We’re going
to Iran. And here’s why.
It looks like the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
aren’t enough for President George W. Bush and his neocon policy advisers. Now the White House – and the Pentagon
– are turning their attention to Iran.
In mid-February, a
U.S aircraft carrier group, led by the USS John C. Stennis, was deployed into Mideast waters, doubling the U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf. The Stennis, with its strike
force of cruisers, destroyers and submarines, joins the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which has already engaged in military action
against Somalia.
In addition to the
military buildup, Bush and company have launched a steady stream of barely veiled threats, crafted to fit a variety of situations.
The charge that Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi resistance fighters?
“When we find
devices that are in [Iraq] that are hurting
our troops,” says President Bush, “we’re going to do something about it, pure and simple.” ( Reuters,
Feb. 14, 2007)
Iranian ambitions
to become – like the U.S, Britain and Israel – a nuclear power?
“All options
are still on the table,” says Vice President Dick Cheney. (Associated Press, Feb. 25, 2007)
And it’s not
just the Republicans.
“We cannot,
we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons,’’
Sen. Hillary Clinton, the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, told a crowd of Israel supporters. “In dealing with this threat ...
no option can be taken off the table.’’ (Associated Press, Feb. 1, 2007)
And Clinton’s
main Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, is on record as saying that the
United States should not rule out military strikes to destroy nuclear production
sites in Iran. (Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 25, 2004)
Bush and his buddies
lied to us about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.
They lied about nuclear weapons and Saddam’s Hussein’s supposed ties to the Al-Queda network.
Now we’re supposed
to believe they would tell us the truth about a threat from Iran – a country with two things that Iraq also had –
lots of oil, and a government that won’t bow down to Washington.
We’re not buying
it.
The people of this
country have lost more than 3,200 fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, friends and neighbors in
the immoral, illegal and criminal U.S. war against Iraq.
The people of Iraq have lost hundreds of thousands.
This war is costing
one billion dollars a day – a day!
More than a year after
Katrina, much of New Orleans is still devastated.
Bush’s new proposed
federal budget would reduce spending on Head Start, social service block grants, energy assistance, Medicaid and housing programs.
Since Bush ordered
the troops to invade Iraq on March 19, 2003, the war has cost Virginia taxpayers more than $11 billion. Richmond’s share was nearly $206 million – that’s $50 million a year for
each year of the war.
We can’t afford
this war.
And we sure can’t
afford a new one.
We have marched and
rallied, written articles and signed petitions, donated money and cast our votes.
Now we want to do
something more.
We’re going
to Iran.
The Richmond Defender
newspaper and the Virginia Anti-War Network are proposing a “People’s Peace Delegation to Iran.”
We want to tell the
Iranian people – in person – that we want peace and friendship with their country, that we don’t
consider them to be our enemy and that we will do everything in our power to try and prevent a new war.
By making this journey,
we hope, in some small way, to help counter the attempts by Bush, Cheney, Rice and the whole White House crew to demonize
the Iranian people.
We hope to demonstrate
the possibility of peace between our peoples.
And we plan to come
back prepared to share what we have learned about that ancient and complex society, in hopes of convincing others that war
can be prevented – if the people intervene.
You can read more
about our proposal on this page, along with ideas about how you can support this effort.
We’re not professional
diplomats, or geopolitical analysts, or rich or powerful people.But we are people committed to struggling for a world free
from hunger, fear, racism, war and poverty.
And we are not going
to stand by and watch Bush and his buddies destroy that dream.
There was an interesting article about Iran this March in the New Yorker magazine.
The author was Seymour
Hersch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who in 1969 broke the story about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and, more recently, exposed the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
Hersch is generally
considered to have access to important figures in the Pentagon and State Department, especially those who don’t necessarily
agree with the way the Bush Administration is handling foreign policy.
In the article, Hersch
quoted Flynt Leverett, a former official in the Bush Administration’s National Security Council, who refers to a “campaign
of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran.
The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”
And, according to
Hersch, the Bush Administration is already preparing its response:
“... the Pentagon
is continuing intensive planning for a possible bomb attack on Iran,
a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, ... a special planning group has been
established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President,
within 24 hours.”
Other accounts put
the number of potential targets at as many as 10,000 – not just military targets, but also commercial and civilian.
This isn’t just
abstract planning. As of March, there were two U.S. aircraft carrier groups
in the Arabian Sea – the USS Eisenhower and the USS Stennis. Each typically carries
hundreds of cruise missiles, more than 80 warplanes and a combined Navy and Marine Corps complement of 5,000 troops, plus
accompanying warships. These massive carriers are like floating air force bases, meant not to defend the shores of the United States, but to enable it to strike at targets far overseas.
