[wvns] If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran
Neocons have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the
Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the
will of the US government.
If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran
By Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearinghouse
The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American
military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt.
Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq during the
first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an
option. Our best hope, Gen. Sanchez says, is "to stave off defeat,"
and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Gen. Sanchez
sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: "I am
absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this
time."
More evidence that the war is lost arrived June 4 with headlines
reporting: "U.S.-led soldiers control only about a third of Baghdad,
the military said on Monday." After five years of war the US
controls one-third of one city and nothing else.
A host of US commanding generals have said that the Iraq war is
destroying the US military. A year ago Colin Powell said that the US
Army is "about broken." Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn says Bush
has "piecemealed our force to death." Gen. Barry McCafrey testified
to the US Senate that "the Army will unravel."
Col. Andy Bacevich, America's foremost writer on military affairs,
documents in the current issue of The American Conservative that
Bush's insane war has depleted and exhausted the US Army and Marine
Corps:
"Only a third of the regular Army's brigades qualify as combat-
ready. In the reserve components, none meet that standard. When the
last of the units reaches Baghdad as part of the president's
strategy of escalation, the US will be left without a ready-to-
deploy land force reserve."
"The stress of repeated combat tours is sapping the Army's
lifeblood. Especially worrying is the accelerating exodus of
experienced leaders. The service is currently short 3,000
commissioned officers. By next year, the number is projected to grow
to 3,500. The Guard and reserves are in even worse shape. There the
shortage amounts to 7,500 officers. Young West Pointers are bailing
out of the Army at a rate not seen in three decades. In an effort to
staunch the losses, that service has begun offering a $20,000 bonus
to newly promoted captains who agree to stay on for an additional
three years. Meanwhile, as more and more officers want out, fewer
and fewer want in: ROTC scholarships go unfilled for a lack of
qualified applicants."
Bush has taken every desperate measure. Enlistment ages have been
pushed up from 35 to 42. The percentage of high school dropouts and
the number of recruits scoring at the bottom end of tests have
spiked. The US military is forced to recruit among drug users and
convicted criminals. Bacevich reports that wavers "issued to
convicted felons jumped by 30 percent." Combat tours have been
extended from 12 to 15 months, and the same troops are being
deployed again and again.
There is no equipment for training. Bacevich reports that "some $212
billion worth has been destroyed, damaged, or just plain worn out."
What remains is in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Under these circumstances, "staying the course" means total defeat.
Even the neoconservative warmongers, who deceived Americans with the
promise of a "cakewalk war" that would be over in six weeks, believe
that the war is lost. But they have not given up. They have a last
desperate plan: Bomb Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney is spear-
heading the neocon plan, and Norman Podhoretz is the plan's leading
propagandist with his numerous pleas published in the Wall Street
Journal and Commentary to bomb Iran. Podhoretz, like every
neoconservative, is a total Islamophobe. Podhoretz has written that
Islam must be deracinated and the religion destroyed, a genocide for
the Muslim people.
The neocons think that by bombing Iran the US will provoke Iran to
arm the Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing rocket propelled
grenades and with surface to air missiles and unleash the militias
against US troops. These weapons would neutralize US tanks and
helicopter gunships and destroy the US military edge, leaving
divided and isolated US forces subject to being cut off from
supplies and retreat routes. With America on the verge of losing
most of its troops in Iraq, the cry would go up to "save the troops"
by nuking Iran.
Five years of unsuccessful war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's
recent military defeat in Lebanon have convinced the neocons that
America and Israel cannot establish hegemony over the Middle East
with conventional forces alone. The neocons have changed US war
doctrine, which now permits the US to preemptively strike with
nuclear weapons a non-nuclear power. Neocons are forever heard
saying, "what's the use of having nuclear weapons if you can't use
them."
Neocons have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the
Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the
will of the US government. Insurgency and terrorism cannot prevail
against nuclear weapons.
Many US military officers are horrified at what they think would be
the worst ever orchestrated war crime. There are reports of
threatened resignations. But Dick Cheney is resolute. He tells Bush
that the plan will save him from the ignominy of losing the war and
restore his popularity as the president who saved Americans from
Iranian nuclear weapons. With the captive American media providing
propaganda cover, the neoconservatives believe that their plan can
pull their chestnuts out of the fire and rescue them from the
failure that their delusion has wrought.
The American electorate decided last November that they must do
something about the failed war and gave the Democrats control of
both houses of Congress. However, the Democrats have decided that it
is easier to be complicit in war crimes than to represent the wishes
of the electorate and hold a rogue president accountable. If Cheney
again prevails, America will supplant the Third Reich as the most
reviled country in recorded history.
Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was assistant
secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was
associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and
contributing editor of National Review. He is author or co-author of
eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard
University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments,
including the William E. Simon chair in political economy, Center
for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and
senior research fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He
has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and testified before
Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's
Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a
reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert
Mundell
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