Guest post: The fog of war can be impenetrable
Originally a comment by Papito on The CIA or the Koran.
The comment that leads this is mostly nonsense. “Since the war with Iraq, Iran has kept within its borders, has not attacked its neighbours.” displays a level of ignorance about middle-east affairs it is hard to believe isn’t motivated. Iran has funded a network of terrorist organizations that have been instrumental for decades in keeping countries around the region from developing. Lebanon would not be the mess it is, or Yemen, or Syria, without the Iranian terrorist network having perverted their politics for decades, all so it could persecute the Jews – many of whom were chased out of those very countries to Israel.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the question of how much damage the strikes did to Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon in the next few months remains. It seems likely that the bombs loosed on Fordow did substantial damage and perhaps collapsed the facility. On the other hand, we can all see the satellite photos of trucks lined up outside Fordow in the days prior to the bombing, which presumably hauled equipment and materials to other sites.
Assuming that this information was available to Israel in real time and that Israel could overfly Iran with impunity at that point, why did Israel not bomb those trucks? Did Israel instead follow those trucks to wherever they were headed with, as Iran claims, the 60% enriched uranium from Fordow?
The fog of war can be impenetrable. We may learn as strikes happen on previously unknown facilities; we may learn as Iran uses its stockpile of 60% uranium to build a dirty bomb to irradiate population centers in Israel or America. We may never learn.
The best any of us can hope for is the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahs. All of us surely remember the protests after the murder of Mahsa Amini and the chants of “Women, Life, Freedom” by the soon-crushed protestors. We may remember the song “Baraye” going around the world and being performed by popular Western bands like Coldplay.
Are we going to forget all of that now that Israel has entered the frame? Is judenhass more important than women, life, or freedom?
My understanding is that being a non-Jew in Israel is better than being a non-Muslim elsewhere in the Middle East. So bad as Netanyahu might be, I find it hard not to favor Israel over eg: Hamas.
Wow, Papito, dragging out the war criminals’ most-used excuse – it was “the fog of war” that caused it. This is no different to the wife beater who says, “Look what you made me do”.
You seem to forget Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the destruction of much of that nation, as well as Israel’s other acts of war on its neighbours.
I did not defend Iraq, simply pointed out that it has remained largely within its reduced borders.
Does Iran sponsor terrorism to advance its political goals? Yes, it does. Just like both Israel and the USA. Then there was the French sponsored bombing of “Rainbow Warrior” in Auckland Harbour, the Mossad agents caught during the Christchurch earthquakes with a bunch of illegally gained New Zealand passports. I could go on, but that should be enough for you to get the picture that terrorism is not the sole province of a single nation. Or maybe just one more example – the bombing of the King David Hotel.
And, of course, you totally ignore my point that today’s Iraq is the direct result of UK and US meddling in Iraq’s affairs, not to promote human rights, not defend women from religious misogyny, but to protect Britain’s oil interests. Cause and effect, my dear fellow.
And what happens then? Like Iran and Afghanistan, a worse situation, with an unstable authoritarian regime? A US backed Israeli puppet regime? Or maybe a democracy, but then, that was tried before in Iraq and overturned by Britain and the USA. Of course, there is another Shah in waiting, currently luxuriating in Paris, I believe; he’s probably champing at the bit to be the next American puppet to control and torment Iraqis.
Maybe, just maybe, leave the Iraqis alone to sort out their future.
You, it seems, are highly supportive of the USA joining in Israel’s war on Iraq? Why? Just what is it that permits the USA to bomb anywhere, anytime, with impunity? Why does the USA get to unilaterally decide who can and cannot develop nuclear weapons? Where was the outrage and bombing when Israel developed nuclear weapons? How much aid “under the counter” did the USA provide?
And just why is Israel worthy of so much support when Ukraine has been thrown a few bones and told to “make a deal”? Where are the B-2 bomber raids on Russia?
I must give the Israeli government credit, though. While the world is now watching Iraq and waiting to see if this is the “Archduke Ferdinand moment”, Israel is continuing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the Occupied West Bank out of the gaze of the world’s media. Well played.
The people of Gaza and the West Bank would like a word with you.
