In Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus! Trilogy the fnords were the nonsense words everybody was conditioned not to see but that elicited preconscious fear and foreclosed rational thought when they appeared...and they appear all the time everywhere. "Seeing the fnords" meant getting hip to propaganda systems and management of consent techniques hiding in plain sight. Thanks to mcjoan, Paul Krugman, and The Guardian, I'm seeing fnords. They lead from Iraq into Iran, and they're hiding in plain sight.
Initially, it appeared that any US action in Iran was a year away and that the bellicose noises coming out of Washington could be dismissed as mere big stickery. From Saturday's Guardian::
US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington. The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.
But in an interview with NPR late last month Mr. Bush appeared to be ready to accelerate the timetable:
If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly.
And today the word from Washington is that Iran is arming the Mahdi Army with surface-to-air missles and better roadside bombs. From today's Guardian:
The Bush administration stepped up pressure on Iran yesterday by producing what it claimed was intelligence that Tehran was behind roadside bombs used by insurgents against US forces in Iraq. It also said the decision to send the arms had been made at "the highest levels".
And in the same story:
The Washington Post reported that a Washington-based ambassador had been told by John Hannah, national security adviser to the vice-president, Dick Cheney, that this was "the year of Iran" and that a US attack was a real possibility.
From mcjoan and Paul Krugman comes the final piece: the Bush administration could justify an attack on Iran under the post-9/11 Iraq resolution if Iran could be linked to hostilities in Iran. Chuck in some talk about Iranian WMD and "supporting the mission of the troops" and the creaking PR machine can be rolled out just in time to provide a rationale for a March/April attack. Think Cambodia in the desert.
But if it was so obvious, why wasn't I seeing it? Answer: I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The "why?" was blinding me to the "that." Think of that old X-Files episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose." A psychopathic killer tracks down Bruckman, a psychic, to ask why he (the killer) is driven to kill:
Killer: "There's something I've been wanting to ask you for some time now. You've seen the things I do in the past as well as in the future."
Clyde Bruckman: "They're terrible things."
Killer: "I know they are. So tell me, please, why have I done them."
Clyde Bruckman: "Don't you understand yet son? Don't you get it?" [Killer shakes his head] "You do the things you do because you're a homicidal maniac."
Killer: "That... that does explain a lot, doesn't it. It's all starting to make sense now."
Now I see the fnords. My need for a rational explanation for the Bush Administration's fixation on Iran distracted me from looking at its plain behavior. Over and over again, I couldn't believe that the White House was doing what it appeared to be doing: stealing elections; lying about war; silencing climate scientists; and on and on. "Why?" overshadowed "is." They do these things because that's what they do.
The right quesiton is: "How do we stop them?"--and that one's got me stymied.