METAFUTURE: Iraq, Iran and Permanent War

[at the end of this post is an essay I posted over three years ago, on the Daily Kos, entitled "Metafuture: Iran, Iraq and Permanent War". At that point, the idea of a US attack on Iran was considered by most to be  farfetched.]

The appointment of David Petreus to be head of CENTCOM is part of an ongoing, quiet purge by the Bush Administration of anyone in the US military leadership with more than a shred of moral conscience, and I am utterly convinced that if the Bush Adminstration can attack Iran it will.

I am not the only one so concerned:

Petraeus' rise lets Cheney loose on Iran

WASHINGTON - The nomination of General David Petraeus to be the new head of the US Central Command ensures that he will be available to defend the George W Bush administration's policies on Iran and Iraq at least to the end of Bush's term and possibly even beyond.

It also gives Vice President Dick Cheney greater freedom of action to exploit the option of an air attack against Iran during the administration's final months.

Petraeus will take up the CENTCOM post in late summer or early autumn, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. . ."

[Gareth Porter, in Asia Times, via IPS News Service]

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

Questions Linger on Scope of Iran’s Threat in Iraq, By MARK MAZZETTI, STEVEN LEE MYERS and THOM SHANKER, New York Times, April 26, 2008

" For weeks, Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the top American officials in Iraq have portrayed Iran as a significant and growing threat to the American war effort in Iraq.

In particular, they have cited an intensified barrage of Iranian-made rockets hitting the Green Zone in Baghdad — including attacks during a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — that have killed Americans and Iraqis.

...in recent weeks the administration has sought to emphasize the threat by citing new evidence. The interrogations of four Iraqi Shiite militia commanders, for example, have provided new details about the extent of training conducted by the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, officials said."

Here's Jim Lobe, for IPS News:

POLITICS-US:  Hawks Resurgent?

Add the promotion of Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq who has overseen the past year's "surge" of U.S. troops, to take over the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) this summer, as well as the increasingly harsh charges against Iran's alleged interference in Iraq that have been coming out of the Pentagon in recent days.

All these developments are seen by some as an answer to the prayers of neo-conservatives, in particular, who had largely given up hopes that Bush could be persuaded to attack Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office.

In his testimony about the surge earlier this month, Petraeus had repeatedly blamed allegedly Iranian-sponsored and directed Shi'a "Special Groups" for attacking Iraqi government and U.S. forces in Basra and Baghdad, describing them as "the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq"...

...there appears little question that the rhetoric here has become considerably harsher in recent weeks. The shift became particularly evident in February, when the former Centcom commander and the man whom Petraeus will replace, Adm. William 'Fox' Fallon, abruptly announced his resignation following the publication of a profile in Esquire magazine that depicted him as opposing key administration policies and as the one man standing between Bush and war with Iran.

Salt Lake City Tribune, April 26, 2008 (Farrah Hassan):

Petraeus promotion an ominous sign of possible war with Iran

The promotion of Gen. David Petraeus is another ominous sign that the Bush administration may attack Iran.
   
President Bush is nominating Petraeus, commanding general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, to replace Adm. William Fallon as head of Centcom: U.S. Central Command, which oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
   
Fallon was forced to resign last month after his outspoken opposition to an attack on Iran. Petraeus, by contrast, has been heating up the rhetoric against Iran.
 
"Iran has fueled the violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support to the special groups," Petraeus testified to Congress in early April. Those special groups (meaning, the militias) pose the biggest threat to the United States, he added.
   
He blamed Iran for the rocket attacks on the Green Zone, and he warned, "We should all watch Iranian actions closely in the weeks and months ahead." Petraeus' boss issued a warning of his own. "The regime in Tehran also has a choice to make," Bush said April 10. "If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq. If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests, and our troops and our Iraqi partners."

