Today Winter Patriot discusses ‘the surge’ and how to define whether or not it ‘worked’. From eyewitness accounts quoted extensively in this post, it’s very hard to come to any other conclusion than this: the US has conspired with Iran to jointly control Iraq.
In other spaces, this detailed article about the Mediterranean Union asserts that giant swaths of politics, as we the people experience it, is little more than calculated theater. The plan to organize the world’s resources into streams feeding the greedy oceans of Franco-German and Anglo-American power bases, which themselves are converging into one giant ocean, has been underway for decades.
Unknown to the global public, several milestone decisions have been made to end Franco-German and Anglo-American squabbling that will ultimately call for joint management of the spoils of war. Franco-German and Anglo-American interests are converging into one. The reality of the situation is that the area ranging from Mauritania to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan will be shared by America, Britain, France, Germany, and their allies.
These spheres of influence are really spheres of responsibility in a long campaign to restructure the Middle East and North Africa. The services agreement between Total S.A. and Chevron to jointly develop Iraqi energy reserves, NATO agreements in the Persian Gulf, and the establishment of a permanent French military base in the U.A.E. are all results of these objectives. Militant globalization and force is at work from Iraq and Lebanon to the Maghreb.
This map is included:
I have been wondering about Libya lately, thinking maybe the Libyan government was acting as a proxy for Russian interests by opposing sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. According to the Mediterranean Union article, Libya has “surrendered peacefully to the demands” of the Western Powers. Both of these things can still be true, meaning Libya may cooperate sometimes with the West and other times with Russia. I don’t claim to understand the role that Russia plays in the world drama, but it seems to be gaining power and influence rapidly, providing a counterweight to the West.
The overall impression I get, however, after reading these things, is that Iran’s status as the bogeyman has been pre-negotiated with Iran. It’s a little mind-boggling to think this, but we live in times when you have to look at actions, not words, to draw your conclusions.
Here’s another piece of evidence. Back in December when the NIE came out, Bush said a funny thing. In describing the “sticks and carrots” approach the US had taken with Iran, the two carrots he named were 1) putting the WTO on the table and 2) giving Iran spare parts for their airplanes. Lest you were thinking spare parts for commercial jets or something, that’s not what Bush meant. Come to find out, in February 2007 somebody in the US government illegally sold 1400 F14 airplane parts to Iran, in violation of a DoD suspension.
If you add that together with the facts on the ground in Iraq, it does seem to make a lie of all this huffing and puffing against Iran, no?
I mean, there are cock-ups and there are COCK-UPS. What if this Iran demonization program is the latter? A high-stakes drama to keep everyone on their toes, with just enough insane psychopaths involved to keep it real.
Meanwhile, Obama’s foreign policy mentor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave an interview to Jonathan Power before the NIE was released, in which he said this:
For America to give Iran a military thump that it won’t easily forget it is not necessary for Bush to have convincing intelligence that it is building a nuclear weapon. US-Iranian relations have soured for many reasons, not just the nuclear one, and conflict could be ignited over Iranian support for Shia movements in Iraq, the support for anti-American warlords in Afghanistan or because of an Al Qaeda initiated provocation.
Referring back to Winter Patriot’s post, it’s clear that, at least according to these Iraqi witnesses (who have no reason to lie that I can think of) the US and Iran have been cooperating to control Iraq. If true, and I don’t doubt it, this means that an alternative excuse for striking Iran has already been set up, should it be needed. Based on the incessant warmongering we’ve been subjected to, wouldn’t this excuse be useful? Especially if we’re just talking about a “military thump that [Iran] won’t easily forget”, would Iran agree to something like that in the interest of a larger strategic objective? You know, the same way our leaders willingly sacrificed 3,000 Americans on 911 to start remaking the Middle East? Maybe the struggle really is more how the US and/or Israel will be able to strike Iran, not whether they will be allowed to. The push to insist that Iran has nuclear weapons is really a push to justify attacking Iran with nuclear weapons instead of some more conventional, second choice, method of killing innocent people.
The people pushing back might simply be trying to wrestle a compromise: yes you can attack, but no nukes. The crazies probably hope that things will spiral out of control and they get to use them anyway. They are that sick.
The Powers article goes on to these conclusions:
So what could be on Bush’s mind? What are the hard men behind him, such as Vice-President Richard Cheney, pushing for? The Middle East experts, Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh, attempt to answer that question in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. “For the Bush administration containing Iran is the solution to the Middle East’s various problems”, they write. Its officials “seem to feel that in the midst of disorder and chaos lies an unprecedented opportunity for reshaping the region so that it is finally at ease with US dominance and Israeli prowess.”
