Columnist – John Sammon
You know the old saying, those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it? What can you say about Republican hopefuls Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and their incredible knowledge of U.S. history? Remember, this is the best they can do, the Republican Party, out of the millions of people they might select. These two are the crème of the crop.

The following unauthorized, imaginary interview with the pair is based nevertheless on real statements the dynamic duo has made.

Myself — Ms. Palin, wouldn’t you say that we’re in the worst economic crisis since before World War II?

Palin — World War II?

Myself — Yes.

Palin — Wasn’t that that war where they drove old cars around a lot?

Myself — You could say that yes.

Palin — No. The worst crises are the liberals trying to take our guns and God away from us.

Myself — Ms. Bachmann. Do you agree?

Bachmann — The bitch doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You knew that I’m the spirit of John Wayne don’t you?

Myself — No. I didn’t know that.

Bachmann — He comes in the night with God standing behind him and tells me that God is an American, and the Republican Party is the party of God.

Myself — Really?

Bachmann — That’s right. That’s why we’ve never lost a war.

Myself — Because of John Wayne?

Bachmann — Because we’re in the right.

Myself — But we have lost one.

Bachmann — We did?

Myself — Yes. Vietnam.

Bachmann — Oh that. Yeah, I heard about that. The Vietnams attacked San Diego and then we dropped an atomic bomb on ‘em.

Myself — I think you’re getting confused with World War II.

Bachmann — World War what?

Myself — Never mind.

Palin — Can I say something?

Myself — Go ahead.

Palin — The history of this country has always been about God fearin’ people and God and the people fightin’ Godless savages. All through history, when Paul Revere warned the British they wouldn’t take our guns, to the battleships at the Alamo, we’ve been the ones. On May 5, 1968, at Pearl City, Hawaii, we were hit in a surprise attack at dawn and hit hard. But we struck back, and killed that Arab that hid the secret weapons in Iraq.

Myself — You mean Bin Laden?

Palin — Whoever.

Bachmann — I don’t have to take this. The bitch needs a bitch–slap. It wasn’t Pearl City, Hawaii. Everybody knows it was Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The A–Rab air force made a sneak attack and all our ships were lined up in a row in the harbor. I’ve traveled across this country…and

Palin — I had a bus.

Bachmann — Shut up bitch! I’ve traveled the length and width up and down of this country, and I’ve talked to heroes, veterans and people who know God like I do, and they all say the same things. America is our country, not theirs. You’re not one of them are you?

Myself — Them?

Bachmann — Those people. The evil ones. Those who don’t believe in God and the flag, the socialists and traitors.

Myself — I was a boy scout.

Palin — I know God better than you do Bachmann. You bitch! You say you know John Wayne? I was going to be on a reality show in a bikini with Brad Pitt. Try and top that. Not some dead cowboy. I got to talk on the phone to Margaret Thatcher one time and almost got a meeting with her.

Myself — Can we close this by simply saying that you both are concerned about the country? Have you two considered becoming running mates?

Palin — It’s possible.

Myself — Then the two of you might be able to stem the worst economic situation since the Great Depression?

Palin — The Great Depression?

Bachmann — You mean the Grand Canyon?

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The ‘Defeated‘: Two Nut-Jobs, Michele Bachmann and Sarah ‘DEATH‘ Palin Crowd Iowa

Playlist: Michele Bachmann – Psycho, Bigot Congresswoman [ 40 Clips ]

   Columnist – John Sammon
This is where we Americans who have failed as a country start to pay the price. It’s pretty simple. If you let one war or two wars drag on long enough, there’s bound to be another trouble spot somewhere else. But we won’t have adequate power if a new war breaks out because we’re still locked in two other wars.

Equipment wears out. Soldiers wear out. Some of our soldiers are in their 19th deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan. We’re stretched to the max now.

What happens if Korea blows up?

We didn’t learn as a people from Watergate. We didn’t learn from Vietnam. There is only so much military power can accomplish. If you can’t win a decisive victory in a war that makes the other guy surrender and give up, then you have to settle it politically somehow and get out.

When Bush and Cheney lied us into war telling United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq to get out of the way that it was too late, even though the weapons inspectors hadn’t found any weapons of mass destruction. The American people went along with it.

When Bush and Cheney set up torture camps and threw out the Geneva Convention treatment of prisoners. The American people went along with it. Not all of them, but enough of them.

When the wars dragged on and our military ruling élite said things like “be Patient,” and “we’re making progress,” and pushing back “their influence.” The American people went along with it, year after year after year.

