Primal smirk

[kliljedahl]

The War God has his eyes on Iran — can we stop him?

By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services
January 5, 2006

I ache with fresh hope and foreboding at this time of year. The time is ripe for an overarching vision of a world without war — a tough, smart vision that can claim headlines and hold its own with the spin machines of government. Without it, we’re doomed to . . . war with Iran?

“Of course, Bush has publicly stated for months that he would not take the possibility of a military strike (against Iran) off the table. What’s new here, however, is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year.”

This is from the German publication Der Spiegel, at the end of 2005. Even the cynic in me is shocked by the lack of subtlety in these calculations: “During his trip to Turkey,” the article goes on, “CIA chief (Porter) Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”

Terror link, WMD program. Uh oh.

Suddenly Ares’ primal smirk is all over this story, especially when you factor in the Bush administration’s plummeting poll numbers and its obvious need to do something decisive. It stops the heart. Are we once again watching the slow, methodical buildup to folly? Are we once again helpless to stop these guys from doing what they do best?

Our primary institutions are locked in a cycle of violence the public has been in the process of abandoning for several generations. The same poll numbers that bode so poorly for Bush point to Americans’ serious loss of appetite for militarism. In a University of Maryland survey a while back, 76 percent of respondents, asked what role the country should assume globally, agreed that, “The U.S. should do its share in efforts to solve international problems with other countries.” Only 12 percent thought it should be the predominant world leader. And 57 percent disagreed that the U.S. “has the right or even the responsibility to overthrow dictatorships”; only 12 percent agreed.

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