Posted on 01/15/2014 9:08:18 AM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
As we approach the centennial of World War I, we will read much of the blunders that produced that tragedy of Western civilization.
Among them will be the “blank check” Kaiser Wilhelm II gave to Vienna after the assassination by a Serb terrorist of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
If you decide to punish the Serbs, said the Kaiser, we are with you.
After dithering for weeks, Austria shelled Belgrade. Within a week, Germany and Austria were at war with Russia, France and Great Britain.
Today the Senate is about to vote Israel a virtual blank check—for war on Iran. Reads Senate bill S.1881: If Israel is “compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” the United States “should stand with Israel and provide … diplomatic, military and economic support to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence.”
Inserted in that call for U.S. military action to support an Israeli strike on Iran, S.1881 says that, in doing so, we should follow our laws and constitutional procedures.
Nevertheless, this bill virtually hands over the decision on war to Bibi Netanyahu who is on record saying: “This is 1938. Iran is Germany.”
Is this the man we want deciding whether America fights her fifth war in a generation in the Mideast? Do we really want to outsource the decision on war in the Persian Gulf, the gas station of the world, to a Likud regime whose leaders routinely compare Iran to Nazi Germany?
The bill repeatedly asserts that Iran has a “nuclear weapons program.”
Yet in both 2007 and 2011, U.S. intelligence declared “with high confidence” that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
Where is the Senate’s evidence for its claim? Why has Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not been called to testify as to whether Tehran has made the decision to go for a bomb?
Why are the American people being kept in the dark?
Are we being as misled, deceived, and lied to about Iran’s “weapons of mass destruction,” as we were about Iraq’s? The bill says that in a final deal Iran must give up all enrichment of uranium. However, we have already been put on notice by President Hassan Rouhani that this is an ultimatum Iran cannot accept.
Even the reformers of Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009 back their country’s right to a peaceful nuclear program including enrichment.
Senate bill S.1881 imposes new sanctions if Iran fails to live up to the interim agreement or fails to come to a final agreement in six months.
Yet the Senate knows that Iran has warned that if new sanctions are voted during negotiations, they will walk away from the table.
Why is the Senate risking, or even inviting, a blowup in these talks?
When the interim agreement was reached, it was denounced by neocons as “worse than Munich.” Now the War Party piously contends this Senate bill is simply an “insurance policy” to ensure that the terms of the deal are met and a final deal reached.
It is nothing of the sort. This bill is a project of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, designed to sabotage and scuttle the Geneva talks by telling Tehran: Either capitulate and dismantle all your enrichment facilities, or face more severe sanctions which will put us on the road to war.
What terrifies AIPAC and Bibi is not an American war on Iran, but an American rapprochement with Iran.
Who are the leaders of the push for S.1881? Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, the biggest recipients of AIPAC campaign cash.
Last weekend, the Obama National Security Council finally belled the cat with a blunt statement by spokesperson Bernadette Meehan: ”If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action [against Iran], they should be up front with the American public and say so.”
Exactly. For whether or not all these senators understand what they are doing, this is where their bill points—to a scuttling of the Geneva talks and a return to the sanctions road, at the end of which lies a U.S. war with Iran.
A majority of Democratic senators have thus far bravely bucked AIPAC and declined to co-sponsor S.1881. However, all but two Republican senators have signed on.
If, after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the GOP has once again caught the war fever, the party should be quarantined from the White House for another four years.
Press Secretary Jay Carney says that if S.1881 passes, Obama will veto it. The president should tell Congress that not only will he veto it, but that if Israel decides on its own to attack Iran, Israel will be on its own in the subsequent war.
Obama should order U.S. intelligence to tell us the truth.
Is Iran truly hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear bomb? Does Iran have a nuclear bomb program? If so, when did Tehran make that decision?
Or are we being lied into war again?
Our sanctions are meaningless anyway. We’ve been giving waivers to get around the sanctions for years.
Peace in Our Time
A fifth war in the Middle East? People barely noticed the first four. Just put it on the national credit card and send somebody else to fight it. Again.
Pat supporting President O.
Who’d have thought it? (Anyone with a brain).
