Collateral damage.....

The Japan Times
More deadly than Saddam

By GWYNNE DYER

LONDON -- The final indignity, if you are an Iraqi who was shot for accidentally turning into the path of a U.S. military convoy (they thought you might be a terrorist), or blown apart by a car bomb or an airstrike, or tortured and murdered by kidnappers, or just for being a Sunni or a Shiite, is that U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will deny that your death happened. The script they are working from says (in Bush's words last December) that only "30,000, more or less" have been killed in Iraq during and since the invasion in March, 2003.

So they have a huge incentive to discredit the report in the British medical journal The Lancet last week that an extra 655,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion in excess of the natural death rate: 2.5 percent of the population.

"I don't consider it a credible report," said Bush, without giving any reason why he didn't.

"It is a fairly small sample they have taken and they have extrapolated it across the country," said a spokesman of the British Foreign Office, as if that were an invalid methodology. But it's not.

The study, led by Dr. Les Roberts and a team of epidemiologists from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was based on a survey of 1,849 households, containing 12,801 people, at 47 different locations chosen at random in Iraq. Teams of four Iraqi doctors -- two men and two women -- went from house to house and asked the residents if anybody had died in their family since January, 2002 (15 months before the invasion).

If anybody had, they then inquired when and how the person had died. They asked for death certificates, and in 92 percent of cases the families produced them. Then the Johns Hopkins team of epidemiologists tabulated the statistics and drew their conclusions.

The most striking thing in the study, in terms of credibility, is that the prewar death rate in Iraq for the period January 2002-March 2003, as calculated from their evidence, was 5.5 per thousand per year. That is virtually identical to the U.S. government estimate of the death rate in Iraq for the same period. Then, from the same evidence, they calculate that the death rate since the invasion has been 13.3 per thousand per year. The difference between the prewar and postwar death rates over a period of 40 months is 655,000 deaths.

More precisely, the deaths reported by the 12,801 people surveyed, when extrapolated to the entire country, indicates a range of between 426,369 and 793,663 excess deaths -- but the sample is big enough that there is a 95 percent certainty that the true figure is within that range. What the Johns Hopkins team have done in Iraq is more rigorous version of the technique that is used to calculate deaths in southern Sudan and the eastern Congo. To reject it, you must either reject the whole discipline of statistics, or you must question the professional integrity of those doing the survey.

The study, which was largely financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, has been reviewed by four independent experts. One of them, Paul Bolton of Boston University, called the methodology "excellent" and said it was standard procedure in a wide range of studies he has worked on: "You can't be sure of the exact number, but you can be quite sure that you are in the right ballpark."

This is not a political smear job. Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and MIT are not fly-by-night institutions, and people who work there have academic reputations to protect. The Lancet, founded 182 years ago, is one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world. These numbers are real. So what do they mean?

Two-thirds of a million Iraqis have died since the invasion who would almost all be alive if it had not happened. Human Rights Watch has estimated that between 250,000 and 290,000 Iraqis were killed during Saddam Hussein's 20-year rule, so perhaps 40,000 people might have died between the invasion and now if he had stayed in power. (Though probably not anything like that many, really, because the great majority of Saddam's killings happened during crises like the Kurdish rebellion of the late 1980s and the Shiite revolt after the 1990-91 Gulf War.)

Of the 655,000 excess deaths since March 2003, only about 50,000 can be attributed to stress, malnutrition, the collapse of medical services as doctors flee abroad, and other side effects of the occupation. All the rest are violent deaths, and 31 percent are directly due to the actions of foreign "coalition" forces.

The most disturbing thing is the breakdown of the causes of death. Over half the deaths -- 56 percent -- are due to gunshot wounds, but 13 percent are due to airstrikes. Terrorists don't do airstrikes. No Iraqi government forces do airstrikes, either, because they don't have combat aircraft. Airstrikes are done by "coalition forces" (i.e. Americans and British), and airstrikes in Iraq have killed over 75,000 people since the invasion.

Oscar Wilde once observed that "to lose one parent . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." To lose 75,000 Iraqis to airstrikes looks like carelessness, too.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

The Japan Times: Monday, Oct. 16, 2006

(C) All rights reserved

Interview with former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter

Radio Interview with Scott Ritter about Iran:

written interview on Democracy Now!

The interview as real-player video-stream (19mins)


Worth listening to!

Back to Iran

America Moves Toward War with Iran

By William R. Polk

10/16/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- After careful study of recent moves and statements by the Bush Administration, I have concluded that there is at least a 10% chance of an American attack on Iran before the November 7 Congressional elections and about a 90% chance before the administration’s end in 2008. In this and following articles I will explain that prediction, illustrate what moves are now being made the prepare for war, analyze what the results of such actions would be and, finally, discuss what alternatives America has to bring about what it wishes to achieve in Iran. I begin with the prediction.

Twelve years before he ran for the presidency, George W. Bush sought to rally the American religious fundamentalists to his father’s election. He realized that about one in five Americans considered themselves part of this movement and so could be formed into a massive voting bloc. From this time also, Mr. Bush underwent a personal “rebirth” and emerged from what he described as a life-long alcoholic haze into the belief that he had a God-given role to fight off the forces of evil and prepare a new world order.

What that was to be, he only vaguely perceived, but in the following years he was guided by some of his father’s old retainers including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to an already-formed group that came to be called the Neoconservatives. These men and women already had a plan and an objective. Young Bush eagerly adopted both and, when he was elected, appointed Cheney, Rumsfeld and Neoconservatives to key positions in his administration. These men have consistently favored military action against Middle Eastern regimes for the past seventeen years. They are still doing so.

As the heart of their doctrine, Neoconservatives took Leon Trotsky’s concept of “permanent revolution” and adapted it to their own radical ideology in the guise of “permanent war.” Just as Trotsky (and later Mao) saw permanent revolution, so the Neoconservatives saw what the US Defense Department now calls “the long war” as the means to destroy foreign opponents and silence domestic critics who would fear to be charged as unpatriotic. Their doctrine has been incorporated in the March 6, 2006 “National Security Strategy of the United States.” Mr. Bush summarized its imperatives on March 16, 2006 thus: “We choose to deal with challenges now rather than leaving them for future generations. We fight our enemies abroad instead of waiting for them to arrive in our country. We seek to shape the world, not be merely be shaped by it; to influence events for the better instead of being at their mercy.” Having identified Iran as part of “the Axis of Evil,” he specified that “we may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran” because, he charged, it threatens Israel, sponsors terrorism, oppresses its people and, above all, is embarked on acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear weapons charge is the most critical. Iran (along with the US, France, Britain and other countries) had signed the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The treaty obligated the signers who did not yet have nuclear weapons to refrain from moves toward acquiring them and those that already had weapons to move toward giving them up. Neither Israel, Pakistan, India nor North Korea signed the treaty and the established nuclear powers have publicly acknowledged their violation of the treaty both by retaining their full stocks of weapons and by building more. What Iran is doing is uncertain. So far as is known, it has not violated the treaty, but intelligence specialists guess that it is determined to have nuclear weapons. A program to manufacture them was begun with American assistance under the regime of the Shah, then stopped and probably restarted. US intelligence consensus is that Iran is today five to ten years away from getting them.

The Neoconservatives also believe that Iran is a threat to Israel and quote President Mahmoud Ahmad-i Nejad’s pronouncements as proof. He foolishly denied the reality of the holocaust and harshly criticized Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Worse he described Zionism as a has-been and predicted that Israel would decline and fall. But he was misquoted as saying that Israel would be “wiped off the map.” Even if he wished it would, his country is incapable of making it happen: Israel has the strongest army in Western Asia, the second most powerful air force in the world and a stockpile estimated to contain 400 or more nuclear weapons while Iran has a large but immobile army, a small but antiquated air force and no nuclear weapons. More important, Israel acts in close association with the United States while Iran has no effective allies. As a state it is no threat to anyone.

Mr. Bush also charged Iran with sponsoring terrorism. Yet, Iran helped the US to bring down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and has consistently opposed al-Qaida. True, it has given money and weapons to the Lebanese Hizbullah against which Israel has been fighting. Moreover, it has, itself, been the target of terrorism for which it blames America.

Finally, while the Iranian fundamentalist regime is oppressive so are a number of other regimes that the Bush administration warmly approves. And, unlike Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Uzbekistan, its government is the product of what, by local standards, was a reasonably free election. In fact, most observers believe that if a new election were held today, it would be overwhelmingly returned to office. Thus, although President Bush is right that the government denies the right of its people to live as Americans think they should, it has done so with the consent of the governed.

