"Any Sovereign Nation is Allowed to Bomb Another"
By Guest Post • Jul 8th, 2009 at 6:25 • Category: Analysis, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Religion, War, Zionism
Biden, Israel and Iran
WRITTEN BY GARY LEUPP
Vice President Joe Biden, apparently speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, has just given Israel the green light to bomb Iran.
“Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else,” he told ABC’s “This Week” in an interview broadcast Sunday. “Whether we agree or not, they’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice,” he declared.
The statement is presented in logically abstract terms. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do what’s in its interest regardless of what “we” think, surely. How very reasonable—magnanimous, even, coming from the mouth of the vice-president of the superpower that’s in the last eight years brutally imposed its will on two sizable Southwest Asian countries.
But to test Biden’s universalist logic imagine yourself in 1939, substitute Germany for Israel and Poland for Iran and ask whether “any sovereign nation is” really “entitled to do that.”
Of course Israel doesn’t have any “sovereign right” to attack Iran! And Biden’s implied distaste for the attack (“That is not our choice”), which may presage a calculated distancing from an action in the future, doesn’t undo the fact that he explicitly validates such action here.
They’re entitled to do it, says Joe. Just as presumably they’re entitled to remain outside the nuclear nonproliferation treaty regime, and produce and stockpile the only nuclear weapons in the Middle East, while claiming that the Iranian nuclear program (begun under U.S. encouragement under the Shah) can only have military intentions and can only be designed to produced a “nuclear Holocaust” to destroy the Jews.
Just as presumably they’re entitled to deploy vast resources to pressure the U.S. government to bomb Iran for them. (But no worry about the impact on U.S. foreign policy. “There is no pressure,” says Joe, “from any nation that’s going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed.” What he really means is: There’s actually a whole shitload of pressure from Israel on us to bomb Iran. But we might not do that. Because Obama thinks that the Israeli-demanded attack on Iran, like the assault on Iraq, might be a “strategic blunder.”)
One could argue, of course, that in positing Netanyahu’s “sovereign right” to bomb Iran, a nation which has not attacked another in modern times, Biden is just shooting off his famous mouth again. But there are at least two reasons his comments should be taken very seriously.
First of all, there is obviously much conflict within the U.S. power structure over the wisdom of a U.S. attack on Iran. The Israel Lobby demanding one may have suffered a defeat at the hands of the Pentagon, which sees such an attack as complicating the imbroglios it faces in Iraq and Afghanistan (and down the road in Pakistan?), and the intelligence community which knows that Iran does not possess a nuclear weapons program threatening the world.
Secondly, the state of Israel continues to depict the Islamic Republic of Iran as an “existential” threat to itself, while threatening to attack it with missiles if the U.S. does not do so. The Bush administration always endorsed Israel’s vilification campaign and conceded the possibility that it might act “on its own” (as though it could really do so without a green light from Washington). Dick Cheney told Don Imus on MSNBC in January 2005 that “Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel [sic (disinformation)], the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.” He implied that if the U.S. didn’t take action, the Israelis would be justified in doing so.
This remains the U.S. position under the Obama administration. And having decided for geopolitical reasons to adopt a tougher line on Israel’s illegal settlements on the West Bank, Washington is perhaps particularly disinclined to deter Israel should it opt to create the mess of which Cheney spoke. “That was not our choice,” it will say.
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
http://www.counterpunch.com/leupp07072009.html
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By Biden's logic, but with much more justification, any country in the world — especially north Korea or Iran — would have the sovereign right to obliterate the United Snakes of AmeriKKKa. In the case of Iran, that would also include the right to obliterate IsraHell.
Of course, in U.S. discourse, a country is only sovereign if it's rulers own the majority of the members of the U.S. Congress and most of the U.S. media. (In the case of IsraHell, those rulers are the ZioNazi U.S. bankers and capitalists. The Jews living in occupied Palestine are not its rulers, but its willing executioners.)
@Aaron Aarons –
Well said, Aaron! By that logic the U Snakes and U Kats wild ones invaded Iraq and left depleted uranium on their land in thirst of oil for blood they shed, despite the docile UN!
My question remains, is Israel even a sovereign state at all? It is occupied Palestine. Cheers!
i am still on interpretation level. If US has ordered or is about to order IOF to attack iran, US [biden mere messenger/manager] wld not have said what uncle sam has just said.
however, i do not imply that what US is explicitly saying is right; actually, whether it is solely biden's statement of the presidency/uncle sam's, it is a criminal act.
world shld condemn US latest diaolog.
biden's statement shows or proves that there is in US one party system!
Cheers Mary:):)
Just read this post and have an answer for the "how" part
This is how the "Un-Holy Three" will attack Iran:
http://irish4palestine.blogspot.com/2009/07/cyber-war-fare-may-be-used-to-attack.html
one important detail you forgot to mention: Iran's president has said that Israel is a country that should be destroyed. So your Polish-German comparison goes up the chimney, because Poland's president never said Germany should be destroyed.
Although it's fun and provocative to "substitute Israel for Germany" it's also lazy thinking. Iran is about 10 times the size of Israel. Iran has been funding Hamas and Hizbolla's attacks on Israel. Was Poland sponsoring militias that attacked Germany before the invasion?
Dear Randy, when the author of the article says [sic (disinformation)], he means that Ahmadinejad never said what it was attributed to him, which is the repeated ad nauseam "Iran will wipe Israel out of the map". The true stament is of Khomeiny, who said, more that 20 years ago, when the Soviet Union still existed, something like: "I think that the foundations of Soviet Union and Israel are fake, they will erased by the pages of time"; Ahmadinejad only adds, when he quotes this statement: "do you see? the halfth of the forecast has already come true". But, as I don't think that the Soviet Union was destroyed by Iran, I think that Israel should not take the statement as a threat, but on the contrary as a friendly warning that it is heading to the wrong direction. And you say that Poland did not sponsor militias, and it's true, but UK and EU have removed from the list of terrorist organizations groups like the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq, who are still armed groups in Iran, even if they swear the contrary; and it seems that they have directly or indirectly backed and funded this organization, which did in the past terrorist attacks in Europe and North America, and which does not seem to have completely renounced to armed struggle in Iran. So, Sir, I think that also your refutation goes up to the chimney.
Joe Biden, like most of our other politicians in America are shameless zionists. They support the criminal nation of israel without question. It is no surprise really, considering a politicians career depends on the media, and the media in America is owned and controlled by jews. Add to that the fact that they get most of their campaign contributions and kickbacks from corporations, and what we have is a government owned by corporate America and controlled by the jewish media. Americans are intensely propagandized, and don't get any news about things the zionists don't want us to hear about. The holocaust, the truth about 911 or the fact that the CIA has been interfering in Iranian affairs for decades are forbidden subjects in the main stream media. The fact that Amadinajad is right about the holocaust is something Americans will never see or hear on TV. The jews have turned the "holocaust" into a victim industry, from which they have been allowed to steal a country, and billions of dollars from the US, mostly in the form of military aid so they can hold on to their ill gotten gains, and steal more.
The good news, if there is any, is the fact that more and more Americans are waking up, and realizing that israel is not our friend. They are seeing that what they see and hear on TV are lies, and are taking to the internet to get their information. If Mr. Amadinajad was smart, he would flood the internet with blogs and sites giving the world the truth about Iran, and the Iranian people. Israel wants war with Iran, but most Americans do not, and if more Americans could see the Iranian people for who they are, they would never back a war against Iran. Don't believe everything you hear coming from the jewish controlled media in America.