This isn’t a hadith of the prophet. It’s a hadith of a pathetic ummah:

“There shall come a day when men who have taken shahada shall dance in the streets and celebrate over the death of other men who have taken shahada in order to please the kaffiroon”

In the past few hours news has broken over the execution of Saddam Hussein, former ruler of Iraq and the cameras are beaming a steady stream of muslims dancing in the streets celebrating the event.

SO anticipated was this celebration that there are reports of US soldiers actually setting up the celebratory locations for people to gather in, complete with cordoned off press areas and prompters to help the crowds be sure to face the cameras that are actually filming at any given time.

Whatever you or I may or may not think of Saddam Hussein, he was a man who had taken shahadah, who prostrated toward Mecca, and who greeted people with As Salaam Alaikum. All of this means that, according to the accepted legal definition of a muslim based on the Quran and numerous ahadith, he was a muslim.

Never mind the legality of his execution or the manner in which it was carried out. Never mind the fact that it was intentionally planned and carried out within the same day as the prayers at mount Arafat. Never mind that the media will twist the footage of crowds out celebrating Eid into crowds celebrating Saddam’s death.

What you should mind is the fact that a muslim has died today. Will you make istighfar for him or will you pray for his damnation like a certain Imam in Iraq did?

This isn’t a hadith of the prophet. It’s a hadith of a pathetic ummah:

“There shall come a day when men who have taken shahada shall dance in the streets and celebrate over the death of other men who have taken shahada in order to please the kaffiroon”

This isn’t a hadith of the prophet. It’s a hadith of a pathetic ummah:

“There shall come a day when men who have taken shahada shall dance in the streets and celebrate over the death of other men who have taken shahada in order to please the kaffiroon”

In the past few hours news has broken over the execution of Saddam Hussein, former ruler of Iraq and the cameras are beaming a steady stream of muslims dancing in the streets celebrating the event.

SO anticipated was this celebration that there are reports of US soldiers actually setting up the celebratory locations for people to gather in, complete with cordoned off press areas and prompters to help the crowds be sure to face the cameras that are actually filming at any given time.

Whatever you or I may or may not think of Saddam Hussein, he was a man who had taken shahadah, who prostrated toward Mecca, and who greeted people with As Salaam Alaikum. All of this means that, according to the accepted legal definition of a muslim based on the Quran and numerous ahadith, he was a muslim.

Never mind the legality of his execution or the manner in which it was carried out. Never mind the fact that it was intentionally planned and carried out within the same day as the prayers at mount Arafat. Never mind that the media will twist the footage of crowds out celebrating Eid into crowds celebrating Saddam’s death.

What you should mind is the fact that a muslim has died today. Will you make istighfar for him or will you pray for his damnation like a certain Imam in Iraq did?

This isn’t a hadith of the prophet. It’s a hadith of a pathetic ummah:

“There shall come a day when men who have taken shahada shall dance in the streets and celebrate over the death of other men who have taken shahada in order to please the kaffiroon”

Zionism – Pitting The
West Against Islam
By Professor M. Shahid Alam

The history of Israel has often been read as the saga of a people marked for extinction, who emerged from Nazi death camps — from Auschwitz, Belzec and Treblinka — to establish their own country in 1948.

Without taking away anything from the sufferings of European Jews, I will insist that this way of thinking about Israel — apart from its mythologizing — has merit only as a partisan narrative. It seeks to insulate Israel against the charge of a devastating colonization by falsifying history, by camouflaging the imperialist dynamics that brought it into existence, and denying the perilous future with which it now confronts the Jews, the West and the Islamic world.

When we examine the consequences that have flowed from the creation of Israel, when we contemplate the greater horrors that may yet flow from the logic of Zionism, Israel’s triumphs appear in a different light. We are forced to examine these triumphs with growing dread and incredulity. Israel’s early triumphs, though real from a narrow Zionist standpoint, have slowly mutated by a fateful process into ever-widening circles of conflict that now threaten to escalate into major wars between the West and Islam. Although this conflict has its source in colonial ambitions, the dialectics of this conflict have slowly endowed it with the force and rhetoric of a civilizational war: and perhaps worse, a religious war. This is the tragedy of Israel. It is not a fortuitous tragedy. Driven by history, chance and cunning, the Zionists wedged themselves between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam, and by harnessing the strength of the first against the second, it has produced the conditions of a conflict that has grown deeper over time.

Zionist historiography describes the emergence of Israel as a triumph over Europe’s centuries-old anti-Semitism, in particular over its twentieth-century manifestation, the demonic, industrial plan of the Nazis to stamp out the existence of the Jewish people. But this is a tendentious reading of Zionist history: it obscures the historic offer Zionism made to the West — the offer to rid the West of its Jews, to lead them out of Christendom into Islamic Palestine. In offering to ‘cleanse’ the West of the ‘hated Jews’, the Zionists were working with the anti-Semites, not against them. Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, had a clear understanding of this complementarity between Zionism and anti-Semitism; and he was convinced that Zionism would prevail only if anti-Semitic Europe could be persuaded to work for its success. It is true that Jews and anti-Semites have been historical adversaries, that Jews have been the victims of Europe’s religious vendetta since Rome first embraced Christianity.