They didn’t protest at the White House by the millions. They didn’t engage in the kind of peaceful non-violent protest that gains attention. They just, went along.

   Vietnam Soldiers
Sooner or later, there’s bound to be another war break out somewhere. And we’re overcommitted in two endless wars now, a policy continued by Obama, who uses the same kind of tired statements that always lack specifics like, we’re making “progress,” making “influence,” making “gains.”

Korea is ready to blow.

Our trucks and planes and hardware to make war are worn out.

This is what happens when you don’t demand of your government that they either win a war in a reasonable amount of time, or settle it somehow politically.

We don’t demand accountability of our government. Korea is going to blow and we’re already overcommitted in two wars in neither of which we’ve won a military victory, but allowed to drag on forever.

This is the legacy of Bush. It will become that of Obama.

As long as the American people are like sheep and demand no specifics on how our Middle East wars are to be resolved, the president and the military will make vague statements and drag them on and on forever. In the meantime, a new conflict is brewing, probably Korea.

Our weak economy is struggling to recover. We don’t have the wherewithal for a third war.

Foolish Americans. You didn’t listen to Teddy Roosevelt, who said it’s the duty of every American to criticize their government, and especially members of their own political party. Americans have proven instead that the Watergate scheme and scandal were the wave of the future.

We didn’t learn.

The American people are not up to the challenge of Democracy.

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The following is an excerpt from David Swanson’s self-published new book War Is A Lie (David Swanson, 2010).

   [ By: David Swanson ]
Since the Vietnam War, the United States has dropped all pretense of a military draft equally applied to all. Instead we spend billions of dollars on recruitment, increase military pay, and offer signing bonuses until enough people “voluntarily” join by signing contracts that allow the military to change the terms at will. If more troops are needed, just extend the contracts of the ones you’ve got. Need more still? Federalize the National Guard and send kids off to war who signed up thinking they’d be helping hurricane victims. Still not enough? Hire contractors for transportation, cooking, cleaning, and construction. Let the soldiers be pure soldiers whose only job is to kill, just like the knights of old. Boom, you’ve instantly doubled the size of your force, and nobody’s noticed except the profiteers.

Still need more killers? Hire mercenaries. Hire foreign mercenaries. Not enough? Spend trillions of dollars on technology to maximize the power of each person. Use unmanned aircraft so nobody gets hurt. Promise immigrants they’ll be citizens if they join. Change the standards for enlistment: take ‘em older, fatter, in worse health, with less education, with criminal records. Make high schools give recruiters aptitude test results and students’ contact information, and promise students they can pursue their chosen field within the wonderful world of death, and that you’ll send them to college if they live — hey, just promising it costs you nothing. If they’re resistant, you started too late. Put military video games in shopping malls. Send uniformed generals into kindergartens to warm the children up to the idea of truly and properly swearing allegiance to that flag. Spend 10 times the money on recruiting each new soldier as we spend educating each child. Do anything, anything, anything other than starting a draft.

But there’s a name for this practice of avoiding a traditional draft. It’s called a poverty draft. Because people tend not to want to participate in wars, those who have other career options tend to choose those other options. Those who see the military as one of their only choices, their only shot at a college education, or their only way to escape their troubled lives are more likely to enlist. According to the Not Your Soldier Project:

“The majority of military recruits come from below-median income neighborhoods. “In 2004, 71 percent of black recruits, 65 percent of Latino recruits, and 58 percent of white recruits came from below-median income neighborhoods. “The percentage of recruits who were regular high school graduates dropped from 86 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2006. “[The recruiters] never mention that the college money is difficult to come by – only 16 percent of enlisted personnel who completed four years of military duty ever received money for schooling. They don’t say that the job skills they promise won’t transfer into the real world. Only 12 percent of male veterans and 6 percent of female veterans use skills learned in the military in their current jobs. And of course, they downplay the risk of being killed while on duty.”

In a 2007 article Jorge Mariscal cited analysis by the Associated Press that found that “nearly three-fourths of [U.S. troops] killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.”

“It perhaps should come as no surprise,” wrote Mariscal,”that the Army GED Plus Enlistment Program, in which applicants without high school diplomas are allowed to enlist while they complete a high school equivalency certificate, is focused on inner-city areas.

