US Citizens Goose-Step to Voting Booth & War with Iran

A vote for either Obama or Romney will be an endorsement for a war with Iran.

Both evil Romney and supposedly lesser evil Obama are committed to more war in general and committed to obliging Israel’s strident insistence for a war with Iran.

All American citizens should think of this as they cast their ballots. Think of their own participation -- their enabling -- the greatest crime against humanity -- WAR.

There are third party anti-war candidates but corporate media has been rigorously thorough in omitting any mention of them and the moral and humanitarian alternatives they offer the US citizenry. Omitting mention of the legitimate options granted to us for our precious votes. Corporate media has successfully convinced far too many citizens they should not begin to consider foregoing one or the other of the moneyed, legacy parties.

The TOTAL blackout ensuring NO mention of these candidates and their pro-people, pro-planet, pro-peace platforms shows just how shameless a megaphone for corporate propaganda mainstream media -- even supposedly “progressive” media -- has become. It also shows how passive and easily seduced Americans are to such a media.

David Swanson writes about “less evil politics” and the horrifying stifling of conscience too many Americans do oblige their leaders with, in exchange for what they rationalize as a “lesser evil” compromise. Swanson writes:

“We often forget that war is the worst thing there is. Hence our government's shift in policy back to outsourcing a lot of the torture and insourcing the "cleaner" approach of assassination without torture.  Hence, also, our common fantasy that war can be used to solve a problem that is somehow worse than war.”

snip

“In fact, this is what Lesser Evilism amounts to.  A Lesser Evilist today is not choosing less evil policies, but the same policies in what he or she hopes will be lesser amounts."

"That might be a rational calculation within a polling place.  But living it prior to and after an election, apologizing and cheering for one of two teams, as if self-governance were a spectator sport, is nothing other than complicity in the most hideous forms of cruelty and murder.  That complicity is insidious.  Evil begins to look like something else, because the Lesser Evilist, within his or her own mind, comes to view the Lesser Evil forces as good, if not glorious, if not saintly.”

Please consider it. An upcoming war with Iran! Are we as citizens so cynical or so burned out or so "learned helpless” we are not horrified and outraged at this very real possibility? Too disconnected from conscience not to consider rejecting its perpetrators at the voting booth this November?

Netanyahu’s lit fuse bomb diagram presented to the 67th session of the UN General Assembly last week was straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, though it was far from funny.

Bibi with his handy dandy little red marker dramatically drew a line across the illustration very near the lit fuse. Get it -- the “red line”? A literal red line echoing all those “red line” references of the “engineering-consent-for-war”-politician-pundit-group-think-speak now infiltrating the colluding national media.

By the way, Netanyahu’s proportional estimate of Iranian nuclear weapon capability was a colossal lie. Theirry Meyssan writes:

“The most ridiculous, however, was his use of a diagram aiming to sew confusion in the general public. He claimed that Iran had already achieved 70% of a nuclear military program, despite Teheran having only uranium enriched at 20% for civilian use while a military program requires uranium enriched at 85% and upward."

Justin Raimondo addresses the mendacity and manipulativeness of Netanyahu’s speech:

“The Israeli Prime Minister may have been addressing the UN General Assembly, but he was really talking to the Americans, whose fear and loathing of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks can always be counted on to raise them to new levels of hysteria. Outside that context, however, equating the Iranians with Al Qaeda makes about as much sense as likening the late unlamented Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden – and, hey wait, didn’t we hear that equation made endlessly in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? Yet this was not a time for subtlety from the Israeli Prime Minister – the cartoon “bomb” ended all hope of that – but for the crudest sort of propaganda, which is, of course, war propaganda."

One of the passages from Netanyahu’s speech:

“Today a great battle is being waged between the modern and the medieval. Israel stands proudly with the forces of modernity. We protect the right of all our citizens, men and women, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, all are equal before the law.”

I suppose Israel can be considered “modern” only in the sense that it is capable of stockpiling 400 of its own technologically sophisticated nuclear weapons.