So why do I predict an American attack on Iran?

The answer is composed of the same elements I have described: Mr. Bush’s belief that he has a God-given task which he must accomplish before he leaves office – and perhaps even before the forthcoming Congressional elections might cripple his means of action. His belief that what his own intelligence experts tell him is wrong, that Iran actually is about to acquire the bomb, is stirring the pot of Middle Eastern terrorism and is a threat to the existence of Israel. Finally, he believes he has the authority, given by the American people in his two elections and through Congressional approval of his war with Afghanistan, to act. In the next article, I will discuss what he is doing to effect his policy.

Mr. Polk was the member of the U.S. Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East from 1961 to 1965. Subsequently, he was professor of history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago and later president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. Author of many books on international affairs, world and Middle Eastern history, he recently wrote Understanding Iraq (HarperCollins, New York and London 2005 and 2006) and, together with former Senator George McGovern, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006).

A voice from Israel about Israel

The Great Experiment

By Uri Avnery

10/14/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?

That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.

The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there.

IN ORDER to meet the required scientific standards, it was necessary first of all to prepare the laboratory.

That was done in the following way: First, Ariel Sharon uprooted the Israeli settlements that were stuck there.

After all, you can't conduct a proper experiment with pets roaming around the laboratory. It was done with "determination and sensitivity", tears flowed like water, the soldiers kissed and embraced the evicted settlers, and again it was shown that the Israeli army is the most-most in the world.

With the laboratory cleaned, the next phase could begin: all entrances and exits were hermetically sealed, in order to eliminate disturbing influences from the world outside.

That was done without difficulty. Successive Israeli governments have prevented the building of a harbor in Gaza, and the Israeli navy sees to it that no ship approaches the shore. The splendid international airport, built during the Oslo days, was bombed and shut down. The entire Strip was closed off by a highly effective fence, and only a few crossings remained, all but one controlled by the Israeli army.

There remained a sole connection with the outside world:

the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. It could not just be sealed off, because that would have exposed the Egyptian regime as a collaborator with Israel. A sophisticated solution was found: to all appearances the Israeli army left the crossing and turned it over to an international supervision team. Its members are nice guys, full of good intentions, but in practice they are totally dependent on the Israeli army, which oversees the crossing from a nearby control room. The international supervisors live in an Israeli kibbutz and can reach the crossing only with Israeli consent.
So everything was ready for the experiment.

THE SIGNAL for its beginning was given after the Palestinians had held spotlessly democratic elections, under the supervision of former President Jimmy Carter.

George Bush was enthusiastic: his vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East was coming true.

But the Palestinians flunked the test. Instead of electing "good Arabs", devotees of the United States, they voted for very bad Arabs, devotees of Allah. Bush felt insulted. But the Israeli government was ecstatic: after the Hamas victory, the Americans and Europeans were ready to take part in the experiment. It could start:

The United States and the European Union announced the stoppage of all donations to the Palestinian Authority, since it was "controlled by terrorists". Simultaneously, the Israeli government cut off the flow of money.

To understand the significance of this: according to the "Paris Protocol" (the economic annex of the Oslo agreement) the Palestinian economy is part of the Israeli customs system. This means that Israel collects the duties for all the goods that pass through Israel to the Palestinian territories - actually, there is no other route. After deducting a fat commission, Israel is obligated to turn the money over to the Palestinian Authority.

When the Israeli government refuses to pass on this money, which belongs to the Palestinians, it is, simply put, robbery in broad daylight. But when one robs "terrorists", who is going to complain?

The Palestinian Authority - both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - needs this money like air for breathing. This fact also requires some explanation: in the 19 years when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip, from 1948 to 1967, not a single important factory was built there. The Jordanians wanted all economic activity to take place in Jordan proper, east of the river, and the Egyptians neglected the strip altogether.

Then came the Israeli occupation, and the situation became even worse. The occupied territories became a captive market for Israeli industry, and the military government prevented the establishment of any enterprise that could conceivably compete with an Israeli one.

The Palestinian workers were compelled to work in Israel for hunger wages (by Israeli standards). From these, the Israeli government deducted all the social payments levied on Israeli workers, without the Palestinian workers enjoying any social benefits. This way the government robbed these exploited workers of tens of billions of dollars, which disappeared somehow in the bottomless barrel of the government.

When the intifada broke out, the Israeli captains of industry and agriculture discovered that it was possible to get along without the Palestinian workers. Indeed, it was even more profitable. Workers brought in from Thailand, Romania and other poor countries were ready to work for even lower wages and in conditions bordering on slavery.

The Palestinian workers lost their jobs.

That was the situation at the beginning of the experiment:

the Palestinian infrastructure destroyed, practically no means of production, no work for the workers. All in all, an ideal setting for the great "experiment in hunger".

THE IMPLEMENTATION started, as mentioned, with the stoppage of payments.

The passage between Gaza and Egypt was closed in practice.

Once every few days or weeks it was opened for some hours, for appearances' sake, so that some of the sick and dead or dying could get home or reach Egyptian hospitals.

The crossings between the Strip and Israel were closed "for urgent security reasons". Always, at the right moment, "warnings of an imminent terrorist attack" appeared.

Palestinian agricultural products destined for export rot at the crossing. Medicines and foodstuffs cannot get in, except for short periods from time to time, also for appearances, whenever somebody important abroad voices some protest. Then comes another "urgent security warning" and the situation is back to normal.

To round off the picture, the Israeli Air Force bombed the only power station in the Strip, so that for a part of the day there is no electricity, and the water supply (which depends on electric pumps) stops also. Even on the hottest days, with temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade in the shade, there is no electricity for refrigerators, air conditioning, the water supply or other needs.

In the West Bank, a territory much larger than the Gaza Strip (which makes up only 6% of the occupied Palestinian territories but holds 40% of the inhabitants), the situation is not quite so desperate. But in the Strip, more than half of the population lives beneath the Palestinian "poverty line", which lies of course very, very far below the Israeli "poverty line". Many Gaza residents can only dream of being considered poor in the nearby Israeli town of Sderot.

What are the governments of Israel and the US trying to tell the Palestinians? The message is clear: You will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the Hamas government and elect candidates approved by Israel and the US. And, most

importantly: you must be satisfied with a Palestinian state consisting of several enclaves, each of which will be utterly dependent on the tender mercies of Israel.

AT THE moment, the directors of the scientific experiment are pondering a puzzling question: how on earth do the Palestinians still hold out, in spite of everything?

According to all the rules, they should have been broken long ago!

Indeed, there are some encouraging signs. The general atmosphere of frustration and desperation creates tension between Hamas and Fatah. Here and there clashes have broken out, people were killed and wounded, but in each case the deterioration was halted before it became a civil war. The thousands of hidden Israeli collaborators are also helping to stir things up. But contrary to all expectations, the resistance did not evaporate. Even the captured Israeli soldier has not been released.

One of the explanations has to do with the structure of Palestinian society. The Hamulah (extended family) plays a central role there. As long as one person in the family is working, the relatives, too, do not die of hunger, even if there is widespread malnutrition. Everyone who has any income shares it with all his brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins and their children. That is a primitive system, but quite effective in such circumstances. It seems that the planners of the experiment did not take this into account.

In order to quicken the process, the whole might of the Israeli army is now being used again, as from this week.

For three months the army was busy with the Second Lebanon War. It became apparent that the army, which for the last

39 years has been employed mainly as a colonial police force, does not function very well when suddenly confronted with a trained and armed opponent that can fight back.

Hizbullah used deadly anti-tank weapons against the armored forces, and rockets rained down on Northern Israel. The army has long ago forgotten how to deal with such an enemy.

And the campaign did not end well.

Now the army returns to the war it knows. The Palestinians in the Strip do not (yet) have effective anti-tank weapons, and the Qassam rockets cause only limited damage. The army can again use tanks against the population without hindrance. The Air Force, which in Lebanon was afraid to send in helicopters to remove the wounded, can now fire missiles at the houses of "wanted persons", their families and neighbors, at leisure. If in the last three months "only" 100 Palestinians were killed per month, we are now witnessing a dramatic rise in the number of Palestinians killed and wounded.

How can a population that is hit by hunger, lacking medicaments and equipment for its primitive hospitals and exposed to attacks on land, from sea and from the air, hold out? Will it break? Will it go down on its knees and beg for mercy? Or will it find inhuman strength and stand the test?

In short: What and how much is needed to get a population to surrender?

