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August 22nd and Iran's ideology welcoming M.A.D.
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| emc^2 |
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August 22
Does Iran have something in store?
BY BERNARD LEWIS
Tuesday, August 8, 2006 4:30 p.m. EDT
During the Cold War, both sides possessed weapons of mass destruction, but neither side used them, deterred by what was known as MAD, mutual assured destruction. Similar constraints have no doubt prevented their use in the confrontation between India and Pakistan. In our own day a new such confrontation seems to be looming between a nuclear-armed Iran and its favorite enemies, named by the late Ayatollah Khomeini as the Great Satan and the Little Satan, i.e., the United States and Israel. Against the U.S. the bombs might be delivered by terrorists, a method having the advantage of bearing no return address. Against Israel, the target is small enough to attempt obliteration by direct bombardment.
It seems increasingly likely that the Iranians either have or very soon will have nuclear weapons at their disposal, thanks to their own researches (which began some 15 years ago), to some of their obliging neighbors, and to the ever-helpful rulers of North Korea. The language used by Iranian President Ahmadinejad would seem to indicate the reality and indeed the imminence of this threat.
Would the same constraints, the same fear of mutual assured destruction, restrain a nuclear-armed Iran from using such weapons against the U.S. or against Israel?
There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers. This worldview and expectation, vividly expressed in speeches, articles and even schoolbooks, clearly shape the perception and therefore the policies of Ahmadinejad and his disciples.
Even in the past it was clear that terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam had no compunction in slaughtering large numbers of fellow Muslims. A notable example was the blowing up of the American embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing a few American diplomats and a much larger number of uninvolved local passersby, many of them Muslims. There were numerous other Muslim victims in the various terrorist attacks of the last 15 years.
The phrase "Allah will know his own" is usually used to explain such apparently callous unconcern; it means that while infidel, i.e., non-Muslim, victims will go to a well-deserved punishment in hell, Muslims will be sent straight to heaven. According to this view, the bombers are in fact doing their Muslim victims a favor by giving them a quick pass to heaven and its delights--the rewards without the struggles of martyrdom. School textbooks tell young Iranians to be ready for a final global struggle against an evil enemy, named as the U.S., and to prepare themselves for the privileges of martyrdom.
A direct attack on the U.S., though possible, is less likely in the immediate future. Israel is a nearer and easier target, and Mr. Ahmadinejad has given indication of thinking along these lines. The Western observer would immediately think of two possible deterrents. The first is that an attack that wipes out Israel would almost certainly wipe out the Palestinians too. The second is that such an attack would evoke a devastating reprisal from Israel against Iran, since one may surely assume that the Israelis have made the necessary arrangements for a counterstrike even after a nuclear holocaust in Israel.
The first of these possible deterrents might well be of concern to the Palestinians--but not apparently to their fanatical champions in the Iranian government. The second deterrent--the threat of direct retaliation on Iran--is, as noted, already weakened by the suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today, without parallel in other religions, or for that matter in the Islamic past. This complex has become even more important at the present day, because of this new apocalyptic vision.
In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time--Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise.
What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.
A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."
In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.
How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD.
Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).
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| tathi |
that's pretty scary :wtf:
It's a shame Iran doesn't have any courageous International Heros like Moderchai Vanunu :( |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
It's a shame Iran doesn't have any courageous International Heros like Moderchai Vanunu :( |
i'm sure they do but one is a liberal, Western European society, the other is a theocratic, fascist/isolationist regime.
please tell me i don't have to explain to you which one Mr. Vanunu is from.:D |
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| tathi |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
please tell me i don't have to explain to you which one Mr. Vanunu is from.:D |
Hmmmmm thats a hard one, his government did illegally kidnap him on foreign soil, threw him in jail for eighteen years for a crime that hopefully will one day see him receive the Nobel Peace Prize, twelve years of his sentence were spent in solitary confinment that Amnesty International condemned as constituting "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment [...] such as is prohibited by international law" which was consequently condemned by all "liberal, Western European societies"
My geography is pretty sketchy so i'll take a wild guess, was Vanunu from Myanmar? Hmmm nah they would probalby put him under house arrest for speaking out against their facist / isolationist regime.
heh. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
Hmmmmm thats a hard one, his government did illegally kidnap him on foreign soil, threw him in jail for eighteen years for a crime that hopefully will one day see him receive the Nobel Peace Prize, twelve years of his sentence were spent in solitary confinment that Amnesty International condemned as constituting "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment [...] such as is prohibited by international law" which was consequently condemned by all "liberal, Western European societies"
My geography is pretty sketchy so i'll take a wild guess, was Vanunu from Myanmar? Hmmm nah they would probalby put him under house arrest for speaking out against their facist / isolationist regime.
heh. |
he's not in any danger of winning the Nobel prize. see, treason by any other name is called a crime. something we as Americans have executed people for in peacetime...doing exactly what he did.
i'm not gonna ask you to draw parallels about America being a fascist state because i think your smart enough to distinguish between the two in private but not intellectually honest enough not to draw some sort of pacifist moral equivalency on this board.
