5 thoughts on “David Rothkopf’s Fever Dream of U.S.-Israeli “Surgical Strike” Against Iran – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. RS: “Clearly Rothkopf hasn’t read Khosrow Semnani’s persuasive study which found that up to 85,000 Iranians would die or be maimed by any such attack.”

    Oh, I’m sure he’s aware of it.

    But it’s the American Way to be dismissive of such predictions, all the better to plow on ahead with a little “shock ‘n’ awe”.

    And when the death toll finally comes to light then he’ll just mutter an insincere “Ooops! Well, at least my heart was in the right place, even if our aim was a little wayward”.

    It happens all too often……

  2. What “peace process” is he talking about? As I recall, the “peace process” was the arrangement whereby Israel pays settlers to squat in the WB, more year after year, and the PA gets to think about the destiny of Palestinian people while suppressing active discontent with Israel. Is it this peace process that will reanimated?

  3. RE: “Foreign Policy’s (FP) David Rothkopf is in the hot seat for offering us a real humdinger. He asserts that the U.S. and Israel aren’t far apart regarding Iran at all. In fact, they’ve agreed to launch a ‘surgical strike’ against its nuclear facilities.” ~ R.S.

    • FROM WIKIPEDIA [Foreign Policy]: “. . . On September 29, 2008, The Washington Post Company announced that they had purchased Foreign Policy from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.[2] . . .”
    2. ^ The Washington Post Company Acquires Foreign Policy Magazine September 29, 2008
    SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Policy

    MY COMMENT: ‘Nuff said?!?!

  4. RE: “Foreign Policy’s (FP) David Rothkopf is in the hot seat for offering us a real humdinger. He asserts that the U.S. and Israel aren’t far apart regarding Iran at all. In fact, they’ve agreed to launch a ‘surgical strike’ against its nuclear facilities.” ~ R.S.

    GLENN GREENWALD, 10/12/12: “Establishment journalists are creatures of a highly ideological world and often cause ideology to masquerade as neutral fact . . . That Iran is some major national security issue for the US is a concoction of the bipartisan DC class that always needs a scary foreign enemy.”

    SEE: “Martha Raddatz and the Faux Objectivity of Journalists”, By Glenn Greenwald,Guardian.com, 10/12/12
    Establishment journalists are creatures of a highly ideological world and often cause ideology to masquerade as neutral fact.

    [EXCERPTS] . . . The highly questionable assumptions tacitly embedded in the questions Raddatz asked illustrate how this works, as does the questions she pointedly and predictably did not ask. Let’s begin with Iran, where Raddatz posed a series of questions and made numerous observations that she undoubtedly believes are factual but which are laden with all sorts of ideological assumptions. First there is this:

    RADDATZ: Let’s move to Iran. I’d actually like to move to Iran, because there’s really no bigger national security . . .
    • RYAN: Absolutely.
    RADDATZ: . . . this country is facing.

    Ryan’s interruption made it difficult to hear whether Raddatz said that there is “no bigger national security threat the country is facing” or “national security issue”. Either way, the very idea that Iran poses some kind of major “national security” crisis for the US – let alone that there is “really no bigger national security” issue “this country is facing” – is absurd. At the very least, it’s highly debatable. . .
    . . . That Iran is some major national security issue for the US is a concoction of the bipartisan DC class that always needs a scary foreign enemy. The claim is frequently debunked in multiple venues. But because both political parties embrace this highly ideological claim, Raddatz does, too. Indeed, one of the most strictly enforced taboos in establishment journalism is the prohibition on aggressively challenging those views that are shared by the two parties. Doing that makes one fringe, unserious and radical: the opposite of solemn objectivity. . .
    . . . Exactly the same is true of Raddatz’s statements and questions about America’s entitlement programs. Here is the “question” she asked to launch the discussion:

    “Let’s talk about Medicare and entitlements. Both Medicare and Social Security are going broke and taking a larger share of the budget in the process.”

    “Will benefits for Americans under these programs have to change for the programs to survive?”

    That Social Security is “going broke” – a core premise of her question – is, to put it as generously as possible, a claim that is dubious in the extreme. “Factually false” is more apt. This claim lies at the heart of the right-wing and neo-liberal quest to slash entitlement benefits for ordinary Americans – Ryan predictably responded by saying: “Absolutely. Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.” – but the claim is baseless. . .
    . . . That Medicare is “going broke” is as dubious and controversial a claim as the one about Social Security. Numerous economists and fact-checking journalists have documented quite clearly why this claim is misleading in the extreme.
    Yet this claim has also become DC orthodoxy. That is because, as the economist Dean Baker has explained, “Social Security and Medicare are hugely important for the security of the non-rich population of the United States,” and “for this reason” many Washington media outlets and think tanks “hate them”.
    Nonetheless, Raddatz announced this assertion as fact. That’s because she’s long embedded in the DC culture that equates its own ideological desires with neutral facts. As a result, the entire discussion on entitlement programs proceeded within this narrow, highly ideological, dubious framework. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/12

    1. RE: “That Iran is some major national security issue for the US is a concoction of the bipartisan DC class that always needs a scary foreign enemy.” ~ Glenn Greenwald (from above)

      SEE: “How the Power of Myth Keeps Us Mired in War”, by Ira Chernus, TomDispatch.com, 01/20/11

      [EXCERPT] “. . . White Americans, going back to early colonial times, generally assigned the role of ‘bad guys’ to ‘savages’ lurking in the wilderness beyond the borders of our civilized land. Whether they were redskins, commies, terrorists, or the Taliban, the plot has always remained the same.
      Call it the myth of national security — or, more accurately, national insecurity, since it always tells us who and what to fear.
      It’s been a mighty (and mighty effective) myth. . .”

      SOURCE – http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175344/

      P.S. ALSO SEE – “Iranophobia: The Panic of the Hegemons”, by Ira Chernus, Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2010
      LINK – http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/iranophobia-the-panic-of-the-hegemons-3

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