[News] Real Liars Go to Tehran - Return of the Living Dead
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Mar 21 12:25:15 EDT 2013
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-210313.html
March 21, 2013
Real Liars Go to Tehran
Return of the Living Dead
by PEPE ESCOBAR
Uncle Marx never thought about this one: history repeating itself as
double tragedy after already being a farce in the first place. Let's
examine the case in hand. First of all, take a close look at this Wall
Street Journal op-ed from September 2002, in the hysterical run-up
towards the invasion of Iraq.
Title: The Case for Toppling Saddam
<http://www.potomac-airfield.com/netanyahu.htm>. Author: Benjamin "Bibi"
Netanyahu -- then out of the Israeli government.
It's all here: a "dictator who is rapidly expanding his arsenal of
biological and chemical weapons" and "who is feverishly trying toacquire
nuclear weapons"; the Saddam equals Hitler parallel; the portrayal of
(de facto nuclear power) Israel as helpless victims of Palestinian
"terror"; the claim that Saddam could produce nuclear fuel "in
centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout
the country -- and Iraq is a very big country"; the cheerleading of a
unilateral pre-emptive strike; and the inevitable conclusion that
"nothing less than dismantling his regime will do".
Fast-forward over 10 years to this week in Israel. The scene: press
conference of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and visiting US
President Barack Obama. Anyone watching it live on al-Jazeera, from the
Middle East to East Asia, must have thought they were watching a
geopolitical /Back to the Future /- and frankly, Michael J Fox at least
oozed charm.
No charm here; this was more like an eerie, suit-and-tie /Return of the
Living Dead/. Bibi and Obama were at pains to stress the US-Israel bond
was "eternal". Actually Bibi preferred to stress that Iran's
(non-existent) nuclear weapons posed an existential threat to Israel. He
repeated, over and over again, that Obama was adamant; Israel was
entitled to do anything to defend itself, and its security would not be
anyone's responsibility, even Washington's.
Obama, for his part, once again stressed that Washington's official
policy towards Iran was not containment -- but to prevent Iran from
acquiring a nuclear weapon. He stressed the "window of opportunity" was
getting narrower; and, of course, that all options were on the table.
The thought that the president of the United States (POTUS) willfully
ignores the verdict of his own alphabet soup of intel agencies on Iran
might raise eyebrows in a rational world. But this is not reality; more
like a trashy reality show.
*Dream, dream, wet settler dream*
The powers that be in Israel -- neocon-infested US corporate media
avalanche of denials notwithstanding -- were absolutely essential in the
whole Iraq War cheerleading operation; Ariel Sharon, at the time,
boasted that the strategic coordination between Israel and the US had
reached "unprecedented dimensions".
Bibi was just a cog in the wheel then -- as Jim Lobe details here
<http://www.lobelog.com/lets-all-for-a-moment-remember-bibis-wisdom-on-iraq-10-years-ago/>
-- quoting Bibi's pearls of wisdom dispensed to a
misinformed-to-oblivion US Congress in 2002.
Every usual "Israeli official" suspect at the time was breathlessly
spinning that Saddam was only months away from a nuclear weapon. The
bulk of WMD "intelligence" presented to Congress and faithfully parroted
by corporate media was filtered if not entirely fabricated by Israeli
intelligence -- something duly detailed, among others, by Shlomo Brom in
his study An Intelligence Failure, published by the Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University in November 2003.
Of course it didn't matter that UN inspectors found no nuclear weapon
program evidence on site. Of course it didn't matter that Saddam
son-in-law Hussein Kamel, who had defected to Jordan in 1995, had told
UN inspectors in detail there had been no WMDs whatsoever since 1991.
Now it's double tragedy, and double farce, all over again. Yet even
Nepalis building glitzy towers in Dubai know that the "Bomb Iran"
hysteria is Tel Aviv's tactic to change the subject from the relentless
land confiscation/ethnic cleansing in slow motion in Palestine and
consequently the de facto total impossibility of a two-state solution.
Here
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/20/will-israeli-settlers-receive-obamas-blessing/>,
Jonathan Cook succinctly details the frankly scary political
configuration in Israel after the recent elections. The Israeli website
Ynet has reported that Israeli settlers can't stop hailing their brand
new "wet dream" cabinet. Translation: the ultimate nail in the coffin of
the already dead and buried "peace process".
So here's a modern geopolitical parable that would puzzle Aesop. Bibi
publicly insults POTUS. He unabashedly supports Mitt Romney (who?) in
the US presidential elections. He hits the "peace process" with a
barrage of Hellfire "facts on the ground" (with loads of Palestine
"collateral damage"). He sticks to his one and only message; Bomb Bomb
Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran. And then POTUS, in theory the mighty Double O Bama
with a license to kill (list) but actually behaving like an accidental
tourist, lands in Israel with his kill list between his legs, to bask in
Bibi's glory.
No wonder the rabid American neo-con/Israeli firster/Bomb Iran crowd is
gloating. Over 10 years ago their mantra was "Real Men go to Tehran".
The question now is whether POTUS will be able to grow a set of proper
cojones and stare them down.
/*Pepe Escobar* is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World
is Dissolving into Liquid War
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim>
(Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during
the surge
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898>.
His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1>
(Nimble Books, 2009). //He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com
<mailto:pepeasia at yahoo.com>.
/
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20130321/665ef6ec/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list