War with Iran foregone conclusion?

Israel lobby demands Democrats promise not to allow negotiation or compromise, essential campaign fund$ in the balance


John Edwards getting tough with bin Laden in Bangor during the 2004 campaign

A few weeks ago, I received a flurry of emails from the John Edwards presidential campaign about an impending speech, given at the Riverside Church in New York on January 15. Edwards was to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King 40 years after the famous anti-war speech King gave at the same place. Since then Edwards has continued to promote his opposition to escalation in Iraq.

An longer excerpt of the speech arrived with one of the emails:

EDWARDS: Forty years ago, almost to the month, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at this pulpit, in this house of God, and with the full force of his conscience, his principles and his love of peace, denounced the war in Vietnam, calling it a tragedy that threatened to drag our nation down to dust.

As he put it then, there comes a time when silence is a betrayal -- not only of one's personal convictions, or even of one's country alone, but also of our deeper obligations to one another and to the brotherhood of man.

That's the thing I find the most important about the sermon Dr. King delivered here that day. He did not direct his demands to the government of the United States, which was escalating the war. He issued a direct appeal to the people of the United States, calling on us to break our own silence, and to take responsibility for bringing about what he called a revolution of values.

A revolution whose starting point is personal responsibility, of course, but whose animating force is the belief that we cannot stand idly by and wait for others to right the wrongs of the world.

And this, in my view, is at the heart of what we should remember and celebrate on this day. This is the dream we must commit ourselves to realizing.

A week or so thereafter, this story circulated around the blogosphere (thanks, Avedon):

Edwards: Iran Threat Serious
By Ronen Bodoni - TotallyJewish.com - Tuesday 23rd of January

The challenges in your own backyard "represent an unprecedented threat to the world and Israel," the candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination told the Herzliya Conference, referring mainly to the Iranian threat.

In his speech, Edwards criticised the United States' previous indifference to the Iranian issue, saying they have not done enough to deal with the threat. Hinting to possible military action, Edwards stressed that "in order to ensure Iran never gets nuclear weapons, all options must remain on table."

On the recent UN Security Council's resolution against Iran, Edwards said more serious political and economic steps should be taken. "Iran must know that the world won't back down," he said.

Addressing the second Lebanon war , Edwards accused the Islamic Republic of having a significant role, saying Hizbullah was an instrument of Iran, and Iranian rockets were what made the organization's attack on Israel possible....

I commented on a private mailing list that this sounds like quite a contradiction, Edwards the self-styled peace candidate speaking like war on Iran is just around the corner. To this, a friend on the list asked, ``The problem is--Is there anyone who stands a chance of getting the nomination who would say anything different? Israel is being treated like the 51st state.''

I replied, ``Welcome to the Democratic Party (or Republican for that matter).''

My analysis was that I thought that this helps Edwards raise money, while taking an "even-handed" position may well cause his campaign to starve for money and drown in bad press at the same time. The Democratic Party position on Israel/Lebanon/Iran/Syria can be discerned from H. Res. 921 of last summer, passed in the House during the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, for the purpose of ``Condemning the recent attacks against the State of Israel, holding terrorists and their state-sponsors accountable for such attacks, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and for other purposes.''

The resolution was a panoply of pro-Israel propaganda, lacking any notion that the effect of the Israeli bombardment was to end over a thousand innocent lives and smash civilian infrastructure to smithereens. Of course, the Israelis said they tried to avoid harming the innocent--ergo war crimes, not. The resolution passed 410-8 and even Dennis Kucinich did not vote against it. (See this post. Also, please read this extended critique of the resolution by Professor Stephen Zunes.)

Pressure for war on high
Glenn Greewald has a breathtaking, clear-headed post on how these `` enforced orthodoxies'' must be maintained in order for candidates to raise money. It confirms everything I wrote a few days ago, with a hell of a lot more style.

Greenwald writes about an astonishing piece in the hard-line pro-Israel New York Sun about recent fund-raising activity by Democratic presidential candidates, including Edwards and Hillary Clinton,

On Thursday, the neoconservative New York Sun published a remarkable article reporting on an event to be held that night by AIPAC, at which Hillary Clinton was to deliver the keynote address and John Edwards was to appear at the pre-speech cocktail party. The article made several points which are typically deemed off-limits to opponents of neoconservatism -- ones which almost invariably provoke accusations of anti-semitism when made by others.

