One of the brilliant themes in George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 is the way that the government of Oceania always succeeds in distracting people from the real problems they face — like shortages and malnutrition.
When cocoa supplies are disrupted, for example, the government is forced to cut each individual’s chocolate ration from 30 grams a week to 20. But this is presented as good news: the chocolate ration is being increased to 20 grams! People watching the news focus on the word “increase” — whether it’s true or not — and don’t bother to think about the rest.
The cocoa supply rises and falls because Oceania is in a perpetual state of war over the world’s resources. It’s usually allied with one of the other two major powers, Eurasia or Eastasia. Which power it is never matters because Oceania often changes sides. The point is that Oceania needs an enemy: the other side is bad, therefore one’s own side is good.
We expect this sort of thinking in Iran, where state-organized protests direct anger at the “Great Satan” (America). It’s easy for those of us familiar with Orwell to laugh this off.
But something similar is happening in the US. The neoconservatives are looking for another enemy. Afghanistan wasn’t enough. Iraq wasn’t enough. Libya wasn’t enough. Now it’s Iran.
Two points of view
America’s beef with Iran goes back, from Iran’s perspective, to 1953, when we overthrew their democratically elected government and installed a king. From our perspective, things turned sour in 1979, when the Islamic revolution overthrew the king and took American diplomats (who may also have been spies) hostage.
As the Iranians see it, the US armed its enemy, Iraq, with weapons of mass destruction that were used in a devastating, decade-long war against Iran during the 1980s. As the US sees it, Iran has been funding covert actions involving Libya, Syria and Palestine, with the goal of destabilizing Israel. Last October, America’s spy agencies said they believed Iran was behind a two-man plot to kill a Saudi ambassador on American soil.
Media pundits have, for some time, conflated President Achmadinejad’s notoriously anti-Israeli statements and his program of uranium enrichment to deduce that Iran’s goal is to threaten Israel with a nuclear weapon. But in recent weeks, American news programs have become full of speculation that Israel will try to prevent this by launching some kind of attack on Iran. This would, in one way or another, pull the US into war.
How much is real?
The generals don’t want this. Iran is a huge, well-armed country, and some of the uranium-processing facilities are too far underground to be targeted from the air. Martin Dempsey, head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, even went on TV recently to say he thought international sanctions were having an effect.
The Republicans campaigning for president — except for Ron Paul — strongly disagreed with him. At recent debates, then again this week at the annual conference of AIPAC, the influential pro-Israel lobby, they declared it a top priority to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Newt Gingrich’s reason was that to Israel, two or three nuclear weapons would be another Holocaust. (He didn’t mention that it would be a Holocaust to the Palestinians as well.)
There is thinking that the window in the uranium-enrichment timetable is closing, and that if Israel is to strike, it must be in the next six months. This would be before the November election in the US. Barack Obama would have to decide whether to support Israel in this decision — and face potential terrorist reprisals — or not to support Israel and appear weak, with the risk of losing the election.
If this were all a game, this would be a clever strategy to checkmate the president. But it’s not a game. It’s not a novel either. It’s real life. In real life, people are worried about jobs and the economy. Iran is already in the club of rogue states, alongside North Korea and Pakistan. Can it be that much of a distraction? Or has the chocolate ration been increased again?
