With the Republican presidential race in disarray and something of a lull in the post-"inevitable Romney" phase, there is one ongoing constant: All the conceivable nominees, at least in the current set of prospects, is pushing for war with Iran.
I'm referring, of course, to Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. Not the neo-isolationist Ron Paul, who is about as likely to be the Republican nominee for president as I am. He is so far off the reservation that Santorum and Gingrich passed on the opportunity to guarantee a fourth straight Romney defeat, in the little-attended Maine caucuses, by tossing some support to Paul. The idea of him succeeding, even in this minor way, is simply anathema to them.
Not that these warhawks have anything like a plan as to how an Iran war would, you know, work.
Iranian patrol boats and aircraft shadow the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group in the Arabian Gulf.
It might be nice to imagine that an attack could work. If one believes that Iran is developing nuclear weapons -- as most experts who've looked at this, including the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, do -- then this is serious business. Notwithstanding the futile protest of iPod-wielding students a few years back, whose fate may be shared by the initial revolutionaries of Egypt (when will we stop imagining that the people most like us represent the mainstream of another society?), Iran is a worrisome, hostile, radical fundamentalist power. One which was held neatly in check by Saddam Hussein. Who of course was removed from power at the insistence of the very people now flipping out over Iran and pushing war there.
The reality is that the US invasion of Iraq ended up empowering Iran, leading to government in Baghdad which is dominated by politicians friendly with Iran.
If we can't control what happens in Iraq, a nation which we conquered for a time, we're not very well going to control what happens in Iran, a more formidable opponent which, unlike Saddam's Iraq, really does have international terrorist assets.
Pushing such a war is an obviously very dangerous idea. But it's treated rather blithely in a stenographic US media, with little attention to its substance or peril. Even in the record number of Republican debates, in which media moderators have allowed candidates to mouth their shallow talking points without any substantive discussion.
While Iran's growing role in the region is alarming to many Arab states and beyond, the underlying dynamic is principally Iran vs. Israel, two governments presently controlled by religionists. One which may well have a Mahdi complex, another which may well have a Masada complex.
Iran is shadowing US Navy forces operating in the Arabian Gulf, which Iran calls the Persian Gulf, with missile boats and aircraft. We're sending a third aircraft carrier to the region in March. Which further backstops Israel's hand, not that the right-wing critics of Barack Obama, including the GOP presidential candidates, whose caricature of Obama on defense policy is so extreme that even George Will can't believe it.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced this week that Iran has brought a new generation of centrifuge online and has begun enriching its uranium stores on its own. Not to weapons grade. Not yet. Iran also threatened to cut off oil supplies immediately to European nations which have agreed to embargo Iranian oil by the end of June.
Not only are there the ongoing threats by Iran to block the critical oil choke point in the Strait of Hormuz and by Israel to launch air strikes on Iran's nuclear program, there is a further ratcheting up of the intelligence war between Iran and Israel. Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated and missile centers bombed.
As international pressure on Iran's nuclear program mounts, Russia's military says it sees the probability of an Israeli or Israeli/US strike against the Islamic Republic as being high. Concerns of pending military action grew after Israel blamed Tehran for bomb attacks on its diplomatic staff.
Now there are claimed Iranian attacks on Israeli personnel in Delhi, Tblisi, and Bangkok, the respective capitals of India, Georgia, and Thailand. The balloon is not yet up. But it's getting inflated.
The situation is perilous and complicated enough without all the hot air filling that balloon from the Republican presidential candidates.
Neither Romney, Santorum, nor Gingrich were ever in the military, and Romney sat out the Vietnam War as a Mormon missionary in France. (Which gets more amusing the more you think about it.)
Romney, who boasts of his partnership with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, with whom he worked at Boston Consulting Group, is joined at the hip to the most right-wing government in Israel's history.
Santorum is a fundamentalist Christian motivated by religious affinity.
