Gary Hart on the October Surprise

Former senator Gary Hart writes in the Huffington Post about the Bush plan to attack Iran prior to the November mid-term elections:

The steps will be these: Air Force tankers will be deployed to fuel B-2 bombers, Navy cruise missile ships will be positioned at strategic points in the northern Indian Ocean and perhaps the Persian Gulf, unmanned drones will collect target data, and commando teams will refine those data. The latter two steps are already being taken.

Then the president will speak on national television. He will say this: Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons; if this happens, the entire region will go nuclear; our diplomatic efforts to prevent this have failed; Iran is offering a haven to known al Qaeda leaders; the fate of our ally Israel is at stake; Iran persists in supporting terrorism, including in Iraq; and sanctions will have no affect (and besides they are for sissies). He will not say: ...and besides, we need the oil.

Therefore, he will announce, our own national security and the security of the region requires us to act. "Tonight, I have ordered the elimination of all facilities in Iran that are dedicated to the production of weapons of mass destruction....." In the narrowest terms this includes perhaps two dozen targets.

But the authors of the war on Iraq have "regime change" in mind in Iran. According to Colonel Sam Gardiner (author of "The End of the 'Summer of Diplomacy': Assessing U.S. Military Options in Iran," The Century Foundation, 2006) to have any hope of success, such a policy would require attacking at least 400 targets, including the Revolutionary Guard. But even this presumes the Iranian people will respond to a massive U.S. attack on their country by overthrowing their government. Only an Administration inspired by pre-Enlightenment fantasy could believe a notion such as this.

Hart is behind the curve. Not only are drones and commando teams getting target data, but the naval strike force is being prepared to send to the Persian Gulf. I have not yet heard any news of Air Force preparations for a strike, but my ear is to the ground.

(via Avedon Carol)

John M. Ford

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
        who used to
        ride a watersmooth-silver
                                  stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                 Jesus

he was a handsome man
                      and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

(e. e. cummings)

October Surprise

The Nation reports that that a naval strike force that includes the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower has been ordered to prepare for deployment to the Persian Gulf.

The strike force has been ordered to be ready for deployment by Sunday, October 1. Military analysts say that, deploying on this date, the strike force would be on station in the Persian Gulf three weeks later, on October 21.

The Nation reports that several angry officers on the ships involved ... contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.

It is becoming increasingly clear that George W. Bush and his henchmen intend to launch an attack on Iran, in direct contravention of U.S. and international law, to say nothing of common decency (let alone sanity), prior to this November's election.

A lot of people are working hard at reining in the Republican regime through campaigning and get-out-the-vote efforts in these mid-term elections. Others are raising awareness and lobbying against legislation being considered by the Republican-controlled Congress to legalize torture by US intelligence and security forces.

I believe that stopping this insane war that the USA cannot win and that can only result in the murder of countless innocent people and earn justly the hatred and contempt of the entire world is even more important and pressing than these important and pressing concerns.

(via tristero at Digby's Hullabaloo)

How The Democrats Should Be Campaigning, #5,271,009

Everyone else in Left Blogistan is full of suggestions on how the Democrats should be campaigning in the runup to the midterm congressional elections this November. Why should I be left out of the fun?

The shoe has finally dropped. Aside from the beating of war drums in the media there hadn't yet been indications of concrete military action against Iran until now:

he first message was routine enough: A "Prepare to Deploy" order sent through naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters. The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said to be ready to move by Oct. 1. But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf. The CNO had asked for a rundown on how a blockade of those strategic targets might work. When he didn't like the analysis he received, he ordered his troops to work the lash up once again.

What's going on? The two orders offered tantalizing clues. There are only a few places in the world where minesweepers top the list of U.S. naval requirements. And every sailor, petroleum engineer and hedge-fund manager knows the name of the most important: the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile-wide bottleneck in the Persian Gulf through which roughly 40% of the world's oil needs to pass each day. Coupled with the CNO's request for a blockade review, a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed—but until now largely theoretical—prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.

The naval blockade by itself is insufficient to wage a war. We don't have the ground troops to invade Iran. What is left, obviously, is assault by air, possibly with nuclear weapons, which, as Jim MacDonald at Making Light points out, would be an unmitigated disaster.

So maybe it's time to go into the archives and pull out this highly effective campaign classic. It gets the message across to anyone who can count to ten.

One Hundred Years Ago Today

As a counter to the slow evolution of September 11 into a nationalistic celebration of vengeance and bloodlust I want to mark today as the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Mohandas Gandhi's Satyagraha movement:

On September 11, 1906, in Johannesburg, Gandhiji initiated his Satyagraha against the Natal Government, which was trying to pass an Ordinance meant to disenfranchise the Indians and if passed would have made life impossible for the Indians in the country. It was on September 11, 1906, when the Indians gathered to discuss how to meet the challenge of the ordinance that Gandhiji thought of facing violence with non-violence, of fighting for truth and justice with suffering. He warned the meeting that pursuit of Satyagraha might mean prison or even cost them their life. Everyone who attended that meeting took a pledge to resist the ordinance with non-violence whatever the provocation. ...

September 11, 1906, was the beginning of Gandhiji's Satyagraha movement — it started in Johannesburg against the ordinance and was later used in India to fight for its independence. "Satyagraha," explained Gandhiji, "is a relentless search for Truth and a determination to search for Truth. Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within. Satyagraha can be described as an effective substitute for violence." An eye for an eye, said Gandhi, only ends up making the whole world blind.

Explaining his philosophy of non-violence to the people, he said, "I saw that nations like individuals could only be made through the agony of the cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself. Violent means would give violent freedom and that would mean a menace to the world. Real suffering, on the other hand, bravely borne melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering. And there lies the key to Satyagraha."

The peaceful liberation of India from British colonial rule stands out as a beacon of light and hope in a century otherwise filled with national madness, chaos, war, and industrialized murder. Today is much better remembered as the birthday of a philosophy of hope than for a bloody skirmish in the clash of civilizations.

(via Debbie Notkin)