“When working-class youth make it to their local community college, they often encounter military recruiters working hard to discourage them. ‘You’re not going anywhere here,’ recruiters say. ‘This place is a dead end. I can offer you more.’ Pentagon-sponsored studies — such as the RAND Corporation’s ‘Recruiting Youth in the College Market: Current Practices and Future Policy Options’ – speak openly about college as the recruiter’s number one competitor for the youth market…

“Not all recruits, of course, are driven by financial need. In working-class communities of every color, there are often long- standing traditions of military service and links between service and privileged forms of masculinity. For communities oft en marked as ‘foreign,’ such as Latinos and Asians, there is pressure to serve in order to prove that one is ‘American.’ For recent immigrants, there is the lure of gaining legal resident status or citizenship. Economic pressure, however, is an undeniable motivation. . . .”

Mariscal understands that there are many other motivations as well, including the desire to do something useful and important for others. But he believes those generous impulses are being misdirected:

“In this scenario, the desire to ‘make a difference,’ once inserted into the military apparatus, means young Americans may have to kill innocent people or become brutalized by the realities of combat. Take the tragic example of Sgt. Paul Cortez, who graduated in 2000 from Central High School in the working-class town of Barstow, Calif., joined the Army, and was sent to Iraq. On March 12, 2006, he participated in the gang rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her and her entire family.

[ Ref: Abu Ghraib Tortures ][ Ref: Haditha Killings ]

“When asked about Cortez, a classmate said: ‘He would never do something like that. He would never hurt a female. He would never hit one or even raise his hand to one. Fighting for his country is one thing, but not when it comes to raping and murdering. That’s not him.’ Let us accept the claim that ‘that’s not him.’ Nevertheless, because of a series of unspeakable and unpardonable events within the context of an illegal and immoral war, ‘that’ is what he became. On February 21, 2007, Cortez pled guilty to the rape and four counts of felony murder. He was convicted a few days later, sentenced to life in prison and a lifetime in his own personal hell.”

In a 2010 book called The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities, Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen look at the data from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. They found that only in World War II was a fair draft employed, while the other three wars drew disproportionately from poorer and less educated Americans, opening a “casualty gap” that grew dramatically larger in Korea, again in Vietnam, and yet again in the War on Iraq as the military shifted from conscription to “volunteer.” The authors also cite a survey showing that as Americans become aware of this casualty gap, they become less supportive of wars.

The transition from war primarily by the rich to war primarily by the poor has been a very gradual one and is far from complete. For one thing, those in the highest positions of power in the military are more likely to have come from privileged backgrounds. And regardless of their background, top officers are the least likely to see dangerous combat. Leading the troops into battle is not how it works anymore, except in our imaginations. Both presidents Bush saw their approval ratings soar in public opinion polls when they fought wars — at least at first when the wars were still new and magnificent. Never mind that these presidents fought their wars from the air-conditioned Oval Office. One result of this is that those making the decisions upon which the most lives hang are the least likely to see war death up close, or to have ever seen it.

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

The first President Bush had seen World War II from an airplane, already a distance away from the dying, although not as far away as Reagan who had avoided going to war. Just as thinking of enemies as subhuman makes it easier to kill them, bombing them from high in the sky is much easier psychologically than participating in a knife fight or shooting a traitor standing blindfolded beside a wall. Presidents Clinton and Bush Jr. avoided the Vietnam War, Clinton through educational privilege, Bush through being the son of his father. President Obama never went to war. Vice Presidents Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden, like Clinton and Bush Jr., dodged the draft. Vice President Al Gore went to the Vietnam War briefly, but as an army journalist, not a soldier who saw combat.

Rarely does someone deciding that thousands must die have the experience of having seen it happen. On August 15, 1941, the Nazis had already killed a lot of people. But Heinrich Himmler, one of the top military bigwigs in the country who would oversee the murder of six million Jews, had never seen anyone die. He asked to watch a shooting in Minsk. Jews were told to jump into a ditch where they were shot and covered with dirt. Then more were told to jump in. They were shot and covered. Himmler stood right at the edge watching, until something from someone’s head splashed onto his coat. He turned pale and turned away. The local commander said to him: “Look at the eyes of the men in this Kommando. What kind of followers are we training here? Either neurotics or savages!”

Himmler told them to do their duty even if it was hard. He returned to doing his from the comfort of a desk.

Shalt Thou Kill or Not?

