"My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meanness, and hypocrisies. As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it belongs."

- Mark Twain

"The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled."

- Cicero.

The coming months may eliminate the question mark from the title of this article. And American civilization may well end up where Twain wished in his despair that it should.

History returns to haunt in strange ways.

It was on August 19th, 51 years ago, that Britain and the US orchestrated a military coup in Iran, dislodged the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq and installed the exiled monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne.

What lay behind this maneuver? One of the main organizers of the coup was the Princeton-educated student of Persian architecture, Donald Wilber. He published an account of the coup in 1954 that has since then been confirmed by the release of classified documents from Washington.

The summer of 1953 was much like this one. Iran was in a major dispute with the Western powers. The popular government led by Mossadeq nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, controlled hitherto by British interests who were siphoning off the bulk of the revenues in a colonial-style operation.

In reaction to this, the British froze Iranian assets, got all the world’s oil companies to boycott Iranian oil and pulled their technicians out of the country. Oil output collapsed, Iran’s economy suffered and public unrest grew. Meanwhile, Britain managed to convince the US of the need for regime change in Teheran. On July 11th President Eisenhower secretly signed an order to overthrow Iran's fledgling democracy. After a well-organized secret campaign, involving people like the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and the father of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and in which CIA agents did everything from posing as Communists in order to bomb the house of a prominent Muslim leader to forging royal decrees dismissing Mossadeq and getting Associated Press to wire it in the course of an extended propaganda campaign in the media, the Western powers finally managed to purge Iran of democracy and install their chosen vassal, the Shah, inaugurating a quarter century of a reign of terror, before the Islamic revolution put an end to the brutal regime in 1979. (According to ex-US Foreign Service officer William Blum, one of the artifacts recovered by the Iranians after the Shah had been deposed was a CIA film made for his secret service, the SAVAK, on how to torture women.)

The CIA’s secret history records that August 19, 1953 "was a day that should never have ended. For it carried with it such a sense of excitement, of satisfaction and of jubilation that it is doubtful whether any other can come up to it." So giddy did the CIA get with its first smell of success in toppling Third World governments that it followed this up with numerous successful coups across the world over the next five decades.

That was 1953. The events of 2004 are moving eerily in the same direction. There has been a marked increase in official rhetoric against Iran in recent weeks.

Iran has been in American gun-sights for a long time now. Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has been a "rogue state" in Washington’s classification. The US backed Saddam Hussein, when he was still Washington’s blue-eyed boy, in his aggression against Iran from 1980 to 1988, a war which accounted for over a million victims. More recently, Iran was named in the infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ speech made by Bush Jr. in January 2002. The main fear is that Iran will soon come to possess nuclear weapons.

In early August, President Bush and his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said they would demand UN-imposed sanctions if Iran persists with its nuclear program.

Speaking with customary alarm at a community college in Virginia, Mr. Bush emphasized again the other day that he has put "hard questions to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), so they ask the hard questions to the Iranians." In a Freudian slip, he said "we got the Iranians to sign what's called an additional protocol, which will allow for site inspections that normally would not have been allowed under IAEA." Immediately he corrected himself and said "not we, the world got the Iranians" to do so. He pointed out that "ever since the late '70s", the US has had no contacts with Iran. "We're out of sanctions. And so we've relied upon others to send the message for us. And the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Great Britain have gone in as a group to send a message on behalf of the free world that Iran must comply with the demands of the free world. And that's where we sit right now."

The "free world" is also seeking, through "different methodology", to incite rebellion against the theocracy in Teheran. The newly liberated Iraq proves, according to King George, "that free societies are possible", that "a free country in the midst of the Middle East will send a very clear signal that freedom is possible." A free society was not just possible, but was actually realized for the people of Iran, back in 1953, when the "free world" sabotaged it because it proved too democratic to allow Western plunder.

Media commentary on Iran has also been hostile. Writing in The Washington Post a few weeks back conservative intellectual Charles Krauthammer gave what is a far from unrepresentative view:

"The fact is that the war critics have nothing to offer on the single most urgent issue of our time -- rogue states in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Iran instead of Iraq? The Iraq critics would have done nothing about either country. There would today be two major Islamic countries sitting on an ocean of oil, supporting terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction -- instead of one.

Two years ago there were five countries supporting terrorism and pursuing these weapons -- two junior-leaguers, Libya and Syria, and the axis-of-evil varsity: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The Bush administration has eliminated two: Iraq, by direct military means, and Libya, by example and intimidation.

Syria is weak and deterred by Israel. North Korea, having gone nuclear, is untouchable. That leaves Iran. What to do? There are only two things that will stop the Iranian nuclear program: revolution from below or an attack on its nuclear facilities."