Sorry, mixed my Iraqs and Irans, I put it down to being too old to have to suffer through just one more war that will achieve nothing except tears and misery for the people and huge profits for “The Masters of War”.
Rev, please confirm whether you mean Iraq or Iran.
David, as would be clear to most people who aren’t blinded by their prejudices, my reference to the fog of war is in regard to the difficulty of, at this point, knowing whether the enriched uranium from Fordow had been moved off site before the bunker-busters collapsed it (and, also, whether they collapsed it) or not. Iran, of course, claims that they did move it all off site. Trump claims it was all destroyed. There is no way to know now… because of the fog of war.
As for the rest of your screed, it’s another day I wonder how you stumbled into this joint and why you haven’t moved on yet.
The war on Iraq is a blast from the past. You would have no way of knowing that I brought two buses full of college student from the midwest to the DC protest to roam up and down the mall with signs and such. I believed that W should be and would be impeached. Didn’t happen. I believe it was the worst geo-political error in American history, and am glad that W was not president when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because he would surely have invaded Mexico in response. But you would never ask a genuine question of your interlocutors, or find out a thing like that, just bloviate erratically about those damn Jews.
Papito, not once have I bloviated “erratically about those damn Jews”; that appears to be your inability to separate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. I have always maintained that a Jewish state should have been established in Bavaria and Austria since they were the origin of much of the Holocaust, but that wouldn’t have suited Europe’s need to both assuage its conscience and to keep the “pesky Jews” out of Europe. Anti-Semitism was never just confined to Hitler’s Germany.
And you, like so many who comment on affairs of the Middle East, continually ignore cause and effect. Iran’s nuclear program began, wait for it, when the Shah was murdering Iranians for opposing his iron fist rule. The United States provided the initial training and fissionable material, giving the Iraqis quite a head start.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc is not a proper basis for understanding middle-east politics. The idea that today’s Islamic extremist dictatorship is the direct result of the (however misguided) coup against Mossadegh is an example of this logical fallacy. One might as well say that the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites is the direct result of Iran’s expulsion of almost all of its Jews, the majority of whom went to Israel. That might even be more easily demonstrated. Perhaps some of the 200K Iranian Jews who settled in Israel, and their descendants were surely flying planes or making decisions. How about Ramtin Sebti, the Persian Jew who is the head of the IDF’s nonconventional weapons defensive alignment? There you have it, if Iran hadn’t tried to murder its poor dhimmis, the bombing never would have happened.
Ignoring the reality that the largest Jewish group in Israel is not Ashkenazim (from Europe) but Mizrahim (from the Middle East and North Africa) does not provide a good basis for understanding why Israel exists today. Should all the Jews who fled Yemen have gone to Bavaria? How about the Moroccan Jews? Iraqi Jews?
Israel is a Middle-Eastern country, and its citizens include both those (Ashkenazim) with ancestry going back a longer way to the Middle-East and those (Mizrahim) with a much closer connection. Israel’s founding was brought about not only by the attempted genocide of the Jewish people in Europe, but by the similar contemporaneous actions (including sometimes direct collaboration with Hitler) of Middle-Eastern states and religious figures. Saying they should have all gone to Poland, or Austria, or Bavaria, is absurd. Only about 10% of world Ashkenazim live in Israel, but about 80% of Mizrahim and Sephardim do. Can they go back to Iran, and Iraq, and Yemen? No. They fled with the clothes on their backs, some of them literally walking barefoot across the desert, to escape death in those countries.
Mizrahi music is very popular in Israel right now, as the Mizrahi Jews continue to grow in population and influence there. Maybe listening and reading the stories of the musicians can help you understand better that Israel is not a country of old European men. I like the band A-WA a lot. Their song Habib Galbi made a bigger splash, but I like the bop Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD90UbVXZSE
Here you can read more about their story; the song is inspired by the journey of their great-grandmother, who came to Israel from Yemen along with 49,000 other Jewish refugees.
https://www.heyalma.com/a-wa-a-band-of-yemenite-jewish-sisters-want-you-to-feel-at-home/
Should she have gone to Bavaria instead?