[Peace-discuss] The war about the wider war

[C. G. Estabrook]

	How the Military Can Stop an Iran Attack 	
	Published on Wednesday, October 10, 2007.
	Source: The Nation - JEREMY BRECHER & BRENDAN SMITH

Sometimes history -- and necessity -- make strange bedfellows. The 
German general staff transported Lenin to Russia to lead a revolution. 
Union-buster Ronald Reagan played godfather to the birth of the Polish 
Solidarity union. Equally strange -- but perhaps equally necessary -- is 
the addressee of a new appeal signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, 
Ann Wright and many other leaders of the American peace movement:

"ATTENTION: Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel: Do 
not attack Iran."

The initiative responds to the growing calls for an attack on Iran from 
the likes of Norman Podhoretz and John Bolton, and the reports of 
growing war momentum in Washington by reporters like Seymour Hersh of 
The New Yorker and Joe Klein of Time. International lawyer Scott Horton 
says European diplomats at the recent United Nations General Assembly 
gathering in New York "believe that the United States will launch an air 
war on Iran, and that it will occur within the next six to eight 
months." He puts the likelihood of conflict at 70 percent.

The initiative also responds to the recent failure of Congress to pass 
legislation requiring its approval before an attack on Iran and the 
hawk-driven resolution encouraging the President to act against the 
Iranian military. Marcy Winograd, president of Progressive Democrats of 
Los Angeles, who originally suggested the petition, told The Nation:

If we thought that our lawmakers would restrain the Bush Administration 
from further endangering Americans and the rest of the world, we would 
concentrate solely on them. If we went to Las Vegas today, would we find 
anyone willing to bet on this Congress restraining Bush? I don't think so.

Because our soldiers know the horrors of war--severed limbs, blindness, 
brain injury--they are loath to romanticize the battlefield or glorify 
expansion of the Iraq genocide that has left a million Iraqis dead and 
millions others exiled.

Military Resistance

What could be stranger than a group of peace activists petitioning the 
military to stop a war? And yet there is more logic here than meets the eye.

Asked in an online discussion September 27 whether the Bush 
Administration will launch a war against Iran, Washington Post 
intelligence reporter Dana Priest replied, "Frankly, I think the 
military would revolt and there would be no pilots to fly those missions."

She acknowledged that she had indulged in a bit of hyperbole, then 
added, "but not much."

There have been many other hints of military disaffection from plans to 
attack Iran--indeed, military resistance may help explain why, despite 
years of rumors about Bush Administration intentions, such an attack has 
not yet occurred. A Pentagon consultant told Hersh more than a year ago, 
"There is a war about the war going on inside the building." Hersh also 
reported that Gen. Peter Pace had forced Bush and Cheney to remove the 
"nuclear option" from the plans for possible conflict with Iran--in the 
Pentagon it was known as the April Revolution.

In December, according to Time correspondent Joe Klein, President Bush 
met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a secure room known as The Tank. 
The President was told that "the U.S. could launch a devastating air 
attack on Iran's government and military, wiping out the Iranian air 
force, the command and control structure and some of the more obvious 
nuclear facilities." But the Joint Chiefs were "unanimously opposed to 
taking that course of action," both because it might not eliminate 
Iran's nuclear capacity and because Iran could respond devastatingly in 
Iraq--and in the United States.

In an article published by Inter Press Service, historian and national 
security policy analyst Gareth Porter reported that Adm. William Fallon, 
Bush's then-nominee to head the Central Command (Centcom), sent the 
Defense Department a strongly worded message earlier this year opposing 
the plan to send a third carrier strike group into the Persian Gulf. In 
another Inter Press analysis, Porter quotes someone who met with Fallon 
saying an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch." He added, "You 
know what choices I have. I'm a professional.... There are several of us 
trying to put the crazies back in the box."

Military officers in the field have frequently refuted Bush 
Administration claims about Iranian arms in Iraq and Afghanistan. Porter 
says that when a State Department official this June publicly accused 
Iran of giving arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US commander of 
NATO forces there twice denied the claim.

More recently, top brass have warned that the United States is not 
prepared for new wars. Gen. George Casey, the Army's top commander, 
recently made a highly unusual personal request for a House Armed 
Services Committee hearing in which he warned that "we are consumed with 
meeting the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready 
forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies." While 
this could surely be interpreted as a call for more troops and 
resources, it may simultaneously be a warning shot against adventures in 
Iran.

An October 8 report by Tim Shipman in the Telegraph says that Defense 
Secretary Robert Gates has "taken charge of the forces in the American 
government opposed to a US military attack on Iran." He cites Pentagon 
sources saying that Gates is waging "a subtle campaign to undermine the 
Cheney camp" and that he is "encouraging the Army's senior officers to 
speak frankly about the overstretch of forces, and the difficulty of 
fighting another war." Shipman reports Gates has "forged an alliance 
with Mike McConnell, the national director of intelligence, and Michael 
Hayden, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, to ensure that Mr. 
Cheney's office is not the dominant conduit of information and planning 
on Iran to Mr. Bush."

