Not again!

NEW YORK—The drumbeats have been getting louder, and more insistent. The hawks, albeit of the chicken variety, are out in force. It’s a déjà vu scenario, a war dance that serves as prelude to almost every foreign adventure the mighty United States has embarked on, particularly when it comes to a much smaller country. I am of course referring to the macho thumping on the chest, the testosterone-fueled rhetoric that demands the U.S. be more aggressive in making sure Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. Not that Iran’s nuclear weapons, if ever developed, would directly threaten the U.S.—North Korea in this regard is much more frightening.—but a military strike would be to supplement Israel’s own drive to bomb Iran’s facilities.

Memories are indeed short. There’s a very good chance that the mistakes made in Iraq (remember the non-existent weapons of mass destruction?) and Afghanistan will be overlooked, proving once again the truth of that adage, that those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Have people forgotten about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? These misadventures have so far cost more than $1 trillion, 300 million: $800 billion in Iraq, and more than $500 billion in Afghanistan. These two wars, begun by the Bush and Cheney horror show, have caused the meaningless deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and 1,780 in Afghanistan, not to mention far more Iraqi and Afghani mostly civilian casualties. Most of those pressing for a preemptive war (for that is what this would be), particularly among the Republicans, have never fought in a war. And those who have are much less bellicose in discussing a strategy vis à vis Iran.

I have no love for the ayatollahs of Iran or for its Holocaust-denying president Ahmadinejad. None for the right-wing government of Israel’s Netanyahu that continues to build settlements on Palestinian land while arguing hypocritically that it desires peace, fails to protect women from the rabid, misogynistic rants (and worse) of its ultra-orthodox sects, and treats Arab Israelis as second-class citizens or even criminals, e.g., Israel’s Foreign Minister has proposed executing Arab members of the Israeli Parliament who have the temerity to meet with Hamas.

The 1980 population of Jewish settlers in the West Bank was 12,000; today, there are more than 300,000 and counting. There is much to detest in both governments. Certainly, both have a right to exist, Israel as much as Iran. And, yes, a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat, but no one is exempt from this charge, nor from the universal fear of mass annihilations and a global nuclear winter brought on by these weapons. Not the United States, not India, not Pakistan, not Russia, not North Korea, and certainly not Israel, which will neither confirm nor deny that it does possess such weaponry—an official stance that reminds me of how the U.S Navy, in the days of Subic and Clark, when asked if any of its ships using Subic Bay had nuclear weapons, would neither confirm nor deny.

How can the United States say of any country that it cannot, must not, have nuclear weapons, when it itself has 5,500—albeit down from a peak of 70,000 warheads developed between 1945 and 1990? Exactly how does one guarantee that a nuclear-tipped U.S. missile will kill only the certifiable bad guys (and girls)? Israel, for its part, is believed to have between 100 and 200 warheads. Like India, Pakistan, and North Korea, Israel tellingly won’t sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In response to a 2009 resolution passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calling on Israel to open its nuclear facilities to inspection, the Israeli delegate stated, “Israel will not cooperate in any matter with this resolution.”

The strident and increasingly hawkish tone of U.S. public discourse relating to Iran underscores the disproportionate influence of the Israel lobbying group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Israel gets $3 billion in U.S. direct assistance every year, which is a fifth of the foreign-aid budget of the United States. You would think that given its reliance on the U.S. for $3 billion, Israel would be more amenable to U.S. influence. Au contraire: It is the U.S. that seems to follow Israel’s every bend in the diplomatic river, with AIPAC in the role of river pilot. In contrast, another Jewish lobbying group, J Street, favors diplomacy over a military solution. Describing itself as a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” advocacy group, J Street believes in “the right of Palestinians to a sovereign state of their own” and that “ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the best interests of Israel, the United States, the Palestinians, and the region as a whole.” Disappointingly, even as President Obama criticizes those who talk “loosely about war with Iran,” the political establishment in Washington clearly prefers the red meat offered up by AIPAC.

One plausible reason for the disproportionate influence of the hawkish AIPAC is that any criticism of the Israel state, of Zionism, no matter how reasonable and well founded, is almost automatically categorized as anti-Semitic. According to this convoluted logic, to lobby against war on Iran is to lobby against Israel. In essence, it isn’t the fog of war we need to worry about; it is the fog leading up to the fog of war.

Copyright L.H. Francia 2012