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The possibility of an attack on Iran seems to be on the front burner again, thanks to neoconservatives like Keane. In Washington in the not-too-distant past, we used to call such aficionados of pre-emptive war "the crazies"; many have since become the capital's opinion leaders.
Yet, even some level-headed Israelis are doing their best to warn their countrymen that Israel's right-wing government is again, dangerously, beating the drums for an attack on Iran. It has reached the point where former Mossad intelligence chief, Meir Dagan, has stated publicly that Israeli leaders may be on the verge of doing something really dumb and extremely dangerous.
In a recent talk at Hebrew University, Dagan called a military attack on Iran "a stupid idea" that "would mean regional war." Dagan said, "The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible." But many hard-line Israelis -- like their neocon counterparts in the United States -- don't want to hear such warnings. They are convinced -- and see ample evidence -- that, no matter what, in the end analysis the U.S. will pull Israel's chestnuts out of the fire
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported:
"Most of the politicians, and amazingly (and absurdly) enough, also a large number of journalists, want [Dagan] to be quiet. They don't want him to get us upset with his fears or arouse us from our slumber with his warnings. We'll just leave the fateful decision of whether to attack Iran to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and to them alone, and let the storm over the issue subside. As if blind, we will follow them and be led by them straight into the midst of the danger."
As for Dagan himself, Haaretz commented that if he "thinks it's a matter of a threat to our existence at our doorstep, it is not only his right to make himself heard, it is his supreme duty. He should attempt to stop it, to act as a gatekeeper. If he acted otherwise, he would have been abusing his role as former Mossad director."
Keane's Record
I've had a day now to reflect on why I blurted out, "That's a lie." I mean, aside from the fact that I am 99 percent certain it was, in fact, a lie. I could have followed Washington rather than Bronx etiquette and said something less caustic, like "I don't believe you have that right, general."
I've pieced together the reasons for my blunt, visceral reaction. My umbrage derived mostly from the tens of thousands of human beings -- Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Libyans, as well as Americans -- who have died because of misleading statements like the one Keane made about Iran "acquiring nuclear weapons."
And I guess the setting had something to do with it, since I felt rather strongly that Keane should know better. You see, during the Sixties all undergraduates at Fordham were required to take a course in moral theology/ethics. Business School students were not exempt.
Moreover, I regard Keane and his neocon friends as mostly responsible for the death and destruction brought about by the surge of some 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq between February 2007 and July 2008. U.S. troop deaths spiked to over 900 in 2007 alone, making it the deadliest year of the U.S. since 2004. As for Iraqi civilians, the first half-year of 2007 was the most deadly first six months of any year since the invasion of Iraq. In a word, the surge brought industrial scale violence to Iraq on the pretence of quelling it.
The most significant thing that happened during the surge was that the additional U.S. troops, most of whom were sent into Baghdad and its suburbs, enabled the Shiites to disarm the Sunnis. Once the Sunnis were disarmed, Shiite militias poured into Sunni neighborhoods at night and ethnically cleansed those neighborhoods. We could even observe from satellite imagery that the lights in Sunni districts literally went out.
Mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad ended up with virtually no Sunnis. In short, Baghdad went from a predominantly Sunni city to being overwhelmingly Shiite. Again, we're talking millions.
It is true that the horrific sectarian violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, but that was mostly because there were far fewer mixed neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shiites could kill one another, although sectarian butchery remains horrible even to this day.
Moreover, it is a mistake to think that those U.S. troops still in Iraq will be spared. Earlier today five more U.S. soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on an American base in the Baladiyat district of Baghdad. This appears to be a tangible sign that the Sunnis mean to "get even" not only with the Shia but with the U.S. troops who screened the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad in 2007-2008.
As for what the surge did in terms of brutalizing American troops, one need look no farther than the gun-barrel video and chatter from an Apache helicopter on July 12, 2007, in a southeastern neighborhood of Baghdad. WikiLeaks, you will recall, released the video and it can be accessed via collateralmurder.com in 18-minute and 39-minute versions.
An excellent report with short commentary on the video was produced earlier this year by the German TV program Panorama. Panorama was later persuaded to go back, "undub," and provide a 12-minute video-cum-commentary in English, since the American Fawning Corporate Media have tended to avoid this horrific footage.
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