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US hostility to Iran has nothing to do with its enrichment policy or even its form of government. It's the result of Iran's intent to remain independent of US dominance and go its own way. It's been that way since the uprising that overthrew the repressive and US installed and supported Shah in 1979 after which Iran no longer was willing to continue relinquishing its sovereignty and remain subservient to US interests. The result has been continued hostility between the two countries that may now be culminating with a US planned attempt to oust the country's leadership forcibly since we've given up trying to achieve that goal by other means short of war. The strategy won't be any more successful in Iran than it's been in Iraq. What US planners may succeed in doing is engulfing the whole Middle East in flames without a realistic notion of what the outcome of that may be. It certainly won't be a good one, but that never before deterred an administration that's often wrong but never in doubt.The US way of doing things is to engage other nations like a schoolyard bully. It's especially true in our dealings with the developing world where we generally treat the countries in it on the basis of an "our way or the highway" policy. We can't unleash our full force bullying against most developed ones in the Global North, but we do that freely and often, directly or through proxies, against all others that forget "who's boss." When that happens, that "highway" is usually strewn with unwarranted economic sanctions, coup attempts, political assassinations, or death and destruction from war. The US follows this hostile course to bring "outlier" nations in line with our policies, but also to deter others from deviating from them as well. It's a bloodstained legacy that puts to rest the myth that the US is a peace loving, benevolent democracy only wanting to spread those principles to other nations that don't practice them. But let me state clearly something I haven't said elsewhere before but should have. By the US I don't mean the people. I mean the leadership of both major political parties and their corporate and elitist allies all of whom work against the public interest everywhere and only for their own.
The US and Iranian public interest won't be served by what our present leadership apparently has in mind for that country - regime change the hard way. It looks like the plan is to make it extra hard by upping the ante to send a clear and decisive message to the Iranians and all other nations going their own way that we will nuke you into submission unless you come around willingly. So far we've only used nuclear weapons below the radar with DU munitions that alone have caused unspeakable harm. But should the US go further and attack Iran with industrial strength nuclear bombs, we will have crossed an inviolable threshold, moved the nation one step closer to tyranny and brought the world a lot closer to a possible eventual nuclear holocaust. In my judgment, that's what's now at stake unless a way is found to stop this aggressive juggernaut before it goes further and it's too late to act.
Iran is First in the US Target Queue Followed by Venezuela
Unimaginable as it may seem, high-level leadership and planners in Washington may have in mind not just a third conflict but a fourth one as well. I've written about this several times, and recently wrote a feature article titled "The US Now Planning A Fourth Attempt to Oust Hugo Chavez." Based on my knowledge and ear to the ground observing and listening to the steady and intensifying drumbeat of anti-Chavez rhetoric coming from top US officials through the corporate media (all of it the usual litany of lies and deception only), I have no doubt whatever a fourth attempt to oust President Chavez and his government is planned and likely now being implemented under the radar. Precisely how and what will be unleashed won't be known until the fireworks begin. But make no mistake about it, they will begin, and this time they may include attempted assassinations and open conflict with DU munitions or even full-scale nuclear bombs if that's part of the plan. If that happens, the nuclear nightmare will have arrived in the Americas and come ever closer to the US Southern border.
By whatever means the US has in mind in its latest attempt to unseat Hugo Chavez, its intentions toward him and his government are clear, unmistakable and written in stone. The US will settle for nothing less than full control of his country's vast hydrocarbon reserves and a government willing to hand them over to us. Those reserves are far more vast than once thought as the best estimates of the country's oil reserves (including the extra-heavy kind more expensive to refine) are thought to be about 350 billion barrels or even higher. That compares to Saudi Arabia's estimated reserves of about 262 billion barrels of (at least mostly) the preferred and more easily refined "light sweet" crude. It takes no mental exertion to see the two countries at the head of the US target queue have vast amounts of the essential commodity the US wants most and is willing to go to war if necessary to secure control over everywhere it feels it's worth the cost and effort. There's no doubt the US feels that way about Iran and Venezuela just as it did about Iraq.
