Criminal and criminally stupid: the Bush Administration plan to attack Iran
Posted by Charles II on March 26, 2008
Arthur Silber asks why the big bloggers spend so much time on the trivia of Washington politics when the Bush Administration so clearly is planning to commit the crime of the 21st century: attacking Iran.
He’s right. As bad as attacking Iraq was, attacking Iran has much, much more serious consequences. Explaining it is complicated. In addition to the obvious stuff like oil and the further overstrain of the US military, Iran acts as a regional buffer. Take away the buffer, and the whole Middle East is likely to go up in flames.
An attack on Iran would threaten Russian, Chinese, Indian, and European interests. The US would end up isolated. The extremists would be unified. The world economy would almost certainly enter a recession and perhaps a depression. Bush’s endless crusade would become a reality, destroying everything good that we know. It is not just criminal. It is criminally stupid.
These are all reasonably foreseeable consequences. If any of us want to live happy lives, we want to stop this. It is tragic, ridiculous and frustrating that people like Atrios and Markos refuse to use their leadership to alert people to this issue, preferring instead to burble on about political trivia. Our voice is so faint, and it’s even fainter when it is misdirected into inside-the-Beltway chatter.
Dear Reader: do not have this on your conscience. Do something– whatever you can, no matter how small– to raise the alarm. Let us rage against the dying of the light.
March 26, 2008 at 3:09 am
All I can say is that our military men and women should recognize an illegal order and refuse to obey, nor can they claim they were just following orders and be let off the hook by the tribunals that will come. An invasion of Iran under the present circumstances would be a war crime, and not one even given the imprimatur of authorization by congress.
March 26, 2008 at 11:48 am
It’s very difficult to resist illegal orders, Michael. It almost certainly means prison and disgrace.
How many resisted the illegal war against Iraq?
March 26, 2008 at 12:01 pm
There was a better sell job on the Iraq war, they convinced many people that they were going after weapons of mass destruction.