Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke writes today in The Washington Post that the six retired generals who have publicly called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld are likely speaking for their colleagues who are still in the military:

First, it is clear that the retired generals — six so far, with more likely to come — surely are speaking for many of their former colleagues, friends and subordinates who are still inside. In the tight world of senior active and retired generals, there is constant private dialogue. Recent retirees stay in close touch with old friends, who were often their subordinates; they help each other, they know what is going on and a conventional wisdom is formed.

I agree with Ambassador Holbrooke that what we are seeing is indeed the tip of the spear. The United States Military is quietly but surely signaling to their civilian masters that they need to change course.

Many commentators have tried to determine why the generals are speaking out and why they are speaking out now. Most, like Ambassador Holbrooke, have suggested that the frustration over the Iraq fiasco has now reached a boiling point within the military. This is certainly the case. But, I think there may be more to the generals’ timing and motivation than has been discussed so far. I think by focusing on Iraq we are all fighting the last war in trying to discern the generals’ motivations. I think a significant reason why the generals are speaking out has to do with our impending attack on Iran.

Seymour Hersh wrote in his article that the top leaders of the U.S. military are against a nuclear strike on Iran and may have to resign to prevent the Administration from moving forward with an attack. In one extraordinary paragraph, Hersh wrote:

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.” He also confirmed that some senior officers and officials were considering resigning over the issue. “There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the adviser told me. “This goes to high levels.” The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

I believe we are seeing the beginning salvo in the military’s push to avert a nuclear strike on Iran. The top leaders in the military may have decided that the civilians in the Administration are ignoring their advice in the march to Tehran and have now decided to take their case public. The military understands the grave consequence of an attack on Iran but have failed to convince the ideologues in the Administration to see reality. Having learned the lessons of Iraq that the checks and balances in the U.S. Government have failed to prevent a determined President from acting out his apocalyptic fantasy, the military have taken their case directly to the public in the hopes of averting a nuclear catastrophe.

This is not a revolt. This is the United States Military upholding the Constitution to which they have sworn an oath.

The United States has threatened a nuclear strike on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Government of Iran has responded to this threat by publicly humiliating the United States. Iran has declared that it has officially joined the Nuclear Club. Though Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon, its announcement that it is now capable of enriching uranium puts the United States, and the international community, on notice that Iran is rapidly becoming the newest nuclear power in the world.

In his latest column in The Washington Post, David Ignatius compares the current impasse with the Cuban Missile Crisis. He writes about the choices President Bush is presented with:

[Professor Graham] Allison argues that Bush’s dilemma is similar to the one that confronted Kennedy in 1962. His advisers are telling him that he may face a stark choice — either to acquiesce in the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a dangerous adversary, or risk war to stop that nuclear fait accompli . Hard-liners warned JFK that alternative courses of action would only delay the inevitable day of reckoning, and Bush is probably hearing similar advice now.

He argues that an attack on Iran will undermine America’s pre-eminent position in the world. He cites Zbigniew Brzezinski to drive home the point:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, makes a similar argument about Iran. "I think of war with Iran as the ending of America’s present role in the world," he told me this week. "Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it’s still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we’ll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world."

While I agree with Mr. Ignatius and Mr. Brzezinski that an attack on Iran will further undermine America’s relevance in the world, I disagree with the suggestion that we are not already there. I think it is a direct consequence of the war in Iraq that Iran and to a similar extent North Korea are able to throw dirt in America’s face with impunity. By threatening war we have rendered impotent our ability to wage war. Our adversaries know this and know that the vast diplomatic playing field between war and peace belongs to them.

While Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis realized that the goal of war is to achieve your will and not war itself, the Bush administration considers war as an end by itself. Kennedy deftly employed the tools of war, gunboat diplomacy, and the art of political communication in combination to achieve the primary goal - to avoid a nuclear Cuba. His genius, as Mr. Ignatius points out, was to realize that the other side does not necessarily want war. Kennedy cultivated this notion and pounced on it in one brilliant act in high stakes diplomacy: he received two contradictory messages from the Soviet Union, one belligerent one conciliatory, he chose to ignore the belligerent and act on the conciliatory. That single act shifted the dynamics of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The detente that followed can be traced back directly to this triumph of uncommon common sense alone.

