Chutzpah, Thy Moniker Be Dubya
Even though, with the Taliban increasing their power and influence, experts consider the US-Afghan War a lost cause, and noted warmonger Henry Kissenger declared military victory in Iraq is no longer possible, Wannabee World Conquerer George W. Bush continues to stumble about like Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran in the seventh round of his second bout with Sugar Ray Leonard, trying to find a corner of the planet he can successfully win a war against an enemy that floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.
Defense News reports that the USS Nimitz battle group is headed to support U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The official story from US Navy sources is that the Nimitz is to relieve the USS Eisenhower battle group after war games with the USS Stennis battle group, but one knows that “emergencies happen”! There is just as good a chance that all three groups will remain on station as not.
The justification for this assertion comes from the Russian news agency RIA Novosti (via The Jerusalem Post) which reports that the US has a plan to attack several targets in Iran this coming Friday with missiles from planes and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf. The Nimitz should just be arriving about that time.
With Britain and Iran engaged in a diplomatic stare-down over the 15 British Marines captured by Iranian forces during an inspection os a suspected smuggling ship, and with growing tensions at home with the Democrats in Congress peeling away the veneer of legal justification of un-Constitutional acts by the White House, it’s clear that the Bush administration sees an opportunity to actually Wag The Dog for real by attacking Iran, completing the initiation of the final stage of the disastrous PNAC plan to dominate Southwestern Asian petroleum reserves for American corporate profit.
But there’s a serious fly in that Texas Tea Tactic:
Britain and Iran are reaching an agreement
intended to ease the current tensions
and ensure that it can’t happen again.
That doesn’t quite fit with the Bush administration war plan! There are reports that US jets violated Iranian air space, certainly an agressive act in it self considering the circumstances. But were they just probing the response capabilities of the Iranian air defense system, or was something more sinister afoot?
The Independent is reporting that the Iranians went after the British Marines ten weeks after a failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on January 11. The Independent explains the severity of this offense on sovereign Iranian diplomatic ground:
“The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.”
How well would that be playing in Red State America if the reverse of this act of official kidnapping had happened? As it is, the five Iranian officials who were taken by US forces have yet, according to The Independent, to be released. Remember 1979 and the uproar over the Iranian occupation of the American Embassy in Teheran? We weren’t about to let them get away with such an insult to American sovereignty!
As it is, few in the media have noted the hypocrisy of the words of George W. Bush complaining about Iranian agression as measured against his hostile actions against Iran. One who has is veteran columnist Robert Parry, who notes that Bush’s outrage is “selective’:
One of the least endearing features of Washington’s political/media hierarchy is its propensity for selective outrage, like what is now coming from George W. Bush about the “inexcusable behavior” of the Iranian government in holding 15 British sailors whom Bush has labeled “hostages.” This is the same President Bush who often mocks the very idea that international law should apply to him…
Of course, left outside this narrow frame of reference was the gross violation of international law – the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003 – that put the Brits there in the first place. From a longer-range historical context, there were other facts that would need forgetting if one wanted to get worked up into a moral frenzy. These include British colonial domination of both Iraq and Iran, and the CIA’s role in overthrowing Iran’s elected government in 1953 and reinstalling the brutal Shah of Iran on the Peacock Throne.
The combined interventions by the United Kingdom and the United States may have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of Iraqis and Iranians over the past century, but somehow Blair and Bush have positioned themselves as the innocent victims – at least as far as the Western press corps is concerned.
Bush’s disdain for international law are well known to the U.S. news media, the context disappeared again when press interest turned to the captured British sailors in late March 2007. Regarding the captured British sailors, Blair and other U.K. officials have taken particular umbrage over videos released by Iran showing the sailors eating or being interviewed. This complaint references the principle of the Geneva Conventions against subjecting captured soldiers to public humiliation. The grand human rights defender, George W. Bush, lectured other countries about “inexcusable behavior” – and no prominent Western journalist called him to account for his contradictions.
Bush insisted that he had the sole right to declare which prisoners were POWs (with protections under the Geneva Conventions) and which ones were to be considered “unlawful combatants” (with no protections under the Geneva Conventions). Even Bush-designated POWs only received the Geneva rights that Bush saw fit to grant.
This same Geneva provision also was an issue – and another example of Western double standards – in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In protesting alleged Geneva violations by Iraq [against five captured US soldiers] in March 2003, the U.S. news media also was silent about the fact that Bush had drawn worldwide condemnation for his decision to strip many POWs captured in Afghanistan of their Geneva Convention rights.
Former Python satirist Terry Jones wonders why all the outrage out of the Oval Office, considering that the British captives display “no signs of electrocution or burn marks, and there are no signs of beating”. Jones suggests that, with the British Marines suffering “No hoods… no ectric shocks… no beatings… These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch.”
But to return to reality, The Independent defines who the “uncivilized bunch” really are:
The raid in Arbil was a far more serious and aggressive act. It was not carried out by proxies but by US forces directly. The abortive Arbil raid provoked a dangerous escalation in the confrontation between the US and Iran, which ultimately led to the capture of the 15 British sailors and Marines - apparently considered a more vulnerable coalition target than their American comrades.
More succinctly, Robert Parry puts it this way:
Bush has the unilateral right to do whatever he wants in the world and any reaction is … an invitation to an American military retaliation.
To put it yet another way, vires planto vox. Translated to Texan, that’s ight-may akes-may ight-ray.
We’ll see how well that tired and trite strategy plays on the world stage! After King Abdullah’s declaration that the occupation of Iraq was illegal, I doubt the Guardian of the Holy Sites going to be in much of a mood to cut George any more slack should he whack the Iranian hornet nest and they sting everyone in sight!