The US decided Saddam had to go not because of his oppressive rule or his "now you see 'em, now you don't" WMDs. It was because of his unwillingness to surrender his nation's sovereignty to the US. Same old story, and it's the same again in Iran and most of all in Venezuela that has to be the greatest prize of the three. It's especially tricky for the US there as that nation happens to have a democratic leader loved by the great majority of his people. It's because Hugo Chavez is fiercely and proudly independent, as he has every right to be, and puts the needs of his people ahead of the US and its Big Oil interests. Chavez was twice democratically elected and then prevailed in an August, 2004 recall referendum (the third coup attempt by ballot box means) that was a contrived act of desperation cooked up by his right wing opposition in league with US corporate interests. It was a flop as Chavez's supporters flocked to the polls giving him a decisive victory. He deserved and earned it and his other electoral victories as he proved he's the rarest of political leaders who actually delivers on his promises to the people. Try finding a US politician who's done that, especially one with any power to follow through. You'll need a high-powered version of that lamp Diogenes once used used looking for an honest man.
It's Hugo Chavez's intention to serve the interests and needs of his own people and not those of his dominant Northern neighbor that has him once again high on its target list for elimination. Hugo Chavez will remain there until the US finds a way to remove him which it certainly will keep trying to do. Chavez is well aware of it and so are the Venezuelan people who love and support him and are likely to fight to keep him in office. They know what their lives were like before he became their president and what a vast difference he made once he came into office. He promised to serve the people and proved it by instituting a vast array of social programs the majority of the US public might only dream about if they knew what's available now to the Venezuelan people.
They include free, comprehensive and high-quality health and dental care for all as well as free education through the university level to all those who wish it and can qualify. Compare that to what's available in the US - a health care system available only to those who can afford its high and fast-rising cost and a deliberately degraded inner-city public education system as well as a costly one at the university level unavailable to lower income families that can't afford it for their children. Now try to imagine what the US has in mind for Venezuelans. It won't tolerate a developing nation's leader who'll institute such essential social services for the people and will try to end them even if it takes nuclear war to do it. Try to think of appropriate language to describe the leader of a nation who would unleash such an attack and do it for power and profit. Do the words tyrant and war criminal come to mind?
Get Ready for the Long Knives, the Marines Again in Action to Go Along with A Little Or Maybe A Lot of "Shock and Awe."
The plans for two "outlier" countries are set, the wheels are in motion, and we now must wait and see what will unfold in the next chapter of the ongoing drama of an aggressor and imperial US against the world with Iran and Venezuela numbers one and two in the US target queue.
Several times before I spelled out in some detail what I feels lies ahead unless a way is found to stop it. I fear two more conflicts are ahead for starters to add to the ones now ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still others will follow against other countries to be named later and by whatever timetable and means we have in mind. The result may be that the US is near to crossing an inviolable Rubicon in two deadly and dangerous ways - first by unleashing the nuclear genie in an industrial strength way, and second by suspending the Constitution and declaring martial law at home in the wake of a likely inevitable second major terror attack that may be as much an inside job as was the first one on September 11.
Unless the US public awakens to these very real threats, we face the same fate as did the Germans who lost their model democratic state after the ascension of Adolph Hitler. Good German people let him steal it from them while they weren't paying attention or bought into his false rhetoric that he was serving their interests and protecting them from an outside threat - that never existed. We also have no outside threat from any other nation, but we've been effectively scared to death and conned by the false rhetoric that's made us feel we do. The result is we're getting too close for comfort to the point of no return. There's still time to act if we're bold enough to do it. Think of the choice I think we face. Act together in our collective self-interest or do nothing and see us pass from a once proud but now tattered republic
to tyranny. It can happen here as it has elsewhere unless we act to prevent it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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