Glenn Greenwald has thoroughly documented the media’s attempts to depict Iran as a belligerent and dangerous nation that threatens America’s and Israel’s safety despite a lack of credible evidence for those claims. If you have read the New York Times and Washington Post in the last few days, or watched cable news, you have probably noticed, anyway. Considering the U.S. government’s last 11 years of military aggression and the media’s complicity in that aggression, it is hard not to see this treatment of Iran as propaganda for an attack.
Greenwald believes that the Obama administration does not want a war with Iran that would resemble the war with Iraq. President Obama has said he prefers diplomacy, but also said that invasion is on the table. (It should be noted the U.S. has imposed sanctions, then more “tougher” sanctions, on Iran). Let’s assume the Obama administration does, indeed, hope to avoid invading Iran right now. But what if there was an attempted terrorist attack on the U.S. by someone connected to Iran? Does anyone believe that President Obama would not invade Iran?
Now imagine that it is October 2012 and the United States did not invade Iran. A person whom the media believes is connected to Iran successfully commits a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. How would the Republican challenger react? It is safe to say that whomever it is (unless it is Ron Paul), the Republican will inveigh against President Obama for failing to attack Iran, and guarantee swift and violent revenge by military invasion of Iran.
How would President Obama likely react to such an attack mere weeks before the 2012 election? Would he vow to maintain peaceful relations with Iran, or would he vow to attack? President Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan in 2009; used drones to “carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries;” tried to negotiate an extension for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq; and, as already mentioned, has refused to rule out attacking Iran under present circumstances, so it seems incredibly unlikely that he would react peacefully to the pre-election terrorist attack especially since his strategy has always been to appeal to the conservative voter.
Another terrorist attack would also threaten our civil liberties regardless of which party controls the White House. The ACLU has documented how the United States government began stripping away our civil liberties after 9/11. Under President Obama, the erosion of our rights “continues unabated, indeed often in accelerated form.” Thus, it is safe to assume that not only will thousands of people abroad pay for the terrorist attack with their lives (remember, over 1 million Iraqis died as a result of the Iraq war), but that we will also pay for it with our freedoms.
The timing of an attack near an election may have special consequences. For example, one week prior to the 2004 election in Spain, “the Popular Party had been favored to win by a comfortable margin.” The (relatively conservative) Popular Party was the incumbent, and it made Spain one of a few prominent allies to the United States in its invasion of Iraq, sending 1,300 of its troops to participate. But three days before the election, a terrorist attack on Madrid’s metro killed 200 people and wounded many more. The attack was linked to Al-Qaeda and seen as retaliation for Spain’s participation in the invasion. The leader of the Socialist Workers Party, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, had been campaigning with a pledge to withdraw the troops from Iraq. The people responded by electing Zapatero in a “sensational” turn around.
But the United States is very different from Spain. Our two major parties are both controlled by people practically obsessed with fostering their warrior images. With President Obama and the Republican nominee likely competing in the race to see who can offer a more violent retribution to Iran and invasive domestic program to “protect” Americans, the two-party mentality all but guarantees a nightmarish future – at least under this hypothetical.
The point of presenting this hypothetical scenario is to illustrate in what a precarious position the “two-party mentality”—an erroneous belief that a vote for any candidate not from the two major parties is “wasted,” that the two major parties offer a meaningful choice to voters, and that voters should always vote for one of the two major party candidates regardless of what they stand for because one of the two will always be better than the other—puts us. That’s why people have to shake themselves out of the two-party mentality. ACED has argued before that the mentality has brought us here by moving America’s politics to the right. Regardless of whether or not you accept that, it should be absolutely clear based on the statements made and policies undertaken by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as the campaign pledges of the 2012 Republican nominees, what a terrorist attack on the U.S. would mean for this election. ACED hopes that this hypothetical shows, then, that the need for open-mindedness to a political alternative is obvious.
UPDATE: The above scenario presents a situation where people will have a choice between two different candidates in the 2012 election, both of whom will likely be calling for (1) war with Iran, and (2) more invasive domestic policies “necessary” to prevent future attacks. Under the two-party mentality, your only choice is to vote for war and fewer rights – and, by the way, less security if you buy the argument that American attacks across the globe breeds terrorism. The Simpsons nailed this point already.
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