Originally posted by Exploited
[email protected] 17 2005, 11:55 AM
"The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible."
I really want to focus on that sentence. Why so important to say, "civilians". That is a very odd spin to put on this. The civilians.... So uncomfortable.
'Lo, EC.
By "civilians", they mean neo-con ideologues like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. These men are imperialists and militarists of the most severe variety. They have never served a day of their life in the military. That is why they are called civilians.
This is to distinguish them from the generals and retired ex-generals--lifelong soldiers, essentially. Generally speaking (no pun intended), those who have been in the military--and especially those who have seen combat--are more reluctant to start wars than those who have only seen them glossed over on TV. Generals are typically pragmatic, and slow to start new wars.
The eager aggression of the neo-con "chickenhawks" (after all, they avoided Vietnam like the plague) stands in stark contrast to the attitude of the military men.
The political objective of "destroy[ing] as much of the military infrastructure as possible" in Iran should be pretty obvious. Iran is a moderately powerful state in the Middle East, which is the world's oil spigot. U.S. policy for 50 years has been to dominate the world's source of energy, which means to control overtly or covertly the Middle East.
Iran itself was a key client under the shah. Since the removal of the shah, Iran has been out of the U.S.'s control. This has made imperialists here quite uncomfortable since 1979. Iran has been very high on the official enemy list ever since. Saddam Hussein was armed and supported because he was devastating Iran during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88).
With U.S. hegemony over the world perhaps starting to slip away (the European Union and a burgeoning East Asian bloc are challenging U.S. domination), and an especially ambitious and ruthless regime in power here, we are seeing something of a clampdown. The U.S. has, again, dominated the region since the end of World War II, but we are seeing the empire tightening its grip.
Iraq has been blatantly colonized. There are few examples in U.S. history of such blatant, naked imperialism. And in addition to Iran, most of the other rebellious Middle Eastern states are high on the Bush administration's hit list.
But going back to Iran. American militarism/imperialism has a peculiar, perhaps unique characteristic to it. Military aggression is only permissible when it will provide minimal danger to American soldiers. Iraq was an easy choice for invasion because it was perhaps the weakest state in the region in 2003.
Iran is different. At the moment, Iran is capable of putting up a modest defense. It surely would be no match for the overwhelming might of the U.S. war machine, but thousands of American soldiers would die. The cost is unacceptable. Military action is off the table concerning North Korea for the same reason.
Though it seems there are strong tendencies to get Iran back in the orbit of the American Empire. Thus, Iran must be neutered. The U.S. will not start a war until Iran is incapable of fighting back. Thus, perhaps three dozen commando strikes (I am paraphrasing Hersh's article to get that number) may be carried out to terminate Iran's WMD and missile capacity.
If this is done, I would expect them to also disable Iran's anti-air defenses (whatever they are). Then Iran would be at the mercy of America's overwhelming air superiority. At which point, the U.S. would have its preferred method of warfare as an option: bombing with impunity.
It is not clear from what I have seen whether all-out regime change is desired. That would be desirable on ideological grounds for Bush, et al., but a broken and grovelling theocracy bending to U.S. imperial desires would have essentially the same material gain.