It is almost a clockwork kind of thing now: Last week saw one political disaster after another for President Bush and the Republicans. So of course we wake up Monday morning to find the new agenda of the week — another war.
There is no scarier read today than Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker piece detailing Bush administration planning for a war on Iran. If you’re saying to yourself, “What? How could that be? Aren’t we still busy trying to disengage ourselves from this gang’s last war?” then you are hopelessly mired in a reality-based perspective.
The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.” |
Hersh’s sources in Congress and the Pentagon say: (1) That the Bush administration is far advanced in planning for war with Iran as an active policy option; (2) such a war would begin with a campaign of air strikes and covert operations; (3) U.S. leaders are seriously considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons; (4) the U.S. goal is “regime change.”
Over at the Washington Post they’re a little less convinced than Hersh that the war plans represent a significant likelihood of an attack, and a little more inclined to think that the plans (and the talk about the plans) is intended as a gambit to scare Iran.
Meanwhile, the White House calls the talk “wild speculation” — a phrase that will ring a bell for those with memories longer than, say, a few months, since the same term was used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Josh Marshall makes the obvious but necessary case that Bush’s credibility is utterly, irremediably shot on this matter.
One of Hersh’s sources says, “The President believes that he must do ‘what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,’ and ‘that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.’ ”
No. Whatever happens with Iran, we already know Bush’s legacy. It is a legacy of reduced options and no-win situations. Given how much more likely an Iranian nuclear weapons program is than Saddam’s turned out to be, the administration’s legacy lies in the self-destruction of American credibility, the hobbling of the U.S. military in an unnecessary quagmire, and the loss of any short-term hope of persuading the world’s billion Muslims that the U.S. is not their enemy.
We now know that, at the same time the Bush administration was telling the world that talk of an Iraq attack was “wild speculation,” the plans were already in motion, the policy approved, the diplomatic effort a sham. The people who led the administration then are the people who are leading it now. (The only significant figure to have left the scene, Colin Powell, is the only senior administration figure who even put up token resistance to the Iraq scheme.)
So when we hear this new talk of war, the most foolish thing we can do is to close our eyes and say, “No, even George Bush isn’t that crazy.” As Paul Krugman says, the “But he wouldn’t do that” line of argument no longer holds. Bush has got that glint in his eyes again: He’s going to save the world. Look out.
This time around, there are just a few thin reeds of hope: We can at least cross our fingers that the reality of the failed war in Iraq will help the “won’t get fooled again” factor finally kick in with the American electorate. The Republican machine is in disarray, and the drums of war are beginning to sound pretty ragged.
Perhaps even more important, surely at this point the uniformed leaders of the U.S. military are surveying the shambles of their forces that Rumsfeld and company have made in the wake of Iraq, and they’re saying, “Never again.” I wouldn’t foresee, and certainly wouldn’t advocate, a “Seven Days in May” scenario of insubordination or coup. But honorable people in the military have other options. The public resignation is a powerful act.
It is virtually impossible to imagine a happy outcome from any conceivable scenario following from an American attack on Iran. The only silver lining in sight is visible from Bush’s vantage: a new war would wipe the front pages clean of all those headlines about corruption and incompetence, all the deficit figures and low poll numbers.
Bonus link: Jim Fallows in the Atlantic explains why, however dangerous the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran might be, the preemptive assault is the worst option possible for the U.S.
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