Obama Threatens to Nuclear Bomb Iran

May 3, 2010

Global Research

“This confrontation [between the forces of the Apocalypse and Israel] is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict toAttack on Iran erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”. U.S. President George W. Bush (in a 2003 conversation with French President Jacques Chirac)

“Preventive war was an invention of [Adolf] Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

“We don’t desire any nuclear proliferation in our region, and our policy is well known regardless of which country has such programs. For us it doesn’t matter whether it is Israel or Iran. I will call on the international community, which is so sensitive toward Iran, to pay attention to Israel, too.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Prime Minister

“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

By now, most everybody knows that the (2003-) Bush-Cheney Iraq War was based on fiction [http://news.antiwar.com/2009/08/10/elbaradei-regrets-not-doing-more-to-stop-iraq-war/] and on deception [http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/07/22_lies.html]. There was no such thing as “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, the rationale for an illegal attack against that country. And Bush II and his accomplices knew that.

But incredibly, just as the Bush-Cheney administration did in order to launch a war against Iraq in 2003 by (falsely) alleging that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Obama-Biden administration, in 2010, is arguing for unilateral sanctions against Iran and even beating the drums of war against Iran, alleging that its program to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants is posing an existential threat to Israel, to Europe and to the United States.

Besides being a blatant exaggeration, this is nevertheless most dangerous. Indeed, such an eventual military attack–which, by the way, would be illegal under international law–would also have dire economic consequences, because it would almost certainly result in the closing of the narrow Strait of Hormuz. Should we be reminded that it is through this strait that roughly 40 percent of all world traded oil transits out of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Its closing would push the international oil price to unheard of levels.

Therefore, if the pro-Israel lobby and the pro-war neocon press [http://news.antiwar.com/2010/04/29/neocon-press-slams-obama-as-trying-to-soften-iran-sanctions/] were to succeed in 2010-11 in triggering a hot war against Iran, as they did in 2002-03 against Iraq, this could easily turn the current festering financial crisis into a full-fledged worldwide economic depression. Believe me, the last thing the world economy needs now is an oil-shock that would derail the present feeble economic recovery.

But the most disconcerting of all is no doubt the implicit threat recently made by President Barack Obama, on Tuesday, April 6, 2010, to launch a nuclear attack [http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18620] against Iran and North Korea if these countries refuse to toe Washington’s line. That sort of loose language is most dangerous because it may serve to trivialize the military use of nuclear weapons, a disaster that the world must avoid. The round of pronouncements demonizing Iran and the incessant calls for sanctions [http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=23134] against a sovereign country by other U.S. politicians is also most unproductive, even though that may make for good domestic politics.

This is of course in addition to the use of unmanned drones to drop bombs on civilians in Pakistan and other American death squad activities [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25346.htm] in Afghanistan that the Obama administration has intensified since gaining power. There seems to be a pattern here: No law or moral decency seem to be taken into consideration when such decisions, most likely illegal, [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25344.htm] are taken, no matter who is in power in Washington D.C.

It is true that Iran’s domestic politics is not without reproach. This is a country that is run by a mixture of democratic and theocratic rules. However, compared to fundamentalist Islamic Saudi Arabia, Iran is somewhat more democratic and less oppressive of women, even though it does not satisfy all the Western criteria to be a true democratic state. But we don’t declare war on a country because we don’t like its domestic politics. That’s not what the U.N. Charter [http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/] or the Nuremberg Charter, [http://home.earthlink.net/~platter/nuremberg/charter.html] says.

Logic would have it that all the nuclear countries in that part of the world (Israel, Pakistan, India,) sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), [http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=124679&sectionid=351020502] just as Iran has done, because an accidental, or worse, an intentional or provoked, use of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat to the region and to the world. In the long-run, however, the world needs a new and expanded nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) to prevent nuclear war but, at the same time, to make sure that no country is denied access to nuclear energy that can enhance its economic development. Every country in the world has a right to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants.

