John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Iran says some arrests made for downing of Ukrainian plane, but gives no details”

 

A comment below speaks of a “mistake” (in quotes to express doubt or contempt for Iran’s explanation) and of our never being able to learn what happened.

That is simply incorrect.

It already is known, and in some detail. It involved a communication-connection error with an officer in charge of a missile battery some distance from others.

Of course, everyone was under great pressure from constant American threats, and there were reports of American cruise missiles being launched.

Given the height and speed of the airliner at the moment, its radar signature on the remote unit’s radar, not at all the latest technology, resembled that of a cruise missile.

The reports had to be treated seriously, and split-second decisions had to be made.

After all, the United States had just used missiles to kill 35 people, including Iran’s General Soleimani, in Iraq in the previous few weeks.

Ultimately, only one person is responsible for all of it. His name is Donald Trump, and he busies himself with threats and violent acts against a nation which has attacked no one in its modern history and is known by all experts to have followed scrupulously its nuclear treaty obligations, the treaty Trump just suddenly one day decided to rip-up.

But our politicians never address the matter fairly or accurately. They are all under Washington’s thumb and shill for Trump, some even asking for further hostile measures against Iran.

It is a shameful situation for Canada to be in.

What kind of a country do you want for your children?

Ethics matter, or why does anyone bother go to church or synagogue to pray and read scripture?

And the rule of law matters. In these matters, Trump has been in complete contempt of the rule of law.

Trump is given a free hand by our politicians to commit murder in public. And to make vicious threats, day after day. Please remember that in ordinary civil society, uttering serious threats can put you into prison.

If Trump’s vicious activities don’t cause our government to speak up, what would?

Certainly not the bloody terrors of Saudi Arabia, courtesy of Trump’s good pal, the Crown Prince. Our government says nothing about his murder, executions and bombing of civilians. Nothing.

We have constructed a society with all kinds of barriers against ethics, and we have learned nothing from the bloody horrors of the past.

All the hypocrisy towards Iran, charging it with crimes it has not committed, makes our ethics and respect for rule of law devoid of meaning.

_______________________

“Iran says some arrests made for downing of Ukrainian plane”

There really is only one arrest that should be made.

Complete responsibility for this mistake made under the threats and pressures of war, as well as for related violent events, is Donald Trump’s alone.

It is of course a sign of Canada’s now close-to complete subservience to Trump’s White House that this indisputable truth is not heard.

Harry Truman famously said, “The buck stops here,” a reference to the expression, “passing the buck”, but that sense of responsibility is totally ignored by Trump. Instead, a steady line of new lies and tales are spun daily to justify what cannot be justified.

And our guys just go along.

_______________________

Response to a comment about there being no justice after Iran’s downing of an airliner:

Please.

Where was the justice when the United States shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 Iranians above the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s own territorial waters, in 1988?

The captain of the American warship that downed that airliner was even awarded a medal.

Or where was the justice when Israel sent 114 people aboard an airliner – Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 – to their deaths in 1973 over the Sinai?

A known, clearly marked airliner, trying to return to Cairo, was downed by two Israeli fighters. There were no repercussions at all for Israel.

John Chuckman

COMMENT ON IRAN’S ADMISSION THAT IT ACCIDENTALLY DESTROYED A UKRAINIAN AIRLINER

 

Iran has apologized for its terrible error, and it did so promptly. And in judging, everyone should keep in mind the terrifying pressure Iran has been put under by the United States (see footnote).

Has America apologized for any of the pain and death and destruction it has inflicted on the Middle East in recent years?

America’s Neocon Wars in the Middle East (2003 – present) have killed something like two million people, destroyed many treasured historic and religious sites, reduced millions to primitive living conditions (eg, to this day, much of Iraq’s electricity, deliberately destroyed by America in its 2003 invasion, still has not been restored), and created so many desperate refugees that Europe’s stability was threatened.

Going back before the Neocon Wars, we have the Iraq-Iran War (1980-88), an extremely bloody war facilitated by the United States to hurt Iran’s revolutionary government of 1979. In that war, America shot down an Iranian civilian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655), killing 290 people.

A United States warship, the USS Vincennes, was in Iranian waters of the Strait of Hormuz and fired missiles at the plane, claiming to mistake the airliner, flying a well-established route, for a hostile plane.

The Captain of the American warship was later actually awarded a medal, the Legion of Merit.

The United States absolutely refused to apologize or pay damages for its obvious destruction of a civilian airliner.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s, as the result of a lawsuit, that the United States properly acknowledged what it had done and paid damages to survivors.

 

WHAT IRAN FACED AT THE TIME OF ITS MISTAKEN DOWNING OF AN AIRLINER – INDEED WHAT IT FACES STILL

 

Iran has been under constant threat by the Trump White House, and for no good reason since Iran has started no wars in its modern history and is recognized as complying with its treaty obligations.

Trump started by suddenly ripping-up a valid international nuclear agreement, one which had been scrupulously kept for four years. He followed that by imposing war-like sanctions which seriously hurt millions of ordinary people. Iranian assets abroad have been seized, and every effort has been made to disrupt Iran’s economy.

Trump sent fleets of warships and nuclear-capable bombers to intimidate the country. He made many public threats, including the barbaric threat to destroy Iran’s national heritage sites. Trump even once bellowed he would “obliterate” Iran’s eighty million people.

Just before the airliner’s destruction, Trump had committed a set of murders in neighboring Iraq, including the murder of an Iranian national hero, General Qasem Soleimani. Iran had been put on the highest war alert.