However, Zionism would enter into a new relationship with anti-Semitism that would work to the advantage of Jews. The insertion of the Zionist idea in the Western discourse would work a profound change in the relationship between Western Jews and Gentiles. In order to succeed, the Zionists would have to create a new adversary, common to the West and the Jews. In choosing to locate their colonial-settler state in Palestine — and not in Uganda or Argentina — the Zionists had also chosen an adversary that would deepen their partnership with the West. The Islamic world was a great deal more likely to energize the West’s imperialist ambitions and evangelical zeal than Africa or Latin America.

Israel was the product of a partnership that seems unlikely at first blush, between Western Jews and the Western world. It is the powerful alchemy of the Zionist idea that created this partnership. The Zionist project to create a Jewish entity in Palestine possessed the unique power to convert two historical antagonists, Jews and Gentiles, into allies united in a common imperialist enterprise against the Islamic world. The Zionists harnessed the negative energies of the Western world — its imperialism, its anti-Semitism, its crusading nostalgia, its anti-Islamic bigotry, and its deep racism — and focused them on a new imperialist project, the creation of a Western surrogate state in the Islamic heartland.

To the West’s imperialist ambitions, this new colonial project offered a variety of strategic advantages. Israel would be located in the heart of the Islamic world; it would sit astride the junction of Asia, Africa and Europe; it would guard Europe’s gateway to the Indian Ocean; and it could monitor developments in the Persian Gulf with its vast reserves of oil. For the West as well as Europe’s Jews, this was a creative moment: indeed, it was a historical opportunity. For European Jews, it was a stroke of brilliance. Zionism was going to leverage Western power in their cause. As the Zionist plan would unfold, inflicting pain on the Islamic world, evoking Islamic anger against the West and Jews, the complementarities between the two would deepen. In time, new complementarities would be discovered — or created — between the two antagonist strains of Western history. In the United States, the Zionist movement would give encouragement to evangelical Protestants — who looked upon the birth of Israel as the fulfillment of end-time prophecies — and convert them into fanatic partisans of Zionism. In addition, Western civilization, which had hitherto traced its central ideas and institutions to Rome and Athens, would be repackaged as a Judeo-Christian civilization. This reframing not only underscores the Jewish roots of the Western world, it also makes a point of emphasizing that Islam is the outsider, the adversary.

Zionism owes its success solely to this unlikely partnership. On their own, the Zionists could not have gone anywhere. They could not have created Israel by bribing or coercing the Ottomans into granting them a charter to colonize Palestine. Despite his offers of loans, investments, technology and diplomatic expertise, Theodore Herzl was repeatedly rebuffed by the Ottoman sultan. It is even less likely that the Zionists could at any time have mobilized a Jewish army in Europe to invade and occupy Palestine, against Ottoman and Arab opposition to the creation of a Jewish entity on Islamic lands. The Zionist partnership with the West was indispensable for the creation of a Jewish entity.

This partnership was also fateful. It produced a powerful new dialectic, which has encouraged Israel, both as the political center of the Jewish Diaspora and the chief outpost of the West in the heart of the Islamic world, to become more daring in its designs against the Islamic world and beyond. In turn, a wounded and humiliated Islamic world, more resentful and determined after every defeat, has been driven to embrace increasingly radical ideas and methods to recover its dignity and power — and to attain this recovery on the strength of Islamic ideas. This destabilizing dialectic has now brought the West itself into a direct confrontation against the Islamic world. We are now staring into the precipice. Yet do we possess the will to pull back from it?

M. Shahid Alam is a professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston and author of Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on America’s ‘War Against Islam’.

Zionism – Pitting The
West Against Islam
By Professor M. Shahid Alam

The history of Israel has often been read as the saga of a people marked for extinction, who emerged from Nazi death camps — from Auschwitz, Belzec and Treblinka — to establish their own country in 1948.

Without taking away anything from the sufferings of European Jews, I will insist that this way of thinking about Israel — apart from its mythologizing — has merit only as a partisan narrative. It seeks to insulate Israel against the charge of a devastating colonization by falsifying history, by camouflaging the imperialist dynamics that brought it into existence, and denying the perilous future with which it now confronts the Jews, the West and the Islamic world.

When we examine the consequences that have flowed from the creation of Israel, when we contemplate the greater horrors that may yet flow from the logic of Zionism, Israel’s triumphs appear in a different light. We are forced to examine these triumphs with growing dread and incredulity. Israel’s early triumphs, though real from a narrow Zionist standpoint, have slowly mutated by a fateful process into ever-widening circles of conflict that now threaten to escalate into major wars between the West and Islam. Although this conflict has its source in colonial ambitions, the dialectics of this conflict have slowly endowed it with the force and rhetoric of a civilizational war: and perhaps worse, a religious war. This is the tragedy of Israel. It is not a fortuitous tragedy. Driven by history, chance and cunning, the Zionists wedged themselves between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam, and by harnessing the strength of the first against the second, it has produced the conditions of a conflict that has grown deeper over time.

