U.S. Attack on Iran Would Bring Trans-Atlantic Rift: Analyst

[sabra]

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1762579&C=europe

U.S. Attack on Iran Would Bring Trans-Atlantic Rift: Analyst

Trans-Atlantic relations will fracture if the United States moves militarily against Iran, with no European ally taking its side, unlike during the Iraq war, one of France’s leading political analysts predicts.

“There’s not going to be repetition of history this time,” said Dominique Moisi, who teaches at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, a think-tank that advises the French government on foreign policy issues. “Washington knows war with Iran would be a catastrophe, but it considers a nuclear Iran to be the greater disaster. This view symbolizes the huge gap separating the United States from the rest of the international community — and certainly European nations, which rank those scenarios the other way around. The Europeans will not be divided in the opposition to the United States if it launches action against Iran.”

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 bitterly split the 25 European Union nations into pro- and anti-invasion camps.

Addressing a roundtable of EU officials and policy experts here May 9, Moisi said there are “now no more diplomatic means” to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons capability since “the country is determined to attain this status, and Tehran has the firm support of Iran’s population to do so. But it’s a very dangerous situation because if it does this, then nuclear proliferation will spread across the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries will not stand and watch non-Arab Iran get the bomb.”

[Warpy]

1. Bombing Iran will cause all sorts of splits

and one of the deepest ones will be right here. People realize, even if they don't articulate it, that a unilateral action against Iran is one of the things that could quickly spin out of control and lead to the next world war, a war that the US will have no chance of being on the winning side in.

Even if we were in the right and wearing the white hats and retained any allies at all, we'd be at a terrible disadvantage because we have simply offshored too much of our essential manufacturing infrastructre. Machinery has been offshored or scrapped. We can't get it back in under a decade, and that is with the kind of government effort that is not forthcoming in a corporate controlled state.

We don't make cloth. We don't make shoes. We don't make enough bullets to supply the war in Iraq as it is. Increasingly, we don't make heavy machinery.

Going after Iran is suicide for this country and the thieves in Washington are just too damned ignorant and arrogant to realize it. They honestly think a war can be won with airstrikes, alone. They haven't bothered to check up on what it really does, forces a population to rally around even despised governments and fight to the death.

[Peace Patriot]

4. "....too damned ignorant and arrogant to realize it." What about treason?

The Bush junta is clearly operating in the interests of global corporate predators, who stopped being loyal to the U.S. a long time ago, although we provided them with the infrastructure, the resources, the tax benefits and the productive, well-educated labor to become what they are: massive, powerful, multinational monopolies of business and finance, with loyalty to no one.

Ignorant? Arrogant? Any tinpot dictator can be ignorant or arrogant. I think we're dealing with something far, far more difficult to address and solve--that we have lost our sovereignty to a super-rich elite that we now know has absolutely not one particular of care for us. They're not even a "noblesse oblige" ruling class. They are PREDATORS.

The sovereignty of the people is quite simple, really. We vote. Our votes elect representatives who see to our interests and the common good.

And guess who is now counting all of our votes, under a veil of corporate secrecy--in the new (Tom Delay/Bob Ney engineered) electronic voting systems, with their 'trade secret,' proprietary programming code and virtually no audit/recount controls?

These corporations--the brethren corporations Diebold and ES&S, and Sequoia--all with close ties to the Republican Party, the Bushites and rightwing causes.

This is not ignorance. This is not arrogance. This is a fascist coup.

But it goes even beyond the parameters of fascist coups we have seen in the past. The people who would bomb Iran DON'T CARE what it would do to our country (let alone to the Iranians). They are MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS who are shipping oil ALL OVER THE GLOBE. THIS "market"--their American compatriots--doesn't matter to them any more, except in so far as they can squeeze our last dime out of us. We are suffering a NINE TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT to SUBSIDIZE them and their oil wars!

Sovereignty is simple. And getting it back is simple. Not easy. But simple.

Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor NOW!

If you want your country back.

We vote. Our votes elect representatives who see to our interests and the common good.

We vote--on paper ballots, hand-counted at the precinct level, for all to see--as they do very efficiently in Canada and other countries, and as we USED TO DO here.

