It was shocking to hear several Republican hopefuls use Iran as a whipping boy during last night's debate. It's truly frightening to consider the possibility that these supposedly responsible elected officials are willing to pander to war profiteers and to terrorize their base of primary voters in order to bolster their prospects in the Republican primary.
Unfortunately real lives are again at stake and as conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate, the reality of a strike against Iran, according to geopolitical analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski, increases as George W Bush feels pressure to use Iran as a scapegoat for his failures. (See Brzezinski's "horror scenario" towards the end of this diary.)
Knowing very little about Iran, I searched You Tube for videos on this "multicultural country of 70 million people"* to see the people who are part of President Bush's so-called axis of evil and are deserving of attack. Because, after watching the debate, it sure seems like most of the participants got the memo that Iran is in our sights. Ron Paul was the only one of 10 debaters who challenged the president's authority. Representative Paul said that as a conservative he did not believe it was right to make "preventive" attacks on other countries.
Here are links to some of the best videos I found, although I encourage people to do their own search, and perhaps write a diary of their own to counter the fear mongering against an extremely beautiful country and a people not so different from us before the unthinkable becomes reality.
This video is called "Beautiful Iran" and is an absolutely lovely travelogue:
http://youtube.com/...
As I watched these beautiful images of ancient sculptures and coral sand deserts and magnificent snow covered mountains, I wondered what would become of them if Bush bombs Iran. It brought back memories of the Taliban in Afghanistan blowing up the ancient Buddha statues. Our Taliban seems similarly inclined.
This video is called "Skiing in Iran".
A young man visits Iran with his father, brother and sister to ski and learn about life in Iran. They visit Tehran. They find people just like us instead of the "terrorists" that Bush would need us to believe in to get us to accept war with Iran.
http://youtube.com/...
I loved this next one, "Iran: Another Perspective A Photo Tour":
http://youtube.com/...
I couldn't stop seat dancing, lol, to this music as I watched the absolutely lovely pictures of a modern country with beautiful coastlines, mountains, modern buildings, and life, life life...soccer games, food, sunsets, traffic, skiing, symphony orchestras, parks, festivals, stunning architecture.
I guess Bush and Cheney don't understand life. They only see the oil under other people's sands and everything follows from that.
If you love soccer, sports, team spirit and music you'll enjoy:
Immortal Iran - World Cup Song
http://youtube.com/...
The next video is "Iran Rap - Sarbaze Irani"
http://www.youtube.com/...
For a translation of this rap song, click on "more" in brackets to the right of the video and after the word "transla..." It calls on the soldiers of Iran to think about what's going on.
And here's the video where Brzezinski's describes his "horror scenario". He says that "we have smashed" Iraq beyond some quick repair and Bush's predicament in Iraq will likely lead him to blame Iran for his continuing failures.
http://youtube.com/...
Brzezinski predicts provoking war with Iran.
It looks like Brzezinski is indirectly accusing Bush administration of preparing a provocation or even a false flag terrorist act in order to have a pretext to attack Iran (as noticed by wsws.org).
PBS, February 1, 2007
Brzezinski before The Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "The plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran, culminating in a, quote, unquote, "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran, that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan."
I found a recent interview of three Iranian people who live in California at Wes Clark's blog Securing America presented as the May 2, 2007 Clark Cast http://securingamerica.com/... . These three people are very worried and talk about their hopes and fears for the people of their native country.
John McCain and the other saber rattlers last night demonized Iran in much the same way that Iraq was demonized before Rumsfeld's "shock and awe" got underway. The groundwork is apparently being laid for this attack to prove, once again, that Republicans are "strong on defense".
But some Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans who have experienced the truth on the ground in Iraq aren't buying it.
VoteVets, formed by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans led by co-founder and chairman, Jon Soltz, are working with an advisory group including retired military officers Major General Eaton and Major General Batiste who recently testified before Congress on Iraq policy failures and General Wesley Clark who testified in 2002 against attacking Iraq to stop this assault on a beautiful country and its people.
The goal of the VoteVets.org PAC is to put Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans in Congress who are critical of the execution of the war in Iraq and representative of the principles of VoteVets.org PAC in the US Congress by:
* Providing their campaigns with early candidate training, financing, messaging, web and field training from the top professionals in the field
* Fostering policy and message unity regarding U.S. foreign and military policy
* Making direct contributions and independent expenditures to benefit their campaigns
* Ensuring current members of Congress are held accountable for their votes on Iraq and Veterans’ issues by taking them to task for votes and positions that harm America, and its troops and Veterans.
* Providing the credibility and support of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans community. An attack on an individual is an attack on us all. We are united in supporting our fellow veterans.
http://www.votevets.org/...
And VoteVets is offering those of us who are horrified at the prospects of an attack on Iran the opportunity of joining with like-minded people to
stop Bush from turning beautiful Iran into rubble. Please join 38,000 people who have signed the petition at http://www.votevets.org/ to StopIranWar.
Check out VoteVets's web site to see Sergeant John Bruhn's video chosen by MoveOn members http://pol.moveon.org/... as the one to be used as part of an Oliver Stone directed 60 second T.V. spot.
Check out General Eaton's letter to George W. Bush.
http://www.votevets.org/...
And while you're there check out the StopIranWar link on the right side of the page and please join 38,000 others to sign the VoteVets petition: http://ga4.org/... to stop Bush before he misuses our air force and our navy, our marines and our army to attack Iran.
*"multicultural country of 70 million people"
I heard Wes Clark refer to Iran this way and those words have been percolating in my head for a while and probably inspired me to search YouTube and write this diary.