Zionist historiography describes the emergence of Israel as a triumph over Europe’s centuries-old anti-Semitism, in particular over its twentieth-century manifestation, the demonic, industrial plan of the Nazis to stamp out the existence of the Jewish people. But this is a tendentious reading of Zionist history: it obscures the historic offer Zionism made to the West — the offer to rid the West of its Jews, to lead them out of Christendom into Islamic Palestine. In offering to ‘cleanse’ the West of the ‘hated Jews’, the Zionists were working with the anti-Semites, not against them. Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, had a clear understanding of this complementarity between Zionism and anti-Semitism; and he was convinced that Zionism would prevail only if anti-Semitic Europe could be persuaded to work for its success. It is true that Jews and anti-Semites have been historical adversaries, that Jews have been the victims of Europe’s religious vendetta since Rome first embraced Christianity.

However, Zionism would enter into a new relationship with anti-Semitism that would work to the advantage of Jews. The insertion of the Zionist idea in the Western discourse would work a profound change in the relationship between Western Jews and Gentiles. In order to succeed, the Zionists would have to create a new adversary, common to the West and the Jews. In choosing to locate their colonial-settler state in Palestine — and not in Uganda or Argentina — the Zionists had also chosen an adversary that would deepen their partnership with the West. The Islamic world was a great deal more likely to energize the West’s imperialist ambitions and evangelical zeal than Africa or Latin America.

Israel was the product of a partnership that seems unlikely at first blush, between Western Jews and the Western world. It is the powerful alchemy of the Zionist idea that created this partnership. The Zionist project to create a Jewish entity in Palestine possessed the unique power to convert two historical antagonists, Jews and Gentiles, into allies united in a common imperialist enterprise against the Islamic world. The Zionists harnessed the negative energies of the Western world — its imperialism, its anti-Semitism, its crusading nostalgia, its anti-Islamic bigotry, and its deep racism — and focused them on a new imperialist project, the creation of a Western surrogate state in the Islamic heartland.

To the West’s imperialist ambitions, this new colonial project offered a variety of strategic advantages. Israel would be located in the heart of the Islamic world; it would sit astride the junction of Asia, Africa and Europe; it would guard Europe’s gateway to the Indian Ocean; and it could monitor developments in the Persian Gulf with its vast reserves of oil. For the West as well as Europe’s Jews, this was a creative moment: indeed, it was a historical opportunity. For European Jews, it was a stroke of brilliance. Zionism was going to leverage Western power in their cause. As the Zionist plan would unfold, inflicting pain on the Islamic world, evoking Islamic anger against the West and Jews, the complementarities between the two would deepen. In time, new complementarities would be discovered — or created — between the two antagonist strains of Western history. In the United States, the Zionist movement would give encouragement to evangelical Protestants — who looked upon the birth of Israel as the fulfillment of end-time prophecies — and convert them into fanatic partisans of Zionism. In addition, Western civilization, which had hitherto traced its central ideas and institutions to Rome and Athens, would be repackaged as a Judeo-Christian civilization. This reframing not only underscores the Jewish roots of the Western world, it also makes a point of emphasizing that Islam is the outsider, the adversary.

Zionism owes its success solely to this unlikely partnership. On their own, the Zionists could not have gone anywhere. They could not have created Israel by bribing or coercing the Ottomans into granting them a charter to colonize Palestine. Despite his offers of loans, investments, technology and diplomatic expertise, Theodore Herzl was repeatedly rebuffed by the Ottoman sultan. It is even less likely that the Zionists could at any time have mobilized a Jewish army in Europe to invade and occupy Palestine, against Ottoman and Arab opposition to the creation of a Jewish entity on Islamic lands. The Zionist partnership with the West was indispensable for the creation of a Jewish entity.

This partnership was also fateful. It produced a powerful new dialectic, which has encouraged Israel, both as the political center of the Jewish Diaspora and the chief outpost of the West in the heart of the Islamic world, to become more daring in its designs against the Islamic world and beyond. In turn, a wounded and humiliated Islamic world, more resentful and determined after every defeat, has been driven to embrace increasingly radical ideas and methods to recover its dignity and power — and to attain this recovery on the strength of Islamic ideas. This destabilizing dialectic has now brought the West itself into a direct confrontation against the Islamic world. We are now staring into the precipice. Yet do we possess the will to pull back from it?

M. Shahid Alam is a professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston and author of Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on America’s ‘War Against Islam’.

Bush’s Great Leap Forward
By Chris Floyd
12-27-6

The outlines of Bush’s “New Way Forward” or “Great Leap Forward” or “Long Walk Off a Short Pier” in Iraq is now fairly clear. It has three general thrusts: a large increase in troop numbers; a direct assault on the forces of Motqada al-Sadr; and, if possible, an expansion of the war beyond Iraq’s borders through a military strike on Iran.

