If Chris Hedges is shrill, I’m worried
Former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges believes that the Bush administration will attack Iran, perhaps within weeks. In the past I have been skeptical of claims the US was about to attack Iran. There were those who claimed to know that an attack was planned for last March; March came and went. I have based my skepticism on the obvious reality that such an attack will fail, bringing about disaster, including for US interests. US allies in the middle east will be threatened, oil prices will surge leading to a major economic downturn, and US forces in Iraq are sitting targets, not only for attacks by Iraqi Shiites, but also by Iranian missiles. Even if the Bush people are deluded, surely, I reasoned, other forces in the establishment wouldn’t allow them to do something so catastrophic. But could it be me, rather, that is deluded and denying reality?
Time magazine recently reported that a US aircraft carrier group has been ordered to attack position in the Straights of Hormuz. Even this, I said, could be a bluff. But Chris Hedges doesn’t think so. Hedges, author of the amazing meditation War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, is no fool. He is not known for making dubious claims. So, when he takes reports of an attack on Iran seriously, I conclude that so must I. Hedges takes it so seriously, in fact, that he warns that we may be living in the last weeks or months to enjoy our way of life:
hose in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe. The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced—either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation….
An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.
The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel. And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program “the Samson option.” The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.
If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.
Hedges may be wrong. In fact, we must hope he is. But I will no longer place bets on it. In fact, one factor he doesn’t mention that may increase the impulse to launch war is the free-fall the Republicans are experiencing in the polls, and in their hopes of maintaining control of Congress. Those who so confidently expected to dominate and remake the entire world in their image may, upon seeing their hold on power shatter, decide to launch the dice and see what comes up. The lure of the excitement may be too great for them to resist. Those who have had such apparent success at transforming their fantasies into reality may not gracefully accept their failure. After all, more than one despot in history has gone down in a blaze of glory. If our leaders decide to follow such a path, it may depend upon the rest of us to stop them so that we do not follow them along the path to destruction.
Add comment October 9th, 2006