Gingrich, well, Gingrich has a military scifi sensibility, as I wrote here on the Huffington Post a few months ago in this piece on his alternate history novels.
In my opinion, because of the Holocaust, we have a civilizational responsibility to protect the Jewish people. This is especially dicey, since Israel is a nation founded in a fundamentally precarious spot, like a bird's nest in a rain spout. But we don't have the obligation to do whatever any government of Israel -- including the most right-wing government in its history, led by a party, the Likud, which finished second in the elections -- says to do.
Israel has fewer people than Los Angeles County, about as many as the San Francisco Bay Area. Sometimes these populations produce extraordinary political leaders. More often, they produce mediocrities.
Amazingly, the drumbeat for war with Iran, pushed by the leading Republican presidential candidates, is very short on scenarios, even though it would likely set the region alight, crash the nascent global economic recovery, and quite likely deeply offend Iran's great power allies of a sort in China, India, and Russia. But I have found this Bipartisan Policy Center report pushing war with Iran, with a few name Democrats like former Senator Chuck Robb and New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman joining neoconservatives on the core task force.
They aren't officially saying they want Israel to attack Iran, or the US to join in. But just in case Israel does attack Iran, we should help them in advance and send them 200 bunker buster bombs and three special aircraft to refuel the Israeli squadrons coming and going to Iran! Which obviously drives us ever closer to war.
Not that the plan, whatever it is, would actually work, or the inevitable backlash be mitigated. In fact, there is little discussion of how things might play out, but a lengthy exhortation against Iran.
However, this is a time for thoughtful consideration, not exhortation. After all, we've been through this with Iraq. Which went so well that US diplomats can't travel freely in Baghdad less than two months after our pull-out.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
William Bradley Huffington Post Archive
I do agree with this author that we need to demand a scenario that provides a reasonable outcome from those advocating war, for make no mistake it will be war. We should also expect that Iran will not fight on our high tech terms, but on their own. Any successful conflict will demand occupation which could well require 2-3 million men, and cost at least $1 Trillion (est on the cost of Iraq) and continue for decades.
Although, Iran has done this numerous times before, no?
By saying that Iran is a rational country, he was simply implying that he did not think that Iran would act irrationally with respect to nuclear weapons should they ever decide to make one (which Dempsey said the jury was still out on, in his opinion) and actually produce one.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/obamas-california-gold-ru_b_1292184.html
Unfortunately, the Bush administration had no intention of using the authorization it was given to avoid war, preferring instead to rush to war.
I am hopeful that the Obama administration will not be so dismissive of all of the forms of diplomacy at its disposal and will use all means necessary to persuade Israel that the military option is not the way to go to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Similarly, I would expect that, in addition to the tightening of sanctions that the US and its allies have put in place, an increased focus on negotiations and creative diplomacy to reach a peaceful agreement with Iran and avert a self-defeating military attack by Israel is in the works.
A vote in favour of the October 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the use of US military force in Iraq under certain clearly defined conditions was most decidedly NOT a "vote for war".
I am not convinced that Obama really understood what that resolution was all about and I think he used the tactic of falsely claiming that he was the only candidate who was against the Iraq invasion in an effort to compensate for his paucity of foreign policy expertise.
You know, opposing the resolution and opposing the war are two wholly different propositions.
I used to have an excellent link (www.authforce.liberatedtext.org) which provided a complete transcript of the debate in congress - Senate and House. Unfortunately, it does not seem to exist anymore. But, I did copy Biden's remarks on both days of the Senate floor debate which you might find very instructive. I think the only way I could get it to you, though, is through personal email ... so, you'll just have to take my word for it that a vote for that resolution was not a vote for war, not that many members didn't view their vote that way.
And, then there could be a full discussion of the authorization vote, how the Bush administration abused the authority it was given, and all that lead up to the invasion ... and Obama's views in the post-invasion period. Unfortunately we have not had the kind of inquiry into all of this that Britain has had and that we really need to have. Your essay on this would go a long way toward filling that gap.
