The Iran Trap

[ProgressiveMuslim]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080608_the_iran_trap/
Posted on Jun 8, 2008
By Chris Hedges

The failure by Barack Obama to chart another course in the Middle East, to defy the Israel lobby and to denounce the Bush administration’s inexorable march toward a conflict with Iran is a failure to challenge the collective insanity that has gripped the political leadership in the United States and Israel.

Obama, in a miscalculation that will have grave consequences, has given his blessing to the widening circle of violence and abuse of the Palestinians by Israel and, most dangerously, to those in the Bush White House and Jerusalem now plotting a war against Iran. He illustrates how the lust for power is morally corrosive. And while he may win the White House, by the time he takes power he will be trapped in George Bush’s alternative reality. More from Chris Hedges:


“Humanity Does Not Change”

There is nothing in human nature or human history to justify the idea that we are progressing morally as a species.


Read the introduction to Hedges’ new book “Collateral Damage”


We need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to stay the hand of Israel, which is building more settlements—including a new plan to put 800 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem—and imposing draconian measures to physically break the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. We need, most of all, to prevent a war with Iran.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, in a letter to President Bush on May 8, threatened to open impeachment proceedings if Bush attacked Iran. The letter is a signal that planning for strikes on Iran is under way and pronounced.

“Our concerns in this area have been heightened by more recent events,” Conyers wrote. “The resignation in mid-March of Admiral William J. ‘Fox’ Fallon from the head of U.S. Central Command, which was reportedly linked to a magazine article that portrayed him as the only person who might stop your Administration from waging preemptive war against Iran, has renewed widespread concerns that your Administration is unilaterally planning for military action against that country. This is despite the fact that the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, a stark reversal of previous Administration assessments.”

[Vegasaurus]

1. Would you prefer McCain? nt

[PFunk]

2. Agreed. On the ME Obama may be lousy but McClain is worse.

Much worse. And one might convince Obama to change course once he wins the GE. No chance with McClain.

[Vegasaurus]

3. The way some democrats talk about Obama

you'd think they want McCain to win.

I really do not understand this line of thinking.

[oberliner]

7. Chris Hedges is not a Democrat

He has made his hostility to the Democrats very clear in his recent writings and has said that he will vote for either Nader or McKinney for President.

[Sezu]

8. So has this site become Undemocratic Underground?

Why the heck post this moron's stuff?

[ProgressiveMuslim]

9. Do you honestly think Chris Hedges is a moron?

That's pretty shocking.

[Sezu]

10. His tin foil hat pronunciations about Israel and plotting

are as close to antisemitism as one can come without saying "we gotta stop those evil Jews," and "Jews run America."

Yes, he's a moron.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

11. You think the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism wears a tin hat?

A bit about Hedges from wikipedia...

Christopher L. Hedges (born 18 September 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont) is a journalist and author, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society.

Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years.

Hedges was part of The New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism

--------------------------------

In my circles, he's called a true progressive.

[Vegasaurus]

12. A "true progressive"

because he is another anti-Israel shill.

Next?

[Sezu]

16. Guys like him are dangerous because they represent the

"legitimate," side of a red brown alliance which, despite the fact it may be a heartfelt attempt to address perceived wrongs, ultimately merely aids the fascists whose agenda is far different. A true progressive choses his memes carefully and assidiously avoids helping fascists and their talking points. A true progressive might have aimed his criticism at what is obviously popular American foreign policy embraced by all politicians still in the race rather than try and place it all at the feet of Jews.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

14. Frankly, I find Hedges compelling because of what he's observed. He's a progressive WITHOUT a tin

hat. It's absurd to classify him as a conspiracy nut because he has come to the conclusion that American is a corporatist society, or that Israel practices an unconscionable occupation.

Both are true.

[Sezu]

15. Indeed I do. The Troofer movement is full of well credentialed

tin foilers. It goes with ideological political activism and dogma. The post-modernism so prevalent in the humanities makes it read more like science fiction than rational fact finding and inquiry over the last few decades. This "Israel Lobby," meme rolls off the tongue as easily as the Protocols once did and there is plenty of evidence that it was the "intelligensia," which embraced and supported fascism and nazism. When the author grieves that Obama did not DEFY the Israel Lobby, he de facto shows he believes that Israel controls the US; a preposterous position and a dangerous one.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

17. "Israel Lobby" = Protocols? Who's the tin roofer? Pot meet kettle!

