Is World War III on Hold?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
Is a Bush pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz, or on the Al Quds force of the Revolutionary Guard, a more remote possibility today than it was several weeks ago?
So it would seem.
The latest indication is a candid interview in the Financial Times with Adm. William “Fox” Fallon, head of Central Command, who would be the Tommy Franks of any naval or air war on Iran.
“The Pentagon is not preparing a pre-emptive attack on Iran in spite of an increase in bellicose rhetoric from Washington, according to senior officers,” concluded the FT in the lead of its story.
Dealing with Iran is a “challenge,” a strike is not “in the offing,” Fallon is quoted. His comments, said the Times, “served as a shot across the bows of hawks who argue for imminent action.”
“(G)enerally, the bellicose comments” out of Washington “are not particularly helpful,” said our CentCom commander. That is naval gunfire directed right across the bow of the West Wing.
For the ranking man in Washington said to be arguing loudest for imminent action is Dick Cheney. And the most “bellicose comments” about Iran coming out of Washington have come from George W. Bush.
Here, again, is Bush 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.”
Last month, Bush ventured further, “(I)f you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
If terms like “nuclear holocaust” and “World War III” are not “bellicose rhetoric,” what is?
Why might the administration be backing away from war on Iran?
First, Pakistan. With a nation of 170 million with nuclear weapons in a political crisis that could lead to civil war, igniting a war with Iran would seem suicidal—especially with the war in Iraq about to enter its sixth year this spring and the war in Afghanistan about to enter its seventh year next month.
Second, there is no guarantee U.S. air strikes could denuclearize Iran, except temporarily. Bombs cannot destroy knowledge. And Iran has been gaining knowledge for years on how to enrich uranium. Moreover, Iran has surely secreted away many of the centrifuges it has constructed, far from the Natanz plant—ground zero—where 2,000 or 3,000 are said to be operating.
Third, no one can predict where an attack on Iran will lead. While the United States could smash all known nuclear facilities, Iran could ship IEDs, sniper rifles and surface-to-air missiles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and send in thousands of Revolutionary Guard and cause chaos in the Gulf that would double or treble the price of oil, setting off a worldwide recession. Sleeper cells could retaliate for Iranian casualties with suicide bombings at U.S. malls.
We went into Iraq and Afghanistan without an exit strategy. In Iran, other than the naval and air strikes of the first weeks, we do not know how or where the war would go. We do know the Iranians have been preparing surprises.
Fourth, Congress seems to have found its voice, and 30 senators have written to inform President Bush that he does not have the authority, absent an Iranian attack on U.S. forces, to launch a war on Iran. While Rudy Giuliani and John McCain remain hawkish, the Democratic candidates are moving in the other direction.
Fifth, there has been a downturn in roadside attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, suggesting Iran may no longer be supplying the enhanced IEDs. And U.S. forces have released several Iranians held captive in Iraq. There may be progress behind the scenes, as both countries could suffer horribly in a war.
We are not out of the woods yet. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is telling the truth about those 3,000 centrifuges working perfectly, Iran could have the nuclear material for a single bomb in a year. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports this month on whether Iran is meeting its commitments to come clean. It is not. And the European Union will report on whether the sanctions have succeeded, or failed. And the latter is the case.
And there are those in Tehran who would relish U.S. strikes, to unite the nation against us and consolidate the mullahs’ power.
Nevertheless, the forces against war now and for negotiations with Tehran—Condi Rice, Robert Gates, the Pentagon brass, the most outspoken of the retired military and NATO Europe—seem to be gaining the ascendancy in the last great battle of the Bush presidency.
And the War Party, which began its propaganda offensive around Labor Day, seems to have shot its bolt. For now.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by robert reavis on 13 November 2007:
“One hundred and eighty-seven men for eleven days withstood the Mexican army of Santa Anna. When the battle was done, all of the one hundred eighty-seven brave Americans, including Davy Crockett, lay dead on the ground; and as Crockett said after the first day, “They will be back.”
Given the fact that today there are only about 187 Americans within the beltway who oppose the neo-con’s pledge for world empire and democracy against those who “hate us for our freedom,” readers can be assured that , “They will be back.”
2 Comment by Virgil Caine on 13 November 2007:
Damn straight Brother Reavis! But who will be our brave Colonel to step forth in the words of the immortal Johnny Cash:
“A hundred eighty were challenged by Travis to die
By the line he drew with his sword when the battle was nigh
Any man who’ll to fight to the death cross over
But if you wanna live you better fly
And over the line went a hundred seventy nine”
3 Comment by roho on 13 November 2007:
This is good news. Be it Republican or Democrat, somebody castrate this administration and send them to their rooms!
