Revoking Godwin's Law

More than 1000 years ago China burned its fleet and turned inward, and ever since that pivotal historical event the Confucian world view, one of conservatism and isolationism from geopolitical involvement has characterized Chinese culture.

Confucianism persisted in China, even after the revolution, and Maoist China has remained reluctant to get involved with the rest of the world. Today its industry is thriving, and China is a major business partner of many great nations, but its imperialistic aspirations are limited: Taiwan, Tibet, countries China historically consider part of its reign.

Is that so much different from the aspirations of Iran, its reluctant alliance with Syria, its funding of Hezbollah and Hamas, and its opposition to Saudi Arabia?

Is Iranian anti-Western attitudes worse than Chinese anti-Western atittudes? And how is Iranian nukes worse than Chinese nukes?

Well, it is all about Israel.

With Hamas and Hezbollah locking down Palestine and Israel in perpetual conflict - not that it is a onesided conflict, where Israel is innocent or merely acting in retaliation - and Iran exercizing global power through economy, religion and political rhetoric, the scene on which the Iranian government has perpetrated its massacre differs vastly from China 20 years ago.

The internal debacle over voting fraud in obvious ways implicate the flash point of the most threatening geopolitical conflict in the world.

As it is often stated:


The nuke is immunity to invasion

I never really doubted that Iran is going for the nuke, but I never thought it was realistic they would use it against Israel.

The nuke is simply immunity to invasion, the mad man's last resort: Threaten to blow up people at random, and you can have your scrawny little dictatorship in peace, like North Korea's Kim Il-Yong.

Even if the signs given by Ahmadinejad do not mean exactly what they are interpreted as, it is also the pinnacle of ignorance to ignore the signs: Calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, Holocaust denial, staunch anti-Western attitudes, the radicalization of civil society and now the brutal clamp-down on dissent.

That's the way dictators roll.

With a dictatorial regime wielding the clout Iran does - enough to rival Saudi Arabia for dominance in the region - it is pretty much a given the new Iran emerging from the reelection of Ahmadinejad will be more trouble than ever.

The road to Israel goes through Iraq

The Middle East Conflict is, potentially, the ignition for a global conflict of, well, apocalyptic proportions, the much debated Clash of Civilizations.

The major monotheistic religions in the world has charged this small piece of land the size of Vancouver Island with so much subjective context it is fair to say the fate of the world rests on resolving the conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

It doesn't seem to go this way today, as Washington under Obama has managed to calm the nerves of many Muslims, and all Arab countries but Syria supports the peace process.

The election in Lebanon did not turn out to Ahmadinejad's favor, and his version of Iran is now increasingly isolated. It is doubtful, nuclear capacity or not, that even a regime as ruthless as his would attack Israel.

It is not how it is likely to go down.

Instead Iran is likely to increase its influence on Iraq, seeking to destabilize it from within or even creating a pretext for invasion.

Today Khamenei added Iraq and Afghanistan to the list of Western governments who will pay for meddling in Iran's election, as the regime's accusation goes.

Tehran's own meddling with Iraq, as US forces are withdrawing and Iraq is left in a vulnerable state, could force US involvement in a Second Surge, or - if it is an actual invasion - another Gulf War, this time one that will not be easy to fight or cheap in terms of Western lives.

Godwin's Law does not apply to Ahmadinejad

Iraq is to Iran like Poland to Germany, an easy target useful for expansion of the empire, and it is an old time enemy of a long and devastating war.

Usually, in political discussions, the rule is that meaningful debate ends when someone pulls the Hitler card. That is not actually the meaning of Godwin's Law, but this interpretation has become a popular variation.

In the case of Ahmadinejad's Iran, an Iran secretly controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Godwin's Law becomes an obstacle to a clear perspective.

So much of what is going on in Iran, now evident to the majority of the world population, at least in the free world, the West, resembles what took place in Hitler's Germany.

It does not follow automatically that Iran will engage in conquest, but the likelihood of it can no longer be dismissed as speculation. That is one new lesson still sinking in, as people digest images from the violent clamp-down on the opposition.

This is budding democracy being wiped out - or off the map, if you will.

The only thing keeping people from drawing the obvious conclusions is the natural inability to comprehend madness on this scale.

The same inability to fathom the depth of depravation men are capable of sinking to allowed the Bush administration to seduce the world after 9/11, creating another mockery of democracy, one that still has not unravelled.

But in the days to come people will grow wise. The current taboo against linking Iran to Iraq and speculating about Iran's expansionist plans, or including the Middle East conflict in the equasion, will take over as it grows increasingly difficult for the protest movement to capture media headlines.

Instead we will hear more of Ahmadinejad's "blovitudes".

And while experts repeat "he is not in power; he is just a puppet for the clerics" people conveniently forget that so was Hitler, a puppet for the industrialists in his days, a simple corporal elevated to the pinnacle of political power for the sake of preserving the nation.

July 1 2009