This is among the best, most comprehensive, in-depth, and accurate articles that I've seen yet regarding the catastrophic war against Iran started by Trump and his fascist administration. There are so many layers related to the reasons behind starting a war of such profound devastation. And, yes, this can include other factors beyond the Trump-Netanyahu-AIPAC relationships and seeking regime change — and this can certainly also include getting the Epstein files off the front pages, creating a scenario of justification for canceling the midterms, and other nightmares. That said, here we see the deepest roots behind the horrors that we are witnessing today. It is my belief that there is an urgent need to understand that it is the American regime in power and the Israeli regime in power that are the greatest threats to peace in the world. These are the terrorists who threaten us all.
Chris Hedges illuminates in this piece and many other articles the truth of the long-term criminal support by our government — including by both major political parties — of Netanyahu, AIPAC, and Israel. Chris pierces through the poisonous AIPAC aligned propaganda of the American mainstream media. He can be counted on for his integrity, courage, profound commitment to truth, knowledge and wisdom, and awareness of the deeper interconnected issues at the root of so much suffering, greed, and violence. And Chris should know after his many years as an independent unembedded Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist who reported from the front lines of multiple wars. Chris Hedges understands the American Empire and the truth of Martin Luther King's words from decades past which remain true today: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: My own Government."
As Emma Goldman also said many years ago, "The most violence element in society is ignorance." It is essential that we seek and know the truth, that we turn to consistently reputable resources for our information, and that we speak up and act together to dismantle the roots of the ignorance and endless violence within ourselves and within our world. Everything we love and cherish is at stake. — Molly
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| Blood Brothers - by Mr. Fish |
Going to War, Again, for Israel
By Chris Hedges
Once again, America is going to war for Israel. Once again, many will die for the Zionist state, including American service members. Once again, we will stumble blindly into a military fiasco. Once again, we will do the bidding of a foreign power whose interests are not our interests, but whose lobbyists have bought up our political class, including Donald Trump. Once again, we will violate the U.N. charter by attacking a country that does not pose an imminent threat.
This is not our war. This is part of Israel’s demented vision of Greater Israel, of dominating the Middle East. But Israel needs our military, our taxpayer dollars, our weapons to do it. And we have handed them the keys to our formidable arsenal.
The architects of the war with Iran, which the administration feels no need to justify to the American public or the international community, admit it will not be quick.
Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Saturday that the goal is not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but “dismantle their terror support network.”
“To do all that is going to take longer than the strikes on their nuclear program last summer,” Cotton said. “We’re probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning.”
Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with their courtiers in the media, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, as well as academia, are shining examples of Israel’s transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system. Forget Russia. Forget China. No foreign government comes close to exerting Israel’s influence.
Democratic Party leaders are not opposed to attacking Iran — they are opposed to attacking Iran without being consulted. Two dozen Democrats lept to their feet and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, or lauded Israel, in his State of the Union address. The Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership made no effort to reinstate Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement. It focused instead on sustaining the genocide in Gaza. It cheered Israel’s decapitation of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Kamala Harris in her feckless and tone deaf presidential campaign promised to continue funding the genocide, which alienated many voters, and labeled Iran our most dangerous enemy.
Endless war is a bipartisan project.
The flagrant interference by Israel in the American political system is documented in the Al-Jazeera four-part series “The Lobby,” which Israel and its supporters blocked from being broadcast. Pirated copies can be watched on the website Electronic Intifada. In the documentary, the leaders of the Israel lobby are captured on a reporter’s hidden camera explaining how, backed by the intelligence services in Israel, they discredit and silence American critics and use huge cash donations to control the American electoral process and political system.
Israel’s death grip on our political system is also documented in “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
“If you wander off the reservation and become critical of Israel, you not only will not get money, AIPAC will go to great lengths to find someone who will run against you,” Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, says in the documentary. “And they support that person very generously. The end result is you’re likely to lose your seat in Congress.”
Israel flies hundreds of members of Congress, often with their families, to Israel for lavish junkets at seaside resorts. These Congress members run up individual bills that frequently exceed $20,000. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 attempted to restrict lobbyists from offering paid trips lasting more than one day to members of Congress. But AIPAC, which has never been forced to register as a foreign agent, used its clout to insert a clause in the act to exclude so-called educational trips organized by charities that do not hire lobbyists. The AIPAC-affiliated charity utilized to navigate this loophole is called the American Israel Education Foundation.
The investment by Israel is worth it. The United States Congress in 2016 authorized a $38 billion per year defense aid package from 2019-2028 for Israel. We squandered $ 4 to $ 6 trillion on the futile wars Israel and its lobby pushed for in the Middle East. Congress has, as well, authorized $ 21.7 in military aid to Israel to sustain the genocide.
God knows the cost of this war, but it will likely be in the billions of dollars.
We are back to where we were in 2003 with a war whose utopian goal is regime-change. It didn’t work then. It won’t work now.
The same fatuous lies have been dredged up to justify this war, with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff telling Fox News that Iran is “probably a week away” from having the materials necessary to make a nuclear bomb.
This has been Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel lobby’s mantra for three decades.
I’m not sure how we are supposed to swallow this after Trump announced last July, following U.S. air strikes, that “All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service...”
One lie supersedes the next.
Once again, we promise to bomb a country to liberate it, with Trump saying all he wants is “freedom for the people” of Iran.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound was bombed and, according to Israeli officials, he has been killed. Iran insists he remains alive.
The Israeli prime minister, like Trump, is calling on the Iranians to seize the “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to “take to the streets en masse, to complete the task of overthrowing the regime that is making your lives miserable.”
“This is your time to join forces to overthrow the regime, to secure your future,” Netanyahu said.
That every other attempt at regime-change in the Middle East resulted in disaster eludes them. This time, they promise, it will work.
We may not have assembled a ground force, as Bush did in 2003 for the Iraq war, but once you open the Pandora’s box of war, war controls you. You don’t control it.
American troops will likely be killed as Iran targets U.S. bases in the region. The Iranian navy has announced it is shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil chokepoint that facilitates the passage of 20 percent of the world’s oil supply. This will potentially double or triple the price of oil and devastate the global economy. Oil installations along with U.S. ships and military bases in the region will be hit.
Iran has already fired missiles at Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, Al-Salem airbase in Kuwait, Al-Dhafra airbase in the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and U.S. bases in Jordan. Explosions have been reported in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Thousands of innocents will die. Israel hit an elementary girls’ school on Saturday in Minab, a city in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran. Iran’s Tasnim News Agency cited the Judiciary of Minab as saying that the death toll had risen to 85.
The steady losses, and a huge spike in oil prices, will compound the frustrations of Trump and his Israeli allies. These frustrations, like those during the two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, will ignite a protracted regional war.
Iran, under sustained attack, could eventually fragment and splinter, sending millions of refugees over its border and igniting the chaos we engineered in Libya. But Israel, whose goal is to degrade the military capabilities of its neighbors, will get what it wants.
We will be left with the mess.
Please go here for the original article: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/going-to-war-again-for-israel
