[Peace-discuss] Iran scare

[Morton K. Brussel]

The only flies in the ointment of this analysis is that 1) Bush is  
still the Commander in Chief of the armed forces--and they will do  
his bidding, 2) an election is coming up in which a military  
adventure could swing the popular vote to McCain, and 3) that  
rationality is not the main attribute of the Cheney-Bush gang.

What may determine what will happen is the assessment by the military  
and other experts of what Iran can and will do after it is attacked.  
I don't think this is clear.

I believe one should expect the worst, and fight like hell to avert  
it. In that sense, I don't think this piece is very helpful. --mkb


On Jul 15, 2008, at 10:35 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [This seems about right.  One might handicap the horses (or parts  
> thereof) a bit differently, and it might be worthwhile to advert to  
> the general US policy (shared by both parties), but as far as they  
> go both the analysis and the exhortation seem generally sound. --CGE]
>
> 	Attack On Iran On The Way? Uh, Maybe Not...
> 	Jul 15, 2008
> 	By Bill Fletcher, Jr., and Dennis O'Neil
>
> Once again, there's a lot of serious attack-on-Iran talk going  
> around. We've both been following this, admittedly with no deep  
> expertise, for several years now. During that time a number of  
> media/blogosphere storms declaring such an attack imminent have  
> whirled up and then blown away. (Of course, we oughtn't to forget  
> that in the old children's story, the wolf eventually does come and  
> eat the shepherd boy who produced the false alarms.) So we decided  
> to sketch out these few points.
>
> 1. No matter how much Bush and his coterie may want it, we give no  
> more than 10% odds on an attack actually taking place, and that's  
> mainly just covering ourselves.
>
> 2. The furor is not a calculated bluff by the administration to put  
> pressure on Iran. Neither is it a planned distraction to weaken  
> opposition to the continued occupation of Iraq. It's the public  
> face of a tense struggle within US ruling circles, concentrated in  
> the state apparatus. Among those pushing for an attack are Bush,  
> who is looking for the Hail Mary pass that will redeem his  
> presidency in the history books; Cheney and the neocons and open  
> advocates of empire, who are certain that the US can by force of  
> will and arms dominate the world; a minority in the Armed Forces,  
> mostly notably in the Air Force which hasn't been permitted to get  
> their lethal jollies in the region; and the Israel lobby people,  
> fronting for ruling class forces there who want to crush anything  
> that might end Israel's regional monopoly on nukes.
>
> Arrayed against an assault on Iran are a whole range of powerful  
> forces in the US and throughout the world. Articles like the well- 
> publicized Seymour Hersh pieces in the New Yorker recently are  
> salvos in that battle. We identify a few more below.
>
> 3. First and foremost, it is the majority in the military high  
> command that is blocking any attack on Iran--as they have,  
> unswervingly, for the last four years. They know full well that  
> even an assault as limited as air bombardment of "suspected nuclear  
> sites" would put US land and naval forces in the region in an  
> untenable position, and they are nervous about the longer term  
> damage it would do to US power, "soft" as well as military.
>
> Just look at three key developments in the last week, hardly  
> coincidences as the pounding of the war drums by attack advocates  
> in and outside the administration supporters grew louder.
>
> First, the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth issued  
> On Point II, the second volume in its ongoing history of the Iraq  
> war--which focuses the lack of a follow-up plan for after the  
> capture of Baghdad and victory over the regular Iraqi armed forces.
>
> "The army, as the service primarily responsible for ground  
> operations, should have insisted on better Phase IV planning and  
> preparations through its voice on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The  
> military means employed were sufficient to destroy the Saddam  
> regime; they were not sufficient to replace it with the type of  
> nation-state the United States wished to see in its place."
>
> This was intended to underline the fact that there is no post- 
> attack plan for Iran, nor any feasible way to develop one, to say  
> nothing of the absence of a plan to deal with likely blowback in  
> other parts of the region--the preparation hasn't happened and the  
> horses just aren't there.
>
> Second, to follow up, the Pentagon released a report on how things  
> are going in Afghanistan, "its first assessment of conditions in  
