Has Bush Boxed Himself In?
As Americans anguish over how to extricate this country from Iraq without a disaster greater than what we now have, and without our friends suffering the fate of our friends in Cambodia and Vietnam, they had best brace themselves. This escalator is going up.
George Bush and his generals are laying out the case for a new war. And there has been no resistance offered either by a vacationing Congress or the major presidential candidates.
On CNN's Late Edition Sunday, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, No. 2 commander in Iraq, said, "It is clear to me that (the Iranians) have been stepping up their support" for enemy fighters in Iraq.
They do it from providing weapons, ammunition, specifically mortars and explosively formed projectiles. . . . They are conducting training within Iran of Iraqi extremists to come back here and fight the United States.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said his troops were following 50 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who have been crossing the border and training fighters in Iraq. The State Department is about to declare the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
Earlier in August, President Bush directly charged Tehran with aiding Iraqi insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers:
I asked Ambassador Crocker to meet with Iranians inside Iraq . . . to send the message that there will be consequences for . . . people transporting, delivering EFPs, highly sophisticated IEDs, that kill American troops.
The EFPs are roadside bombs that penetrate Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams tanks. They have taken the lives of scores of U.S. soldiers.
Whether Bush has made the decision to attack the al Quds training camps inside Iran, he has painted himself into a corner.
If he does not strike the camps, he will be mocked by the War Party as a weak commander in chief, too timid to use U.S. power to protect soldiers he sent into battle or to punish those killing them.
Thus, Bush must either announce that his diplomacy has worked, and attacks out of Iran have diminished or been halted, or he will have to explain why the Top Gun of the carrier Lincoln was too wimpish to do his duty by the soldiers he sent to fight.
Who is pushing for attacks on Iran? Israel and its lobby. Vice President Cheney. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has been calling for air strikes on Al Quds camps for months. And a War Party facing lasting disgrace for having lied the country into an unnecessary war, and for having assured the American people it would be a "cakewalk."
The arguments for war on Iran are both strategic and political.
Israel is terrified Iran will end its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East and wants an all-out U.S. war on Iran to prevent it. The War Party fears Iran may acquire a nuclear weapon, which would inhibit U.S. freedom of action in the Gulf and convince the Arab states that the United States is yesterday and they must appease Iran or go nuclear themselves.
As for Bush and Cheney, if they go home without hitting Iran's nuclear sites, and Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the Bush Doctrine will have been defied by the Ayatollah as well as Kim Jong-il, and their legacy will be a no-win war in Iraq.
The War Party is thus seeking an excuse to launch air strikes on Iran, as that would trigger Iranian counterstrikes on our forces. Then they will have their long-sought casus belli for U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
First, the al Quds camps, then Natanz, Isfahan and Bushewr.
Initially, Americans might cheer the bombing of Iran, and Congress would head for the tall grass. But as U.S. strikes would be an act of war, rallying the Iranians behind the failing regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and igniting a long war the end of which we cannot see and the troops for which we do not have, there are powerful arguments against a new war.
Iran and the United States would both pay a hellish price, and Iran at least seems to recognize it. Both the Iraqi and Afghan governments say Iran is behaving as a good neighbor. There is evidence Tehran's nuclear program is faltering, or being curbed. Iran is said to be making concessions to U.N. inspectors.
Iran has released an American seized in response to our seizure of five Iranian "diplomats" in Iraq. Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, in a letter to the Washington Post, denies Iran is aiding the Iraqi insurgency and calls on the U.S. government to "proffer evidence" and "provide the list of Iranian agents who it alleges are operating in Iraq."
If there is a rush to war here, it is not on the part of Iran.
As Bush is preparing for war on Iran, if he has not already decided on war, where is Congress, which alone has the constitutional power to authorize a war?
Or has it given Bush and Cheney another blank check?
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
The American “war party” is bipartisan. Bush, Cheney as well as the war-happy Democrats are equally ready to “teach Iran the lesson” on democracy, disarmament, human rights.. name it! American people will swallow the bate as they did when the American led NATO, shamefully, bombed Serbia in 1999.
ha!ha!ha! the U.S. will never bomb Iran. The Bush Zionsts don't have the backbone.They are all Jew pussies just like Israel.
I wish there never is anything that prompts the U.S. to act against Iran (not that Iran is fault-free - it isn't). As it stands now we didn't quite accomplish any goals (neither political nor military) in Iraq. The business about the "backbone" is a a typical Muslim way of inciting a staged riot. Over the past two weeks I have spoken to a camera operator (filmed documentaries and news for the Swiss Natioanal News Service, Japanese NHK TV news, etc.). In the words of this person once there is a camera in any Muslim village hundreds of children show up and start crying on cue - not a bad theater performance, and CNN is only thirsting for such images. More than anything we need a policy of a clever steady withdrawal. Never-mind the British legacy of drawing poor borders across the desert sand.
It's all over for Anglo-Saxon Christian Old-Right America is'nt it??!!!!!
I know, everywhere I look some schmultzy general is blaming iran for our destruction of iraq - and their resistance. with quotes like: 'there were at least we'd estimate 20 iranian iud err ieds we believe were made with the approval of iran's highest idiots etc.' ... unreal city - kingdom absent
My question: - is Greece another Lebanon and does it have any ties to what's on the apparent 'drawing board'? seriously ... Who is burning down Greece... the whole country is on fire, and it has to be arsonists not an act of 'God'... God's more whimsical and repentative... this is too totalitarian not to by done by some twisted, and overly ambitious human, scum.