The troop increase is now certain (if indeed it had ever been in doubt). In the past few days, with the nation distracted by the Christmas holidays (and by the ever-phony and genuinely idiotic “Christmas Wars” eating up media airtime), the Bush Faction has carried out a quiet coup ­ or perhaps a counterrevolutionary purge ­ in the military ranks. Top generals who openly opposed increasing the U.S. occupation force in Iraq have either announced their retirements or else have been compelled to crawl and eat their words in public recantations. (This moral cowardice is even more remarkable when you consider how weak, stupid ­ and deeply unpopular ­ is the “commander-in-chief” who has somehow overawed these stalwart soldiers. One can only imagine that some sort of blackmail must be involved.)

The generals were the last possible obstacle to the war’s precipitous escalation; the national Democrats have already signaled their willingness to countenance a “surge” (the Orwellian propaganda term that has been adopted wholesale by the corporate media to describe the vast expansion of the war). Even those Democrats who have appeared to speak out against it have, almost invariably, couched their objections in weasel-wording terms devoid of any actual oppositional content. “I won’t support a surge unless it’s part of an overall plan to bring our troops home sooner,” is the standard formulation, although the “boldest” among them will sometimes tack on a specific date: “bring our troops home by 2008″ or some such. But of course, any escalation of the war will be presented precisely as a strategy to bring the conflict to a speedier end; thus most Democrats will latch onto that spin and ­ grudgingly or enthusiastically ­ go along. In any case, it’s certain that the Congressional Democrats will not put up a concerted, united effort against an escalation.

And so in the coming weeks, we will see anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 more troops sent to Iraq ­ despite the overwhelming public sentiment against such a policy: only 11 percent of Americans support the idea of escalation, as a new CNN poll reports. This is an astounding level of public opposition to any government policy; I can’t recall anything like it in almost 40 years of observing American politics and studying American history. The fact that the Bush Regime is willing to undertake an action that 89 percent of the American people oppose ­ and what’s more, an action that is guaranteed to cost the lives of many Americans and many billions from the public treasury ­ is a glaring indication of how completely anti-democratic the Bush Faction is, and how utterly dysfunctional the U.S. political system has become.

So the “surge” will come. It will be used to support an all-out assault on the militia of Iraqi nationalist cleric Motqada al-Sadr. A brief attempt by the Bush Faction to isolate Sadr politically ­ by creating a bloc of so-called “moderates” in alliance with the death squad leaders of the violent extremist Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ­ has, as usual, failed miserably. And it has foundered on the same stone that has wrecked most of the Administration’s political boats in Iraq: the refusal of the leading Shiite cleric in the country, the Iranian-born Ayatollah Sistani, to cooperate with American wishes. Sistani refused to bless any attempt to ease out Sadr and thus split the Shiite alliance.

His refusal is one of those “clarifying moments” that the Bushists like to speak about in their degraded political jargon. What they mean by that is any action that minimizes the possibility of a non-violent solution to a political problem that is preventing them from getting whatever they want. They love to be thwarted diplomatically ­ which is why all their diplomatic efforts are so lame-brained, half-hearted, and transparently geared toward ultimate failure; they want to leave open at all times an excuse for military action, which is the only way of “projecting power” that these primitives understand. (Yet they and their sycophants endlessly repeat the racist trope that it is the Arabs who “only understand force.” Here, as in so much else ­ such as their constant condemnations of “terrorist violence” by these state terrorists who have murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people ­ we see the principle of projection at work, on a massive and sinister scale.)

Sistani’s refusal gives the Bushists the “justification” they have craved for launching the attack on Sadr’s forces. In the past months, we have seen them slowly and methodically build up Sadr as the new embodiment of all evil in Iraq. Get rid of Sadr, and the milk and honey (and oil leases) will flow at last in the beleaguered land. We have of course heard this storyline before; in fact, it is the only storyline we ever hear. Get rid of Zarqawi, and the insurgency will die; conquer Fallujah and the insurgency will die; capture Saddam and the insurgency will die; kill Uday and the insurgency will die. If Sadr is killed or captured, there will no doubt be another embodiment of all evil in Iraq coming down the PR pike in short order. (Perhaps Sistani himself will eventually be fitted for the horns.)

Sadr is no sweetheart, of course; he is entirely representative of the violent, obscurant, religious extremism that Bush has empowered throughout most of Iraq with his war of aggression. Yet he is also supported by millions of Iraqis for whom his organization provides many of the social support function and basic human needs that the Bush-installed government cannot provide. He has an army of tens of thousands, which can no doubt be overcome militarily, eventually, but only in a Pyrrhic victory that will leave even more of Iraq a moonscape of ruin and raging hatred.

An assault on Sadr could also trigger Shiite uprisings across the Middle East. But here we must realize that this is not a black mark against the plan in the Bush Faction’s eyes. For it seems clear that an expansion of the war is very much part of the “New Way Forward.” Indeed, many of the most rabid neocons have long talked openly of their hopes for a Shiite uprising in Saudi Arabia that would split the kingdom and ­ in their fantastical dreams ­ give the US direct control over the Saudi oil fields, that now lie primarily in Shiite regions. (Yes, these stunted intellects actually believe that grateful Saudi Shiites will turn over the world’s richest oilfields to their American “benefactors.”)

But beyond those fond wishes, there is the more pressing matter of Iran. Once again under the cover of Christmas, the Bush Faction has taken a series of steps in the past few days to increase the pressure on Tehran exponentially. They have wrung an entirely toothless and pointless “sanctions” measure out the UN Security Council that will have no effect whatsoever on Iran’s nuclear program ­ but will act as an international slap in the face that the Bushists hope will goad the Iranians into some drastic action. In like manner, the Pentagon has sent more ships to the Persian Gulf, to float menacingly off Iran’s coast ­ again, in hopes of provoking some sort of incident from Tehran.

A Christmas Eve story in the New York Times makes this strategy of provocation even more explicit. It is a very curious piece whose only real news value is in what it tells us from between the lines. The Times reports that:

The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.

It was unclear what kind of evidence American officials possessed that the Iranians were planning attacks, and the officials would not identify those being held. One official said that “a lot of material” was seized in the raid, but would not say if it included arms or documents that pointed to planning for attacks. Much of the material was still being examined, the official said.

Nonetheless, the two raids, in central Baghdad, have deeply upset Iraqi government officials, who have been making strenuous efforts to engage Iran on matters of security. At least two of the Iranians were in this country on an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month. It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President Bush.

[Yes, but death-squadder Hakim was a prime mover in the "moderate coalition" gambit; now that Sistani has killed that initiative, there's no need to mollycoddle Hakim. He can be roughed up like all the rest of the darkies.]

American and Iraqi officials have long accused Iran of interfering in this country’s internal affairs [the irony here is way beyond comment ­ CF], but have rarely produced evidence. The administration presented last week’s arrests as a potential confirmation of the linkThe United States is now holding, apparently for the first time, Iranians who it suspects of planning attacks. One senior administration official said, “This is going to be a tense but clarifying moment.”

And here we’re back to the “clarifying moment” to be banked as an excuse for a military strike on Iran when necessary. Bush is here using the same strategy that he suggested to Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq invasion: “Let’s paint some US planes in UN colors, fly ‘em over Iraq and see if Saddam will shoot ‘em down.” This, Bush suggested, would give the two self-proclaimed Christian statesman the “smoking gun” they needed to launch their long-planned invasion. The two Christianists were at that time in the midst of a months-long intensive bombing campaign against Iraq ­ yes, before the war ­ which was also designed, in part, to provoke a “clarifying moment” out of Saddam. As we know, Saddam refused to take the bait ­ and they had to launch the aggression without even a shred of sham legality.

What the Bush Faction is clearly hoping for with this latest series of provocations against Iran is that Tehran will be so unnerved by Bush’s he-man muscles that they will lash out in some fashion. (Preferably by killing Americans somewhere; that would be the best-case scenario to Bush and Cheney. They thrive on the “clarification” that dead Americans gives them.) Here again we have a case of mental lightweights in the throes of projection. The Bushists lash out in knee-jerk fashion when they feel put upon or provoked, even if the lashing is not in their best interests; therefore they ignorantly assume that everyone else does too. This mindset is also part of the background to the impending assault on Sadr. His Mahdi Army launched two separate uprisings against the U.S. occupation in 2004, yet not only is he still walking free, he has become the keystone of the Bush-backed Iraqi government; without his support, the present government will fall. His very presence is a standing reproach to Bush, it insults his ever-shaky manhood. And so, even though a military assault on Sadr will plunge Iraq even deeper into hell ­ and probably increase the risk of terrorist attacks on Americans from angry Shiite radicals ­ Bush will go ahead with the policy anyway. That’s not the only reason for the strategy, of course (although it is murderously stupid from every angle); but it’s certainly a factor in the thinking of the “Decider” as the “New Way Forward” is finalized.

But Iran’s leaders ­ the real leaders, not the herky-jerky blusterer now serving as the nation’s president, who has, Bush-like, just been slapped down by his own electorate in local elections ­ are not as stupid as Bush and his minions. They are not likely to give Bush an excuse to attack their country and kill hundreds or thousands of their people. So in the end, if Bush wants to strike Iran, he will have to do so unilaterally, with either the flimsiest of pretexts or with cooked intelligence, as in the Iraq invasion (or ­ why not be bipartisan? ­ with outright lies about an Iranian attack, à la the “Gulf of Tonkin incident”).

And so there we have Bush’s “Great Leap Forward.” The first two prongs of this strategy seem guaranteed: there will be an escalation of the war and an attack on Sadr. The third thrust ­ expanding the war beyond Iraq ­ seems increasingly likely, but perhaps, at the moment, more of an option to be held in reserve, to be brought out when the first two elements inevitably begin to fail and there is, finally, nothing left for them to do but shoot the moon and see what happens.

