Peacenik was working on a post about Iran this morning which concluded that a military strike against Iran was inevitable. Peacenik allowed the media hype to influence Peacenik. But Peacenik pressed a wrong key on Peacenik's keyboard and the post disappeared. This caused Peacenik to go back and read some more.
This Dreyfuss article seems to be a little more rational than the hysteria Peacenik was reading elsewhere. Nobody thinks a military strike is plausible except the neo cons in the U.S. and Israel. Supposedly the neo cons in the U.S. are in retreat after the Iraq and Ahghanistan fiasco. Or they should be. Do the neo cons have enough influence left to manipulate the U.S. into a shooting war with Iran? Peacenik doesn't think so. Peacenik hopes not. But they are trying hard. It's deja vu. The warmongers methods have worked before. Will they work again?
Posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 09/28/2009 @ 09:00am
The US-Iran talks start Thursday in Geneva and, while a lot of other countries will be there too -- the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany are all part of the so-called P5 + 1 -- it's really the United States and Iran who will have to make a deal. Even the latest flareup over the secret Iranian enrichment facility doesn't change the basic fact: that Washington and Tehran, after three decades without diplomatic relations, will be talking. It's a startling and important reversal of US policy, as promised by candidate Barack Obama in 2008, abandoning the charged rhetoric of the Bush administration, which lumped Iran incongruously into the Axis of Evil in 2002 and looked aghast at the idea of negotiating with Iran.
Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, did his part yesterday to lower the temperature of the rhetoric by stating explicitly that the US does not have a military option to deal with Iran's nuclear program. He didn't exactly take the military option "off the table," as the unfortunate phrase goes, but he did say:
Read on...
This Dreyfuss article seems to be a little more rational than the hysteria Peacenik was reading elsewhere. Nobody thinks a military strike is plausible except the neo cons in the U.S. and Israel. Supposedly the neo cons in the U.S. are in retreat after the Iraq and Ahghanistan fiasco. Or they should be. Do the neo cons have enough influence left to manipulate the U.S. into a shooting war with Iran? Peacenik doesn't think so. Peacenik hopes not. But they are trying hard. It's deja vu. The warmongers methods have worked before. Will they work again?
Posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 09/28/2009 @ 09:00am
The US-Iran talks start Thursday in Geneva and, while a lot of other countries will be there too -- the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany are all part of the so-called P5 + 1 -- it's really the United States and Iran who will have to make a deal. Even the latest flareup over the secret Iranian enrichment facility doesn't change the basic fact: that Washington and Tehran, after three decades without diplomatic relations, will be talking. It's a startling and important reversal of US policy, as promised by candidate Barack Obama in 2008, abandoning the charged rhetoric of the Bush administration, which lumped Iran incongruously into the Axis of Evil in 2002 and looked aghast at the idea of negotiating with Iran.
Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, did his part yesterday to lower the temperature of the rhetoric by stating explicitly that the US does not have a military option to deal with Iran's nuclear program. He didn't exactly take the military option "off the table," as the unfortunate phrase goes, but he did say:
Read on...
