Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/bricmont09042007.html

When Wishful Thinking Replaces Resistance
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran
By JEAN BRICMONT

Many people in the antiwar movement try to reassure themselves: Bush cannot possibly attack Iran. He does not have the means to do so, or, perhaps, even he is not foolish enough to engage in such an enterprise. Various particular reasons are put forward, such as: If he attacks, the Shiites in Iraq will cut the US supply lines. If he attacks, the Iranians will block the Straits of Ormuz or will unleash dormant terrorist networks worldwide. Russia won't allow such an attack. China won't allow it -- they will dump the dollar. The Arab world will explode.

All this is doubtful. The Shiites in Iraq are not simply obedient to Iran. If they don't rise against the United States when their own country is occupied (or if don't rise very systematically), they are not likely to rise against the US if a neighboring country is attacked. As for blocking the Straits or unleashing terrorism, this will just be another justification for more bombing of Iran. After all, a main casus belli against Iran is, incredibly, that it supposedly helps the resistance against U.S. troops in Iraq, as if those troops were at home there. If that can work as an argument for bombing Iran, then any counter-measure that Iran might take will simply "justify" more bombing, possibly nuclear. Iran is strong in the sense that it cannot be invaded, but there is little it can do against long range bombing, accompanied by nuclear threats.

Russia will escalate its military buildup (which now lags far behind the U.S. one), but it can't do anything else, and Washington will be only too glad to use the Russian reaction as an argument for boosting its own military forces. China is solely concerned with its own development and won't drop the dollar for non-economic reasons. Most Arab governments, if not their populations, will look favorably on seeing the Iranian shiite leadership humiliated. Those governments have sufficient police forces to control any popular opposition-- after all, that is what they managed to do after the attack on Iraq.

With the replacement of Chirac by Sarkozy, and the near-complete elimination of what was left of the Gaullists (basically through lawsuits on rather trivial matters), France has been changed from the most independent European country to the most poodlish (this was in fact the main issue in the recent presidential election, but it was never even mentioned during the campaign). In France, moreover, the secular "left" is, in the main, gung-ho against Iran for the usual reasons (women, religion). There will be no large-scale demonstrations in France either before or after the bombing. And, without French support, Germany--where the war is probably very unpopular -- can always be silenced with memories of the Holocaust, so that no significant opposition to the war will come from Europe (except possibly from its Muslim population, which will be one more argument to prove that they are "backward", "extremist", and enemies of our "democratic civilization").

All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized because it is not nice to women, to gays, or to Jews. That in itself is enough to neutralize a large part of the American "left". The issue of course is not whether Iran is nice or not ­according to our views -- but whether there is any legal reason to attack it, and there is none; but the dominant ideology of human rights has legitimized, specially in the left, the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds anywhere, at any time, and that ideology has succeeded in totally sidetracking the minor issue of international law.

[tom_paine]

1. K & R

[ThomWV]

2. Of Course He Can Be Stopped From Attacking Iran - All We Have To Do Is IMPEACH Him

He can not start a war if he has been removed from office.

[patrioticintellect]

3. True but

His buddies in office can. If the foreign policy strategy is to attack Iran, than that is what foreign policy minds in Washington will do.

[chiggerbit]

4. I doubt it,, slad...

I know that Cheney fantasizes of a limited strike against Iran, at a minimum, but he will unleash a whirlwind. We're stretched to the limit in Iraq as it is, to the point that we can't even control Iraq's borders,and it's getting worse in Afghanistan. And I very much doubt that Iran would sit back and let it happen without response. The best defense for Iran might be an offense,so the response would likely be to invade Iraq, or possibly one or more of it's other neighbors (ones with loads of oil, maybe?). If Iran struck in several different directions, would we have the capacity to keep it under control? That's the problem with a limited strike--we cannot contain the opposition's response.

As I've said at ~ahem~ our other site, Iran and Saddam's Iraq are two different countries. Iran has a legitimately elected government, and the people, even those who did not vote for the current president, have nationalist loyalties. Saddam's Iraq, after all his atrocities, did not have that, not from the Shiites and not from the Kurds, leaving a very small chunk of the population to fight us. I'm convinced that the Iranian people were leaning more and more towards
Western ways, even expressed sympathies after 9/11...until Bush included Iran in his Axis of Evil hyperbole, and we invaded Iraq. The Iranians' response was to vote in an extremist. Duh!

It's hard to predict how the neighboring countries will react, so I don't think it's safe to make any assumptions. I'm recalling how Turkey rebuffed our request to use their country for the launching of our invasion of Iraq, a totally unexpected response from Turkey, it seemed. Then to be considered would be whether Turkey would take the opportunity to invade Kurdish territories in Iraq while we were busy elsewhere. Has the author of this article been paying attention to the turmoil between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds lately? And what about Pakistan (a country with nuclear weapons) and Syria? The dynamics of that entire area are so numerous and so complex that I cannot imagine a successful campaign, as described by this author, being conducted by this inept administration.

Furthermore, I don't see how this could be done without a draft. Beware ye of the left against any of your candidates who make noises against Iran, for if any candidate (such as any involved in The Fellowship cult, for instance)thinks s/he can do a better job, it will require the blood of YOUR children and grandchildren. And it still will end in disaster.

On the other hand, neither this administration nor this Congress has shown a lick of intelligence or common sense in the last six years, except for a stray here and there, so......our karma builds.

[chiggerbit]

5. Grandiosity should be a crime

"And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."

- Richard Perle, 9/22/03

[L. Coyote]

6. Starting (and losing?) another war without justification is beyond plausible today.