Iran-Israel-U.S. Showdown: "Peace Movements Should Be in Crisis Mode"
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Most of the posts in this blog fall within the general framework of UC involvement in weapons of mass destruction, other forms of militarization within the UC, and UC student activism. Those topics are this Web site's bread and butter.
But sometimes larger world events merit special attention in this space. One of them is Israel's planned bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities, which would almost surely incite a war between the two countries and may cause a cascade of other very dangerous events on the world stage (we're talking about the biggest threat of a nuclear exchange since the end of the Cold War here). I refer to one possible sequence of events in a post on December 14.
Recently, former CIA analysts Bill and Kathleen Christison wrote an article for CounterPunch concerning the urgency of preventing the Israel-Iran war from taking place. While I don't necessarily agree with all of their conclusions, their overall point is well-taken. The article, titled "It's More Important Than Halting Nuclear Proliferation," starts off like this:
The peace movements of the entire world should be in crisis mode right now, working non-stop to prevent the U.S. and Israel from starting a war against Iran. (See the James Petras article in CounterPunch on December 24, 2005 titled Iran in the Crosshairs for the best summary of the present situation.) The reckless and unnecessary dangers arising from such a war are so obvious that one wonders why normal political forces in the two aggressor countries -- both of whom love to glorify themselves as democracies -- would not prevent such a war from happening.
But the "normal political forces" in both the U.S. and Israel have become badly distorted. Democracy has been seriously undermined in both. The cowboy-like personalities and aggressive tendencies of both countries' leaders tend to feed on each other. Domestic political difficulties and coming elections in both countries probably add to the macho inclination of the ruling elites to use force to remove any problems facing them. The glue binding these tendencies together is the ever-strengthening institutional link between defense establishments and military-industrial complexes in both countries, as well as, in the U.S, the growing power and influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over both major political parties. The entire mix increases the probability, against all common sense, that this absurd war will actually happen.
Nothing else more dangerous to the world, to the Middle East, to the oppressed Palestinians, or to the true interests of the United States is happening today -- anywhere. Americans who do not want an eruption of a new world war, started by our own government, ought to be strongly lobbying the Bush administration and all members of Congress against supporting any military action by the U.S. and Israel against Iran. Globally, people who oppose such a war should be lobbying their own governments in similar fashion.
Click here to read the entire article.
Israel's bombing or Iran is planned for March. I will continue to post regarding this subject as new developments unfold. As the Christisons note, we should all be doing as much as we possibly can to prevent this war from taking place, which includes holding the US government accountable for its reckless nuclear policies and demanding that it adopt a less inflammatory approach with respect to Iran.