All the scientists taking part in the experiment - Ehud Olmert and Condoleezza Rice, Amir Peretz and Angela Merkel, Dan Halutz and George Bush, not to mention Nobel Peace Price laureate Shimon Peres - are bent over the microscopes and waiting for an answer, which undoubtedly will be an important contribution to political science.

I hope the Nobel Committee is watching.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the Israeli peace movement, "Gush Shalom".

Legal worries in the US, interesting author; US-Gulag on the horizon?

American Prison Camps Are on the Way

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush's "unlawful enemy combatants." Americans are certain to be among them.

By Marjorie Cohn

10/13/06 "AlterNet" -- -- The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.

Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.

The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under it.

The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and malicious" with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.

Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).

During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting." One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

We can expect Bush to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip us of more of our liberties. Our constitutional right to dissent is in serious jeopardy. Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should give us pause: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. Her new book, "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law," will be published in 2007 by PoliPointPress

Aha, wacht man langsam auf? A wake up call.....

14. Oktober 2006, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Britischer Heereschef gegen Blairs Irak-Politik
Gefährdung auch für Grossbritanniens Sicherheit

Der neue Chef des britischen Heeres, Dannatt, hat in ungewöhnlicher Form die Irak-Politik der Regierung Blair kritisiert, die auch die Sicherheit im eigenen Land und dessen christliche Werte gefährde. Er forderte, sich auf die Mission in Afghanistan zu konzentrieren.

Mr. London, 13. Oktober

Der erst im August als oberster Heeresführer ernannte General Richard Dannatt, der über weitreichende Erfahrung im Auslandeinsatz verfügt, hat im konservativen Massenblatt «Daily Mail» vom Freitag in ungewöhnlicher Offenheit Stellung zum britischen Einsatz im Irak und in Afghanistan und zu den Folgen für die Sicherheit in Grossbritannien genommen. Während Blair gleichzeitig in Schottland den Nordirland-Konflikt zu lösen versuchte, hat Dannatt damit die grösste aussenpolitische Schwäche Blairs ins Rampenlicht gerückt, mit Argumenten, die über die Kompetenz eines Militärs hinausgehen, aber von den konservativen und liberalen Oppositionsparteien - und letztlich auch von breiten Kreisen bei Labour - mehr oder weniger geteilt werden.

Verlegenheit der Regierung
Dannatt hat versucht, am Freitag in Radio und Fernsehen seine Haltung abzuschwächen, aber seine Kritik am Regierungskurs konnte er nicht rückgängig machen. Das Verteidigungsministerium veröffentlichte einen Kommentar, in dem erklärt wurde, dass Dannatts Erklärungen aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen worden seien. Das Premierministeramt versicherte ihm noch seine Unterstützung, aber machte klar, dass die britischen Truppen im Irak auf Wunsch der dortigen Regierung und der Uno stationiert seien.

Dannatt hat letztlich die immer wieder geäusserten Bedenken der im Irak stationierten Offiziere bestätigt, wonach sich ihre Mission seit 2003 drastisch geändert und verschlechtert habe. 7000 britische Soldaten sind im Einsatz, vor allem im Südirak. Diese für so lange Zeit nicht vorhergesehene Konzentration behindert auch einen vernünftigen Soll-Bestand in Afghanistan, wo die britischen Truppen unter extremen Situationen ausharren. Die Armee beklagt im Irak bisher 119 Tote. Die beabsichtigte Förderung eines Wiederaufbaus unter möglicherweise «naiven» prowestlichen Vorstellungen habe, erklärte Dannatt, eindeutig kontraproduktiv zu Ablehnung bei der Bevölkerung geführt, ausser in Basra. Dannatt liess offen, ob dies vor allem amerikanisches Verschulden sei, plädierte aber für «weniger Ehrgeiz». Hingegen beklagte er den negativen Einfluss dieser Politik in Grossbritannien selbst, wo man auf die eigenen «christlichen Werte» immer mehr verzichte, um sich nach dem «vorherrschenden Wind» - Rücksicht auf die islamische Minderheit - zu richten.

Vorrang für Afghanistan
Die konservative und liberale Opposition griff Dannatts Kritik sofort auf, obwohl dieser selbst am Freitag versuchte, seine pessimistische Stellungnahme abzuschwächen, um sich wieder mehr auf die offizielle Linie eines Abzugs in den nächsten zwei bis drei Jahren zurückzuziehen. Er erklärte, dass seine Äusserungen vom «Daily Mail» zerstückelt worden seien - sie wurden in der Tat mit eigenen redaktionellen Verschärfungen angereichert - und dass er sich vor allem über die Zukunft des Heeres in den nächsten fünf bis zehn Jahren Sorgen mache. Damit sprach er auch das von den Militärs als zu knapp betrachtete Budget für Verteidigung an. Priorität hat gemäss Dannatt Afghanistan, aber die Forderung der Militärs nach vorhergehender Entlastung im Irak konnte von der Regierung nicht realisiert werden. Andere Militärführer hatten vor Dannatt in diesem Zusammenhang bereits auf ungenügende Mittel hingewiesen. Blair hatte vor kurzem mehr Geld versprochen, aber nicht mehr Truppen und auch nicht mehr Helikopter.
http://www.nzz.ch/2006/10/14/al/articleEKGUL.html

Gewalt im Christentum

14. Oktober 2006, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Nötige sie hereinzukommen, damit mein Haus voll werde!»
Über Gewalt im Christentum

Empörung schlug Papst Benedikt nach seinen Äusserungen zum Verhältnis von Religion und Gewalt von islamischer Seite auch deswegen entgegen, weil er die Gewaltgeschichte des Christentums mit keinem Wort erwähnt hatte. - Ein Rückblick auf ein Thema, das alle an einem interreligiösen Dialog Beteiligten zu Selbstkritik bewegen könnte.

Von Hans Maier

Ist der militante Islamismus unserer Zeit ein Sonderfall? Oder ist es seit je in allen Religionen gewalttätig zugegangen - wenigstens zeitweilig? Handelt es sich bei dieser Gewalt speziell um ein Problem monotheistischer Religionen? Schliesst der Wahrheitsanspruch einer Religion Toleranz gegenüber anderen Religionen aus? - Das sind Fragen, die in jüngster Zeit heftig diskutiert werden und die im Anschluss an die Regensburger Vorlesung Papst Benedikts XVI. erneut ein vielstimmiges und kontroverses Echo finden. Längst schliesst die Diskussion über die Ursachen und Formen religiös motivierter Gewalt die monotheistischen Religionen ein. Sie konzentriert sich auf den Islam, erstreckt sich aber inzwischen auch auf Judentum und Christentum.

NICHT DAS LETZTE WORT
Mohammed, Religionsstifter und Eroberer zugleich, steht nicht von ungefähr im Mittelpunkt der Debatte - aber auch der Mann Moses, der den Einen Gott proklamierte und die vielen Götter zu Götzen machte, ist in dieser Thematik eine zentrale Figur. Hat er doch, folgt man Jan Assmann, die antiken Polytheismen in die Unwahrheit gestossen und damit der Unterwerfung religiöser Identitäten den Weg bereitet. Und wie steht es mit jenen christlichen Denkern, die aus der biblischen Weisung des zum Gastmahl einladenden Herrn an seinen Knecht: «Nötige sie hereinzukommen, damit mein Haus voll werde» (Lukas 14, 23), eine schrankenlose Ermächtigung zur Missionierung der Heiden machten - notfalls gewaltsam und gegen deren Willen?

Eine vorläufige Antwort könnte lauten, dass Religion und Gewalt zwar nicht in einem religionsgeschichtlich eindeutigen systematischen Zusammenhang stehen, dass sie aber in der Geschichte vielfältige kontingente Verbindungen miteinander eingegangen sind. Gewalt spielt im Leben der Religionen - und bei Zusammenstössen zwischen unterschiedlichen Glaubensweisen - eine unübersehbare Rolle. Der Missionsauftrag Jesu an die Jünger - «Gehet hinaus in alle Welt und taufet alle Völker!» - hat sich in der Geschichte nicht selten mit Gewalttaten, Ausschreitungen, Pogromen verbunden. Oft genug wurden die Grenzen fliessend zwischen Mission, Expansion, Kolonisierung, Unterwerfung.

