Willing Executioners

Here's a typically excellent essay by Ed Herman on the absurdity of the saber-rattling towards Iran.

After laying out "Twelve Principles of Propaganda Used in Setting the Stage for War," he concludes:

Uncle Chutzpah and his willing executioners -- the media, UN and coalition of the cowardly and bribed -- have isolated Iran and set her up for possible destabilization and aggression. One wouldn't think this possible given the remarkable parallels in argument and (phony) evidence in this case and that of the failed aggression in Iraq, but the power of the aggressor and subservience of the media and international community are apparently boundless.

It is certainly not assured that Iran will be attacked, and if it is attacked that is most likely to be by bombs only, but it can well happen. The stage is being set, and the folks likely to make those decisions are proven killers, torturers and law violators, confident in their military superiority and invulnerability to prosecution for criminal behavior and with a great capacity for righteous self-deception. And the international community is not only doing nothing to stop them, it is helping them prepare the "(im)moral" and quasi-legal groundwork.

I remain doubtful that the UN Security Council will do much to punish Iran, but that's largely irrelevant for US policy makers.

The UN is being used, like it was in the Iraq war build up, to highlight the seriousness of Iran's nuclear "ambitions" for domestic consumption, primarily. Once the UN stumbles drawing up suitably harsh enough measures against Iran (from the American/Israeli perspective), the international body will be quickly disregarded, labelled "irrelevant" and "weak" for its inability to rein in Tehran's "rogue" behavior. The US will claim that it tried to handle Iran's threat diplomatically, but was hamstrung by Old Europe and the Old Commie duo.

At this point, Israel and/or the US will get down to the real business at hand.