sunnuntaina, elokuuta 06, 2006

Spilling Over from Rigorous Intuition (where this cuttlefish has been lurking when awol from this watery home...)

Here’s another darkling log for the fire. I was having an ethereal drink over at Billmon’s Whiskey Bar yesterday when I happened upon two connected unpleasantries. One was a startling bit of attempted humor from the boys and girls over at the Council on Foreign Relations. Apparently well aware of their sinister reputation, they made a strangely jeering jest at the expense of folks like us when they said (after introducing the luminous panel which was discussing the topic of “The Emerging Shia Crescent”):

"So for those of you who are conspiracy theorists and think that the council controls the world, this is further additional ammunition that we in fact do just that."

If the topic that the panel had embarked upon were just some run of the mill rich folks exploiting poor folks fodder, such a remark might have been merely arrogant, but since this Shia Crescent thing is anything but typical, the ‘joke’ really does take on sinister overtones.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10866/emerging_shia_crescent_symposium.html

The best explanation of the imminent Crescent Crisis actually comes, not from the den of those CFRers, but from the Whiskey Bar, a decidedly non-CFR site, , which Jeff has linked and which I’ve often visited in the past but normally find a little too focused on straightforward politics—the known unknowns are, I think, too seldom included in Billmon’s otherwise concise analyses. This time, however, he was zeroed right in on the CFR’s topic du jour and dark clouds quickly gathered, even without any extra dimensions. He started out by discussing the apparent “success” of the antiwar wing of the Democrats and “Left Blogistan” in putting ‘I-suck-chimpface’ Liebermann on the ropes in his race against Ned Lamont on Connecticut, which Billmon saw as deeply flawed because it only served to obfuscate a much bigger problem, which was the shift from Iraq to Lebanon in the mad designs of the desperately resurgent neocons. The reasoning goes like this: Lamont only opposes the war in Iraq and has, in fact, already pledged unconditional support for Israel, which, when coupled with Howard Dean’s recent and rather showy self-abasement at the feet of AIPAC and the insane lust for WWIII on the part of the mad dog neocons augers no good at all for the rest of the world. Read Billmon’s prediction:

The lesson learned from the Democratic reaction to Israel's war of choice is that the Dems are only likely to oppose war as long as the war in question can be framed as a fight against Iraqi insurgents and/or Shi'a death squads, rather than a fight for Israel. But the Iraq occupation isn't going to fit neatly into that frame much longer. In fact it's already slipped out of it. The Dems -- always a little slow on the uptake -- just haven't realized it yet. But when the time comes to choose (for Israel, or against war with Iran) I fully expect to see Ned Lamont in the front ranks of the pro-war phalanx, right next to the last great white Democratic anti-war hope, Howard Dean.

People tell me I shouldn't get hung up on this because, you know, if the Dems get in they'll make sure the seniors get their Social Security checks a little faster -- or they'll keep the Supreme Court out of the hands of legal madmen or do something about global climate change or save the whales or whatever else it is that's supposed to make the Democratic Party infinitely preferable to the Republicans.

It's not that I discount these differences entirely -- although they're easily oversold. But compared to the fate that awaits the republic, and the world, if the United States deliberately starts a war with Iran, those other considerations start to look pretty insignificant. I mean, we're talking about World War III here, fought by people who want to use tactical nuclear weapons. I'm supposed to put that out of my mind because the Dems might be a little bit more generous about funding the VA budget??? I'm sorry, but that's fucking nuts.

The truth is that on the most important issue of our time -- the cliff that drops into total darkness -- the only real opposition left in this country is in the Pentagon, where, according to Sy Hersh, at least some of the generals are trying to stall the march to war. Plus whatever scattered resistance is left in the intelligence agencies following the purges of the past couple of years.

It is a stunning testament to the political devolution of this country that the most effective anti-war movement in America is inside the walls of the Pentagon or buried deep in the bowels of the CIA! But that is the reality, thanks in no small part to the Dems and the Israel lobby.

I had hopes once that the Democratic Party could be reformed, that progressives could burrow back in or build their own parallel organizations (like MoveOn.org or even Left Blogistan) and eventually gain control of the party and its agenda -- much as the conservatives took over the GOP in the 1980s and '90s.

But I think we've run out of time. Events -- from 9/11 on -- have moved too fast and pushed us too far towards the clash of civilizations that most sane people dread but the neocons desperately want. The Dems are now just the cadet branch of the War Party. While the party nomenklatura is finally, after three bloody years, making dovish noises about the Iraq fiasco, I think their loyalty to Israel, or their fear of the Israel lobby, almost certainly will snap them back into line during the coming "debate" over war with Iran.

I hope like hell I'm wrong about this, but I don't think I am. So I guess I'll just have to accept being labeled a traitor to the cause -- or whatever the hardcore partisans are calling it. Sure, why not. They're certainly free to follow their party over the cliff (we're all going over it anyway) but I'd at least prefer to do it with my eyes open. (Posted by billmon at August 3, 2006 10:45 PM)


You can read the whole thing for yourself http://billmon.org/archives/002627.html,
(and it’s well worth your time, even--if you really have snerves of steel--this scary DoD flash animation of nuclear bunker-busters in Iran: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/nuclear-bunker-buster-rnep-animation.html), but despite the depth of this Whiskey Bar analysis, there’s still something missing, and that’s where the normal gets para. I know we’ve been dancing with unease around the issue of the upcoming Armageddon a lot of late, but there has to be more to it than what even the Whiskey Bar has given us. For example, where does the very public display of those giant triangles that Jeff wrote about fit into this insanity? Are they “ours” or are they something from very far away? Would the technology/intelligence behind these things allow us to blow ourselves up, as these assholes seem bent on doing? (Or are the neocons and their filthy military industrialist friends the “intelligence” behind the triangles?) How do we reconcile what we know about what we don’t know with what we can see as clearly as the writing on the Whiskey Bar’s walls?