"Look, Iran was dangerous," Bush said. "Iran is dangerous. And Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."Was, is, will be. That covers the major tenses, and it's strongly lacking in the conditional mood. What's notable is that Iran's future state is expressed not in terms of capacity but in terms of knowledge. Eliminating Iran's knowledge of how to make a nuclear weapon constitutes eliminating Iran, by the way. All of it. For the knowledge is but a google away. Anyway, it's a rather ingenious pretextual setup, one we've seen retroactively applied to Iraq's notoriously nonexistent nukes. It is, however, of a kind with the centrality of a chop-shop Neitzschean Will to the present incarnation of the American imperial dream. This is one of the most palpably false, Poor-Richard truisms of our culture: Where there's a will, there's a way. That is clearly not true, as any PCP freak who's ever tried to stop a moving bus or fly out of a 10th-floor window would tell you, were he not squashed flat on something or other. The impediment to nuclear armament has little to do with either knowledge or will, but with intent and industrial capability. The Iranians apparently lack both.
from the Post
A few triumphant, relieved cries have already sounded. We cannot go to war with Iran, they say, because of this new "evidence." When has a war ever been started on an evidentiary standard? I have to say that I rather admire the President for stripping away the many pretensions, elisions, and euphemisms that once encumbered our empire. He has stated with admirable clarity the plain fact that our decision to attack or not to attack Iran will be exogenous to anything the Iranians themselves do or say. Their "weapons programs," like Iraq's previously, are entirely irrelevant, except insofar as they provide fodder for the domestic debate mill. The United States embarked upon a project to cement its political hegemony in the Middle East, and that has proven more difficult than America imagined. Thus does our naked eye turn to the next target of opportunity. Iran's crime is not, nor ever has been, building weapons or "sponsoring" terrorism. Its crime is asserting a right to self-determination and political independence, which the government of the United States percieves as a challenge to its global primacy. There you have it.
11 comments:
Greg Cochran is skeptical, and he's the guy who wrote Size Matters.
Personally, I wouldn't be too upset if they had nukes. Maybe MAD would stop the crazies in our government from screwing around.
Your nuclear weapon link was more amusing than accurate, here's the real deal- http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/
an ugly thing this politics is, where you wind up supporting a regime like Iran's when facing a bloody intervention from a regime like ours. fuck both governments, dude. fuck bombs, fuck sanctions, fuck funding these regimes, fuck any further piling upon of those already oppressed.
our country should be a life-raft, not a destroyer. bring all the terrorists you want, should be the motto. (you should see our motherfucking swat teams!)
I can't quite support the pro-Iran rhetoric, though I can reconcile its use in light of our own government's schtick.
...self-determination and political independence...of the Iranian people as recognized by its current regime...you're fucking high.
I do love me some fucking Shiraz though.
As Bill Hicks once said "You do know, of course, that every government is a lying cocksucker."
Can we wall off the Midwest and just let whoever wants to blow us up take on all our wannabe Rambos on even terms in there and leave us sane adults the fuck out of it? I'll gladly give my apartment here in Omaha and move to a real state if we can just bus all the cocksuckers who want an American empire so badly in here and let them have their little reindeer games.
What do you cocksuckers have against cocksuckers?
Or, as Andrew Holleran had one of his characters put it:
"Who wants a blowjob anyway?" [asked a gay man who'd spent the summer platonically drooling over surfer boys.]
"Millions of American boys, thank God," breathed Sutherland.
Was, is, will be. That covers the major tenses, and it's strongly lacking in the conditional mood.
...not to mention he completely ignored le plus-que-parfait.
Kennedy's speechwriters had chiasmus ("ask not what your country can do for you ..."). Bush's speechwriters have verb declension.
Not to suggest that JFK was a nobler man than our current C-in-C; I just want to point out the diminishing standards in rhetoric. Within our very lifetimes, we may yet have a President begin his State of the Union with the word "Shit."
The whole focus on Iran's knowledge about building a nuclear weapon is pretty chilling. As IOZ logically points out, hegemony is one way to control knowledge that we don't approve of. Another way is some sort of mass genocidal attack that leaves lots of people dead and therefore without the disturbing "knowledge" at issue (the Administration would call it a "surgical strike.") Either way you look at it is pretty frightening and means that the Administration remains intent on its lovely strategy of control through the death of unloved others.
Was, is, will be. That covers the major tenses
That reminds me of something I once heard about a country called Oceania and another country called Eurasia...
"I can't quite support the pro-Iran rhetoric, though I can reconcile its use in light of our own government's schtick"
-Mr. Fundamental
I wouldn't catagorize IOZ's comments as "pro-Iranian" just pro-self-determination. As I recall, it is the US that has illegally occupied Iran's neighbor and now credibly threatens it with destruction.
As IOZ (and the latest NIE) has pointed out, Iran's "threat" to the US--or any other nation--is nonexistent yet Team Bush continues its rhetoric of attack.
Iran had the temerity to toss the Shah (our hand-picked puppet) out on his ass in '79 and we've never forgiven them for this defiance. As IOZ said, there you have it.
fair enough.
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