In his latest article in the New Yorker, Last Stand - the military's problem with the President's Iran policy, Sy Hersch writes:
"Rumsfeld and Cheney are the pushers on this - they don’t want to repeat the mistake of doing too little," the government consultant with ties to Pentagon civilians told me. "The lesson they took from Iraq is that there should have been more troops on the ground" - an impossibility in Iran, because of the overextension of American forces in Iraq - "so the air war in Iran will be one of overwhelming force."Now, how much force is "overwhelming force"?
When does "overwhelming" become genocide?
When does another invasion of aggression become more than the world can stand for?
In the late 1930s, Hitler absorbed - at the point of a gun - Austria, in the Anschluss, which was a declaration that the Germans and the Austrians were "one people", but to the world outside Berlin it was a gobbling up of one country by another in building an empire. The world was not happy, but it tucked its tail between its legs and went whimpering home. Hitler's generals and advisors almost all thought that the British and French would step in and punish Germany. Hitler was proven right, as the "Allies" sat on their hands.
After World War I's devastation, the War to End All Wars begat a peace movement the likes of which the world had never seen. Disarmament was all the rage. The western powers mistakenly believed that they had all the military that could cause any harm, and that if they melted down all their weapons the world would never see war again - at least on a large scale. Germany at the end of The War had been proscribed from raising more than a token army, so Germany was a non-entity in their thinking. Germany, to them, had no army; it had already been disarmed at the end of 1918.
Then on October, 1938, Herr Hitler reached out and touched another neighbor as he sent troops and tanks to swallow the Sudetenland whole. (It just may have mattered that the Sudetenland was the location of very sizable deposits of uranium, by the way...) What was the world's reaction that time? Appeasement. Neville Chamberlain is still seen as a coward of Biblical proportions for not standing up to Der Führer. Chamberlain had no choice, though, as the armies of the west were hollow shells (and not the artillery kind). There really was nothing they could do about it. Hitler once again trumped the west and his advisors, as he correctly surmised that the pared-down armies did not have the manpower, arsenal or will to put their foot down and make him back off. Hitler was not bluffing, but the west was. He called their bluff and they had no cards to play; therefore Chamberlain folded.
How did Hitler have the cards while they didn't? Well, he had pulled an end run on them and had raised an army in secret, training them in the recently "acquired" lands to the east, where the western powers were little capable of keeping an eye on him. Just as Prohibition drove alcohol underground and drug laws drive drug production underground, the building of the German military was done underground.
Had they called him on either maneuver, Hitler might well have backed down, but we will never know. If Hitler had never been right about the spines of the west, his followers and the world would not have been taken for the worst ride of the 20th century.
Fast forward to September 1, 1939, on the German-Polish frontier - only 11 months later. Hitler once again sees neghboring territiry that he wants for "die Volk" and in which to spread the German "Kultur". He had decided that they needed "Lebensraum" (living space), and the fertile plains of Poland, Belarus and the Ukraine beckoned. All he had to do was invade, then get rid of the less than Arian Slavs, and all would be well with the world. By this time, Hitler had determined that he had the most potent (literally and figuratively) army (and certainly air force) in the eowlrd and that no one - as it stood at that time - could hope to stop him from doing as he bloody well pleased.
Adolf had figured that west would not intervene; they had no interest in what happened in the east. Or would they?
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As Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney and their neo-Nazi/neocon advisors stand poised to invade Iran, the sane world may have to soon make a decision, to intervene. They, also, hope to spread their culture - democracy, they claim, but in reality oligarchy and Fascism - to the far corners of the world (at least those corners whose oil they want to not lose control of). They (our sons and daughters, actually) will go in (as this article has shown they plan to do) with all their guns a-blazing, with their latterday version of the Blitzkrieg, known as 'shock and awe', to overwhelm the natives (who they will immediately label "insurgents" and "terrorists"). They are convinced that they (we) have the most powerful military in history (even as we sit bogged down in Iraq, a country of 1/3 the area and populace and 1/10th the military capacity after 12 years of UN sanctions), and that no country can withstand our carpet bombing or our high-tech guided weapons. What a horrible, horrible disaster they are bringing upon the world. And they have no idea that they - like Michael Douglas' character in the movie "Falling Down" - that they are the bad guys.
Like Hitler, Bormann, Goering, Heydrich and the lot, they are convinced that they have found the coolest toy set on the planet since walking into the WHite House that day in January, 2001, and have been enamored of it ever since. With that toy set, and its million non-toy soldiers, they are sure no one in the world will say, "This far and no more." It freed their latent bully tendencies to run rampant over the world and sanity. If I had to label them, I would call them a pack of sociopaths, with the closest group in history to them would be none other than Adolf, Goering, Dr. Goebbels, Bormann, Himmler and Heydrich. While most of us would be offended by such comparisons, something tells me they would revel in them.
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If not when we invade Iraq, if not when we invade Iran, then when will anyone stand up to the criminals who claim to be our representatives before the world? We can yell and scream (and get our names on no-fly lists and in FBI folders), and they don't have to listen to us one whit.
A bully only knows the messages sent by knuckles smashing them in the eye socket or in their dental work. The rest of the world, combined, has the wherewithal to stop the U.S. The cost may be greater than the 50+ million ded of World War II. Europe, in particular knows how heavy a cost that is, and they are unwilling to step into that hell hole again. In the 1930s, no one in the west was willing to repeat WWI, and look at where that got them: their non-hard-headed reasonling only created a worse situation.
The question for now must be: Will they recognize the need early enough this time to stave off an even worse holocaust?
We know that they are almost to a man (sans Tony Blair) against the Bush doctrine of "Walk stupidly and carry a big Dick on your right hand". But will they ever have the will to put their collective foot down? It is doubtful. Leaders who have lived a lifetime without need of war/no war decisions are going to dodge those decision for as long as they possibly can. Ask Chamberlain about that. . .
If they do not, then the world may have many more dead than even WWII.
Let us hope not. Let us hope that someone, some military 'deciders' around the world can find a way to head the Bushies off at the pass. Ironically, it may fall to the Russians to man the majority of the army that saves us from an American President.
From the bulk of this Hersch article, it is clear that the U.S. military is trying to revolt (on OUR behalf, may I add) and trying to talk the Village Idiot and his evil twin out of becoming the first Adolf of the 21st century.
One of the unnamed four-star generals said to Hersch,
"The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don't want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, 'We stood up.' "That general has my support, for what it is worth. . . God bless them if they can, indeed, stand up.
. . . . TD
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