Can we make a loud enough noise on Iran? by Stan Goff

Two main points need to be made on this Iran issue. (1) The Bush Administration is not the latest embodiment of the Illuminati that acts independently of its ruling class base. (2) Iran is over a decade away from being able to make a nuclear weapon. Now, these need to be fleshed out a bit.

The antiwar movement is being flushed this way and that like a covey of quail at Dick Cheney’s hunting club. Do we need to put Prozac in the water towers? Boo! There they go… “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” “They’re gonna nuke Iran!!!”

Forgive me, y’all. But a war in the hand, as the saying goes, is worth two in the Bush.

There is a bloody, criminal war in Iraq. The United States military has been sent there, and they are losing the war. On the other hand, public opinion on the war has shifted dramatically in the direction of those of us who said the troops need to come back here where they belong and leave the Iraqis the fuck alone. They’ve had about all the depleted uranium democracy they can stand.

This is a hell of an impasse for the ruling class here. Some of them didn’t like how Bush and Cheney went about it, but they fundamentally agreed that for the US to retain its international power into the forseeable future, it had to readjust its military forces from the old positions to fight the no-longer-existing Warsaw Pact to a place where they could tighten the screws on future competitors if need be. That place was in the Middle East; and that’s because of all the oil that is still sensibly reachable on Earth, over half of it is in that area. That same ruling CLASS, mind you, can pull the plug on Bush and Cheney any time they want… and in fact may be doing that right now. This is not some independent fraternity that is conspiring to take over the world. This is a system. It’s been around for a long time. And it is in trouble. But it is still a system, and it is run by a whole ruling stratum, not one clique.

Every one of them is perfectly capable of reading to the best of my knowledge, and since they are, they know goddamn well that any attack on Iran would make the continued occupation of Iraq untenable.

This administration is not insane, as many people contend. This is just paranoid hyperbole. They are meaner than hell, because they can be, because they are in power. The Bush administration serves at the pleasure of the dominant class. Get your heads around that, folks. The last time a whole destabilized white middle class started convincing themselves that the world was run by a conspiracy, they identified Jews and elected a mediocre Austrian watercolor artist as Chancellor of Germany. This is a dangerous and inaccurate understanding of the world. What you are looking at is disequilibrated imperialism.

Both Nixon and Reagan “played crazy” as a method of political manipulation.

If I were the Bush administration, and I was both losing the war and losing public support like they are, I would give my domestic opposition something new to run off to… like making them believe I was about to attack Iran. Later on, when it didn’t happen, I could portray them all as poule paranoidus. Then they would stop what they are doing… ie, tearing my credibility to shreds and sending my historical legacy into the shithouse.

Think!

If they DID drop a nuke on Iran, and if we didn’t immediately start an open revolt that shut the whole fucking country down, we would deserve everything we get right until the next Zhukov walked his artillery across our own Berlin. We need to be telling them that. Drop a nuke, and we break things. I’ll go on the record right here and right now… modeling it for you… George W. Bush, if your administration drops a nuclear weapon on anyone anywhere, you need to lock me up before you do it. Because at that point, anything except open rebellion against you makes me no better than all the "good Germans." I will not be your good German.

Boo! yourself, Georgie.

Cripes, people! The only power these assholes have is what we continue to collectively grant them.

Meanwhile.... BACK IN IRAQ, where there is an actual war... we need to keep throwing wave after wave of opposition over them. Build an impeachment movement in the streets. Keep educating people about what is really going on there.

Second point... Iran's nukes. This is also a public education responsibility for us, and the media needs to be our first target. Every time those nimrods even suggest that Iran has nukes, is close to getting nukes, or talks about an Iranian nuke-you-ler program without noting boldly that Iran is not within a blue million miles of having a nuclear weapon, then we need to bust them.

We have to say, loudly and clearly and often, this is just another bullshit story. Not, "Omigod, those mean men are going to nuke Iran!" but -- with some authority -- "Stop that goddamn lying!"

Then get back to the business of stopping the real war.