I think of the Cold War as World War III, but I’ve addressed this idea of World War III or IV, or whatever number you want to give it before before–for instance here–but I wonder why so little attention is paid to questions that relate to the larger geopolitical issues that are driving our current adventure in the Middle East. It’s always been silly to think that the invasion of Iraq was just about Saddam or WMD. Nor does it have much of anything to do with the War on Terrorism. There have always been larger long-term goals, and while there hasn’t been much talk about the Project for the New American Century lately, its agenda is still on the table so long as Bush/Cheney are in office. And so now after Iraq, the obsessive interest by Cheney and others in Iran is best explained not by its nuclear threat but by its being an essential piece of territory to be obtained en route to the achievement of their long-term goal of exclusive American hegemony in the Middle East.

So anyway I came across an interview this morning with Scott Ritter (h/t Chris Floyd).  He is someone who has mainstream stature and credibility, and it is very refreshing to hear someone like him actually addressing these larger issues.  The interview is long, but worth reading in its entirety in Detroit’s metrotimes. My redacted excerpt of it below focuses on themes I’ve been developing here over the years. He first addresses the causes of what I’ve been calling our devolution into a merely ceremonial democracy:

MT: Last year you expressed hope that if Democrats took control of Congress it might pass legislation that could block the march toward war [with Iran]. Do you see them stepping up?

Ritter: No. They just passed a resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command as a terrorist organization. Unless there is a radical reawakening in Congress, I don’t see them passing any sort of pre-emptive legislation of that nature.

MT: But it is now clearer than ever that our invasion of Iraq has been a disaster. How do you explain the lack of opposition?

Ritter: It’s difficult to explain. First of all you have to note, from the public side, that very few Americans actually function as citizens anymore. What I mean by that are people who invest themselves in this country, people who care, who give a damn. Americans are primarily consumers today, and so long as they continue to wrap themselves in the cocoon of comfort, and the system keeps them walking down a road to the perceived path of prosperity, they don’t want to rock the boat. If it doesn’t have a direct impact on their day-to-day existence, they simply don’t care.

There’s a minority of people who do, but the majority of Americans don’t. And if the people don’t care — and remember, the people are the constituents — if the constituents don’t care, then those they elect to higher office won’t feel the pressure to change.

The Democrats, one would hope, would live up to their
rhetoric, that is, challenging the Bush administration’s imperial
aspirations. Once it became clear Iraq was an unmitigated disaster, one
would have thought that when the Democrats took control of Congress
they would have sought to reimpose a system of checks and balances, as
the Constitution mandates. But instead the Democrats have put their
focus solely on recapturing the White House, and, in doing so, will not
do anything that creates a political window of opportunity for their
Republican opponents.

The Democrats don’t want to be explaining to an apathetic
constituency, an ignorant constituency whose ignorance is prone to be
exploited because it produces fear, fear of the unknown, and the global
war on terror is the ultimate fear button. The Democrats, rather than
challenging the Bush administration’s position on the global war on
terror, challenging the notion of these imminent threats, continues to
play them up because that is the safest route toward the White House.
At least that is their perception.

The last thing they are gong to do is pass a piece of legislation
that opens the door for the Republicans to say, "Look how weak these
guys are on terror. They’re actually defending the Iranians. They’re
defending this Ahmadinejad guy. They’re defending the Holocaust denier.
They’re defending the guy who wants to wipe Israel off the face of the
earth." The Democrats don’t want to go up against that. They don’t have
the courage of conviction to enter into that debate and stare at
whoever makes that statement and say they’re a bald-faced liar. They’re
not going to go that route.

It doesn’t matter if
there is a significant, well-informed minority that realizes the
government is being run by corrupt crony-capitalist authoritarians.
Minorities never matter until they find the motivation to get organized
and work toward the achievement of realizable goals.  It’s an open
question whether we’ve passed a point of no return on that.  I have my
up days and down days on the question.  It is astonishing to me that
given what we know that we allow this administration to have any
shaping influence on American policy. 

