Neoconservatives lied us into war with Iraq. Now they’re trying to do it with Iran
After 9/11, and after we invaded Afghanistan, neoconservatives immediately started talking about going to war with Iraq. They said Iraq President Saddam Hussein had sheltered and trained al-Qaeda. They said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
Today, we know there was more mass deception than secret Iraqi weapons, but in the end, the hawks in the Bush administration and beyond still got their war. They had wanted war with Iraq for years, seeing regime change in that country, however strangely, as necessary for continued American global dominance, and didn’t mind manipulating the public after 9/11 to get it.
https://twitter.com/YALiberty/status/1620784223136145410
Now the neocons are doing it again, using these heady days of the Israel-Palestine war to gin up support for a war on Iran.
https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1712292496456499211
These neocons say they know Iran was behind the Hamas attack on Israelis. They might be right. Time will tell.
But right now Israel says it has no such intelligence. The US says the same. And even if such evidence were to present itself, the fact still remains that Israel was attacked—not the United States.
One of the loudest neocons, Senator Lindsey Graham, says to hell with that, he doesn’t need evidence. Bomb Iran anyway!
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/1712276527792996375
Just like with 9/11 and Iraq, these people will jump to any conclusion or tell any lie to get their war.
And how bad would war with Iran be?
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald recently asked author and foreign policy expert Stephen Walt what a combined US and Israeli war on Iran might look like.
“You’re talking about a regional war in the Middle East, and one that would be devastating for some countries in the region. I mean Iran is much weaker but it is not incapable of defending itself in various ways. It has a large missile force; some of those missiles can reach our friends in the region and there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't use them.”
Walt added, “So you're talking immediately about you know countries, including Israel, who would suffer if an active war like that broke out.”
He said the missile capacity of Hezbollah outmatches anything Hamas is capable of.
“Hezbollah, an Iranian ally in Lebanon, would probably get involved and they have tens of thousands of rockets that they can fire into Israel as well,” Walt continued. “So I think, you know, anyone who cares about Israel or cares about countries in the region does not want to see this war expand territorially.”
While both Israel and the US say they have no evidence of Iran backing Hamas in the recent attack, both governments would have good reasons to not want that knowledge even if it were true.
Walt observed, “I think actually the Israeli government and the American government do not in some respects want to discover that there's evidence linking Iran to this in any kind of direct or active way. I mean I think the interest of almost everyone now is to try and bring this to an end as quickly as possible and not allow it to get bigger.”
He then addressed the neoconservatives so eager for war with Iran, “And if there are American politicians trying to make political hay out of this, I think that's, you know, irresponsible at a minimum and reprehensible at worst.”
So an Iran war would be another awful, cataclysmic war like Iraq, if not worse.
And like Iraq, neocons have wanted war and regime change with Iran for years, again, believing that it’s key to US dominance in the Middle East and the world.
Did Iran sponsor the Hamas attack on Israel? At the moment, that’s not anywhere close to conclusive, similar to neoconservative presumptions and premises for attacking Iraq two decades ago. Fool me once…
But regardless, they want war. Perpetually.
And ANY reason will do.
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