Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Michael Carmichael
According to current reports on the rapidly escalating preparations for a US war against Iran, it now appears that prophecies in the Bible are driving President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their inner circle of neoconservatives to design a strategic platform for the prosecution of the final war for control of Planet Earth. In the Bible, this conflict is called The War of Gog & Magog, and the final battle of that war is Armageddon. This scenario has been graphically detailed in the best-selling Left Behind fantasies authored by the Rev Tim LaHaye, a true believer and a devout political supporter of George Bush.
You might well ask, “Who, what and where are Gog and Magog?” According to the literature of fundamentalist Christianity as it is peculiarly practiced in America, Magog, is the prince of Gog, an area that is frequently described as including many of the following nations: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. While accounts of the geography of Gog vary, the consensus is that it includes the mass of central Asia, and may involve European nations as well who will form an alliance to attack Israel.
While all of this is an amusing Biblical theory, it is now certain that the US and its allies, Israel and Turkey, are in a highly advanced state of preparation for the launch of an aerial bombardment against the region that is now seen to be the strategic keystone of Gog: the Islamic Republic of Iran. The exchanges between Bush and Putin during yesterday’s VE celebrations in Moscow spotlight the fact that the next war has a larger dimension to it. In what were the sharpest exchanges between an American president and his Russian counterpart since the Cold War, it is now clear that the Iranian campaign is designed as part of a broader plan to target Russia.
The distinguished Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa has published a paper detailing the prolific manifestations of the rapidly advancing military preparations by the United States, Israel, Turkey and NATO that are the unmistakable build-up to an aerial attack on Iran. The military preparations are now nearing completion for the launch of a bombing campaign, but the political and diplomatic machinations have not yet reached fruition. That said, the neoconservative diplomatic and political operations are reaching a feverish pitch in Bush’s Washington.
While conventional wisdom is that Bush’s America and Rumsfeld’s Pentagon already have more than they can deal with in the occupation of Iraq, many of their most radical and motivated neoconservative minions are working day and night to perfect the game plan and to prepare the public for the next phase of their final war for global supremacy. An important study of the diplomatic and political operations to launch the Iran War is now published in the current issue of GQ, the American men’s fashion magazine. Authored by Joshua Kurlantzick, the Foreign Editor of The New Republic, his paper, The Next War Is Closer Than You Think, details the meticulous political build-up to the next phase of the neoconservative wars for global domination.
The following is what we know of the current state of play. While common sense prevails within a large segment of the intelligence community that has steadfastly argued against launching a new phase of warfare, rabid hawks highly placed in the neoconservative hierarchy have over-ruled the CIA and their counterparts at State. Colin Powell and Richard Armitage argued strenuously against an Iranian campaign, and that is precisely why they were removed from their posts so unceremoniously late last year. While their hasty removals were disguised as natural attrition from an administration ending its first term, they were engineered due to their direct conflict with the unfolding neoconservative agenda which will be defined in religious terms in order to build up a progression of higher levels of political support among the many Bible-fearing elements of the American electorate. Condoleezza Rice, herself a deeply indoctrinated religious fundamentalist, wholeheartedly approves of the escalation of the Middle Eastern war. She is an expert on the Soviet Union and its survivor, Russia, which is the leading candidate for the role of Gog, an Apocalyptic prophecy with which she is intimately familiar following her childhood in Alabama and her strict fundamentalist upbringing in the Bible Belt where the End of Time scenario is taught morning, noon and night. Rice’s father was a Southern minister and a strict constructionist of the fundamental literality of the Bible.
To stem the tide of scathing critiques about plans to attack Iran that were pouring out of the CIA, Porter Goss was dispatched to Langley, where he was moved into position to silence the critics of the Bush White House by enforcing a strict code of political discipline and a stern rule of silence. The theoretcial incubation of the War of Gog and Magog has been assigned to neoconservative intellectuals including but not limited to the following figures: William Kristol, Michael Ledeen and John Bolton.