Point in case: Ever wonder why we can negotiate a deal with crazy
guys like Kim Jong Il who already has as the bomb but can’t with
Ahmadinejad who doesn’t have one?  Maybe it has something to do with
the program supported by a bipartisan Beltway consensus about what
American geopolitical interests are in the Middle East:

MT: What’s the motivation?

Ritter: The ideologues who are in there believe the United States in
the post-Cold War environment needed to fill the gap created by the
demise of the Soviet Union so that no nation or group of nations would
ever again confront us as equals. And in order to do this, they
basically divided the world into spheres of strategic interest and said
we will impose our will. And the Middle East is one such area. There’s
a whole host of reasons to do this.

It’s not just supporting Israel. It’s not just taking down Saddam.
It’s about geopolitics. It’s about looking down the road toward China
and India, the world’s two largest developing economies, especially the
Chinese, and the absolute fear that this resurgent Chinese economy
brings in the hearts of American industrialists and the need to dictate
the pace of Chinese economic development by controlling their access to
energy. And controlling central Asian and Middle East energy areas is
key in the strategic thinking of the Bush administration.

So, there’s a lot of complexity at play here. But you say why do
they want to do this? It’s about as Condoleezza Rice continuously says
before the U.S. Congress: It’s about regional transformation, inclusive
of regime change. It turns the Middle East into a sphere of interest
that we have tremendous control over. That’s what’s behind all this.

So
this is what it’s about.  Who’d a guessed?  But in our ceremonial democracy, it never gets
debated.  It’s all about terrorism and fighting them there so we don’t
have to fight them here.  It’s about American prestige and how we can’t
be perceived as losers.  It’s about everything except what it’s really
about.  Success in Iraq is simply the first step in a longer-term
project to establish permanent hegemony in the Middle East.  When
politicians, whether GOP or Dem talk about success in Iraq, it’s really
about the success of this longer-term project.  The Dems are angry at
Bush because he blew it, and because they see political advantage in
criticizing him, but the core of the party, at least its Beltway
contingent, is basically ok with this longer range project.  They have
to be, or they would have forced debate on it. And then you have the
co-dependent enabling role of the media:

MT: Even
going back to before the start of the Iraq war, the national mainstream
media just seemed to be beating the drum for it. Why do you think that
is?

Ritter: Again, only they can really answer that question, but I
think it is clear the mainstream media, while not outright fabricators,
are not there to tell the truth, they’re there to win over ratings.
They will package their programming in ways that sells well to an
audience. And we are dealing with a complacent American audience, where
in-depth reality stories are trumped by reality TV. I don’t see the
programming director saying, "Look, we’re going to spend an hour
explaining to the American people why Ahmadinejad’s speech wasn’t that
big of a deal." Or they can say, "Hell, no; in three minutes we can
lead with a story saying he’s a Holocaust denier and win everybody’s
attention."

And the role the Israelis might play:

MT:
One of the scenarios that’s been raised has Israel launching the first
strike, prompting a response from Iran that would then pull us in.

Ritter: I think Israel is capable of doing a one-time limited shot
into Iran. One has to take a look at the distances involved and the
complexity of military operations … the lack of friendly airspace
between corridors into and out of Iran. It’s nice to talk about an
Israeli attack, but the reality is far different. Israel had trouble
dominating Hezbollah right on its own border with air power.

I think Israel could actually go into Iran and get their butts
kicked. It may not go off as well as they think it’s going to go off.
It is too long of a distance, too much warning for the Iranians. The
Iranians are too locked-in; they’re too well prepared. It doesn’t make
any sense. Israel doesn’t have the ability to sustain a strike. Like I
said, they might be able to pull off a limited one-time shot. But I
think the fallout from that would be devastating for the United States.
As much as we’ve worked to get an Arab alliance against Iran, that
would just fall apart overnight with an Israeli attack. No Muslim state
will stand by and defend Israel after it initiated a strike against
Iran. It just will not happen. And the United States knows this. I just
think it’s ludicrous to talk about an Israeli attack.

