Wednesday’s Washington Post contains a rundown of the Obama administration’s current thinking on Iran sanctions. The bottom line: administration officials are increasingly open to sanctions, but want to find ways to target the Revolutionary Guard and other hardline elements within the regime without inflicting needless suffering on the civilian population. For that reason, the administration shows “little apparent interest in legislation racing through Congress that would punish companies that sell refined petroleum to Iran,†whose brunt would be borne by the most vulnerable segments of the populace. (â€Look, we need to be honest about this,†neoconservative foreign policy guru Fred Kagan admitted this spring. “Iranians are going to die if we impose additional sanctions.â€)
Even these more finely targeted sanctions appear to be more than the Iranian opposition desires. Spencer Ackerman, in his useful discussion of the Green Movement’s position on sanctions, notes that some elements of the opposition have come to view sanctions that specifically target the Revolutionary Guards in a more favorable light, but it appears that most continue to oppose sanctions in any form. (And of course, it appears that virtually no one in the Green Movement supports refined petroleum sanctions, which opposition leaders have repeatedly denounced.)
But targeted sanctions are evidently not gratuitously destructive enough to satisfy the “bomb Iran†crowd. Thus we see Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin complaining that such sanctions reflect the administration’s misguided desire to “avoid being too harsh, too effective, or inflict too much damageâ€. Instead of genuinely “crippling sanctions,†the weak-kneed administration “[doesn’t] want to topple the regime nor inflict much damage, just target those ‘elements’ they think are the really bad guys.â€
Rubin is rather vague about fleshing out what kind of “damage†she is hoping for. This is hardly surprising, since the unpleasant truth underlying all the chest-beating talk about “crippling†sanctions is that their primary effect would be to inflict suffering upon precisely the civilians on whose behalf she claims to speak. The logic endorsed by sanctions proponents dictates that once the civilian population is sufficiently ravaged and impoverished, they will rise up in earnest and overthrow the regime. A far more likely outcome, however, is that crude sanctions like the refined petroleum bills will merely inflict gratuitous suffering on the population without harming the regime itself — as we saw in Iraq, where “crippling†sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of civilians (at the very least) without weakening Saddam Hussein’s hold on power.
Of course, the fact that she is calling for innocent civilians to be starved and immiserated does not prevent Rubin from engaging in pompous and self-congratulatory rhetoric about her great devotion to “the Iranian people, who are risking life and limb against a regime they know all to [sic] well is evil.†It would be hard to think of a better example of the profound dishonesty underlying what Glenn Greenwald has aptly called “the ‘bomb Iran’ contingent’s newfound concern for The Iranian Peopleâ€.
The disgusting hypocrisy of neocons is identical with the hypocrisy of Israel leaders like olmert,and livni who stated endless times that "we have nothing with Palestinians people,we share his sufferings but Hamas…"while one year after the massacre called Gaza war ,1,5 millions people are tightly closed in Gaza .And the siege will be "improved"by a wall built with US money between Gaza and Egypt to impede the introduction of weapon from Iran (of course).Have someone saw imagines of these weapons.I saw what Israeli's television shew ,imagines from tunnels and depots of weapon:it was show a gun (Iranian probably)
Please stop using the word NEOCON to describe those in this country that love war, like Bill kristol. THEY ARE WARCONS, WARCON WARCONS. GOT IT!
Rick, you are quite right. It is not just so-called "Neocons" who love war. There are legions in America who love war. They are from the right and from the left. They call themselves Republicans and they call themselves Democrats. They call themselves liberals and they call themselves conservatives. They are agnostics, atheists, jews and so-called Christians. But they all have all have one thing in common: they all love immoral, unjust, aggressive and endless war. And they all are accessories to mass murder.
Most unfortunate that the world outside of the american empire couldn't get together and impose sanctions on them. Maybe then when enough of them are affected, they would rise up and overthrow their overlords in the House of Unrepresentatives and Satanic Pentagon, and restore some semblance of sanity.
Ah, but to dream……..
Oh I'm sure they will very soon. History has shown that nations with empire and world domination as their first objective get paybacks for their brutality in spades.
At this rate we won't have long to wait.
I keep meaning to check the Alexa chart for commentary to see how much traffic they've lost since they stopped allowing comments. I used to go there to post, the columns were awful but some of the discussions were good
Ms Rubin and her neocon allies delight in mass murder — that's obvious. The intellectual authors of criminal acts, and the propagandists who promote them, should be subject to the same penalties meted out at Nuremberg. They urge the "brutal harshness" so dear to the Nazi regime and its web-spinning propagandists, some of whom were hanged. One wonders what Ms. Rubin would wear to the gallows.
It is not just so-called "Neocons" who love war. There are legions Americans who love war. They are from the right and from the left. They call themselves Republicans and they call themselves Democrats. They call themselves liberals and they call themselves conservatives. They are agnostics, atheists, jews and so-called Christians. But they all have all have one thing in common: they all love immoral, unjust, aggressive and endless war. And they all are accessories to mass murder. And they all are destroying America; fiscally, morally and spiritually.
Henry _Clemens,
You are absolutely correct. But what causes such attitudes? I think for America it is the constant self-glorification of always referring to ourselves as the “good guys” and portraying the evil sh-t we do like invading Iraq as somehow innocent and beneficial. We are incapable of feeling shame. Similiarly, the Zioinsts have so defined themselves as victims of the Holocaust as to be justified no matter what kind of evil they do. Zionism is a thirst for revenge – against the whole world. American narcissism and Zionist self-justification
have become entwined like two noxious weeds
American narcissism and Zionist self-justification are more than just entwined; they are grafted together and can be accurately counted as one organism. To listen to the American "rah-rah" rabble, they owe their allegiance to Israel. The FedGov exists merely to funnel American support to the Jewish state, to maintain a military that can be unleashed in support of Zionist objectives, and to build up a domestic police-surveillance state whose sole purpose is persecute anyone who thinks that all this is a really bad and profoundly immoral idea.
It may be time for the US Citizenry to consider the desirability of naming the Kupermans, Kristols, Boltons, Kagans, Krauthammers and like minded individuals "personas non grata" in the USA.
As promoters of "wars with no end" against Arab, African and Asian Muslims their views and demands to use US military action is becoming glaringly representative more of a foreign bent than an American one.
If their demands are followed through then the end results will mean not only more dead and crippled young American men and women but additional costs to the already $ 300 million dollars that the military in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan is costing American taxpayers per day.
And last but by no means least their proposed actions can only result in America not only going bankrupt but also hated by more and more nations.
You bunch of fucking pussies there is no peace without war
Hope, you save the people that time.If you have more update about this information, please let me know.