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How the Military Can Stop an
Iran Attack
By Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith
10/11/07 "The
Nation" -- --
Sometimes history--and necessity--make strange bedfellows. The
German general staff transported Lenin to Russia to lead a
revolution. Union-buster Ronald Reagan played godfather to the
birth of the Polish Solidarity union. Equally strange--but
perhaps equally necessary--is the addressee of a
new appeal
signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright and many
other leaders of the American peace movement:
"ATTENTION:
Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel: Do not
attack Iran."
The initiative responds to the
growing calls for an attack on Iran from the likes of Norman
Podhoretz and John Bolton, and the reports of growing war
momentum in Washington by reporters like
Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and
Joe Klein of Time. International lawyer Scott Horton
says European diplomats at the recent United Nations General
Assembly gathering in New York "believe that the United States
will launch an air war on Iran, and that it will occur within
the next six to eight months." He puts the likelihood of
conflict at 70 percent.
The initiative also responds to
the recent failure of Congress to pass legislation requiring its
approval before an attack on Iran and the hawk-driven resolution
encouraging the President to act against the Iranian military.
Marcy Winograd, president of Progressive Democrats of Los
Angeles, who originally suggested the petition, told The
Nation:
If we thought
that our lawmakers would restrain the Bush Administration from
further endangering Americans and the rest of the world, we
would concentrate solely on them. If we went to Las Vegas today,
would we find anyone willing to bet on this Congress restraining
Bush? I don't think so.
Because our
soldiers know the horrors of war--severed limbs, blindness,
brain injury--they are loath to romanticize the battlefield or
glorify expansion of the Iraq genocide that has left a million
Iraqis dead and millions others exiled.
Military Resistance
What could be stranger than a
group of peace activists petitioning the military to stop a war?
And yet there is more logic here than meets the eye.
Asked in an online discussion
September 27 whether the Bush Administration will launch a war
against Iran, Washington Post intelligence reporter Dana
Priest
replied, "Frankly, I think the military would revolt and
there would be no pilots to fly those missions."
She acknowledged that she had
indulged in a bit of hyperbole, then added, "but not much."
There have been many other hints
of military disaffection from plans to attack Iran--indeed,
military resistance may help explain why, despite years of
rumors about Bush Administration intentions, such an attack has
not yet occurred. A Pentagon consultant told Hersh more than a
year ago, "There is a war about the war going on inside the
building." Hersh also reported that Gen. Peter Pace had forced
Bush and Cheney to remove the "nuclear option" from the plans
for possible conflict with Iran--in the Pentagon it was known as
the April Revolution.
In December, according to
Time correspondent Joe Klein, President Bush met with the
Joint Chiefs of Staff in a secure room known as The Tank. The
President was told that "the U.S. could launch a devastating air
attack on Iran's government and military, wiping out the Iranian
air force, the command and control structure and some of the
more obvious nuclear facilities." But the Joint Chiefs were
"unanimously opposed to taking that course of action," both
because it might not eliminate Iran's nuclear capacity and
because Iran could respond devastatingly in Iraq--and in the
United States.
In an article published by Inter
Press Service, historian and national security policy analyst
Gareth Porter reported that Adm. William Fallon, Bush's
then-nominee to head the Central Command (Centcom), sent the
Defense Department a strongly worded message earlier this year
opposing the plan to send a third carrier strike group into the
Persian Gulf. In another Inter Press analysis, Porter quotes
someone who met with Fallon saying an attack on Iran "will not
happen on my watch." He added, "You know what choices I have.
I'm a professional.... There are several of us trying to put the
crazies back in the box."
Military officers in the field
have frequently refuted Bush Administration claims about Iranian
arms in Iraq and Afghanistan. Porter says that when a State
Department official this June publicly accused Iran of giving
arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US commander of NATO
forces there twice denied the claim.
More recently, top brass have
warned that the United States is not prepared for new wars. Gen.
George Casey, the Army's top commander, recently made a highly
unusual personal request for a House Armed Services Committee
hearing in which he warned that "we are consumed with meeting
the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready
forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential
contingencies." While this could surely be interpreted as a call
for more troops and resources, it may simultaneously be a
warning shot against adventures in Iran.
An October 8
report by Tim Shipman in the Telegraph says that
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has "taken charge of the forces
in the American government opposed to a US military attack on
Iran." He cites Pentagon sources saying that Gates is waging "a
subtle campaign to undermine the Cheney camp" and that he is
"encouraging the Army's senior officers to speak frankly about
the overstretch of forces, and the difficulty of fighting
another war." Shipman reports Gates has "forged an alliance with
Mike McConnell, the national director of intelligence, and
Michael Hayden, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, to
ensure that Mr. Cheney's office is not the dominant conduit of
information and planning on Iran to Mr. Bush."
