Thursday, January 27, 2005

Sounds like "Terror"

Remember the "War on Terror"? That was the one just before the "War on Tyranny," which is America's sacred mission for Bush's second term. (Here's another blast from the past: remember Bush's "humble foreign policy"?)

I can see how easy it is to confuse Terror and Tyranny. That would appear to be the idea. Slur them like the lord of Crawford's potemkin farm, and they sound pretty much the same. After all, they both start with "T," and have, according to the Pentagon accounting office, the same number of syllables.

Clearly this is part of the Iran rollout, Tehran having been found to have a terror deficit. And everything seems on track for a summer strike:

USAF playing cat and mouse game over Iran

NEW YORK -- The U.S. Air Force is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Iran's ayatollahs, flying American combat aircraft into Iranian airspace in an attempt to lure Tehran into turning on air defense radars, thus allowing U.S. pilots to grid the system for use in future targeting data, administration officials said.

"We have to know which targets to attack and how to attack them," said one, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The flights, which have been going on for weeks, are being launched from sites in Afghanistan and Iraq and are part of Bush administration attempts collect badly needed intelligence on Iran's possible nuclear weapons development sites, these sources said, speaking on condition of strict anonymity.

"These Iranian air defense positions are not just being observed, they're being 'templated,'" an administration official said, explaining that the flights are part of a U.S. effort to develop "an electronic order of battle for Iran" in case of actual conflict.

In the ramp-up to Iraq, many historical analogies were drawn to Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. I think they were mistaken. Iraq was more of a Czechoslavakia circa 1938, as the world's powers conceded a "small country far away of which we know little." Tut-tut, and all that, but Hitler had the Sudetenland, and then the rest. It was when he took the rest, the Czech territories, and absorbed for the first time non-Germanic people into the Reich, that Europe braced for war before the tripwire of Poland.

The UN washed its hands of Iraq and let Bush have his war to "disarm Saddam." Two years later, with no weapons to show for the blood and Iraqis staring at a perpetual occupation, the world knows appeasement is worth less than zero. The neocons will either be stopped, or they'll carry the world before them. They are in their strength, and there's no compromise.

Where to stop them.

Iran, I believe, is the tripwire. The point of no return for America.

Hitler didn't really believe Britain would go to war over Poland. He thought Chamberlain would back down again, and concede him another easy conquest. But Britain and France, finally, had their "Fool me once, shame on you" moment.

Though Russia and China are not obligated to its defence, let's not kid ourselves: Iran is of strategic importance to both. Particularly China. Iran is its principal source of petroleum and natural gas. American control of its reserves could be calamatous to its, and Russia's, 21st Century energy strategy. The Chinese leadership can read the PNAC documents as well as we can. They know encirclement when they see it. They would be foolish not to do something. And don't think they aren't now.

It needn't be military. As I write, China may be launching a pre-emptive economic war against the United States. Yesterday's announcement at the World Economic Forum in Davos that China, America's largest creditor, has lost faith in the US dollar and will seek to broaden the yuan's exchange rate with a "basket of currencies," could be the equivalent of a decapitation strike.

And meanwhile, there's the big story. The one my children will inherit:

Study finds Earth temperature "skyrocketing"

The largest ever climate-change experiment reveals that scientists may have dramatically underestimated the threat of global warming.

The study by British scientists, which is published today, found the planet's global temperature could climb by between 2C and 11C because of skyrocketing levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. That more than doubles the current prediction of a 1.4C to 4.5C rise this century.

"When we started out we didn't expect anything like this," said Oxford University's David Stainforth, chief scientist for climateprediction.net.... "If this is the case, it's very dramatic and very scary," Mr Stainforth said.

...

Even rises that are more modest are expected to trigger disastrous changes, including melting glaciers, sea-level rises, shut-down of the Gulf Stream, and increases in droughts, cyclones and other extreme weather events. The new results follow two reports in last week's edition of Science, showing that global warming probably caused the "Great Dying".


