Mad for the Wrong Reasons

Cartoons Worse than Torture?

This is the Real Outrage by Tariq Ali (Common Dreams) slices through the nonsense over the non-issue of the recent cartoons of Muhammed published in newspapers[1] recently. He acknowledges that the right to free speech is paramount, but neither can a speaker assume that everyone will react calmly and reasonably, regardless of the message.

“[T]he cartoon depicting Muhammad as a terrorist is a crude racist stereotype. The implication is that every Muslim is a potential terrorist. This is the sort of nonsense that leads to Islamophobia.”

Muslims have any number of reasons to be angry with “the West”, most of them because of the continued dominance through means both military and economic (not to mention the dictatorships still being propped up throughout the Middle East). The real story is that they can more easily be incited to rise up in response to cartoons than to real offenses:

“Where is the response to that or the tortures in Abu Ghraib? Or the rapes of Iraqi women by occupying soldiers? Where is the response to the daily deaths of Palestinians?”

It seems Americans aren’t the only people whose anger can be whipped up and focused at the wrong targets. Extremist Americans are currently laying waste to Iraq because of lies told them by their government; similarly duped extemist Muslims have laid waste to several embassies because of lies told them by their imams. Ignorance is equally manipulable, regardless of culture.

Iran Must Go!

With Arabic attentions firmly focused elsewhere, the US is pressing forward on other fronts, with “…American military strategists … drawing up plans for a massive air assault on Iran, including ballistic missiles launched from submarines, as a last resort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” To Bomb Or Not To Bomb (Plastic) summarizes reports from various sources.

Drawing up plans for attack is not a new thing; back in the lean years between WWI and WWII, the US drew up plans for invading England, Mexico and Canada, among others—all color-coded so that even the slower generals could play along. These latest plans could be shrugged off as just another day at the office for a well-run military (*cough*). If not for Afghanistan and the shockingly fast attack there (obviously planned before 9-11). If not for the ongoing attack on Iraq. If not for “Israel … making plans for a similar attack with bunker-buster technology obtained from the United States” If not for reports of these plans being “more than just the standard military contingency assessment … [which] has taken on much greater urgency in recent months”.

All this posturing is relatively obviously trying to draw Iran into doing anything that can be called a “first move”, so that the next ass-kicking can begin. Strange that countries like Pakistan and India, which acquired the bomb less than ten years ago (almost inciting their own war at the time) are allies of the US, whereas Iran, doing essentially the same thing, is clearly an enemy. How do you keep track? Pakistan is an ostensibly very Islamic military dictatorship. Is it really because they seem—at least on the surface—non-threatening of Israel that they are allowed to survive? We are being asked to believe Iran is far more likely to use their nukes (when they get them in, at best, ten years) than, say, North Korea, which already has them. Objectively, how is it worse for a country like Iran (number of invasions of other countries in the last 100 years: 0[2]) to have nukes than for a country like the US (number of invasions of other countries in the last 100 years: dozens[3]).

Following our Example

The fact remains that the US still has almost 14,000 nuclear weapons, Israel has at least about 100 and both nations are openly hostile and easily as threatening to Iran as Iran is to them. Even France, also armed to the teeth with nukes, recently issued a barely-veiled threat of nuclear pre-emptive attack for nations perceived to be involved with terrorism. In the face of that, what is Iran to do? Iran is by no means an angel here. They are an unelected theocracy with enough domestic problems to keep them occupied. But then so is the USA. Any honest analysis of Irani society shows strong democratic/student movements which, given time, will result in a counter-revolution against the stranglehold of theocratic government[4]. Would a similarly honest analysis of US society yield such hopeful results?

The lesson of Iraq is: “if you do [disarm,] we’ll invade you anyhow, so you may [as well] just ignore what we say and have nuclear weapons to defend yourself with.” Even simple diplomacy is not an option, because, as with children in a playground, the US doesn’t “have diplomatic relations with [Iran], so [they]’re reduced to relying on the Europeans”. Even negotiating with Iran is considered giving in to the enemy. And they’re the crazy ones. We’re the ones who reduce the whole situation to one of “bomb or be bombed”. We’re the ones who have already started one war on lies and are happily being led by the nose by people who want to start another (even many of those who should know better).

Iran has not attacked the US, nor will it. It has threatened Israel, to which Israel has responded with far more plausible threats.[5] As one poster at Plastic noted:

“Within hours of Iran announcing that they have an atomic bomb, Israeli missiles will will [sic] slag Iran. … Israel shall do so without permission, without hesitation, without apology and without remorse.”

Given that likely scenario and the ground rules as laid out by the US, Iran has every reason to pre-emptively attack Israel, in retaliation for the presumably inevitable attack from Israel. It’s the world that US diplomacy—or lack of it—has built for us. Suck it up.