Almost every day brings some new barrage of fear-mongering lies and vaporous accusations from leading members of the Obama Administration and other nabobs at the top of the political-media elite, all of them aimed relentlessly at one goal: justifying military action against Iran.
It is an almost exact replay of what we saw in 2002-2003 during the build-up to the war of aggression against Iraq – with one significant exception. The “progressive” opposition to the baseless warmongering is virtually non-existent this time around – because the warmonger-in-chief is their own champion, their partisan standard-bearer. Many voices that hurled thunderous denunciations at the Bush Regime for its brazen manipulations toward a baseless and unjustified war are now silent – that is, if they are not actively supporting the increasingly rabid saber-rattling by the Peace Laureate. To them, Obama’s re-election is more important than anything on earth: certainly more important than the thousands (or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands) of innocent people who will die in the long-running, far-reverberating hellstorm that an attack on Iran will create.
So now there is even less resistance to the fever-stoking against Iran. Yet what is playing out before our eyes is even more brazen than the build-up to the war crime against Iraq. Right now, in real time, in real life, the Obama administration and its allies in warmongering are telling the American people, over and over, that Iran is preparing terrorist strikes in the United States, that Iran is joining hands with Al Qaeda, that Iran is killing American soldiers in Afghanistan (just as they did in Iraq), that Iran is building long-range missiles that launch their nearly-completed nuclear weapons straight into the Heartland. The Obama administration is carefully – and deliberately and knowingly – building up the Iranian “threat” to such monstrous heights that it will be impossible to back down: Tehran terrorists striking in the Homeland with Al Qaeda while they ready their nukes to destroy America – we’re supposed to negotiate with such monsters? There is only one way to save our sweet little children from nuclear obliteration – strike the Persian aggressors before they kill us! It’s a plain case of self-defense.
There is of course absolutely no substance to any of this. There is no substance to the claim that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. And there would be no “threat” to the United States if they did build one. (And no threat to Israel either, which is sitting there with its vast nuclear arsenal, fully able – right now, in real time, in real life – to “wipe Iran from the map” at the push of a button.) The only “threat” Iran poses – with or without nuclear weapons – is to the domination of the Middle East and its oil wealth by the American elite and its international partners.
Yet here we are, genuinely on the brink of another war – a war which will make the mass-murdering, $3 trillion FUBAR in Iraq and Afghanistan look like the Summer of Love. Yet the “professional Left” is bending all its might to re-elect the perpetrator behind this Bush-like push for aggressive war. (And of course the professional Right is fully on board.) Can anything stop this runaway train?
In his latest post, Arthur Silber lays out a number of practical, effective steps that can be taken today to bring the danger of this lunatic course to public consciousness. They are there if anyone wants to take them up – especially those in the “dissident” world who already have a broad media platform, and could leverage that position to force this issue to the forefront.
Will anyone do it? Like Silber, I have my doubts. But the alternative is a numb acquiescence to an enormous evil being prepared right in front of us. If it happens, no one can say that they didn’t see it coming. When the thousands lie dying and the world grows darker, the only question will be this: Did you try to stop it, or not?