At War For Zionism
Jim Kavanagh
So this is happening—the USraeli war on Iran that, in an essay
in October 2023, I saw as the inevitable denouement of Israel’s Gaza ethnic
cleansing offensive. The inevitable result of this attack is going to be a regional,
if not global, conflagration that will likely create economic and political
upheaval around the world (including crisis in the U.S.), probably involve the
use of nuclear weapons, and certainly will effect a dramatic change in the
balance of geo-political power.
Everyone is aware of the enormous collection of American
military assets amassed against Iran. The U.S. has drawn down military
potential in other important world theaters, including warships, warplanes, and
tankers. Something like
40% of the available U.S. naval fleet and 37% of the AWACS fleet are deployed
for this attack. They’re taking air-defense assets from South Korea!
Some of us understand that this enormous strike force is in
play because Iran itself has formidable military capabilities, and the Pentagon
knows it. Many knowledgeable people have warned that Iran, a large, mountainous
country of >90 million people with a strong economic and military
infrastructure, is a much larger and harder target than Iraq, or Syria, or
Libya. Iran has already shown, in the 12-day war, that its missile inventory
can outlast initial attacks, deplete Israeli air defenses, and strike with
precision. Iran is also now much better prepared, with substantial support from
Russia and China, including important air defense, ISR, and global positioning assets.
The military conflict is underway, each side has the ability
to inflict serious damage on the other, and the various speculations about who
has what advantage will soon be resolved on the battlefield. I’ll just say,
with most observers, that I think the longer the fight goes on, the worse it
will get for USrael, which—politically, as least as important as militarily—does
not want and cannot sustain a prolonged war.
Donald Trump is certainly counting on a quick,
low-American-cost “victory.” He has initiated the kind of regime change war
that he promised to end, one that >70% of the American people oppose. Any
prolonged resistance, any need to deploy more (especially ground) forces, any
dire economic consequences, any significant number of casualties—results that
are, I think, in some combination inevitable—will be a military and political
disaster for him. The Israelis have different political considerations, but
they, too, cannot sustain a prolonged conventional war against a country as big
and strong as Iran.
Let’s be clear about what the
purpose of this war is, and what the prospects for its resolution are.
First, and most important for
American opponents of this war to emphasize and repeat constantly: This is a
Zionist war. It is a war for Israel and Zionism. The United States and the
American people have no reason to attack Iran. There is nothing for them in it.
And they know it. More than 70% of Americans oppose it. Over four election
cycles, the American people have soundly rejected regime-change wars,
especially in the Middle East, and that rejection was a foundational element of
the Trump-MAGA campaign itself. Iran poses no threat to the United States. The various
rationales—from notional nuclear weapons to monarchist “democracy”—don’t
deserve a moment of consideration. They are as patently phony as Bush’s were
for Iraq, and everybody knows it. Nobody wanted this war but Netanyahu and
Israel.
Netanyahu explicitly thanked,
“my friend, US President Donald Trump, for “allow[ing] us to do what I have
yearned to do for 40 years.” Not an American project, but one Netanyahu wished
for for 40 years that could not have been done unless the U.S. “allowed” it.
Now the U.S. is doing it for and with him.
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and
National Security Advisor, acknowledges, with full confidence that it will be
accepted as a sufficient explanation, that the U.S. attacked Iran because
Israel was going to, and Donald Trump, the President of the United States, said
that “he had no choice but to join a strike that Israel would launch.” There
are no more powerful American political leaders. For them, for the whole of the
American political and media elite, Israel leads and America follows—America cannot
conceive of doing anything but follow. Like a dog on a leash.
Here’s what I said in my August
2024 essay foreseeing how Israel was going to walk the U.S. into war on Iran.
Israel is acting
with particular contemptuous disregard for the country on whom it most depends,
the United States. Israel has only slightly less contempt for Americans than
it does for Palestinians. Israel considers Palestinians needless,
expendable subhumans. Israel considers Americans unfortunately necessary fools
who don't, and don't want to, understand the core of the Zionist colonial
project and its necessarily eliminationist policy toward the Palestinians,
about whose essential savagery equality-obsessed Americans are hopelessly
naive.
Israel thinks of
Americans the way a supercilious avant-garde artist thinks of his/her vulgar
wealthy patrons. It has to keep its indispensable supporters believing it
shares their appreciation of the purely decorative prettiness of things like
human rights, peace, living side by side in mutual respect with other peoples,
etc., so that they will continue to subsidize the truly important and
transgressive Zionist artistry, whose beauty they will never understand.
Israel has been
confident of its ability to play its patron in that way, because, as Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have
said many times: “America is a thing that can be easily moved, moved in the
right direction” and “We have the
Senate, the Congress, and a strong
Jewish lobby on our side.” And he is right.
(And don’t forget the Zionist-committed media.) It’s hard to find a ward
more contemptuous of its patron than Israel, or a patron more submissive to its
ward than the United States.
In fact, Israel is
so confident of its ability to get the American government to go along with
anything it wants that it has completely dispensed with any effort at
prettifying its grotesqueries:
“Look, we are, as we announced, committing
genocidal ethnic cleansing with no limits, deliberately slaughtering and
starving children every day, carrying out airstrikes and destructive
assassinations in foreign capitals, etc. If you want to continue pretending to
yourselves and your citizens that there’s such a thing as fundamentally
humanitarian ‘liberal Zionism,’ that we’re interested in ‘ceasefires’ and
‘two-state solutions’ and such—anything other than getting rid of the
Palestinians and consolidating Jewish supremacy throughout our promised
land—-while we blatantly kill the primary negotiator you want us to talk to,
you go right ahead. Keep writing your thoughtful op-eds and expressing your
‘frustration’ and ‘tension’ with us.
Just understand that we are going to continue killing anyone and any
number of people, anywhere, at any time of our choosing, until we’ve put down
all potential enemies of our colonial project, and we don’t give a damn about
what you think about that. Your job
is to keep sending us the weapons we need and bring your soldiers and armies
into a major war to protect us from the inevitable blowback from the countries
we attack. Capisce?”
To which the Blue
and Red bitches—-Biden, Harris, Trump, Vance, RFK, Jr.—-leading the American
and Western political pack, bark, “Yes, sir. Your war is our war.
We will do anything to protect the Zionist project!” Has anyone ever
seen a more pathetically obsequious, self-demeaning political leadership?
So, the American
polity—-its dog-trained leadership and its starting-to-yap-back but still too
dog-trained populace—-is walking into war. Being walked into war on the Zionist
leash. There will be a lot of yelping once their noses are rubbed in it.
Like a dog on a leash. The only revision I would make, happily, is that the populace is now not just yapping but snapping back much more widely and forcefully. Tucker Carlson sees it clearly:
