Will Bush attack Iran? Will Israel attack Iran as a surrogate for the Bush administration? In either case, it would bring about military disaster in Iraq and probably Afghanistan. Look at the map of Iraq the JP posted years ago. Note that Iraq and Iran share a very long border. Note also where Iraq meets the Persian Gulf. Supplies must be offloaded near Basra and trucked north over the desert to the troops. For our troops to survive, those supply lines must be preserved not only against insurgents, including the Shiite population of the southern provinces, but in the event of an attack against Iran, it must be defended both on both land and sea against Iranian interdiction. Our forces are already stretched thin.

I've recently been reading Lucian Prices's dialogues with the English philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead. Speaking of the Great War (WWI), Whitehead recalled:

"They [historians] conscientiously examine state papers, but what do state papers have to do with it? The condition of fear that reigned from 1900 to 1914 was unspoken, almost unconscious. People forbore to mention it, hoping thereby not to detonate the explosive, but the dread was always there. Only for a few years after 1870, when it was evident that France would not attack, was there a sense of security in England. The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains, but in their nerves and vitals." 1

The passage reminded me of psychologist Carl Jung's pre-war dreams of Europe being drenched in blood:

In October [1913], while I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood. This vision lasted about one hour. I was perplexed and nauseated, and ashamed of my weakness.

Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasized. An inner voice spoke, "Look at it well; It is wholly real and will be so. You cannot doubt it." That winter someone asked me what were the political prospects of the world in the near future. I replied that I had no thoughts on the matter, but that I saw rivers of blood.2

This writer is no clairvoyant, but it often seems to me that we are now being sucked into an insane vortex, much like the vortex that in 1913 seemed to be inexorably drawing Europe into a war that would shatter the civilization that countless numbers of workers, thinkers and dreamers had built since the beginning of the Dark Ages. Small 19th Century minds, equipped with 20th Century technology, initiated a war the horror of which they could neither comprehend not control, once it had begun.

The Cold War could have been such a vortex, but the men in charge clearly understood that nuclear weapons simply were not an option and that there could be no victor in a nuclear exchange. They drew back from the nuclear abyss, but they were also lucky, because the world came close to war several times.

The vortex has not gone away, though. Until January 20, 2009, this country will be in the hands of some very stupid, arrogant and vicious people that seem bent upon drawing the entire world into a flaming vortex. Such a catastrophe would represent the third and final phase of the Great War that began in August, 1914, and resumed in September, 1939. It would complete the work of destruction and end western civilization.

It is beginning to look more and more likely that such an outcome is likely.

It is possible to avoid disaster, but the opportunities are diminishing every day. It is easy to despair, but to give into despair now is suicide.

Tom Lowe

Footnotes:
1. Price, Lucien, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, p. 20, Boston 2001.
2. Jung, Carl, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 175-176, New York, 1989.

Links:
http://www.worlddreambank.org/J/JUNG-WWI.HTM
http://www.nndb.com/people/910/000031817/
Israel, Iran and the Bomb