Allerdings: Das letzte Wort behielt die Gewalt im Judentum und im Christentum nicht; denn von Anfang an gab es gegen Zwangsbekehrungen fremder Völker kräftige Widerstände im Inneren der Religion selbst. In der Bibel finden sich, bis in frühe Schichten hinein, Elemente der Gewaltkritik und Gewaltbegrenzung. So ist schon der Talionsgrundsatz «Leben für Leben, Auge für Auge, Zahn für Zahn!» - entgegen dem geläufigen Verständnis - keineswegs ein Aufruf zu massiver Vergeltung; er legt vielmehr Rechtsgrundsätze für die Entschädigung fest, versucht also Rache durch Recht zu ersetzen. Diese Gewaltkritik hinterlässt vor allem seit der Zeit des babylonischen Exils ihre Spuren im jüdischen Gottesbild. Die Bergpredigt Jesu kann insoweit als Steigerung und Überbietung prophetischer Überlieferungen erscheinen. Und auch im Christentum steht der Tendenz zur missionarisch oder kulturell begründeten Expansion das Gebot des Friedens und der Liebe gegenüber - einer Liebe, die selbst den Feinden gilt. Vollends ist mit dem Kreuz Jesu ein Symbol des Gewaltverzichts aufgerichtet, auf das «die Kritiker einer Gewaltanwendung im Bereich christlicher Geschichte sich immer wieder berufen konnten» (Karl Lehmann).

Freilich darf man die Gewaltanfälligkeit des Christentums nicht verharmlosen. Man darf sie auch dann nicht übergehen, wenn man den islamisch motivierten Terrorismus von heute mit gutem Grund als Verirrung und Verbrechen verurteilt. Wenigstens zweimal ist Gewalt in der Geschichte des Christentums massiv zutage getreten: in den Kreuzzügen und in den Anfängen der europäischen Expansion. Es lohnt sich, nach den historischen Beweggründen für diesen doppelten Ausbruch zu fragen.

KREUZZÜGE UND KOLONIALE EXPANSION
Dass die Eroberung Palästinas durch den Islam christlichen Pilgern den Weg zu den heiligen Stätten versperrte, empfanden viele Christen im Abendland als eine schwer erträgliche Demütigung. So begannen die Kreuzzüge «mit dem Doppelziel, die Christen im Osten von der Herrschaft der Muslime zu erlösen und das Heilige Grab in Jerusalem zu befreien» (Victor Conzemius). In seiner Kreuzzugspredigt in Clermont-Ferrand (1095), einem der wirkungsvollsten Aufrufe der Weltgeschichte, hob Papst Urban II. auf drei Dinge ab: den Hilferuf des byzantinischen Kaisers, dem man folgen müsse, das Grab Christi, das es den Heiden zu entreissen gelte - und den zur Befreiung nötigen Kampf der Ritter («milites»), die durch päpstliche Ermächtigung und geistlichen Lohn zu «milites Christi» (Soldaten Christi) werden sollten.

Neben den Waffen empfingen die Kreuzfahrer das Pilgerkreuz. Als Anführer des Kreuzritterheeres galt Christus selbst. Auf Darstellungen reitet er den Rittern voran, das Schwert zwischen den Zähnen, das Buch des Lebens in den Händen. «Und wenn einer dort in wahrer Busse fällt», so Urban II., «so darf er fest glauben, dass ihm Vergebung seiner Sünden und die Frucht ewigen Lebens zuteil werden wird.» - Was ist das anderes als eine Aufforderung zum «gerechten Krieg» um die heiligen Stätten? Die Ähnlichkeiten mit heutigen Jihad-Aufrufen aus islamischen Ländern springen in die Augen. Vor allem der Hinweis auf den unmittelbar bevorstehenden Paradieseslohn erinnert an Äusserungen sich selbst opfernder islamistischer Krieger von heute - sie heissen inzwischen in der ganzen islamischen Welt (auch in laizistischen Ländern wie der Türkei) «Märtyrer», was beunruhigend ist.

Die Zeit der Kreuzzüge hat nicht nur das Verhältnis zwischen Christentum und Islam dauerhaft belastet (und ebenso das Verhältnis zwischen Christen und Juden wegen der heimischen Pogrome), sie bot dem Islam auch Gelegenheit, eigene Angriffe und Eroberungen als «Verteidigungskriege» zu deklarieren, und das bis heute. Bis heute werden die Christen in der muslimischen Terminologie zugespitzt «Kreuzzügler» genannt - und wenn George W. Bush von «Kreuzzügen gegen den Terror» spricht, so hören Muslime in diesem Wort nicht etwa eine abgeblasste, säkularisierte Formel (wie bei «Kreuzzügen» gegen Hunger, Kälte, Armut, Drogenmissbrauch), sondern sie erinnern sich an konkrete Ereignisse, die bis heute ihr Geschichtsbild prägen.

Umgekehrt wurde die Zeit der Kreuzzüge im Abendland zum Auftakt für eine doppelte Bewegung: die Ausbreitung und Festigung des Friedens im Inneren der europäischen Staaten einerseits, die zunehmend schärfere Abgrenzung nach draussen, zur nichtchristlichen Welt hin, anderseits. Gottesfriede im Inneren als Vorstufe des späteren Landfriedens und des sich entfaltenden staatlichen Rechts- und Friedensraumes - Krieg im Äusseren, «beyond the line», gegen die Heiden in der nichtchristlichen Welt: Das führt zum zweiten Ausbruch von Gewalt in der Geschichte des Christentums: zur europäischen Expansion im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. «Jenseits des Äquators ist der Europäer ein gezähmter Tiger, der in den Wald zurückkehrt» (Guillaume Raynal).

Joseph Höffner hat in seinem klassischen Werk «Kolonialismus und Evangelium» gezeigt, dass die Härte der Kriege gegen die Eingeborenen in der Neuen Welt auch mit der Verschärfung der Lehre vom «gerechten Krieg» zusammenhing, die sich schon in der Zeit der Kreuzzüge vorbereitet hatte. So lehrte Papst Innozenz IV. (1243 bis 1254), der Papst könne den Ungläubigen befehlen, christliche Glaubensboten in den Ländern ihrer Herrschaft zuzulassen - sollten sie den Gehorsam verweigern, seien sie mit weltlicher Gewalt zu zwingen. Möglicher Grund für einen gerechten Krieg war also nicht mehr nur das Unrecht von Heiden gegen Christen - es war vielmehr das Unrecht (des Nichtglaubens) gegen Gott schlechthin. Theoretisch war damit «das Verhältnis zu den Heidenvölkern als dauernder Kriegszustand gekennzeichnet» (Höffner).

Gewiss, gegen diese Verengung und Zuspitzung des biblischen «Nötige sie!» erhob sich Protest auch unter christlichen Theologen und Juristen - der Kampf des Las Casas gegen die Übergriffe der spanischen Kolonisatoren und die Entwicklung einer neuen Kolonialethik durch Vitoria zeigen es. Doch es dauerte noch längere Zeit, bis sich die Kirche von dem im Lauf der Zeit immer mehr profan gewordenen, nicht mehr religiös unterfangenen Kolonialismus zu lösen begann. Spätestens um 1890 war dieser Punkt erreicht - symbolisch greifbar in der Gegenüberstellung des französischen Ministerpräsidenten, Kirchenfeindes und Vaters der französischen Trennungsgesetze, Jules Ferry, der aus der kulturellen Überlegenheit der weissen Rasse die letzten Konsequenzen kolonialer Hegemonie zog, einerseits und des Papstes Leo XIII. andererseits, der zur gleichen Zeit vorsichtig damit begann, Kolonialismus und Mission zu entkoppeln und in den aussereuropäischen Ländern einen indigenen Klerus aufzubauen.

Rückfälle in die Anwendung religiös motivierter Gewalt gibt es sowohl beim Christentum wie beim Islam. Die Praxis solcher Gewalt bietet ein weites Feld für die historische Betrachtung. Sowohl die kriegerischen Vorstösse des Islams in den Mittelmeerraum und nach Südeuropa wie auch die Kreuzzüge und der heutige Jihadismus müssten im Einzelnen untersucht und systematisch verglichen werden. Das ist ein weites Feld für eine vergleichende Religionsgeschichte - vor allem aber für unvoreingenommene, der Klärung dienende Gespräche zwischen heutigen Muslimen, heutigen Christen.

LEHREN DER GESCHICHTE?
Kann man Lehren aus den Ereignissen ziehen? Am Anfang müsste ein Blick auf die jeweils eigene Geschichte stehen. Hier hat Papst Johannes Paul II. in seinem Schuldbekenntnis und seiner Vergebungsbitte (am 12. März 2000) allem früheren katholischen Triumphalismus in Sachen Kreuzzüge und Kolonisierung eine Absage erteilt: «. . . oft haben die Christen das Evangelium verleugnet und der Logik der Gewalt nachgegeben. Die Rechte von Stämmen und Völkern haben sie verletzt, deren Kulturen und religiöse Traditionen verachtet . . . Vergib uns!»