Rodrigue Tremblay http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/author.htm is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached atrodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.
He is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics” at:http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

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How Wars are Born

May 3, 2010

Global Research

Those of us making the “radical” claim that wars are the result of economic/corporate interests pushed abroad, were recently given a nod of approval from a typically unfriendly source, The New York Times.How wars begin

The corporate controlled New York Times published a revealing article about how U.S. foreign policy really works, and why.  The motive behind the sincerity is that China’s foreign policy was being attacked. However, the article soon made it clear that China’s policy is the same as the U.S.’s :  dominating regions that are of “economic (corporate) interest” — raw materials, cheap labor, shipping lanes, markets, etc. — through military buildup.

Dangerously, the article discusses how China’s economic expansion —and the military buildup used to protect it — is coming into conflict with the U.S.overseas militarism.  For example:

“The Chinese military is seeking to project naval power well beyond the Chinese coast, from the oil ports of the Middle East to the shipping lanes of the Pacific, where the United States Navy has long reigned as the dominant force, military officials and analysts say.”

Why is China expanding militarily?

“Chinese admirals say they want warships to escort commercial vessels that are crucial to the country’s economy, from as far as the Persian Gulf to theStrait of Malacca, in Southeast Asia, and to help secure Chinese interests in the resource-rich South and East China Seas.”  (April 24, 2010).

Shen Dingli, a Chinese intellectual, recently argued in favor of creating the firstChinese overseas military bases (the U.S. has 909 military facilities in foreign countries):

“With the continuous expansion of China’s overseas business, the governments are more accountable for protecting the overseas interests… the guarantee of smooth trading; the prevention of overseas intervention…”   (January 28, 2010 - China.org).

Typically, the U.S. military is in charge of policing most of the global shipping lanes, so that corporate goods are unhampered by pirates or hostile nations, etc.  But China is no longer content with this situation, and wants protections of its own.  But why?

One reason is that China has been listening to the increasingly hostile attitude of the U.S. corporate elite, who have expressed the view that China’s economic rise is inherently in conflict with or in competition with the profit-making ability of U.S. corporations.  Obama’s recent provocations against China — arm sales to Taiwan, the visit to Washington by the Dali Lama, threats about Iran, currency, etc. — are all proof that China’s economic rise will not be met with friendship and cooperation.

The above-mentioned New York Times article admits “…there are few indications that China has aggressive intentions toward the United States or other countries.”  Nevertheless, the whole article intends to scare and frighten. For instance:

“Of particular concern is that elements of China’s military modernization appear designed to challenge our [U.S. Navy’s] freedom of action in the region,” the admiral [Willard] said.

“Japan is anxious, too…”

and

“Lee Kuan Yew, the former Singaporean leader, reflected widespread anxieties when he noted China’s naval rise and urged the United States to maintain its regional presence.”

These scare tactics are intended to steer public opinion into a hostile stance towards China, which the U.S. government views as a possible war target.  This eventuality was made clear later in the article:

“…in reaction to China’s growth, the United States has recently transferred submarines from the Atlantic to the Pacific so that most of its nuclear-powered attack submarines are now in the Pacific… The United States has also begun rotating three to four submarines on deployments out of Guam, reviving a practice that had ended with the cold war…”

And most alarmingly:  “American vessels now frequently survey the [Chinese] submarine base at Hainan island, and that activity leads to occasional friction with Chinese ships.”

China’s economic and military rise is pushing up against territory dominated by the U.S. military, which is pushing back.  Military “incidents” are increasingly likely in this situation, which can be used as a pretext for war.

Behind the military jockeying for power are economic interests.  Controlling the U.S. economy are powerful corporations, who rely on the U.S. military to ensure them super profits overseas, including domination over whole regions — the Middle East, Latin America, the Pacific — that are viewed as the “exclusive economic zones” of U.S. corporations.  The fact that China is now declaring itself master of its own zones is intolerable for U.S. corporations, which will stop at nothing — including war — to maintain U.S. military dominance over the globe.

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