The mechanism of our sovereignty as a people, and the most fundamental condition of democracy and good government--transparent elections--has been taken away. We MUST get it back, before any other reform can or will occur.

[Karenina]

5. Excellent post, PP!

:toast:

[Warpy]

6. I like the way you think

but here in the Rockies, a watery grave in Boston Harbor might be problematic. I have been known to dream of RPGs aimed into storage warehouses 2 weeks before an election, although my own nonviolence gets in the way.

Luckily for me, I moved to a state which has since mandated 100% paper, optical scan ballots. Yes, the scanners can be hacked, but there will be a paper trail and if the pubbies win this state again, you can bet there will be a manual recount. There is also no way it can be challenged before the USSC the way Florida was, that different systems provide unequal protection, or whatever nonsense they used to install fascism.

Yes, if they bomb Iran, it will be treason. Shoot, I think the Plame outing now rises to the level of treason, given what we know about what she was working on undercover. I think allowing an Israeli spy at the highest levels of government is treason. I think a foreign policy that has benefited Israel and damaged the US is treason.

If they go after Iran, all hell will break loose, here and overseas.

[superconnected]

13. Beautiful. Yes we need to throw Diebold into the Boston harbor.

[0007]

17. Excellent Post. Nominated.

[Vincardog]

2. aWoL is a uniter. He is uniting the World against us. Will it take a

mushroom cloud over Theran to convince everyone that The Idiot Bush is an End Timer? He wants to bring about the end of the world. The truth be told he would like nothing better that to be raptured up and watch us suffer God's rath. That is what a Messiah Complex is.

[sweetheart]

3. Its more an us/them rift

.
.
Mr Fox himself has in the past observed that international agreement on decriminalising drugs
consumption may be the only way forward. As the fate of that law shows, there is nothing remotely
approaching cross-border consensus on the need for that radical a rethink. But that cannot disguise
the fact that the "drugs war" is being lost. It is a bankrupt policy.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/995a60ea-de2e-11da-af29-0000779e2340.html

A london paper writing about a failed policy, another transatlantic rift,
except the rift starts at canada and ends at the mexican border..

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. The last time the international community became so united....

...was during WWII against Germany, Japan, and Italy.

[Vidar]

8. Good news--the world should be united against us until regime chage.

[sidpleasant]

9. "no more diplomatic means” to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons?

What an idiotic statement! There is a lot that could be attempted diplomatically. Bush has never tried diplomacy with Iran. He'd rather launch a war with that country than sit across a table from them and try to talk out a mutually satisfactory solution to this alleged problem.

[Voltaire99]

10. Will the Democratic Party leadership line up for an attack?

Watch the polls.

If the public is scared into supporting an attack, you can be sure your Hillaries and Liebermans and Obamas will be right there, too.

[Canuckistanian]

11. And a Trans-Pacific rift and a Trans-Arctic rift

Face it, if the US attacks Iran they'll be doing it all alone.

[superconnected]

14. Wrong, the US has always strong armed the other nations into

attacking with us. Even when they didn't have planes, we made them fly ours - Gulf War I.

Bush, Rumsfield and Sleeza have no interest in getting the world to boycott Iran, the ONLY thing they are doing is stiring the pot for a war.

Bush will have one, and the US will be forcing the rest of the world into it with the US.

He'll top everything he's done up to now.

[Canuckistanian]

15. Sorry, Gulf war I?

Poppy made the Iraqi Air Force put planes in the air? How did he do that?

[superconnected]

18. I remember small countrys being loaned US planes just to bomb,

and how he strong armed England.

Oh, and how we flew 1100 miles around france and dropped a bomb on the French Embassy on our way across iraq, and called it an "accident".

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

12. George wants a wall around America- brother, he's gonna get it!

The rest of the world will build a wall so high around our country it will complete cut us off from EVERYTHING. All our imported resources will disappear and prices for the rest will skyrocket beyond most people's reach. The United States will become a ravaged nation, impotent and unimportant in world affairs.

Time to start hoarding EVERYTHING.

[lovuian]

16. The Irony is if Europe think they are not involved well they are

VERY VERY MISTAKEN...