WINDMILLS ?

That's how Cindy Sheehan called them in her piece “Don’t attack Iran” :

The doctrine of preemptive war is an abominable doctrine, especially when we have such a vacuum of leadership in this country that rubberstamps any maniacal thing that this president wants to do. We cannot allow our leaders to destroy the world by jousting with windmills that are no threat to our safety, or our way of life.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=628

The doctrine of preemptive war is an abominable doctrine, hell yes..

windmills that are no threat to our safety, or our way of life, I don't know...

Now a lot of people can helpfully prove that Bushco just wants to wage a war after another, and that it’s irresponsible and dangerous... Still haven’t found anybody to validate convincingly this “stretch” that Ms Sheehan has let out…

“Call them windmills, vipers, Hounds of Hell, whatever…” a friend suggested impatiently. As if it didn’t matter.

It does.

"Hounds of Hell" is a ridiculous name with Jihadist connotations which shows that he can't conceive that this "Axis of Terror" can be anything else than a scarecrow, one of the jacks in the box of our theocracy. His vipers are harmless too, since they sleep when you don't stomp on them. His hounds and his vipers are windmills.

Well, no : these vipers don't sleep, they unite and call to the annihilation of a country.

If you scrutinize the far left discourse on the Middle East, you're bound to be struck by the derogatory connotations for Israel ("the US attack dogs", generally - ie Hounds of Hell for atheists I suppose), and the moving leniency over the aggressive far right theocracies whose stand against the American interests makes angels. Check this cautionary piece :

http://gowans.blogspot.com/2006/01/why-iran.html

The author devotes the major part of his article to the exposure of Bushco's true motives for screwing Iran rather than ex-public enemy North Korea, or Singapore, or Iceland (scrolls, scrolls). Then he tackles the Western propaganda against Ahmadinejab and launches into the demonstration that this leader really is a good man who only wants justice for the Palestinians and not a half crazed loon at all. He shows that Mr A's wish to "wipe Israel off the map" is only a tender way to advise Europe to deport the Israelis in some place where they can be really at home, like Canada or Australia, and to him this stance is normal, reasonable and acceptable. In the same breath he has noticed, a few paragraphs earlier, that the Western powers that be will demonize the Third World leaders by falsely comparing them with Hitler.

Falsely ?

This is infuriating.

Before WWII, the overwhelming majority of the French left wing intellectuals such as Sartre advocated "peace at all costs", bearing in mind the pointless horror of WWI and the fact that it was a deception made up by the capitalists in the sole purpose of lining up their pockets, no matter what it would cost in cannon fodder. What they didn't want to see was that Hitler was NOT a nice man. The English knew better but could not prevail. In France, only a tiny fraction of the intelligentsia as embodied by Nizan saw the "imminent threat" but couldn't make itself heard.

Parallels have their limitations. I have no clue about the political and ethical worth of the French government then, I doubt it could be as bad as ours. My point is about the difficulty of IDENTIFYING little Hitlers for sure, and also about the casual ease with which the far left has kept on dismissing a few of those who turned up over the ages, as if under the spell of their anti-American potential. And the attitude of leaders like Chavez, who sucks up to Ahmadinejab for strategic reasons, only fosters the confusion.

We radicals don't like to see things that way. Like the other side, we need a good guy and a villain. And if Bush is a villain, then Mr A must be a good guy. I mean, he MUST be. The main ongoing petition says this :

The most effective way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons would be to closely monitor its nuclear energy program, and to improve diplomatic relations -- two tasks made much more difficult by threatening to bomb Iranian territory. We urge you to lead the way to peace, not war, and to begin by making clear that you will not commit the highest international crime by aggressively attacking Iran.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/iran

This can work ONLY if Mr A is "not a demon".

But "not a demon" means nothing. No one's a demon. Hitler wasn't. "Not a demon" doesn't mean "reassuring". It doesn't mean "threatening" either, granted. But it leaves the question mark beneath the propaganda and the counter-propaganda unanswered.

My friendship with a Zionist Jew has opened my eyes to cognitive dissonance and complexity. It made me see things I didn't see before, because it was easier this way. An American far left winger doesn't want his country to be a disgrace and he sees no further unless an emotional interest is raised, shedding an uncomfortable light in dark corners he never cared about. You can't care about everything. It's your desire leading your priorities. Only your desire.

This guy has conveyed to me his passionate desire for Israel's survival. Don't ask me why, I don't know. I think it's because he expressed it honestly, powerfully and truthfully enough to touch something universal in me and open it to his particular cause. I had always thought that if I had been a Jew I would have been a Zionist anyway. But I never paused to consider the implications - why would I have ?

As a conclusion…

Unlike the saber rattlers and the orthodox radicals I * DON'T KNOW * whether we should attack Iran or not, because, to me, there's no "good guy" in that, and it's hard to tell a mofo from another and which one should be stopped before the other one.

This position, "I won't take pre-emptive war except for...", I think it's mine, but I don't agree with it. I mean, I wonder what else can be done with those loons. And I think that the peace stance is misleading. Iraq is not Iran, Iran wouldn't be Iraq. Another friend solved this dilemma in terms I find a bit theoretical (what else can they be ?), but accurate :

"I believe it is compatible with the creed of non-interference to pre-emptively strike a country which is clearly gearing up to attack another regime. I have said previously that I think that the one thing a tolerant regime cannot tolerate is intolerance, and a similar principle may apply in international politics - especially with the additional pressure of knowing that failure to act first may cost literally millions of lives."

And so I pass on the petitions, because I'm unable to say AT WHAT POINT the Axis of Terror is "clearly gearing up", and knowing Bushco as I know them, I just doubt it's now and I think we could do with giving peace a little chance. But I don't sign them because I think they do. They're gearing up to attack Israel and I can't let them do that... I can't.