U.S. doesn't need Council's advice on Iran

Iran's malign influence is ever present in the Middle East. In Iraq, Iranian-made weapons and Iranian-trained forces kill American troops as well as Iraqi soldiers and civilians. So blatant is Iran's destabilizing involvement that Iraqi Shiite politicians historically friendly to Tehran no longer are able to ignore it and have protested to Iran.

In Beirut, the Hezbollah terrorists that Iran funds and arms have launched the worst fighting in Lebanon since its civil war. Iran remains the chief funder and arms supplier to Hamas, whose reign in the Gaza Strip fires rockets into Israel, endangers peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and threatens worsening violence in the region.

And Iran thumbs its nose at the rest of the world in gathering an ever more sophisticated nuclear apparatus, the only purpose of which can be the building of atomic weapons.

What to do about Iran must cause countless sleepless nights for countless generals, Pentagon strategists and political leaders in the White House and Congress. Now they're going to get advice from the Chicago City Council.

The Council's Human Relations Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing today on a resolution "opposing any U.S. attack on Iran." The full Council could vote on it on Wednesday. The results are a foregone conclusion. Today's hearing features among its witnesses the anti-war figure Scott Ritter and John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor known for seeing "Israel lobby" machinations behind U.S. foreign policy.

The resolution is sponsored by eight aldermen, including veterans such as Joseph A. Moore (49th) and Toni Preckwinkle (4th) and newcomers like Sandi Jackson (7th) and Robert W. Fioretti (2nd). They accuse the Bush administration of "a systematic campaign" to portray Iran as "an imminent threat to the American nation, American troops in the Middle East and U.S. allies." They compare this to "the use of unreliable sources, exaggerated threat assessment, the selective use of information" in the run-up to Iraq.

Likely to be the lone voice against the resolution is Ald. James A. Balcer (11th). "We are sending the wrong message," he says. "Our troops have to be protected. If it's confirmed that you have enemy sanctuaries [in Iran] where they build up weapons, equipment and supplies, and they're killing our troops, we should go in there."

Balcer knows something about the success of going after enemy sanctuaries. As a Marine he participated in a 1969 incursion into Laos to shut down a North Vietnamese sanctuary. Russian 122mm guns there had shelled U.S. positions in Vietnam, and the NVA was amassing a huge stockpile for a spring offensive. The 56-day Operation Dewey Canyon hauled in 1,000 tons of enemy weaponry, including 12 of the 122mm guns, 7,200 shells for them, 1,000 small arms and 807,000 rounds of ammunition. More than 1,600 North Vietnamese were killed. The NVA spring offensive didn't happen.

The cost was heavy: 130 Marines killed and 920 wounded. Balcer won a Bronze Star for helping carry 61 wounded and 11 dead Marines from the battlefield to a dug-in position on an 800-foot hill. Ponchos served as stretchers for the dead and wounded as Balcer and his comrades slipped and slid struggling up a hillside made a messy morass by wet weather -- all the while under enemy fire. "I remember thinking I don't want to get killed, I don't want to get captured, but I want to get these guys to the top of the hill," he says.

That experience informs Balcer's view about the resolution pending before the Council. "I want the war to end," says Balcer. "But the military commanders are better suited than me and my colleagues to determine whether or not there are sanctuaries that should be taken out."

The risks of an attack on a sanctuary in Iran are so huge that it's not likely. But Balcer correctly judges that the City Council shouldn't be sending a wrong signal about protecting the lives of the young men and women our nation sends in harm's way.

"The Council's Human Relations Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing today on a resolution "opposing any U.S. attack on Iran." The full Council could vote on it on Wednesday. The results are a foregone conclusion. Today's hearing features among its witnesses the anti-war figure Scott Ritter and John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor known for seeing "Israel lobby" machinations behind U.S. foreign policy."

The Chicago city council and Mayor Daley have already made Chicago a sanctuary city for illegal aliens, now they want to make Chicago a sanctuary city for Muslim terrorists.

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