Something very serious happened in August 2007, that has the suspicians of the 10 Days Of October involving the Cuban Missle Crisis?
Those 6 nuclear cruise missles attached to a B-52 from Minot N.D. did not wind up in Baksdale Lousiana AFB by accident!(With several mysterious Air Force deaths during the same period.)
It was no accident that Gen. Peter Pace went vocal on how a “Premptive Nuclear Strike” was a WAR CRIME…..And scientist, and wmd inspector of Britain Dr. David Kelly had one of those mysterious “Vince Fostor” incidents.
Too much smoke in August not to have been a fire?www.globalresearch.ca
4 Comment by The Superfluous Man on 13 November 2007:
So perhaps we’ve staved off World War III for a year and change. That is, until Giuliani gets elected.
Can you imagine a presidency with Huckabee (who wants to double the size of our military) as Veep, Podherentz as Secretary of State, Daniel Pipes as Secretary of Defense, and Michael Rubin as ambassador to the U.N.?
5 Comment by robert m. peters on 13 November 2007:
Superfluous Man
“So perhaps we’ve staved off World War III for a year and change. That is, until Giuliani gets elected.
Can you imagine a presidency with Huckabee (who wants to double the size of our military) as Veep, Podherentz as Secretary of State, Daniel Pipes as Secretary of Defense, and Michael Rubin as ambassador to the U.N.?”
I can already smell the sulfur.
6 Comment by Paul D. Alexander on 14 November 2007:
I can already see the economic collapse, if Iran (in reprisal)devastates the oil fields in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and cuts off the Straits of Hormuz; if Venezuela announces an embargo on oil sales to the USA; if crude oil skyrockets and the pump price of gasoline is $5 or $6 a gallon, possibly more; if China refuses to extend any more credit to us and/or demands we pay up what we already owe them …
Can you say, “pariah nation”? Or “basket case”?
7 Comment by Michael Kenny on 14 November 2007:
Another point worth noting is the lack of international support for any attack. Sarko, hyped as the greatest thing since Lafayette, insisted that the issue must be resolved diplomatically. Merkel said the same thing a few days later. Gordon Brown is blowing hot and cold. John Howard is in electoral trouble. Politicians all over the world are realising that too close an association with Bush is the kiss of death.
8 Comment by wuthering Heights on 15 November 2007:
“more; if China refuses to extend any more credit to us and/or demands we pay up what we already owe them …” (end quote of above)
to their credit china is biding its time, expecting our ‘pause’ or reality check – so, believe it or not-that they can go Green. its capitalists or state-capitalists won’t “like” it – but in this case (although no communist myself) the party or ruling elite know better…their survival probably depends on it.
china rushed headlong into industrialization and into the present like a kid with a new toy having a blast…but had no experience yet, [like we are still learning slowly in the West] about the need at the same time for conservation, mitigation of pollution etc. Although we ourselves still have not learned or made sufficient headway, since our system currently is owned by the state-capitalists. In America there presently is NO transcendant power or authority for better-or-worse other than our now top-down System itself, sadly. ?
Anyway china’s cancer rate has exploded (& they know contrary to propaganda in the west – cancer is environmentally driven i.e. pollution being one of its major catalysts, also nutrition, stress/lifestyle etc. – & the west’s genome project i.e. the mapping of the human genome has proven lately – for example – there’s no such thing as a ‘breast cancer’ gene … etc.) And china’s rivers today have been turned into sewers and its peasants who lived for thousands of years healthful lives along these once pristine tributaries, the peasants in their age old relationship with the land, are suddenly perishing at alarming rates from cancer etc. (which in their cases was unheard of prior.) And these peasants are literally and sadly as well befuddled by what has befallen them. … While the proletariat i.e. the workers for the state-capitalist class have all been thrown off of their social programs e.g. free medical, education, transportation and so forth in order to motivate them to go out there and work now for almost slave wages (even worse than it is for the working poor now in America)… In other words the larger underbelly of the iceberg of China is more and more a miserable, polluted, disease ridden mess. And yet, as in the west with its minority of fabulously wealthy state-capitalists too! [Yo, it don't 'trickle down' in china either.]
They (i.e. the party and most of the rest of china as well-in reality) can’t wait until they Can take a pause… and clean Up their act. So china will be going green of necessity, slowly now – faster if and when the u.s. isn’t still in its face to move at a break-neck pace in the direction of ‘progress’.
civilization is green. we need to breathe all of us fresh air among other things. we may be conceptual creatures but we’re creatures too, similar in this regard to God’s other creatures. No? like an eagle is just a glorified vulture; let’s face it we’re just glorified monkies, under God. amen.