The obvious question, however, is how could he possibly get us into a new conflict? The latest leak from Britain of his discussions with Tony Blair pre-Iraq indicate that he considers Gulf of Tonkin-like measures to be fair game, so it is possible he could manufacture a military action by Iran and therefore justify military strikes. Or, he could simply roll new air-strikes into his existing mandate to fight the "global war on terror." He believes his current war-time authority gives him the ability to nullify existing US law (NSA wiretapping), so it stands to reason that he could cite any number of Iranian transgressions (their support of Iraqi "insurgents") as reason to extend the global war on terror to Iranian soil. I see this last option as the most realistic, because it seems reasonable to assume that any attempt to manufacture a reason would be heavily scrutinized (CIA attempts to silence whistle-blowers notwithstanding).
In addition, if the action consists solely of air-strikes, it becomes much easier to justify, since one can assume American casualties from such an action will be limited. He can talk-up the merits of our "smart bombs" and how we are doing everything possible to minimize collateral damage. There are several inconsistencies with these theories I'm expounding upon, however, and I'd like to address why I don't believe they impinge the credibility of my argument.
To the rational observer, if one were to try to gain political cover from a new campaign (to "Wag the Dog"), it seems reasonable to assert that a bombing campaign will only provide cover for a short period of time, after which it'd be back to business as usual. That's why it seems likely the war will begin in late August. Many people are on vacation, so few are paying much attention to politics. By the time the campaign is well underway in September, Republicans can make a big deal of "standing behind our Commander in Chief" and not backing down for the sake of our troops' morale. We don't want to switch horses in mid-stream. This action will provide cover for just long enough to eke out a marginal victory and keep a tiny majority in Congress, stripping the Dems of any opportunity for punitive measures. The Dems, consulting their political consultants, image consultants, pollsters, and inside the beltway out-of-touch colleagues, will once again fail to stand up and have courage to speak the truth and broaden the dialog. They'll be successfully painted as unpatriotic flip-flopping wimps, and Americans will once again be sold a bill of goods by opportunistic Republicans.
And that's the how/why America will enter Iran. Hoo-ah.
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3 comments:
Welcome to the blogosphere Paul. I'm willing to bet though, that any October surprise will not be an airstrike on Iran. It's just too bad of an idea.
Thanks! But if not Iran, what else could they do that would have the desired effect? The only person who has used the phrase, "Iran is not Iraq" is Condi. Rumsfeld hasn't given any reassurances this isn't already in the works. In fact, his recent dismissal of reports on our intentions toward Iran employed the exact same phrasing he's used in the past when caught lying ("Henny Penny the sky is falling"). Couple that with Bush's assertion that he would do it all over again in exactly the same way if he had it to do over, and I see an administration hell-bent on continuing their love affair with bad ideas. These guys aren't afraid of bad ideas. After all, they have God on their side.
If my hypothesis is right, we'd have to see a lot more being done to ramp up anti-Iranian sentiment (although they're pretty good at it all by themselves as demonstrated by today's headline). I think it'll be hard to avoid the discussion about whether or not they are striving to get nuclear weapons as a deterrent or a weapon. Much has been made of N. Korea's success in using deterrence to fend of American hostility while Iraq got invaded because we knew we could. In the era of the pre-emptive war, it becomes important to be able to defend yourself. This discussion isn't overly complicated, so the average American should be able to at least acknowledge that we may complicit in the spread of nuclear tech to other nations. It still doesn't seem like a criticism that's gonna change a whole lot of minds, though. I think this can be successfully wielded into an ace in the hole by Rove et al. Of course, if Fitzgerald sidelines Rove...
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