by B. R. GOWANI
Launched from a B-52, the proposed X-51 hypersonic cruise missile could travel 600 miles in 10 minutes to strike elusive, fleeting targets. (ILLUSTRATION/Render Room)
In most US covert and overt wars, religion is not the predominant factor. The two major motives for US wars are economical and political factors: the former is related to unhindered access to resources and labor, and the latter is for obedience from the leaders of the countries involved.
The dominant “free media” mostly supports the corporate-controlled “democratic” US government—unless, there is a conflict among the corporations. In this case, internal war among corporations will ensue, resulting in victory for those with the strongest lobbies.
The New York Times holds a prestigious position in the dominant free media, and it religiously sticks to its masthead logo “All The News That’s Fit To Print,” but with equal fanaticism avoids the question of Israel’s nuclear weapons, which it finds unfit to print.
In 1979, when Iran’s Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was overthrown in a Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that country took a permanent place on the US dart board of dangerous and terrorist countries. Now Iran has committed another sin: it is trying to develop nuclear weapons. And that the US will try its best to stop.
Recently,, the New York Times editorial advised the Obama Administration to force Iran to discontinue its nuclear program, posing the following questions: “How will the world contain Iran if it actually produces a weapon? What will Washington and its allies do if Iran acquires all of the parts but decides to stop just short of that?” In the 600-words editorial, Israel was not mentioned even once. Israel is in the same neighborhood and possesses many nuclear weapons.
Although Iran denies it, due to US and other Western countries’ pressure, there is no doubt that its nuclear program is weapons-related. To an unbiased analyst, this would not be blame-worthy as it would appear to be assurance for self survival due to the ample nuclear power in the region. Iran’s denial is to avert, as much as possible, the economic sanctions, political harassment, the US supported armed incursions from outside, the US created internal trouble, and an air attack from Israel on its nuclear facilities.
Such an air attack could prompt fatal retaliation on the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so some Israelis would prefer to get the US blessing before carrying out such an enormity. However, people like Ephraim Sneh (former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s deputy minister of defense) would not wait for such authorization: “We don’t have permission and we don’t need permission from the U.S.” Sneh will undoubtedly find enough supporters in the US, and the powerful Israeli Lobby can easily manage the fallout from such an action.
The New York Times and the rest of the US establishment know they cannot stop Iran from developing the nuclear weapons, unless its nuclear plants are successfully blown up as the Iraqi Osirak reactor was bombed by the Israelis in 1981. Any other partial solution would not yield the desired result.
In the mid 1970s, Pakistan was under immense pressure to give up its nuclear weapons program. The then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose hands had blood of Vietnamese, Chileans, and Chile’s President Dr. Salvadore Allende, had warned Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto:
Kissinger: Basically I have come not to advise, but to warn you. USA has numerous reservations about Pakistan’s atomic programme; therefore you have no way out, except agreeing to what I say.
Bhutto: Suppose I refuse, then what?
Kissinger: Then we will make a horrible example of you!*
Eleven months later, Bhutto was overthrown and later hanged by the military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. A horrible example was set indeed! Nevertheless, although Zia and the subsequent governments kept on denying it, they pursued the nuclear program, and in 1998 Pakistan officially became a nuclear power.
This is a little atomic game countries play depending on the location of their region. Once the US became a nuclear power in 1945, the Soviet Union follow suit in 1949. Its neighbor China had to have similar weapons. In turn China’s bordering country India had a good excuse to do the same. Now how can you stop India’s underweight, underdeveloped, and underfinanced twin Pakistan from assuming its rightful place among this august assembly of peace loving nations?
Israel did not have any such compulsions. Its sole purpose in acquiring nuclear capability was to maintain its illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and to scare the hell out of the neighboring countries.
The white minority governments in South Africa had developed nuclear weapons. But with the end of their racist apartheid rule in 1991, the new government of Nelson Mandela discarded those weapons. Imagine, if the Mandela government would have decided otherwise, not only the US and other Western countries would have created plenty of trouble for South Africa, but some of its African neighbors would have wasted their limited precious resources in obtaining similar weapons to what end?
The New York Times should instead join those who are working to make this world nuclear free, and advise Obama that the goal set for Russia and the US to have only 1550 nuclear weapons by 2017 is nothing but a joke. These weapons are more than enough to destroy our planet many times over. On the other hand, the Pentagon is developing non-nuclear “Prompt Global Strike” weapons which could hit any target on earth in less than 60 minutes without creating the radioactive mushroom cloud. For sure, the weapons would be placed on several US bases around the world, and so the time it would take to hit the target would be far less. About precision, that is not guaranteed; the US record around the world in causing “collateral damage” speaks out loud.
So now the nuclear countries will join this race to acquire the Prompt Global Strike weapons! And once again, the New York Times (and the rest of the media) will get busy advising the US government on what steps to take to stop others from getting their hands on these weapons.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
*See also Tariq Ali, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight of American Power (New York: Scribner, 2008), pp.209-16.