|
The Iran hawks
Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton think a tough line on Tehran
will sell politically. They could be right.
By Juan Cole
10/17/07 "Salon" -- -- Future historians may conclude that the
key issue in the 2008 presidential campaign was not Iraq, but
whether the United States should go to war with Iran. Sparring
over Iran dominated the Republican debate in Dearborn, Mich.,
last week, while a Senate resolution condemning Iran's
Revolutionary Guards as terrorists divided the Democrats, some
of whom (including Sen. Barack Obama and Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi) feared that it might give Bush a pretext to launch
another war. Unexpectedly, Tehran has emerged as a preoccupation
of candidates -- as a litmus test for attitudes toward war and
domestic security.
The Republicans are competing to see who can wax most bellicose.
The two candidates with the greatest need to compensate for
their socially liberally pasts, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani,
have been extra warlike. Giuliani in particular seems to be
running for velociraptor-in-chief.
In an ABC interview on Sunday, Giuliani made fun of Romney for
saying during the Dearborn debate that he would seek the advice
of counsel before launching a war on Iran. Moderator Chris
Matthews had asked, "If you were president of the United States,
would you need to go to Congress to get authorization to take
military action against Iran's nuclear facilities?" Romney had
replied that the president "has to do what's in the best
interest" of the country "to protect us against a potential
threat." He said nothing about needing a congressional
declaration of war; indeed, he was clearly suggesting that for
him to strike Iran it would suffice to get a legal opinion that
such an act did not require a formal declaration of war.
During his Sunday interview, Giuliani attempted to portray
Romney's brazen end run around the Constitution as evidence of
wimpiness. "That's one of those moments in a debate," he told
ABC News, "where you say something and you go like this [wiping
his mouth with the back of his hand] ... wish I can get that one
back.
"Basically, right out of the box," Giuliani continued, "first
thing, you're faced with imminent attack on the United States, I
don't think you call in the lawyers first. I think maybe the
generals, the ones you call in first, they're the ones you want
to talk to."
But Matthews, of course, had not asked Romney what he would do
were the U.S. attacked. His question concerned a sudden U.S.
strike on Iran's nuclear energy facilities, and whether the
president should seek congressional authorization for such an
act of war.
During the debate itself, Romney also took heat for not
mentioning the need for congressional authorization, although
the rebuke came from a lonely voice out of the GOP's
isolationist past. "You're not allowed to go to war without a
declaration of war," said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. Paul declared
flatly that the Constitution was clear and that Romney's talk
about consulting attorneys was "baffling." He also maintained
that "the thought that the Iranians could pose an imminent
attack on the United States is preposterous." When Giuliani shot
back that Sept. 11 had been such an attack, Paul interrupted
him. "That was no country," snapped Paul. "That was 19 thugs. It
has nothing to do with a country."
Sen. John McCain tried to present himself as the voice of reason
in the debate, saying, "Of course you want to go to Congress; of
course you want to get approval." Last spring, however, when
badgered by a belligerent audience member at a South Carolina
campaign event about how long the U.S. should tolerate Iran's
alleged bad behavior, McCain had been caught on camera singing
"Bomb, bomb, bomb/ Bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the old Beach
Boys hit "Barbara Ann." If any major Iranian political figure
had made a similar jest about striking the U.S., it would not
have been quickly forgotten in Washington. McCain's ditty, and
the relative lack of controversy about it, speak volumes about
the aggressive mood in the U.S.
Among the Republican front-runners, debate about Iran occurs in
a dark, upside-down fantasy land, where a weak third-world
regime with no air force to speak of plots a military strike on
the planet's sole superpower. The third-world regime is led by a
genocidal commander-in-chief who serves a global conspiracy; to
stop him, the president of the superpower might be compelled,
after a quick chat with a lawyer and a few bars of a golden
oldie, to launch an aggressive war. (And even the part about a
conversation with an attorney is seen by some of the candidates
as an abdication of manhood.)
Perhaps because of his chest-thumping contest with Giuliani,
Romney especially has shown a talent of late for putting the
ignorant in fear-mongering. During the Dearborn debate, Romney
alleged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had "spoken
about genocide," and said it was important not to "allow that
individual to have the control of launching a nuclear weapon."
In an ad released after the debate, in a clear attempt to
out-Giuliani Giuliani, Romney declaimed, "It's this century's
nightmare, jihadism -- violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism."
He told the cameras that the fundamentalists' goal is to
establish a "caliphate," and wanted to "collapse" countries such
as the United States as part of that goal. "We can and will stop
Iran," he added, "from acquiring nuclear weapons."
President Ahmadinejad, whose job is more or less ceremonial, is
not the commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. He has
never advocated "genocide," and his expressed wish that the
"occupation regime over Jerusalem" (i.e., the Israeli
government) eventually vanish has been mistranslated.
As for the rest, the candidates simply assume that Iran has a
nuclear weapons research program, which has not been proven. It
certainly does not have a nuclear weapon at present, and the
National Intelligence Estimate indicates that if it were trying
to get one, it would take until at least 2016 -- and then only
if the international environment were conducive to the needed
high-tech imports. (Ahmadinejad, by the way, will not be in
power in 2016.) Also, someone really needs to let the
Republicans know that Iran is Shiite, meaning it abhors Sunni
fundamentalists and rejects the caliphate.
