Posted on 01/26/2006 2:38:37 PM PST by Dark Skies
THE UNIMAGINABLE but ultimately inescapable truth is that we are going to have to get ready for war with Iran. Being of a free-speaking, free-thinking disposition, we generally find in the West that hand-wringing, finger-pointing and second-guessing come more easily to us than cold, strategic thinking. Confronted with nightmarish perils we instinctively choose to seize the opportunity to blame each other, cursing our domestic opponents for the situation they’ve put us in.
The rapidly intensifying crisis with regard to Iran exemplifies the phenomenon. On the right, it is said that the decision to let the Europeans play nuclear footsie with the mullahs in Iran for more than two years was a terrible blunder. Pacifist evasion is what the world has come to expect from continental Europe, but the decision by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to become an enabler to their procrastinations was of a different order of strategic error. An emboldened Tehran seized the chance to play them all along while advancing its ambitions in great leaps.
On the left the hands are being wrung over Iraq. It is argued that the decision to invade the wrong country has made our situation intolerably worse. Iran was always the bigger threat. While we were chasing phantom nuclear weapons in Mesopotamia, next door Iran was busy building real ones. Now we are enfeebled, militarily and politically, our diplomatic tools blunted beyond repair by the errors in Iraq.
I tend to side more with the former crowd (though let it not be said that the latter do not have a point) but it is important for all of us to understand that this debate is now for the birds. All that matters now is what we do.
The unavoidable reality is that we now need urgently to steel ourselves to the ugly probability that diplomacy will not now suffice: one or way or another, unconscionable acts of war may now be unavoidable.
Those who say war is unthinkable are right. Military strikes, even limited, targeted and accurate ones, will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world. They will, quite probably entrench and harden the Iranian regime. Even the young, hopeful democrats who despise their theocratic rulers and crave the freedoms of the West will pause at the sight of their country burnt and humiliated by the infidels.
A war, even a limited one, will almost certainly raise oil prices to recession-inducing levels, as Iran cuts itself off from global markets. The loss of Iranian supply and the already stretched nature of production in the Arab world and elsewhere means prices of $150 per barrel are easily imaginable. Military strikes will foster more violence in the Middle East, strengthen the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, fuel anti-Western sentiment among Muslims everywhere and encourage more terrorism against us at home.
All true. All fearfully powerful arguments against the use of the military option. But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in the history of the world, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler. What the country itself may do with those weapons, given its pledges, its recent history and its strategic objectives with regard to the US, Israel and their allies, is well known. We can reasonably assume that the refusal of the current Iranian leadership to accept the Holocaust as historical fact is simply a recognition of their own plans to redefine the notion as soon as they get a chance (“Now this is what we call a holocaust”). But this threat is only, incredibly, a relatively small part of the problem.
If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world’s greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions.
No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.
Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists. The terror training grounds of Afghanistan were always vulnerable if the West had the resolve. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian camps will become impregnable.
And the kind of society we live in and cherish in the West, a long way from Tehran or Damascus, will change beyond recognition. We balk now at intrusive government measures to tap our phones or stop us saying incendiary things in mosques. Imagine how much more our freedoms will be curtailed if our governments fear we are just one telephone call or e-mail, one plane journey or truckload away from another Hiroshima.
Something short of military action may yet prevail on Iran. Perhaps sanctions will turn their leadership from its doomsday ambitions. Perhaps Russia can somehow be persuaded to give them an incentive to think again. But we can’t count on this optimistic scenario now. And so we must ready ourselves for what may be the unthinkable necessity.
Because in the end, preparation for war, by which I mean not military feasibility planning, or political and diplomatic manoeuvres but a psychological readiness, a personal willingness on all our parts to bear the terrible burdens that it will surely impose, may be our last real chance to ensure that we can avoid one.
War now, or a nuclear Iran later. Hmm.
I know I'm going to take flak for this, but from the beginning I wished President Bush had gone after Iran first.
I'm aware of all the arguments and rationale, but that's just the way I felt.
the problem with that is we had to get rid of the nrighborhood bully first, because Saddam's actions are unpredicatble. He could have inserted himself into that situation in a variety of ways.
While the Iranian leadership prepares to burn us all, the US Senate fiddles with hearings on the legality of wiretaps.
Of course. We now have the Mexican Army crossing our border with armored cars and heavy machine guns. Why worry?
Iraq is a base from which operations can be launched against Iran and Syria.
(Even if it's fake...)
Actually, I think Saddam was the easier target (less of a rat's nest - although that's like comparing two bad smells -they both have to be gotten rid of)
Sorry, you can't have a different opinion...whaddya think this is, a free country?
Oh wait, this is a free country.
Which is the number one reason I support the move against Iraq.
No flak, just a comment from the strategic viewpoint - far easier to invade Iran from the Iraqi desert than to orchestrate amphibious landing from the gulf with all the french Exocet and Chinese Silkworm anti-ship missiles Iranians have.
But if it comes to that, the gloves will come off. We only saw a couple weeks of air bombardment last time. This time the bombs will rain until the mullah's don't have but two rocks to call a building.
This sounds like a VERY tough nut to crack...
This is SERIOUS.
"...the decision to let the Europeans play nuclear footsie with the mullahs in Iran for more than two years was a terrible blunder. Pacifist evasion is what the world has come to expect from continental Europe, but the decision by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to become an enabler to their procrastinations was of a different order of strategic error"
So there it is. Europeans blaming the US for alowing Europeans to be Europeans. Can't say I'm surprised.
Separately, have you ever read an article that uses the prefix "un" so many times?
The decision to invade Iraq was forced by necessity, as will be seen. Iran at that time was not the immediate threat but just a swirling cesspool of incoherent political thought out of which monsters emerge now and then. If Iran is now an immediate threat rather than just an oozing breeding ground, it will be dealt with. A bombing campaign with no ground invasion may suffice to reduce Iran once more to fangless malignity and if the Persians can then recover their country from the invaders, so much the better, but it isn't a done deal.
Iran was a bit different then and also the invasion into Iraqn back then would have had to come from Afghanistan or by sea.
Now we have more options for which to move troops by.....
Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf....
I didn't think it was a fake.
I pulled it off another site some time ago, but hey, maybe.
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