Who’s Planning Our Next War?
Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002, President Bush has often said, "The United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, though there is no hard evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program?
William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a U.S. attack on Iran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win. Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free.
Yet, to start a third war in the Middle East against a nation three times as large as Iraq, and leave it to a new president to fight, would be a daylight hijacking of the congressional war power and a criminally irresponsible act. For Congress alone has the power to authorize war.
Yet Israel is even today pushing Bush into a pre-emptive war with a naked threat to attack Iran itself should Bush refuse the cup.
In April, Israel held a five-day civil defense drill. In June, Israel sent 100 F-15s and F-16s, with refueling tankers and helicopters to pick up downed pilots, toward Greece in a simulated attack, a dress rehearsal for war. The planes flew 1,400 kilometers, the distance to Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
Ehud Olmert came home from a June meeting with Bush to tell Israelis: "We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. ... I left with a lot less question marks regarding the means, the timetable restrictions and American resoluteness. ...
"George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term. ... The Iranian problem requires urgent attention, and I see no reason to delay this just because there will be a new president in the White House seven and a half months from now."
If Bush is discussing war on Iran with Ehud Olmert, why is he not discussing it with Congress or the nation?
On June 6, Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, we will attack it." The price of oil shot up 9 percent.
Is Israel bluffing—or planning to attack Iran if America balks?
Previous air strikes on the PLO command in Tunis, on the Osirak reactor in Iraq and on the presumed nuclear reactor site in Syria last September give Israel a high degree of credibility.
Still, attacking Iran would be no piece of cake.
Israel lacks the stealth and cruise-missile capacity to degrade Iran's air defenses systematically and no longer has the element of surprise. Israeli planes and pilots would likely be lost.
Israel also lacks the ability to stay over the target or conduct follow-up strikes. The U.S. Air Force bombed Iraq for five weeks with hundreds of daily runs in 1991 before Gen. Schwarzkopf moved.
Moreover, if Iran has achieved the capacity to enrich uranium, she has surely moved centrifuges to parts of the country that Israel cannot reach—and can probably replicate anything lost.
Israel would also have to over-fly Turkey, or Syria and U.S.-occupied Iraq, or Saudi Arabia to reach Natanz. Turks, Syrians and Saudis would deny Israel permission and might resist. For the U.S. military to let Israel over-fly Iraq would make us an accomplice. How would that sit with the Europeans who are supporting our sanctions on Iran and want the nuclear issue settled diplomatically?
And who can predict with certitude how Iran would respond?
Would Iran attack Israel with rockets, inviting retaliation with Jericho and cruise missiles from Israeli submarines? Would she close the Gulf with suicide-boat attacks on tankers and U.S. warships?
With oil at $135 a barrel, Israeli air strikes on Iran would seem to ensure a 2,000-point drop in the Dow and a world recession.
What would Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria do? All three are now in indirect negotiations with Israel. U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq could be made by Iran to pay a high price in blood that could force the United States to initiate its own air war in retaliation, and to finish a war Israel had begun. But a U.S. war on Iran is not a decision Bush can outsource to Ehud Olmert.
Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullins left for Israel. CBS News cited U.S. officials as conceding the trip comes "just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex."
Vice President Cheney is said to favor U.S. strikes. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Mullins are said to be opposed.
Moving through Congress, powered by the Israeli lobby, is House Resolution 362, which demands that President Bush impose a U.S. blockade of Iran, an act of war.
Is it not time the American people were consulted on the next war that is being planned for us?
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
It's time, but it won't happen.
Hillary offered massive destruction of Iran, and Obama has kissed the AIPAC ring on the Iran question.
The anti-war forces in Congress don't have the votes or the courage. We can only hope that Gates and the realists prevail.
A weak reed, that.
GOM @ 1
Yes, indeed, a very weak reed; but hope might well thereon turn. Providence relishes in using the weak, even unawares. That is one of many reasons to pray! Let us pray that if Gates, for whatever his reasons, is opposed to this impending war - immoral, unlawful and unnecessary - that he will have courage and prevail in his counsel.
It is interesting to note how Israel is, in fact, what Germany has been accused of being by historians for decades: an inherently destabilising force among it's neighbours, which not only is madly aggressive and expansionist, but which, in fact, is a danger to stability and peace merely because of it's existence.