The Bush Administration, by contrast, has played the diplomatic game with the subtlety of a jackhammer. It may work well in movies, where you draw a line in the sand and your opponent quickly crumbles and grovels at your feet, but in the real world a show of force is underpinned by multiple of acts of mutual compromise. The Administration however, due to its misadventure in Iraq, has lost the ability to make a credible show of force. When the United States says that we will strike you militarily if condition A is not met, the opposing party knows that this is not a starting point of diplomacy but an inflexible ultimatum. The choices for the adversary now are either capitulate or wage war. From anyone else’s perspective except perhaps that of the United States, the sounder choice is to prepare for war. It is better to fight a war under these circumstances with the final political outcome in doubt than to capitulate with its assured outcome of defeat. This is not to say that the United States cannot win militarily against Iran, it certainly can. But war is not about military victories. War is a political act and its final outcome must be measured with a political yardstick. By that yardstick, a prospect of an American victory in Iran is remote.

President Ahmadinejad of Iran has in recent days struck both a conciliatory and a belligerent tone in his public remarks. This is not a sign of an unstable personality, as many in the Administration appear to believe. It is, on the contrary, a sign that Iran is practiced in the art of diplomacy. The Bush Administration should now be at a moment of decision. Past experience suggests that the Administration perhaps does not realize this and may already have made the decision to go to war. That is a shame. This crisis offers the United States the opportunity to truly remake the Middle East - but perhaps not in the way they had originally envisioned. Iran is destined to be, with an assist from the United States in Iraq, a major power in the Middle East. The United States has an opportunity here to get ahead of this development and broker a new status quo in the Middle East that can usher in an era of regional and global stability. This development is in our National Interest, far more so than a full-scale war in the Middle East.

It is now time to move the conversation to the achievement of this new order in the Middle East.

You have just learned that the "Shaytan Bozorg" wants to go nuclear on you. What do you do? Do you run into the streets screaming "Marg bar Amrika!"? Do you run and hide in the basement? Do you head for the hils? Do you check the newspapers first?

I am not sure I know the answers to any of those questions so I thought that I would check the Iranian (English language) newspapers to try to get a pulse on the Iranian reaction to our nuclear gambit. What I found was an interesting mix of news stories and opinion ranging from defiance to indifference. Here’s the rundown:

Iran News Daily, published from Tehran, quotes an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman as saying that the threatened strikes are "psychological warfare":

"We regard that (planning for air strikes) as psychological warfare stemming from America’s anger and helplessness," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

"The Americans are not seeking a solution for the Iranian nuclear file and are seeking to make crisis. They do not want us to reach an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Europeans," Asefi said.

The spokesman warned that Iran "will not give up its nuclear rights," adding that "activities of research on uranium enrichment are continuing normally" in Natanz.

"Sending our file to the UN Security Council will not make us retreat. During the past 27 years, we underwent economic sanctions and in spite of that we made economic, technical and scientific progress," he added.

The same article also reports on British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s dismissal of the nuclear strike idea as "completely nuts".

The official Government news outlet, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), notably buries the news about the possible U.S. attack deep inside a story about Iran-U.S. talks about Iraq entitled "Asefi: Iran doubts US good intention in talks on Iraq". The headline story is entitled "Iran does not need nuclear weapons: Ambassador" and argues that Iran has sufficient conventional deterrent:

Iran’s Ambassador to Ankara Firouz Dowlatabadi said here Sunday that the Great Prophet (PBUH) military exercise conducted in the Persian Gulf waters last week proved that Iran does not need any nuclear weapons.

In an exclusive interview with IRNA, he said, "Recent military exercise was a response to futile allegations made by the US and Zionist regime that Iran wants to manufacture nuclear weapons." "The military exercise proved that Iran does not need nuclear weapons and Iranian nuclear program has noting to do with military aspect," he said.

"Successful test fire of missiles in the military exercise showed that they can meet Iran’s defensive requirement in modern wars," he said.

In perhaps an ominous sign, the Iranian exercise was codenamed "Great Prophet" while the planned test detonation (story via Polimom) of the largest conventional bomb by the U.S. has been codenamed "Divine Strake".

IRNA also carries an article entitled "Israel nuke depots biggest threat to int’l security: envoy". The article makes the argument we are likely to hear more of as the standoff heats up that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is a bigger concern for the region than Iran’s nuclear program:

Syrian Ambassador to Tehran Hamed Hassan here Sunday said nuclear depots of Israel, composed of 200 nuclear warheads, is the biggest danger and threat to regional and international security and stability.

Hassan made the remark while speaking to IRNA in an exclusive interview on the threshold of an international conference in support of Palestinian rights.

He said Israel’s nuclear plan was very important for the United States and the West, referring to Western media reports that Britain delivered thousands of tons of uranium to Israel last year and that the regime’s nuclear facilities have been constructed in cooperation with France.