Wäre ein solches Mit-sich-selbst-ins-Gericht- Gehen auch im Islam denkbar? Man vermisst es bis heute, aber ganz ausschliessen sollte man es für die Zukunft nicht. Geduld ist nötig. Vielleicht ist der Islam - bei all seiner oftmals berechtigten Kritik an den «Kreuzzüglern» und ihren Nachfahren - als jüngste der drei abrahamitischen Religionen gegenwärtig selbst noch in einer «Kreuzzugsphase».

Hans Maier amtete von 1976 bis 1988 als Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken. Bis 1999 hatte er an der Universität München den Lehrstuhl für christliche Weltanschauung, Religions- und Kulturtheorie inne. Vor zwei Jahren ist von ihm das Buch «Das Doppelgesicht des Religiösen. Religion - Gewalt - Politik» (Herder, Freiburg i. Br.) erschienen.
http://www.nzz.ch/2006/10/14/li/articleEIFWP.html

Der deutsche Theologe Eugen Drewermann über Islamismus und Terrorismus

© Tages-Anzeiger; 13.10.2006; Seite 55

Kultur

«Terror ist die Sprache der Verzweifelten»

Für den deutschen Theologen Eugen Drewermann ist die konsequente Gewaltfreiheit das angemessene Mittel gegen den islamistischen Terror.

Mit Eugen Drewermann sprach Michael Meier

Nicht nur Unglückspropheten künden heute, dass wir auf einen Kampf der Religionen zusteuern. Sie auch, Herr Drewermann?

Der Kampf der Religionen ist in Wirklichkeit ein kaschierter Machtkampf um die Verteilung der Ressourcen und die hegemoniale Rolle der USA. Es gibt Hinweise, dass man nach dem Zusammenbruch des Sowjetimperiums 1989 im Pentagon und im Weissen Haus aktiv darüber nachdachte, wie man einen Ersatzfeind findet, und man hielt den Islam für gut geeignet. Erstens ist das meiste Erdöl bei den Arabern versteckt. Zweitens ist der Islam ein Kulturkreis, der mit 1,2 Milliarden Menschen eine relative religiöse Geschlossenheit hat. Deswegen ist die Destabilisierung der arabischen Kultur von all den chaotischen Zuständen, Fanatismen und Regressionen begleitet, wie wir sie jetzt erleben. Gleichzeitig haben wir es mit einem Typus von Christentum zu tun, der selber fundamentalistisch ist. Im Bibelgürtel der USA dankt man Gott dafür, in diesen Krisenzeiten George W. Bush an der Macht zu haben. Und dieser Mann redet inzwischen von Islamfaschismus. Er gibt vor, dass man den Islamismus mit militärischen Mitteln bekämpfen könnte wie das Nazi-Regime von einst. Das ist absurd.

Was kann angesichts des islamistischen Terrors der viel beschworene Dialog noch bewirken?

Ein ehrlicher Dialog müsste bei der Definition des Terrors anfangen: Wir nennen Terror, wenn man Menschen zum Erreichen eines politischen Zieles tötet. Jemand, der sich einen Sprenggürtel um den Bauch bindet und sich in Tel Aviv in die Luft sprengt, ist ein Terrorist. Ist aber derjenige, der aus der Luft Streubomben in Wohngebiete abfeuert, nicht auch ein Terrorist? Liegt der Unterschied nur in der technischen Überlegenheit? Wir nennen das eine einen legalen Militärschlag und das andere Terrorismus. Das ist so verlogen. Krieg selber ist Terrorismus. Wir müssten uns auch unserer Schuld bewusst werden, den islamischen Kulturraum von den Maghrebstaaten bis nach Indonesien in Form der Kolonialregimes ausgebeutet und kulturell überfremdet zu haben.

Im Terrorismus wirkt die koloniale Vergangenheit nach?

Ja. Was wir heute asymmetrische Kriegsführung nennen, war ein Problem im ganzen 20. Jahrhundert: Die Länder der Dritten Welt, die alle fast ausnahmslos unter Kolonialverwaltung standen, haben den Weg in die Freiheit nie anders gehen können als mit asymmetrischer Kriegsführung. Damals nannte man das Guerillakrieg, heute nennen wir es Terror. Beides ist im Grunde die Kapitulation gegenüber dem Glauben, dass die Machthaber die Sprache von Gerechtigkeit und Menschlichkeit verstehen. Der Einzige, der hier einen Ausweg gefunden hatte, war Mahatma Gandhi. Natürlich wünschte ich mir, es gäbe auf der Westbank und im Gazastreifen eine vergleichbare charismatische Gestalt. Angesichts einer moralischen Autorität, die mit gewaltlosen Mitteln operieren würde, wäre die Besatzungspolitik der Israeli in den palästinensischen Gebieten überhaupt nicht durchführbar. Der Weg gegen den Terrorismus kann nur in einer grundlegenden Gewaltfreiheit bestehen.

Stattdessen potenziert der Antiterrorkrieg den Terror bloss.

Gewalt ist eine Sprache der Verzweifelten auf dem Hintergrund verweigerter Dialoge. Das rechtfertigt die Dinge nicht, aber es kann sie erklären. Wir müssen verstehen, was in den grässlichen Handlungen der Selbstmordattentäter noch als so wertvoll erscheint, dass sie diese ungeheuerlichen Opfer in Kauf nehmen. Begreifen wir das nicht, lässt sich der Terrorismus nicht abschaffen. Führt man Hinrichtungsoperationen durch wie jetzt im Libanon, muss man für jeden getöteten Terroristen die Auferstehung von zwei anderen gewärtigen. So bekämpft man den Terrorismus nicht, so schürt man ihn. Das ist eine bittere Pille, die inzwischen, Gott sei Dank, auch in Amerika erkannt wird. Die Art des Antiterrorkriegs, wie ihn Bush führt, hat den Terrorismus im Irak erst im grossen Stil eingeführt. Gegen jedes bessere Wissen und mit unglaublichen Lügen hatte er bei Kriegsbeginn Saddam Hussein in Verbindung mit der al-Qaida gebracht.

Nochmals: Kann in dieser Situation der Dialog der Religionen überhaupt etwas ausrichten?

Die Wahrheit des Dialogs bestünde darin, zuerst die Andersartigkeit des anderen kennen zu lernen. Das heisst im Fall des Islam, den Zauber des Orients, die Schönheit der islamischen Kultur wahrzunehmen. Der Islam ist ein grossartiges Angebot einer internationalen Glaubensgemeinschaft: Nur Gott ist Gott, und die Menschen finden im Gegenüber zu Gott zur Einheit der Person. Ob der Islam eine Schamkultur hat, in der die Frau verschleiert ist - was geht das uns an? Muslime haben das Recht, unsere Kultur für obszön zu halten. Über solche Unterschiede müsste man verhandeln dürfen, statt sie hochzustilisieren. Wir aber meinen, den Muslimen beibringen zu müssen, was Menschenrechte sind, was Trennung von Staat und Kirche und Gleichberechtigung bedeutet. Das ist eine Propagandasprache der Rechthaberei. Die Muslime müssen sich selbst entwickeln dürfen.

Sie scheinen den Islam zu idealisieren. Ist in Islam und Koran das Gewaltpotenzial nicht doch grösser als in Bibel und Christentum?

Wir sollten nicht mit der Bibel in der Hand den Koran bessern wollen. Punkto Gewalt ist das Alte Testament noch viel schlimmer als der Koran. Und der Islam hat in vielen Jahrhunderten bewiesen, dass er ungleich friedfertiger ist als das Christentum. Beispielsweise im 8. Jahrhundert, als die Mauren in Spanien regierten: Sie waren den Christen in allen Sektoren wie Medizin, Astronomie, Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften hoch überlegen. Anders als die Christen schworen sie damals der Gewaltmission ab. Oder: Als die christlichen Kreuzfahrer 1099 Jerusalem eroberten, metzelten sie alle Ungläubigen nieder. Der spätere Eroberer Sultan Saladin indessen ging ganz anders vor: Er öffnete die Heilige Stadt für die Wallfahrer. Wohl kassierte er Geld dafür, aber er unterdrückte die Religionen nicht.

Speziell Christen von rechts argumentieren, der Islam werde auch im Westen als so stark wahrgenommen, weil das Christentum so schwach sei. Muss der Westen religiös aufrüsten?

