Ersatz Versus Real Russian Empire

Simon Jenkins argues in Bush rebuking Russia? Putin must be splitting his sides
(The Guardian, Aug 13 2008) :

Moscow has to take some of the blame. But it is the west's policy of liberal interventionism that has fuelled war in Georgia.

Yet, Jenkins does not capture the full magnitude of the joke.

In U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation, J. Brady Kiesling asks:

Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

Zionism reached its final form in the late Czarist state and imprinted on Russian imperialism as the normal behavior of a Great Power.

Neocons steeped in Zionist ideology, acting as a Jewish special interest, and holding some of the most powerful positions in the US government, have almost reflexively proposed policy in conformance with the belief that the normal behavior of a Superpower like the USA must follow the example of the imagined brutality of the Czarist Empire of Zionist narrative.[xiv]

Yet, when push comes to shove, the US can only be an ersatz Russian empire in the face of rise of the New Russian Empire from the shards of the Soviet Union. Sphere: Related Content

Real Issue of Nuclear Iran

Alan Hart summarizes succinctly the real issue of an Iran with nuclear capabilities in his movie review "Farewell Israel": Myth and Reality:

Perhaps without realising that he has let a great, big cat out of the bag, Joel Gilbert [director of the documentary film FAREWELL ISRAEL, Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam] has provided the answer. He says (my emphasis added): "Even without attacking Israel, the mere capabilty of Iranian missiles to lay waste to Tel Aviv would create a 'strategic umbrella,' preventing Israel from using its superior strategic assets in a conventional war. With Israeli missiles neutralised, Muslim countries could overwhelm Israel with their superior numbers, conventional armor and short range missiles."

And that's the real point. Israel's military leaders and their political yes-men don't believe, and never have believed, that Iran, if it possessed nuclear weapons, would unleash them in a first strike against the Zionist state. The real problem for its leaders is that the moment Israel ceased to be the only nuclear-armed power in the region, would be the moment it lost its ability to impose its will on the region. And actually the world.

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Preparing for Attack on Iran?

Important Question from Mondoweiss Comments

"Nobody likes it when their neighbor gets nukes..."

Nope. But the U.S. and Israel tend to get all pre-emptive about it. Along those lines, the ever-chauvinist JPost offers a spin on the recent shake-up of U.S. Air Force leadership that the U.S. press (I guaran-damn-tee you) will not touch with a ten-thousand-foot pole. Frankly, I'm shocked that even the scrappy Israeli press would stick their collective toe into these murky waters:

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US Defense Secretary Robert Gates launched the US Air Force in a new direction Monday by announcing an unusual choice as the service's next uniformed chief. Gates recommended that President Bush nominate Gen. Norton Schwartz, a Jewish 35-year veteran with a background in Air Force special operations, as the new Air Force chief of staff, replacing Gen. Michael Moseley, who has been sacked.

When the Jewish Community Centers Armed Forces and Veteran's Committee presented its Military Leadership Award to Schwartz in 2004, he said he was "Proud to be identified as Jewish as well as an American military leader."

http://tinyurl.com/66jzfk

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Now to the 64,000-shekel question. With the U.S. and Israel locked in an escalating confrontation with Iran -- the Israeli minister Mofaz last Friday having described armed conflict with Iran as "unavoidable" -- is it antisemitic to ask whether Schwartz can be objective? To ask whether he is a Jewish neocon?

I mean, we don't want a rerun of the Dreyfus affair or anything. But was Moseley fired for resisting the rush toward aerial intervention, and replaced by "attack Jew" Schwartz who is onboard with Olmert's proposed sound-and-light show over Tehran?

[Note that Bush is in Europe today, urging that Iranian bank assets in Europe be frozen. This is not unlike Roosevelt's policy during 1941 of isolating and starving out Japan, to provoke it into a military attack.]

For perspective, consider a hypothetical case: the U.S. is in an escalating war of words with mainland China; a Taiwanese minister describes armed conflict as "unavoidable." And in the midst of this, the U.S. fires its air force chief and replaces him with a Taiwanese-American. Would Americans be entitled to question the advisability, objectivity and timing of such a choice, without being labeled as "yellow peril" reactionaries?

If the Israel Lobby succeeds in pushing the U.S. into armed aggression against Iran, it will be a crime that -- unlike their insider-cabal maneuvering to goad on the Iraq attack -- they will be unable to deny. Sanctioning Iran has been the noisy headline theme of the last several AIPAC policy conferences.

Posted by: Jim Haygood | June 10, 2008 at 01:49 PM

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