{"id":44391,"date":"2019-03-11T07:39:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T12:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44391"},"modified":"2019-03-11T07:39:09","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T12:39:09","slug":"tomgram-bob-dreyfuss-the-rise-of-the-hardliners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44391","title":{"rendered":"Tomgram: Bob Dreyfuss, The Rise of the Hardliners"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/176537\/tomgram%3A_bob_dreyfuss%2C_the_rise_of_the_hardliners\/\">Tomgram: Bob Dreyfuss, The Rise of the Hardliners<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/176537\/tomgram%3A_bob_dreyfuss%2C_the_rise_of_the_hardliners\/print\"><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ll tell you when the nightmare that&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/blog\/176114\/tomgram%3A_bob_dreyfuss%2C_will_the_donald_rally_the_militias_and_the_right-to-carry_movement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>TomDispatch<\/em>&nbsp;regular<\/a><em>&nbsp;<\/em>Bob Dreyfuss raises so eloquently first hit me hard. I\u2019m talking about the possibility that the next U.S. military disaster of the twenty-first century might be Iran. That country has, of course, had a significant spot on Washington\u2019s war-making to-do list since the days of George W. Bush\u2019s presidency. After all, the Washington&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/03\/18\/opinion\/things-to-come.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">catch-phrase<\/a>&nbsp;of that moment when neocons like&#8230; well,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/taskandpurpose.com\/john-bolton-shame\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">John Bolton<\/a>&#8230; helped take us so disastrously into Iraq was \u201cEveryone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.\u201d The \u201creal men\u201d didn\u2019t make it then. The question is: Will they now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You remember, of course, that, on entering the Oval Office, Donald Trump turned to America\u2019s<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/blog\/176224\/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_all_the_president%27s_generals\/\" target=\"_blank\">generals<\/a>\u00a0for a hand. For secretary of defense, he proudly tapped retired Marine Corps General James Mattis,\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2016\/dec\/01\/james-mattis-secretary-of-defense-donald-trump\" target=\"_blank\">reveling<\/a>\u00a0in his nickname, which was \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2019\/03\/03\/trump-claims-he-coined-the-nickname-mad-dog-mattis\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mad Dog<\/a>.\u201d As it happened, Mattis already had a rep for obsessiveness on Iran that seemed to fit that moniker perfectly. As the head of U.S. Central Command in 2011, he reportedly responded to a query from President Obama about the top three threats across the Greater Middle East by\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/as-a-general-mattis-urged-action-against-iran-as-a-defense-secretary-he-may-be-a-voice-of-caution\/2017\/01\/08\/5a196ade-d391-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.3288877ac9c3\" target=\"_blank\">saying<\/a>, \u201cNumber one: Iran. Number two: Iran. Number three: Iran.\u201d In the end, he was evidently removed from that command early because he\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/as-a-general-mattis-urged-action-against-iran-as-a-defense-secretary-he-may-be-a-voice-of-caution\/2017\/01\/08\/5a196ade-d391-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.dc18db89d871\" target=\"_blank\">hatched a scheme<\/a>\u00a0to take out an Iranian oil refinery or power plant in a \u201cdead-of-night U.S. strike\u201d to pay Iran back for supporting Iraqi Shia militias then fighting American troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomgram: Bob Dreyfuss, The Rise of the Hardliners I\u2019ll tell you when the nightmare that&nbsp;TomDispatch&nbsp;regular&nbsp;Bob Dreyfuss raises so eloquently first hit me hard. I\u2019m talking about the possibility that the next U.S. military disaster of the twenty-first century might be Iran. That country has, of course, had a significant spot on Washington\u2019s war-making to-do list [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[24632,441],"class_list":["post-44391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-bob-dreyfuss","tag-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44392,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44391\/revisions\/44392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}