Posted on 01/29/2006 4:13:58 AM PST by RWR8189
EVENTS ARE CONVERGING TO ELEVATE the nuclear crisis with Iran into the central crisis of the Bush presidency. War presidents are graded not by circumstances they inherit, including those that lead to war. They are judged by how they react to those circumstances.
Franklin Roosevelt as a war president is defined not by the attack on Pearl Harbor, but by the radical war aim he laid out against Japan and Germany in the wake of Pearl Harbor--unconditional surrender--and by his relentless and successful pursuit of that war aim until the day he died.
When Lyndon Johnson became president in November 1963, he inherited a chaotic situation in South Vietnam due to an ill-advised military coup against the civilian-led Saigon government countenanced by his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. As vice president, LBJ had fought to prevent the anti-Diem coup, which proved to be a ghastly mistake. Yet Johnson as a war president receives a failing grade for one reason only: When he left office in January 1969 the United States was in a far weaker geopolitical position, in Vietnam and globally, than it had been when Johnson took office.
In the same way, long after the present wartime president leaves office, his success or failure will be judged not by the enemy attacks of 9/11 but by how he responded to those attacks--and by whether his responses prove right or wrong.
In response to 9/11, Bush and his administration put down clear markers and bright lines. The days of treating terrorism as a criminal activity, to be solved primarily by the work of policemen, prosecutors, judges, and juries, were over. The president served notice that foreign governments providing safe haven for terrorist enemies of the United States would be treated as if those governments were mounting terrorist operations themselves--that is, as enemies of the United States in a world war. And he announced that rogue states would not be allowed to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
To achieve these war aims, Bush proclaimed two new doctrines. The new military doctrine, a marked departure from the Cold War doctrine of deterrence, was that of preemption: We would no longer wait for military mobilizations or attacks before striking against a growing terrorist threat. Preemption comprised a series of military options up to and including invasion, occupation, and regime change.
The new geopolitical doctrine was the promotion of democracy as a central U.S. policy goal around the world but with particular focus on the Arab and Islamic cultures. Without political reform in the Islamic world, Bush argued, eliminating one set of terrorists would achieve no more than a respite before terrorism's next wave.
By the time of the January 2002 State of the Union speech that singled out an "axis of evil"--Iraq, Iran, and North Korea--as the most dangerous of the world's surviving rogue states, Bush had successfully defined his response to 9/11. He had also laid out a coherent U.S. military and political strategy to deal with the protracted world war he believed us to be in. You could disagree with the strategy, and many did. But no one could deny that such a strategy had been laid out.
In the years since 9/11, the Bush war strategy has yielded some undeniable successes: the turning of Pakistan from a fomenter of terrorism and of nuclear proliferation into a semicollaborator of the United States; the ousting of the Taliban government and its al Qaeda mentors in Afghanistan; and the renunciation by Libya of its nuclear program, to name three. Claims can be made as well for the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon followed by free elections and for the advance of democratic reforms in a number of other Islamic countries.
Beginning with the March 2003 invasion, the war in Iraq has taken center stage as the toughest, best-defined test of the Bush war strategies: in a nutshell, military preemption and regime change, followed by democratic reform in the wake of terrorist challenges from Sunni revanchists and Islamist terrorists swearing allegiance to al Qaeda. Iraq has tested every element of the Bush war strategy. Until fairly recently, it seemed plausible that the success or failure of Bush's global strategies, and thus of the Bush presidency itself, would hinge on U.S. success or failure in Iraq.
With the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran last June, this began to change. There may or may not be elements in the Iranian government willing to accommodate the emerging Shiite-majority government in Iraq. There may even be factions in Iran that would hesitate before providing a direct challenge to Bush's preemption doctrine. If such factions exist, however, they are irrelevant today. Ahmadinejad, for whatever reasons, appears determined to force Bush to live up to his post-9/11 strategy or tacitly admit that he has abandoned it in the face of difficulties in Iraq.
One by one, Iran's radical president is removing the pretexts for U.S. inaction or delay. Could we live with a nuclear Iran? Not one led by a man who says the Jewish Holocaust never happened and muses about the possibility of correcting that Nazi failure by dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel. Is there a way to take advantage of the fact that the Shiite wing of Islamism has not taken part, so far, in a shooting war with the United States or its allies? Not with an Iranian president who convenes a terror summit in Damascus with Bashar Assad, the all-but-proven murderer of the former premier of Lebanon, and with Hamas, the avatar of Sunni terrorism in the Palestinian territories. Given these events, it would no longer be shocking to see Ahmadinejad at a summit with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq and an advocate of the mass murder of Shiites as a tactic in the war against U.S. forces and the Shiite-led Iraqi government.
Reports out of Iran suggest Ahmadinejad may see himself as a central actor in an Islamic apocalypse. A man with this mindset might see provoking the United States as forwarding the end game of Allah. And he might not fear provoking Israel into an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities that could trigger convulsions throughout the Middle East and beyond.
Much depends on how far Iran is from putting together its first nuclear warhead. Some reports, particularly those traced to Israeli intelligence, point to the very near future. Even if the ominous date turns out to be much further away, Ahmadinejad shows little sign of pausing for breath. Indeed, the Hamas sweep of the Palestinian parliamentary elections is no doubt being seen in Tehran as a vindication of Ahmadinejad's Damascus terror summit days earlier.