Iran has also become an obsession on the Democratic side of the
aisle, albeit absent the rampant machismo. In fact, while many
of their colleagues in Congress continue to second Republican
saber-rattling, most of the Democrats who are running for
president seem notably wary of rushing into war with Iran.
Of the four senators among the Democratic candidates, only
Hillary Clinton voted for the non-binding Kyl-Lieberman
resolution on Sept. 26. The Kyl-Lieberman resolution, which
passed 76-to-22, with 29 Democrats voting in favor, says, "the
United States should designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization ... and place
the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially
Designated Global Terrorists." Jim Lobe, among the best
journalists covering neoconservatism in Washington, wrote that
unnamed "Capitol Hill sources" told him that the resolution was
crafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker,
interviewed on "Democracy Now," concurred that the amendment was
pushed by the Israel lobby.
It would be unprecedented to declare a military force of a state
to be a "terrorist" organization, and illogical, since the
formal definition of terrorism is that it is committed by
non-state actors. It would also endanger U.S. troops, who might
well be designated terrorists by some foreign governments.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she would not
allow a similar resolution to be brought up for a vote in the
House of Representatives, telling ABC's "This Week," "This has
never happened before, that a Congress should determine one
piece of someone's military is [a threat]."
Sen. Chris Dodd voted against the resolution on the grounds that
it would green-light a Bush administration attack on Iran. Sen.
Joe Biden also opposed it, though he argued that it was just a
resolution and could not authorize a war. Sen. Barack Obama
missed the vote because it was abruptly rescheduled after he had
already left on a campaign swing, but when he learned of the
rescheduling he issued a statement against the resolution. Obama
blasted Clinton's vote for the resolution as a repeat of the
mistake she made when she voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq
war. (Clinton muddied the waters somewhat by backing a
resolution by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb requiring that Bush seek
Congressional authorization before attacking Iran.) Some
analysts suggested that Clinton is already thinking past the
primaries. They believe she is making her decisions on the
assumption that she will face a Republican hawk in the
presidential contest of 2008, and therefore has to guard against
charges that she is weak on national security. According to this
analysis, the other Democratic candidates, trailing her, are
still playing to the party faithful, who are to the left of the
general public.
In short, Clinton's staffers must have read the Opinion Dynamics
poll for Fox Cable News, which shows that 80 percent of the U.S.
public believe that Iran's nuclear program is for weapons
purposes, and 50 percent believe that the U.S. should take a
tougher line with Iran (as against 31 percent who do not). About
29 percent of the sample want Bush to go ahead and attack Iran
before leaving office, while a bare majority thought he should
leave the problem to the next president. Some 54 percent of
respondents believed that if Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad had been allowed to visit the site of the Sept. 11
attacks, he would have been intent on honoring the hijackers.
Since the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been
carrying out regular inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities,
still cannot find good evidence for a weapons program, the
overwhelming consensus to this effect in the U.S. is evidence of
successful propaganda by the Bush administration and its
enablers in the media. That Ahmadinejad, an Iranian Shiite who
has repeatedly denounced Sunni fundamentalism and its terrorist
activities, should be viewed as an al-Qaida sympathizer by the
American public is a testament to how effectively he has been
demonized.
Iran has not launched an aggressive war against a neighbor since
1785 and does not have a history of military expansionism. Its
population is a third that of the United States and its military
is small and weak. Aside from the Republican Party's long
history of fear-mongering as a way to get power, throw public
money to their corporate clients, and scare Americans into
giving up their civil liberties, what is driving this obsession
with Tehran?
Candidates may be talking about Iran as an indirect and
politically safer way of speaking to voters' anxieties about
Iraq. As an issue in itself, Iraq contains many pitfalls. It is
a quagmire about which a former commanding general in that
country, Rick Sanchez, said last Friday, "There is no question
that America is living a nightmare with no end."
The Iraq problem is so intractable that bringing it up with
voters is dangerous, since they will then ask about policy
prescriptions, and most experts agree that the U.S. has no good
options. Iran, in contrast, looms as a vague sort of threat on
the horizon and politicians can therefore pull out of their tool
kits their favorite instrument -- speaking hypothetically
without committing to a particular course of action. The
problem, as Chris Dodd and Barack Obama saw so clearly, is that
in attempting to change the conversation to Iran, American
politicians and their morbidly aggressive constituents may be
vastly widening the quagmire, playing Katrina to the Middle
East's New Orleans.
-- By Juan Cole
Copyright ©2007 Salon Media Group, Inc.
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments
Comment Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We encourage engaging, diverse
and meaningful commentary. Do not include
personal information such as names, addresses,
phone numbers and emails. Comments falling
outside our guidelines – those including
personal attacks and profanity – are not
permitted.
See our complete
Comment Policy
and
use this link to notify us if you have concerns
about a comment.
We’ll promptly review and remove any
inappropriate postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
