchers were overwhelmingly peaceful and moderate — many of them mothers with children, members of religious communities, union members, and on and on. But the police were terrifying — they had on the most frightening heavily-padded uniforms and weapons of every kind.
That’s a bit of a digression, but my point is that however we protest, or how we look and behave, it’ll get ignored, underreported, or warped by the media and there’ll be an overkill response from law enforcement. It’s shameful that the WTO protests are remembered for a few rocks through windows, when it was something entirely different and really quite beautiful. Not to mention important.
Guess we can all write our members of congress. What else?
NYC pulled similar shenanigans during the protests here. They refused to permit the march until the last minute for one protest, which led to the UN building. Then they set up pedestrian blockades all along the route and kept adding to them as we marched. So if you started up 5th Avenue at 42nd Street hoping to cross town and head down 1st Ave., you couldn’t. The goal posts kept moving north as it were…all the way up to 70th Street I think. So all the protesters had to march from 42nd & 5th Ave. up to 70th Street before they could cross town to 1st Ave. and then head downtown to 42nd Street again where the speakers and the main protest was located. It was a very effective deterrent and drove lots of people away. Even so, the protest was huge!
You should’ve seen the police presence at the next protest on 6th Ave. months later. There were paddy wagons everywhere. That’s the infamous protest where about 600 people were arrested, most released later, and held in some kind of a bunker with plastic cufflinks holding their hands behind their backs for hours. That protest was also huge and predominately peaceful, just as the previous one was.
Yeah, the NYC police had full riot gear on. The protesters were a mix of politicians leading the march, such as Jesse Jackson, and Military Families Speak Out, with a lot of veterans, then families with their kids and babies, older people, young people, business people, you couldn’t paint a stereotypical protester.
And there was relatively little media attention given to any of the NYC protests. When the media did report them, they tended to focus on the few people who caused trouble.
Those damned “anarchists” have been at all the demonstrations here too, and also got most of the media attention. The police here are not so bad, though. They are typically as unobtrusive as they can be under the circumstances and considering their numbers. I do remember one time, though, they brought in a mounted unit to go after the “anarchists” after they broke away from the main demonstration, but other than that they have been pretty cool.
Some people DID get arrested last summer during the horrible, criminal Israeli assault on Lebanon. It was at a rally in front of the Israeli Consulate that was orgnanized by a coalition of Jewish organizations. A group of them decided to block the street, and at that point the police came and arrested them, but it was all very calm and not violent at all. Of course they knew they would be arrested, and of course the police knew they knew. This was one of a number of noon-time and late-afternoon rallies in that location, and it was by far the largest one. The Consulate is about a block from my office, so I was able to attend all of them.
But media coverage of the protests was scant and marginalized.
So what do we do to get ourselves heard?
Susan,
I suggested to some people that regular protests (I don’t care if only 2 or 3 people gather daily) should also take place in front of the HOMES of the people who control the media and the HOMES of the people who sit at the anchors desks and lie to us!
When the spouses, kids and neighbors start bitching perhaps some shit will change!
On a similar note, as far as I know there have not been any actions at all targeting the media. What about demonstrations outside the offices and facilities of the major networks? Every major metropolitan area has TV and radio station affiliates and they have offices and broadcast facilities that could be the location of rallies, or regular pickets. I think that might be even more affective than actions outside the homes of anchors, who mostly really don’t have much to say about what they present in their broadcasts.
Protesting in front of the local affiliates was also mentioned.
I don’t want the anchors left out.
Why should people who read the Pentagon scripts get to go home and not face the angry public?
The lies they tell get people killed. What price do they pay?
But the police were terrifying — they had on the most frightening heavily-padded uniforms and weapons of every kind.
Sorry to keep posting!
Susan,
I was in Seattle. They also had that fast little tank.
What was most frightening was hearing the sound of their boots echoing off the buildings before you could see them coming.
It reminded me of the old Nazi SS footage.
Then came the tear gas.
I believe you. Wish we’d known of each other back then! I’d forgotten about that tank.
That day I got dumped off by the bus and had to walk downtown to try to find a taxi to get me home, I stumbled on to a protest and then saw this huge phalanx of cops in those uniforms and was terrified I’d get caught up and teargassed. Or even arrested … they’d already arrested a Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer, etc. and thrown them in jail.
Despite my warnings, my then teen daughter went down with her friend. They brought home pockets full of rubber bullets they’d picked up off the street. Just nuts. But at least she was able to report to me the kinds of people who were the real participants in the demos — decent working people terrified about “free trade” and mainstream-type members of human rights and environmental groups. (But no media report ever mentions any of that, just the brief violence that the police allowed to happen.)
P.S. The city/county’s refusal to run its buses through downtown — which has the main connecters for all bus routes everywhere — made it impossible for a lot of people to get to/from work that week. Minimum-wage workers had a hell of a time, and lost several days in wages. At the time, I was doing Web design for a software company so could afford a cab if need be (although cabbies had a rough time getting around too). And, unlike me, minimum-wage workers didn’t even have free bus passes. But — as I recall — the feds ordered the city/county into this “overkill” response mode. Stupid.
What it really was all about was to crush dissent, and to paint all demonstrators as wild-haired, masked “anarchists.”
Shirin…I am feeling more and more that the time has come to pack my bags, gather my assets, and get the hell out before it is too late. I don’t want to be part of a country that behaves the way this one does.
My thoughts exactly…at this point that old 60’s phrase “my country love it or leave it” makes more sense every day. It is not a case of running out its a case of survival. It is similar to the situation when a hurricane is coming do you get out or do you ride it out? If Bush/Cheney aren’t thrown out by a coup, then the downfall and collapse of this ncountry is inevitable and I for one see no reason to “ride it out”.
My wife and I sold our house last year and are currently renting (a very easy solution in the increasing down turning housing market) and plan to retire to Mexico with a few assets and a little retirement in a year or so. I would say this that be prepared to move quickly but if you still feel there is a chance than stay until the election of Nov 2008 but I don’t think it matters because when President Guiliani iis inaugarated in jan 2009 it will be all over except the shouting!
Bill, I don’t think it will matter much whether it is Giuliani, Hillary, or Obama. It is largely, as I see it anyway, idiotic foreign policy - the policy of empire - that is doing the most damage, both to the world and to this country, and Hillary and Obama are on the same track of bomb, bomb, bomb, invade, invade, invade, occupy, occupy, occupy (if they were not planning to invade and occupy more unwilling countries, then why would they need the significantly larger military they both say they are planning?).
Mexico is too close to Texas. There are thousands of retired military living down there. I was living there myself in 2000. A US citizens group run by retired military organized the absentee voting. They collected all the ballots but didn’t mail in (on a timely enough basis) the votes for Al Gore. After the election, the registered Democrats received notices that their ballots had not arrived in time and their votes were not counted. I still have my receipt. I will never part with it.
Also, lots of crime happening to American citizens in Mexico. On the very day I arrived in June 2000, a prominent couple from Dallas was murdered, execution style, in their home. Of course, the Dallas husband DID have some illegal land deals happening at the time. And the wife was a Daughter of Texas but they killed her too.
There are plenty of places in the world ideally suited for retirement. You should think carefully before you go to Mexico. And remember, when Mexico becomes part of the North American Union, you will still be living in the USA anyway.
Well, in the case of my co-workers…none of them support Bush or the war. They’ve said so. But why they won’t speak out…dunno?
I don’t know what to do either. But I can’t just sit around and do nothing, waiting for disaster to strike. Even if nothing is accomplished by speaking out, I still have to. As Keith Olbermann would say…he’s expecting the Bushies to arrest him any day now for sedition.
Yes, Leslie, I cannot just do nothing either. I feel very much the way I felt watching the impending Iraq disaster. As you said, like watching a slow motion train wreck.
