Holbrook's Revelation
By Jeff Berg
29 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Richard Holbrooke, former Ambassador to the U.N., and former Assistant Secretary of State to the U.S., spoke last night at the Toronto Design Exchange. (November, 27, 2007)
He was introduced by Allan Gotlieb, former Canadian Ambassador to the U.S., and was here at the behest of the Donner Canadian Foundation which is connected in the U.S. to the Woodrow Wilson Centre. His talk centered on the thesis that the Bush administration has made many mistakes in its foreign policy over the last seven years. It is safe to say, if unsurprising, that there was little disagreement among the audience on this point.
What this writer found more revelatory came out when Mr. Holbrooke held forth on the subject most on everyone's mind these days. I.e. Whether or not the U.S. will bomb Iran and its people. The first intriguing fact is that he did not speak of this action in terms of the U.S. nation bombing Iran. He spoke of it in terms of the Bush Administration bombing Iran. That an Ambassador of his calibre chooses his words very carefully I think goes without saying. For this reason I found this purposeful differentiation between the nation of the U.S. and its government deeply interesting.
He then went on to list four reasons as to why he thought that the Bush Administration would not bomb Iran. Though to my ear at least it was the one that he did not list which I found the most revealing of all in terms of the bipartisan consensus that will exist in the U.S. regardless of who is the next President.
WHY THE U.S. WILL NOT BOMB IRAN:
1) The nuclear installations, the putative causa belli of such an operation, are dispersed and built deep underground and so could not be sufficiently damaged to be put out of commission this way.
2) Much of the U.S. military is diametrically even vehemently opposed to embarking on a third "adventure" (Ambassador Holbrooke's word) when the first two are far from over.
3) Such an attack may well serve to unite the people of Iran behind Ahmanidejad and thereby make the nation of Iran even more of a "destabilizing force in the region". (Again Holbrooke's choice of words)
4) The U.S. would further isolate itself from the international community as Holbrook
could not envision even a single one of America's allies joining in such an action.
What he did not mention much less lead with was the following. Absent a Security Council motion legitimizing an attack on Iran such an attack would be a crime against peace. What this means is that beyond the immorality of such an act such an attack would be in violation of international laws to which the U.S. is signatory, and make the U.S. guilty of the supreme crime in international law: The crime of a war of aggression.
Aka. The crime which led the Allies to hang the High Command of the German nation after the trials at Nuremberg. By this very severe sanction they/we hoped to communicate to the German nation and to every nation in the world going forward into the nuclear age the following message: "The problem with this war was not that you lost it. The problem was that you fought it at all."
After this signal absence Holbrooke then went on to categorize Iran as "the most pressing problem nation" for the U.S. and the "most dangerous country in the region". He accused the President of Iran of being "The world's most virulent anti-Semite" and a "holocaust denier", and he cited the Iranian Revolution as being a central cause for the rise of fundamental Islam in the region. He further accused the Iranian government of fomenting terror worldwide and of providing IED's (improvised explosive devices) "That are killing Americans in Iraq".
Again I think it is important to stress that Ambassador Holbrooke is a career diplomat and considered by many to be among the most gifted diplomats of his generation. In fact he was described in just those terms in the introduction given to him by Mr. Gotlieb last night. And so one must assume that when he is speaking on the record and for public attribution he is choosing his words not so much out of a deep sense of personal belief as he is speaking so as to reflect the general/bipartisan consensus that exists in the halls of U.S. power. For this reason I think that his words should be very carefully considered by those who believe such things bare noting.
Today throughout the Middle East we are seeing the result of the use of force as a means of promoting "stability". In Iraq we are seeing the massive human suffering and geopolitical nightmare that has come from years of draconian and ruinous sanctions
(themselves a kind of violence); followed by the destruction of Iraq's water and electrical power infrastructure during the invasion. The latter destruction being a war crime as defined by treaties to which the U.S. is also signatory.
N.B. For those of you who may doubt that the sanctions that were brought to bear on Iraq were a form of violence no less real than bombing I direct you to the word used to describe this program by the men in charge of overseeing it. And remember, the men in question, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, are men like Holbrooke drilled in diplomacy over decades, and still the word they chose to use on the record and for public attribution to describe the sanctions was "Genocidal". This also being the reason that they cited as they, one after another, resigned their posting despite the personal cost to their reputations and careers.
We are also seeing the result of Lebanon's infrastructure being smashed by the Israeli military last summer. This result being, as usual, best described by long time Beirut resident, journalist and author, Robert Fisk, in his most recent article 'Darkness Descends on the Middle East'. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/
news/opinion/article3191916.eceAs this darkness descends I would like to cite the words of British poet laureate Andrew Motion. Given that they were written in January, 2003, they show no small amount of prescience and serve as useful warning I think to whomever may occupy the position of Commander in Chief regardless of their ideological stripe.
Causa Belli by Andrew Motion
They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.
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