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Wednesday, May 5, 2010 On Iran, the U.S. is Painting Itself into a Political and Moral Corner “This
confrontation [between
the forces of the Apocalypse and Israel] is willed by God, who wants to
use this conflict to 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.” “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
and on deception.
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 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 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 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 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,
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 or
the Nuremberg
Charter, 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), 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
is professor emeritus of economics at the University
of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. He is the author of the book "The
Code for Global Ethics"
at: http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten
Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz,
has just been released by Prometheus Books. Please visit the book site at: http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ See it on Amazon
USA See it on Amazon
Canada: See it on Amazon
UK: or, in Australia Please ask your favorite bookstore and
your local library to order the book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten
Humanist Principles, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz,
Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721. *****The French version of the book is also now
available. See: http://www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon
Canada: _____________________________________ Posted, Wednesday, May 5, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1124 or The
Code For Global Ethics/blog. Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction
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