Scott Ritter’s “Target: Iran” Talk: So Right, And So Wrong
by Rob Williams
There are few American patriots in public life more deserving of our support and respect than Scott Ritter. A Marine Corps major, proud dyed-in-the-wool paleo-conservative republican, and former United Nations weapons inspector, Ritter has courageously spoken out against the excesses of U.S. Empire (his own phrase, one I like) since the 2000 “election” (I use the term loosely) brought the Bush “regime” (again, his word) to power.

When I heard that my Green Mountain Global Forum neighbors (thanks, Deb, Laura, Tara, Liz, and Marge!) planned to bring Scott Ritter to the Big Picture Theater to speak on his new book “Target Iran” last Saturday night, I was pleased. Here’s a guy, I thought, who has the mustard to tell it like it is.

Or so I thought.

Ritter is a compelling speaker, no doubt, and his analysis of the “bushwhacking” (his term) of a scared post-9/11 U.S. public into supporting a war in Iraq comes from first-hand experience on the ground, in both D.C. and the Mesopotamian desert.

He is on solid footing, too, when he asserts that a slim Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress means absolutely nothing, in terms of derailing the current course and speed of U.S. Empire. (While both Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders seem like decent human beings, I didn’t vote for them, and those who did are kidding themselves if they believe that big changes are now afoot in D.C.)

And while I hope, for the world’s sake, that Mr. Ritter is dead wrong in his conclusions regarding the U.S. and Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Islamic Republic of Iran, he may be right in asserting that the U.S. government will seek “regime change” by lobbing bombs at the allegedly “fragile” theocracy early next year, through some combination of targeted air strikes and (god forbid) tactical nuclear weapons. Ritter (conveniently?) left out Israel’s central role in such a war, but make no mistake that if and when said war comes, Mr Olmert’s government (Israel is the U.S. Empire’s #1 proxy state) will be front and center at the table.

But Ritter got it startlingly wrong, in terms of diagnosing what’s behind all of this. Why has the U.S. government invaded and occupied Iraq, and now turned its sights on Iran?

Ritter’s answer: pure naked power. This war, Ritter, said, is an “ideological” war – just like the Cold War that ended almost two decades ago.

Absurd.

A study of world history will tell you that Empires don’t act for ideological reasons. No – they act on behalf of specific imperial players with specific economic, political, geographic, and military objectives, using ideology – “better dead than Red!” or “war on terror!” - to cloak their actions. Whether its Mr. Bush, the “neoconservatives,” and the Project for a New American Century’s use of “hard power,” or the Clintons, the “neoliberals” and the “American Prospect’s” use of “soft power, the goal at day’s end is the same: Empire building.

The U.S. government and it’s military/industrial/media/ energy complex is in the midst of a global sequential war for the world’s last remaining oil and natural gas reserves, and 60% of those reserves are in the Middle East. Don’t let Rumsfeld’s sacking fool you for a moment - the U.S. government’s plan is working quite nicely, thank you very much. Hussein’s regime – a threat to U.S. interests in the region - is gone, civil war is underway, corporate money is being made bombing, rebuilding and privatizing Iraq, and the U.S. government has all the reasons it needs to build 14 “hardened” (read “permanent”) bases in the region. Swimming pools, Pizza Huts, bomber strips – the whole enchilada.

Ritter mentioned none of this, except to argue that the case for a “war for Iraqi oil” makes no sense, as none of the oil has been pumped out of the ground yet. (Precisely, because the oil hasn’t been privatized yet, and what better place to ensure the safety of the black gold than in the ground for future use, and profit?)

Even more startling was Ritter’s lack of solutions. The peace movement is comprised of a bunch of losers, he said. And he is right, if being “for peace” means staging a “kum by yah” mass rally every year for a day or two and then going home.

His chief solution? If we all just know our U.S. Constitution, Ritter said, than somehow this will work in our favor.

Let’s get more specific here. I’ve studied and taught the U.S. Constitution (along with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights) for some years now – powerful mojo in those documents - and the solution that I’ve come up with is this.

We Vermonters must engage in peaceable, nonviolent and sustained resistance to Empire. How? By moving as quickly as we can to extricate ourselves from the global “tapeworm economy” - built on an unsustainable addiction to fossil fuel energy - and re-creating a more localized economic life, through re-inventing more sustainable energy systems, food production, currency, and the like. It’s already happening, and all of us have roles to play.

And yes, I, along with 8% of the Vermont population, advocate peaceable secession – a well-worn New England belief for the first 70 years of the United States’ history. Secession means citizens of the sovereign state of Vermont will act to withdraw their state from the United States Empire, and re-invent themselves as an independent republic.

Secession is every American’s birth right, and the time has come to investigate secession once again.

For more, see http://www.vermontrepublic.org.

Happy Thanksgiving, and free Vermont.