Yes, they are that stupid. Yes, they are that criminally reckless. And no, they don’t care how many American soldiers will be slaughtered in the process ­ not to mention (which they never do) the countless Iraqi and Iranian ­ and American ­ civilians who will be killed in direct assaults and the inevitable, generations-long blowback.

It looks like 2007 will be one of those ­ what’s the word? ­ clarifying moments, all right.

Chris Floyd is the author of Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime.

Bush’s Great Leap Forward
By Chris Floyd
12-27-6

The outlines of Bush’s “New Way Forward” or “Great Leap Forward” or “Long Walk Off a Short Pier” in Iraq is now fairly clear. It has three general thrusts: a large increase in troop numbers; a direct assault on the forces of Motqada al-Sadr; and, if possible, an expansion of the war beyond Iraq’s borders through a military strike on Iran.

The troop increase is now certain (if indeed it had ever been in doubt). In the past few days, with the nation distracted by the Christmas holidays (and by the ever-phony and genuinely idiotic “Christmas Wars” eating up media airtime), the Bush Faction has carried out a quiet coup ­ or perhaps a counterrevolutionary purge ­ in the military ranks. Top generals who openly opposed increasing the U.S. occupation force in Iraq have either announced their retirements or else have been compelled to crawl and eat their words in public recantations. (This moral cowardice is even more remarkable when you consider how weak, stupid ­ and deeply unpopular ­ is the “commander-in-chief” who has somehow overawed these stalwart soldiers. One can only imagine that some sort of blackmail must be involved.)

The generals were the last possible obstacle to the war’s precipitous escalation; the national Democrats have already signaled their willingness to countenance a “surge” (the Orwellian propaganda term that has been adopted wholesale by the corporate media to describe the vast expansion of the war). Even those Democrats who have appeared to speak out against it have, almost invariably, couched their objections in weasel-wording terms devoid of any actual oppositional content. “I won’t support a surge unless it’s part of an overall plan to bring our troops home sooner,” is the standard formulation, although the “boldest” among them will sometimes tack on a specific date: “bring our troops home by 2008″ or some such. But of course, any escalation of the war will be presented precisely as a strategy to bring the conflict to a speedier end; thus most Democrats will latch onto that spin and ­ grudgingly or enthusiastically ­ go along. In any case, it’s certain that the Congressional Democrats will not put up a concerted, united effort against an escalation.

And so in the coming weeks, we will see anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 more troops sent to Iraq ­ despite the overwhelming public sentiment against such a policy: only 11 percent of Americans support the idea of escalation, as a new CNN poll reports. This is an astounding level of public opposition to any government policy; I can’t recall anything like it in almost 40 years of observing American politics and studying American history. The fact that the Bush Regime is willing to undertake an action that 89 percent of the American people oppose ­ and what’s more, an action that is guaranteed to cost the lives of many Americans and many billions from the public treasury ­ is a glaring indication of how completely anti-democratic the Bush Faction is, and how utterly dysfunctional the U.S. political system has become.

So the “surge” will come. It will be used to support an all-out assault on the militia of Iraqi nationalist cleric Motqada al-Sadr. A brief attempt by the Bush Faction to isolate Sadr politically ­ by creating a bloc of so-called “moderates” in alliance with the death squad leaders of the violent extremist Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ­ has, as usual, failed miserably. And it has foundered on the same stone that has wrecked most of the Administration’s political boats in Iraq: the refusal of the leading Shiite cleric in the country, the Iranian-born Ayatollah Sistani, to cooperate with American wishes. Sistani refused to bless any attempt to ease out Sadr and thus split the Shiite alliance.

His refusal is one of those “clarifying moments” that the Bushists like to speak about in their degraded political jargon. What they mean by that is any action that minimizes the possibility of a non-violent solution to a political problem that is preventing them from getting whatever they want. They love to be thwarted diplomatically ­ which is why all their diplomatic efforts are so lame-brained, half-hearted, and transparently geared toward ultimate failure; they want to leave open at all times an excuse for military action, which is the only way of “projecting power” that these primitives understand. (Yet they and their sycophants endlessly repeat the racist trope that it is the Arabs who “only understand force.” Here, as in so much else ­ such as their constant condemnations of “terrorist violence” by these state terrorists who have murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people ­ we see the principle of projection at work, on a massive and sinister scale.)

Sistani’s refusal gives the Bushists the “justification” they have craved for launching the attack on Sadr’s forces. In the past months, we have seen them slowly and methodically build up Sadr as the new embodiment of all evil in Iraq. Get rid of Sadr, and the milk and honey (and oil leases) will flow at last in the beleaguered land. We have of course heard this storyline before; in fact, it is the only storyline we ever hear. Get rid of Zarqawi, and the insurgency will die; conquer Fallujah and the insurgency will die; capture Saddam and the insurgency will die; kill Uday and the insurgency will die. If Sadr is killed or captured, there will no doubt be another embodiment of all evil in Iraq coming down the PR pike in short order. (Perhaps Sistani himself will eventually be fitted for the horns.)

