[Peace-discuss] Liberals for attacking Iran, conservatives against

[Stuart Levy]

That's funny.  Liberals vs. conservatives again...  Why the distraction?

If Lindsay Graham, the Washington Times, and the AEI are liberal,
then I need a new dictionary.  But calling out all these people,
with both party labels, as members of the singular War Party is about right.

Other than the Subject line, thanks for this -- it's a good article.
Antidote to the foolish NYT piece.  If only as many people read this.



On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 12:10:20PM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [The Obama administration and its allies, like the NYT, scream about the 
> Iranian threat to distract from their wretched performance (for most, not 
> all, Americans) on economic matters. They may be vicious enough to do it. 
> It's good that there's some opposition to them in US politics. --CGE]
>
> 	What War with Iran Means
> 	by Patrick J. Buchanan, April 02, 2010
>
> "Diplomacy has failed," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told AIPAC, "Iran is on 
> the verge of becoming nuclear and we cannot afford that."
>
> "We have to contemplate the final option," said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., 
> "the use of force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon."
>
> War is a "terrible thing," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., but "sometimes 
> it is better to go to war than to allow the Holocaust to develop a second 
> time."
>
> Graham then describes the war we Americans should fight:
>
> "If military force is ever employed, it should be done in a decisive 
> fashion. The Iran government’s ability to wage conventional war against 
> its neighbors and our troops in the region should not exist. They should 
> not have one plane that can fly or one ship that can float."
>
> Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, Neocon Central, 
> writes, "The only questions remaining, one Washington politico tells me, 
> are who starts it, and how it ends."
>
> As to who starts it, we know the answer. Tehran has not started a war in 
> memory and is not going to launch a suicide attack on a superpower with 
> thousands of nuclear weapons. As with Iraq in 2003, the war will be 
> launched by the United States against a nation that did not attack us — 
> to strip it of weapons it does not have.
>
> But to Graham’s point, if we are going to start this war, prudence 
> dictates that we destroy Iran’s ability to fight back. At a minimum, we 
> would have to use air strikes and cruise missiles to hit a range of 
> targets.
>
> First, Iran’s nuclear facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant at 
> Natanz, the U.S.-built reactor that makes medical isotopes, the power plant 
> at Bushehr, the centrifuge facility near Qom and the heavy-water plant at 
> Arak.
>
> Our problem here is that the last three are not even operational and all 
> are subject to U.N. inspections. There are Russians at Bushehr. And there 
> is no evidence that diversion to a weapons program has taken place.
>
> If Iran has secret plants working on nuclear weapons, why have we not been 
> told where, and demanded that U.N. inspectors be let in? Why did 16 U.S. 
> intelligence agencies, three years ago, tell us they did not exist and Iran 
> gave up its drive for a nuclear weapon in 2003?
>
> If Iran is on the "verge" of a bomb, as Schumer claims, the entire U.S. 
> intelligence community should be decapitated for incompetence.
>
> This week, in a hyped headline, "CIA: Iran capable of producing nukes," the 
> Washington Times said that a new CIA report claims, "Iran continues to 
> develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear 
> weapons, if a decision is made to do so."
>
> Excuse me, but this is mush. We could say the same of a dozen countries 
> that use nuclear power and study nuclear technology.
>
> But let us continue with Graham’s blitzkrieg war.
>
> To prevent a counterattack, the United States would have to take out 
> Iran’s 14 airfields and all its warplanes on the ground. We would also 
> have to sink every warship and submarine in Iran’s navy and destroy some 
> 200 missile, patrol, and speedboats operated by the Revolutionary Guard, 
> else they would be dropping mines and mauling our warships.
>
> Also, it would be crucial on day one to hit Iran’s launch sites and 
> missile plants for, like Saddam in 1991, Iran would probably attack Israel, 
> to make it an American and Israeli war on an Islamic republic.
>
> Among other critical targets would be the Silkworm anti-ship missile sites 
> on Iran’s coastline that would menace U.S. warships and oil tankers 
> transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Any Iranian attack on ships or seeding of 
> mines would likely close the gulf and send world oil prices soaring.
>
> Revolutionary Guard barracks, especially the Quds Force near Iraq, would 
> have to be hit to slow troop movement to and across the border into Iraq to 
> kill U.S. soldiers and civilians. The same might be necessary against 
> Iranian troops near Afghanistan.
>
> With Iran’s ally Hezbollah in south Beirut, all U.S. civilians should 
> probably be pulled out of Lebanon before an attack lest they wind up dead 
> or hostages. And how safe would Americans be in the Gulf region, especially 
> Bahrain, home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, a predominantly Shi’ite island?
>
> And whose side would Shi’ite Iraq take?
>
> Would we have to intern all Iranian nationals in the United States, as we 
> did Germans and Italians in 1941? How many terror attacks on soft targets 
> in the USA could we expect from Iranian and Hezbollah agents in reprisal 
> for our killing thousands of civilians in hundreds of strikes on Iran?
>
> Before the War Party stampedes us into yet another war, the Senate should 
> find out if Tehran is really on the "verge" of getting a bomb, and why 
> deterrence, which never failed us, cannot succeed with Iran.
>
> http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2010/04/01/what-war-with-iran-means/

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