Leider wird religiös aufgerüstet. Und die Debatte um das Kopftuch wird zum Integrationsfaktor für die neue konservative Phalanx. Ich finde das ganz entsetzlich, weil man damit Elemente der Aufklärung verleugnet, die uns wirklich weiterbringen. Wir müssen religiös nicht aufrüsten, wir müssen abrüsten. Wir müssten sehen, dass die Ernstnahme der Religion nicht einfach bedeutet, konservative Dogmen zu stabilisieren oder sich der Papstautorität zu unterwerfen. Seine Heiligkeit Benedikt XVI. sagte in Polen: «Glauben ist akzeptieren, was die Kirche sagt.» Die Kirche aber sagt lauter Dinge, die der Islam nicht brauchen kann, weil sie nicht mystisch und innerlich sind.

Sie setzen auf den Dialog nicht der Institutionen, sondern der mystisch verinnerlichten Gläubigen?

Ja. Und auf das gegenseitige Zuhören. Bei Benedikt heisst Dialog immer, den Anderen monolithisch etwas vorzulesen, ohne mit ihnen ins Gespräch zu kommen - so auch neulich in Castel Gandolfo, als er im Nachgang zur Regensburger Vorlesung muslimische Diplomaten empfing. Noch ein Aperçu: In Regensburg erklärte der Papst im Rückgriff auf den byzantinischen Kaiser Manuel, der Islam habe nichts Neues gebracht. Offensichtlich empfindet Benedikt darin etwas Defizitäres. Mohammed aber wollte niemals etwas Neues bringen. Der ganze Islam besteht im Kern darin, die Religion zu bringen, an welche schon Noah, Moses und Abraham glaubten. Es ist die Religion, die Allah für alle Menschen zu allen Zeiten vermittelt, nur jetzt mal auf Arabisch. Da könnte man sich die Hände reichen.

BILD DORIS FANCONI

And back to Iran, but still talking about Israel

Israel's Plan for a Military Strike on Iran

By Jonathan Cook

10/12/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The Middle East, and possibly the world, stands on the brink of a terrible conflagration as Israel and the United States prepare to deal with Iran's alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel, it becomes clearer by the day, wants to use its air force to deliver a knock-out blow against Tehran. It is not known whether it will use conventional weapons or a nuclear warhead in such a strike.

At this potentially cataclysmic moment in global politics, it is good to see that one of the world's leading broadcasters, the BBC, decided this week that it should air a documentary entitled "Will Israel bomb Iran?". It is the question on everyone's lips and doubtless, with the imprimatur of the BBC, the programme will sell around the world.

The good news ends there, however. Because the programme addresses none of the important issues raised by Israel's increasingly belligerent posture towards Tehran.

It does not explain that, without a United Nations resolution, a military strike on Iran to destroy its nuclear research programme would be a gross violation of international law.

It does not clarify that Israel's own large nuclear arsenal was secretly developed and is entirely unmonitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or that it is perceived as a threat by its neighbours and may be fuelling a Middle East arms race.

Nor does the programme detail the consequences of an Israeli strike on instability and violence across the Middle East, including in Iraq, where British and American troops are stationed as an occupying force.

And there is no consideration of how in the longer term unilateral action by Israel, with implicit sanction by the international community, is certain to provoke a steep rise in global jihad against the West.

Instead the programme dedicates 40 minutes to footage of Top Gun heroics by the Israeli air force, and the recollections of pilots who carried out a similar, "daring" attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in the early 1980s; menacing long shots of Iran's nuclear research facilities; and interviews with three former Israeli prime ministers, a former Israeli military chief of staff, various officials in Israeli military intelligence and a professor who designs Israel's military arsenal.

All of them speak with one voice: Israel, they claim, is about to be "wiped out" by Iranian nuclear weapons and must defend itself "whatever the consequences".

They are given plenty of airtime to repeat unchallenged well-worn propaganda Israel has been peddling through its own media, and which has been credulously amplified by the international media: that Iran is led by a fanatical anti-Semite who, like Adolf Hitler, believes he can commit genocide against the Jewish people, this time through a nuclear holocaust.

Other Israeli misinformation, none of it believed by serious analysts, is also uncritically spread by the film-makers: that Hizbullah in Lebanon is a puppet of Iran, waiting to aid its master in Israel's destruction; that Iran is only months away from creating nuclear weapons, a "point of no return", as the programme warns; and that a "fragile" Israel is under constant threat of annihilation from all its Arab neighbours.

But the programme's unequivocal main theme -- echoing precisely Israel's own agenda -- is that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is hellbent on destroying Israel. The film-makers treat seriously, bordering on reverentially, preposterous comments from Israel's leaders about this threat.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli government's veteran roving ambassador, claims, for example, that Iran has made "a call for genocide" against Israel, compares an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying concentration camp", and warns that "no one would like to see a comeback to the times of the Nazis".

Cabinet minister Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet domestic security service, believes Israel faces "an existential threat" from Iran. And Zvi Stauber, a former senior figure in military intelligence, compares Israel's situation to a man whose neighbour "has a gun and he declares every day he is going to kill you".

But pride of place goes to Binyamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and the current leader of the opposition. He claims repeatedly that the only possible reason Iran and its president could want a nuclear arsenal is for Israel's "extermination". "If he can get away with it, he'll do it." "Ayatollahs with atombic bombs are a powerful threat to all of us." A nuclear Iran "is a threat unlike anything we have seen before. It's beyond politics" -- apparently worse than the nuclear states of North Korea and Pakistan, the latter a military dictatorship and friend of the US barely containing within its borders some of the most fanatical jihadist movements in the world.

Apart from a brief appearance by an Iranian diplomat, no countervailing opinions are entertained in the BBC programme; only Israel's military and political leadership is allowed to speak.

The documentary gives added credence to the views of Israel's security establishment by making great play of a speech by Ahmadinejad -- one with which the Israeli authorities and their allies in Washington have made endless mischief -- in which the Iranian president repeats a statement by Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, that went unnoticed when first uttered.

In the BBC programme, Ahmadenijad is quoted as saying: "The regime occupying Jerusalem should be eliminated from the page of history". This is at least an improvement on the original translation, much repeated in the programme by Netanyahu and others, that "Israel must be wiped off the map".

But for some strange reason, the programme makers infer from their more accurate translation the same diabolical intent on Ahmadinejad's part as suggested by Netanyahu's fabricated version. Iran's nuclear weapons, we are told by the programme as if they are already in existence, have "presented Israel's leaders with a new order of threat". In making his speech, the BBC film argues, Ahmadinejad "issued a death sentence against Israel".

But, as has now been pointed out on numerous occasions (though clearly not often enough for the BBC to have noticed), Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were referring to the need for regime change, the ending of the regime occupying the Palestinians in violation of international law. They were not talking, as Netanyahu and co claim, about the destruction of the state of Israel or the Jewish people. The implication of the speech is that the current Israeli regime will end because occupying powers are illegitimate and unsustainable, not because Iran plans to fire nuclear missiles at the Jewish state or commit genocide.

Overlooked by the programme makers is the fact that "fragile" Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East armed with nuclear warheads, several hundred of them, as well as one of the most powerful armies in the world, which presumably make most of its neighbours feel "fragile" too, with far more reason.

And, as we are being persuaded how "fragile" Israel really is, another former prime minister, Ehud Barak, is interviewed. "Ultimately we are standing alone," he says, in apparent justification for an illegal, unilateral strike. Iran's nuclear reasearch facilities, Barak warns, are hidden deep underground, so deep that "no conventional weapon can penetrate", leaving us to infer that in such circumstances Israel will have no choice but use a tactical nuclear strike in its "self-defence". And, getting into his stride, Barak adds that some facilities are in crowded urban areas "where any attack could end up in civilian collateral damage".

But despite the terrifying scenario laid out by Israel's leaders, the BBC website cheerleads for Israel in the same manner as the programme-makers, suggesting that Israel has the right to engineer a clash of civilisations: "With America unlikely to take military action, the pressure is growing on Israel's leaders to launch a raid."

As should be clear by now, the Israeli government's fingerprints are all over this BBC "documentary". And that is hardly surprising because the man behind this "independent" production is Israel's leading film-maker: Noam Shalev.

Shalev, a graduate of a New York film school, has been making a spate of documentaries through his production company Highlight Films, based in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, that have been lapped up by the BBC and other foreign broadcasters. With the BBC's stamp of approval, it is easy for Shalev to sell his films around the world.