I think what we’re looking at is an American attack. It’s the only
viable option both in terms of initiation and sustainment of the
strike. Israel might be drawn in after that. There’s no doubt in my
mind the Iranians will launch missiles against Israeli targets, either
directly or through proxies, and that Israel will suffer. This is
something I try to warn all my Israeli friends about. If you think
Saddam Hussein firing 41 missiles was inconvenient, wait until the
Iranians fire a thousand of them. It goes well beyond an inconvenience;
it becomes a national tragedy. And then the escalation that can occur
from there.

I think right now what the Bush administration is conceiving is a
limited strike against Iran to take out certain Revolutionary Guard
sites and perhaps identified nuclear infrastructure. Not a massive,
sustained bombardment, but a limited strike. But we were always told in
the Marine Corps that the enemy has a vote and no plan survives initial
contact with the enemy. So we may seek to have a limited strike, but if
the Iranians do a massive response, things could spin out of control
quickly.

Would it be successful?

MT: How much damage could be done to the Iranian nuclear program?

Ritter: No damage would be done to it. Remember, the problem the
Iranians face isn’t the manufacture of this equipment. They’ve already
mastered that. And if you think for a second machine tools that are
used to manufacture enrichment equipment are going to be stored out in
the open where we can bomb them, you’re wrong. They’ve been dispersed.
The Iraqis were masters of this. We spent a lot of money blowing up
concrete, but we never got the machine tools, because they were always
hidden. They were always evacuated the day before — they’d take it to
palm groves or warehouses that we didn’t know about, or hidden in
narrow streets. And we never detected that, and we never got them. The
Iranians are even better. They’ve been mastering the technology of
deep-earth tunneling, so they can hide things underground that we can’t
reach with our conventional weapons. So I just think it is absurd to
talk about bombing these sites, because all we’ll do is blow up
buildings that can be rebuilt.

A couple of sites are more sensitive; I think the uranium conversion
facility at Isfahan, that’ll be a major blow. It’s a site that can be
rebuilt however. It was a facility put in by the Chinese, but the
Iranians have the blueprints. It’ll take time, but they can rebuild it.
At the best we are talking about retarding an Iranian program. But
what’s worse is if we bomb them, we may retard it, but we might also
make it a militant program. Meaning that if their objective is only
nuclear energy and suddenly they’re being attacked and the world is
doing nothing, we may push the Iranians into weaponization even though
that is something they don’t want to do. That’s not in the cards right
now. But our attack will have little or no impact on anything. That’s
for certain.

So what should we do?

MT: So what do you think the United States should be doing to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons?

Ritter: I think that is the wrong question. That presumes Iran is
seeking nuclear weapons. There’s no evidence of that whatsoever. So
rather than pose a question that legitimizes a certain point, I think
the question should be, "What should the United States be doing in
regards to Iran?" I think we should be seeking to normalize relations
with Iran. We should be seeking stability in the region. This concept
that the United States gets to dictate to sovereign people the makeup
of their government is absurd. First of all, the theocracy in Iran,
while not a model, for instance … it’s an Iranian problem, not an
American problem. The day of the exportation of the Islamic revolution
is long gone. The Iranians are not seeking to convert by the sword
anybody. It’s a nation that has serious internal problems. Economic.
Huge unemployment. It’s a nation that recognizes these problems. And
they are in desperate need of not only political stability but also the
economic benefits that come with this stability.

The Iranians want a normalization of relations with the United
States that would be inclusive of peaceful coexistence with Israel.
They’ve said this over and over and over again.

So what the United States should be doing is exploiting the olive
branch that is being held out by the Iranians. We should be engaging
them diplomatically. We should be terminating economic sanctions and
seeking to exploit the leverage that comes with having American
businesses working inside Iran to try and change them from within. We
should be doing everything to get Iran to be a positive player in the
region, especially considering the debacle that’s unfolding in Iraq.
Having the Iranians working with us to engender stability as opposed to
being at cross-purposes.