> Afghanistan since the invasion began in 2001" according to the Wall  
> Street Journal. In short: Armed attacks up, US fatalities up,  
> narcotics production up, corruption up, Taliban influence up,  
> stability down, and worse to come.
>
> Third, to cap it off, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  
> Admiral Mike Mullen announced at a Pentagon press gathering that  
> the US is currently in danger of losing in Afghanistan because  
> there aren't enough troops:
>
> "I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send  
> into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq.  
> Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign,  
> which by definition means we need more forces there."
>
> Regarding Iran, Mullen added, evidently for those too dim to draw  
> the obvious conclusion,
>
> "Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful  
> for us. This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don't need  
> it to be more unstable."
>
> Nor is this view limited to the Armed Forces' uniformed commanders.  
> Secretary of Defense Robert Gates late last year spoke to the  
> Democratic caucus in the Senate. In his remarks, as reported by  
> Hersh, Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration  
> staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator  
> recalled, "We'll create generations of jihadists, and our  
> grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America." Gates'  
> comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator  
> asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick  
> Cheney. Gates' answer, the senator told me, was "Let's just say  
> that I'm here speaking for myself."
>
> 4. The most valuable political ally the pro-attack faction has,  
> despite Gates' warning, is the national Democratic Party. Congress  
> voted $400 million earlier this year to fund and operationalize a  
> secret "Presidential Finding" signed by Bush. This Finding steps up  
> incursions into Iran by CIA and elite military units and the  
> passing of arms and intelligence to extremely sketchy "opposition"  
> forces within Iran. The Democrats went right along with this  
> transparently provocative effort to create an incident inside Iran  
> which could be exploited as a casus belli.
>
> Now before Congress we have House Resolution 362, which 102 House  
> Democrats have joined 117 Republicans in sponsoring. Like its  
> identical twin, Senate Resolution 580--introduced by Evan Bayh  
> (Dem, IN)--it demands that Bush take steps "inter alia, prohibiting  
> the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing  
> stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships,  
> planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran." The basic  
> idea of this non-binding resolution is that the US will take  
> advantage of Iran's refinery shortage by stopping the flow of much- 
> needed gasoline into the oil-producing country.
>
> Despite a clause at the beginning stating that the bills do not  
> authorize military action, the fact is that no such blockade of  
> shipping into and out of Iran could be conducted without force. To  
> initiate a blockade without UN approval would be a declaration of  
> war against Iran (and an act of aggression against any country  
> peacefully trading with Iran).
>
> Driven primarily by the politics of posing (The Democrats: Tough on  
> Towelheads!) and placating (HR 362 and SR 580 are among AIPAC's top  
> legislative priorities according to the Zionist lobbying group's  
> website), the bills are actually very dangerous in two ways. First,  
> they continue the ongoing demonization of Islam and of Iran and its  
> people, and promote the idea that the US has the right to intervene  
> wherever it wants on any pretext. To do this at a time when the  
> invasion of Iraq has made the US population very wary of rhetoric  
> about why "we" need to go to war is unforgivable.
>
> Second, should Bush & Co. actually manage to conjure up a  
> convincing Gulf of Tonkin-type incident, they could point to this  
> resolution to justify starting an armed blockade--and a war!
>
> Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, incidentally,  
> blusters of Iran that the military option "is on the table" and  
> that he will meet Iranian leaders only on his timetable and "if and  
> only if it can advance the interest of the United States." He has  
> not yet announced what he intends to do about SR 580, which, like  
> HR 362, is expected to pass the Democratic-controlled Congress by a  
> 2/3 majority under expedited voting rules very soon.
>
> 5. Overall, the signs indicate that the majority of the US ruling  
> class really does not want an attack on Iran. One clear indication  
