The guns of August

It would be nice to think Bush's "all options are on the table" crack is just bluster, and that Cheney's contingency plans for nuking Iran in the case of a terrorist attack on the U.S. (by anyone!) do not really reflect serious intent.

But who knows?

Once again, in the face of all logic, decency and common sense, this administration is beating the drums for war in yet another sovereign nation that happens to be sitting on an ocean of oil.

It's crossed my mind more than a few times that Bush is posturing to please the Israelis and what remains of his political base, but I worry.

I worry because antiwar sentiments are becoming ascendant in the United States, but the leadership of both parties either can't or won't reflect the popular will. Ari Berman has an interesting if discouraging overview of why the hawks run Democrat foreign policy in this week's Nation:

At a time when the American people are turning against the Iraq War and favor a withdrawal of US troops, and British and American leaders are publicly discussing a partial pullback, the leading Democratic presidential candidates for '08 are unapologetic war hawks. Nearly 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war, according to recent polling. Sixty-three percent want US troops brought home within the next year. Yet a recent National Journal "insiders poll" found that a similar margin of Democratic members of Congress reject setting any timetable. The possibility that America's military presence in Iraq may be doing more harm than good is considered beyond the pale of "sophisticated" debate.

I am also worried because some basic facts are completely being overlooked in regard to the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

• First, as I've said before, Iran has signed the NPT. The NPT allows atomic programs for peaceful ends. You have to read pretty deep into most accounts of the current set-to to learn that simple and crucially important fact.
  
  
• Second, it's questionable that Iran's "secrect" program has anything to do with building nuclear weapons. If Iranian scientists had intentions in that direction, don't you think they would have built ONE by now? They've had a secret program for 17 years!
  
  
• Third, and this is a new development, published today in the Independent: the IAEE is about to publish scientific research that supports Iran's assertions.
  
  
• Fourth, of the four countries refusing to get on board with the NPT, three -- Pakistan, India and Israel -- are strategic allies of the U.S., leading one to ask: has the United States used its considerable leverage with these nations to curb their proliferation? The short answer (and the long answer, for that matter) is no.
  
  
• Fifth, as Gordon Prather points out, the Iranians have been bargaining in good faith, while the EU negotiators have not.
  
  
• Sixth, that the U.S.'s performance at the May Review Conference of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was absolutely contemptible. For an international meeting to discuss the single-most important danger facing the world today, there was no Condi. Not even John Bolton. Some schlub named Stephen Rademaker stood in for the world's largest nuclear power and basically tore up all past U.S. committments, while self-righteously condemning countries not allied to the United States who would dare attempt to join the nuke club.

What to do? It's not a pretty picture so for the moment I will leave the last word to Howard Zinn who, while not mentioning Iran specifically, gets to the heart of the issue:

More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong. More and more every day the lies are being exposed. And then there is the largest lie, that everything the US does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a "war on terrorism", ignoring the fact that war is itself terrorism, that barging into homes and taking away people and subjecting them to torture is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less.

The Bush administration, unable to capture the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, invaded Afghanistan, killing thousands of people and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. Yet it still does not know where the criminals are. Not knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein was hiding, it invaded and bombed Iraq in March 2003, disregarding the UN, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorising the population; and not knowing who was and was not a terrorist, the US government confined hundreds of people in Guantánamo under such conditions that 18 have tried to commit suicide.

The Amnesty International Report 2005 notes: "Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times ... When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity".

The "war on terrorism" is not only a war on innocent people in other countries; it is a war on the people of the US: on our liberties, on our standard of living. The country's wealth is being stolen from the people and handed over to the super-rich. The lives of the young are being stolen.

The Iraq war will undoubtedly claim many more victims, not only abroad but also on US territory. The Bush administration maintains that, unlike the Vietnam war, this conflict is not causing many casualties. True enough, fewer than 2,000 service men and women have lost their lives in the fighting. But when the war finally ends, the number of its indirect victims, through disease or mental disorders, will increase steadily. After the Vietnam war, veterans reported congenital malformations in their children, caused by Agent Orange.

Officially there were only a few hundred losses in the Gulf war of 1991, but the US Gulf War Veterans Association has reported 8,000 deaths in the past 10 years. Some 200,000 veterans, out of 600,000 who took part, have registered a range of complaints due to the weapons and munitions used in combat. We have yet to see the long-term effects of depleted uranium on those currently stationed in Iraq.

Our faith is that human beings only support violence and terror when they have been lied to. And when they learn the truth, as happened in the course of the Vietnam war, they will turn against the government. We have the support of the rest of the world. The US cannot indefinitely ignore the 10 million people who protested around the world on February 15 2003.

There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.