Shalev, who claims that he doesn't "espouse a political view", started his career by making documentaries on less controversial subjects. He has produced films on Ethiopian immigrants arriving in Israel, and on the Zaka organisation, Jewish religious fundamentalists who arrive at the scene of suicide attacks quite literally to pick up the pieces, of human remains.

In the past his films managed to bypass the reticence of broadcasters like the BBC to broach the combustible subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside their news programmes by touching on the topic obliquely. Importantly, however, Shalev's films always humanise his Israeli subjects, showing them as complex, emotional and caring beings, while largely ignoring the millions of Palestinians the Israeli government and army are oppressing.

According to a profile of Shalev published in the Israeli media in 2004, his success derives from the fact that he has developed a "soft-sell approach", showing Israel in a good light without "the straightforward 'hasbara' [propaganda] efforts which explain Israel's case that Israel's Foreign Ministry is required to disseminate to European and American news outlets."

In the words of an Israeli public relations executive, Shalev has a skill in telling Israel's story in ways that international broadcasters appreciate: "[Shalev] also shows the Israeli side, he is not one of those traitors who sell their ideology for money. He has the skill to market it in such a way that overseas they want to see it, and this is very important."

But recently Shalev has grown more confident to try the hard sell for Israel, apparently sure that the BBC and other foreign broadcasters will still buy his films. And that is because Shalev offers them something that other film-makers cannot: intimate access to Israel's security forces, an area off-limits to his rivals.

Before the disengagement from Gaza last year, for example, Shalev made a sympathetic documentary, shown by the BBC, about a day in the life of one Israeli soldier serving there. The film largely concealed the context that might have alerted viewers to the fact that the soldier was enforcing a four-decade illegal occupation of Gaza, or that the Strip is an open-air prison in which thousands of Palestinian have been killed by the Israeli army and in which a majority of Gazans live in abject poverty.

Interviewed about the documentary, Shalev observed: "The army really is very, very careful. There is no indiscriminate firing. I saw, and this was not a show put on just for us, that before any shot is fired there is confirmation that there is nobody behind or in front of the objective. The army is very sensitive to non-deliberate fire."

In other words, Shalev's film for the BBC shed no light on why Israel's "deliberate" fire has killed hundreds of Palestinian children during the second intifada or why a large number of civilians have died from Israeli gunfire and missile strikes inside the Gaza Strip.

Earlier this year Shalev made another film for the BBC, "The Hunt for Black October", to coincide with the release of Stephen Spielberg's movie Munich. "The BBC gains exclusive access to the undercover Mossad agents assigned to track down the Palestinian group responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics," the BBC was able to glow in its promotional material.

Shalev's latest film, "Will Israel bomb Iran?", follows this well-trodden path. Arabs and Muslims are again deprived of a voice, as are non-Israeli experts.

So why did the BBC buy this blatant piece of propaganda?

Here are a few clues. Shalev's film includes:

* footage taken from inside Hizbullah bunkers under the supervision of the Israeli army as it occupied south Lebanon.

* a "rare view" of the inside of the Israeli army's satellite control room, which spies on Israel's Arab neighbours and Iran and which, according to programme, is "incredibly guarded about its security arrangements".

* an exclusive appearance by Israel's former military chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, who we are told is "rarely interviewed".

* a glimpse inside a Rafael weapons factory, which the programme tells us is "rarely filmed".

In other words, the BBC, and the other broadcasters who will air this "documentary" in the coming weeks and months, has been dazzled by Shalev's ability to show us the secret world of the Israeli army. So dazzled, it seems, that it has forgotten to check -- or worse, simply doesn't care -- what message Shalev is inserting between his exclusive footage.

It might have occurred to someone at the BBC to wonder why Shalev gets these chances to show things no one else is allowed to. Could it be that the "hasbara" division of the Israeli Foreign Ministry has got far more sophisticated than it once was?

Is the Israeli government using Shalev, wittingly or not, and is he in turn using the BBC, to spread Israeli propaganda? Propaganda that may soon propel us towards the "clash of civilisations" so longed for by Israel's leadership.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

New kind of weapon used by the Israeli Air Force in the Gaza-Ghetto

New kind missile/bomb used in the Gaza-Strip puzzles doctors in Hospitals.

English Report on RAI24, (Windows Media Player video on top right hand side, 18mins,)

or watch the video report here (English, 18mins)

The British Guardian on North Korea

We are heading towards another pre-emptive war and Japanese nuclear weapons unless pressure for disarmament revives

Dan Plesch
Tuesday October 10, 2006
The Guardian

North Korea's nuclear test is only the latest failure of the west's proliferation policy. And it demonstrates the need to return to the proven methods of multilateral disarmament. Far from being crazy, the North Korean policy is quite rational. Faced with a US government that believes the communist regime should be removed from the map, the North Koreans pressed ahead with building a deterrent. George Bush stopped the oil supplies to North Korea that had been part of a framework to end its nuclear programme previously agreed with Bill Clinton. Bush had already threatened pre-emptive war - Iraq-style - against a regime he dubbed as belonging to the axis of evil.

The background to North Korea's test is that, since the end of the cold war, the nuclear states have tried to impose a double standard, hanging on to nuclear weapons for themselves and their friends while denying them to others. Like alcoholics condemning teenage drinking, the nuclear powers have made the spread of nuclear weapons the terror of our age, distracting attention from their own behaviour. Western leaders refuse to accept that our own actions encourage others to follow suit.

North Korea's action has now increased the number of nuclear weapon states to nine. Since 1998 India, Pakistan and now North Korea have joined America, China, France, Russia, Israel and the UK.

The domino effect is all too obvious. Britain wants nuclear weapons so long as the French do. India said it would build one if there were no multilateral disarmament talks. Pakistan followed rapidly. In Iran and the Arab world Israel's bomb had always been an incentive to join in. But for my Iranian friends, waking up to a Pakistani bomb can be compared to living in a non-nuclear Britain and waking up to find Belgium had tested a nuclear weapon.

East Asia is unlikely to be different. In 2002 Japan's then chief cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, told reporters that "depending on the world situation, circumstances and public opinion could require Japan to possess nuclear weapons". The deputy cabinet secretary at the time, Shinzo Abe - now Japan's prime minister - said afterwards that it would be acceptable for Japan to develop small, strategic nuclear weapons.

It was not supposed to be like this. At the end of the cold war, disarmament treaties were being signed, and in 1996 the big powers finally agreed to stop testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945. The public, the pressure groups and the media all breathed a great sigh of relief and forgot about the bomb. Everyone thought that with the Soviet Union gone, multilateral disarmament would accelerate.

But with public attention elsewhere, the Dr Strangeloves in Washington, Moscow and Paris stopped the disarmament process and invented new ideas requiring new nuclear weapons. A decade ago, Clinton's Pentagon placed "non-state actors" (ie terrorists) on the list of likely targets for US nuclear weapons. Now all the established nuclear states are building new nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration made things worse. First, it rejected the policy of controlling armaments through treaties, which had been followed by previous presidents since 1918. Second, it proposed to use military - even nuclear - force in a pre-emptive attack to prevent proliferation. This policy was used as a pretext for attacking Iraq and may now be used on either Iran or North Korea. More pre-emptive war will produce suffering and chaos, while nothing is done about India, Israel and Pakistan. So we are left with a policy of vigilante bravado for which we have sacrificed the proven methods of weapons control.

Fortunately, there is a realistic option. Max Kampelman, Ronald Reagan's nuclear negotiator, has proposed that Washington's top priority should be the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction on earth, including those possessed by the US. At the ongoing disarmament meetings at the UN, the vast majority of nations argue for a phased process to achieve this goal. They can point to the success of the UN inspectors in Iraq as proof that international inspection can work, even in the toughest cases. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that removed the missiles from Greenham is an example of an agreement no one thought possible that worked completely. This, and other legacies from the cold war, can and should be applied globally.

A group of Britain's closest allies, including South Africa and Ireland, are trying to broker a deal on global disarmament. Tragically, Britain won't be helping. Political parties and the media are deaf to these initiatives. The three main parties all follow more or less the US approach. They know that no US government will lease the UK a successor to Trident if London steps out of line on nuclear weapons policy. The media almost never report on UN disarmament debates. Disarmament has become the word that dare not be said in polite society.

Do we have to wait for another pre-emptive war or until the Japanese go nuclear before the British political class comes to realise that there can be a soft landing from these nuclear crises?