Human life is simply too short for most of us to care much about environmental consquences. Or, it has been. What's changed is not our lifespan, but the Earth's carrying capacity for our bad choices.

Even if the Bush White House doesn't trigger a fiscal meltdown, or a global hot war, or both, we have maybe five or ten good years left to enjoy the poisonous fruits of our over-devoloped world. We could spend that time making good choices for a change - make a deathbed conversion with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energies. But that would take a Manhattan Project-like commitment on a global scale, and Manhattan Projects have only arisen when there are people to kill, not planets to save. So I'd say the choice has been made, and it's not a wise one.

The Earth can be a bit of a tyrant, too. Good luck with that.

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your writing is brilliant but jeez, today's installment was beyond depressing.

All the best,
SFMike

8:00 p.m.  
Blogger erlenda said...

The trouble with every study coming from Britain, the US or Australia is, that it is hard to trust them.
You said, that maybe, the USA is deliberately sabotaging Kyoto and other efforts to protect the climate, because climate change will hurt Europe more than America. But the one country to be hurt most except for Iceland, will be Britain. So why would Britain side with the USA in their wars instead of with Europe, which is trying to come to agreements with the rest of the world?
I`ve heard experts in Europe and Scandinavia say, that the horror-szenario of "The Day after Tommorrow" is extremely unlikely. Even if the Gulfstream shuts down, the low-pressure areas which originally drive on the Gulfstream will still be there. The winters might get a bit stronger and for continental Europe, the summers will probably not change much.

And then, who knows, when the polar-ice melts, and temperatures rise, more water will evaporate and so more rain will fall, so depending on where the rain falls, there might even be more fresh water available lessening the water crises around the world.

The way I see it, there is far too much fear-mongering from all over the place.Fear-mongering against so called "terrorism" is used to bring on the generational warfare against the Muslim world.
Fear-mongering about "peak-oil" or "climate-catastrophy" might quite possibly be used to justify "population-reduction" or with other words mass-genocide.
And every government, that actually cares for the welfare of its people, will soon probably be called a "tyranny" aimed to receive the Orwellian gifts of "democracy", "liberty" and "freedom" through bombs and missiles with depleted uranium or worse.

8:47 p.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

There may be an analogy to Iraq in Nazi Germany's experience in Yugoslavia.

It was an unnecessary war, even according to Nazi calculations. (Hitler was drawn to the Balkans by Mussolini's blunders, and wanted to punish Yugoslavia for its reneging on a treaty.) Operation Barbarossa was delayed for the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece, which meant winter was able to stall the Germans and give the Soviets opportunity to regroup and save Moscow.

Yugoslavia's Croat/Serb divide was exacerbated and exploited by the Nazi occupiers. (And more successfully than the US is managing to do with Iraqs Shias and Sunnis.)

Most significantly, Yugoslavia's partisans waged a punishing guerrilla campaign, the most successful of WWII. It tied down and bled large numbers of German troops.

Successful though it was, it didn't inhibit Hitler's misadventures.

9:51 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, I am also depressed about the state of our world. I have grandkids, and I had hoped for a decent future for them. That is why I have become so involved politically and environmentally. However, I fear, as you do, that it is too late. I think we are already in the grips of horrendous climate change. I guess it's just a matter of what is going to get us first: global war, severe climate change, the plague the dead microbiologists knew about, or maybe a large rock from space.
- Mary C.

10:08 a.m.  
Blogger George said...

You are absolutely right. Iran could very well be the tripwire - if not for Europe definitely the Middle East and probably most of Asia and Africa. OPEC will demand to be paid in Euros in retaliation and the need for countries to buy dollars disappears.

Few Americans understand how easily we can slip into hyperinflation when no one needs truckloads of dollars anymore.

Profit repatriation will be no panacea either. Many "American" corporations will quickly reorganize into whatever nationality gives them the best tax breaks. This will also help them overcome negative brand image that they are currently experiencing by being an "American" multi-national. They will still have administrivia offices in their US subsidiaries until those are outsourced to India.


Sorry, no cheering up perspective from me...

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