The political scientist Machiavelli once said it is much better for a prince to be feared than loved. The second inauguration of U.S. President George W. Bush, and already the rumors of war are echoing throughout the halls of Washington, through the cracked walls of the Pentagon and from the well sourced pen of the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh. According to Hersh, Bush administration officials in the Defense Department are finalizing plans to strike a series of targets in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ostensibly, because of reports that Iran possesses weapons grade nuclear materials. Hersh also reports that U.S. covert forces have been inside Iran for nearly a year searching for good sites to paint for air strikes. If so, then the country is on the brink of engaging in a war that will make Iraq look like a picnic. This imminent war should surprise no one, for the recent election results have been interpreted by the administration as an endorsement of their mishandling of the Iraq War. And, if it worked in Iraq, the thinking goes, why not Iran? It’s almost as if the administration is saying, WMDs? We don’t need no proof of no stinking WMDs. And in fact, they don’t. The 2004 elections which ratified the Iraq war as a facet of the facetious war on terror has opened the door to what is, in actuality, a war on the world.
Iran appears to be next. That’s because Iraq was preordained for U.S. attack based upon the Project for a New American Century, a blueprint of the neocon faction of the American right wing. It is from this project that the idea of preemptive war arises. Its basic thrust is that no nation will be allowed to acquire weapons that may constitute a threat, and no nation will ever be allowed to rival the U.S. empire. If the Iraq War gave Americans cause for alarm, then Iran will be a doozy. For Iraq, with its population of about 23 million, has a land area of about the size of California. Iran, on the other hand, has about three times that population and about five times the land area. Where Iraqi deserts lie in its southwest, much more of Iranian territory is desert. Moreover, it appears that the neocons are trying to sell the Pentagon on the old, “if we invade, the citizens will hail us as liberators” routine. That didn’t work in Iraq. It’s doubtful in the extreme that it will work in Iran. This may prove to be Bush’s Bay of Pigs. The CIA promised Kennedy that Cubans would rise up against the Castro government. Of course, that didn’t happen. But Americans, after the disastrous example of Iraq, like to learn things the hard way.
Prepare for a wave of press reports about the imminent threat posed by the mullahs in Tehran; perhaps that they paid Osama bin Laden to hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Or, that good old stand by – democracy. I can already hear it. We’re bringing democracy to the oppressed Iranians. Can’t you already hear it? And once again, American imperial mania will have driven people into desperate straits, into the treacherous embrace of war. Prepare for it, for it is coming as surely as the dawn. The empire needs to feed on blood. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noel Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