If this u.s. (scum) congress doesn't impeach the moron-in-chief the whole govt. is culpable. We may have actually found the terrorists, is the good news?!!!!!
"George Bush and his generals are laying out the case for a new war."
Haven't we done enough damage to the balance of global power for two hundred and thirty-one years?
This article is scary because a lot of what Pat has said in the past about the neocons has been right. God i hope Pat is wrong this time for the sake of our country and our world!
Take Washington... if i were running the old american civil war... i would have quickly taken, as we could have, washington d.c. and new york... but we 'believed' after bull run, they'd leave us alone. (lincoln immediately captured)...it would have been tea with jeff davis. "ok," they'd have agreed "it's too big anyway... you go your way, we'll go ours... of course slavery not to mention 'wage slavery' is history over time here in the colonies..." I used to live in n.y. where all of the vicious riots transacted, right around Gramercy Park & Pete's Tavern - once lincoln said we have to conscript - unless you can buy your way out of it...to go kill southern brothers, or be killed.
sick mother f'errr Abe was since no one in the south was savvy enough to know - got to catch the scum doing it. then, they're sweet. i want those scum today. capture the flag kids, it's like camp.
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Why is congress conducting meaningless and endless hearings into non-issues that nobody cares about while they let this go on? Valerie Plame, good grief, or the US attorney firings, which are not even as severe as when Janet Reno fired every US attorney who served under Reagan-Bush I, or into sentence commutations and pardons by Presidents Clinton and Bush. Why aren't they doing oversight on Iraq war spending? Why aren't they making any oversight into the ramifications of a war with Iran on our economy, on the Middle East, or examining the "evidence" for war in Iran?
Why isn't congress doing its constitutional duty to stop the president from launching more unconstitutional wars?
Well its simple, they are all apart of the same game. The Republican-Democrat charade is intended to fool the people into thinking they have a voice. We don't. If we really had any evidence against Iran to jump in there, we would put the faces and names of those revolutionary guard men on 24 hour news. They don't because in spite of all Iran's faults and its tyrannical Qur'anic rule, they have no interest in attacking the US. Once we are gone they get the country anyway. There is simply no benefit.
This is why we need so many more like Pat who will call it like it is. He was one of the few people before the war in Iraq who was right, and God forbid that we should go into another immoral and unconstitutional war that serves no American interest (what's the total now? Panama, Granada, Rwanda, Serbia, Iraq?) he will have been right yet again.
It is very weird to read the comments, which start as comments on the article and end up as comments on the comments, which are very remote from the ideas of the author of the article. In fact, reading the comments on the comments becomes more interesting than reading the article.
To be critical of the nation’s leadership is very easy. Presidents or lower ranking officials are people like you and me. If not in office, they would think and discuss the country’s problems the same as you do. They’ll be very critical of the way the country is run, or the way the foreign policies are conducted.
Since I am from a Balkan country that has always suffered at the hands of its neighboring countries, Serbia and Greece, throughout its history, I would take a Serb as an example. Talk with an ordinary Serb in Serbia, (not any of those who post their comments on this website and take advantage of every article to speak of the “plight of Serbia”, which in fact is its own doing and draw unnecessary parallels to the situation in Serbia prior to, during and after NATO’s air strikes) and you’ll find that he is not different from an ordinary American. That Serb would be very friendly and very reasonable and very critical or moderately critical of the previous and present-day governments, which were and are responsible for the policies that led to the destruction of the former Yugoslavia, for the four Balkan wars they started and lost as well as for their current policies that may be conducive to further instability in the Balkans. But to be truthful to ourselves, we should say that his government is the offspring of the Serbs themselves. The rulers of Serbia today are the sons and daughters of the Serb people. Try and put that same Serb in a leading position. Won’t he advocate and implement the same policies, domestic and foreign, as his predecessors? Can that same, former ordinary Serb change the way Serbia has always been run. No way.
The persons, who run a country, are indoctrinated by the state mechanism of that same country and, as such they are not all powerful. The state mechanism they happen to run, does not let them do what they like or I would better say, they themselves like to run it that way because that is what they have been taught. Hence, there are limits, imposed or self-imposed, to their actions.
We always witness two opposite poles in a country. Those, who run or govern it and those who are governed or ruled. Change their positions. Let those who are governed become rulers and the rulers become the ruled. Will there be any difference. The same policies will be followed, the same problems will exist and the criticism will keep coming from below against those in ruling positions. As already said, those who run the country are the sons and daughters of the ruled.
The same goes for everybody in the world despite his/her nationality.
The ordinary American is no exception from this general rule. The problem lies with the intellectuals. It is good that they criticize the Bush administration and are always on the look-out for the mistakes he or his administration may make. This is normal. But being too critical without ever experiencing what leading a country, big or small, means is far from being modest and humble. Imagine one of you has been elected the president of the United States. (I do not mean the Serbs who have posted comments on this article. Let them go to Serbia and run for whatever position they like. They belong there). Would the lucky one here in the U.S.A. behave differently? A little, yes, but not much. There are always limits, which you forget when writing or looking on from a safe and comfortable distance.