Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Attacking Iran via South Ossetia

Could the conflict between Russia and Georgia be the excuse the Bush administration has been looking for to bomb Iran?

Stephen Kinzer
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday August 20 2008

"An editor I once worked for told me that when his parents and grandparents discussed the day's news over dinner, they would inevitably finish by asking each other: "Is it good for the Jews?"

"Whether it was a war or an earthquake or men landing on the moon, it would always come down to that," he recalled. "They saw everything through that lens."

This year, I've developed a comparable pathology. I am terrified that the Bush administration is going to attack Iran sometime before it leaves office on January 20. Whenever there is a new tremor in Washington or the wider world, I ask myself: Does this make an American strike against Iran more or less likely?

So it is with the recent dustup in Georgia. I fear it has increased the chances that the United States will bomb Iran.

If there is a single principle that underlies the Bush-Cheney view of the world, it is that all countries must accommodate American interests and none may be allowed to emerge as what the 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review called a "near-peer power". This is a recipe for conflict, since many countries will naturally try to increase their power whether or not the US wants them to......"

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