All the Germanophobic bigots back their grumblings with pseudo-history that paints Germany as a constant threat to European and world peace, which, they claim, always has the potential for great evil lurking just beneath the surface, even when it's cowed as it has been now for three generations. The mere fact of germany's existence is said or implied to be the root of the problem. The same whiners conveniently ignore the fact that Israel is a greater threat to world peace and world stability than any other modern Mideastern country ever has been, whose very existence is destabilising, and that it has caused so much harm and suffering in the world, and is now preparing for yet another phase of mad expansionism.
Iran will turn out to be Israel's Russian winter.
A war with Iran is not in our best interest at all. Iraq would explode and our Sunni problem would be compounded by a Shiite problem. How would this war be in our best interest? It would not benefit our troops in Iraq, our economy, and the cost of any war with Iran would be exponentially more difficult and expensive than our war in Iraq.
If I were Israel, I would see a nuclear Iran as an existential threat. But I am not Israeli, and I don't see how another war at this time would be in American interest.
Not much the ordinary person can do about this one except pray. What is really crazy is that such an attack on Iran by either Israel or the US would probably be wildly popular with the American public - at least at first. If it happened close enough to the election, it would probably result in McCain pulling an upset. I don't know who first came up with the saying that the easiest way to get support for a war was to start one, but unhappily he was on to something.
Iran sits as the fulcrum of strategic power it could be called the "Continental Divide" for oil flows. Yes Israel is a destabilizing factor in its region, and yes too many Jews have latched onto the weaknesses of the West for their own benefit, but this issue is the first big issue to be faced in the post ideological era, not a continuation of the age of ideology. Pat's analysis might be good for the masses, but it is flawed fundamentally.
Pat asks: "If Bush is discussing war on Iran with Ehud Olmert, why is he not discussing it with Congress or the nation?"
The answer to that question is easy. A neoconservative cabal allied with Israel's right-wing Likud Party has captured the U.S. government, and this cabal now decides the U.S.foreign policy. They do not bother to discuss the question of war with the congress, and certainly not with the American people.
Pat further asks: "Is it not time the American people were consulted on the next war that is being planned for us?"
In principle, yes. But the U.S. ceased to be a democracy many years ago.
#6 D. Simmons
"but this issue is the first big issue to be faced in the post ideological era, not a continuation of the age of ideology. Pat’s analysis might be good for the masses, but ....."
OH, FOR HEAVENS SAKE !! And you, no doubt, are among the patriots who must some day reveal this painful secret to our country ? Goodness gracious --- Is there no end to the embecility of our designated insiders ? "Oh, to be in England" when, coal was all the rage ! Evidently all of us will soon own a tattoo, a pierced nose, recent copies of The Weekly Standard and the corner blog .
You have it exactly 180 degrees off, ideology is the revealing of the "truth" this Iran thing is about money and national survival. Unless you think like the far left and we can all bicycle to our "green jobs." Israel rides the coatails of the Western managerial system, and hence is the last in line, a welfare case in a declining budget era. Now why would Greece perhaps the most anti-American country in Europe by habit participate in the Great Iranian Turkey Shoot alongside Israel? Because it straddles the pipeline route that transverses the Stans, Iran, Caspian basins for starters. BTW Iran has been negotiating about a pipeline that heads East, you think that is popular in the West's capitals?
" This Iran thing is about money and national survival."
Oh, I didn't know, well then by all means let's "nuke'em."
As Marine General Smedlay Butler once said "I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. "
If only Smedley could see us now, " Going Global," as they say.
To my brother, Kirt (see #5), and to several others, I have predicted the following:
1) If, close to the election, a terrorist attack on US soil equal to or greater than that on 9-11-01 occurs, that alone might be used by W. Bush as grounds for declaring martial law and canceling the election.
2) If, close to the election, a catastrophic economic/market meltdown occurs, that alone might be used by W. Bush as grounds for declaring martial law and canceling the election.
3) If, close to the election, both of the above occur--perhaps as fallout from an attack by the US, Israel, or both on Iran--then all my money is on the table: betting that W. will declare martial law, cancel the election, and attempt to continue indefinitely as the US caesar.
#11:
There was such talk at the Clinton administration's close bumped up against Y2K. I think these theories are generally too optimistic, in that they assume that such dramatic action is required to secure control of the nation. Why pull an armed robbery, when you get to decide who runs the bank?