The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) is the most powerful think-tank in Bush’s Washington. Founded by Kristol, PNAC published its prescription for full spectrum imperial domination of the globe in 2000. Calling for military confrontation and political reconstruction of the Middle East, PNAC proposes erecting a huge array of US military bases to enforce imperial hegemony far into the foreseeable future. The neoconservatives have designed a breathtaking strategy that will involve the long-range American domination and geopolitical restructuring of Planet Earth. The birth of this project has been aimed directly at the Middle East, where the repository of the world’s greatest oil and energy reserves and the situation of many of the world’s weakest nations combine to present American neoconservativism with an attractive set of strategic circumstances.
That these economic and military factors converge with the prevailing Apocalyptic ideology of the fundamentalist culture of America should not be seen as a mere coincidence. Bush takes it as read that he has been anointed by Jesus Christ, his Lord and Saviour, to fulfil biblical prophecy, a fact that resonates with many books, papers and sermons as well as his own political speeches and posturing in order to attract the fundamentalist vote.
In Congress, the archconservative Republican, Senator Rick Santorum, has cooperated with the divine inspiration of his Commander-in-Chief. Santorum has introduced legislation titled the Iran Freedom & Support Act that calls for outright “regime change” in Tehran. Senator Richard Lugar’s objections to the language of Santorum’s Iran Act have postponed passage of this landmark legislation for the time being, but it is still undergoing incubation, and even its critics predict that it is very likely that it will pass both houses of Congress. This political reality belies what is truly a pitiful state of incompetence of the Democratic Party and its members of Congress. With the majority of the nation now believing that the Iraq War was a huge $300 billion mistake and climbing, the Democratic members of Congress are lining up to support Santorum’s disastrous legislation.
Following the passage of a hardline Iran Act, Congress will be in position to support much more aggressive military operations against Bush’s next target. This will involve support for Iranian dissidents, but not merely political reformers. Funds will begin to funnel into the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a paramilitary organization of “freedom fighters” or “terrorists” depending on one’s geopolitical perspective. These are the same people funded by the US during the Iran-Iraq conflict to wage an internecine war against the Islamic Republic. In the 1970s, the MEK killed American civilians, and they have been on the State Department’s pariah list of terrorist organizations since 1997. Yet, those facts are mere trifles for neoconservatives, and they will not stand in the way of using the MEK to: engineer terrorist atrocities in Iran; conduct surveillance for the CIA and to target the forthcoming aerial attacks inside of Iran. Kurlantzick revealed that moves will soon be made to remove the MEK from the official State Department list of prohibited terrorist organizations, and it will then be primed for covert reactivation.
Against this backdrop, the neoconservatives have written a script starring two of the most evocative political figures in Iran. Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah of Iran has been totally integrated into the neoconservative scenario. He has appeared at some of the glittering events sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute where he has inspired neoconservatives with their luminous vision of the restoration of the Iranian monarchy to the Peacock Throne, a gaudy and tortuous piece of furniture that was actually encrusted with zillions of diamonds. However, even this splendiferous fantasia pales in contrast to the second major figure now integrated into the evolving script. Hussein Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, has cleverly emerged from behind the curtain as the favourite Iranian pawn of Michael Ledeen. In an arresting speech delivered to the American Enterprise Institute, Hussein Khomeini called for the United States to invade Iran in order to effect regime change. After making his surprising oracular pronouncement, Khomeini was whisked away back behind the curtain by Ledeen who had been hovering Svengali-like by his side.
A steady stream of clues continues to appear to confirm suspicions of regime change in Iran. Elizabeth Cheney, the Vice President’s famous daughter, has been installed at Condoleezza Rice’s State Department to direct the political dimensions of the soon to be forthcoming democratization operations in Iran. Dick Cheney speaks incessantly about the urgent crisis in Iran due to their potential to manufacture nuclear weapons sometime in the foreseeable future even though they have pledged not to build WMDs and the indisputable fact that they have signed treaties prohibiting them from doing so.
