Another brilliant and utterly terrifying piece of writing
has appeared in the newspaper today.
Simon Jenkins ponders over the possibility of a strike
against Iran and the implications for world peace, its similarity with the war
in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possibility of a complete world breakdown
where all out war is declared between so-called Christian and Muslim countries.
The most terrifying thing of all is that this is not the
ramblings of a mad pessimist with a “World is Ending” placard around his neck.
This is something that could be a reality within a matter of months if the
Hawks around the world thrash headlong into their tunnel of tyranny, oblivious
to the fact that the total lack of democracy that they claim to be rescuing the
world from is an inherent part of their own being.
In another article, Susannah Moore discusses the role of
the occupation in establishing true democracy within our society, and she makes
an obvious yet realistic point.
“Despite the million-long queue that was the anti-Iraq war demonstration, the politicians knew best and took us into battle”.
But Jenkins makes a clear statement regarding the
comparisons between Iraq and Iran. There are huge differences in the two
countries and the regimes of governance. Iran is not Iraq, despite the foolish
in the west thinking that because of the phonetic similarities they are one and
the same bar the ‘notes’ and ‘queries’.
“Iran is not a one-man, two-bit dictatorship, but a nation of 70 million people, an ancient and proud civilisation with a developed civil society and a modicum of pluralist democracy”.He continues to say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
“leads a country which, like Pakistan, Britain or Israel, craves status, prestige and a vague sense of security that these unusable weapons seem to convey”.
This is scary. This is entering into another paradigm
completely, albeit veiled in the usual form, as Jenkins puts it.
This is how it would go.
“It is declared exclusively aerial, with missiles and unmanned drones deployed against nuclear and military targets. The airmen will promise, as they did in Belgrade, Baghdad and Benghazi, that bombing can do the job unaided. The enemy then digs in and fights back, the tempo of attack has to mount, and ground forces are sucked in.
We read that there are, as yet, no plans for a ground attack on Iran, though "a small number of special forces" may be required, as was required eventually in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. The mission will creep from wrecking Iran's nuclear capability to ensuring it cannot be rebuilt, and then to securing regime change and "freedom". We have been there so often before. The logic of war tends towards totality, without which no victory can be declared.”
Jenkins continues to say that every politician who is
even beginning to contemplate such an attack should be locked in a room with
paper clippings from the last decade of useless and futile fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan – to what purpose and what original intent?
He states that trying to prevent nuclear development in
Iran is both futile and hypocritical. Why should a ten-a-penny nation such as
the UK have the right to develop nuclear arms compared with a ten-a-penny
nation of the same size and the same history of grandeur just because they are
buddies with the big boys.
What is going
to happen if China finally does decide to call the shots and fully embrace its
position as the world’s most dominant country, supporting the Iran’s of this
world in direct dissent to the old powers of the west? Has anybody considered
this at all?
What worries me is that we are in a very precarious
position with people cramming to retain the small amount of power that they have.
The people in charge of nations are in a tenuous position and they want to make
their mark. Look at the piffle that was spoken after Gaddafi’s death by a man
so keen to make his mark on the world stage, emulating his predecessors without
learning valuable lessons from their mistakes.
“I’m proud of the role that Britain has played in helping
them to bring that about” stated our Prime Minister regarding the regime change in Libya, and
then there was that excruciating self-congratulation when Sarkozy and Cameron
went to Libya before the demise of the Colonel.
These men are struggling with power within their own
country; one is the leader of a tenuous coalition, the other at the end of his
presidency with decisions to be made as to whether he should continue for a
second term in office. Wouldn’t a massive strike against the evils of the
madman in Iran do them both rather nicely?
Of course, there is another man that is also seeking
re-election, and this is a rather more sobering and worrying issue.
He bagged the ‘Big One’ earlier in the year by the US
attack and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden but even that may not be enough to
secure Obama a second term in office, according to the latest ratings.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are chanting about their foreign policy at their
various congresses pre-choosing the candidate to stand against the president.
They want something big, and their over-open mouths are spouting the sort of
fearful traits that Jenkins is commenting on in this article.
I am genuinely frightened.
Could Obama be that stupid, that desperate to maintain
his reins on power, knowing that should he be successful, he could bring about
considerable change with the mandate of a second term? Surely this man is too intelligent
to madly pursue such an apocalyptic fight?
