Edward S. Herman & David Peterson – 2006-05-14 10:32:47

http://www.counterpunch.com/herman05112006.html

With the United States having initiated wars in violation of the UN Charter, and hence engaged in the “supreme international crime,” (1) against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq in 1999, 2001, and 2003, one might have expected that its commencement of a fourth aggression only a few years later against Iran would arouse the UN, EU, other international institutions and NGOs, and even the supposedly moral and independent Free Press, to serious protest and counter-action, including referral to the UN Security Council under Chapter VII’s “threat of peace” articles and support of possible diplomatic and economic sanctions.

This has not happened, and in fact the Bush administration has successfully mobilized the UN, whose “primary responsibility” is the “maintenance of international peace and security,” and the EU, as well as the Free Press, to facilitate its fourth attack.

WE SAY THAT THE FOURTH AGGRESSION IS ALREADY UNDERWAY, BECAUSE ONCE AGAIN, AS IN THE IRAQ CASE, THE UNITED STATES HAS BEEN ATTACKING IRAN FOR MANY MONTHS, AND NOT JUST WITH VERBAL INSULTS AND THREATS.

It has been flying unmanned aerial surveillance drones over Iran since 2004; it has infiltrated combat and reconnaissance teams into Iran “to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic minority groups” (Seymour Hersh); (2) it has bestowed an ambiguous “protected” status upon the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group which, since 1997, the U.S. Department of State has designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but a group that the Washington regime now uses to launch cross-border attacks on Iran from within US-occupied Iraq; (3) and it and its Israeli client have repeatedly threatened larger scale and more open attacks.

This pre-invasion aggression was an important feature of the overall aggression against Iraq, where the US and British greatly increased their “spikes of activity” with massive bombing well before the March 19, 2003 invasion (4) — major acts of war and aggression begun as early as April 2002, that were almost wholly ignored by the Free Press and “international community.”

What is mind-boggling in all this is that new attacks and threats by a country that is in the midst of a serial aggression program, that runs a well documented and widely condemned global gulag of torture, (5) that has committed major war crimes in Iraq-Fallujah may well replace Guernica as a symbol of murderous warfare unleashed against civilians (6) — and that openly declares itself exempt from international law and states that the UN is only relevant when it supports U.S. policy, (7) is not only not condemned for its Iran aggression, but is able to enlist support for it in the EU, UN and global media.

This enlistment of support occurs despite the further fact that it is now generally recognized that the Bush and Blair administrations lied their way into the Iraq invasion-occupation (but still quickly obtained UN and EU acceptance of the occupation and ensuing ruthless pacification program),8 and that they cynically misused the inspections program, all of which makes the new accommodation to the aggression-in-process and planned larger attack truly frightening.

• Read the entire footnoted article at CounterPunch:
http://www.counterpunch.com/herman05112006.html