Inconceivable as it may be after the recent disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the midst of the ongoing economic problems in this country, the US may find itself in a war with Iran in the near future. With increasingly belligerent talk and accusations against Iran from Israel's Netanyahu and with Israeli and American drones in the area, there is an increasing sense of a mindless drift towards war.
Charles Mutede's February 14 post on The Stranger blog summarizes the situation with Israel's right-wing leader: "Netanyahu apparently feels, however, that he can manipulate right-wing Israeli influence on American politics to make it impossible for Obama to stay out of an Israeli war on Iran. He has defied the Obama administration by refusing to assure Washington that he would consult them before making any decision on war with Iran."
Frankly who the f**k does Netanyahu think he is? Even George Bush would not be convinced to tolerate and support an Israeli strike against Iran.
Hopefully Obama will not be forced into an Iran war by the right-wing lunatics and neocons in Congress and in the Republican Party in this election year. Hopefully he will take the only path to peace possible and publicly warn Netanyahu that if he institutes any such attack against Washington's wishes, he is totally on his own for the duration.
And hopefully, Obama was just grand-standing in his State of the Union when he said that he "will take no options off the table to achieve [the] goal [of preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capability]". As noted in today's Huffington Post, there is little enthusiasm in the military for any such war. Quoting Gen. Martin Dempsey's comment to the National Journal last month, a war with Iran "would be really destabilizing ... I personally believe that we should be in the business of deterring [war] as a first priority." Dempsey is the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So at least there is sanity at that spot.
As for the presence of US ships near Iranian waters and US drones near the Iranian border, Rep. Dennis Kucinich asks how would we react if an Iranian aircraft flew near our coast? Maintaining the peace requires an all-out effort in diplomacy, not provocations against Iran's national sovereignty. Kucinich suggests if we want to deter Iranians from nuclear energy, we should show them the cost of such energy and that there are better ways to power a nation. If we want to deter them from developing nuclear weapons capability, the US should take the lead in nuclear disarmament. As Kucinich says in the linked video , "Don't we have enough wars that we're fighting in the United States? Do we need another war? Did I miss something that we somehow ran out of wars?"
Noam Chomsky in a HuffingtonPost/TomDispatch co-post notes another diplomatic path to solve the nuclear weapons issue. He sites overwhelming international support for undertaking "meaningful steps towards establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, including Iran and Israel (and applying as well to U.S. forces deployed there), better still extending to South Asia." This fuller solution (Middle East plus South Asia) would have the advantage of bringing Israel, Pakistan and India under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). These three countries are the only ones to never have signed the NPT and they all have nuclear weapons. (It should be noted that North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003.)
There is some hope that world peace can be maintained and that we will not stumble into another disastrous war in the Middle East. It is going to take hard diplomatic work, creative solutions, and the courage and political will to stand up to those who would clamor for that war or try to lure us into it.
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Turmoil
Tunisia, Egypt, and most recently Jordan. The "street" is forcing change in the Middle East.
In an uprising led mostly by young working-class men, Tunisians ousted authoritarian President Zine el Abidine ben Ali on January 14. Opponents of ben Ali's government had complained of corruption, lack of jobs and repression. Continuing protests on the composition of the interim government, which included members from the former regime led to a major Cabinet reshuffle on January 27. The interim government has scheduled general elections within six months. Both the US and the EU, which had long backed Ben Ali's regime as a counter to Islamic extremism, have now endorsed the uprising with pledges of financial aid.
In Egypt, initial protests came in early December after preliminary election results were announced. The opposition charged that the elections were rigged. Then on January 2, protesters gathered in central Cairo to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. As events unfolded in Tunisia, the opposition to Mubarak's rule gathered strength and crystallized around the Nobel prize winning opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei. (ElBaradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and prominently and correctly disputed the US WMD rationale for the invasion of Iraq. Too bad the Bush and Blair Administrations didn't listen to him then - countless lives and a trillion dollars would have been saved. But that's another subject.) Protests against unemployment, corruption and rising prices have continued unabated since January 25th. On January 29th, Mubarak fired his Cabinet. Soldiers and policemen are now allowing the protests to continue. Today more than a million Egyptians across the country protested. Mubarak says he will be addressing the nation and will not be running in the scheduled Septemebr elections. Unless he can satisfy the demands of the Egyptian people soon, I think his step-down from power is imminent. Mubarak and Egypt's secular government have been key to US strategy for 30 years.
Thousands of people in Jordan had taken to the streets in protests, demanding the country's prime minister step down, and the government curb rising prices, inflation and unemployment. King Abdullah II of Jordan fired his Cabinet after today's Egyptian protests, and organizers in Yemen and Syria, with their own authoritarian rulers, have called for protests.
Across the Middle East, there will be change. The US for many years has backed authoritarian secular regimes as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism. (Remember when Saddam Hussein was our ally?) It's reminiscent, on perhaps a lesser scale, of the US approach towards communism in the cold war days. We disgracefully backed some of the most repressive military dictatorships and oligarchies around the world as long as they said they were anti-communist. When rebellion and change and democracy occur, it may not always result in what the US wants. But we cannot and should not dictate to the world's peoples what their nations should look like.
In an uprising led mostly by young working-class men, Tunisians ousted authoritarian President Zine el Abidine ben Ali on January 14. Opponents of ben Ali's government had complained of corruption, lack of jobs and repression. Continuing protests on the composition of the interim government, which included members from the former regime led to a major Cabinet reshuffle on January 27. The interim government has scheduled general elections within six months. Both the US and the EU, which had long backed Ben Ali's regime as a counter to Islamic extremism, have now endorsed the uprising with pledges of financial aid.
In Egypt, initial protests came in early December after preliminary election results were announced. The opposition charged that the elections were rigged. Then on January 2, protesters gathered in central Cairo to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. As events unfolded in Tunisia, the opposition to Mubarak's rule gathered strength and crystallized around the Nobel prize winning opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei. (ElBaradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and prominently and correctly disputed the US WMD rationale for the invasion of Iraq. Too bad the Bush and Blair Administrations didn't listen to him then - countless lives and a trillion dollars would have been saved. But that's another subject.) Protests against unemployment, corruption and rising prices have continued unabated since January 25th. On January 29th, Mubarak fired his Cabinet. Soldiers and policemen are now allowing the protests to continue. Today more than a million Egyptians across the country protested. Mubarak says he will be addressing the nation and will not be running in the scheduled Septemebr elections. Unless he can satisfy the demands of the Egyptian people soon, I think his step-down from power is imminent. Mubarak and Egypt's secular government have been key to US strategy for 30 years.
Thousands of people in Jordan had taken to the streets in protests, demanding the country's prime minister step down, and the government curb rising prices, inflation and unemployment. King Abdullah II of Jordan fired his Cabinet after today's Egyptian protests, and organizers in Yemen and Syria, with their own authoritarian rulers, have called for protests.
Across the Middle East, there will be change. The US for many years has backed authoritarian secular regimes as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism. (Remember when Saddam Hussein was our ally?) It's reminiscent, on perhaps a lesser scale, of the US approach towards communism in the cold war days. We disgracefully backed some of the most repressive military dictatorships and oligarchies around the world as long as they said they were anti-communist. When rebellion and change and democracy occur, it may not always result in what the US wants. But we cannot and should not dictate to the world's peoples what their nations should look like.
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