Israel has been and still is very sensitive about it's nuclear secrets. thats understandable in their position. what Iran would do to that man if he were theirs would be a forgone conclusion wouldn't it? no room for moral dynamics there. |
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| emc^2 |
It must be the water... that's it... All these people either drank or had parents who drank from the "ing Crazy River". I find no other explanation for this ramblings of this "intellectual":
| quote: |
Bush, Blair should apologise to Iran: professor
Saturday, August 12, 2006 - ©2005 IranMania.com
LONDON, August 12 (IranMania) - US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair should drop their confrontational policies and apologise to Iran to resolve the current stand-off over its nuclear programme, according to Professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann, IRNA reported.
"Ideally, Mr Blair and Mr Bush should go to Tehran, ask the Iranian people for forgiveness, and then, as they say, take it from there," said the French-born Professor of International Political Economy.
"This will be infinitely more effective than sanctions, let alone warfare," he said in a letter to the Financial Times published Friday.
Lehmann, who is a founding director of the Lausanne-based Evian Group, an international coalition of corporate, government and opinion leaders, was writing about the roots of the crisis in the Middle East caused by interference by western governments, IRNA added.
"The interventions and impositions by the 'west,' both Europe and the US, in the Middle East have been almost invariably negative, both in their motivations and in their consequences," he suggested.
"While we (rightly) urge the Japanese to apologise to the Chinese, Koreans and other victims of the Pacific war and Japanese imperialism, the west owes profound apologies to Iran, the Iranians and the Arab people and societies of the Middle East," he said.
According to IRNA, the 60-year old professor said the Bush administration sermonises about freedom and democracy to Iran, but it "should it not, at the very least, acknowledge that democracy in Iran was aborted by the UK and the US in 1953 with the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh." "The US-UK then imposed and strongly supported the dictatorial monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as shah of Iran until he was finally overthrown by the Iranian people in 1979," he said.
Lehmann said that what is important is that the current government in Tehran is that it was "chosen by the Iranian people and ultimately it is up to the Iranian people whether it wants to maintain it or not."
"Surely the first step would be for the US and the UK to accept responsibility for all the political turbulence they caused in Iran in the previous century, proffer profound apologies, preferably with some important compensation, especially to all the families with members who died or were tortured by Savak, the shah's notoriously brutal secret police," he told the Financial Times.
The professor at the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland said the affair was emphatically "not water under the bridge."
"It is one example out of so many in this tragic region where history lives on (as it does between Japan and China and Korea) and determines the present and the future, because the past has not been properly addressed," he said.
Lehmann said there are many other cases for the west to seek forgiveness in the region, "but the Mossadegh issue has the advantage of being quite clear-cut and could go a long way to providing a solution for the current Iranian crisis."
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| tathi |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
he's not in any danger of winning the Nobel prize. see, treason by any other name is called a crime. something we as Americans have executed people for in peacetime...doing exactly what he did.
i'm not gonna ask you to draw parallels about America being a fascist state because i think your smart enough to distinguish between the two in private but not intellectually honest enough not to draw some sort of pacifist moral equivalency on this board.
Israel has been and still is very sensitive about it's nuclear secrets. thats understandable in their position. what Iran would do to that man if he were theirs would be a forgone conclusion wouldn't it? no room for moral dynamics there. |
If Vanunu were to have exposed the nuclear program in Iran, or North Korea he would no doubt be tortured and executed for "treason" and the US and her allies would no doubt condemn this act while cannonizing this Man for standing up to 'tyranny' or the 'axis of evil' or whatever other buzzword these demagogues like to use. All you've done is proved my point about the double standards that exist between the East and West, however i sincerely doubt that you will ever be intellectually honest enough to realise this moot point. The parallels between Israel and Myanmar were exagerated and sarcastic, but sometimes one has to resort to these tactics to get their point accross :p |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
his government did illegally kidnap him on foreign soil |
hmmm, mossad 'illegally' kidnapped nazi war criminals as well ;)
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
All you've done is proved my point about the double standards that exist between the East and West, however i sincerely doubt that you will ever be intellectually honest enough to realise this moot point. |
but thats the thing isnt it? there IS a difference between liberal democracies and the theocratic dictatorships & stalinist communist countries. or so i would have thought. i might desire complete nuclear disarmament by all nations, but im a lot less worried about countries like israel having them than i am about some others. and id be surprised if you didnt agree with me there... |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
If Vanunu were to have exposed the nuclear program in Iran, or North Korea he would no doubt be tortured and executed for "treason" and the US and her allies would no doubt condemn this act while cannonizing this Man for standing up to 'tyranny' or the 'axis of evil' or whatever other buzzword these demagogues like to use. |
your probably right. you know why? (i'll know you didn't if you argue this point with me) because Iran and PRNK ARE tyrannical! yeah! they ARE evil! let go of the f**king semantics and take a good hard look at them.
