Drumming up to the Iran War

Is there any doubt that there is a concerted effort to drag America into war with a nation of 70 million Iranians that holds no immediate threat to the United States or its citizens? The pernicious means employed now by war-drumming media and US government officials, which include blatant distortion of Iran's present nuclear capabilities, abstract concepts regarding Iran's presupposed threat to the world, and outright deception, parallel those used to launch the Iraq War to an astonishing extent. A war that lags in support 4 years on, that is capable of extinguishing moral and strategic reason for enough time allotted to its completion, and requires such concerted effort to carry out, is obviously not a war Americans wish to fight. Only the drive of power and will by the handlers of our foreign policy enables such mass scale deception.

In every news story, from the Associated Press to CNN, the falsified statements of Iranian President Ahamdinejad concerning Israel are presented as though proof of Iranian bellicosity. He allegedly possesses an impounding desire to "wipe Israel off the map" - indeed, this is often the only evidence that justifies the deluded pro-war campaign and offers "balance" to news stories that are, sans the statement, lacking in umph. Yet, in various analyses of the translation, Ahamdinejad was in fact calling for "regime change" in Israel. Juan Cole, Persian and Arabic linguist, offers the following translation and reasoning:

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Obvious sympathy with Jews regarding their Nazi wartime experience on the part of American readers is drawn upon here. In essence, they ask their opinion-hungry readers, "should the Jews be faced with extermination once more?" As if that is the real question here. Repeat the lie often enough, and the people will come to believe it.

The very foundation for all this at the present time is Bush's feigned anxiety regarding Iran's nuclear program (but, in a few years, will most likely be freedom and democracy in an already democratic country. Irony?). Back in August 2005, the Washington Post reported that Iran was "about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon." Meanwhile, Cheney states that "Iran is a top threat to world peace and Middle East stability, accusing Tehran of sponsoring terrorism against Americans and building a 'fairly robust new nuclear program.'" Such obfuscation of the reality of the situation is blatant mischaracterization of Iran's threat to the US and evinces the inside push for war.

Every deadline imposed and subsequently ignored by Iran constitutes a leap towards malevolence that shall somehow spread its unerring tentacles into US cities. Each such report frets the instrument of fear in US minds, creating an impression of imminent threat from a country half-way across the world and in whose affairs the US government meddles more so than vise-versa.

The plans are reportedly drawn up. Using unholy nukes to prevent unholy nukes. That is the political possibility that ominously reverberates on our television screens and print media. Air strikes using "tactical nuclear weapons," plans of which were denied immediately after leakage given the predictable fanfare against such obscene rationale (which is not to say that it will not occur in the name of the defense of freedom guided by the all-knowing hand of big government, as it has, ahem, in the past).

Cui bono? To whose benefit? Obviously not ours. So let's stop it.