The other day I read a book review titled “Dr. Strangelove” in the conservative catholic magazine “Culture Wars”. James G. Bruen, Jr. wrote the review on the book
“Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency” by Barton Gellman.
The whole book seems to be a chilling read, describing the ruthlessness and utter amorality of the former Vice-President and those surrounding him.
One part of the review, however, I found especially note-worthy.
Bruen cites Gellman:
The world’s last remaining superpower, Cheney believed, must not stand helpless against the dangers of a state-terror nexus. A defensive crouch was not an option. The United States could not defeat every potential foe, unseat every hostile government, but tackling one would send a powerful message to the rest.
Notes Gellman, “The question was where to begin.”
Iran? Iraq? Libya? Syria? Sudan? North Korea? Cuba? Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? Military and political interests militated against attacking many of these countries. Cheney was looking for an exemplar, not a formidable foe:
Cheney, in the end, did not press for war with Iraq because Saddam really topped the list of ‘grave and gathering threats,’ as he led the Bush administration in asserting. The United States would take him down because it could. The war would not preempt immediate danger, a more traditional ground for war, but prevent a danger that might emerge later – from Baghdad or anywhere else in the viewing audience.
To this Bruen comments:
Use any means at our disposal, basically. The United States would take him down because it could. What could be more cold-blooded than launching a war with its attendant death, destruction, misery, and suffering, merely because you can and you want to send a message to other countries?
Well, how about this? At Christmastime in 2003, the government was on edge, fearing “a spectacular attack around New Year’s Eve,” possibly nuclear terrorism. Cheney decided, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s support, to inform Iran that the United States would respond to such an attack by using nuclear weapons against Iran, even though, Gellman notes, there was “little or no indication that the plot, if plot there was, had support from the Islamic republic.”
Now this is really interesting: The American Vice President threatens Iran with nuclear annihilation already in December 2003 to supposedly prevent a nuclear plot against the US.
Let´s recapitulate: In 2oo3 the United States and their allies had just militarily overthrown Saddam Hussein, Iran´s arch foe. They were in the process of empowering the religious Shiite fractions from among the Iraqi people at the expense of the Sunnis. Iran had good relationships to all the Shiite parties. Empowering the Shiites in Iraq would encrease Iran´s influence in the region. The confrontation about Iran´s nuclear energy program was less severe, since at the time the more western-friendly “reformer” government was at the helm. Ahmadinejad was still only the mayor of Tehran and had not made that famous misquoted quote about the non-existing “map” or the “page of time”.
Not only was there no proof that Iran was behind any potential plot to attack the United States, there was not even the slightest motive for Iran to hedge such a plot. Neither would there have been a motive for any Shiite group Iran could possibly have influence on.
So what was really going on?
We know Cheney is a Neocon, a co-signer of the PNAC paper, which calls for endless war starting in the Middle East. Iran was on the list of countries to be attacked even then.
The Cheney administration wanted to make absolutely sure that there would be no normal relationship between Iran and the western world. No matter, who ruled the country, Israel thought Iran was too big for Israel´s comfort and so did the Neocons. Iran needed to be cut into conveniently smaller pieces along ethnic or sectarian lines by any means possible, just what the post-invasion civil-war was supposed to do to Iraq. Iranians were threatened so they would fear and hate America and the west, and in turn the west would hate and fear Iran.
An even darker possibility might have been, that the same people who planned the attacks of 9/11, (and we know by now with absolute certainty, that they weren´t Muslims of any denomination), were indeed contemplating a new attack, possibly with nuclear material.
This “nuclear 9/11″ would have given Cheney and his friends the pretext to start World War III for real, and the pretext for using nuclear bombs to destroy Iran and other Islamic countries, since there is no way that a large land-invasion would be successful.
The United States and it´s allies just do not have the man-power for full-scale invasions and occupations of large countries. They can destroy a country, but they can´t conquer it – unless they destroy it first.
Destruction of everything they cannot easily control, seems what our western elites are hell-bend to do.
The Cheney administration´s rule is over. But has it´s destructive mindset disappeared?
James Bruen doesn´t think so. Citing Gellman, the books author, who actually endorses Cheney insanity and shares his paranoia,
If Nexus comes, loosing a plague or igniting a mushroom cloud, posterity may decide we should have stayed the vice president’s course.
Bruen comments:
A mushroom cloud, though, was not Cheney’s worst nightmare: we should be thankful that a mushroom cloud did not appear over Iran at Cheney’s instigation. But the publicly expressed willingness of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama’s choice for Secretary of State, to “totally obliterate” Iran suggests that the danger did not end with the recent change of administrations.
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