Killing sounds a lot easier than it is. Throughout history, men have risked their own lives to avoid having to take part in wars:

“Men have fled their homelands, served lengthy prison terms, hacked off limbs, shot off feet or index fingers, feigned illness or insanity, or, if they could afford to, paid surrogates to fight in their stead. ‘Some draw their teeth, some blind themselves, and others maim themselves, on their way to us,’ the governor of Egypt complained of his peasant recruits in the early nineteenth century. So unreliable was the rank and file of the eighteenth-century Prussian army that military manuals forbade camping near a woods or forest. The troops would simply melt away into the trees.”

Although killing non-human animals comes easily to most people, killing one’s fellow human beings is so radically outside the normal focus of one’s life which involves co-existing with people that many cultures have developed rituals to transform a normal person into a warrior, and sometimes back again following a war. The ancient Greeks, Aztecs, Chinese, Yanomamo Indians, and Scythians also used alcohol or other drugs to facilitate killing.

Very few people kill outside of the military, and most of them are extremely disturbed individuals. James Gilligan, in his book Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, diagnosed the root cause of murderous or suicidal violence as deep shame and humiliation, a desperate need for respect and status (and, fundamentally love and care) so intense that only killing (oneself and/or others) could ease the pain — or, rather, the lack of feeling.

When a person becomes so ashamed of his needs (and of being ashamed), Gilligan writes, and when he sees no nonviolent solutions, and when he lacks the ability to feel love or guilt or fear, the result can be violence. But what if violence is the start? What if you condition healthy people to kill without thought? Can the result be a mental state resembling that of the person who’s internally driven to kill?

The choice to engage in violence outside of war is not a rational one, and oft en involves magical thinking, as Gilligan explains by analyzing the meaning of crimes in which murderers have mutilated their victims’ bodies or their own. “I am convinced,” he writes,”that violent behavior, even at its most apparently senseless, incomprehensible, and psychotic, is an understandable response to an identifiable, specifiable set of conditions; and that even when it seems motivated by ‘rational’ self-interest, it is the end product of a series of irrational, self-destructive, and unconscious motives that can be studied, identified, and understood.”

The mutilation of bodies, whatever drives it in each case, is a fairly common practice in war, although engaged in mostly by people who were not inclined to murderous violence prior to joining the military. Numerous war trophy photos from the War on Iraq show corpses and body parts mutilated and displayed in close-up, laid out on a platter as if for cannibals. Many of these images were sent by American soldiers to a website that marketed pornography. Presumably, these images were viewed as war pornography. Presumably, they were created by people who had come to love war — not by the Himmlers or the Dick Cheneys who enjoy sending others, but by people who actually enjoyed being there, people who signed up for college money or adventure and were trained as sociopathic killers.

On June 9, 2006, the U.S. military killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took a photo of his dead head, blew it up to enormous proportions, and displayed it in a frame at a press conference. From the way it was framed, the head could have been connected to a body or not. Presumably this was meant to be not only proof of his death, but a kind of revenge for al-Zarqawi’s beheading of Americans.

Gilligan’s understanding of what motivates violence comes from working in prisons and mental health institutions, not from participating in war, and not from watching the news. He suggests that the obvious explanation for violence is usually wrong:

“Some people think that armed robbers commit their crimes in order to get money. And of course, sometimes, that is how they rationalize their behavior. But when you sit down and talk with people who repeatedly commit such crimes, what you hear is, ‘I never got so much respect before in my life as I did when I first pointed a gun at somebody,’ or, ‘You wouldn’t believe how much respect you get when you have a gun pointed at some dude’s face.’ For men who have lived for a lifetime on a diet of contempt and disdain, the temptation to gain instant respect in this way can be worth far more than the cost of going to prison, or even of dying.”

While violence, at least in the civilian world, may be irrational, Gilligan suggests clear ways in which it can be prevented or encouraged. If you wanted to increase violence, he writes, you would take the following steps that the United States has taken: Punish more and more people more and more harshly; ban drugs that inhibit violence and legalize and advertise those that stimulate it; use taxes and economic policies to widen disparities in wealth and income; deny the poor education; perpetuate racism; produce entertainment that glorifies violence; make lethal weapons readily available; maximize the polarization of social roles of men and women; encourage prejudice against homosexuality; use violence to punish children in school and at home; and keep unemployment sufficiently high. And why would you do that or tolerate it? Possibly because most victims of violence are poor, and the poor tend to organize and demand their rights better when they aren’t terrorized by crime.