· Dan Plesch, a fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Keele University, is the author of The Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace

www.danplesch.net

Detour to North Korea

Don Rumsfeld Bats Both Ways

By Chris Floyd10/10/06 "ICH Information Clearing House " -- --

In February 2003, I wrote a column for the Moscow Times detailing Don Rumsfeld's personal – and profitable – connection with North Korea's nuclear program. Today Greg Saunders at This Modern World notes (from a Guardian story from May 2003), that the Bush Administration continued to shove money toward Rumsfeld's corporate cronies, allowing them to help accelerated North Korea's nuke push – even as the Dear Leader (theirs, not ours) was kicking out weapons inspectors and withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

What I wrote more than three years ago unfortunately still holds true today. The nuclear blast test that North Korea conducted this week is not only the result of the Bush Administration's incompetent and sinister diplomatic philosophy – which seems to consist solely of provoking unfriendly regimes into countermeasures which can then be used as excuses for war-profiteering "regime change" assaults – but also stems from the overwhelming lust for loot that lies behind the noble rhetoric of the third-rate goons of the Bush Gang.

Swing Blades
(Originally published in the Feb. 28, 2003 edition of The Moscow Times; the version here excerpted from the book, Empire Burlesque.)

It's a well-known fact – oft detailed in these pages – that the boys in the Bush Regime swing both ways. We speak, of course, of their proclivity – their apparently uncontrollable craving – for stuffing their trousers with loot from both sides of whatever war or military crisis is going at the moment.

That's why it came as no surprise to read last week that just before he joined the Regime's crusade against evildoers everywhere (especially rogue states that pursue the development of terrorist-ready weapons of mass destruction), Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld was trousering the proceeds from a $200 million deal to send the latest nuclear technology – including plenty of terrorist-ready "dirty bomb" material – to the rogue state of North Korea, the Swiss paper Neue Zurcher Zeitung reports.

In 1998, Rumsfeld was citizen chairman of the Congressional Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, charged with reducing nuclear proliferation. Rumsfeld and the Republican-heavy commission came down hard on the deal Bill Clinton had brokered with North Korea to avert a war in 1994: Pyongyang would give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for normalized relations with the United States, plus the construction of two non-weaponized nuclear plants to generate electricity. The plants were to be built by an international consortium of government-backed business interests called KEDO.

Rum deal, said Rummy: those nasty Northies would surely turn the peaceful nukes to nefarious ends. What's more, even the most innocuous nuclear plant generates mounds of radioactive waste that could be made into "dirty bombs" – hand-carried weapons capable of killing thousands of people. The agreement was big bad juju that threatened the whole world, Rumsfeld declared.

Of course, that didn't prevent him from trying to profit from it. Even while he was chairing commission meetings on the "dire threat" posed by the Korean program, Rumsfeld was junketing to Zurich for board meetings of the Swiss-based energy technology giant, ABB, where he was a top director. And what was ABB doing at the time? Why, negotiating that $200 million deal with North Korea to provide equipment and services for the KEDO nuclear reactors, of course!

Yes, nuclear proliferation is ugly stuff – but you might as well squeeze a few dollars from it, right? A smart guy always plays the angles – and, as the hero-worshiping American media never stop telling us, Rumsfeld is one smart guy.

In fact, he's so smart that he's now playing dumb. A Pentagon spokesman says Rumsfeld "can't recall" discussing the Korean deal at ABB board meetings. And his erstwhile ABB corporate colleagues say that it's possible the subject never came up. Of course it didn't; going into the nuclear business with a Communist tyranny that very nearly launched a nuclear war against the West just four years before, in a deal that involved high-level negotiations with the governments of the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union – that's certainly the kind of thing that would be handled by a couple of junior executives in a branch office somewhere. Nothing for the bigwigs – especially hard-wired government players like Rumsfeld – to trouble their pretty heads about. A perfectly reasonable explanation.

And so Rumsfeld joins the roster of Bush Regime boardroom honchos who once trumpeted their "business savvy" as selling points for their aspirations to national leadership but now claim to have been "hands-off" figureheads who had no idea what their companies were up to. Bush, in his sinkhole of insider trading and stockholder scamming at Harken; Cheney, making fat deals with Saddam Hussein (yes, after the Gulf War) and muddying up the corporate books at Halliburton; Army Secretary Thomas White, gaming the power grid and stealing millions for Enron in the manufactured California "energy crisis" – all of them went from mighty moguls to mere "front men" the instant their corruption was brought to light. None of it was their fault; nothing ever is.

Whatever happened to Bush's much-trumpeted "era of responsibility?" These guys are not only chiselers, hustlers, hypocrites and war profiteers – they're a bunch of gutless wonders as well. So you'll pardon us if we are just the tiniest bit cynical about the "moral arguments for war" and other such buckets of warm spit this gang is now forcing down the world's throat.

Postscript
And what became of that 1994 pact with North Korea? UN inspectors entered the country to make sure the weapons program was put on ice. Pyongyang signed a number of lucrative deals with various politically-connected Western firms, like ABB, to build the promised energy plants, while waiting for the normalization of relations with the United States to begin – a move which many thought would set North Korea on a course toward China-style "moderation" of its monolithic regime.

But normalization never came. Clinton, pressured by rightwing forces (such as Rumsfeld's commission) who opposed any truck whatsoever with godless commies, did his usual folding number, with much windy suspiration of forced breath – and no action. The KEDO companies pocketed Pyongyang's cash but dithered about the actual construction. Pyongyang – while not exactly a font of smiling cooperation itself – concluded that the pact was being deep-sixed. This suspicion was confirmed when Bush took office, calling Korean leader Kim Jong Il a "pygmy" and declaring the county part of the "Axis of Evil."

Pyongyang then accelerated its weapons program, kicked out the UN inspectors, and is now threatening to unleash a nuclear war if Bush, a la Iraq, makes a "pre-emptive strike."

A dicey situation, sure – but at least Don Rumsfeld made some money out of it.

Let`s follow developements in and about Iran

Nach dem nun Nordkorea in den Schlagzeilen ist - ich hoffe niemand ist überrascht über den Nuklearwaffentest (sofern er wirklich stattgefunden hat) - sollte man die Situation in Iran im Auge behalten. Wer also Artikel beitragen kann, ist herzlich willkommen.

Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse

By Chris Hedges

10/09/06 "TruthDig" -- -- The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.” They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran. Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.

These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States, slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.

But this war will be different. It will be catastrophic. It will usher in the apocalyptic nightmares spun out in the dark, fantastic visions of the Christian right. And there are those around the president who see this vision as preordained by God; indeed, the president himself may hold such a vision.

The hypocrisy of this vaunted moral crusade is not lost on those in the Middle East. Iran actually signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has violated a codicil of that treaty written by European foreign ministers, but this codicil was never ratified by the Iranian parliament. I do not dispute Iran’s intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nor do I minimize the danger should it acquire them in the estimated five to 10 years. But contrast Iran with Pakistan, India and Israel. These three countries refused to sign the treaty and developed nuclear weapons programs in secret. Israel now has an estimated 400 to 600 nuclear weapons. The word “Dimona,” the name of the city where the nuclear facilities are located in Israel, is shorthand in the Muslim world for the deadly Israeli threat to Muslims’ existence. What lessons did the Iranians learn from our Israeli, Pakistani and Indian allies?

Given that we are actively engaged in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime by recruiting tribal groups and ethnic minorities inside Iran to rebel, given that we use apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what must be done to the Iranian regime, given that other countries in the Middle East such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are making noises about developing a nuclear capacity, and given that, with the touch of a button Israel could obliterate Iran, what do we expect from the Iranians? On top of this, the Iranian regime grasps that the doctrine of permanent war entails making “preemptive” and unprovoked strikes.

Those in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe. The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced—either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation.

“As a people we are enormously forgetful,” Dr. Polk, one of the country’s leading scholars on the Middle East, told an Oct. 13 gathering of the Foreign Policy Association in New York. “We should have learned from history that foreign powers can’t win guerrilla wars. The British learned this from our ancestors in the American Revolution and re-learned it in Ireland. Napoleon learned it in Spain. The Germans learned it in Yugoslavia. We should have learned it in Vietnam and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are learning it all over again in Chechnya and we are learning it, of course, in Iraq. Guerrilla wars are almost unwinnable. As a people we are also very vain. Our way of life is the only way. We should have learned that the rich and powerful can’t always succeed against the poor and less powerful.”

An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.

The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel. And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program “the Samson option.” The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.

If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.

Chris Hedges is former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” reports on Bush’s plan for Iran, and how a callous war, conceived by zealots, will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.

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