As quoted above, Netanyahu emphasized Israel protects "the right of all citizens." In his speech, Netanyahu also declared that Israel “cherishes peace.”

Raimondo writes:

“Yes, Israel protects the rights of all citizens – unless they’re Palestinians who happen to own property coveted by the “settlers,” in which case it doesn’t. And the key word here is citizens: of course, the Palestinians in the occupied territories are not citizens, but helots, with no rights, and no protection from fanatical Jewish fundamentalists who have launched hundreds of attacks on their homes, and sought to displace them at every opportunity, with the active complicity of the Israeli government."

David Swanson discloses that Patrick Clawson, Director of Research at the Washington Institute Of Near East Policy, recently joked about “stepping up the pressure” for an Iran war using a covert, black-ops-nudging or even "false flag" operation....

"Crisis initiation is really tough.  ...

snip

We could step up the pressure.  I mean, look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down.  Someday one of them might not come up.  Who would know why? [LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE] . . . . We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians.  We could get nastier."

Swanson’s response:

“This is serious advocacy for manufacturing a "defensive" and "humanitarian" war.  This is not a war critic or a Yes Men prankster.  The position of most elected officials in Washington, including the President, fits well with this.  That position includes the ultimatum that Iran must cease doing what U.S. National Intelligence Estimates say it is not doing, namely building nuclear weapons.  The goal at the bottom of all of this is war.  The purpose of the war is not related to any of the excuses for it.  The purpose is something else entirely.  But it's ugly, so it's easier not to look."

Swanson exposes the heart of darkness of our “deciders” over mass life and death and their chronic and discordantly dissonant CRAZYMAKING propaganda spewing forth at us 24/7 via THEIR not our national media.

IRAN MUST CEASE DOING WHAT IT IS ACTUALLY NOT DOING!!!

And,

THE REAL PURPOSE OF THE US/ISRAEL et al. LAUNCHING A WAR WITH IRAN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EXCUSES BEING MADE TO DO IT.

How insanely craven, dangerous and dooming!

Raimondo:

“The ticking-bomb theme, which has been used to justify everything from torture to the invasion of Iraq, permeates Israeli propaganda in the US and was a cental[sic] theme of Bibi’s speech. His message was clear: “the hour is getting late.” We must act without giving too much thought to the possible consequences. Don’t delay, don’t think, act now – before the fraud is exposed, and we discover that – as in the case of the Iraqis – those “weapons of mass destruction” were just a figment of our easily manipulated collective imagination.”

I see Netanyahu as an auctioneer for the two desperately ambitious, competing, soul-selling corporate/money/war political party candidates, Romney and Obama, not to guarantee that a war with Iran will occur, that is pretty much a given, but to bid against each other vying for Netanyahu’s and Israel’s good will and support over the terms of the timing, intensity, scope and duration of such a war -- to commit to the extreme degrees they will go. Yes, the bidding is now open ... or, rather, not open but behind closed doors. Considering how Congresspeople from both sides of the aisle knock each other over for an opportunity to kiss Netanyahu’s ring on any occasion, there is all the more likelihood of an Iran War sooner rather than later.

Barry Grey of wsws writes:

“Netanyahu sought to create the impression that he would be willing to forgo an Israeli attack on Iran prior to the US elections in exchange for a clear commitment from Washington to launch a war next year."

It really is a win/win scenario for Bibi and a lose/lose for humanity. Both U.S. corporate party candidates are willing to mendaciously justify, threaten and launch or at the least support a war with Iran for and/or by Israel really for control of vast Middle East resources -- and hang the lives of millions of human beings.

The candidates and their corporatist overlords would prefer the learned helpless US citizens not seriously focus on War with Iran. They don’t want us, as we naively tried to do in 2008, to issue a serious, anti-war mandate to the candidates and our corporate-captured government. Granted with five weeks to go before the election such a passionate, eleventh hour mandate would be a long-shot.

