The whirlwind

If you read anything at all today, be sure that it's this important essay from retired Foreign Service officer Elizabeth Spiro Clark, via TomPaine.com. In it, Ms. Clark argues that even the scattered criticisms of belligerent U.S. attitudes toward Iran that have surfaced in the media (and, inexcusably, there aren't enough), are "ducking the central issue," since they are based on the premise that America simply cannot launch an attack given its current state of military readiness.

This premise, she contends, has caused critics to view the issue in a hypothetical sense, debating the Administration's provocative rhetoric as something ill-informed, but certainly not actionable, and stopping short of openly and directly condemning the insanity of this option being kept "on the table" at all. Clark writes:

Critics who are confident they can put off writing their "don't do it" columns because of the irrationality of the strike should consider how a strike is rational - from Bush's perspective. Bush faces a predicament. Whether or not he draws down, withdraws or stays in Iraq, the war will secure his place in history as a failure. A second and related predicament is that if the Democrats capture the House this fall he will spend his last two years fighting investigations, censures and even impeachment - unless he sets himself down in a different geopolitical landscape.

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.

As anyone familiar with this site knows all too well, I've been adamantly opposed to the Administration's bullying tactics toward Tehran for quite some time, and genuinely terrified that the warmongers dictating policy in Washington are, in fact, unhinged enough to fabricate "evidence," convince the American people they are in "imminent danger," and launch an unnecessary and unprovoked war in the name of securing "peace." Let's face it - they've done it once already.

We cannot allow these continued overtures to war to go unchallenged. We cannot allow the traditional media to remain complicit in Administration fearmongering about Iran. We cannot allow ourselves to be duped again into attacking a nation that poses no threat to anyone, simply because the proven liars that govern this nation say otherwise.

If we do, we have only ourselves to blame for the whirlwind that will surely follow.