Today’s is from That American Chap following Digby’s excellent post about the US media’s suggestion that a war with Iran would somehow occur accidentally, and that the moment to act is NOW.
The Chap’s comment echoes what I’ve been saying for some time, but does so a damned sight more concisely and urgently.
It’s been clear to me for at least two years that we would be going to war (and a nuke one at that) with Iran and that nothing, not the failure in Iraq, not the clear evidence of how they lied the Iraq war into existence, would stop it.
When you say that “we’d better get ready to see our lives change in fundamental ways”, you’re spot on… but I doubt that you really grasp how dark the future is (you’d be screaming at the top of your lungs if you really knew), just how devastating our nuking of Iran will be for the US! The rest of the planet will regard us (for the next couple of hundred years) as the guys who one-upped the Nazis in the contest to see who could be the most despised villains in history.
The neo-cons (why aren’t these clowns serving life terms in prisons for the criminally insane?) still think that the best route for us is to grab up as many of the world’s oil fields as we can (yes, all of that sniping at Venezuela is a tip-off that we’ll be going there in the “cause of freedom”, aka- stealing their oil) and that all of this bullying will make us the world’s hyper-power for a thousand year reich.
The problem with this theory is that, like all neo-con thoughts, it is only “thunk” from the perspective of people who have an exceedingly incomplete picture of reality. Remember how the whole middle east was going to bow down to us and surrender when the awesome majesty of our military might was shown to them? What steaming-hot bullshit THAT turned out to be! We’ve shown them *way* too much and now they see us as a paper tiger (and outside of nuking the rest of the planet, we simply aren’t good at these long distance, long-termed wars, are we?) who can be ground down with snipers and IED’s.
They (the neo-cons) picture the rest of the world as helpless victims of our power when, in fact, *we’re* the fragile ones. Once we nuke Iran, the rest of the world will understand, without any doubt, that we’re out to grab the oil…and this will outrage them. They will band together against us and simply boycott every American product and turn in the dollars they’re holding for the currencies of China and the European Union. This will vaporize the buying power of the dollar and shatter our economy beyond repair. Martial law and civil war will occupy the American homeland and the troops that the neocons envisioned blitzing through the middle-east will be called home to patrol their own country.
Trust me on this, we’re in for a shitstorm the likes of which you only ever pictured reading about in some absurdly dark novel. If you have any brains (and I assume that your presence here is an indicator that you do), you’d better wave off the fog of “it can’t happen here” because it, in fact, IS happening here. Take whatever disposable cash you have and turn those faltering dollars into something real, canned food, shotguns, batteries, medical supplies, motor oil, anything practical that you’ll be able to use or to barter with in the future. If this sounds like hysteria to you, think again, the most powerful weapon that the rest of the world has to use against us is our own dollar, and when we make ourselves into complete monsters by nuking Iran, they will use that weapon to paralyze us, to defang us, to cause us internal agonies that will stop our aggression.
Don’t just stand there slack-jawed, watching this go down in a state of horrified fascination, get your ass in gear and do what you can to position your family and friends to be able to survive the coming nightmare as best they can!
That American Chap | 02.01.07 – 4:28 pm | #
Quite.
Oy, the number of posts I’ve written in the past, bewailing the smug complacency of the mushy middle of American left politics and warning grimly. but knowing the innefectuality of it, that although Bushco might be incompetent they are also utterly ruthless and without conscience; that America was going to be in a very bad place indeed before the populace woke up and that when they did it’d be too late; and so it’s proved.
Did anyone listen? Did they buggery, and why the hell should they? I’m just another one of those droning millions of lefty America-haters who want to see Americans made to grovel in the dirt.
Actually, no. Not anti-American, far from it.
America was a social experiment, a nation built on the premise of self-determination – no aristocracy, no established church, no monarch, freedom of worship and conscience, just ruled by its people. I’m a socialist. I want the same thing.
So no, it doesn’t make me happy to see the US, that grand yet horribly flawed experiment, totally fucked over by Bush and Cheney, about to plunge the world into war, and full-steaming ahead with the greedy destruction of the planet.
The rest of the world has hardly been blind to the USA’s faults but nevertheless has maintained faith in the increasingly faint ideal that’s been so long fostered by the US itself, of America as a beacon of stability and democracy in the world, the world’s last shot at redemption. Even though the explosion of information access has allowed us to see that image for the fraud it is, it’s also allowed us to see that most Americans are just regular folks like us, not monsters.
But if the US does attack Iran and the populace, media and elected politicians fail to stop it, even that lingering sympathy may be gone and I’m very much afraid you’ll be on your own with whatever results, domestically or internationally.
[Orwell -tshirt available here.]
