GOP Blank Check for War?
High among the blunders of history was the "blank cheque" Kaiser Wilhelm gave Vienna, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to deal with the Serbs as they saw fit.
Five weeks later, Vienna cashed the check and declared war, after Belgrade refused to submit to all 10 demands of an ultimatum. Russia mobilized; Germany and France followed. And war came, the bloodiest in all of European history with 9 million soldiers in their graves.
Since June 1914, a "blank check" given by one nation to another for war has been regarded as strategic folly.
Thus it is startling to learn 47 House Republicans just signed on to H.R. 1553 declaring unequivocal "support for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran ... including the use of military force."
These Republicans have just given Tel Aviv a blank check for a pre-emptive war that Israel, unless it uses its nuclear weapons, can start but not finish. Fighting and finishing that war would fall to the armed forces of the United States.
Who do these Republicans represent?
The Pentagon has made clear that with two wars of nearly a decade's duration bleeding us, we do not want a third war with Iran. For while easy to predict how such a war begins, with air and missile strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, no one can know how it ends.
Indeed, how would Israel reach its targets in Iran?
Turkey would not allow Israeli over-flights. The route over Jordan and Iraq would require U.S. military complicity, for we control Iraqi air space. Would Riyadh permit Israel to use its airspace to attack Iran, knowing Tehran could create havoc in the Gulf states and oil patch of northeastern Arabia?
The Israeli air force could destroy the nuclear power plant at Bushehr, the heavy water reactor at Arak and uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. But Israel cannot follow up and destroy all the dispersed nuclear facilities and missile sites of Iran. And no one knows what would follow.
How would Iran retaliate? Missile strikes on Tel Aviv? A missile barrage form Hezbollah igniting another Israeli-Lebanon war? How long could the United States stand by and watch Israel bombarded?
Indeed, the principal purpose and result of an Israeli pre-emptive war on Iran, bringing retaliation on Israel, would be to drag America in to fight and finish a war Israel had begun.
In whose interest is that? And who dreamed this resolution up?
If America joined the attack, we would have to complete the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities and destroy its missile sites, coastal defenses, navy, air force and hundreds of speedboats to prevent attacks on U.S. warships and tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
We would have to strike all the Republican Guard bases near Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our troops. We would have to kill thousands of Iranians.
Would Iran retaliate by inciting the Mahdi Army to kill our men in Iraq? Would it set Hezbollah to kidnap or kill Americans in Lebanon? Would Iran retaliate for its civilian dead by activating agents to commit terrorism in the United States? No one knows.
In 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered air strikes on Libya to retaliate for Qaddafi's bombing of the Berlin discotheque. In 1989, in retaliation, Qaddafi blew up Pan Am 103. Death toll: 270 men, women and children. It's called blowback.
The House Republican resolution supports Israel's use of "all means necessary" to "eliminate nuclear threats" that represent an "immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel."
What "immediate and existential threat" are they talking about?
It is Israel that has hundreds of atomic bombs. Iran has no atom bombs, has tested no atomic device, has diverted none of its low-enriched uranium out of the sight of U.N. inspectors and has offered to ship half of its LEU to Turkey in exchange for fuel rods for a U.S.-built reactor that makes medical isotopes. And half of the centrifuges at Natanz have broken down.
Undeniably, Iran is gaining knowledge of how to build a bomb. But such a decision would seem idiotic from Iran's standpoint, risking Israeli or U.S. nuclear strikes and provoking Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to follow suit and acquire the bomb, leaving Iran even more isolated and vulnerable,
Three years ago, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that Iran had given up on the project of building a bomb. Do these Republicans have hard evidence Iran is diverting its enriched uranium to such a bomb? If so, where is it?
Have these Republicans forgotten what happened to their colleagues in 2006, who voted Bush that blank check for war on Iraq in 2002?
Why, with all the issues going for them, House Republicans would announce full-throated support for a pre-emptive war on Iran that Americans would have to fight and finish, escapes me.
But if this is where a Republican House would take America, into yet another war, best that we know it before voting this fall.
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Options for American Citizens in the November Elections:
( ) I Vote Democrat and more U.S. entitlements.
( ) I Vote Republican for more War in The Middle East
( ) | Flee the country.