Sadr is no sweetheart, of course; he is entirely representative of the violent, obscurant, religious extremism that Bush has empowered throughout most of Iraq with his war of aggression. Yet he is also supported by millions of Iraqis for whom his organization provides many of the social support function and basic human needs that the Bush-installed government cannot provide. He has an army of tens of thousands, which can no doubt be overcome militarily, eventually, but only in a Pyrrhic victory that will leave even more of Iraq a moonscape of ruin and raging hatred.

An assault on Sadr could also trigger Shiite uprisings across the Middle East. But here we must realize that this is not a black mark against the plan in the Bush Faction’s eyes. For it seems clear that an expansion of the war is very much part of the “New Way Forward.” Indeed, many of the most rabid neocons have long talked openly of their hopes for a Shiite uprising in Saudi Arabia that would split the kingdom and ­ in their fantastical dreams ­ give the US direct control over the Saudi oil fields, that now lie primarily in Shiite regions. (Yes, these stunted intellects actually believe that grateful Saudi Shiites will turn over the world’s richest oilfields to their American “benefactors.”)

But beyond those fond wishes, there is the more pressing matter of Iran. Once again under the cover of Christmas, the Bush Faction has taken a series of steps in the past few days to increase the pressure on Tehran exponentially. They have wrung an entirely toothless and pointless “sanctions” measure out the UN Security Council that will have no effect whatsoever on Iran’s nuclear program ­ but will act as an international slap in the face that the Bushists hope will goad the Iranians into some drastic action. In like manner, the Pentagon has sent more ships to the Persian Gulf, to float menacingly off Iran’s coast ­ again, in hopes of provoking some sort of incident from Tehran.

A Christmas Eve story in the New York Times makes this strategy of provocation even more explicit. It is a very curious piece whose only real news value is in what it tells us from between the lines. The Times reports that:

The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.

It was unclear what kind of evidence American officials possessed that the Iranians were planning attacks, and the officials would not identify those being held. One official said that “a lot of material” was seized in the raid, but would not say if it included arms or documents that pointed to planning for attacks. Much of the material was still being examined, the official said.

Nonetheless, the two raids, in central Baghdad, have deeply upset Iraqi government officials, who have been making strenuous efforts to engage Iran on matters of security. At least two of the Iranians were in this country on an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month. It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President Bush.

[Yes, but death-squadder Hakim was a prime mover in the "moderate coalition" gambit; now that Sistani has killed that initiative, there's no need to mollycoddle Hakim. He can be roughed up like all the rest of the darkies.]

American and Iraqi officials have long accused Iran of interfering in this country’s internal affairs [the irony here is way beyond comment ­ CF], but have rarely produced evidence. The administration presented last week’s arrests as a potential confirmation of the linkThe United States is now holding, apparently for the first time, Iranians who it suspects of planning attacks. One senior administration official said, “This is going to be a tense but clarifying moment.”

And here we’re back to the “clarifying moment” to be banked as an excuse for a military strike on Iran when necessary. Bush is here using the same strategy that he suggested to Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq invasion: “Let’s paint some US planes in UN colors, fly ‘em over Iraq and see if Saddam will shoot ‘em down.” This, Bush suggested, would give the two self-proclaimed Christian statesman the “smoking gun” they needed to launch their long-planned invasion. The two Christianists were at that time in the midst of a months-long intensive bombing campaign against Iraq ­ yes, before the war ­ which was also designed, in part, to provoke a “clarifying moment” out of Saddam. As we know, Saddam refused to take the bait ­ and they had to launch the aggression without even a shred of sham legality.

What the Bush Faction is clearly hoping for with this latest series of provocations against Iran is that Tehran will be so unnerved by Bush’s he-man muscles that they will lash out in some fashion. (Preferably by killing Americans somewhere; that would be the best-case scenario to Bush and Cheney. They thrive on the “clarification” that dead Americans gives them.) Here again we have a case of mental lightweights in the throes of projection. The Bushists lash out in knee-jerk fashion when they feel put upon or provoked, even if the lashing is not in their best interests; therefore they ignorantly assume that everyone else does too. This mindset is also part of the background to the impending assault on Sadr. His Mahdi Army launched two separate uprisings against the U.S. occupation in 2004, yet not only is he still walking free, he has become the keystone of the Bush-backed Iraqi government; without his support, the present government will fall. His very presence is a standing reproach to Bush, it insults his ever-shaky manhood. And so, even though a military assault on Sadr will plunge Iraq even deeper into hell ­ and probably increase the risk of terrorist attacks on Americans from angry Shiite radicals ­ Bush will go ahead with the policy anyway. That’s not the only reason for the strategy, of course (although it is murderously stupid from every angle); but it’s certainly a factor in the thinking of the “Decider” as the “New Way Forward” is finalized.

