Bombing Iran
The Public is Primed; Will Israel and the Right Light the Fire?
Sometimes everything seems so stupid one hardly knows what to do.
So...
1. Apparently the American public is largely fine with another ME war.
2. The wingnuts are beating the war drums.
3. Israel is making rumbling noises.
I was very pro-Israel for most of my life. The horror of the Holocaust and the barbarous terrorism routinely directed at them drove me to be far more sympathetic to them than I probably should have been. Only in the last ten years or so have I basically become fairly critical of the country. Currently--and perhaps this is just my mental pendulum swinging too far the other way--I'm not what you'd call at all happy with them. The bizarre, disproportionate influence Israel seems to have over American politics, and the strange allegiance the American right seems to have to them have not helped endear them to me...
My concern is that they are going to attack Iran, and do so before November, thus whipping up the right and tilting the election rightward. I fear it would force Obama to render assistance or alienate the Israel lobby. Thus, from Israel's perspective, they either force Obama to help them, or, if not, they increase the odds that the U.S. ends up with a Republican president...which is something to which they, apparently, would not exactly be averse.
Uh, and...can anyone explain to me how it is that a small foreign country...a country with a less-than-stellar human rights record, a country that, prudentially speaking, does us more harm than good as an ally...has gained such influence with us? WTF is going on here? Hell, the even the Brits, our oldest and bestest buds, don't seem to have this much influence over us. It's downright bizarre.
And finally: even if military action against Iran were not the veriest lunacy...at some point the right is going to have to acknowledge that their $3 trillion recreational war in Iraq has opportunity costs. One of them was: it made victory in Afghanistan more difficult or impossible. Another is: it rules out any sane possibility of another ME war for quite some time.
It's not that I'm wild about a bomb-wielding Iran. But we simply can't afford another war in the ME now, either financially or in terms of world opinion. Even if military action were a good idea intrinsically, it just can't seriously be on the table right now.
The Public is Primed; Will Israel and the Right Light the Fire?
Sometimes everything seems so stupid one hardly knows what to do.
So...
1. Apparently the American public is largely fine with another ME war.
2. The wingnuts are beating the war drums.
3. Israel is making rumbling noises.
I was very pro-Israel for most of my life. The horror of the Holocaust and the barbarous terrorism routinely directed at them drove me to be far more sympathetic to them than I probably should have been. Only in the last ten years or so have I basically become fairly critical of the country. Currently--and perhaps this is just my mental pendulum swinging too far the other way--I'm not what you'd call at all happy with them. The bizarre, disproportionate influence Israel seems to have over American politics, and the strange allegiance the American right seems to have to them have not helped endear them to me...
My concern is that they are going to attack Iran, and do so before November, thus whipping up the right and tilting the election rightward. I fear it would force Obama to render assistance or alienate the Israel lobby. Thus, from Israel's perspective, they either force Obama to help them, or, if not, they increase the odds that the U.S. ends up with a Republican president...which is something to which they, apparently, would not exactly be averse.
Uh, and...can anyone explain to me how it is that a small foreign country...a country with a less-than-stellar human rights record, a country that, prudentially speaking, does us more harm than good as an ally...has gained such influence with us? WTF is going on here? Hell, the even the Brits, our oldest and bestest buds, don't seem to have this much influence over us. It's downright bizarre.
And finally: even if military action against Iran were not the veriest lunacy...at some point the right is going to have to acknowledge that their $3 trillion recreational war in Iraq has opportunity costs. One of them was: it made victory in Afghanistan more difficult or impossible. Another is: it rules out any sane possibility of another ME war for quite some time.
It's not that I'm wild about a bomb-wielding Iran. But we simply can't afford another war in the ME now, either financially or in terms of world opinion. Even if military action were a good idea intrinsically, it just can't seriously be on the table right now.
posted by Winston Smith at
4:45 PM
2 Comments:
I'm surprised that you don't share my presumption on this one, but I think I can put it simply:
Israel owns us because modern Christian theology has become warped and bizarre to the point that it is comical.
Now, that's fairly clear, but what might not be as clear are the following important details about said comical theology:
-The vast, vast majority of modern righty christians in this country fear Islam.
-The vast, vast majority of modern righty christians in this country hold bizarre beliefs about the Old Testament.
This is by no means an all-inclusive list of the important bizarre components of modern christian theology, but it's certainly a pair of the most pertinent to this discussion.
Iran is the crazy Islamist state par excellence, perhaps with Saudi Arabia coming real close. But Saudi Arabians don't have annual hate-filled rallies against America, and neither do their politicians routinely threaten to wipe Israel off the map.
So that's enough right there to make the righty christian crowd hate the hell out of them. A militant Islamist state is going to incur great wrath among the righty christians - it hits all the right notes.
But further, many protestant christians believe crazy things about Israel's necessity for the fulfillment of the Biblical prophesies regarding the Kingdom of Heaven (the future utopia which will occur when the will of God is reflected perfectly in the government of the people of Earth).
You see, because Christianity is about following Jesus, and because Jesus was a highly educated Jew, modern Christians who do not read the Old Testament in depth suffer at the hands of modern Christian theology which has gone completely bonkers trying to make Jesus into God (something he absolutely never claimed or implied). It's so far off from what is likely the truth about their own religious documents that it sprouts myriad forms of insanity masquerading as religion.
One form of this insanity can be found in many modern protestants' belief that the establishment of a lasting Jewish state is a prerequisite for the coming Day of Judgment. That is, God's Kingdom cannot be established on Earth unless a Jewish state is made, granting them permanent ownership of that land which God promised them. Only then, do they believe, can everyone who <3s Jesus be saved.
Nevermind all those parts of the Bible that record Jesus and others close to him instructing people that "faith without works is dead"...
Yeah, I'm sure they'll be fine.
Anyway, when you see the crazy righty "Christians" [I have to stop myself from inserting scare quotes every time I say that, but I'm going to allow myself at least once just to make my point] going nuts about Israel, it's likely because they've been told by their pastors/religious puppeteers that they must do their part to ensure Israel remains alive and well, or God won't <3 them.
Is any of this founded on anything even close to a remotely reasonable interpretation of the Bible, you ask?
No. No it is not.
My book no one will read is forthcoming. lol.
Winston,
It's getting harder and harder to find rational discussion of what the implications of a nuclear Iran would be, in large part due to the delusions mentioned by The Mystic.
Here is one that I remember from a few years ago, in case you're interested:
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2006/08/24/nuclear-iran
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