NGPM,
Yes, and heading back into our brand of paganism is much worse than the old pagans headed towards a new light from the East. The pietas romana was something along the lines of "a national virtue loaded with a physical and religious meaning, and which signified all together attachment to the land, fidelity, gratitude, the cult rendered to the gods, the parents, and the homeland, but also to the family, the house, and the manes of the Ancestors." For the new pagan,the pietas americana pagan, it means attacking countries who don't want war with us, lieing to your citizenry about the reasons and justification for such wars, and describing those who tell the truth as "unpatriotic Americans." Why don't Republican party wizards just run the Canadian, Mr. Fumm, or the neo-con Bill Kristol, or the ever useful and idiotic New York Times writer, David Brooks, for the high offices they seek -- At least it would comply with the truth in advertising standards they constantly attempt to circumvent.
At least the resolution preempts another false-flag attack on US soil for the time being as a pretext for an attack on Iran, but that won't do the countless thousands of innocent Iranian men, women, and children much good now that these Zionist apparatchiks in the Republican Party have authorized their incineration. Why do we scratch our heads when these actors play the part they were vetted for as candidates in the first place by a complicit media? What else do we need to know about them? They're saying they're willing to destroy America to serve Israel, because that will be the result and everybody knows it. I've been a lifelong registered Republican, but they can go to hell the next time they send me one of those patronizing, phony questionnaires asking for money to support such evil. And coming soon, those phony WikiLeaks vilifying the ISI and made by that PFC whose profile screams asset will be used to justify expanding the war into Pakistan.
Europe still has a chance to learn from America's errors. I fear she may not, but there are positive signs--namely the insipidity and ineffectuality of European states or governments to elicit any respect or reverence from any sector of the population. Unfortunately, in many cases this means respect and reverence for nothing. But those who want to revere something usually find their way home, in the end...
You'd be surprised how many neophyes we have every year at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet...
Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet…"????
One of my favorite living examples of the abiding hope of France. Eldest daughter, ancient source for the best and worst of times, sleepy mistress to the EU, and giant to civilized living.
"Sancte Pie Decime,
Gloriose Patrone,
Ora, Ora, pro nobis."
If Israel has a blank check to nuke Iran, then they obviously have enough surplus money that we can cut off all foreign aid to that criminal enterprise. I think the subsidies have gone on way too long, and we can spend our tax money here in the USA.
Robert is absolutely right. The elites of both political parties appear to be well on their way to succeeding in their quest to destroy whatever little semblance of a nation America has left with their vile cultural Marxism at home and imperialist foreign wars abroad. Will the day ever come when the American people finally rise up and say to their overlords that they have had enough?
And how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iranians have our beloved leaders let into the country for a fifth column
It's only 400,000, in a country of 300 million.
And only a minority of them are Muslims, since Payvand.Com says most of them are atheists, Jews, or Christians.
The heir of the Shah of Iran was opposed to war, at least last time I heard...
My cousin married an Iranian immigrant, who, though nominally Muslim, is more interested in making money.
It only takes a few to sabotage and terrorise.
The superficiality that represents Americanization today has made
its inroads. However, there are those who stand fast abiding in
Truth.
I just read the resolution on the internet. What an incredible piece of rubbish. Well, they don't call them the stupid party for nothing.
This could be a properly Machiavellian stratagem for the U.S., if we had anyone in government capable of statecraft on Machiavelli's level: give the Israelis the rope and watch them be hanged when the Arab and Muslim world rises up against them. We would not be immorally abandoning an ally who'd fought a war side-by-side with us, and to whom we'd pledged continuing assistance, as we did the South Vietnamese. We would only be guilty of encouraging the Israelis to stand a little closer to the precipice, perhaps lean over a bit for a better look ... not of telling them to jump. Then we could accept a share of the properly humbled Jewish refugees, on condition that they stay out of politics, finance, entertainment and the law. Middle East and moslem problem largely solved; and we get lots of great doctors just when my generation really needs them.
I don't have the impression, though, that Israel is as serenely confident of the protection of the U.S. as was Austria-Hungary toward Wilhelmine Germany. And they are certainly not as brave as they were in '48, '67, or '73. Look for the Israelis to continue to do nothing, while milking every whisper of a rumor of Iran's acquiring a nuke for more U.S. money to subsidize more settlements, and more forbearance toward their oppression of the people who were there before them.
Republicans and conservatives get nothing from supporting Israel. Most Jews are firm Democrats and give the party a majority of their campaign money. The Republicans sell their souls for peanuts. If you are going to be bribed at least get a good amount out of it.
John Marino, I am an Israeli Jew who has dual citezenship in the United States and Israel and I myself identify as a traditionalist paleoconservative.
No offense to Mr Goldberg, but I dont see how one can square the concept of dual citizenship with traditionalist conservatism - and that goes between any two countries.