Paging Senator Biden
Many in Congress deeply regret having voted President Bush a blank check for war in October 2002. And they are frustrated at their inability to compel him to begin bringing the troops home.
Why, then, is Congress pushing for a new confrontation, with Iran, which could involve us in a war with a nation four times the size of Iraq?
In July, the Senate voted 97 to zero to censure Iran for complicity in the killing of U.S. soldiers by enhanced IEDs that Iran's Quds Force is said to be providing Iraqi insurgents. Last week, the Senate voted 76 to 22 to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard a "terrorist organization."
The Senate resolutions track the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus, who accused Iran of conducting a "proxy war" against us:
"Iran, through the use of the Quds Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi Special Groups into a Hezbollah-like force to ... fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq."
The War Party is said to be readying a rollout of a big propaganda campaign for war on Iran like the one that stampeded us into the war in Iraq. President Bush got the ball rolling at the American Legion Convention:
"Iran ... is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. ... Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent and target Israel. ... Iran is sending arms to the Taliban. ... Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. ...
"Iran's leaders cannot escape responsibility for aiding attacks against coalition forces and the murder of innocent Iraqis."
And has Bush already authorized military action against Iran?
"I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities. ... We've conducted operations against Iranian agents supplying lethal munitions to extremist groups."
Bush's shifting rationale for war on Iran is consistent with what The New Yorker's Sy Hersh reports. The case for war and the initial target list have been changed -- from Iran's nuclear program to Iran's Quds Force.
If Iran is supplying enhanced IEDs to Iraqis to kill Americans, that is an act of war. And President Bush has the same right to go after the nests of terror as did President Nixon in ordering the 1970 invasion of the Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia.
But while Nixon and LBJ bombed North Vietnam, we did not strike China or Russia, which were providing far more weaponry to the NVA and VC than Iran has provided Iraqi insurgents. And President Truman fired Gen. MacArthur, who wanted to go to the source, in China, of the men and weapons killing Americans in Korea.
The point here is this: If the United States has a case for war, why has Congress not held hearings to give us answers to the crucial questions, before Bush plunges us into that war?
How solid is the evidence Iran is providing roadside bombs to kill Americans? How solid is the evidence Tehran has approved of or assisted in these attacks?
If Tehran is complicit in the killing of Americans, is it being done in reprisal for what President Ahmadinejad described as terror attacks against Iran? While he did not name names, the Kurdish Pejak, an offshoot of the PKK, which has engaged in terror attacks against Turkey, has reportedly been operating inside Iran.
Jundallah, the Party of God, has been killing Iranian soldiers in Baluchistan. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq, which the State Department has labeled a terrorist group, is said to be operating against Iran.
Is Iran killing our boys because they think we are killing theirs?
U.S. air strikes on the Quds Force in Iran would bring retaliation, and escalation to U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. This would solidify the mullahs and could lead to Iran's distributing surface-to-air missiles to agents and proxies in the Middle East, the unleashing of Shia attacks against our allies and a hellish situation for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention attacks on Gulf tankers, $200-a-barrel oil, a worldwide recession and a 2,000-point plunge in the Dow.
Iran cannot want a war with the United States. If it did, it could have had that war any time in the last 30 years. But Iran did not start any war in those three decades.
If they do not want war, and as Sen. Joe Biden says, he does not want war, why is his Foreign Relations Committee not holding hearings on what exactly Iran is doing in Iraq, how advanced its nuclear program is, what Iran is asking to stop short of nuclear weapons, what Iran is willing to pay for peace with the United States, and what we are willing to offer to get them to back off in Iraq and give up nukes?
If we are going to war, Congress, not George Bush, should take us into it. Isn't that how the Constitution reads?
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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Pat knows these folks are cowards but never misses an opportunity to remind them. They just voted 92 --3 to approve billions more to fund the war they apparently oppose . No surprise then that Homeland Security guards flushed a small covey of stragglers hiding in a clump of Blue Stem tall grass, dedicated to the high plains prairie conservationist movement near our capitol, later identified as five Senators attempting to avoid voting on the measure --
Biden (D-DE), Clinton (D-NY), Dodd (D-CT), McCain (R-AZ), Obama (D-IL). ---- all considered by THE PARTY to be Presidential timber. rr
Yes, according to some report I chanced to read today, Mr. Obama wants to ban nuclear weapons; but he does not raise his voice in a meaningful way, i.e. voting and demanding hearings, on the current wars taking our lives and our fortunes as well as the lives and the fortunes of those in whose lands war is now mongered in our name.
Is it just me, or is world politics beginning to look like another season of 24?
"If Iran is supplying enhanced IEDs to Iraqis to kill Americans, that is an act of war. And President Bush has the same right to go after the nests of terror as did President Nixon in ordering the 1970 invasion of the Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia."
In other words, no right at all.
How can the US have any "right" to retaliate against an "act of war" in a situation and in a country wherein it is prosecuting an unprovoked, undeclared, unconstitutional and, therefore, illegal conflict?
My admiration for Mr. Buchanan is great. I feel privileged to occasionally correspond with him one-on-one.
That said, I submit that he expends far too much thought/ink/pixels on irrelevant and baseless "if-then" reasoning in re Iran based on the (implied and admitted) false premise that we had any right to attack Iraq in the first place or any subsequent right to occupy the country.
While Congress may indeed have a constitutional prerogative to declare war on Iran, barring a direct attack on legitimate US soil or property by Iran, Congress has no moral right to declare war. And the US has no moral OR constitutional warrant to remain in Iraq for one day longer than it takes to withdraw all troops as expeditiously as is logistically possible.
