BETWEEN THE LINES
Jonathan Alter
Before We Bomb Iran …
Shouldn't we give peace a chance? A look at the divestment movement.
Debra Burlingame says there's got to be a better way to confront Iran. Her brother Charles F. (Chic) Burlingame was the captain of American Airlines Flight 77, the airliner hijacked and flown into the Pentagon on 9/11. Since then, Ms. Burlingame can't get over our failure to fight a smarter war on terror, a war that wouldn't get more people killed. "We should be using all the tools we have—including our enormous wealth—to prevent our enemies from coming after us," she says. So she, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Sam Brownback, among others at the state and local level, have identified a powerful tool—a grass-roots and bipartisan campaign to "divest" from Iran, just as the international community divested from South Africa's apartheid regime in the 1970s and '80s.
This time, the stakes are higher. In last week's presidential debate in Detroit, John McCain said offhandedly that military action is "closer to reality than we're discussing today." While Condi Rice and Bob Gates seem to have prevailed for now in urging caution, Dick Cheney is not yet down for the count; bombing Iran is still an option. Norman Podhoretz, Rudy Giuliani's wise man on foreign policy, recently met with President Bush and strongly argued for war. The relative silence that greeted the recent Israeli bombing of suspected nuclear sites in Syria has only emboldened the superhawks.
But shouldn't we give peace a chance? Frank Gaffney thinks so. For two decades, it was impossible to out-hawk this guy on anything. Gaffney is still a bellicose Reaganite, but the "bomb now" crowd is apparently giving even some neocons serious pause. "We know there's broad and deep popular support for our side in Iran," Gaffney says. Bombing dispersed and deeply buried nuclear sites not only isn't practical, it "would almost certainly drive the population into the arms of the [radical] mullahs." To try something else first—something that Gaffney concedes might not work— his Center for Security Policy began agitating after 9/11 to "divest terror."
Its first important convert was Missouri State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, a Republican elected in 2004. When Steelman assumed supervision of the state pension funds, she learned that Missouri parked a large chunk of its assets with BNP Paribus, a French bank that floated billions in loans to Iran, and that the Show Me State invested its pension funds in dozens of European and Asian companies that effectively helped prop up murderous regimes. (North Korea, Syria, Sudan and, until recently, Libya are the other governments cited for sponsoring terrorism and targeted for divestment.) The pension funds don't like to be told what to do, and they claimed divestment would bring heavy losses. Wrong. Steelman's "terror-free" fund returned 29 percent in the last 12 months, 4 percent higher than the benchmark.
The Bush administration supports "sustained economic pressure" on Iran but won't commit to backing full divestment, apparently for fear of offending allies. Steelman has a more brutal explanation for the resistance: "It's no surprise that politicians would rather put men and women in harm's way than to stand up to powerful corporate interests."
To date, 12 other states have divestment bills that are either pending or passed. Schwarzenegger has signed one in California that divested as much as $24 billion in massive pension-fund assets, though the bill was limited to energy and defense companies doing business with Iran. The same goes for the Obama-Brownback bill (which is being held up by one, anonymous senator, per the Senate's idiotic rules). But arguably, other companies in Iran should also be forced to divest. Telephone companies, for instance, provide "dual use" technology that can be used in Iranian defense systems. And even mullahs like their creature comforts. Serious diplomacy will only work when they feel the heat.
- 1
- 2
- Next Page »
Loading Menu
Member Comments
Posted By: dahszil @ 10/31/2007 11:46:35 PM
Comment: After we overthrew the great democratically elected statesmen Mossadegh in circa 1953, we installed the Shah back on the throne with ultimate power in Iran.
Even though the cia has admitted to covertly making that regime change for access and control of Persian oil, the shah was feverishly developing plans for nuclear power. Oil is prohibitively expensive to make electricity from. Perhaps the Shah and now Ahmadinad's regime know something that the rest of us don't know-that Iranian petroleum "fields" are drying up quicker than any of us in the west want to acknowlege. An Iranian "bomb" has little to do with the upcoming Bush/ Cheney regime's bloody "liberation" of Iran.
Posted By: masherif @ 10/29/2007 6:00:26 PM
Comment: How could we be credible?
Sorry for my English. I come from the old Europe, as Mr. Rumsfeld said!
Following on NBC, Oct. 28, 2007 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21516968/). ???ElBaradei says he has no evidence Tehran is developing nuclear weapons. ... and expressed concern that escalating rhetoric from the U.S. could bring disaster. .. But have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No. ... ElBaradei said he was worried about the growing rhetoric from the U.S., which he noted focused on Iran's alleged intentions to build a nuclear weapon rather than evidence the country was actively doing so. If there is actual evidence, ElBaradei said he would welcome seeing it. ... ???
Can we still remember a congruent story like this? Covering same logic before the Iraq war? Have we forgotten it? Why politicians in power can spread the same lie for many times, and why we believe them again and again? Do we really want peace? Why then are we following them? If we are so confident that this is not true? Is something wrong with us? And our politicians know well, that with us something is wrong? That we need tension, need the war and the killing rituals? So they can manipulate us, at any time they need? Yes, nuclear weapons, and indeed all weapons are dangerous and show how violent we are and how many of us prefer violence as a way to dominate others! Even the American policy has fallen in love with this ritual of war several times. To dominate others or to bring them democracy? Interesting is that the same politicians and states in which are hoarding these weapons suddenly realize their dangers. Is something wrong here? While USA, Russia, France, Pakistan, India, Israel, and others developing and deploying actual nuclear weapons!!! Still nothing wrong here? If nuclear weapons are so dangerous for Mr. Bush, why he and the other nuclear powers don not give example and begin to destroy them? Why they are not willing to concentrate efforts to create a serious way for all countries to follow it? Do you think they want this? The reality says no, they do not want this! Why? What these weapons for a purpose have? Is it the deterrence? But what does this exactly mean, deterrence? Does this also mean extortion of all those who do not have these weapons? The law of the strongest? The barbarity, the modern barbarism? Yes, I would like to see that in Iran a democracy can prevail, in Iraq too. In Syria, but also in friendly countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world! Yes, the regime in Iran has not deserved support. But which country has become its freedom as a gift (even USA itself)? Exactly so little by a dictation from the outside, through the USA or any other power! This is just a different type of domination, a hidden, under the pretext of democracy!
Posted By: kevin estis @ 10/27/2007 11:53:20 AM
Comment: Divestment is the best bomb we can drop. Especially don't buy their oil, or, for that matter, any oil. Its way past time to remove it from our enrgy equation. No oil equals much less pollution, equals energy self reliance and no more oil wars.