People asked me then why I demonstrated, why I spoke, why I wrote and wrote and wrote when nothing I did would change anything. My answer was that at the very least if I remain silent I am giving assent, and at the end of the day I wanted to be able to know that I went on record - one small, insignificant voice, heard by very few - that I did not assent to this.
Not one of my coworkers can stand Bush, none of them, I am sure, wants to see an attack on Iran, but they will not take even one tiny action. Not one. A couple of weeks ago I went to a rally against torture at the site of the American Psychological Association annual meeting. I don’t know how many are aware of just how involved APA members are in the whole turture machinery, including devising methods. I brought back several small orange ribbon pins. These are used both as statements against torture, and also for impeachment. I wear mine every day, and every Friday I wear orange as a major feature of my wardrobe. I gave a flyer and one of the orange ribbons to a young man I work with who I know is very passionately pro-impeachment. Where do you think it two weeks later? Still on his desk where I put it, and believe me it is not because he is shy about displaying his views - he has a large impeach Bush and Cheney poster hanging in his cubicle.
Tuesday was a nationwide day of speaking out with about 6-700 rallies and vigils all over the country, including a very large one in the city where I work. I told several of my colleagues who I know are concerned about rallies in their towns. Do you think any of them bothered to take an hour or two out of their Tuesday evening for that? Of course not!
I have invited colleagues to join me at noon-time or after-work rallies at the Federal Building, which is about a 15 minute walk from the office, or join for a few minutes or an hour the sit-ins outside the homes of our local Congress members, one of whom holds a very important and high position. How many do you suppose have even expressed interest? Right - zero, exactly.
I have urged my colleagues to call the White House, or call and write to their Congress members on national call-in days. How many calls do you suppose they have made collectively? Zero, exactly.
I guess they think I am some kind of obsessed kook, and wish I would shut up about it.
If they won’t even do these small things - pin on a ribbon, wear a particular colour on a particular day, spend an hour at an anti-war vigil, make a phone call, write a letter - then how are they going to do anything that takes any real effort?
In Iraq I knew and associated with people who were real activists who did a lot more, and risked a lot more, believe me, than pinning on a ribbon or going to a vigil. Maybe some of them were misguided, but most of them were idealists who struggled to bring positive changes to the country. Many of them suffered a lot as a result, and some of them are dead now for their troubles. And these lazy Americans cannot even lift their hands to pin on a ribbon or make a phone call, or write an e-mail, or take an hour or two out of their precious, useless lives to attend a rally or a vigil.
Worse than allowing this country going down in flames, they are watching this country taking the rest of the world with it, and they don’t even care enough to look up from their Starbuck’s lattes to see it happening. Some land of the free and home of the brave. More like land of the tethered goat and home of the coward.
Oh yes - and one of my colleagues who is very smart and very aware and concerned, and knows just what the orange ribbon and the orange garments are all about compliments me constantly on both, but do you suppose she has joined me in the effort at all?
For the sake of history: There were powerful ongoing protests against the war in Vietnam. I worked for a television station that had a investigative, progressive news mission. At lunchtime, the place would empty out and almost everyone walked downtown, in their business attire, to march in the noon protests against the Vietnam war.
So, it can happen. I was there. But that was also five years after I’d attended my first Vietnam protest, and the war was still raging. So it takes time and constant effort.
We can’t give up. SHIRIN, I’m so proud of your efforts … good for you for going to the APA protest.
Leslie,
You should ask everyone to read a book titled They Thought They Were Free
But Then It Was Too Late
“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
Thanks Cee! Many people find it difficult to imagine the US becoming a police state and waging wars of aggression. But it could happen very easily and it is happening. All it takes is for people to be silent and afraid.
The US has, of course, been waging wars of aggression for a very long time. This would appear to be the first time it has ever come this close to becoming a police state, and it IS scary.
I appreciate Ray McGovern…and Larry….and everyone who is keeping this threat at the forefront. It is, quite simply, THE most important issue of all, since it obviously looks like Bush/Cheney will not leave office without having attacked Iran. Because they can.