That such a scenario is built on what most of us would regard as a fantasy seems not to bother them. But can one really imagine Sunni Arab states will unite to support the present Shia dominated Iraqi government so as to undermine Iranian influence there? Or that Saudi Arabia will work to de-claw Hezbollah because they fear Shia primacy in Lebanon? Or that Israel and the Arabs will work together against Hamas in Palestine to thwart Iranian influence?
Well, if you believe all this it is not surprising that you also believe that Iran, with or without a bomb, can never be a constructive presence in the Middle East. Yet there is no sign that Iran, as it did under the Shah, is seeking to become the pivotal state in the region. It is not creating disorder to fulfil some misread scriptural promise. Nor is it by nature an expansionist power. Iran has not begun a war for over 200 years. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacked Iran, Iran was clearly the innocent party.
The Arab states may worry about Iran’s growing influence, but they know a good part of the reason is Israeli intransigence with the Palestinians. Continuous and consistent pro Palestinian support has given Iran a big return on its soft power, whilst American hard power is a declining asset — there is no way that the US can maintain large numbers of troops in the region indefinitely.
With Iraq still a quagmire, with Nato partners losing the war in Afghanistan, with Lebanon in turmoil, and with very little prospect of substantial Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, this is not the time for cranking up hostility towards Iran. As Nasr and Takeyh remind us, “The last time the US rallied the Arab world to contain Iran, in the 1980s, Americans ended up with a radicalised Sunni political culture that eventually yielded Al Qaeda.”
Actually, I think that these experts who describe “containing Iran” and the “unprecedented opportunity for reshaping the region” lying in the “midst of disorder and chaos” do not believe any of the hypothetical scenarios which follow. When Nasr and Takeyh describe reshaping the region “so that it is finally at ease with US dominance and Israeli prowess”, they are describing a region that has been subdued through military might, not diplomacy. “US dominance and Israeli prowess”? The brawns and the brains. The Dynamic Duo. The US and Israel. Violence is porn to these people.
Iran has some damned good assets compared to some of the other Middle Eastern countries: an educated population, natural resources, financial independence. Here is the Map of the New Middle East:
Notice Iran’s central, prominent role.
This all reminds me of something I saw in one of the 911 movies, maybe it was Loose Change. The theory goes that each person in on the crime had to take some kind of public risk, and their public, recorded statements or actions served as a sort of insurance policy. Two that I remember were the unclaimed trades and Larry Silverstein’s statements about the buildings being pulled, but there were more. One for each conspirator. These little risks gave each conspirator the ability to point the finger at the others, so that in the end, they all have an incentive to keep quiet.
Of course, 3000 innocent people had to die to pull this off. And another million Iraqis have died in the meantime. And then there are all the military people killed and maimed. But the conspirators knew that some people would die, and they agreed to make those “sacrifices” in the service of larger goals, or at least that’s probably what they tell themselves when they lie in bed at night.
Now I ask you, is it possible that this kind of bargaining goes on yet? Would certain countries agree to make certain “sacrifices” of their blood and treasure in the service of larger goals? Which ones? The ones with the most to lose? The ones with the most to gain? Would they pressure other countries to make “sacrifices” in exchange for something down the road? You know they would. You know they do.
In conclusion, I think it highly likely that some attack on Iran will “be allowed”, but it will not be nuclear. The ensuing chaos will be used by the current psychopaths in residence to try and ratchet up the situation into a nuclear exchange. Other forces will push back against them. I can’t say who might win that battle, but obviously, we must hope for sanity to prevail.
UPDATE: This piece by Michael Chossudovsky goes into great detail explaining how the very insane idea of a ‘preemptive nuclear attack’ has been ratified by various intellectuals, NATO, the Pentagon, etc. I cannot disagree with this analysis and defer to Chossudovsky’s expertise in these matters. However, I still think that there is another level of decision-making over and above the one he describes, and on this level they recognize that a nuclear strike will open Pandora’s Box. Nobody quite knows how bad things could get. It could be game over for everyone, not just for some. This gets into population die-off and other issues.
If the people who rule the world want a world to rule, they must not wreck the whole planet. What fun would that be for them? I think it shall suffice for their evil plan to cause very grave harm without killing us all, and that is why I think they ultimately want to constrain the nuclear option. It’s not in their interest to have nobody fun left to rule over.
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