Motivational Rationale

The Existentialist Cowboy figures out why Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton want to nuke Iran.

It's because at one level they're on the level, as quoted from Len Harrison:

...I am quite certain that what is denied in public is discussed in private. What is obvious to anyone certainly cannot be a mystery to the elites. Now we might imagine it's Nero all over again, at least the Nero of popular myth who "fiddled while Rome burned". But these grey-faced, grey-suited, somber, soured souls are not hedonists nor are they acting like Hitler's cronies in the Berlin bunker. They aren't looking to solutions and they aren't going out with one last party. To my mind that leaves only one possible scenario.

They know what's coming and they don't care because they don't intend for most of us to survive. Reduce the population by 90-95% and none of this makes any difference. There's plenty of oil, plenty of places on the planet to move to, even if the coastlines of the continents are under water. Things start to look much different if you imagine a world of at most a few hundred million. Quite honestly, as far as I can see, that's the only future in which what's going down right now can end well for anyone.

In that context the aggregation of wealth and power become paramount. It's like the back end of a poker tournament. Wars become very useful in a variety of ways. They help the population reduction. They distract the masses. They provide tangible "enemies" while masking the common enemy. They inure people to all sorts of cruelty and inhumanity. And they garner chips so that the winners have more clout in the competition between elites after the die-off begins.

If I were a member of the elites, and possessed that sense of innate superiority and lack of compassion and morality that mark those who are visible members, it's what I'd do. It just makes sense. And it's already begun in Africa and elsewhere.

Of course, it's totally unnecessary, but the alternatives are as unthinkable to the elites as this idea is to most of us. There is a path to a sustainable economy but it involves massive decentralization and localization. It collapses the corporations, destroys the elites, and creates a world in which there are neither rich nor poor. It's what some of us call the better world, Possible. But it's anathema to fat cats and the power brokers. ...

--Len Harrison

This fits quite nicely.

It's doubtful that the fat cats and the power brokers actually believe the biblical version of the apocalypse story. After all, in the end, there's a religious communism under god, right? There is no way they'd want that to happen in this bubble of the multiverse.

On the other hand, there is no doubt this vision could prove quite useful to them. After all, what a shock to the system, what a chance to gain the monopoly!

Still, the scope of this is all well beyond 9/11, or the invasion of Iraq. This is taking a little bit more than Big Time Dick's 8 visits to Langley to get Tenet on board. The majority of the Company is likely balking at the idea of nukular conflagration. Not at the idea of the fallout, which is entirely beyond their conceptial experience and therefore likely meaningless to them.

It's the idea of losing 95% of their market, even for the chance of becoming the only game in town. Poppy's faction of the Company- not the Cheneyburton group incidently- feels well on the way to cornering the market anyway.

While the strong arm of the chaos smash and grab strategery is a useful tool for the Company, they don't want to smash the booty.

But the problem is they would trash it all before they'd institute the kind of technological changes that would allow a sustainable post-fossil fuel global economy to develop where the Company no longer holds all the cards, the chips, and the table.