Every indication is that the
"war about the war" is ongoing. Hersh recently reported that the
attack-Iran faction has found a new approach that it hopes will
be more acceptable to the public--and presumably to the Pentagon
brass. Instead of broad bombing attacks designed to eliminate
Iran's nuclear capacity and promote regime change, it calls for
"surgical strikes" on Revolutionary Guard facilities; they would
be justified as retaliation in the "proxy war" that General
Petraeus alleges Iran is fighting "against the Iraqi state and
coalition forces in Iraq." According to Hersh, the revised
bombing plan is "gathering support among generals and admirals
in the Pentagon." But Israeli officials are concerned that such
a plan might leave Iran's nuclear capacity intact.
The appeal for military
personnel to resist an attack is primarily based on principle.
It asserts that any pre-emptive US attack on Iran would be
illegal under international law and a crime under US law. Such
an attack would violate Article II, Section 4, of the UN Charter
forbidding the threat or use of force against the territorial
integrity or political independence of any state. Since Iran has
not attacked the United States, an attack against it without
authorization by the Security Council would be a violation of
international law. Under the US Constitution and the UN Charter,
this is the law of the land. Under the military's own laws,
armed forces have an obligation to refuse orders that violate US
law and the Constitution. And under the principles established
by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal after World War II, "just
obeying orders" is no defense for officials who participate in
war crimes.
But the petition also addresses
some of the practical concerns that have clearly motivated
military officers to oppose an attack on Iran. It would open US
soldiers in Iraq to decimation by Iranian forces or their Iraqi
allies. It would sow the seeds of hatred for generations. Like
the attack on Iraq, it would create more enemies, promote
terrorism and make American families less safe.
The petitioners recognize the
potential risks of such action to military personnel. "If you
heed our call and disobey an illegal order you could be falsely
charged with crimes including treason. You could be falsely
court martialed. You could be imprisoned."
But they also accept risks
themselves, aware that "in violation of our First Amendment
rights, we could be charged under remaining section of the
unconstitutional Espionage Act or other unconstitutional
statute, and that we could be fined, imprisoned, or barred from
government employment."
In ordinary times, peace
activists would hardly be likely to turn to the military as
allies. Indeed, they would rightfully be wary of military
officers acting on their own, rather than those of their
civilian superiors--in violation of the Constitution's
provisions for civilian oversight of the military. But these are
hardly ordinary times. While the public is highly dubious of
getting into another war in the Middle East, there now appear to
be virtually no institutional barriers to doing so.
Military-Civilian Alliance
Is there a basis for cooperation
between the military brass and citizens who believe an attack on
Iran would be criminal and/or suicidal? Perhaps. The brass can
go public with the truth and ask Congress to provide a platform
for explaining the real consequences of an attack on Iran. They
can call for a national debate that is not manipulated by the
White House. (They can also inform other players of the
consequences: tell Wall Street the effects on oil and stock
prices and tell European military and political leaders what it
is likely to mean in terms of terrorism.) The peace movement has
already forged an alliance with Iraq War veterans who oppose the
war and with high military officials who oppose torture; a tacit
alliance with the brass to halt an attack on Iran is a logical
next step.
Such an approach puts the
problem of civilian control of the military in a different
light. The purpose of civilian control, after all, is not to
subject the military to the dictatorial control of one man who
may, at the least, express the foolishness and frailty that all
flesh is heir to. The purpose is to subject the military to the
control of democratic governance, which is to say of an informed
public and its representatives.
What contribution can the peace
movement make to this process? We can cover military officials'
backs when they speak out--no one is better placed than the
peace movement to defend them against Bushite charges of defying
civilian control. We can help open a forum for military officers
to speak out. Many retired officers have spoken out publicly on
the folly of the war in Iraq. We can use our venues in
universities and communities to invite them to speak out even
more forcefully on the folly of an attack on Iran. We can place
ads pointing out military resistance to an attack on Iran and
featuring warnings of its possible consequences from past and
present military officials. And we can encourage lawmakers to
reach out to military officials and offer to give them cover and
a forum to speak out. Says petition initiator Marcy Winograd,
"I'd like to see peace activists and soldiers sit down, break
bread, march together, testify together and forge a powerful
union to end the next war before the bloodletting begins."
The peace movement leaders who
appealed to the military had to break through the conventional
presumption that the brass were their enemies in all situations.
Such an unlikely alliance could be a starting point for a
nonviolent response to the Bush Administration's pursuit of a
permanent state of war.
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