This article by John Molloy first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
IN 2002 the United States Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, reflecting on the failure to find what wasn’t there in the first place, Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” that posed an imminent threat to the U.S., famously wrestled with the English language and lost. He stated “reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
By contrast with such a blizzard of words, at times the Trump White House prefers to comment on its illegal wars with a succinct lie. Hence, we had the statement that the US/Israel war on Iran was “won on day one,” all objectives achieved with no need for any “boots on the ground” in terms of the deployment of US troops. Weeks later, with the war on Iran expanded to continue the assaults on Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, the English Independent newspaper summarised and sourced a different picture, one that is a long way from this “victory.”
Their snapshot reported – “$120 peak oil price per barrel so far (9 March); 36% Trump’s record low approval rating (Reuters/Ipsos); £307 million extra paid by drivers for petrol and diesel; 850 Tomahawk missiles fired by the US costing 43.5 million each; 1,000,000 displaced in Lebanon alone by Israeli bombing (British Red Cross); £15 billion already wiped off UK economic growth – the worst figure of any G20 nation (OECD); 3,500 US troops en route to the region for possible ground invasion, including 2,500 marines and 1,000 paratroopers (Pentagon); 4587 killed across all countries so far, including civilians and soldiers; £150 extra on annual household food bills if war goes on (Institute of Grocery Distribution); $25 billon estimated cost to the US taxpayer so far (Centre for Strategic and International Studies/Centre for American Progress).”
The facts highlight how two traditional pieces of propaganda are currently impossible for the Western media to successfully deploy amidst this Zionist-led slaughter. The first is the framing of its leaders as aware and weighed down by the “solemn burdens of office” in taking these profound martial decisions. This won’t wash as in reality; we know Trump will have been more weighed down thinking about Tiger Woods’ arrest than the need to order body bags for US troops. The second, is to try to easily, cynically surf some immediate, abstract patriotic popularity, because the wider, domestic effects of the war on the cost of living are usually longer term. As outlined above, the strategic, economic importance of disruption to the Straits of Hormuz and the immediate profit-gouging nature of big oil, makes this impossible, as the mass of the world’s population not in the direct firing line, still suffer for this imperialist recklessness and have not bought into the lies about its purpose.
A now certain “known known,” therefore, one that was happening anyway – long-term global realignment that dilutes US hegemony, will now accelerate because of this latest chapter of imperialist plunder.
While Trump is only interested in the short-term as Vijay Prashad wrote recently, “there are no good options for the United States and Israel. They can remain with their bombing, but they will continue to see Iranian escalation that inflicts harm on Israel and on US interests in the region. The United States and Israel will have to face the world as fuel and food prices skyrocket. This was a miscalculation by the United States and Israel. Iran will not bend so easily. Hundreds of years of a proud civilization is at stake. Its leaders know that. They are not just standing for the Islamic Republic or the Iranian Revolution of 1979, but for Iran itself. They will not back down.” (The Miscalculation of the Century: Trump’s Iran Adventure – CounterPunch.org).