Will the U.S. Congress Once Again Show Itself As Slavish Servant of Israel?

Probably. Congress has a bill in the works to heap yet more punitive economic sanctions on Iran (in practice, on the Iranian people, since they are the ones who suffer- already Iranians are dying of cancer thanks to the U.S.-led economic warfare, which has resulted in shortages of medicines). Obama has had to plead with Congress- a humiliating position for the U.S. president- to hold off on them so as not to kill the ongoing negotiations between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council [1] and Germany on the one side, and Iran on the other, for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Secretary of State John Kerry was dispatched to Congress to try and cajole them not to sabotage the talks. (Kerry also had to scurry to Israel, the U.S.' apparent boss, to make the case for the negotiations, including in “briefings” for Israeli journalists from which American journalists were excluded, an amazing incident which elicited barely a mention from the American media, always protective of Israel and thus needing to obfuscate its pampered status from the American public's view.)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin (the correct spelling, not “Benjamin,” as U.S. media habitually misrepresent it) Netanyahu brushed aside an International Atomic Energy Agency report that says Iran has slowed its nuclear activities for the last three months as irrelevant because Iran “already possesses the necessary infrastructure for building a nuclear weapon.” [2] That's probably true, more or less. Which doesn't mean Iran is going to build nuclear weapons. It DOES mean that if Israel and/or the U.S. attack Iran, Iran COULD build them. Basically the U.S. and Israel insist on the freedom to bomb Iran, assassinate its scientists and officials, sponsor terrorism against Iran, and continue to try and overthrow the regime. This freedom would be impaired if Iran were to build a nuclear arsenal, as it would constraint U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran to some degree, if only because those two aggressor states would feel more cautious. (And of course the surest way to provoke Iran to making nuclear weapons would be to bomb the country- an irony lost on the bullet-brained Netanyahu and American militarists.)

What Netanyahu wants is a totally dismantling of all Iranian nuclear capabilities, peaceful or not, closely monitored or not. His preferred route to that goal is the usual Israeli way- by violence, in this case by bombing. (They've also assassinated Iranian scientists and blown stuff up in Iran.)

Taking his cue from the Israeli head of state, not the American one, GOP Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois said of Kerry's briefing to Senators like him: “The pitch was very unconvincing. It was fairly anti-Israeli.” [3]

Anti-Israeli. Right. Kerry probably called for the destruction of Israel or something.

Kirk's demented, extremist attitude was treated as unremarkable by the U.S. media and its resident commentariat. This is symptomatic of the capture of the U.S. elites by the State of Israel, mainly via its fifth column in the U.S.

To fully describe the long history of the U.S. Congress' sycophantic obeisance to the State of Israel would fill a book. For now, I'd like to just toss out three possible motives behind a jackass like Mark Kirk making such an asinine statement, one showing contempt for the Secretary of State of his own nation.

1. The power of the organized Israeli lobby in the U.S., including media power and money power.
2. Ideological affinity, which for right-wingers like Kirk means admiring repressive regimes as long as they aren't “socialist.” (“Liberals” have a different, somewhat deluded, ideological affinity.)
3. Religious fanaticism of the “Christian” variety. The Christians' “Bible” is a Jewish-written tome which mostly deals with glorifying the ancient Hebrews and their genocidal conquests. (Odd that Christians hated Jews for a couple of millennia- some still do, of course.)
4. Racial affinity: “white” Israel oppresses “brown” Arabs, especially Palestinians.
5. Vicarious imperialism: enjoying “Western, democratic” Israel kick “third world” butt.
6. Israeli “aid” to the U.S., such as providing crucial military and “security” assistance to the apartheid regime of South Africa, to the Somoza dictatorship of Nicaragua, to the Guatemalan fascist regime, to the Argentine junta, and so on, at moments when it would have been politically awkward for the U.S. to do so.

