Iran: Victory will defeat us

Last night, I caught much of a History Channel program promoting war with Iran -- an exercise in propaganda so blatant as to make Goebbels blush. The whiff of war is in the air.

Most Americans have been led to believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demands the destruction of Israel; even if he had not been misquoted, he could never achieve such a goal without bringing an end to his own nation's long history. Bush has told the world that Iran is arming the Iraqi insurgency -- an inane and obvious lie, reminiscent of the falsehoods told to justify the Iraqi invasion. Why would Shi'ite Iran arm the Sunnis? In fact, good evidence suggests that aid to Iraq's Sunnis is coming from Saudi Arabia -- which really wants no part in the conflict, but which is being forced to act in a more high-profile fashion. Indeed, Iraq may soon turn into a Saudi/Iranian proxy war.

Today, we learn that Hillary Clinton backs military action:

“U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. In dealing with this threat as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table.”

By what right would we attack a nation that has never gone to war with us or with its neighbors?

The History Channel neglected to mention a key fact that everyone else knows: Any aerial attack on Iran will almost certainly go nuclear, especially if Iran's fearsome Sunburn missiles destroy one of our warships. How can we justify a nuclear first strike to prevent the spread of nuclear weaponry?

Iran did not attack us on 9/11. Osama Bin Laden is Saudi, the hijackers were Saudi, much of the money was Saudi. Al Qaeda was largely a creation of Pakistani intelligence, and Pakistan is the current home of the movement. Yet America did nothing to discourage Pakistan from developing nuclear weaponry. The Pakistani bomb was created with Saudi financing and encouragement. Some say we covertly aided that development.

Yet Bush has decreed that Pakistan may do that which Iran may not. Thus, we are being prepared for a third World War -- one which will throw the entire region into chaos.

Why? Scott Ritter gives one origin theory in his book Target Iran:

"the conflict currently underway between the United States and Iran is, first and foremost, a conflict born in Israel. It is based upon an Israeli contention that Iran poses a threat to Israel, and defined by Israeli assertions that Iran possesses a nuclear weapons program. None of this has been shown to be true, and indeed much of the allegations made by Israel against Iran have been clearly demonstrated as being false."

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Bush speaks of "democracy" as the goal. But Saudi Arabia is not a democracy, and neither is Pakistan. Neither is Jordan nor any of the Islamic nations with which we have good relations.

Ahmadinejad, by contrast, is an elected leader. And it is hard to argue with the sentiments he expressed to the United Nations:

“No one has superiority over others. No individual or states can arrogate to themselves special privileges, nor can they disregard the rights of others and, through influence and pressure, position themselves as the `international community.’ Citizens of Asia, Africa, Europe and America are all equal. Over six billion inhabitants of the earth are all equal and worthy of respect.”

Yet America's position derives from the theory of American exceptionalism: We may have nukes; they may not. We may strike first; they may not even strike back. As WIlliam Pfaff puts it in his recent NYRB piece:

The Bush administration defends its pursuit of this unlikely goal by means of internationally illegal, unilateralist, and preemptive attacks on other countries, accompanied by arbitrary imprisonments and the practice of torture, and by making the claim that the United States possesses an exceptional status among nations that confers upon it special international responsibilities, and exceptional privileges in meeting those responsibilities.

This is where the problem lies. Other American leaders before George Bush have made the same claim in matters of less moment. It is something like a national heresy to suggest that the United States does not have a unique moral status and role to play in the history of nations, and therefore in the affairs of the contemporary world. In fact it does not.

And:

Even Francis Fukuyama, a recovering neoconservative, acknowledges in a recent book that American economic and political policies today rest on an unearned claim to privilege, the American "belief in American exceptionalism that most non-Americans simply find not credible." Nor, he adds, is the claim tenable, since "it presupposes an extremely high level of competence" which the country does not demonstrate.

How will the world react? At first, with harsh words -- which will be no reaction at all. But the counter-attack against the United States will be slow and ongoing, and it will take place on innumerable fronts.

America cannot long endure in a world that considers us despicable. We do not possess the "extremely high level of competence" Fukuyama speaks of. Our intellectual and economic infrastructure is crumbling. After we bring ruin to Iran, even countries and peoples we now consider our friends will long to see us humbled. An unprovoked attack will birth new terror strikes that make 9/11 seem tame, and in their wake, we will command no sympathy. Do you want to see a world in which the fall of the Golden Gate or the Sears Tower elicits cheers in Berlin, London, Melbourne, Moscow and Peking? Such a world is closer than you think.

Many Europeans already -- and with good reason -- considers the United States a land of superstitious, arrogant louts. What will they think after we bring death to innocent millions? Why should the rest of the world care about our dollars, our goods (those few goods we continue to make), or our ill-educated work force? We cannot survive many more disruptions to our energy supply. We cannot survive disinvestment in our fragile economy. The Bush family has a private empire in Paraguay; the rest of us have no escape.

Even if we prevail in the coming war with Iran, victory will defeat us.