Gilligan looks at violent crimes, especially murder, and then turns his attention to our system of violent punishment, including the death penalty, prison rape, and solitary confinement. He views retributive punishment as the same sort of irrational violence as the crimes it is punishing. He sees structural violence and poverty as doing the most damage, but he does not address the subject of war. In scattered references Gilligan makes clear that he lumps war into his theory of violence, and yet in one place he opposes ending wars, and nowhere does he explain how his theory can be coherently applied.

Wars are created by governments, just like our criminal justice system. Do they have similar roots? Do soldiers and mercenaries and contractors and bureaucrats feel shame and humiliation? Do war propaganda and military training produce the idea that the enemy has disrespected the warrior who must now kill to recover his honor? Or is the humiliation of the drill sergeant intended to produce a reaction redirected against the enemy? What about the congress members and presidents, the generals and weapons corporation CEOs, and the corporate media — those who actually decide to have a war and make it happen? Don’t they have a high degree of status and respect already, even if they may have gone into politics because of their exceptional desire for such attention? Aren’t there more mundane motivations, like financial profit, campaign financing, and vote winning at work here, even if the writings of the Project for the New American Century have a lot to say about boldness and dominance and control?

And what about the public at large, including all those nonviolent war supporters? Common slogans and bumper stickers include: “These colors don’t run,” “Proud to be an American,” “Never back down,” “Don’t cut and run.” Nothing could be more irrational or symbolic than a war on a tactic or an emotion, as in the “Global War on Terror,” which was launched as revenge, even though the primary people against whom the revenge was desired were already dead. Do people think their pride and self-worth depend on the vengeance to be found in bombing Afghanistan until there’s nobody left resisting U.S. dominance? If so, it will do not a bit of good to explain to them that such actions actually make us less safe. But what if people who crave respect find out that such behavior makes our country despised or a laughingstock, or that the government is playing them for fools, that Europeans have a higher standard of living as a result of not putting all their money into wars, or that a puppet president like Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai has been making off with suitcases of American money?

Regardless, other research finds that only about two percent of people actually enjoy killing, and they are extremely mentally disturbed. The purpose of military training is to make normal people, including normal war supporters, into sociopaths, at least in the context of war, to get them to do in war what would be viewed as the single worst thing they could do at any other time or place. The way people can be predictably trained to kill in war is to simulate killing in training. Recruits who stab dummies to death, chant “Blood makes the grass grow!”, and shoot target practice with human-looking targets, will kill in battle when they’re scared out of their minds. They won’t need their minds. Their reflexes will take over. “The only thing that has any hope of influencing the midbrain,” writes Dave Grossman, “is also the only thing that influences a dog: classical and operant conditioning.”

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Ever since time immemorial, one way to deflect domestic problems at home like unrest or a bad economy is to divert people’s attention by engaging in war. Caesar did it (not Chavez, but Julius), and so did Bush and Cheney. Obama may follow suit.

America must search out a small impoverished country so that it can invade that country and win a war, because we haven’t won in a long time. It’s like the Oakland Raiders. They used to win all the time, and now they don’t.

Think of it.

We lost in Vietnam, and Obama declared “No Victory” after eight years in Iraq. And Afghanistan isn’t looking particularly good. The outcome there is not at all certain. That’s a total of two (possibly) three wars AMERICAN HAS FAILED TO WIN, against tiny impoverished countries much smaller than we are. WE, THE SUPERPOWER.

We’ve also lost the War on Drugs. That’s three, possibly four if the Afghan insanity doesn’t work out.

What’s happening? We used to be undefeated.

Since we only go to war against tiny impoverished countries that lack a navy, an air force, and with ragged insurgents who don’t even have shoes on their feet, why can’t we win?

Think of it. We beat the British twice to found our own country and then we beat the Indians (Native Americans) whose country it originally was. Then we beat the Mexicans and took California and Arizona away from them. Then we beat the Spanish and took over their colony in the Philippines. Then we beat the German Krauts twice with the help of the rest of the world.

Things started to go wrong in Korea. We managed a tie there. Since then we’ve been losing.

Like the Raiders, I think maybe we need a new coach (president?) Maybe we should blame it on the fans, in this case the American people. We don’t dare attack China, our fascist protégée that we’re teaching to take over the world. Or North Korea. They could do us some damage too.

Iran? Probably not.

We need to find a country that’s small enough and a patsy that a war against them would be a cakewalk. Bush said Iraq would be a cakewalk (in private to Dick Cheney), but we know how that turned out.

