“The Bush Regime: Part Two.” 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.
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 standby, 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.