But then he is a leader of a nation; a nation whose
citizens have little grasp of global politics, who elected and stood by the
Reagan’s and the Bushes of this world, who resolutely believe that their way is
the right way and all should comply, who have no understanding or interest in
other cultures, whose empathy gene is sorely lacking.
Somehow, Obama and his spin doctors are going to be
concerned about these people and what can possibly done to win them over, in
order to get the election in the bag and thus be able to get on with the social
change that they believe is necessary.
After all, “It’s the economy, stupid” as Big Boy Bill so
rightly emphasised throughout his campaign to the White House. Americans, like
us, are suffering at the moment, and despite the huge and mindless
contradiction of spending money of warfare as opposed to welfare, our daft
nations seem to accept this without thinking of the consequences both
internationally and at home.
Every penny spent to blast a Taliban mound in an impenetrable
wilderness is a penny taken away from young people in our schools or sick
people requiring life-enhancing or life-saving treatment in our hospitals.
We are bombarded with news about how we are all facing economic
catastrophe and still our politicians consider the expense and the stupidity of
obliterating yet another nation with a blast of power in the hope that, in the
longer term, they will all conform to this alleged process of democracy that
seems to be working for us.
Guess what? It isn’t working. Refer back to the comment
that Moore made about the march against the war. How did our so-called
democracy work then? How does our so-called democracy work now when the
majority of the people did not vote for the government that we currently have
to endure?
Is this really what we want for other nations, all in
name of oil, I mean making the world safe through getting nuclear weapons away
from mad dictators?
I have a theory which Jenkins alluded to. Our nations
feel as though they have been successful, although there are still soldiers
being killed with infinite regularity in Afghanistan and all the Taliban have
to do is hang in there until we are finally fed up of banging our heads against
a brick wall just as the Russians did two decades before us.
‘We’ toppled Saddam. We got rid of Gaddafi. We killed bin
Laden. We take the credit for the uprisings in Tahrir Square. We believe that
it was ‘our’ intervention that made Egypt and Tunisia look towards a system
change.
We think that Israel is reasonable because they have an
elected parliament, all done properly according to the law of the western
world.
We think, because of all of this, that we can get any
change in any country that we like, without paying any attention whatsoever to
the mess that is still happening daily in Afghanistan or the history of Korea
and Vietnam.
And whilst pondering on the prospect of intervention, we
have increased rates of child poverty within our own ‘fair’ society with money
oozing out of every orifice to protect the Christian domination of the world
whilst our hospitals, schools and services run down the drain through lack of
forethought and investment.
Who the hell do we think we are?
Yes, it concerns me that Iran has weapons of mass
destruction but no more than the concern that I have that Britain has them too.
William Hague may have mellowed with age but a forcefulness of the ultra-right
together with the highly feasible prospect of Obama being deposed in the US
could easily send our foreign policy down an even more dangerous road than the
one that so many opposed on the streets of London a decade ago.
And still nobody seems to mention the finances involved.
Recently, I was listening to an interview with one Simon
Mann talking about the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. He has written a
book about the events called “Cry Havoc” and there is a very interesting piece
of writing in the Independent about this from earlier in the week.
As I was listening to Mann, with his SAS history and his
connections with Sat-Nav Savvy Mark Thatcher, I contemplated precisely how much
our government knew about this regime change pursuit. Clandestine efforts to
change the world don’t usually happen without major backing that would go well
beyond Thatcher’s money. And if you read the article above, it certainly
suggests that Downing Street knew plenty about Mann’s work and positively
embraced his mercenary madness when it suited their needs.
We don’t get to hear about the work that goes behind the
suggestions of invasions or regime changes in places like Iran but you can be
sure that they are taking place, and it is only when there is a possibility or
an inevitability of it happening that the powers that be start leaking the
thought into the public domain to prepare them for the actuality.
This is what
really scares me.
As some of the comments at the end of Jenkin’s piece suggest, this
is very bad news indeed, and buried somewhere on page 41 of the paper is not
where it should be.
But then there is so much going on in the world at the
moment that a frightening futuristic piece is probably more than most people
can bear.
Ignore this at our peril though.
We have seen that no amount of people marching through
the streets of the capital will make the blindest bit of difference to a
government who feel as though they have a legitimate mandate to govern, and for
all the cries of injustice and for all the pleas to concentrate spending on
affecting change in this country will fall on the deafest of ears if there is a
glimmer of possibility that an all-out war would firmly place these old
Etonians in the history books.
That is, of course, if there is a world left to read
those books..... or kindles, indeed.
And all in the name of religion?
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