An exhibition of mass citizen sensibility of morality and justice would be bothersome and inconvenient to the sociopathic one percent profits uber alles ruling class elites. It would interrupt their cake-walk to establishing full-out or “lesser evil” degrees of fascism in America.

As Barry Grey points out, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program is legal within the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that Israel has refused to sign and ignored, itself, defiantly building over 400 nuclear warheads. Netanyahu’s ridiculous Bugs Bunny cartoon version of a ticking bomb more accurately represents the short-fuse, war-trigger-happy Netanyahu himself and Israel’s tragic and destructive present administration. Tragic, as is our own administration, since there is little hope of US-war-criminality ending after the November election.

Grey reminds us that long ago it was the UN that outlawed preemptive-strike launching of wars as had been practiced by the Nazi Third Reich in the 30s and 40s. These strikes were also condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunals as war crimes. THEY ARE ASSUREDLY BACK!!! And embraced by .... wait for it .... the supposed world’s champion of democracy (cough, cough ... choke) and the very government supposedly representing the people and descendants of the people who were most viciously persecuted by the Nazi Third Reich!

Both Obama and Netanyahu brazenly threatened their intention for such a pre-empive strike, this colossal war crime, in the very halls of the UN that outlawed such behavior decades and decades ago.

The international community -- I mean, the real international community, not the one that Obama and Netanyahu pretend they speak for -- know far better than we, the encouraged to be ignorant citizenry, that there is more than political saber-rattling going on right now. Grey contends the plans for war with Iran are profoundly advanced. Grey also suggests that we address the real threat of detonation of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons would not, of course, be used by a non-nuclear Iran. He writes:

“There is the real danger that the US or Israel would resort to nuclear weapons. One newspaper report noted that Israel has enlarged its submarine force, which is reportedly equipped with nuclear weapons.”

Grey exposes what is happening at this very moment in the Persian Gulf.

“Meanwhile, the US, Israel and allied countries are carrying out war exercises in the Persian Gulf in preparation for a military attack. Last Thursday, naval forces from 25 nations completed a 12-day mock battle in the largest-ever military drill in the Gulf. Included in the armada with the US were Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and others."

“This month, the US and Israel will hold war games involving simulated attacks against Iran and Syria. According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, the exercise will be named “dress rehearsal.”

“According to various press reports, the US attack will be anything but narrowly focused and brief. Israeli newspapers in August reported that US National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon had briefed Israel on US plans that began with an initial launch of hundreds of cruise missiles to demolish “Iran’s air defenses, intelligence bases and radar stations.” This would be followed by a wave of B-52 bombers that would “drop bunker-buster bombs on all of Iran’s nuclear facilities.”"

“The influential Washington DC military and intelligence think tank Center for Strategic & International Studies last month published a lengthy analysis of the likely dimensions of a US attack on Iran. The report listed eight missile bases and twelve industrial and research facilities that would be bombed, in addition to Iran’s five main nuclear sites.”

Grey quotes a Washington Post column written by a DC military/intelligence think tank called the Iran Project:

“...a US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could quickly escalate into a massive deployment of US ground troops and spark a regional war “involving Syria, Hezbollah, the Palestinians and other Arab states and terrorist groups.”

Grey spells out the realpolitik.

“As in the previous wars of the twenty-first century, the real war aims are being concealed. Iran is being targeted not because of its nuclear program, but because it has vast oil reserves and is deemed the biggest regional obstacle to US hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia. The US is determined to monopolize control of the world’s oil resources in order to counter its global economic decline and weaken the position of its main rivals, first and foremost China.”

Shouldn’t war be a DEAL BREAKER for us citizens to no longer support either corporate legacy party? Shouldn’t we have some memory of the garden path we were led down to that war with Iraq?

Maybe that is why Netanyahu drew a cartoon bomb and not a mushroom cloud. Wouldn’t want to risk having us citizens connect any historical and moral dots.

[cross-posted at correntewire and open salon]