Here's what I wrote over three years ago, January 2005, on the Daily Kos, in a piece entitled "":

What the Bush Adm. may actually be aiming at  - as a politically serendipitious blowback from strikes on Iran - would be another major terrorist attack on US interests or US soil.

Al Qaeda now exists more as an ideological franchise than an organization. But Hezzbollah on the other hand....

Hezzbollah is an actual organization, more like a ministate, which has both military and terrorist capabilities and which has close ties to, and receives funds from, Iran : The organization has missiles and drones, and  demonstrated considerable military capability in driving Israeli forces from Lebannon. One cannot assume, for that matter, that the organization does not possess one or two portable nuclear devices.

In going to war against Iran, the Bush Administration will be inviting Hezzbollah retaliation. That might not come immediately, but it would be an underestimation, I feel, to discount the possibility that some of the most outrageous of the many Bush Administration generated US PR debacles surrounding the Iraqi invasion and occupation were wholly unintentional :

The gratuitiously offensive nature of the sexual humiliation tactics used at Abu Ghraib, while disastrous at one level, also serve the interests of some in the Bush Administration who need a more significant Causus Bellum now that the sting of 9-11 has ebbed somewhat.

The overall effect of US behavior since the invasion of Iraq has been to polarize Islamic attitudes - this is surely happening within such subcultures as Hezzbollah, and so I have to wonder : when will the Bush Administration's Trotskyite rolling "permanent war" in the Mideast cause the voices of hotheads to prevail, against the voices of caution, in the call for strikes against US interests ? And, would the Bush NeoCons be blindsided, or would they have been expecting such an attack ? It would be a mistake to assume that the growing World hatred of the US was unanticipated or undesired by the Bush Neocons and their Dominionist and Rapturist Christian allies - such World hatred, and subsequent terrorist attacks on the US, would, indeed, enable serve to advance both the domestic and geopolitical aims of the NeoCons.

Of course, such attacks would provide a pretext for US actions against Syria and Iran. Domestically, however, they would be at least as useful for the Bush NeoCons and the new US Right ( AKA the religious right ).

Another strike of magnitude comparable to or larger than the September 11, 2001 attack - "9-11 redux" - or even several much smaller attacks, would provide George W. Bush, the NeoCons, and the Christian right - especially with the likely escalation conflict and mayhem in the Mideast theatre - with sufficient pretext for substantial crackdown - under the rubric of "national unity -  on domestic political dissent. We could expect frenzied demonization of Islamic-American groups with a subsequent widespread outbreak of hate crimes and perhaps the internent of Muslims and certain ethnicities of Mideastern origin : also, a crackdown on political and cultural dissident groups - outspoken voices on the left,  gays, and so on. Some on the US right have long planned and yearned for something like this, at least since the REX-84 days when a Reagan NSC order unleashed Ollie North to plan a concentration camp system. So, "the fire next time" - a 9-11 redux -  would finalize, for the forseeable future, the transformation of US government into an authoritarian security state.

Beyond  harshly repressive domestic political measures, further terrorist attacks within the US would enable the "toughening up America", and full  mobilization of America's war-fighting capability - by way of a reinstituted draft, privatized military services, or both. In fact, this has been underway in a low grade way since September 11, 2001, and it should be noted that one of the side effects of the Iraq conflict has been a dramatic expansion in the number of  battle hardened US Army and National Guard units. This may have been unintentional, but it lays groundwork for future war and is congruent with an overall Spartanization of an American that has come to be viewed by some as grown dangerously soft.

The upshot of this train of events will be a "Spartanization" of America, under a new, embattled and combatitive mentality, and - meanwhile a rolling,  graduated blitz through the Mideast which, conveniently, could have the effect of destabilizing Saudi Arabia - and that, in turn, would demand US led "stabilization" measures. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia - one down, two to go, and the US will achieve direct control of something on the order of 1/2 of the World's oil. That control can be, in turn, used to exert pressure on nations opposed to the new US hegemonic order.