The man, sad to say, is right. What is happening now is a bit like the Cuban Missile Crisis, only seen through a fun house mirror.
But the point of crisis isn’t Poland. This really has nothing to do with the planned missile shield.
This is about Iran.
For months George W. Bush has been raising the temperature on Iran, calling it terrorist, calling it a tyranny, slapping on sanctions, bullying Democrats into going along, generally threatening it. Adding funding for special "bunker busting" bombs for Stealth fighters to the budget was a signal, to the world, that the U.S. is serious, and feels it has the right to "take out" the military capabilities of those crazy Iranians.
But who’s crazy?
In the eyes of the world, it’s George W. Bush who is crazy. His minions may still be able to force a censure vote on a Congressman
who dares say so, and Americans generally who state this fact are still going to be called crazy themselves, but outside the U.S. the view is different.
And that view counts for something.
It’s not just Al-Jezeera. In poll after poll taken all over the world,
people see the greatest threat to world peace coming from the U.S. They
have met the enemy and he is us. Americans tend to dismiss this idea,
either attacking foreigners or calling them naive, but that’s the way
it is.
By standing next to Iran’s President, by rattling his saber, Putin
stands as a bulwark against what the world considers aggression. Most
people see what we’re doing in Iraq as an occupation, and what we’re
supporting in Israel as an occupation. Most Americans still don’t feel
that way, despite the fact 70% of us now oppose the Iraq War. We can’t
see ourselves as the bad guys. Those Americans who do see us as the bad
guys here are easily dismissed as crazy, even in 2007.
But that’s not how we’re seen elsewhere.
Three things can happen concerning Iran:
- We don’t attack, and Putin wins.
- We attack, Putin does not respond, and we win in the short term.
- We attack, Putin does respond, and millions die.
Not just millions of Iranians. Millions, period. American millions,
Russian millions, Iranian millions, millions all around the world. Not just in the attack, but in the years afterward. If Bush attacks Iran
and World War III starts he’s seen as the aggressor, we’re seen as the
aggressor.
At which point all bets are off. Maybe the next Nuremberg Trials take place in Ft. Lee, New Jersey. Maybe that’s what the MSNBC studios were abandoned for.
Putin is betting we won’t attack. Most Americans still believe
we won’t attack. And if we don’t attack, even if we never had any
intention of attacking, Vladimir Putin gets the credit. History
repeats as farce and the joke’s on you. Putin gets the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the long term it may be a bigger American foreign policy blunder
than the Iraq War itself. The rehabilitation of a Sovietized Russia.
And these people claim to be the adults?