Obama was feckless in the face of AIPAC.

Hopefully, he'll grow some balls as he matures in his role.

Are you actually stating there is no such thing as the "israel lobby" in america?

[Vegasaurus]

13. These kinds of "Democrats"

are exactly the people who will get McCain elected.

Nader and McKinney are ridiculous wastes of votes.

Hedges and his ilk, in their anti-Obama campaign, will actually be part of the group that elects McCain.

I hope the "true progressives" here are happy with that choice.

[PATRICK]

4. Wow, another one.

We are getting a slew of "disappointment" trolls, some possibly honest, and this is an election period facing an uncertain victory this fall, massive fraud and spin that is ALL typical of all manner of vote suppressing, excitement suppressing trolls.

As with lobbyists, Obama is not wandering in the Temple with a knotted rope daring people to crucify him.
For the first time, arguably in decades, we are making movements away from the brink and toward the humane, rational and democratic. Real moves, irrevocable steps, but desperate because of the immediacy and imminence of several critical events, some already in full motion.

His thoughtful approach to the usual hat in hand recitation of Israel lobby talking points is politically far different and more important than he is getting credit for. Newbies to politics need to know that ALL US pols have gone to the Israel factions in ritual manner as part of the necessary pilgrimage to the WH, like Reagan going to the mob in Vegas. Obama has interjected something different into the now decadent and puerile unsustainable determinism that is destroying all of us, including Israel itself.

The alarm that has been delayed and is still not sounding past a buzz over the insane drool of the MSM and snoring Congress is the imminent war against Iran and the incredible freedom of the criminal in chief to do it at a time of his choosing. That is justified and the political pace is far behind the eight ball
on this one for incremental, new progress to be sufficient.

We can't just hope that behind the scenes(Fallon, corporations, whistle blowers whatever) someone is reining in Dead-eye Dick and his moron puppet. It has to be publicly slapped down. Unfortunately, Obama has chosen his basic engagement with the political scene and the relationship with the media and Congress. Universally, everything has been scarily, shamefully insufficient to the horror and scale of possible new crimes. Obama is not president yet, done deal or not.

Many more must join Conyers, in Congress and out. Some leadership from Obama, far beyond the quietism of centrist Dems that has bent the party away from the simplest of duties, is necessary to encourage and demand that the crap stops yesterday. Obviously, from recent statements slipping from the real mind of Cheney, he thinks this opposition is nothing compared to the pressure of the Watergate era. In that he is right and smugly satisfied and undeterred. Things will happen badly unless the push back is a brutal, handcuffing smack down, face to the concrete.

That one alarm sounds, shrieks, in the real world, even in the political contest rituals. It is not the total cynical defeat of the entire silly human race. We don't need the reality of present suffering to determine that all our efforts are in vain, resistance not only futile but puny, non-existent. The GOP smiles and talks of murder, Dems grouse and contemplate suicide. Enough of that crap and stop looking for any one idiot in this mess to suddenly change a swamp into Eden. is that all we have learned from the spin machine?

As Kerry needed drastic education about dangerous mistakes like the election fraud or even relations with Chavez, so a smart Dem would advocate putting the slam on the disaster of an Iran attack, if not a fully justified take down of the crooks in charge right now. If it doesn't happen, Obama is not the only goto guy to pile on the blame, to shift the responsibility he does not yet possess. All American grappling with this issue has been pathetic to date and is continuing so.

I suggest we lobby hard as we lob money into the MSM ad coffers. For once, in the past eight years we mean more than the neocon choices of the Israeli planners- themselves betrayed and misled by Bush. Use our clout in the din of the political season's inevitable distractions.

[oberliner]

5. Chris Hedges writes anti-Obama hit pieces and supports Nader for President

In one piece entitled "Corporate America Hearts Obama" Hedges wrote:

A vote for Obama is a vote for the corporate state. Under an Obama administration, the corporations would continue their ruthless drive to disempower the citizens, to protect an entrenched American oligarchy and to subvert what is left of our faltering democracy.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/83890/

[bemildred]

6. Anybody that thinks they know what Obama will do is indulging themselves.

And that includes Mr Hedges.