So Obama and Kerry's fawning to the Israelis and their puppet American Congresspeople is barely holding the line against the attempt to suffocate the infant negotiations in its cradle. Should even more sanctions be enacted against Iran now, the Iranian hardliners will have additional leverage to force the new Prime Minister of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, to abandon his “moderate” (or “cunning,” as Netanyahu et al see it) path of compromise. Of course, compromise is the last thing the “hawks” want. They want Iran's total surrender, or the violent destruction of its nuclear program. Just as during the cold war, their kind (some of the same people in many cases) viewed detente as near treason (or as actual treason, for which they made JFK pay with some bullets fired from a grassy knoll in Dallas, Texas, in 1963). For them, “there is no substitute for victory.” Every conflict is all-out war for these demons and calls for total destruction of the Enemy.

One last note for the benefits of simpletons with a manichean world view. I'm not “on Iran's side.” Iran is ruled by oppressive theocrats who are guilty of numerous human rights violations against Iranians. They support the Assad dictatorship in Syria, one of the world's worst. They are allied with religious fanatics Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. I hope some day the Iranian people can rid themselves of these creeps who hijacked the Iranian revolution of 1979, much as Lenin and his gang took advantage of the fall of the Tsar in 1917 Russia to install themselves in power.

On the other side, Israel has been a constant violator of human rights since its founding in 1948. Their current allies of convenience against Iran, Saudi Arabia and its satellite oil sheikdoms of the Arabian peninsula, are all very repressive countries. Saudi Arabia in fact is much more repressive than Iran is, enforced by religious “police.” Only a few years ago these “police” forced schoolgirls to be burned to death in a school fire because the girls didn't have their hair covered as they were trying to escape the flames, for one example. And the regime executed people by beheading, Taliban/Al Qaeda style. For that matter, the Saudis were accomplices in the 9/11 attacks that the U.S. has used as pretext for a new era of U.S. aggression around the world and a systematic attack on human rights. Today Saudis fund jihadist terrorists in Syria who fight not just Assad's forces but the indigenous Syrian rebels. The Saudis Gulf satellite states are also awful. For example Bahrain's rulers have been oppressing the majority of the population there for years.

Then there is the U.S., a nation founded on the twin pillars of genocide and slavery, a nation that has waged expansionist wars over the years against both of its contiguous neighbors (1812 against present-day Canada, which didn't work out so well for them, and 1848 against Mexico, in which the U.S. scored fully half of Mexico's national territory, which it absorbed) and farther afield too, as when it seized Spain's “possessions” including the Philippines, half a world away. In its ruthless history, the U.S. has killed millions of civilians and installed or backed military/fascist dictatorships in scores of countries.

The bottom line is, this is no Good Guys vs. Bad Guys situation. There are only Bad Guys here. Far too many seemingly intelligent people (not to mention the simple-minded majority) go astray either because of their ideological devotion (which trumps fealty to facts and reality) or to intellectual and moral laziness, and take simplistic kneejerk positions on one side or the other. There is also the innate tendency of people to self-align with power, like little iron filings in a magnetic field.

Objectivity is the duty of the morally and intellectually honest human. In this case objectivity leads us to conclude that all these nations are basically bags of shit worthy of condemnation. Within that reality, we can hope for less harmful outcomes. In this case the desired outcome for humans isn't clear. On the one hand the fewer nuclear weapons and nuclear armed states in the world, the better for humanity, as a general principle. On the other hand, A nuclear armed Iran would be a counterweight to the oppressive power of the U.S., Israel, and the loathsome Wahhabi-spreading Saudis. (Wahhabism is a mental disease that leads to terrorism.) Just as the Soviet Union had the virtue of being a counterweight and check on the U.S., even though it itself was evil and oppressive, so Iran to a smaller degree could be. Which doesn't make Iran “good.” All it means is that the world, and life, is complex, a fact that people evade with simplistic, ideological thinking.

1] The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, designated “victors” in World War II (even though two of them were occupied by the Axis powers, and one, France, having been totally defeated and occupied, and numerous other nations on the Allied side did not get a permanent, cushy seat on the Council that comes with a veto) are the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia (which inherited the Soviet Union's seat). China took Taiwan's place when Taiwan could no longer pretend to be “China,” as it had done with U.S. power behind it.

2] “Iran has slowed nuclear expansion in past three months, says IAEA,” Financial Times, November 15, 2013, p.1.

3] Ibid.