To add fuel to the fire, one of the more handy conclusions drawn by the Kean Commission investigating the 9/11 attacks was, interestingly, that several Al-Qaeda operatives involved in the attacks had "passed through" Iran during the year preceding 9/11, their passports unstamped. This shows, in their remarkable opinion, that Iran and Al-Qaeda are working hand in glove. Just like Iraq and Al-Qaeda were presumably doing so when the US-UK invasion of the country took place last year. It’s not Iraq the US should have invaded, but Iran. What difference does a consonant make, after all, when there is a whole civilization under threat?

When you couple all this with the constant barbs being directed by trigger-happy, nuclear-armed Israel in its direction, Iran’s consternation – expressed through its pursuit of a nuclear program and more urgently, its recent testing of a medium-range ballistic missile capable of hitting Israel – is more than understandable. These fears are fueled further by signals that are being sent by the Americans. Unreported in the US media (but in the Israeli press), 100 F16-1 advanced jet bombers have been delivered to Israel recently, with the specific announcement that they can be used to fly to Iran and return to Israel, and that they are capable of carrying "special weapons."

At the same time, it is also surely understandable that if Grenada and Nicaragua could scare President Reagan, and Cuba has terrorized all American presidents since Kennedy, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear capability is a matter to keep the best of them awake at night.

Iran has been a member of the Axis of Evil for two and a half years. It suddenly becomes an imminent threat. The question is, why now?

It is perhaps true that the fuel rods from Russia have not arrived yet and there is still time to intercept Iran’s nuclear program. (Why Washington never bothered to intercept India’s or Pakistan’s nuclear programs before they weaponized is a question well worth asking (there isn’t much oil there?). The fact that the brain behind Pakistan’s program, A.Q.Khan was selling nuclear secrets and centrifuges in the global free market (including, apparently, to Iran), and was pardoned earlier this year by President Musharraf, with the full knowledge of Washington, is also best left alone.) If Bush is so friendly with Putin, as the media appears to believe, why doesn’t he get him to stop supporting Iran’s nuclear program?

Nor has Iraq worked out as intended by the Americans. While Saddam Hussein has been deposed, no WMDs have been found, nor any links with Al-Qaeda (a fact reiterated by the 9/11 Commission). Democracy is but a mirage in the desert, as the Americans have installed a thug named Allawi to be their chief executioner. Revealingly sadistic Abu-Ghraib tortures remain uninvestigated and probably still continue. American reputation (or whatever was left of it) is in tatters, in any case. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Iraqis and over a thousand Coalition troops have been buried in the sands in the name of freedom. Last, not least, despite setbacks the insurgency threatens to turn into a national uprising against the Allawi regime. Oil pipelines are being sabotaged every other day and hundreds of attacks on Coalition forces are being reported every week. In other words, the end is not in sight for the Americans. Memories of Vietnam are returning to haunt them.

From Iran’s point of view, the tragic element in the timing may be that it is the year for regime change in Washington and there is little that the Republicans have to show for the $130 billion ($4500 for each US citizen) of the American taxpayers’ money already blown up on the misadventure.

Given the stakes, Iran has been willing to sort things out diplomatically, but the Bush administration has not condescended to do its part, not having an envoy in Teheran in the first place. (Civilized societies do not deal with rogue states.) Iranian overtures (made through the Swiss, who look after American interests in Tehran) have been ignored. Thus, the Bush administration, with an absence of professionalism that has become all too predictable in the age of vainglorious empire, is dealing with Iran third-hand, through the UN’s IAEA, and of course the muddled media, neither group having any executive power.

The timing of the Najaf offensive in Iraq also calls for an explanation. Sh’iite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army has been on the scene for a while. Why precisely now has the US decided to risk wounding Sh’iite sentiments, and perhaps provoking a nation-wide rebellion, by launching a massive offensive against the insurgents in their hideout in the Imam Ali shrine?

The Republican National Convention in New York City began on August 30. A victory in Najaf, unlike the fiasco in Fallujah, would lend some cheer to the Bush-Cheney ticket. Al-Sadr’s capture or killing would bring a smile of hope to Republican faces, anxious as they are with the fallout of Michael Moore’s film. Better still would be a full-scale attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in an appropriate week before the November elections.

And that is what the shipment of 100 F16-1s to Israel and the stab at Najaf are about. They are meant to provoke Iran’s ruling Sh’iite theocracy into some form of military retaliation, which would give Bush the ideal pretext to attack Iran. There are already murmurs in the media (BBC, for instance) that there are Iranians fighting in Najaf. Hazim al-Shaalan, defense minister in the Iraqi stooge-government declares, "Iranian intrusion has been vast and unprecedented since the establishment of the Iraqi state."

That is also what the global "realignment" of US troops is all about. London’s Financial Times reports this weekend that 70,000 US troops are being asked to move, mostly from Europe. It is ominous when troops stationed in Germany since 1945 are going to be needed elsewhere. Where?

