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Warmongers stranded over Iran attack
Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:05:46
By Davood and Maryam Taabbodi, Press TV, Tehran |
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US President George W. Bush in a meeting with visiting Japanese Premier Yasuo Fukuda warned Iran that international pressure 'must, and will, grow on the Islamic Republic' in order to intimidate Tehran into abandoning its nuclear activities.
Earlier, he claimed that the world would be engaged in World War III if Iran does not comply with Washington's illegitimate demand. Vice President Dick Cheney warned of bombing Iran and the Senate passed a resolution that critics say is a blank check for war.
However, this is one side of the coin, as Democratic lawmakers have warned that the Bush administration is 'beating the drums for war', and vowed to use constitutional powers to thwart any US military strike.
"It's an open secret that Dick Cheney is agitating for a preemptive attack on Iran… It would be disastrous to the United States, disastrous to the region, disastrous for our armed forces in Iraq," said Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio.
If in fact this is the Cheney camp's opinion, we should take a moment to consider that it was the Vice President who unequivocally and repeatedly assured Americans in 2002 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and was on the verge of producing nuclear weaponry.
Cheney is also the hardheaded geopolitical realist who, according to Robert Draper's semi-authorized book on Bush, assured the then-House Republican leader Dick Armey that the Iraqis are "going to welcome us. It'll be like the American army going through the streets of Paris. They're sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we'll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two."
That may have been one of the most flawed assessments in modern American history.
Last month, the London-based Oxford Research Group issued a report on the problems facing the US in Iraq.
"Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse and adding greatly to the violence across the region," warned the author, Paul Rogers, a professor at the University of Bradford.
Unlike 2002 when the neoconservative war hawks, led by the Pentagon and the vice president's office, were dominant, other leading figures in the administration -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Admiral William Fallon, the head of Central Command for the Middle East, and probably Condoleezza Rice-- all think military engagement with Iran is a recipe for disaster.
Denouncing Cheney's warmongering ambitions, the head of US forces in the Mideast declared that an attack on Iran "is not in the offing," and more or less urged the Vice President and his political allies to shut up.
In a front-page interview published on Nov. 12 by the Financial Times, Admiral William Fallon spoke in diplomatic tones, as top military officers usually tend to do when they make strong political statements.
While Iran certainly poses a 'challenge,' he said, US policymakers must engage Tehran to encourage changes in the country's behavior.
"It seems to me that we don't need more problems. It astounds me that so many pundits and others are spending so much time yakking about this topic (of war against Iran)," he added.
The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, who assumed office on October 1, has also expressed deep concerns about military action against Iran.
"I think we have to be very mindful of risks associated with follow-on steps which would engage us in a third country in that part of the world in any kind of conflict," he recently told an audience of defense experts.
Like Mullen, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates calls for international efforts to economically pressure Iran, while making clear that the military option offers little appeal.
"At this point we're focused on diplomatic and economic sanctions," said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell.
Democratic Representative Jim McDermott, whose remarks came hours after Bush's new rhetoric on Friday, accused the Bush administration of saber rattling against Iran.
"We, under the Constitution, have the right to declare war, to send troops into battle, not the President. We are the ones, the Constitution in Article I gives us the power. That means we have to look at what the options are," McDermott said.
While in recent months Bush has made a series of predictions including a so-called 'nuclear holocaust', Secretary Rice denied on Sunday that the United States was bent on war with Iran.
Top US military leaders have noted that military action against Iran is 'a last resort,' which would create enormous complications for the US forces already trapped in the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires.
Moreover, analysts say that the military, economic and political climate for action against Iran is infinitely less hospitable than five years ago, when the US was preparing for war with Iraq. The prospects for an attack on Iran in the final 14 months of the Bush administration are somewhere between slim and none.
A major military action of choice isn't usually done without a consensus, and certainly not in the final months of a presidency.
As for President Bush, if we are to believe the only logical words issued from his lips regarding Iran's nuclear issue, he has also decided to pursue the diplomatic option rather than engage in a reckless bombing campaign.
DT/HGH/RE
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