In 2003, neoconservatives in the Pentagon including Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, proposed a national-security directive on Iran for the president to sign. This directive mandated that the US would launch a multi-pronged campaign to destabilize Tehran in order to effect regime change. This original presidential directive was never validated, however the neoconservatives have launched a new initiative to formalize a, “Get tough with Iran,” presidential directive which is in draft preparation at this very moment in time.
In January, Seymour Hersh reported that there were American commando units already on the ground in Iran. The following month, Scott Ritter reported that the US would be able to deploy a bombing campaign against Iran by this June – that is in two and a half weeks time. On Capitol Hill, neoconservatives are whispering confidently that the US will now launch a multifaceted campaign to undermine Tehran, destabilize the region and to sabotage specific strategic sites inside Iran. Kurlantznick reported that a confidential source who had direct contact with Bush confirmed that the president will definitely order the launch of an attack against Iran if Tehran remains recalcitrant in the face of US demands about its nascent nuclear energy programme.
While it is conventional wisdom to presume that each of Bush’s wars are tightly confined strategies designed to achieve limited objectives, it is now becoming clear that he is working from a grand design of biblical proportions – especially to those voters who supported him most enthusiastically – the so-called, born-again Christians.
The Prophet Ezekiel warned that Magog, the prince of Gog, would attack Israel. The majority of Israel’s charismatic Jews believe that Russia is the land of Gog. Last month, Vladimir Putin visited Israel where he announced that he was selling missiles to Syria and that he would continue to support the nuclear industry of Iran. Putin’s comments were seen as a threat to Israel and her sponsor, the United States. To both the Bible Belt practitioners of fundamentalist Christianity and to the fundamentalist Hebrews of Israel, there is no longer any doubt whatsoever about the identity of Magog. They are equally convinced that George Bush is doing the work of “The Lord” in smiting Gog, and the identity of its leading prince, Magog, is now clearly revealed to the true believers as Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia. The pointed remarks of the two men yesterday in Moscow have brought the underlying conflict between the two nations that is taking shape in the Middle East to the broader attention of the public.
During Putin’s visit to Israel in April, the US announced the sale of 100 additional uranium-coated (read: depleted uranium) bunker busting bombs to Israel which will accompany the 500 DU-coated bunker busters the US had already sold to them. The US Senate has already authorized the use of nuclear bunker-busting bombs in conventional theatres of war, because they are deemed to pose no threat to civilians since they will explode underground. Also last month, the seemingly tireless Donald Rumsfeld visited Baku in Azerbaijan to discuss the deployment of US troops along Iran’s northwest border. The purpose of that hitherto curious manoeuvre is completely transparent.
Chossudovsky reports that Israeli Dolphin-class submarines heavily armed with US Harpoon missiles that are armed with nuclear warheads trained on targets in Iran are now in position. The Israeli submarines may be cruising into the Persian Gulf right now. Chossudovsky suggests that the US and Israel are planning to introduce nuclear weapons into the bombardment of Iran which would be somewhat ironic, since the primary rationale for warfare will be that Iran constitutes a potential nuclear threat.
Surrounded by a ring of US military bases, Iran is poised to be the next phase of a belligerent process that – for fundamentalist Americans – is unfolding as the War of Gog and Magog – an unending world war that will bring the United States into direct conflict with Russia.
Author’s Sources
Joshua Kurlantzick, The Next War is Closer than you think, GQ, June, 2005
America’s Religious Right – Saints or Subversives?
Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran
Target Iran: It’s a semi-secret joint US-Israel Operation
Scott Ritter Says U.S. Plans June Attack On Iran
Bush offers support to Putin’s critics
The thorns in Georgia’s rose
Source: http://planetmove.blogspot.com/2005/05/war-of-gog-magog-iran-war.html
