This is a post I found in the comments section of a blog about whether Bush will attack Iran before the elections, why, and what the consequences might be -- excellent!
Good arguments for both sides.
On the "won't attack" side, of course, are all the perfectly sane and rational reasons an attack on Iran would backfire-backfire in so many ways that to follow through with it would be incomprehensible in humanitarian terms, foreign-policy terms, economic terms, military terms, and almost any terms imaginable. Any terms, that is, except simply criminal terms. More on that in a moment.
On the "will attack" side, though, there's a significant difference between this hypothetical operation and the scenario we confronted in pre-invasion Iraq. The difference is that Iran can actually fight back. That, of course, has been pointed out-but its significance is political rather than military.
However an attack might be rationalized in the short term-whether as retaliation for a pre-arranged or even a staged Iranian strike, a simple extension of existing pre-emption policy after lots of scary talk about Iranian nukes and the impossibility of diplomatic solutions, or whatever-it's very possible that a couple of American vessels could be lying on the bottom of the Straits within hours of the beginning of hostilities.
In that case, count on this: a great hullaballoo would ensue in the American media for all-out engagement, and questions about the official version of how it all started would be tabled for later. . . some time after November 7, or even after 2008, I suspect.
At sea, as in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, even responsible officers who'd questioned the mission from the start would pull the trigger once American blood had been shed. Back home, the well-being of our service people would once again be trotted out as a human shield against accountability for our leaders-and in our political climate, however cynical people might be about what's going on, who's going to step up and demand that we "cut and run" now that a couple of destroyers and several hundred sailors are in Davy Jones' locker? Who's going to stand against the hurricane and demand an immediate investigation, when American service people are fighting for their very lives? Virulent warnings against "treason" would fill the radio waves, and even the calmest voices would assure us that there would be time later for questions-that "right now, there's a job to be done."
Another unresisted slaughter-fest like the Iraq invasion, of course, would be political suicide for our leaders, as it would generate only cynical disgust back home-and the very smartest thing the mullahs could do if we did attack would be to offer no resistance at all except to flood the world with heart-wrenching images of dead and wounded civilians. But would they be that smart? Or would they launch whatever military capabilities they possess, across the widest-possible theater of operations, and drown any thought of investigating around here in a tidal wave of jingoism?
If Iran did respond militarily, with some success-as there is every reason to think it could-it wouldn't necessarily guarantee a new lease on life for a Republican Congress. But even a triumphant Democratic Party would be confronted with an impossible dilemma after November 7. Take down the resolute "commander-in-chief" in the very midst of a hot war, with Fox News anchors howling their patriotic contempt and America under attack all over the world? (Hard to imagine North Korea twiddling its thumbs as the SECOND nation in the "axis of evil" is attacked, isn't it?) Apologize to Iran, televise a moving funeral-at-sea for our lost service people, and sail the rest of the fleet away?
Nope. They'd have to "stay the course." And when accountability time came later, they'd all be complicit. Complicity tends to mute the vigor of investigations and calls for impeachment, just as it has muted the outcry against our misadventure in Iraq.
It's hard to imagine that all this could be, of course, unless you lower your frame of reference down to around shoe level, where the rats scurry. That's where we get back to "criminal terms," as promised. If you're willing to hypothesize that it's nothing more and nothing less than a simple criminal enterprise-that it's all about seizing permanent power in the United States, to which end foreign nationals, American service people, and the taxpayers' wallets are just expendable props in a political drama-then everything that's happened in the past five years makes a twisted kind of sense.
AMERICAN MILITARY CASUALTIES? "Not anyone of good family, certainly! There aren't any jobs left in their little mill towns, anyway."
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES? "Well, most people in the Middle East are kind of brown, aren't they? Or they have funny noses, or something? And that religion of theirs-Mooslam? Goodness!"
HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WASTED? "That's the great part-the rubes are paying for every gallon of fuel, every gatling gun round, and every cruise missile-and they've got trillions more we haven't even spent yet! Besides, the money they spend doesn't just disappear-it goes into someone's pocket! Whose? Well, take a guess."
SKYROCKETING PRICES FOR CRUDE? "Out of a sacred obligation to our stockholders, we'd have to pass that along to the consumer! That's Business 101."
CRUSHED DOMESTIC ECONOMY? "Well, there's always the military! And besides, we have a lovely place in Paraguay."
One doesn't wish to think that any of this could happen to America-that its constitutional checks and balances, and its fearless press, and its educated citizenry, would permit even a carefully engineered takeover of the country with the evidence stinking under their very noses. But as we say out west, wish in one hand and "defecate" in the other, and see which one fills up first. Five years ago, I didn't think any of the stuff that HAS happened could-pre-emptive war; signing statements; arbitrary "enemy combatant" status even for American citizens; a sitting vice-president still drawing checks from the corporation he's helped to open-ended, no-bid, multi-billion-dollar war contracts; unverifiable election machinery; and on and on and on. I didn't think it could happen. It did.
So maybe it's all a bluff, and the election will play out as it ought to, and America will totter back toward sanity. But maybe my nightmare scenario will play out in every detail-along with a few I haven't thought of. If the former, great-I'll mop my brow and get on with life. If the latter, we'll see you in the camps, I suppose.
In either case, thanks for letting me vent.
Comment by Battling Bob | Oct. 16, 2006, 9:59 pm |
