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

[C. G. Estabrook]

Hadn't you heard that it was a liberal administration? We escaped 
narrowly in November of 2008 when the liberal, anti-war candidate won 
the presidential election.  He just hasn't been able to do all the good 
things he wants to do because of Republican opposition...

Of course we always can count on the leading liberals in the Democratic 
party, like Sen. Schumer of New York or Bayh of Indiana.  And no one can 
deny that the NYT is the flagship of the liberal media. (See the spate 
of recent articles by this season's Judy Miller, David Sanger.)

I suppose the denomination of a War Party must mean that there's a Peace 
Party, too - unless everyone else is just indifferent - and the only one 
I can find are the Paleoconservatives like Buchanan. The result is the 
subject line.

Of course the liberal administration and its tame media are busily 
working to convince you that their only opponents are crazy militia 
types running around in the Michigan woods.  And they'll do it even if 
the administration has to instigate the militia types and give them the 
explosives they need...


Stuart Levy wrote:
> 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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