"Yet US officials acknowledge that no American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened."
No American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened. Just let that sink in one word at a time.
I have tried on this blog to highlight the unthinkable consequences of an attack on Iran. First of all, it would be morally wrong to attack Iran and cause the death of innocent civilians, but apparently that sort of argument doesn't hold much water anymore. As it turns out, there are many other 'self-interested' reasons why Americans should be vehemently against such an attack, namely American deaths and economic catastrophe that would make today's problems look like the good old days.
The fact remains that we have no idea what sort of hell might be unleashed, but the chances of horrible things happening are exceedingly high. So high that we can't afford to find out.
So what is Bush doing? He's giving the Israelis the 'amber light.'
President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.
Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.
“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.
Nor is it certain that Bush’s amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets.
Bush is giving this amber light against the advice of his generals. They know this is insanity. Reading between the lines, it does seem that there are many people in our government and military who are pushing back hard against this lunacy, and that's where you get these statements that Israel can not expect US support (for the first time evah, apparently, if you're inclined to believe in miracles). Since the US and Israel are Siamese twins joined at the hip, it's pretty hard to see how that would work; and certainly the rest of the world is not going to decide that the US is just an innocent bystander all of a sudden. Please.
“It’s really all down to the Israelis,” the Pentagon official added. “This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn’t believe that anything but force will deter Iran.”
The official added that Israel had not so far presented Bush with a convincing military proposal. “If there is no solid plan, the amber will never turn to green,” he said.
Why is the prospect of whether the world suffers WW III up to the Israelis? Says who? The Israeli leaders are crazy and dangerous people. This is like a hostage negotiation. The whole world is being held hostage by paranoid Israelis, and who do we have in charge? The insipid twit, GW Bush; who merely needs to be convinced that the Israelis have a 'solid plan' to change the light from amber to green. May God help us.
The article goes on to discuss the timing and grave consequences of an attack on Iran, culminating in this amazing statement that "no American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened," which to my mind proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel controls the United States of America. If Israel is threatened, Americans must sacrifice. That's the equation. And we are talking big sacrifices.
I don't know about you, but as an American, I have a problem with that.
And now, here come the people who want to convince GW Bush that this is all not such a big deal.
Well shit, I can't help but notice that Mr. Katzman and Mr. Feldman appear to be nice Jewish boys, so I'm sorry, but I don't really care what they think. Give me some analysis from Mr. O'Sullivan and Mr. Smithfield that comes to these conclusions, conclusions that bear a striking similarity to what Israel wants.Among the sceptics is Kenneth Katzman, a former CIA analyst and author of a book on the Revolutionary Guard. “I don’t subscribe to the view that Iran is in a position to inflict devastating damage on anyone,” said Katzman, who is best known for warning shortly before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to attack America.
“The Revolutionary Guards have always underperformed militarily,” he said. “Their equipment is quite inaccurate if not outright inoperable. Those missile launches were more like putting up a ‘beware of the dog’ sign. They want everyone to think that if you mess with them, you will get bitten.”
A former adviser to Rice noted that Ahmadinejad’s confrontational attitude had earned him powerful enemies among Iran’s religious leadership. Professor Shai Feldman, director of Middle East studies at Brandeis University, said the Iranian government was getting “clobbered” because of global economic strains. “His [Ahmadinejad's] failed policies have made Iran more vulnerable to sanctions and people close to the mullahs have decided he’s a liability,” he said.
“Maybe the Israelis could start off the attack and have us finish it off,” Katzman added. “And maybe that has been their intention all along. But in terms of the long-term military campaign that would be needed to permanently suppress Iran’s nuclear programme, only the US is perceived as having that capability right now.”Gee, d'ya think?
Hey, I have a plan. It starts with us telling Israel to fuck off. And then we unplug them from their multi-billion dollar stream of US taxpayer funding, and then we replace the powerful US-Israeli citizens in our government with strictly US citizens. Maybe then they'll get their heads out of their asses before we have WW III on our hands.
Comments
Experts have been predicting that Bush would authorize a strike on Iran for years:
“I believe President Bush is going to order air strikes (on Iran) before he leaves office”
-Norman Podhoretz (Lyons, 2007).
Bush and his cronies say they want peace and diplomacy, but the problem with the members of Bush administration is that you can't trust them. You can't take what they at face value.
The administration secretly planned and prepared for war with Iraq without disclosing it to the general public.
Yet, when asked about Iraq, Bush’s favorite response was “I have no war plans on my desk.” At one point or another after the planning began, nearly every member of the administration publicly denied any plans to go to war with Iraq.
The question remains: Why would we expect the Bush administration to start being honest and up front about its intentions now?
A better approach to Iran would be negotiations. We need to give Iran an honorable path of retreat. While Fareed Zakaria agrees that there is no reason not to use sanctions and embargoes against states such as Iran, he suggests that we also need to “allow a viable way out.” That is to say, we need to negotiate and not merely mandate.
I think we should more concerned about acquainting ourselves with the realities of Iran's foreign policy initiatives, and intelligently determining our most reasonable course of action.
Americans must be awakened to the insanity of this Iran talk. The problem is, as I see it, there's a lot of brainwashing to cut through and not a lot of time; and so we can't be too delicate. Americans basically need a bucket of ice-cold water dumped on their heads to bring things into sharp focus.