[Peace-discuss] Who will stop this war?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Does anyone in AWARE disagree with this analysis?  --CGE]

    April 28, 2006
    Of Imperial Presidents and Congressional Cowards
    by Patrick J. Buchanan

Now that Congress is back from spring break and looking ahead to 
Memorial Day, July 4, the August recess and adjournment early in October 
for elections, perhaps it can take up this question.

Does President Bush have, or not have, the authority to take us to war 
with Iran? Because Bush and the War Party are surely behaving as though 
this were an executive decision alone.

No sooner had President Ahmadinejad declared that his country had 
enriched a speck of uranium than the war drums began again.

Bush has said of Iran that even "a process which would enable Iran to 
develop a nuclear weapon is unacceptable." John McCain has said too many 
times to count, "The military option is on the table." The 2006 National 
Security Strategy re-endorses preventive war and elevates Iran to the 
No. 1 threat to the United States.

This is not enough for The Weekly Standard, which equates our situation 
with that of France in 1936, when Paris sat immobile while Hitler 
marched three lightly armed battalions back into the German Rhineland, 
which had been demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.

"To Bomb or Not to Bomb, That Is the Iran Question," is the title of an 
extended piece in the Standard, whose editorial calls for "urgent 
operational planning for bombing strikes." As that would likely ignite 
Shia and Revolutionary Guard terror attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, the 
Standard wants Bush to send more troops.

In an editorial "Iran, Now," National Review is already into target 
acquisition. It calls for plans for a massive bombing campaign "coupled 
with an aggressive and persistent efforts to topple the regime from 
within." Ideally, U.S. bombs "should hit not just the nuclear 
facilities, but also the symbols of state oppression: the intelligence 
ministry, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard, the guard towers 
of the notorious Evin Prison."

In The Washington Post, Mark Helprin, who is identified as having 
"served in the Israeli army and air force," says "the obvious option is 
an aerial campaign to divest Iran of its nuclear potential: i.e., clear 
the Persian Gulf of Iranian naval forces, scrub anti-ship missiles from 
the shore and lay open antiaircraft-free corridors to each target. … 
Were the targets effectively hidden or buried, Iran could be shut down, 
coerced and perhaps revolutionized by the simple and rapid destruction 
of its oil production and transport."

Since Muslims may not like what we are up to, Helprin cautions, we 
should prepare "for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel 
and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates," and, presumably, from there the 
final push on to Tehran.

In all this hawk talk, something is missing. We are not told how many 
innocent Iranians we will have to kill as we go about smashing their 
nuclear program and defenses. Nor are we told how many more soldiers we 
will need for the neocons' new war, nor how long they will have to 
fight, nor how many more wings we should plan for at Walter Reed, nor 
when it will be over – if ever.

Moreover, where does Bush get the authority to launch a war on a nation 
that has not attacked us? As few believe Iran is close to a nuclear 
weapon, while four neighbors – Russia, India, Pakistan, and Israel, not 
to mention the United States – already have the bomb, what is America's 
justification for war?

If we sat by while Stalin got the bomb, and Mao got the bomb, and Kim 
Jong-Il got the bomb, why is an Iranian bomb a threat to the United 
States, which possesses thousands?

There is a reason the Founding Fathers separated the power to conduct 
war from the power to declare it. The reason is just such a ruler as 
George W. Bush, a man possessed of an ideology and sense of mission that 
are not necessarily coterminous with what is best for his country. Under 
our Constitution, it is Congress, not the president, who decides on war.

Many Democrats now concede they failed the nation when they took Bush at 
his word that Iraq was an intolerable threat that could be dealt with 
only by an invasion. Now, Bush and the War Party are telling us the same 
thing about Iran. And the Congress is conducting itself in the same 
contemptible and cowardly way.

It is time for Congress to tell President Bush directly that he has no 
authority to go to war on Iran and to launch such a war would be an 
impeachable offense. Or, if they so conclude, Congress should share full 
responsibility by granting him that authority after it has held hearings 
and told the people why we have no other choice than another Mideast 
war, with a nation three times as large as Iraq.

If Congress lacks the courage to do its constitutional duty, it should 
stop whining about imperial presidents. Because, like the Roman Senate 
of Caesar's time, it will have invited them and it will deserve them.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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