What countries should we consider for invasion? They have to be Arab. Americans aren’t mad enough at Switzerland to justify an invasion there. Here is a partial list of possibilities:

Yemen — A known hang-out of terrorists. This poor, miserable wretched little wasteland is so pitiful that anything bad happening to them would be better than what they have now. If you assembled 50 Yemenis together they collectively couldn’t figure out how to row a lifeboat. We couldn’t lose here even if we tried. How many Yemenis does it take to plug in a light bulb? You know that one.

Oman — This tiny country curling around the lip of Arabia on the Arabian Sea could simultaneously be hit by American ground forces, naval and air as well as a World War II-style Normandy-type hit-the-beaches D-Day. Nothing would warm our hearts more than an imitation of the last good war (WW2).

Plus, American soldiers could have tee shirts that read “Oh Man!”

The United Arab Emirates — There is nothing united about this place. A conglomeration of ultra-rich tribal chieftains and poverty-stricken yokels, conquest of this country could give us ownership of the Persian Gulf. We could concoct a phony story like we did in Iraq that they had weapons of mass destruction and send in elite squads of Navy Seals and Marine snipers with all our stealth technology and kill a million of these Bedouin losers and who would care? Nobody did in Iraq. We could nation build gated condos there and call it Casa Del Tea Party Patriotic Dunes.

Qatar — All we have to do with this place is add a few letters and it’s named after our own U.S. quarter (quarter dollar). How American can you get? This place is so small, all they export are gnats. If we can’t win here, we can’t win anywhere.

There! I’ve given you options.

Copyright 2010 Sammonsays.

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   By: Noam Chomsky [ Enlarge ]
The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration.

The term “stability” here has its usual technical meaning: firmly under US control.

In June 2010 Congress strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding US offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the US could build the massive base it uses for attacks in the Central Command area. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group. According to a US Navy cargo manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald (Glasgow), the substantial military equipment Obama has dispatched includes 387 “bunker busters” used for blasting hardened underground structures. Planning for these “massive ordnance penetrators,” the most powerful bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, was initiated in the Bush administration, but languished. On taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans, and they are to be deployed several years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran.

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” according to Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said. “The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating under Obama.

The Arab press reports that an American fleet (with an Israeli vessel) passed through the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, where its task is “to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the ships going to and from Iran.” British and Israeli media report that Saudi Arabia is providing a corridor for Israeli bombing of Iran (denied by Saudi Arabia). On his return from Afghanistan to reassure NATO allies that the US will stay the course after the replacement of General McChrystal by his superior, General Petraeus, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen visited Israel to meet IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and senior military staff along with intelligence and planning units, continuing the annual strategic dialogue between Israel and the U.S. The meeting focused “on the preparation by both Israel and the U.S. for the possibility of a nuclear capable Iran,” according to Haaretz, which reports further that Mullen emphasized that “I always try to see challenges from Israeli perspective.” Mullen and Ashkenazi are in regular contact on a secure line.

The increasing threats of military action against Iran are of course in violation of the UN Charter, and in specific violation of Security Council resolution 1887 of September 2009 which reaffirmed the call to all states to resolve disputes related to nuclear issues peacefully, in accordance with the Charter, which bans the use or threat of force.

Some analysts who seem to be taken seriously describe the Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms. Amitai Etzioni warns that “The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up the Middle East,” no less. If Iran’s nuclear program proceeds, he asserts, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other states will “move toward” the new Iranian “superpower.” To rephrase in less fevered rhetoric, a regional alliance might take shape independent of the US. In the US army journal Military Review, Etzioni urges a US attack that targets not only Iran’s nuclear facilities but also its non-nuclear military assets, including infrastructure — meaning, the civilian society. “This kind of military action is akin to sanctions – causing ‘pain’ in order to change behaviour, albeit by much more powerful means.”

Such inflammatory pronouncements aside, what exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided by military and intelligence reports to Congress in April 2010 [Lieutenant General Ronald L. Burgess, Director, Defense Intelligence Agency, Statement before the Committee on Armed Services, US Senate, 14 April 2010; Unclassified Report on Military Power of Iran, April 2010; John J. Kruzel, American Forces Press Service, "Report to Congress Outlines Iranian Threats," April 2010.

The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it does not rank particularly high in that respect in comparison to US allies in the region. But that is not what concerns the military and intelligence assessments. Rather, they are concerned with the threat Iran poses to the region and the world.

The reports make it clear that the Iranian threat is not military. Iran's military spending is "relatively low compared to the rest of the region," and of course minuscule as compared to the US. Iranian military doctrine is strictly "defensive, ... designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities." Iran has only "a limited capability to project force beyond its borders." With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy."

