"Bolton is to diplomacy what Jack the Ripper was to surgery."
Even as the Swiffties, the upcoming RNC and now the Israeli spy story compete for our attention, a little noticed but very significant and scary bit of deja vu is going on across the pond, and the fact that John Bolton is in the thick of it isn't good.
Jonathan Steele of
the Guardian reports that John Bolton, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Disarmament Affairs and International Security, is in Europe raising the alarm about Iran.
History is beginning to repeat itself, this time over Iran. Just two years after the notorious Downing Street dossier on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction and the first efforts to get United Nations approval for war, Washington is trying to create similar pressures for action against Iran.
The ingredients are well-known: sexed-up intelligence material which puts the target country in the worst possible light; moves to get the UN to declare it in "non- compliance", thereby claiming justification for going in unilaterally even if the UN gives no support for invasion; and at the back of the whole brouhaha, a clique of American neoconservatives whose real agenda is regime change.
As Steele observes, this time our British cousins are on the side of Old Europe.
The disaster of the Iraq war and the failure to bring peace, stability or order make them want no repetition in Iraq's more populous and larger neighbour. Even "limited" air-strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities would unify the country and harden hostility to the west throughout the Middle East, especially if Washington subcontracted the attacks to the Israeli air force.
Ominously, [t]here has been speculation in Iran that Israel might attack [Iran's] nuclear sites, such as the main Bushehr facility. That site has come under international scrutiny because of concerns that its material could be used for weapons-grade components. In 1981, Israeli jets struck against Iraq's nuclear facilities.
Ian Williams, in a piece appearing in Counterpunch just before the launch of the Iraq war, observed that [f]or Bolton and Sharon, disarmament is what you to to other people, no more and no less.
He continues:
John Bolton is one of the major reasons why few other countries trust the motives, or indeed the rationality of the U.S. administration (the list of other reasons keeps growing, but the ravings of Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, and Rumsfeld spring immediately to an apprehensive observer's mind).
[snip]
Almost as amazing as Bolton's statements is the relative silence of the U.S. media about him and other administration hawks. Shouldn't the American public know that senior administration officials are promising that after a war with Iraq, there will be one with Iran, and then one with Syria, with Libya, with North Korea, and with Cuba? Each of these is a scenario that could frighten the American public. Taken together, George W. Bush is threatening to make the Prussian kings look like Pacifists. Do those Reservists in the Gulf know how long they will be away, making the world fertile for terrorism?
Some argued that you can ignore the likes of Bolton because they are just token eccentrics--there to appease the right wing of the Republican Party. Such complacency is ill-grounded. The first two years of Bush foreign policy--with the promulgation of the Axis of Evil, the campaign against the ICC, the abrogation of Kyoto, the unlimited support for Ariel Sharon's behavior, and the gratuitous attacks on long-standing allies who have the temerity to disagree over Iraq--should warn us to take heed.
We do not have to agree with those Bible Study classes in the White House on prophetic power to prophesy that it would be very dangerous to ignore Bolton's statements. These are harbingers of endless wars. It's a long, long way to Teheran, but these hawks are putting their heart into going there. Or rather, as most of them did in Vietnam, sending others.
It is well worth reading the whole piece, as Williams conclusively demonstrates both Bolton's cynical use of the UN against Iraq and Iran and his almost single-handed scuttling of the International Criminal Court (no doubt to protect himself and his pals).
Be afraid. Be very afraid.