You know what they’re saying in the American media, don’t you?

    âe¢ That the Iranians are the ones helping to kill our troops in Iraq,

    âe¢ They have bomb casings with Iranian markings stamped on them,

    âe¢That the Iranian nuclear energy program is really a weapons program,

    âe¢ And the International Atomic Energy Agency which denies that, is just like Hans Blix,

    âe¢That Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the next Hitler,

    âe¢That the Iranians are almost ready to roll out their nuclear weapons,

    âe¢ That once they have nukes, theyâe(TM)ll surely use them on Israel because Ahmadinejad said so,

    âe¢That ‘real men’ go on to Iran,

    âe¢That we never really paid them back for the hostage crisis,

    âe¢That Iran is the REAL enemy,

    âe¢That we have to fight ‘them’ over there so we don’t fight them in Disney World,

And because of all of the above, we have to attack Iran.

And right now as you are reading these words, all the plans are in place for a massive ‘shock and awe’ attack on the Iranian military and government.

And you know what they’re saying about that in the American media:

    âe¢That air power alone can always win a war and subjugate a nation,

    âe¢Although we may have to use nuclear weapons and that’s okay with Hillary Clinton,

    âe¢That we have contingencies in case the Iranians try closing the Straits of Hormuz and cause the world’s economy to collapse due to lack of oil,

    âe¢That after the attack, the Iranians will rise up against the mullahs and overthrow their government,

    âe¢That the Americans then will be welcomed with flowers as liberators,

    âe¢That the attack will not make things any worse in Iraq or the Middle East,

    âe¢And that the Middle East will be made safe for Halliburton and Israel,

And you know what else they’re saying?

    âe¢That the Bush administration doesn’t care that most Americans wouldn’t support the invasion—that 30-40 per cent support is mandate enough,

    âe¢That Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, far from opposing such a move, will at least not oppose it formally,

    âe¢That Hermann Goering was right about how easily it is to lead an unwilling people into war, democracy or no.

Actually that last one is mine.

Day after day I sit here and read the same news stories, blogs and Internet samizdat that many Canadians read that indicate that the attack against Iran is imminent and wonder if this government is insane enough to do it.

And I wonder if the American people will again carp and moan but shrug their shoulders and go along with it.

And I wonder whether we as a nation are now so devoid of any rational thought, of any modicum of international civility of any regard of rule of law, of any concern for the ‘collateral damage,’ otherwise known as innocent civilian lives that we will take that we would go along with such a criminal act?

There are at least as thousand different scenarios that this could play out and none of them have a happy ending, at least not to rational minds. I wonder if perhaps, the problem is not so much in political systems, nation-states or bureaucracies but in the failure of the human race to evolve past our most primitive animalistic urges toward profit and conquer and that perhaps we are programmed as a race for eventual self-destruction.

As fall begins in the northern hemisphere it seems as though everything else around me looks normal. And yet there is an almost pervasive sense of doom. I sit and marvel at the beauty all around as my nation and its people march lemming-like toward Armageddon.

And some of them are cheering.

Keith Gottschalk

Keith Gottschalk

U.S. Keith Gottschalk has written for daily newspapers in Iowa, Illinois and Ohio. He also had a recent stint as a radio talk show host in Illinois. As a result of living in the high ground...