First, the Sun noted how important AIPAC's support and financial contributions are to presidential candidates:

"When it comes to important gatherings like this, there is going to be a lot of pressure on the major candidates to not let one of their competitors have the room to themselves," a Democratic strategist [and former Joe Lieberman aide], Daniel Gerstein, said.

"Tonight's event is the first time any of the 2008 candidates have competed for attention in the same room since they launched their campaigns in earnest. It is also an important illustration of just how much stock all of the presidential candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, will put in the pro- Israel community, particularly for campaign dollars.

...

according to the Sun, what do presidential candidates have to do in order to ensure access to 'the ATM for American politicians' -- the 'large amounts of money from the Jewish community' in New York? What is the 'issue that matters most to them'? Belligerence towards Iran.''

...

It is simply true that there are large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups which are agitating for a U.S. war against Iran, and that is the case because those groups are devoted to promoting Israel's interests and they perceive it to be in Israel's interests for the U.S. to militarily confront Iran. That is what the Sun and the Post have made clear.''

On the other hand, in issuing an accurate and important disclaimer, Greenwald also broaches the deepest depths of long-standing US Middle East policy:

It goes without saying that there are other factions and motives behind the push for war with Iran besides right-wing Jewish groups. There is the generic warmongering, militarism and oil-driven expansionism represented by Dick Cheney. And there are the post-9/11 hysterics and bigots who crave ever-expanding warfare and slaughter of Muslims in the Middle East for reasons having nothing to do with Israel. There are evangelical Christians who crave more Middle Eastern war on religious and theological grounds, and there are some who just believe that the U.S. can and should wage war against whatever countries seem not like to us. And, it should also be noted, a huge portion of American Jews, if not the majority, do not share this agenda.

On the essential aspects of ``militarism and oil-driven expansionism,'' it seems to me quite clear that calls to ``negotiate'' with Iran ring hollow. Walking a tightrope while recognizing that very few in America, especially in Democratic primaries, are particularly in a mood to jump into a bigger war, Edwards appeared to be conciliatory in a recent interview with Ezra Klein of The American Prospect. The trouble is, there is really no aspect of US imperial policy in the Middle East that possibly could be conceded in a negotiation with Iran, and Edwards failed to offer such.

In that Klein interview, Edwards explains what America would "give" Iran. They would be allowed to have a nuclear fuel cycle, controlled by Washington. Presumably Iran would be also be allowed to pay its oh-so-``hard'' oil $ in exchange for these benefits brought to it by the elite technocratic contracting entities in the multinational Nuclear Suppliers Group. Also, Iran would get economic "help," presumably from a dose of neoliberal medicine. If I were Iranian, that deal would be totally a non-starter.

Why does Iran scare US and Israeli elites so much that transparently hollow diplomatic postures threats of war against Iran are now at nearly a fever pitch going into the 2008 campaign? It's obvious that Iran has a great potential to develop as a significant power in the mid-21st century. I have no doubt that at least some measure of the propaganda concerning Iran's efforts to make the US ``fail'' in Iraq are true. This is all so important because of the energy reserves--most importantly Washington's ability to keep control of taps throughout the region.

Even though Iran's oil fields are mature and declining, there is still enormous and increasing wealth there, if they can keep more of the oil in the ground for a longer period of time. And they have more natural gas than just about anybody besides Russia. That's why nuclear power makes sense for Iran. The oil & gas are precious export commodities certain to grow in value well into the future.

What kind of genuine, reasonable concession could be made to Iran that would defuse the nuclear tripwire? We could start by bringing Israel into the non-proliferation system (like Iran has been and remains to this day) while establishing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. In my view Israel is a far more dangerous rogue nuclear state now than Iran could possible be for decades. But such an even-handed approach is just not in the cards for elites like those in the Israel lobby's and Cheney's realms. And not in the realm of Edwards or Clinton either.

So, is war on Iran a foregone conclusion? Does it even matter to these people what a disaster the war on Iraq, and also to some extent the war on Lebanon have become? It's going to take a much more informed, much stronger peace movement if this thing is going to work out without at least the kind of war discussed in that New York Sun piece.