There is a great bumper sticker that reads: "America's Labor Unions: The People Who Gave You The Weekend."That slogan came to mind after reading three blog posts this week on attacking Iran from the Atlantic's Jeff Goldberg. It made me think of a bumper sticker that could be made about those promoting war with Iran. "America's Neocons: The People Who Gave You The Iraq War."
It is incredible that people who agitated so recklessly, and with so much deception, to get us involved in the still ongoing Iraq debacle would try it again. So many dead, so much destruction, so many brain-injured heroes condemned to live out their days in military hospitals.
But why should those responsible for the Iraq war feel embarrassed? They know that Americans tend not to have long memories and that Washington, DC is not exactly the capital of accountability. And we certainly can't expect them to wrestle with nightmares or guilty consciences. Come on.
The Bush/Cheney administration was an unprecedented disaster. It ignored the explicit warnings that we would be attacked in the fall of 2001, exploited that catastrophic failure by manipulating a frightened country into war with Iraq, and turned huge budget surpluses into massive deficits that helped create the economic collapse of 2008.
But absolutely no one was held accountable. After the Bush/Cheney gang left town, both President Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress expressed no interest in investigating the egregious sins of their predecessors. They said it was time to move on.
That was a huge mistake. Exposing the malfeasance of the previous administration not only might have prevented similar actions in the future, it would have prevented the situation we have now. Amazingly enough, a sizable percentage of Americans blame Obama for Bush's deficits and the chairman of the Republican Party blames Obama for a war that Obama inherited from Bush. Pretty soon it will be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and not Condoleezza Rice who ignored the emergency memo warning of the 9/11 attacks.
If Democrats had done their job after taking power in January 2009, and actually explained to Americans (by means of Congressional hearings) exactly how the country got to where it is today, the country would be better off. Neither Dick nor Liz Cheney would ever have the chutzpah to show up on our television screens again.
And that is why it is important that an influential writer like Jeff Goldberg, who helped spread the lies that got us into Iraq, must be prevented from doing it again.
But he is doing it. In his three posts this week, Goldberg blogs about an interview he conducted in Aspen with the ambassador to Washington from the United Arab Emirates, Yousef al-Otaiba.
Why three posts on an interview with an ambassador from a rather small country? Because, as condensed by Goldberg, the ambassador favors attacking Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Here's the ambassador:
Countries in the region view the Iran threat very differently, I can only speak for the U.A.E., but talk of containment and deterrence really concerns me and makes me very nervous. Why should I be led to believe that deterrence or containment will work? Iran doesn't have a nuclear power now, but we're unable to contain them and their behavior in the region. What makes me think that once they have a nuclear program, we're going to be able to be more successful in containing them?
And then there is this quote from the ambassador in the second Goldberg post:
I am suggesting that I think out of every country in the region, the U.A.E. is most vulnerable to Iran. Our military, who has existed for the past 40 years, wake up, dream, breathe, eat, sleep the Iranian threat. It's the only conventional military threat our military plans for, trains for, equips for, that's it, there's no other threat, there's no country in the region that is a threat to the U.A.E., it's only Iran. So yes, it's very much in our interest that Iran does not gain nuclear technology.
And then, best of all, is the third post in which Goldberg sums up the ambassador's words with this:
Some of those who have written me have expressed surprise at this, but, as much as I'd like to claim a big scoop here, the ambassador's position, though stated more plainly, and publicly, than usual, is the standard position of many Arab states. It is not only Israel that fears the rise of a nuclear Iran; the Arabs, if anything, fear such a development to a greater degree. The Jews and Arabs have been fighting for one hundred years. The Arabs and the Persians have been going at for a thousand. The idea of a group of Persian Shi'ites having possession of a nuclear bomb scares Arab leader like nothing else -- it certainly scares them more than the reality of the Jewish bomb.
Get the point? Despite everything we hear from Arab leaders about how destabilizing an Israeli attack on Iran would be on the entire Middle East, privately they are eager for an attack. In other words, it's not just Israel that wants to take out Iran, so do all its Muslim neighbors. Or so says Goldberg.
But, guess what, Goldberg is simply deceiving his readers about the thrust of the ambassador's remarks. Yes, he is afraid of an Iranian bomb. But he thinks that the best way to prevent Iranian nuclear development is by addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
This is the part of Goldberg's interview that he didn't choose to publish. But another journalist, Paul Woodward, did. Woodward got the full transcript from the Aspen Institute.
Here is the heart of the interview. As is obvious, the ambassador's view is far from Goldberg's, which is why Goldberg distorted it. Here is the ambassador speaking about President Obama.
YOUSEF AL OTAIBA: For him to really make progress on the Iran issue and to deal with extremism and to deal with terrorism in the region, to deal with radicalized home-grown terrorism in the U.S., you need to address the peace process. That is the one core issue everyone tends to blame, and that's what the people hang all their problems on.
Well, the Palestinians are, you know, they are — they don't have a country, they are abused, they are oppressed, and the U.S. always sides with Israel. So the sooner U.S. appears to be objective and impartial and create a Palestinian state, we take that argument away from everyone, and that is in everyone's best interest.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Why would that stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?
OTAIBA: It won't stop. It will get you all the Arab countries more aligned on containing Iran because now they use Palestine as an excuse, and the Palestine issue is a deep political problem. And I'm not saying it's only the U.S.' fault, I'm saying it is as much Israel and Palestine's fault for not making any progress on it themselves. But lack of their kind of commitment, the U.S. needs to step in and say, you need to do this. And you need to do this for your sake, for our sake, and for the region's sake.
Is it any wonder Goldberg left these parts out?
The last thing he wants to acknowledge is that that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would go a long way to defusing the Iranian nuclear issue. As the ambassador says, Palestine is the issue — the only issue — on which Arabs are united. When Ahmedinejad confronts America and Israel in the name of Palestine, he has the support of all Arabs and most Muslims. Take away that pretext (it's more than a pretext; Arabs and Muslims do indeed care about the suffering inflicted on their brethren) and Ahmedinejad is suddenly out there all alone. That may not prevent his development of a weapon, but it would eliminate his ability to galvanize Arab and Muslim support behind him. And, ultimately, it could lead to a nuclear-free Middle East which, supposedly, is America's goal.
All this frightens Goldberg. He and his allies want an attack on Iran, for much the same reason they wanted an attack on Iraq. It's an unfriendly Muslim country.
Another reason Goldberg condensed the ambassador's remarks was that he said what everyone, including General Petraeus, knows — that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to preventing the entire Middle East from blowing up. It is, as the ambassador says, the "one core issue." For Goldberg, that is blasphemy. For him and his neocon friends, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is superfluous, not central to US interests at all. So long as we just let Israel do whatever it wants to do — including attacking Iran — all will be fine.
Blast from the past! They are doing it again.
How long before the bombs fly?