| quote: | | this All you've done is proved my point about the double standards that exist between the East and West, |
no i didn't. i don't believe in your double standard. |
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| tathi |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
hmmm, mossad 'illegally' kidnapped nazi war criminals as well ;) |
Would it be justified for Holland to kidnapp Aerial Sharon to trial him in the Hague for War Crimes?
| quote: | | but thats the thing isnt it? there IS a difference between liberal democracies and the theocratic dictatorships & stalinist communist countries. or so i would have thought. i might desire complete nuclear disarmament by all nations, but im a lot less worried about countries like israel having them than i am about some others. and id be surprised if you didnt agree with me there... |
Yes I would be much more worried if countries like North Korea or Iran went Nuclear, however Israels possession of Nuclear weapons is just as scary as Pakistans' considering their 'reconaissance by fire' style of warfare and long list of human rights violations
In other news, the Israeli Foreign Ministry declared that it is not illegal for Israeli forces to use internationally banned cluster bombs:
| quote: | The Israeli military is using illegal weapons against civilians in southern Lebanon, according to several reports.
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said this week that Israel had used cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon, in clear violation of international law.
The group said cluster bombs killed a civilian and injured 12 others in Blida village in the south of Lebanon last week. Cluster bombs disperse hundreds of tiny shrapnel-filled 'bomblets' that are "unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable", and should not be used in civilian areas, HRW said.
Lebanese doctors, aid workers and refugees are reporting that the Israeli military has used the incendiary weapon white phosphorous in civilian areas, also in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Dr. Bachir el-Sham at the Complex Hospital in Sidon in the south of Lebanon told IPS in a telephone interview that he has received civilian patients injured by incendiary weapons.
"We are seeing people that are all blackened, with charred flesh that is not burned by normal bombs and flames," he said. "I am sure this is a special bomb. They are using incendiary weapons on civilians in the south. We are seeing these patients."
The doctor also told IPS that the Israelis are again using suction bombs, which they used heavily during the Lebanese civil war.
"They are using suction bombs that implode our buildings," he added, "With implosive bombs... instead of the glass blasted out, it is inside the building. These kill everyone inside the building. There are rarely survivors when they use these bombs."
Bilal Masri, assistant director of the Beirut Government University Hospital (BGUH) had told IPS earlier that "many of the injured in the south are suffering from the impact of incendiary white phosphorous."
Wafaa el-Yassir, Beirut representative of the non-governmental organisation Norwegian People's Aid, told IPS that several of her relief workers in the south had reported assisting people hit by incendiary weapons.
"The most important thing is that we have an investigation for the Israelis' use of banned weapons," she said. "They have used phosphorous in Nabatiyeh and cluster bombs in Dahaya district of Beirut."
She also said that a doctor at the Bint Jbail hospital, in the small city near the southern border of Lebanon where much of the fierce fighting has taken place, had told her agency that he was certain that white phosphorous had been used against civilians there.
Zacharia al-Amedin, an 18-year-old refugee being treated for lacerations from bomb shrapnel said, "I was in a village near Tyre, and the Israelis were dropping incendiary bombs all around us, even though there weren't fighters near us. So many civilians were hit by these weapons."
The Lebanese ministry of interior has officially said that the Israeli military has used this weapon.
President Emile Lahoud said recently on French radio: "According to the Geneva Conventions, when they use phosphorous bombs and laser bombs, is that allowed against civilians and children?"
An Israeli military spokesman told Reuters news agency, "Everything the Israeli defence forces are using is legitimate." International law requires that the military distinguish between combatants and civilians. Incendiary weapons and cluster bombs when used in areas where there may be civilians contravene international humanitarian law.
"We are a country of humans, not animals," Sham said. "Real people are dying here. You must ask this of the world, to please help."
http://www.alternet.org/story/39628/
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I feel much safer that Israel is a liberal democracy using illegal weapons on civilians, because if they were a theocratic dictatorship that would be most immoral :p |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
Would it be justified for Holland to kidnapp Aerial Sharon to trial him in the Hague for War Crimes? |
hmmm, youve got me there ;)
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
I feel much safer that Israel is a liberal democracy using illegal weapons on civilians, because if they were a theocratic dictatorship that would be most immoral :p |
haha. the difference being that liberal democracies are more accountable for their actions, regardless of how inhumane they might be. those governments can also be removed from office from that old fashioned accountability test like the vote ;) im not supporting israel by any means, but i see them as fundamentally different from certain other regimes that also snub their nose at the international community. we dont need to get into the semantics of whether its worse to brutalise civilians in or outside of your national borders. |
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| tathi |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
your probably right. you know why? (i'll know you didn't if you argue this point with me) because Iran and PRNK ARE tyrannical! yeah! they ARE evil! let go of the f**king semantics and take a good hard look at them. |
I am not defending Iran. Yes i think their regime is tyrannical and their president is a sociopathic lunatic (by the way there is no such thing as "evil" - it is just a word religious nuts believe in) however this does not absolve Israel from criticism or responsibility for crimes against humanity or any other acts that the international community would not accept from theocratic dictatorships
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 German philosopher (1844 - 1900)
Israel needs to take a good hard long look at itself, it may be suprised at what it sees. |
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