> came with the release last fall of the National Intelligence  
> Estimate, the consensus opinion of more than a dozen US  
> intelligence agencies (some part of the Armed Forces, others, like  
> the CIA, not), that Iran did not even have an active nuclear  
> weapons program!
>
> After being rolled by the Bushies in the Iraq WMD fiasco, these  
> crucial institutions of capitalist rule are eager to prove their  
> position "above politics" and their worth to their masters.
>
> It is true that the US imperialists are already in a deep, deep  
> hole in Iraq, with no good options--they can't afford to stay (the  
> growing budget deficit, the lack of troops, popular opposition to  
> the occupation) and they believe that they cannot afford to leave  
> (the damage to US interests and prestige, all that lovely  
> petroleum). But at least most of them recognize the folk wisdom  
> that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is  
> stop digging.
>
> To concentrate their minds, we have crude oil climbing to $145 a  
> barrel. Economists at major imperialist institutions globally,  
> public and private, are warning of catastrophic outcomes if the  
> trend continues. "Two-hundred-dollar oil would break the back of  
> the global economy," is the blunt estimate of Deutsche Bank AG's  
> chief energy economist Adam Sieminski. Is it possible to imagine a  
> major assault on Iran that wouldn't drive oil prices much higher  
> than that for an indefinite period?
>
> 6. Despite chit-chat by pundits, there is no easy way for the  
> administration to finesse these contradictions by having Israel  
> undertake the attack. Even under the extremely questionable  
> assumption that the Israeli Defense Forces (a) have the capacity to  
> devastate the very dispersed and hardened Iranian nuclear program  
> without US participation and, (b) feel like going it alone in the  
> teeth of international law and world public opinion, one brutal  
> geographic fact stands in the way. Any IDF air and missile assault  
> on Iran would have to pass through Iraqi airspace, which is  
> controlled by the US occupation, and would constitute a US-approved  
> and sponsored attack. Further, the al-Maliki regime in Iraq would  
> have to denounce it as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and turn  
> hard against their own US sponsors or fall in the face of Shiite rage.
>
> So what do we do? Journalists like Hersh are yelling like their  
> hair is on fire, trying to forestall the attacks they predict.  
> Activist experts like Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy work  
> tirelessly to focus the attention of the left liberal blogosphere  
> on Iran and promote options for negotiation. US Labor Against the  
> War and others have called for a massive phone-in directed at  
> Congress. The country's largest anti-war coalition, United For  
> Peace & Justice, has called for protest actions on July 19-21.
>
> Though skeptical of the likelihood of an attack, we strongly  
> support all of these initiatives. Still, the most important thing  
> for us to be doing at this time is to continue building an  
> independent movement focused on ending the war in Iraq and  
> Afghanistan, and on winning the 70% of our fellow Americans who are  
> against the Iraq war to act against the war. The stronger that  
> movement is, the more it serves to forestall further imperialist  
> ventures in Iran or elsewhere. Check out the Iraq Moratorium.
>
> And this holds true even if the two of us should prove wrong. An  
> actual attack would mean that even the implacable opposition of the  
> high command and deep concern in the ranks of the powers that be  
> are not enough to forestall a spectacularly unpopular lame duck  
> administration from launching a whole new war in its death throes.  
> Supposing our gritty but fatigued anti-war movement could shift  
> gears to make Iran its main focus, how much more weight would that  
> throw on the scales? They know what we think already.
>
> We have to continue to build on our strengths, to expand the  
> movement and draw in the tens of millions we have helped persuade,  
> over the last half decade, that the occupation is a slow-motion  
> train wreck causing catastrophic destruction in Iraq and  
> irreparable harm to our own country.
>
>
> Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the executive editor of  
> www.blackcommentator.com and a co-founder of the Center for Labor  
> Renewal. Dennis O'Neil is on the national coordinating body of the  
> Iraq Moratorium.
>
>
> From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
> URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3555
>
>
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