When one considers the history of faked incidents created by the US to start a new war – the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 and blaming it on Spain and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 for which the North Vietnamese were held responsible, come to mind, not to speak of Saddam himself being lured into Kuwait in 1990 (as the Senate hearings revealed) – it is far from unlikely that Iran will be inveigled into a war.

Is it a military threat to the US? No serious expert could claim that. Does it fund and support Al-Qaeda? Again, there is no evidence whatsoever. On the contrary, given the Sunni Wahhabi roots of Al-Qaeda it is at least as unlikely that they are backed by Sh’ite Iran as that they were supported by the secular Baathists of Iraq when Saddam was at the helm. But just as the Bush administration managed to convince the American public (7 out of 10 of them) that Iraq was behind Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, it can try to do the same now with Iran. Bush’s Axis of Evil speech and the Kean Commission’s naming of Iran in connection with terrorism have already paved the way for making such beliefs credible. Propaganda worked last time. It will work again. Children believe in the innocence of their parents. They will also understand if parents have to occasionally lie and deceive in order to bring the bacon (cheap oil for SUVs) home. Such is the bargain.

The ground has been prepared and the Western mainstream media is once again playing Idiot Box to Big Brother’s well-planned furtive moves. If someone needs to convince themselves of the cowardly complicity of the Western media in this deceit on an imperial scale, they only need to check how many American and European dailies or TV networks reported the US bombing of the Iraqi town of Kut last Thursday, in which anywhere from 60-100 people, including innocent women and children, have been killed. This writer found the information in Arab dailies and on a South African website.

The Western media has also largely failed to report that during the cease-fire in Najaf (to give negotiations a chance) there have been large demonstrations in all the major Iraqi cities as well as in Teheran, asking for withdrawal of US forces from the Gulf. Once again, Al-Jazeera has shown greater daring and accuracy in reporting than anyone from the West.

White House whistles, the media wags its tail. Such are the facts.

So, Iran must prepare for an air attack from Israel and the US. Given the troop movements a ground invasion can be expected too. And this time, perhaps, no one – not the UN, not European Allies, maybe not even Britain (given its ambivalence on Iran), and certainly not the American public – will be consulted before the invasion is launched. Why would the chickenhawks even bother to tell the lies that they had to last time, only to get exposed later on?

Those who have come to believe that the Neo-conservatives have lost for good after their plans for Iraq have been ground in the sand and their criminally awesome lies have been exposed to the world must think again. The climate is psychotic. The empire is in despair. Why shouldn’t an administration, long relieved of any sense of shame and embarrassment plan such an attack? It has much to lose if it doesn’t!

The Americans – and the world – are in the grip of a totalitarian system, asleep to the suicide-bombers manning the White House and the Pentagon. The media is silent or obedient and the Democrat Opposition is pusillanimous and bankrupt in imagination. John Kerry responded to Bush’s provocation the other day by asserting that he would have cast the same Yes vote in Congress that he did in Oct. 2002, to authorize the president to launch a pre-emptive war against Iraq, even if he had known that Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction and posed no real threat to the world. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry said, adding that he would just have used that power more "effectively." Just like Clinton did during the Sanctions era in Iraq which accounted for the deaths of a million children.

And the public is too busy looking for jobs or working overtime or getting entertained by Murdoch’s TV shows to come out in the hundreds of thousands to protest yet another war. In any case, Washington has armed itself with plenty of anti-terrorist legislation to prevent such exercise of civil liberties. If not, the National Guard is at hand. Democracy today is just a slogan copyrighted by the White House.

So it appears that we are likely to see recent history repeat itself in short order. And if the Neo-conservatives perpetrate the belief that it would be a farcical repetition of Iraq, the American public should prepare itself for catastrophic surprises. History shows that savage follies provoke their own nemesis. Even the bills of Iraq will keep coming for a long time.

Perhaps America is destined to destroy itself, and with it, maybe large parts of the world. Perhaps it has become too diseased in mind and soul to learn from history. Perhaps it has come to cynically accept, as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times did some years back, the heartlessness of its governments’ calculations that there is really no way to retain economic dominance in the world without ruling the entire globe with an iron fist. (The Chinese and the Japanese could, in a few hours, ruin the dollar forever, given how much of the growing US debt of $7.5 trillion they own, and how much the US is able to buy from them – and spend on new weaponry – with the money lent to it. China certainly will not lend money to the US to go to war against itself!) And even that will not last long unless the galloping military costs of empire can be financed by Republican geniuses while giving tax breaks to the rich. Imperial overstretch? No, not merely. Overkill. And capitalist excess.

George W. Bush, for his part, will certainly keep his word to the American people. Last week he said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we." "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Can this suicidal course be averted?

The answer depends on American patriots.