I, too, am discouraged by the lack of courage and leadership shown by the Democrats, who seem more interested in not interfering with their chances in Nov. ‘08.
So short sighted! Is NO ONE — other than Ray McGovern, Justin Raimondo, Paul Craig Roberts, Larry Johnson and a few others — capable of seeing the big picture….long term? Do they (now in power) have NO IDEA what will happen to the economy — to everything that matters to us — when this attack takes place? PLAY OUT THE SCENARIO!!!! It will be a disaster!
In fact, it’s not at all clear there will even BE an election in Nov. 08…..Bush/Cheney have already put in place their own take over. Shocking, really.
So disheartening to live during a time when so many cowards and dullards are in this Congress.
We’ve been hearing about this for months now. But it could take place in just a couple of weeks. I’m sure Bush/Cheney will find September 11 a noteworthy date. sigh
Thank you, Ray McGovern!
I think a lot of Democrats agree with the Bushies and that’s why they keep voting to support them.
I think you are right, Leslie, and that is a big reason why we are screwed.
Too many words, too many arguments >> overload.
If they do attack Iran, it guarantees blowback and consequent martial law. The regimists are not fucking around.
I think we can all agree that no matter what we do out here to try to stop this we will be ignored and marginalized by the government and the corporate media. Our only hope is something I’m loathe to even ponder.
The military and intelligence agencies MUST refuse the orders of Bush and Cheney. If the military says no, it won’t happen. If the intelligence agencies go public with all they know about both Iran and Iraq then maybe, just maybe the media will have to report the truth. They will have to stop whoring for this President. Then perhaps we could bring some sanity back to our foriegn policy. It would be unprecidented, to be sure and may ultimately cause other problems in the future but if they let these lunatics who run our government{and their media tit suckers} pull of another illegal act of violence we may not have a future.
“There was no solid proof that Saddam had WMD…I heard a case being made to go to war,” Zinni told Meet the Press three and a half years later.
(Zinni is a straight shooter with considerable courage, and so the question lingers: why did he not go public?
Ray McGovern is simply mistaken here. Zinni did go public. He said exactly what he said on MTP in my home town in October 2002 (on a panel with Pat Lang and others at Virginia Military Institute), and along with Jim Webb became known as one of the few military people willing to actively criticize the idea of invading. He got invited to that panel because he’d been speaking out.
I remember an article from later in the fall of 2002 (in I think a Buffalo paper), interviewing him after a speech there. The article was about how the major media shunned Zinni — previously a favorite cable news military spokesman because he’s bright, to the point, and funny — once he began to speak out against the war. He did speak at every opportunity available to him, bluntly saying that the administration’s claims went way beyond the intelligence.
McGovern should inform himself about Zinni’s pre-invasion activity, and if he does I think he will realize he needs to retract and apologize for this.
Also, somebody tell McGovern that citing Arnauld de Borchgrave, a disinfo pipeline for thirty years, is not a credibility-building move.
Well, except that de Borchgrave’s statement doesn’t reflect particularly well on authoritarian capital, or tend to obscure its evil intentions. So unless those intentions are even *more* evil than Ray M. is now saying, there’s no reason to doubt this particular source.
Morally, we’re all going to be in the bunker with Hitler, especially if Bushco throws nukes. More cynically, the overall outcome for the US depends on whether China takes the Iran attack as the moment to stop buying T-bills.
Who knows? Maybe 9 billion missing dollars from Iraq will keep buying the Chinese leadership’s willingness to underwrite American madness.
F.
[...] of a nuclear strike on Iran would not be worth the limited military value of such an attack. Do We Have The Courage To Stop War With Iran? (By Ray McGovern) : NO QUARTER le to resolve differences with Iran through diplomacy. Network anchors are increasingly accepting [...]
I followed this person’s pingback (like a trackback, I gather).
Saw this on his site:
The bombing of Iran could certainly be catastrophic for France. Sarkozy doesn’t sound like a fool.