The same can be said in Afghanistan and the entire central Asian
region. We keep putting our hopes on allies like Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan. Saudi Arabia, which produced 14 of the hijackers who
slaughtered Americans on 9/11. Pakistan, which was the political
sponsor of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and continues to
have ties to radical Islamic terror organizations. These are our
allies? And we call Iran the enemy? We’ve got it backward. The Iranians
are actually the ones we should be working with to oppose dictatorships
like Pakistan and irresponsible governments like Saudi Arabia’s.

I’ve
often said that the crisis that we’re facing now is not a question of
liberal vs. conservative.  That kind of labeling is a monstrous
distraction.  It has, instead,to do with truth and sanity vs. delusion, greed,
and power madness. Traditional conservatives have as much at stake in
standing against this trend as liberals. It’s a matter of being awake
and using your common sense. But we can count on that kind of common
sense has little chance of prevailing in the corridors of American
power because it’s not part of the geopolitical script written by those
on both sides of the aisle (that would include Clinton and the
DLC/Liebermanesque Democrats) who want permanent American hegemony in
the Middle East.  We have good reason to believe that what Ritter is
saying is not driven by the agendas of either party; neither is it an
attempt to split the difference between the agenda of the left vs the
right. It’s refreshing precisely because it’s driven by just looking at
what’s happening and describing it in common-sense terms:

MT:
I think it is fair to say you are perceived as a champion of the left
at this point. But 10 years ago, when you were criticizing the Clinton
administration for undermining efforts to root out Saddam’s weapons,
you were being heralded by the right. Saddam accused you of being an
American spy. And you were criticized for being too close with the
Israelis and sharing information with them. But when you go to Iraq
prior to the war there, people on the right are calling you a traitor.
The FBI put you under surveillance. What do you make of all that?

Ritter: What I make of it is my consistency and the inconsistency of
those who seek to gain political advantage by manipulating the truth.
When the right embraced what I was saying, they didn’t embrace the
totality of what I was saying. They only embraced that aspect that was
convenient for their political purposes. I would say today that the
left is guilty of the same thing. I’m only convenient to the left when
that which I espouse mirrors what they are pursuing. It will be
interesting to see, if Hillary Clinton wins the White House, how
popular I will be in certain circles, because I can guarantee I will go
after her with all the vengeance I go after the Bush administration.

It’s not about being Republican, it’s not about being Democrat, it’s
about being American. It’s about doing the right thing. And in the
1990s the right thing was to implement the [United Nations] Security
Council resolutions calling for the disarmament of Iraq. That was the
law. That was what I was tasked with doing, and the Clinton
administration was not permitting the task to be accomplished.

By holding them to account, if that suddenly made me popular with
the right, then so be it. It’s not something that I sought; it wasn’t
the purpose of what I was doing. But when the complexity of my stance
became inconvenient to the right, when they found out it wasn’t just
about taking down the Clinton administration, but rather criticizing an
American political position that put unilateral policy objectives and
regime change higher up in the chain of priorities than disarmament,
suddenly it wasn’t convenient anymore to be saying, "Hey, we like this
guy."

One cannot be held accountable for the words and actions of those who seek to selectively embrace what you say.

What will the real World War look like:

MT: When Bush talks about World War III, how likely is the scenario that an attack by us would escalate into that?

Ritter: I don’t know about likely, but what I say is that I can sit
here and spin scenarios that have it going in that direction. And these
aren’t fantastic scenarios.

MT: Would that be having Russia or China coming in?

Ritter: No, no, no. It would be something more like the
destabilization of Pakistan to the point where a nuclear device gets in
the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who are aligned with al-Qaeda and
there’s some sort of nuclear activity on the soil of the United States
of America. That’s more what I’m looking at. I don’t think the Russians
or the Chinese would become involved. They don’t need to. All they have
to do is sit back and wait and pick up the pieces — because it is the
end of the United States as a global superpower. That’s one thing I try
to tell everybody. The danger of going after Iran is that it is just
not worth it. What we can lose is everything, and what we gain is
nothing. So why do it?

Again.  See my post from November 2005.