The authorization vote and, more importantly, the debate leading up to it on the senate floor, was complicated and ambiguous. I used to have a link to a readable version of that entire debate, floor speeches by Biden and the works, but it is no longer available.
Some Democratic politicians, undoubtedly, saw a vote in favour of that authorization resolution as a definitive "vote for war" but, that does not make it so.
I'll have more to say about all of this here, in this piece, unless you think you might write anew on this critical subject, as we drift to war with Iran ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-interventionism
I think an important question which warrants thoughtful consideration is how military action in Iran would lead to a better outcome than containing an Iran that produces a few crude nuclear weapons, taking into account the full compliment of consequences and ramifications of each policy course.
I remember being quite ambivalent about the whole thing, myself. Mostly because some analysts and political leaders for whom I had a great deal of respect at the time - namely, Michael Ignatieff and Tony Blair - were making a credible case for going into Iraq.
And, yet, I also remember thinking that there has to be a better way to deal with Saddam - and, let's be clear ... he had to be dealt with, one way or another, a fact many seem to ignore.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/turkish-diplomat-iran-is-ready-to-cut-a-deal/2012/02/10/gIQANA164Q_story.html
That would be why Iran refused to allow the UN inspectors to even look at its nuclear program sites?
I don't think so.
I think that people who read the article can be distinguished from those who use it simply as a springboard to spray their opinions.
Lazy Minds are ignorant of & dangerous to, the well being of America.
100% of the personal income tax (your 1040) is consumed by the military, its ancillary agencies, or the interest on the debt incurred from past military excursionsÂ.
Iran will do what they will. Israel will respond or not. Our interests lie within our own borders. There is a civil war on our southern border that no one seems to acknowledgÂe with much greater consequence. 60,000 people have died in Mexico since 2006.
This is the pragmatic reality that someone needs to explain to WashingtonÂ. Our future should not include the Middle East--at all.
Get in touch with reality.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
Instead of beating war drums, you tap them lightly, a common passive-aggressive tactic of the Democratic party supporters to defend future actions that will be indefensible considering the precarious nature of our economic realities, leaving the door open to follow your fearful leader into another quagmire of war torn anarchy and global problems of our own making.
Calculated self interest (my preferred term for isolationism) is not "Neo" at all. But global interventionism surely is. I reject it on its face, regardless of the source, either right or left.
lol
The other countries in the region, who have no intention of letting Iran take over there, call it the Arabian Gulf.
lol
"Iran vs. Israel, two governments presently controlled by religionists. "
True for Iran. Completely false for Israel.
"One which may well have a Mahdi complex, "
According to Shia Doctrine: "The Twelfth Imam will return as the Mahdi with "a company of his chosen ones," and his enemies will be led by the one-eyed Antichrist and the Sufyani. The two armies will fight "one final apocalyptic battle" where the Mahdi and his forces will prevail over evil. After the Mahdi has ruled Earth for a number of years, Isa will return." The portent will be "Before his coming will come the red death and the white death, killing two thirds of the world's population. The red death signifies violence and the white death is plague. One third of the world's population will die from the red death and the other third from the white death."
WAR! AGGRESSION! CONQUEST! SUPERIORITY!
"The Massada Complex"
Political scientist Susan Hattis Rolef has defined this "complex" as "the conviction ... that it is preferable to fight to the end rather than to surrender and acquiesce to the loss of independent statehood." And, one might add, Jewish existence.
DEFENSIVE! SELF-PRESERVATIONIST! EXISTENTIALIST!
Where is the comparison?
1) You lied.
2) You falsely equated an aggressive, religious-based irrational movement with a defensive Alamo-like last stand.
That shows how un-necessary the Afghan war was. Do you have any idea how expensive that war was and how much money they had to "borrow" from Social Security to pay for it?