Slouching Towards Tehran by Elizabeth Spiro Clark

Elizabeth Spiro Clark is a retired Foreign Service officer who writes extensively on issues of global democratization.

link: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/05/04/slouching_towards_tehran.php

snip:"Where are the calls to stop the Bush administration from taking military action against Iran, despite a loud chorus of voices warning of its disastrous consequences? Critics list the consequences—escalation (with no troops to escalate with), oil shocks, increased terrorism, worsening insurgency in Iraq, weakening the nonproliferation regime, a stronger Ahmadinejad, and international isolation—but few come out and call bombing Iran the worst worse-case scenario. The inability of the Democrats to insert themselves into this debate is a factor, but, that aside, it is important to ask why the debate is shaping up as if the Bush administration’s threats are not to be believed.

Even when critics go so far as to call a military strike the worst of options, they are ducking the central issue by failing to condemn the military option. Many find it easy to argue that the administration hasn’t exhausted all the diplomatic options and therefore the debate should focus on diplomacy. But does the administration look like it wants to run the diplomacy course? Carnegie Endowment President Jessica Tuchman Matthews laid out in a March 21 New York Times editorial what the U.S. has to do to get negotiations going on the nuclear question; most importantly, dropping preconditions on negotiations and dropping regime change ambitions. The Bush administration has done neither. A drumfire of statements and signals points in the opposite direction. Only yesterday, a senior White House official said that when he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President George W. Bush would explicitly reject any appeal from Merkel asking him to accept direct negotiations with Iran."

snip:"If Bush attacks Iran he can and will cast the action not only as preempting a nuclear threat but also as a necessary action in the “long war” against terrorism. In fact, an attack on Iran will give the administration a new story line on Iraq—Iranian machinations. In February, Sen. Byrd asked Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Pace whether the $75 million special appropriations requested to aid Iranian democrats could be used to attack Iran. The answer was basically yes, ambiguously couched in the context of targeting Iranian terrorists operating in Iraq. Victory in Iraq will be linked to action against Iran.

From the perspective of personal ideology, in attacking Iran, Bush reinforces his commander-in-chief role and the “good versus evil” rhetoric he is comfortable with—Iranian President Ahmadinejad playing his part to the hilt. By acting to protect Israel, Bush will appeal to his religious fundamentalist base and—in all likelihood—his own faith convictions. A military strike would also be an expression of Bush and his core constituency’s sense of their identity as Americans, namely, that the way the U.S. imposes its dominance globally is through force. In a military strike on Iran scenario, the cure for the failure of force in Iraq is to use more force, much as Vietnam diehards remain convinced that with more force the war could have been won. This is a Brer Rabbit moment, throwing Bush into a place he really wants to be, where force or the threat of force become the only tools of U.S. foreign policy left."

read full article:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/05/04/slouching_towards_tehran.php



http://www.dontattackiran.org

start making a LOT of noise about, this may stand as #1 . . . if BushCo attacks Iraq, all bets are off in every aspect of out lives, both political and personal . . .

and using nukes of any kind opens a Pandora's Box that only the criminally insane would attempt . . .

they MUST be stopped . . .

action against Iran, despite a loud chorus of voices warning of its disastrous consequences?"

Assuming this is not a rhetorical statement, I'll tell ya:

Republican leaders and lackeys in the House and Senate will not contradict their "fearless leader" and act independently.

Democratic leaders and lackeys in the House and the Senate don't want to protest, knowing that the *, Rove, Frist, and Hastert will immediately call them weak on "defense" (heh) and there is the thing about mid-term elections where dems don't want to do ANYTHING to ruin their potential opportunity to "take back" back both Houses.

So like a good game of Chicken, we are going to be dragged into a future morass of World War III due to human foibles. Y'know, the usual reason for war.