Though the Iranian threat is not military aggression, that does not mean that it might be tolerable to Washington. Iranian deterrent capacity is considered an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that interferes with US global designs. Specifically, it threatens US control of Middle East energy resources, a high priority of planners since World War II. As one influential figure advised, expressing a common understanding, control of these resources yields "substantial control of the world" (A. A. Berle).

But Iran's threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence. Iran's "current five-year plan seeks to expand bilateral, regional, and international relations, strengthen Iran's ties with friendly states, and enhance its defense and deterrent capabilities. Commensurate with that plan, Iran is seeking to increase its stature by countering U.S. influence and expanding ties with regional actors while advocating Islamic solidarity." In short, Iran is seeking to "destabilize" the region, in the technical sense of the term used by General Petraeus. US invasion and military occupation of Iran's neighbors is "stabilization." Iran's efforts to extend its influence in neighboring countries is "destabilization," hence plainly illegitimate. It should be noted that such revealing usage is routine. Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace, former editor of the main establishment journal Foreign Affairs, was properly using the term "stability" in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve "stability" in Chile it was necessary to "destabilize" the country (by overthrowing the elected Allende government and installing the Pinochet dictatorship).

Beyond these crimes, Iran is also carrying out and supporting terrorism, the reports continue. Its Revolutionary Guards "are behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the past three decades," including attacks on US military facilities in the region and "many of the insurgent attacks on Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces in Iraq since 2003." Furthermore Iran backs Hezbollah and Hamas, the major political forces in Lebanon and in Palestine -- if elections matter. The Hezbollah-based coalition handily won the popular vote in Lebanon's latest (2009) election. Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian election, compelling the US and Israel to institute the harsh and brutal siege of Gaza to punish the miscreants for voting the wrong way in a free election. These have been the only relatively free elections in the Arab world. It is normal for elite opinion to fear the threat of democracy and to act to deter it, but this is a rather striking case, particularly alongside of strong US support for the regional dictatorships, emphasized by Obama with his strong praise for the brutal Egyptian dictator Mubarak on the way to his famous address to the Muslim world in Cairo.

The terrorist acts attributed to Hamas and Hezbollah pale in comparison to US-Israeli terrorism in the same region, but they are worth a look nevertheless.

On May 25 Lebanon celebrated its national holiday Liberation Day, commemorating Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years, as a result of Hezbollah resistance -- described by Israeli authorities as "Iranian aggression" against Israel in Israeli-occupied Lebanon (Ephraim Sneh). That too is normal imperial usage. Thus President John F. Kennedy condemned the "the assault from the inside" in South Vietnam, "which is manipulated from the North." This criminal assault by the South Vietnamese resistance against Kennedy's bombers, chemical warfare, programs to drive peasants to virtual concentration camps, and other such benign measures was denounced as "internal aggression" by Kennedy's UN Ambassador, liberal hero Adlai Stevenson. North Vietnamese support for their countrymen in the US-occupied South is aggression, intolerable interference with Washington's righteous mission. Kennedy advisors Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson, considered doves, also praised Washington's intervention to reverse "aggression" in South Vietnam -- by the indigenous resistance, as they knew, at least if they read US intelligence reports. In 1955 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had defined several types of "aggression," including "Aggression other than armed, i.e., political warfare, or subversion." For example, an internal uprising against a US-imposed police state, or elections that come out the wrong way. The usage is also common in scholarship and political commentary, and makes sense on the prevailing assumption that We Own the World.

Hamas resists Israel's military occupation and its illegal and violent actions in the occupied territories. It is accused of refusing to recognize Israel (political parties do not recognize states). In contrast, the US and Israel not only do not recognize Palestine, but have been acting relentlessly and decisively for decades to ensure that it can never come into existence in any meaningful form. The governing party in Israel, in its 1999 campaign platform, bars the existence of any Palestinian state -- a step towards accommodation beyond the official positions of the US and Israel a decade earlier, which held that there cannot be "an additional Palestinian state" between Israel and Jordan, the latter a "Palestinian state" by US-Israeli fiat whatever its benighted inhabitants and government might believe.

Hamas is charged with rocketing Israeli settlements on the border, criminal acts no doubt, though a fraction of Israel's violence in Gaza, let alone elsewhere. It is important to bear in mind, in this connection, that the US and Israel know exactly how to terminate the terror that they deplore with such passion. Israel officially concedes that there were no Hamas rockets as long as Israel partially observed a truce with Hamas in 2008. Israel rejected Hamas's offer to renew the truce, preferring to launch the murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in December 2008, with full US backing, an exploit of murderous aggression without the slightest credible pretext on either legal or moral grounds.