Hersch isn’t
the only public figure to conclude that the U.S. intends to try and provoke
a war with Iran. This past Feb. 1, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser in the Carter Administration, told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
that the Bush Administration is seeking a pretext for war against Iran.
This is how the former
Cold War architect said he saw the threat developing.
“If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.
“A plausible
scenario for a military collision with Iran,” he testified, “involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed
by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iran; culminating in a ‘defensive’
U.S. military action against Iran ....”
Here’s a quote
from the Feb. 19, 2007, issue of Newsweek magazine:
“At least one
former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. ‘They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians
do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,’ says Hillary
Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council Director for Iran
and Persian Gulf Affairs.”
All of this, of course,
must be viewed in light of recent accusations by former CIA chief George Tenet that the Bush Administration had decided early
on that it would invade Iraq, and then
built a case to justify it – a case that has since been exposed as resting on falsehoods, deceptions and outright lies.
So why are President
George W. Bush and his neocon puppet-handlers so dead set on attacking a country that condemned the attacks of 9-11, is opposed
to Al Quida and in 2003 offered to meet with representatives of the United
States and discuss all outstanding issues with no preconditions?
It’s because
this developing and dangerous situation isn’t about Iran.
Nuclear power plants?
The United States has them. So do 29 other
countries — some 435 commercial nuclear power reactors in all, now supplying 16% of the world’s electricity. Why
not Iran?
Nuclear weapons? The
United Kingdom has them. So do France, China and Russia. Some reports put Israel’s
inventory at more than 200 nuclear weapons. And Israel has openly threatened
Iran with using them to stop the development
of nuclear power for peaceful purposes.
And of course, the
U.S. has some 10,000 nuclear weapons,
more than the rest of the world combined. And it’s the only country that has ever used them – against defenseless
civilians, at a time when no other country could retaliate.
Terrorism? Think Guantanamo
Bay and Abu Graib, not to mention the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of millions of African people, the theft
of half of Mexico and the crass exploitation of waves of poor European immigrants.
No, the Bush Administration
wants to pick a fight with Iran because
it has decided not to allow any country to possess the ability to defy the New American Empire.
This isn’t conjecture.
The Pentagon laid it out in a draft position paper “leaked” to The New York Times back in 1997. The paper explained
that the U.S. should allow no country or combination of countries –
friendly or hostile, to aspire to become a regional power with the ability to defy the United States.
Remember, this was
just a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when U.S.
strategists were grappling with how to consolidate their new status as the world’s sole “superpower.”
The same point was
made later in a paper published in 2000 by the Project for a New American Century, a neocom think tank started by analysts
now close to or members of the Bush Administration:
“At present
the United States faces no global rival.
America’s grand strategy should
aim too preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.”
In other words, both
the military and political establishments in the U.S. agree that only the
United States should be in position to
control a country, a region, a continent, the world.
And having destroyed
Iraq as a regional military power, the Bush Administration sees Iran as the new sole regional power, and thus its new target.
What’s beind
this barbaric arrogance and ambition? Is it just greed, like Midas gone mad by the sight of gold? Or an insatiable thirst
for power, like an Alexander the Great, weeping when he realized he had no more worlds to conquer?
No, its because the
circles that control the United States
act in the interest of the giant corporations that know only one rule for life: the maximization of profits. Either they expand,
or they die, overtaken by ever more ruthless economic rivals. And to expand their economic empires, they must maintain and
control a military one.
To control the wealth
of the world, they must control the world itself.
This is what we are
up against – all of us — the working people and the poor of the United
States, as well as all the peoples of the world. Changing presidents, as sweet as that prospect
seems, will not change the basic equation: as long as the U.S.
economic system is based on putting profits before people, people will suffer – from poverty to racism to wars to global
warming.
Why are we going to
Iran?
Because we believe
that the cause of peace and justice, freedom and equality is in danger today as it has never been before. And because we believe
we have a limited amount of time to do something about it.
We have marched and
rallied, written letters and petitioned, committed acts of civil disobedience and gone to jail. All of this has been helpful,
but we want to do more.
By openly traveling
to a country that the U.S. State Department tells us is dangerous and hostile, we hope in some small way to break through
the false barrier of propaganda, lies and deceit.
We want to meet with
the Iranian people on their own soil, in their own cities and towns and rural areas. We want to express to them our desire
for peace and friendship, and come back better prepared to explain what we have seen and heard.
We want to tell the
truth about the people of Iran – and about the lies of the U.S. government.
We want to take a
stand.
