Upping the Ante

Trey Smith

The attacks and attempted attacks this week on Israeli embassy personnel in Georgia, India and Thailand should serve as a serious warning to the people of both Israel and the US that there will be an increasingly heavy price to pay for the kind of government-sponsored terror that both countries have long practiced, and that too many Americans and Israelis have mindlessly cheered on.

The technology of terror has become so wide-spread, and the materials needed to construct magnetically-attached car bombs, cell-phone detonators, armor-piercing IEDs, diesel/fertilizer bombs and the like, so accessible at consumer shops, hardware stores and local junkyards, that any government, and even any relatively savvy non-government group, can assemble and employ them.

What this means is that when a country like Israel decides to mount a covert campaign of assassination of scientists in a country like Iran, either by using its own agents, or by buying the help of an in-country terror organization like the MEK, it has to expect that the target country will turn around and do the same kind of thing back. There’s no stopping such a tit-for-tat campaign of slaughter, and in fact, it’s more likely that such covert actions will escalate than that they will subside.
~ from Drones and Special Forces Invite Payback: Time for a Return to Sanity and Peace by Dave Lindorff ~

I love reading Lindorff's missives. By and large, I think his analysis of what's going on in the world and why is spot on. So, while I agree with ultimate conclusion of this fine essay -- that it would behoove the US to abide by international law and "by renouncing illegal wars and deadly violations of national sovereignty -- I think he has missed one critical variable: the US and Israel WANT this kind of payback.

In order for the perpetual "war on terror" to continue to be politically viable, government leaders must have acts with which to frighten the voting public. Retaliation for incessant drone attacks -- while shielding the voting public from the frequency and violence of said attacks -- offers a great example. This provides nations like the US and Israel with the rationale to continue such attacks as a strategy to protect the motherland.

Put another way, US foreign policy these days is all about goading our enemies to respond. We keep poking them in the eye until they retaliate in kind and these actions provide the political cover for us to up the ante. We poke some more, they respond and the ante gets upped again.

Were it not for the economic ramifications, this would be an utterly insane strategy! But there is the rub. From the narrow economic viewpoint of the military-industrial complex, tit for tat aggression is GREAT for business. Every time the "other side" retaliates, it means umpteenth more billions of dollars will wind up in the coffers of defense contractors.

And that, my friends, is why the ruling elite has no interest whatsoever in pursuing a more sane plan. The current strategy has NOTHING to do with honor, safety or democracy; it's all about money!