But Iran’s leaders ­ the real leaders, not the herky-jerky blusterer now serving as the nation’s president, who has, Bush-like, just been slapped down by his own electorate in local elections ­ are not as stupid as Bush and his minions. They are not likely to give Bush an excuse to attack their country and kill hundreds or thousands of their people. So in the end, if Bush wants to strike Iran, he will have to do so unilaterally, with either the flimsiest of pretexts or with cooked intelligence, as in the Iraq invasion (or ­ why not be bipartisan? ­ with outright lies about an Iranian attack, à la the “Gulf of Tonkin incident”).

And so there we have Bush’s “Great Leap Forward.” The first two prongs of this strategy seem guaranteed: there will be an escalation of the war and an attack on Sadr. The third thrust ­ expanding the war beyond Iraq ­ seems increasingly likely, but perhaps, at the moment, more of an option to be held in reserve, to be brought out when the first two elements inevitably begin to fail and there is, finally, nothing left for them to do but shoot the moon and see what happens.

Yes, they are that stupid. Yes, they are that criminally reckless. And no, they don’t care how many American soldiers will be slaughtered in the process ­ not to mention (which they never do) the countless Iraqi and Iranian ­ and American ­ civilians who will be killed in direct assaults and the inevitable, generations-long blowback.

It looks like 2007 will be one of those ­ what’s the word? ­ clarifying moments, all right.

Chris Floyd is the author of Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime.

Are Bush and Cheney Planning an Early Attack on Iran?
Crime of the Century

Counter Punch | December 25, 2006
DAVE LINDORFF

Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for an unprovoked attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, with a carrier strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report. Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public with the group’s conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that country.

That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney’s war plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region “in a display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country.” (We’ve all seen what “displays of force” by the Bush administration actually turn out to be.)

The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker, where the only consideration is not what’s good for the country, but what’s good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you’re losing your war in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush’s ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon’s were just before his resignation, and Cheney’s numbers have been in the teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it all–and maybe for your heads, too–expanding the conflict and putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive even if desperate gambit.

From the nation’s point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S. could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that–an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf, together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region, are capable of destroying most of Iran’s nuclear facilities, as well as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory, the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic leaders–the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week’s local elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country’s hardliners. Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on to fight to the death to defend their country.

Moreover, while its military may be no match for America’s, Iran has many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq, with close links to Iraq’s Shia factions, Iran’s military has trained and armed the Badr Brigades–the largest and best-armed faction in Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.

Additionally, Iraq’s intelligence services have connections with Shia groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US military targets there.

More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran’s hundreds of stockpiled anti-ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one quarter of the world’s oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.

Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently, there’s no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil would do to the U.S. economy–or to the global economy.

Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the U.S.–the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.

If Bush and Cheney perpetrate this crime, the Congress should initiate immediate impeachment proceedings and should simultaneously pass legislation terminating funding for the war. The important thing now is for the American people to register their opposition to this war before it happens. Call your senators and your representative and let them know you don’t want it to happen, and you want impeachment if it does. And add your name to the petition against war. Also mark down January 27 in your calendar, for the big march and rally against war and for impeachment in Washington, D.C. (to be followed by two days of lobbying Congress on Jan. 28-29.

Finally, send this story to everyone you know, and urge them to do the same. At this point, with Democrats still cowering in their offices, only the American people can stop this madness.

Are Bush and Cheney Planning an Early Attack on Iran?
Crime of the Century

Counter Punch | December 25, 2006
DAVE LINDORFF

Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for an unprovoked attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, with a carrier strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report. Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public with the group’s conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that country.

That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney’s war plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region “in a display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country.” (We’ve all seen what “displays of force” by the Bush administration actually turn out to be.)

The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker, where the only consideration is not what’s good for the country, but what’s good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you’re losing your war in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush’s ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon’s were just before his resignation, and Cheney’s numbers have been in the teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it all–and maybe for your heads, too–expanding the conflict and putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive even if desperate gambit.

From the nation’s point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S. could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that–an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf, together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region, are capable of destroying most of Iran’s nuclear facilities, as well as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory, the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic leaders–the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week’s local elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country’s hardliners. Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on to fight to the death to defend their country.

Moreover, while its military may be no match for America’s, Iran has many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq, with close links to Iraq’s Shia factions, Iran’s military has trained and armed the Badr Brigades–the largest and best-armed faction in Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.

Additionally, Iraq’s intelligence services have connections with Shia groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US military targets there.

More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran’s hundreds of stockpiled anti-ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one quarter of the world’s oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.

Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently, there’s no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil would do to the U.S. economy–or to the global economy.

Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the U.S.–the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.

If Bush and Cheney perpetrate this crime, the Congress should initiate immediate impeachment proceedings and should simultaneously pass legislation terminating funding for the war. The important thing now is for the American people to register their opposition to this war before it happens. Call your senators and your representative and let them know you don’t want it to happen, and you want impeachment if it does. And add your name to the petition against war. Also mark down January 27 in your calendar, for the big march and rally against war and for impeachment in Washington, D.C. (to be followed by two days of lobbying Congress on Jan. 28-29.

Finally, send this story to everyone you know, and urge them to do the same. At this point, with Democrats still cowering in their offices, only the American people can stop this madness.