What are China and Russia saying? Something like, “Opportunity knocks!”?
It is hard to see Petraeus going along with this. Does he really want to deal with Shiite retaliation and Revolutionary Guard attacks at a time when he is already overstretched and having to draw down by Spring?
Petraeus has clearly agreed to be a tool, that’s why he was given his current job. On the other hand, even though I’m not particularly religious, I pray to God that you are right and I am wrong.
Yeah, a friend of mine now call him General Betray-Us. Both he and Gates were brought in to run the surge, which would have been against anyone’s better judgment and they’ve thus been hooked and aren’t going to stop any attack on Iran. In for the penny, in for the pound.
Are you kidding? Petraeus cares about one thing and one thing only, and that is self aggrandizement. He will do whatever he thinks will help him promote himself and his career. Right now he seems to think serving the regime is the way to get ahead.
The only evidence that Petraeus is NOT channeling Westmoreland is that we haven’t heard any promises to bring, “…our boys home by Christmas,” or that he sees, “Light at the end of the tunnel.”
But then, I’m pretty old, too, so forgive me for thinking that This Movie Has Already Played Here.
Awaiting an attack on the MADDOX and TURNER JOY…and a Persian Gulf Resolution.
Yesterday I put my daughter on a plane for a graduate school in Canada. The school is waiving the international tuition and giving her research assistantships and teaching assistantships. She’s not going to accumulate any debt. I also have a niece whose father is an Australian national who is attending college in that country. Because she has dual citizenship her college education is completely free. Some countries seem to think that having an educated, productive citizenry, not drowning in debt, is in their best interest. I guess they’re the ones who aren’t spending all their resources on a military that’s trying to control the world while their own population slips further and further into need.
I can’t speak for my sister’s hopes for her daughter, but I hope mine can find a job up north. Another war will finish us. What is it going to take to root out this dreadful drive toward empire? It does nothing for the most of us, those of us who don’t run vast multi-national industries. Yet the costs we’re being asked to pay go higher and higher.
Yes, Betray-us is self serving, as are most of the people in positions of power, who remain close to bush, and his minions. It comes as no surprise, does it??? People tend to surrond themselves with people who think like they do. Makes life so much simpler, especially for the morally challenged such as this gang of war criminals. I pray that he will do the right thing, and tell the truth. I do not believe that will happen, although I pray I am wrong.
OT, please forgive. I have such a hard time following the conversation/thread sometimes, and sometimes miss some good comments… by the time I find them, after having to read all the comments, I forget what it was I was looking for… so, hope we can extend recent comments to about 25 or so…
anyway, wanted to share on communication with sons deployed. ALL communication is censored. Either through commercial or govt means. might be outsourced, not sure. We found mail best source, and know it had been opened at times as well. From email communications from him, my address has been watched for some time. I KNOW that my computer has been searched. As a former govt employee, as well as coming from a long line of military family, I never thought for a minute they would not check me out. My father, a former intell officer, as well as Marine, always said: “Remember, big brother is always watching you.”
Lastly what happened with the zogby idiot??? saw his first comment, then everything after that was gone when I got back. Saw you banned him, what happened???
We can prevent a war against Iran by using the DC Madam connection to bring down Cheney and make him resign in disgrace. http://bigheaddc.com/2007/06/05/possible-dc-madam-dick-cheney-affair-raises-ire-among-concerned-citizens/ tells the story.
Has anyone answered SusanUnPC yet? What do we do that can stop this war? King didn’t stop Vietnam. He didn’t put a dent in it. People all over the world have been protesting this war since before it started - no dice. We’ll protest it again on Sept. 15th. Nothing will happen.
There’s something that just won’t die; i.e., the belief that major military objectives can be achieved from air and sea with limited implications for ground forces. What consequences of an air and missile attack on Iran would not have extensive implications for ground forces?
With all of the administration’s support-the-troops hype, I wonder why we’re hearing very little in the administration’s Iran-related statements about deployments, extensions, and call-ups.