Dangerous When Cornered

It's too bad that a blog that set out to be about realizeable dreams for the future has to be so depressing so often. Every time I try to get out of it they pull me back in. I try not to add one more voice to a chorus, but to say what needs to be said that I'm not hearing others say, loudly or well enough, or at all. Even if the only effect is to further depress my few readers, and drive away my last remaining friends.

What people are not talking enough about right now is Iran, and the dangerous rhetoric coming out of Washington. While the public finally catching on to Smirk as a major evildoer of our time, and the worst president in U.S. history, is cause for some sense of relief at least, it is also a cause for worry. Because as Richard Nixon almost proved, a vicious unconscious soul is more dangerous when cornered than an ordinary animal fighting for its life.

It's more or less documented that Nixon was stopped from doing his worst, though the culture of the time was far less crazy than the neocon Washington is today. But who will stop Cheney and Bush? So far, nobody. Their poll numbers tank to the point that majorities don't trust them on anything. But they keep at it--an unrelenting assault on the future, in every conceivable way.

Smirk is on a speaking tour, brazenly promoting his policy of preemption, which is nothing less than the same naked use of dictatorial power he asserts within this country, except aimed at the entire world. Two-thirds of the country being against him doesn't bother him a bit, as long as he's got the office and his finger on the triggers.

In the past few weeks, the Bushites have dialed up the rhetoric on Iran, sounding suspiciously like they did just before launching their attack on Iraq, justified by nothing but lies and imperial power.

Here is all sane people have to know about Iran: Iran is unlikely to have a nuclear arsenal until 2016. That's right--a decade from now. So exactly what's the rush? Right now, an American air attack to take out suspected nuclear facilities in Iran will result in a barrage of missiles, which Iran does have, on American military ships in the Gulf, perhaps other military targets, or on Israel, or both. Israel will respond with bombing, and if it carries out its threats, with a nuclear attack on Iran's cities. Apart from unleashing nuclear destruction, it will mean a frenzy of war and instability in the Middle East and perhaps beyond, with unforeseeable consequences, except the one most likely: a disruption of oil exports that will send the international economy into chaos.

The U.S. is a strong country with many resources. But there is also a strong chance that a fast-moving chain of events like this will be truly apocalyptic. That's certainly a possibility. Iraq may ruin us, in combination with the Climate Crisis and other factors, in the next decade or two. But folly in Iran could be an immediate and immense disaster.

It's time for that kind of alarm to be raised, and loudly. It's irresponsible for politicans, including Senator Russ Finegold, to be talking about the "option" of militarily attacking Iran.

Some believe that the Pentagon would do what they were apparently ready to do with Nixon---they could defy Bush's order. That would precipitate a whole other crisis. It's better for our leaders to say now in no uncertain terms that this easy chickenhawk rhetoric of military threat is intolerable.