To quote the song: "And all the rest is talk."
"My admiration for Mr. Buchanan is great."
Me too, Mr Higdon. Pat has been an inspiration for me in many, ways. Recently I read an interview with him by NYT in which he was asked what book he had read the most often in his life and in his unique Bellocian way with pricelss Irish grin, he responded, " My 1962 Maryknoll Missal. "
When under attack from all quarters before Gulf War I , he suggested to his detractors that "you fellows get out your ink pots and sharpen your quills because just like these wars you are stumping for in the Middle East, I am not going anywhere either.
Like alot of men ahead of their time, (men who Kipling described as keeping their heads when everyone else was losing theirs ) Pat will be treated more favoably after his death than he was during his life. His friends will never forget him.
"Why, then, is Congress pushing for a new confrontation, with Iran, which could involve us in a war with a nation four times the size of Iraq?" -Pat
Isn't that only a rhetorical question by now? Because pat we are ruled from Jerusalem via the almightly Jewish/Israeli lobby in the U.S. , A.I.P.A.C. ... Joe the fraud and sycophant Biden (of hair transplant fame) knows there's no real grounds for attacking Iran. (Just like there were no real grounds for attacking Iraq.) And holding hearings would only disturb the almightly Jewish/Israeli lobby in the U.S., A.I.P.A.C. They retaliate when they are upset against domestics in the U.S. and Joe the sickophant Biden can't afford that because he wants to be el presidente of Jerusalem ruled America.
Regardless he would never go out on a limb against A.I.P.A.C. the power that be in the U.S. who none can say its name - and he doesn't care what the Constitution 'reads'. Because he knows as a practical matter the U.S. is not a 'nation' per se any longer except in the minds of its remaining rubes. It belongs just like Congress to them who buy it, just like the monolithic media belongs to the same people. Who use that instrument to brainwash the rubes and convince them otherwise, that they are a nation and that they really are getting the unbiased and balanced truth from the monolithic media. ... Joe would not use his foreign relations committee to explore and find out the truth because he would suffer the famous swarm effect ATTACK that ex-President jimmy carter sufferred simply for honestly pointing out in his book that the jews practice apartheid in the illegally occupied palestinian territories; and their loathsome wall snakes through those illegally occupied territories and is not even for the most part on so-called israeli land.
That's what ALL this is about. Ever since U.S. inc., discovered that public opinion could be changed almost overnight via the press to favor england instead of germany in world war I. The powers that be decided to make the concerted effort to utilize the media in all of its multifarious facets in this manipulative fashion allowing them to hide in plain sight. What got all of that started was the fact that balfour promised to give palestine to the jews if they could accomplish this feat through their newpapers in america and change public opinion favoring germany in world War I to favor england and so to bring the U.S. into world war I on the side of England.
To this day the major problems we face today in the middle east hinge on that dark deal and the fact that we have subsequently also lost any semblance of our own sovereigty we ever had here in the U.S. ... We are all the palestinians now. Face it Pat. Christianity has its age old enemy the jews and its newer enemy the moslems. Way it is but the monolithic press with its newer mediums like radio, movies and t.v. have brainwashed and continue to brainwash the rubes otherwise. And the west 'wonders' why it has a problem in the middle east? The more things change the more they remain the same. My jewish friends always point out to me but christ was a jew and i reply yes but he became a christian. What a dark thing it is not to yourselves?!
There's enormous power subsequently to be had in the West in the victim Role; however no power in being the Actual victims. Just ask the americans in the meatgrinder of iraq or the iraquis or the palestinians or soon the whole world again as it goes down the tubes...if they start attacking Iran. THAT'S Not The problem. So Joe the fraud and sycophant ain't going to question any of this through his bought and paid for foreign relations committee... He was smart enough to get hair again. Got hair?
" And President Bush has the same right to go after the nests of terror as did President Nixon in ordering the 1970 invasion of the Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia."
Yes Bush has the same "right" to invade Iran as Nixon did to invade Cambodia: none at all. As to the big IF that prefaced the first line of that quote, which I left out because of its patent absurdity, if the hound hadn't stopped to water the bushes, he would have caught the fox.
Maybe Mr. Buchanan actually believes that Bush has a right based on lies to invade yet another country, provided he can muster a compelling enough lie. I don't agree.
Ed,
"... Maybe Mr. Buchanan actually believes that Bush has a right based on lies to invade yet another country, provided he can muster a compelling enough lie. I don’t agree. ..."
"Actually believes"? Of course not. Neither he "actually believes" the contrary. A professional American politician? Who makes his bread by spreading his nets as wide as possible to optimize the number of "followers"? With one of his articles saying one thing and the very next one just the opposite, how can he ever miss? Indeed, my friend, you must be joking.
Mr. Roberts And Ben,
I assumed that Mr. Buchanan was saying to the demo -rats, "where are you now ? I was with Nixon when you were all lathered up about real, actionable, intelligence in " the Viet Cong sanctuaries of Cambodia.” So why are you giving this administration the free pass on bombing Iran with much less evidence ?"
Buchanan has done his share of heavy lifting in keeping the paleo -- conversation alive in America. Consistency in foreign affairs is a dubious request because Southeast Asia is not Iraq, anymore than China and India are Europe. Your mild criticisms of Pat are not major or critical points against Mr. Buchanan's credentials as a patriot. IMO The point about Pat always checking the political windage before speaking is absurd. Believe me, I wish that he would have on past occassions but it is not his way. He is a strategist but not a conniver. rr
rr,
“... Pat always checking the political windage before speaking is ...” known.