Every indication is that the "war about the war" is ongoing. Hersh 
recently reported that the attack-Iran faction has found a new approach 
that it hopes will be more acceptable to the public--and presumably to 
the Pentagon brass. Instead of broad bombing attacks designed to 
eliminate Iran's nuclear capacity and promote regime change, it calls 
for "surgical strikes" on Revolutionary Guard facilities; they would be 
justified as retaliation in the "proxy war" that General Petraeus 
alleges Iran is fighting "against the Iraqi state and coalition forces 
in Iraq." According to Hersh, the revised bombing plan is "gathering 
support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon." But Israeli 
officials are concerned that such a plan might leave Iran's nuclear 
capacity intact.

Appeal to Principle

The appeal for military personnel to resist an attack is primarily based 
on principle. It asserts that any pre-emptive US attack on Iran would be 
illegal under international law and a crime under US law. Such an attack 
would violate Article II, Section 4, of the UN Charter forbidding the 
threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political 
independence of any state. Since Iran has not attacked the United 
States, an attack against it without authorization by the Security 
Council would be a violation of international law. Under the US 
Constitution and the UN Charter, this is the law of the land. Under the 
military's own laws, armed forces have an obligation to refuse orders 
that violate US law and the Constitution. And under the principles 
established by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal after World War II, 
"just obeying orders" is no defense for officials who participate in war 
crimes.

But the petition also addresses some of the practical concerns that have 
clearly motivated military officers to oppose an attack on Iran. It 
would open US soldiers in Iraq to decimation by Iranian forces or their 
Iraqi allies. It would sow the seeds of hatred for generations. Like the 
attack on Iraq, it would create more enemies, promote terrorism and make 
American families less safe.

The petitioners recognize the potential risks of such action to military 
personnel. "If you heed our call and disobey an illegal order you could 
be falsely charged with crimes including treason. You could be falsely 
court martialed. You could be imprisoned."

But they also accept risks themselves, aware that "in violation of our 
First Amendment rights, we could be charged under remaining section of 
the unconstitutional Espionage Act or other unconstitutional statute, 
and that we could be fined, imprisoned, or barred from government 
employment."

In ordinary times, peace activists would hardly be likely to turn to the 
military as allies. Indeed, they would rightfully be wary of military 
officers acting on their own, rather than those of their civilian 
superiors--in violation of the Constitution's provisions for civilian 
oversight of the military. But these are hardly ordinary times. While 
the public is highly dubious of getting into another war in the Middle 
East, there now appear to be virtually no institutional barriers to 
doing so.

Military-Civilian Alliance

Is there a basis for cooperation between the military brass and citizens 
who believe an attack on Iran would be criminal and/or suicidal? 
Perhaps. The brass can go public with the truth and ask Congress to 
provide a platform for explaining the real consequences of an attack on 
Iran. They can call for a national debate that is not manipulated by the 
White House. (They can also inform other players of the consequences: 
tell Wall Street the effects on oil and stock prices and tell European 
military and political leaders what it is likely to mean in terms of 
terrorism.) The peace movement has already forged an alliance with Iraq 
War veterans who oppose the war and with high military officials who 
oppose torture; a tacit alliance with the brass to halt an attack on 
Iran is a logical next step.

Such an approach puts the problem of civilian control of the military in 
a different light. The purpose of civilian control, after all, is not to 
subject the military to the dictatorial control of one man who may, at 
the least, express the foolishness and frailty that all flesh is heir 
to. The purpose is to subject the military to the control of democratic 
governance, which is to say of an informed public and its representatives.

What contribution can the peace movement make to this process? We can 
cover military officials' backs when they speak out--no one is better 
placed than the peace movement to defend them against Bushite charges of 
defying civilian control. We can help open a forum for military officers 
to speak out. Many retired officers have spoken out publicly on the 
folly of the war in Iraq. We can use our venues in universities and 
communities to invite them to speak out even more forcefully on the 
folly of an attack on Iran. We can place ads pointing out military 
resistance to an attack on Iran and featuring warnings of its possible 
consequences from past and present military officials. And we can 
encourage lawmakers to reach out to military officials and offer to give 
them cover and a forum to speak out. Says petition initiator Marcy 
Winograd, "I'd like to see peace activists and soldiers sit down, break 
bread, march together, testify together and force a powerful union to 
end the next war before the bloodletting begins."

The peace movement leaders who appealed to the military had to break 
through the conventional presumption that the brass were their enemies 
in all situations. Such an unlikely alliance could be a starting point 
for a nonviolent response to the Bush Administration's pursuit of a 
permanent state of war.

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