The Bush crowd tricked us us into our present bloody, useless and hopeless mess by applying to the congenital American paranoia an inflammatory salve compounded of worst case scenarios. Maybe it’s time to counter with a different sort of worst case scenario.
Here’s a terrifying specimen, from a comment left by one Rene Sonsmann on The Smirking Chimp. It is a response to the blusterfuck of a speech Bush delivered Wednesday, announcing his plans to escalate tension in the Middle East by anchoring aircraft carriers off the coast of Iran.
It will happen something like this. At sunrise, a dozen sleek, Russian-made, Moskit anti-ship missiles (codenamed Sunburn) will skim low over the surface of the Persian Gulf near the Straits of Hormuz towards a US Navy Battle Group. Flying at 1500 mph, their 70-mile flight will only take three minutes, giving the crews and automated defence systems of the US aircraft carrier and its surrounding flotilla little time to react, even though they will have been on high alert ever since Israeli/US bombers destroyed the Iranian nuclear facilities at Bushehr, Isfahan and Natanz the previous day.
The ageing US aircraft carrier and its equally obsolete support vessels (no point sacrificing the good stuff) will have been deliberately positioned, like some sacrificial lamb, to provoke just such a response from an Iranian government incensed by the unprovoked attack on and destruction of its nuclear facilities. The missiles strike with devastating effect and in scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of Pearl Harbour, several capital ships are hit and sink with thousands of US naval casualties …
Although it’s only 10 pm EST, President Bush is awakened from a deep and peaceful sleep and informed of the attack. He makes an emergency television broadcast to the nation. In anticipation of the attack his speech has already been written, only the actual number of ships lost and “brave American servicemen and women” killed needs to added. He blathers on for a few hand-wringing minutes about the evil nature of the Iranian regime and how it is defying the reasonable demands of the international community before announcing his decision — to authorise first use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iranian underground facilities as well as ‘precision’ air strikes against any and every military target. As President Bush completes his broadcast with “and God bless America,” the first bombs are already falling.
The Iranians choose not to sit idly by while their facilities are bombed, their surface infrastructure and military are destroyed, large areas of their cities are contaminated by radioactive fallout and tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Iranian men, women and children are killed (I wouldn’t either, would you?). They refuse, for some inexplicable reason, to accept defeat, to realise that all resistance is futile, to turn on the mullahs and hardliners that caused all this. The Bush Administration and Joint Chiefs of Staff are perplexed — wasn’t a new democracy supposed to arise out of the radioactive ashes of Isfahan?
Inexplicably, to President Bush and his advisors, the Iranians, the Arabs, the Muslims (both Sunni and Shia) become united by their hatred of and opposition to The Great Satan, America, and its ‘snivelling running dogs’ (now there’s a phrase we don’t hear enough of these days!), Britain and Australia. Everyone else had the good sense not to touch this frolic with a bargepole
Iraq, being predominantly Shiite, falls under the effective control of Iran and the insurgency there increases a hundredfold as the Shias, who have been relatively dormant there to date, also discover the joys of IEDs, suicide bombing and sniping, like their Sunni cousins. (Pity the poor GIs stuck there!)
Around the world, Islamic anti-US, anti-Western sentiment would go off the scale and whilst they wouldn’t be able to do much, it would be sure to swell the ranks of would-be terrorists and Islamic martyrs, and that would have adverse consequences for all our civil liberties as governments then seek to ‘protect’ us from the implacable enemies they’ve created.
The Iranians, now effectively controlling the oil production of Iraq as well as Iran, will turn the oil taps off, at least to those countries that assisted in or supported an attack on them. They also control the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and could make it difficult, if not impossible, for Kuwait, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia to ship their oil in tankers. The overland oil pipelines are easy to attack and/or sabotage. So there’s every likelihood of a massive oil production squeeze, oil prices would soar and just about every economy in the world would go into recession.
Petrol, if you could afford it, would be rationed. Businesses would have to raise prices to reflect the higher energy costs of production and distribution, consumption would fall in response to the higher prices and unemployment would rise as consumption fell. Western governments with social welfare programmes would go into budget deficits, as tax revenue reduced and benefit payments increased, causing interest rates to rise, adversely affecting economies even further. Residential property prices would fall as higher unemployment, energy and interest costs forced people to bail out. The share market would slump as the economy and corporate profitability declined and small investors were forced to liquidate share investments to provide cash for living expenses.
And that doesn’t even consider the actions of Russia and China, who until recently were U.S. enemies No1 & 2 and have strong economic relations with Iran. So, is this doomsday scenario far-fetched and unrealistic? I don’t think so.