The US and West have turned a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear arsenals and its weapons of mass destruction, he stated and urged Muslims to adopt an effective stand in international organizations to disclose the dual policies of the West and the US.

He called on Muslims to strive to restore the right of the Islamic and Arab states and all Third World countries to access nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. 

This argument always has been and continues to be a problem for the United States as it tries to rally worldwide support against Iran.

Tehran Times also carries the Foreign Ministry’s dismissal of the U.S. nuclear threat, although once again buried inside a news story about U.S.-Iran talks on Iraq. The paper also carries an analysis of the U.S. Administration’s unilateralist tendencies:

They essentially believed that the U.S. could regain unassailable power and dominance over the world through the unilateral use of its great military power.

The article demonstrates an understanding of American political forces and also offers a fascinating critique of the closed political systems in other Middle Eastern countries:

Meanwhile, due to their closed political systems, most Middle Eastern countries have many discontents. Thus, they have been unable to effectively meet the challenge of the Western powers and have adopted a passive attitude toward U.S. actions, encouraging U.S. officials to pursue their policies in the region.

Unfortunately, the militarist attitude of U.S. officials and the lack of a powerful political channel in the Middle East through which public opinion could be manifested have paved the way for U.S. warmongers to pursue their policies in the Middle East with no concern for world public opinion.

Yet, the dawn is breaking at last, since the masses of the Middle East are finally beginning to realize that there is no real difference between the dictators of the Arab World, the U.S. imperialists, and the powers behind the throne.

This is a critique that resonates well with the Arab street and the larger Muslim masses. It also highlights the complex challenge of bringing democracy to the Middle East. It is not clear who the real winners will be if and when the United States succeeds in bringing democracy to the Middle East. In the case of Iraq at least, it appears that the real winner is Iran and this article clearly understands this point well.

The Iranian North American expatriate website iranian.com meets the U.S. attack story head on with an article entitled "Pre-emptive Genocide?". If the Administration is harboring fantasies of Iranians dancing in the streets when their country is nuked, this article should put those rosy scenarios to bed:

The foxy neo-cons, with fangs out for a kill, have outwitted the world.  After 27 years of violating the bi-lateral Algiers Agreement, finding itself in a quagmire in Iraq, the United States decided to bring on board other countries to attack Iran, or at the very least, have their blessings.  Falsely accusing Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program and using the NPT, it succeeded.

Clearly, the aim of this administration is regime change.  However, its propaganda, the continuous revelations about the audacious lies that led it to illegally invade Iraq and cause the death of over 100,000 human beings, including thousands of Americans, has left us inert and emotionally inept to extract the neo-cons’ fangs and put a stop to their incessant demise of nations.   This is exactly what they count on – this allows them to persist. 

Their next heinous plan – nuking Iran, will morally bankrupt humanity and be the next chapter of genocide in our history books.  But in their shrewdness, they have even planned the murder of an entire civilization based on a preemptive genocide!

If I had to place a wager, I would guess that when your country is attacked, most reasonable people put aside their political differences with their Government and rally together against the attacker. I think it is long past time to put the "cakewalk" neo-cons out with the garbage.

In my previous post on the subject, I argued that if Seymour Hersh’s sources are accurate war with Iran is inevitable. I hope I turn out to be very wrong. However, unless there is a dramatic development in Congress or perhaps within the Military (as Mr. Hersh suggested might be possible) I think this train has already pulled out of the station.

All that remains is for the facts and intelligence to be fixed around the decision to go to war.

[Author’s Note: The title of this post comes from the Pink Floyd song "Two Suns In The Sunset" from The Final Cut album]

I recall quipping to a friend a few weeks ago that I thought the way out of Iraq for this Administration was through Iran. What I meant at the time was that since this Administration had haplessly shifted the center of gravity of Iraqi politics to Iran, without Iran having to fire a shot, that the only way to exit out of Iraq with "credibility" was to attack Iran. Iran then becomes a continuation of a larger war "on terror" and it can then not be said that Iraq was lost since it will only become an unfinished chapter in a larger war.

I of course was being cynical. I knew then that there have been people within and outside the Administration who have been advocating for an attack on Iran from the time that "Mission Accomplished" was declared in Iraq. Neo-conservatives had focused their attention on Iran as the next domino in the new American Domino Theory. Some of the most rabid of the neo-cons advocating war were the usual suspects such as Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney and Charles Krauthammer. But I had calculated that the appetite for war had waned in Washington due to Mr. Bush’s flagging approval ratings, the disaster in Iraq, the Congressional scandals, and the overextension of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. I had obviously underestimated the hunger for war in Washington.

