This honest peace in the Christian Science Monitor attempts to expose the media's "Bomb Iran Campaign" reminiscent of the WMD scare leading up to the Iraq War. We should not be complacent about war mongering because we all know the consequences by now. In Iraq hundreds of thousands of people have died by conservative estimates and 2.4 million were made into refugees. We don't spend much time recollecting the consequences in our short attention span news cycle but we should not be so complacent as to let the march to war happen all over again. I can clearly recall George W. Bush advocating removing Sadam during the 2000 presidential campaign and little did I know he was actually going to make it happen. Back then it seemed like idle crazy talk from macho posturing conservative, when in reality it was far more than mere threat.
Politicians, lobbyists, and propagandists have spent nearly two decades pushing the lie that Iran poses a nuclear weapons threat to the United States and Israel. After a brief respite in the intensity of the wolf cries over the past two years, the neoconservative movement has decided to relaunch the “Must Bomb Iran” brand.
We don't need to accept the conclusion that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon and the whole foreign policy agenda and endless sound bites created to reinforce this conclusion. The Bush line of "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud" was about as credible as the LBJ Daisy Ad. It was not the Nuclear threat that would lead to tens of thousands of dead Americans, it was our own militarism. LBJ went on to engross America in a long bloody war with 58,267 of our soldiers Killed In Action, 1.2 million Vietnamese Soldiers dead, and 2 million civilians. That's not even counting the resulting civil war and genocide in Cambodia which killed millions more. The Vietnamese finally put an end to it.
If you listen to the clip you will here some guy trying to use this Ad to do a little more post 9/11 fear mongering. That is just a bit of irony. I was just looking for the ad and was shocked to find out it had already been recycled to scare a new generation of Americans.
The fact that Iran is not and has not been a nuclear threat to either nation is rendered irrelevant by a narrative of universal “concern” about its nuclear program.
Our current administration uses that word "concern" while the opposition attempts to garners cool points with strong language and chest thumping. We need to be concerned about the misuse of our military to further the goal of hegemony in the middle east. America need not follow the path of empire and attempt to dominate the world with military power so that it may live safely and peacefully in the world. There are those who would like to use our military power to do just that or to further interest outside of America's national security. Iran is not a threat, if someone says so we should be their strongest skeptic. The war talk quite often has real consequences so we ought to cast doubt on these ideas before there are tens of thousands of dead and trillions spent.
More sensational claims
If the smokescreen wasn’t thick enough, late last week a group of Marxist holy warrior exiles called the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq, working with the very same neoconservatives who sponsored Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress – which manufactured so much of the propaganda that convinced the American people to support the invasion of that country – accused the Iranian government of building a secret nuclear enrichment facility buried deep in tunnels near Qazvin.
Headlines once again blared in total negligence and without verification that here indeed was, an official told Fox News, proof that Iran has a “hidden, secret nuclear weapons program.’” TV news anchors on every channel furiously mopped sweat from their brows, hearts-a-tremor. When will the forces of good rise to stop this evil?!
Yet even US officials quickly admitted that they’ve known about these tunnels for years. “[T]here’s no reason at this point to think it’s nuclear,” one US official said – a quote that appeared in Fox’s article, but only after five paragraphs of breathless allegations. All day long, top-of-the-hour news updates on TV and radio let the false impression stand.
.
So much is the pattern of misinformation, half truths, unverified rumors, and counter logical conclusions said loudly over and over again. It is time we stop the fence sitting and demand the march to war stop.
An ignored clean bill of health
The September 6 IAEA report confirming for the zillionth time the non-diversion of nuclear material should be the last word on the subject until the next time they say the same thing: Iran, a long-time signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is not in violation of its Safeguards Agreement.
So what’s all the hubbub about Iran’s “nuclear defiance” and “danger”?
The IAEA’s latest report does note that Iran has “not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.” Indeed, the agency’s frequent mentions of Iran’s “lack of full cooperation” is a big reason why US media reports portray Iran in ominous terms.
But here, too, US media frequently miss the point. Never mind that 118 nations around the world have signed a statement criticizing the IAEA’s “peaceful activities” conclusion as a departure from standard verification language. More broadly, Iran’s “lack of full cooperation” by itself is an outcome of Western bullying and propaganda.
Iran is being held to a double standard. The pressure being put on Iran is a result of the Pro War advocates making who would like to take out one more sovereign nation in the Middle East that is not on board with the agenda. We already heard the talk of attacking Syria and round two with Lebanon. This war talk is not constructive, and all those who will die in these conflicts do so to satisfy the pride of aggressive nations. These wars don't create a safer world, or happier people. Lebanon is still rebuilding, Iraq will be doing so for decades if it ever recovers, Vietnam's population is dealing with birth defects from agent orange that may never go away. These wars have to stop, and their advocates on both sides are immoral and a danger to humanity.
An outrageous standard
Meanwhile, Washington continues to apply to Iran the outrageous standard it used in the run-up to the Iraq war: an unfriendly nation must “prove” it doesn’t have dangerous weapons or a secret program to make them – or potentially face military action.
“Proving a negative” is, to say the least, a difficult obligation to meet: You say you haven’t read Webster’s Dictionary cover to cover? Prove it!
The bottom line is that Iran is still within its unalienable rights to peaceful nuclear technology under the NPT and the Safeguards Agreement – a point even Tehran’s fiercest critics (grudgingly) acknowledge. The only issues it is defying are the illegitimate sanctions and demands of the US and UN, which themselves defy logic and sense.
The world fortunately survived the Cold War with two powerful nations locked in mutual contempt that could annihilate the world within an hours staring each other down for nearly fifty years. We don't need to fall for the fear mongering born of the Bush era nor should we encourage our politicians to parrot the talking points of that unfortunate period. That was not the best of America it was us at or near our worst consumed with fear, hostility and anger.