If the Iranians get a nuclear weapon than the Arab countries will seek their own nuclear weapons. If we support Israel the war will be conventional. If we don’t support Israel the war will be nuclear. Which is the lesser of two evils?
Pat hates Jews so much that he simply is incapable of understanding the stakes in Iran.
Guess AIPAC won’t be sending any money to Buchanan.
It is so obvious to those that are not blind.
If we want to get involved and move the ball on a few problems at once, we could simply arm the Kurds, the way we armed the Contras once upon a time.
Bibi is not just going to sit around and let this happen.
0bama’s insanity with regard to Iran is going to end up with a couple of very blue cities being turned into smoking, glowing, uninhabitable holes.
“Pat hates Jews so much that he is just incapable of understanding the stakes in Iran.”
correct, alas.
BUT the bigger stakes he refuses to even acknowledge is the threat to AMERICA. Remember, USA is the Iranian IslamoNazis’ number ONE target, America is their “Great Satan” to which they ascribe all blame for all their other complaints....
they believe that once they destroy USA that all their other complaints will disappear, or become easy for them to wipe out with the rest of their nuclear bomb missiles
The number 1 threat is to USA
the number 2 threat is to seize control of the oil fields that Iran does not already have (which happen to be very nearby them there in the gulf region), and
the number 3 threat is to their “little Satan” (Pat’s life-long nemesis, alas, his “stumbling block,” his blind spot, little old Israel).
Pat’s unrealistic (and, plainly DANGEROUS as HELL) attitude about pacifism and isolationism being an effective defense policy for America.... is exactly why many of us could not vote for him in all these years ....
had Pat adopted a more normal, realistic defense policy that recognized the existence of some very evil, aggressive, and hostile forces out there, threats requiring a better response than merely hiding under the bed and pretending they will all go away overnight ........ I bet he could have become President. just a guess, but so many people we know said the same thing, that they were attracted to Pat but his blind spots involving defense and foreign policy scared the hell out of everyone.... I bet he could have at least made a serious run for the office)
as it is, he’s about as useful in defending America as is Kerry
Good question—which is the lesser evil—a land war we become heavily involved in, or a third party nuclear exchange we stand aside from?
How much do the Iranians pay him, anyway?
I agree 100%. Pat’s anti-Israel isolationism killed any chances for the WH. It certainly killed any chance of him ever getting my vote.
Pat’s isolationism killed any chance of our voting for him. It would either leave America defenseless or at least it would force us into fighting much larger and far riskier wars than are otherwise necessary (with a more sensible defense policy)
Pat’s anti-anything-Jewish attitude was similarly unacceptable... totally unacceptable, he seems to keep tripping over that same “stumbling stone” over and over and over and over and over and over again... it is so sad to see such an otherwise-capable person suffering from such a pathetic prejudice
Looks like Pat Buchanan is wanting Iran to finish what the Nazis wanted to do by killing all the Jews in Israel.
His own book stated he we should not have gotten involved in WW2 against the germans.
Some of us believe the more realistic long-term defense posture for the US is to let regional problems be solved by nations in the region. We cannot forever be inserting ourselves into conflicts of secondary American importance as if they were all a life and death affair for our security.
An assassination of an archduke does not incorporate the same issues as a reasonable threat of destruction upon an entire nation or nations. Germany may have had ulterior motives in their agreement with Austria that do not in any way parallel U.S. motives here. And Obama's comment about a bill voting for a U.S. preemptive strike or attack on Iran is not relevant here.
I agree we should not issue any country, even our allies like Israel, a "blank check" by signing away our sovereign right to choose whether to enter into a war but I'm not convinced that is what this is. The excerpt Pat used said "should" not "shall" and doesn't specify what kind of "diplomatic, military and economic support" the U.S. would give "to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence" and that "we should follow our laws and constitutional procedures" (as though that should have to be included). To me, this is simply saying that the U.S. will support its friend and ally Israel against Iran to persevere Israel's existence in any way the U.S. deems appropriate. I don't see a "blank check" here.
I think Pat has a bias against these international entanglements and not sure he's very sympathetic to Israel's constant threat by the nations of the area and the world. I like Pat, but don't agree with him here.
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