The model for democracy in the Muslim world, despite serious flaws, is Turkey, which has relatively free elections, and has also been subject to harsh criticism in the US. The most extreme case was when the government followed the position of 95% of the population and refused to join in the invasion of Iraq, eliciting harsh condemnation from Washington for its failure to comprehend how a democratic government should behave: under our concept of democracy, the voice of the Master determines policy, not the near-unanimous voice of the population.

The Obama administration was once again incensed when Turkey joined with Brazil in arranging a deal with Iran to restrict its enrichment of uranium. Obama had praised the initiative in a letter to Brazil's president Lula da Silva, apparently on the assumption that it would fail and provide a propaganda weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the US was furious, and quickly undermined it by ramming through a Security Council resolution with new sanctions against Iran that were so meaningless that China cheerfully joined at once -- recognizing that at most the sanctions would impede Western interests in competing with China for Iran's resources. Once again, Washington acted forthrightly to ensure that others would not interfere with US control of the region.

Not surprisingly, Turkey (along with Brazil) voted against the US sanctions motion in the Security Council. The other regional member, Lebanon, abstained. These actions aroused further consternation in Washington. Philip Gordon, the Obama administration's top diplomat on European affairs, warned Turkey that its actions are not understood in the US and that it must "demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West," AP reported, "a rare admonishment of a crucial NATO ally."

The political class understands as well. Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, observed that the critical question now is "How do we keep the Turks in their lane?" -- following orders like good democrats. A New York Times headline captured the general mood: "Iran Deal Seen as Spot on Brazilian Leader's Legacy." In brief, do what we say, or else.

There is no indication that other countries in the region favor US sanctions any more than Turkey does. On Iran's opposite border, for example, Pakistan and Iran, meeting in Turkey, recently signed an agreement for a new pipeline. Even more worrisome for the US is that the pipeline might extend to India. The 2008 US treaty with India supporting its nuclear programs -- and indirectly its nuclear weapons programs -- was intended to stop India from joining the pipeline, according to Moeed Yusuf, a South Asia adviser to the United States Institute of Peace, expressing a common interpretation. India and Pakistan are two of the three nuclear powers that have refused to sign the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the third being Israel. All have developed nuclear weapons with US support, and still do.

No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference at United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

Washington still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted -- and has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself. The time is not yet ripe for creating the zone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated at the NPT conference, while Washington insisted that no proposal can be accepted that calls for Israel's nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the IAEA or that calls on signers of the NPT, specifically Washington, to release information about "Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel." Obama's technique of evasion is to adopt Israel's position that any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive peace settlement, which the US can delay indefinitely, as it has been doing for 35 years, with rare and temporary exceptions.

At the same time, Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, asked foreign ministers of its 151 member states to share views on how to implement a resolution demanding that Israel "accede to" the NPT and throw its nuclear facilities open to IAEA oversight, AP reported.

It is rarely noted that the US and UK have a special responsibility to work to establish a Middle East NWFZ. In attempting to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of the Iraq in 2003, they appealed to Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which called on Iraq to terminate its development of weapons of mass destruction. The US and UK claimed that they had not done so. We need not tarry on the excuse, but that Resolution commits its signers to move to establish a NWFZ in the Middle East.

Parenthetically, we may add that US insistence on maintaining nuclear facilities in Diego Garcia undermines the NWFZ established by the African Union, just as Washington continues to block a Pacific NWFZ by excluding its Pacific dependencies.

Obama's rhetorical commitment to non-proliferation has received much praise, even a Nobel peace prize. One practical step in this direction is establishment of NWFZs. Another is to withdraw support for the nuclear programs of the three non-signers of the NPT. As often, rhetoric and actions are hardly aligned, in fact are in direct contradiction in this case, facts that pass with as little attention as most of what has just been briefly reviewed.

Instead of taking practical steps towards reducing the truly dire threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the US is taking major steps towards reinforcing US control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions, by violence if other means do not suffice. That is understandable and even reasonable, under prevailing imperial doctrine, however grim the consequences, yet another illustration of "the savage injustice of the Europeans" that Adam Smith deplored in 1776, with the command center since shifted to their imperial settlement across the seas.

NOTES: The Need For Diplomacy With Iran