Today the Washington Post reports that the United States is planning for a nuclear strike on Iran. This report comes nipping at the heels of Seymour Hersh’s tour de force in the New Yorker magazine on the same topic. Mr. Hersh has been doggedly pursuing this story for some time, with a report in January that the United States was already engaged in covert action inside Iran.

The drumbeat for war with Iran has been ongoing for some time. The rhetoric and the diplomatic doublespeak is eerily reminiscent of the run up to the Iraq invasion. But what is different this time is that the United States is considering using nuclear weapons as a first strike option against Iran. Apparently the civilian leaders in the Administration have surveyed the options against Iran’s nuclear facilities and concluded that a conventional attack will not cause the requisite amount of damage. So like any group of people bent on destruction, they have decided that if the bomb you are using is not big enough, get a bigger bomb - in our case, a nuclear bomb. This is the kind of thinking I have been able to coax my five-year-old out of over the last year. My daughter has matured to a point where she now tends to utilize thought and consider more the longer-term consequences of her actions instead of first resorting to brute force when confronted with a difficult task.

There is likely to be much discussion of this story in the days, weeks, and months to come. Instead of focusing on the primary story which I suspect will be widely discussed in today’s talk shows and on the web, I would like to use the remainder of this post to highlight two aspects of this story that are particularly frightening.

Seymour Hersh’s writes about Mr. Bush’s determination and motivation in attacking Iran:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that 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.” [Emphasis added by me]

It has been widely reported and speculated that Mr. Bush sees his mission in remaking the Middle East very much in biblical terms. If Mr. Hersh’s source is accurate in his assessment then we are confronted with a President with messianic and evangelical zeal that will not be tempered by reason or the facts. In this case, war with Iran is inevitable. This is a frightening development, and the dangers may actually increase as Mr. Bush’s popularity slips further. He may feel that the urgency to accomplish his mission becomes greater as his position in office become more tenuous.

The Washington Post reports on a possible timetable for attack and Israel’s role in setting that timetable:

Israel is preparing, as well. The government recently leaked a contingency plan for attacking on its own if the United States does not, a plan involving airstrikes, commando teams, possibly missiles and even explosives-carrying dogs. Israel, which bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 to prevent it from being used to develop weapons, has built a replica of Natanz, according to Israeli media, but U.S. strategists do not believe Israel has the capacity to accomplish the mission without nuclear weapons.

…

Israel points to those missiles to press their case in Washington. Israeli officials traveled here recently to convey more urgency about Iran. Although U.S. intelligence agencies estimate Iran is about a decade away from having a nuclear bomb, Israelis believe a critical breakthrough could occur within months. They told U.S. officials that Iran is beginning to test a more elaborate cascade of centrifuges, indicating that it is further along than previously believed.

"What the Israelis are saying is this year — unless they are pressured into abandoning the program — would be the year they will master the engineering problem," a U.S. official said. "That would be a turning point, but it wouldn’t mean they would have a bomb." [Emphasis added by me]

The Israelis have been pushing the notion of a point of no return, or "turning point", for quite some time, arguing that even though the actual bomb may be sometime away the date on the calendar that we should be concerned about is much sooner when the Iranian program reaches a technical threshold that once achieved cannot be reversed. Israel has chosen a timetable for attack by the United States by the end of this year by indicating if this attack does not happen, they will launch the attack unilaterally. Israel has also been at the forefront of the nuclear strike option.

The timetable set by Israel for the United States dovetails nicely with the November Congressional elections. An attack on Iran would politically rescue Mr. Bush and the Congressional Republicans from the disaster in Iraq. The actual attack does not have to occur before the elections, in fact it is better politically that the attack take place after the elections. The drumbeat to war and the tension and fear it will generate for the public is much more useful as a political tool than the war itself. By this time in early November, with any luck for the Republicans, the daily death toll in Iraq, the Congressional scandals, the NSA spying and the fallout from the NIE leaking should all take a backseat to the coming war with Iran. With these constraints, the likely strike date on Iran will be in late November or early December of this year, just in time for the Christmas season.

In many ways, war has already begun with Iran. The conversation has changed. It should give all of us pause that on this day in the 21st Century we are considering the possibility that the greatest experiment in Democracy in the history of the world is about to launch a nuclear first strike against another sovereign state. May our children forgive us.