Chomsky on Foreign Fighters in Iraq

Noam Chomsky's appearance on C-Span 2 yesterday provides another entertaining and edifying discussion on the arrogance of American foreign policy.

Among the topics is the American political culture's inability to conceive of and describe the powerful "foreign fighters" in Iraq, and the dangers they pose to regional stability.

There are over 150,000 foreign fighters in Iraq; the fighters are American troops.

But the corporate media and the political culture generally is ideologically unable or disinclined to discuss our intervention in Iraq in such terms as "foreign fighters," invaders, aggressors or terror; no matter that America has invaded, aggressed and terrorized a sovereign country.

See Chomsky.info for more information.

On a related note, I would add that the same Neocons who are so hell-bent on war are ideologically opposed to giving the veterans the care and respect that they deserve when the troops rotate home.

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Iran Strike Coming?

Colin Powell: Iran Far From Having Nuke

Only in Bush's America (including the many depraved Democrats who lie down as an obscene foreign policy is loosed upon the world) does a debate occur pondering whether we launch another assault on yet another country, Iran. [USS Eisenhower, pictured at right, in the Persian Gulf last year]

What are the defense planners in Iran pondering? I suggest this:

It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any attack launched from Israel or the United States against any target in Iran as an attack by Israel and the United States on the Iranian people, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Israeli and American targets.

That means World War III.

The above speculated Iranian ruminations are a paraphrase of one point of Kennedy's address announcing the quarantine against Cuba, October 22, 1962.

What's frightening is that this time, the American administration is clearly the aggressor nation, destabilizing and threatening the world.

As American citizens, we ought not just resist this administration's war plans at home (and let's hope that they are aborted), but wish for a comprehensive world response against the aggressive plans of this authoritarian Bush regime.

One wishes that the obvious costs of an Israeli/American strike against Iran would preclude such aggressive and reckless action. But rational actors are in short supply in the Bush administration.

Scott Horton at Harper's weighs some key points in his piece. Here's an excerpt from Horton's 1,300-word piece:

Still, my sense this week is that the roll-out for attacks on Iran has, to the great distraction of its sponsors, not gained the sort of traction that they envisaged for it. I am therefore pulling back on the prospects for the Cheney air war on Iran before the end of the Bush presidency, putting this again at a break-even proposition. Here are some of the points for the pushback.

I disagree with Horton that lack of traction, little political support among foreign policy elites, and hostility from the military brass are sufficient to dissuade Bush and Cheney, if they have already decided that surrogate Israel or American military strikes are in the offing.

And the predictable economic and political dislocations do not figure into the machinations of these people; the loonies are in charge.

The fact is we have a radical, dangerous regime running the U.S., and the barriers and constraints that would have precluded, say, the disaster of Iraq do not have the normal force of reason on this radical, statist, out-of-control regime.

Really, as citizens, we can only hope.

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War with Iran

Rational Americans look on with concern like passengers on the Titanic as a hare-brained, messianic president enmeshed in a neocon ideological bubble sends signals of a coming strike against Iran.

A ex-military source working in a Midwest industry in a position to observe qualitative changes in military traffic on American rails and highways notes an increase in military-related traffic like that that has preceded military excursions into Iraq twice.

The source believes a strike against Iran is coming.

But as many have noted, such a strike is lunacy.

As Joseph L. Galloway writes in McClatchy (Inexorable March Toward War With Iran?):

The more thoughtful military and civilian advisers can rattle off a dozen reasons why an American attack on Iran at this juncture would be foolish in the extreme and risk setting the Middle East afire.

Just some of those reasons would include:

- Shutting down not only Iran's oil production but Iraq's as well, and possibly triggering Iranian retaliation against the oil production and shipping in other nations around the Persian Gulf. Are we ready for $300 a barrel oil?

- Putting 160,000 American troops and another 125,000 American and foreign contractors in Iraq at much greater risk, as neighboring Iran signals Shiite allies there to begin all-out war against us and sends in its own well-armed guerrillas to lead the attack.

-Our 250-mile main supply lines in Iraq run through the heart of Shiite-controlled southern Iraq, and they would be cut. If we think we have troubles now with the shaky Iraq national government in Baghdad, which has already snuggled up to Tehran, what would war with Iran bring?

- Risking confrontation with the newly oil-rich and energized Russian Federation and President Bush's ex-KGB soul-mate Vladimir Putin. Since Putin has his hand on the natural gas and oil pipelines that keep our presumed allies in Europe from freezing to death, it is wise to assume that any support for an American attack on his ally Iran would be slim to none.

Assuming that any U.S. air war against Iran would not be enough by itself - and such air campaigns seldom are definitive in modern history - where would we find the ground forces capable of doing the really hard part?

Our Army and Marine Corps are stretched to the breaking point maintaining the force level in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have no strategic reserves available to help secure our allies in the Persian Gulf, much less to mount any offensive inside Iran.

When you add it all up, you have your answer: No one in their right mind would believe that attacking Iran now makes any sense at all.

But that doesn't mean that Bush and Cheney won't do it.

There were a lot of reasons why a pre-emptive strike into Iraq based on flimsy and bogus intelligence and far too few troops made no sense, yet they did it anyway, with trademark arrogance and ignorance.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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