John Chuckman

COMMENT – ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON TRUMP’S IRAN CRISIS AND AMERICAN IMPERIAL DECLINE

 

The American empire has overreached itself in recent decades, in places like Afghanistan and Syria and Libya and Somalia and Yemen and even in Iraq. America has basically lost all of those wars in the sense of having created enduring unstable conditions and great hostilities, not peace or stability and not democratic values. All those places are wrecks with smoldering conflicts continuing and outcomes uncertain. The Neocon Wars of the Middle East have been a disaster, but Trump is closely tuned into the Neocons. He is literally surrounded with them.

Even though America clearly won the Iraq War, a war advocated for directly by Ariel Sharon, with a victory memorialized in the blood of a million Iraqis, it was a kind of technical victory, because the key result was something completely unwanted, that is, greatly strengthening Iran as a regional power. Iraq was a war that should not have been fought, but Washington was incapable of seeing that as a result of both its imperial hubris and its vulnerability to Israel’s tireless efforts to influence. Iraq’s invasion has been called by a number of experts America’s greatest strategic blunder ever.

Just as many Israelis live in a kind of foggy fantasy of sentimental Biblical names and notions combined with efforts to recreate American middle-class urban society in a hostile environment – Ozzie and Harriet on the Desert – all floated on an immense Noah’s Flood of American subsidies, public and private, many of them do not realize the full impact of what they do in the region. They believe America is there to bail them out no matter how badly they behave towards others and create unnecessary hostilities. America can flatten Iraq. American can topple Syria. And America can topple Iran. The thinking is terribly wrong and self-indulgent and dangerous. And people subservient to the Neocons, like Trump, are immersed in it.

Trump now seems perilously close to repeating the mistake of Iraq, only on a far grander scale, with Iran. There are many powerful Israeli interests who want to see America go to war with Iran, something they realize is beyond the capacity of Israel despite its rhetoric and threats. The assassination of General Soleimani seems almost certainly to have been a trap designed for that purpose, and Trump just thoughtlessly walked into it. If Iran had not proceeded in the carefully considered way that it did, giving Trump room to slip out of the trap, and without being humiliated, we would have a big new war.

The set of events carries important lessons. First, there is the remarkable steadiness and rationality displayed by Iran’s leaders. They are responsible for avoiding a gigantic, unnecessary conflict.

Second, I think are the unmistakable signs of American imperial decline. Iraq has asked America to leave. Iran has promised new pressures for America to leave. Syria is also effectively telling the United States to leave. America has been reduced to sophomoric jokes about stealing oil, and its treatment of the Iran nuclear agreement has made its word for many close to worthless. It’s pretty hard to stay in a place where the people don’t want you and where long and costly efforts have yielded little of worth. Especially as the near-term future promises nothing but continued relative economic decline for the United States with the privileged position of the dollar gradually disappearing.

Trump has listened to Israel’s bad advice time after time. And the assassination was just the most explosive instance. You do not increase stability or security with such acts. You actually create instabilities that weren’t there before. They may not all be matters to appear in tomorrow’s headlines, but they are like new fault lines in an earthquake-prone zone.

In the end, despite all the bluster, Trump was unwilling to retaliate against Iran. Of course, Iran made it as easy as possible for him with its orchestrated missile attack, an event perhaps better described as an orchestrated missile demonstration. Trump now looks more ineffectual and less in command than ever. The only people looking to him are special interests in Israel, dangerous ones that view him as a big piñata to be poked at with sticks for gifts, and the degree to which he listens to them measures our risk of war.

Trump is likely aware that Iran holds some important cards. No, Iran cannot possibly defeat the United States in a war, but Iran has never sought a war.

Perhaps I shouldn’t speak of “cannot possibly defeat the United States.” We must never forget what the tough and resourceful people of Vietnam achieved vis-à-vis the United States. Wars can go on for very long periods of time, and sometimes a less wealthy, less complex society is able to absorb the costs and demands better than a wealthier, privileged opponent. There have been other instances of that. Note that the United States has been killing peasants for eighteen years in Afghanistan, and the Taleban still controls major parts of the country, as much or more of it than when America started.

If you invade or attack someone without a clear and powerful purpose, you are condemning yourself to an unhappy future. It’s like trying to pour concrete without a mold. And the United States has done that time after time, confident just in its arrogant sense of overwhelming superiority. It is foolish, and absolutely no one is more subject to the illusion of American superiority and exceptional status than Donald Trump.

First, a war means Iran’s hurling fleets of missiles against Israel. It has the missiles. The missiles are very capable, as has been demonstrated several times. They are highly accurate. Iran has literally thousands at its disposal. Underground bunkers packed with them. So, unavoidably, the reason for starting a war against Iran, Israel’s intense and unwarranted hostility against Iran, will result in large-scale destruction of Israel.

The effort to build a deterrence has been one of Iran’s national projects, especially after the ghastly Iraq-Iran War, 1980-88, inflicted upon it.

That deterrent capacity is why Trump wants to strip Iran of its missiles, demanding, as he does, that missile technology be added to the terms of his notion of a new nuclear agreement. But that is like asking Iran to disarm itself and doing so at gunpoint. It will not happen.

Israel makes a rather compact target, meaning a determined opponent can saturate it. Iran can accurately target most of what is worth targeting in Israel. Israel’s anti-missile defenses would be overwhelmed. Besides past incidents demonstrated those defenses fail in part even under the highly favorable circumstances of a limited number of unsophisticated missiles.

Iran can also do the same thing to a number of American bases in the region.

Places like the Saudi oil facilities and the facilities of the Strait of Hormuz could quickly be rendered totally inoperable, bringing the world’s oil economy to a desperate crisis.

Iran several times has demonstrated how resourceful it can be at unconventional or guerilla operations. Any war with the United States would see these capabilities used fully.

Those and other hard facts do make starting a war with Iran an act of madness.

But if you put yourself into a bad situation deliberately, as Trump does, madness can easily happen.