BTW, my car's anti-war bumper stickers seem to be having an effect. As I was getting into my car this morning, a guy in a passing car flipped me the bird. Oh what fun it is living in the 'burbs (Torrance, CA). When we moved here, a friend warned us that it was like jumping into the Wayback Machine to return to the '50s. Yes it is, complete with a lot of houses with permanent flag poles and permanently raised flags. Good news: driving on Pacific Coast Highway, I see significantly fewer "Dubya" and "Bush/Cheney" stickers than I used to.
On 5/18/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> The article below by Aijaz Ahmed in Frontline, the leading Indian biweekly,
> is is well worth reading. It draws on Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece and
> other material, establishing how low-yield nuclear strikes on Iran are a
> real possibiity - in fact, the only credible military option available to
> the US if the decision is made to go to war. Ahmed's conclusion: "Maybe it
> will happen, maybe not. Only Bush, Cheney & company would know for sure."
>
> But probably they don't know for sure at this point; I expect that will
> mostly depend on a) whether Iran yields to the intense US pressure being put
> on them to freeze their nuclear program via the Western Europeans, Russians,
> and Chinese with whom the Iranians have important and developing economic
> relations, and b) whether the Bush administration can fashion a strong
> consensus for such action within the US ruling class, where there are
> powerful voices adamantly opposed to an attack, including many who
> previously warned Iraq would weaken rather than strengthen US global global
> power and who are still smarting from having had to fall in line behind the
> invasion.
>
> The Washington Post, one of the house organs of the US bourgeoisie, has
> lately been running articles warning against military action - including by
> Israel as American proxy -the most recent of which was by Henry Kissinger on
> Tuesday
> (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051501200.html).
> This faction believes US economic power - exercised through its huge capital
> and consumer markets and the threat to block access to them - is more
> effective than military action in securing compliance from America's allies
> and enemies alike. On the other hand, there's a widespread feeling on the
> left, and even beyond, that the the US economic position is collapsing and
> its ruling class is so desperate, parts of it irrationally so, that it will
> do whatever it takes militarily to pursue it's imperialist agenda,
> especially in the energy-rich regions of the world. I'm not yet convinced,
> but Iran looms as a litmus test of that proposition.
>
> * * *
> The imperial nuclear order
> BY Aijaz Ahmed
> Frontline
> May 6-19 2006
>
> THE possibility of a nuclear strike by the United States against Iran has
> now entered mainstream political discourse in the U.S. This needs to be seen
> in the perspective of:
>
> *U.S. determination to attack Iran but the virtual impossibility of
> achieving all its objectives through non-nuclear means;
>
> *the predominance, at the highest levels of the Bush administration, of men
> who believe that problems of a global war and the consequent overstretch can
> and should be resolved by deploying "mini-nukes" - not retreat, but
> escalation to a higher level;
>
> *the much wider spread of actual nuclear weapons among the key U.S. allies
> than is ever revealed in the mainstream media; and, most crucially,
>
> *the immense nuclear superiority the U.S. has kept gaining since the
> collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent doctrine of "usable nukes"
> it has developed during the Bush presidency.
>
> The thought of using nuclear weapons becomes thinkable because the U.S. has
> unrivalled capacity to do so, without any fear of retaliation either from
> its victims, Iran for instance, or Russia with its degraded arsenal and
> China with its very rudimentary capacity.
>
> Full: http://www.flonnet.com/fl2309/stories/20060519000905800.htm
>
>
>
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-- Jim Devine / "the world still seems stuck in greed-lock, ruled by fossilized fools fueled by fossil fuels." -- Swami Beyondananda