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Opinions/Editorials Title: Iran: The Ultimate Test of Obama's Manhood The most discouraging headline of the past week? The NYTimes' "Israel Hawks Warm to Obama." Translation: Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government think President Obama is on board with an airstrike against Iran. Have we learned nothing from nine years of war in Iraq and ten more in Afghanistan? Could this be the year when Barack Obama makes George Bush look smart? Could Obama be somehow maneuvered by Israel into a war with Iran that would make Bush's forays into Iraq and Afghanistan look positively glorious. As Paul Pillar, CIA veteran and former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, warned last week, in the context of the dog-wagging-tail relationship of Israel to the US, Israel gets away with "recklessly throwing its weight around the Middle East in damaging ways" because of "the cover provided by a subservient protective power whose policies it is able to manipulate." War with Iran, one could argue, if it's initiated by Israel without our foreknowledge or approval, would not be Obama's fault. But for our ally Israel, dependent as it is on the US, to launch such a war, with such disastrous consequences for us, would represent a total failure of American foreign policy. Obama must make it absolutely clear to Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu that US interests would be so damaged by a unilateral Israeli strike that the US would denounce Israel's action in the same way President Eisenhower did when Israel, England and France attacked Egypt over Suez in 1956. The US administration has, in recent months, stepped up its own rhetoric against Iran, specifically stating that "nothing is off the table," a barely hidden allusion to our willingness to see Iran attacked, either by Israel alone or jointly. While such table-thumping is designed to encourage Iran not to develop a nuclear weapon, it's risky business, as so often such threats, by raising the ante and leading to counter-threats, take on a life of their own. Assume for the moment our threat of pro-active warfare is a bluff, well and good. But suppose Iran, which is not quite the unilateral dictatorship often imagined, feels compelled as a result to indeed head down the nuclear weapon path, lest its government appear weak in the eyes of internal opposition forces or its neighbors, would Obama's political advisors then use a variation of the same credibility argument to demand that we have no choice but to follow through on our threats? At this time, there is no convincing evidence, from US intelligence or the IAEA inspectors on the ground, that Iran in fact is intent on developing nuclear weapons. Many analysts think a likely outcome is that they will develop the know-how and capability but stop short of actually producing a bomb; even their leadership probably hasn't made the decision one way or the other. But assuming that they, like Pakistan and North Korea and Israel, decide they want a bomb, is that a worse development than the war option? There's no denying the increased instability it would bring the region; over time, Turkey, and perhaps Saudi Arabia and Egypt, would also want to nuclearize. The Sunni-Shia conflict, the Arab-Israeli conflict: bad enough, but give the various sides a nuclear capability, and of course it's worse. But it beats war. Israelis rail about the mad mullahs in Iran who they claim would sacrifice millions of their own citizens to destroy Israel. But have we forgotten that Stalin actually did kill millions of his own people merely to consolidate his power; and that Mao killed upwards of 40,000,000 Chinese during his "Great Leap Forward" and cavalierly talked about the trade-off of a billion Chinese deaths in a victorious war with the West. Surely the risks for the US and the West were much greater when the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists went nuclear, but we used restraint and avoided the worst-case scenario. In today's world, the worst-case scenario is a pre-emptive war against Iran. To retard their nuclear development a few years - even the Israelis acknowledge that's the best an attack could achieve - would require extensive military action and thousands of civilian deaths. Iran would react by closing the Strait of Hormuz, attacking the oil facilities of the Gulf emirates a few dozen miles away, even perhaps hitting at Saudi Arabia's oil fields, events that would double or triple the price of oil. The result: another financial collapse in the West, this one dramatically worse than the near depression of three years ago. Unemployment in the US would skyrocket from its already dismal level. As well, there would likely be Iranian retaliation to US interests in the Gulf (Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is headquartered) and elsewhere, resulting in US escalation, further retaliation, culminating in a war spreading throughout the Middle East. There would be no winners. Even if Obama knows that an attack on Iran is the least desirable outcome, politics on both sides are muddying the landscape. Iran, despite Ahmadinejad's aggressive anti-Western, and especially anti-Israel, rhetoric, is clearly in the midst of an internal power struggle. And he's the moderate, as Ayatollah Khamanei has increasingly adopted a hard line. In a weird way, the US is a mirror image of Iran, with political rhetoric more and more bellicose. All three possible Republican nominees outdo one another in their support of war over the possibility of Iran's developing the same capacity as the considerably more irrational and dangerous North Korea, whose border is less than five minutes by missile from South Korea's capital, with its population of 10 million. And North Korea obtained its nuclear weapons under Republican Bush. Just last week, conservative Republican Senator Lindsey Graham joined with Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, whose support for Israel knows no limits, to fashion a bill that would make it "unacceptable' for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons "capability" - there's a quite specific difference between having the capability of producing a bomb and taking the final step and producing one - that would severely limit the US's ability to negotiate a diplomatic solution. In 1968, a week or two before the presidential elections, emissaries from Richard Nixon were in direct contact with South Vietnam's President Thieu urging him to hold tight against negotiations with the north, which President Johnson and Vice-President Humphrey were promoting as a way out of the Vietnam quagmire. Don't think for a moment the Republican nominee wouldn't privately encourage Netanyahu to attack Iran - who hardly needs much encouragement - if he thought it would help him get elected. Netanyahu's due in Washington again this spring to address the annual meeting of AIPAC, the big Israel lobby. Remember last year's visit, when he lectured Obama in front of Congress, which disgraced itself by giving him and his anti-Palestinian rhetoric some 30 standing ovations. Throwing up roadblocks to Palestinian statehood is bad news, but nothing compared to what Netanyahu has in mind this year: hoping to provoke the US to war. It's time, finally, for Obama to think - and act - outside of the box. He needs to control events now before events - Congress, Republican candidates, Netanyahu - control him, and us. He should call for a nuclear-free Middle East. Unlikely? Of course, but then who would have thought Nixon would be responsible for the opening to Mao's China. Israel would of course kick and scream, and thrust itself even more aggressively into the American political scene. Russia and China, as their recent veto of the Security Council resolution against Syria demonstrated, are stirring the international pot in a way neither has done since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The call for a nuclear-free Middle East would greatly enhance our faltering position in the Arab World at this crucial time, something which, in fact, could prove beneficial to Israel. What better use for Israel of its nuclear weapons than to become the catalyst for assuring a Middle East without nuclear weapons?
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Pentagon wants $3 billion for the War in Iraq that we thought was over RussiaToday Shouldn't a REAL MAN clean up his first mess before he makes another? 8D On the bright side, it might be easier to foot the cost of this make-believe war than you would think. Suspiciously, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction announced in January that upwards of $2 billion that the US was holding onto for Iraq had mysteriously disappeared.
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