If the Bush administration is developing a military option to deal with Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons--a form of preemption--it is doing so very quietly. On the pure military level, this is, of course, appropriate. If you had to pick one flaw in the superbly organized U.S. invasion of Iraq, as Jed Babbin recently pointed out, it would be the lack of an element of surprise.
But what is starting to become clear is that Ahmadinejad's seemingly reckless challenge will extract, and is meant to extract, a cost in U.S. standing among our friends and allies, in Iraq and across the globe. A war president who can be portrayed as having given up on the core of his own war strategy will be seen as a leader considerably less capable of deterring our terrorist enemies, wherever they are and whatever it is they are plotting.
Jeffrey Bell is a principal of Capital City Partners, a Washington consulting firm.
Except the demonrats.
If true, considering all the crises of the Bush presidency, Iran's gonna be a whopper!
I have huge issues with the spread of the Iranian revolution at the moment- and be in no doubt that it is spreading my friends:
In Iraq the near majority Shai vote in the recent elections are a sign of the growing influence of Iran-
The recent Palestinian election where Hamas - an organisation funded by Iran in terms of money, weapons and political ideas- show Irans influence in this area too.
There even seem to be rumblings in Afganistan at the moment- with the lawless Western border area of Pakistan providing breeding grounds for a resurgence of religious Shia fundamentalism (I see the Brits are sending another detachment of solidiers to the country). Wouldn't put it past Iran to be funding this either.
We have to do something to at least halt the Iranian expansion- but not too sure we have many options though.
Sanctions would run the risk of failing, with countries like India, Russia and especially China in desperate of Oil.
As for a military strike- on the 2nd biggest oil exporter in the world- this would push the oil price to levels never seen before causing world recession. This would cause misery to the average American.
Be interesting to see what Bush does next.....I guess that is why he is President and I am not :))
I have to respectfully disagree with this somewhat. I don't think President Bush has done nearly enough to plainly and simply explain his strategy to the country. I understand what he's doing, and agree 100% with the strategy. I just don't think the average American has heard it enough from him. That allows the Dems to keep up their insistent anti-war wail enough to fool some of those who aren't paying sufficient attention.
If you had to pick one flaw in the superbly organized U.S. invasion of Iraq, as Jed Babbin recently pointed out, it would be the lack of an element of surprise.
In today's world, I don't think you can have much of an element of surprise, honestly. We could have avoided putting every little strategic initiative on the front pages of our papers, but the inevitability of the invasion was obvious to anyone paying attention.
The good news, there has been a counter-revolution building in Iran. The bus strike yesterday hopefully, is one of the opening acts. A LOT of Iranians, do NOT want the Mullahs in charge!
If we don't stop Iran with force, it's Vietnam all over again. The US would be seen as a paper tiger, and every tinpot terrorist would line up to take a potshot at the us. Bush doesn't have a choice -- any finagled 'agreement' with Iran at this point will be seen as a sham. This could all telescope drastically -- if we piddle around much longer and if Israel fails to act, they're gone. We'd have to take off the gloves....but too late for millions of Jews. Not an option Bush or the US could live with.
The war with Iran very likely will weaken USA. As a result it will weaken Israel and Israel will be forced to modify its basic policies in the direction of radical compromise with Muslim neighbors and to established closer relations with the European countries.
I'm betting on march being the d-month. Beyond march may well be too late.
The Iraq war was an invasion...Iran will be an air strike which doesn't require a very public build and support system.
That is an undeniable fact.
I fully expect the Iranian yorkies to keep yipping and the enemy Democrat Party & Co. to keep giving aid and succor to any and all that hate the US and what She stands for.
We will either fall, like Germany, France and Russia, or we will stand tall and do what must be done.
What do you suppose the economic effects of the obliteration of Tel Aviv will be? Or nukes going off in mainland USA? Even worrying about the price of oil or a recession, however severe, as some sort of reason to not take care of business in a businesslike manner bespeaks a severely truncated view, like one's assessment of the future being able to take in Tuesday next at most.
Uhm...no...events are converging to ELEVATE the people of God UP...UP...and AWAYAY!
As we're floating, this Believer is going to shake his finger at chu and declare, "See, 4CJ, I told you I knew what the he--ah, Heaven, I was talking about, son!!"
And what, exactly, do you think is the plan these rogue states have for the West?
World recession? Misery to the average American? You are kidding, right?
Have you ever read the history of the Second World War? Considered the sacrifices and hardships that the "average American" was forced to endure?
Indeed don't get me wrong I agree with you. However a military strike on Iran, as apposed to the military action in Iraq, will have potentially huge economic consequences for us here in the US.
Not too sure if the majority of the American people are ready for that at the moment. With Congressional elections next year and then presidential elections just a few years off- the fallout COULD be huge for us conservatives.
You are taking about striking the a country as large and more mountainous than the states of East Coast put together.
The groups in Iran seeking regime change need to rise up and fight for their freedom.
Nuclear destruction in the US is pretty big fallout for Conservatives, too. What do you suppose Republican election chances will be if we lose Chicago and Boston Harbor or Tel Aviv?
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