Posted on 06/25/2019 3:42:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Visualizing 150 Iranian dead from a missile strike that he had ordered, President Donald Trump recoiled and canceled the strike, a brave decision and defining moment for his presidency.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Vice President Mike Pence had signed off on the strike on Iran as the right response to Tehran's shootdown of a U.S. Global Hawk spy plane over the Gulf of Oman.
The U.S. claims the drone was over international waters. Tehran says it was in Iranian territory. But while the loss of a $100 million drone is no small matter, no American pilot was lost, and retaliating by killing 150 Iranians would appear to be a disproportionate response.
Good for Trump. Yet, all weekend, he was berated for chickening out and imitating President Barack Obama. U.S. credibility, it was said, has taken a big hit and must be restored with military action.
By canceling the strike, the president also sent a message to Iran: We're ready to negotiate. Yet, given the irreconcilable character of our clashing demands, it is hard to see how the U.S. and Iran get off this road we are on, at the end of which a military collision seems almost certain.
Consider the respective demands.
Monday, the president tweeted: "The U.S. request for Iran is very simple -- No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!"
But Iran has no nuclear weapons, has never had nuclear weapons, and has never even produced bomb-grade uranium.
According to our own intelligence agencies in 2007 and 2011, Tehran did not even have a nuclear weapons program.
Under the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, the only way Iran could have a nuclear weapons program would be in secret, outside its known nuclear facilities, all of which are under constant U.N. inspection.
Where is the evidence that any such secret program exists?
And if it does, why does America not tell the world where Iran's secret nuclear facilities are located and demand immediate inspections?
"No further sponsoring of terror," Trump says.
But what does that mean?
As the major Shiite power in a Middle East divided between Sunni and Shiite, Iran backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen's civil war, Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon, Alawite Bashar Assad in Syria, and the Shiite militias in Iraq who helped us stop ISIS's drive to Baghdad.
In his 12 demands, Pompeo virtually insisted that Iran abandon these allies and capitulate to their Sunni adversaries and rivals.
Not going to happen. Yet, if these demands are nonnegotiable, to be backed up by sanctions severe enough to choke Iran's economy to death, we will be headed for war.
No more than North Korea is Iran going to yield to U.S. demands that it abandon what Iran sees as vital national interests.
As for the U.S. charge that Iran is "destabilizing" the Middle East, it was not Iran that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, overthrew the Gadhafi regime in Libya, armed rebels to overthrow Assad in Syria, or aided and abetted the Saudis' intervention in Yemen's civil war.
Iran, pushed to the wall, its economy shrinking as inflation and unemployment are rising, is approaching the limits of its tolerance.
And as Iran suffers pain, it is saying, other nations in the Gulf will endure similar pain, as will the USA. At some point, collisions will produce casualties and we will be on the up escalator to war.
Yet, what vital interest of ours does Iran today threaten?
Trump, with his order to stand down on the missile strike on Iran, signaled that he wanted a pause in the confrontation.
Still, it needs to be said: The president himself authorized the steps that have brought us to this peril point.
Trump pulled out of and trashed Obama's nuclear deal. He imposed the sanctions that are now inflicting something close to unacceptable if not intolerable pain on Iran. He had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard declared a terrorist organization. He sent the Abraham Lincoln carrier task force and B-52s to the Gulf region.
If war is to be avoided, either Iran is going to have to capitulate, or the U.S. is going to have to walk back its maximalist position.
And who would Trump name to negotiate with Tehran for the United States?
The longer the sanctions remain in place and the deeper they bite, the greater the likelihood Iran will respond to our economic warfare with its own asymmetric warfare. Has the president decided to take that risk?
We appear to be at a turning point in the Trump presidency.
Does he want to run in 2020 as the president who led us into war with Iran, or as the anti-interventionist president who began to bring U.S. troops home from that region that has produced so many wars?
Perhaps Congress, the branch of government designated by the Constitution to decide on war, should instruct President Trump as to the conditions under which he is authorized to take us to war with Iran.
> It is Pat Buchanan who knows nothing about anything. <
Buchanan is an America-first kind of guy. And I kind of like that.
Buchanan would have kept us out of WWI. And that would have made the world a better place. But he also would have kept us out of WWII. And that would have made the world a much, much worse place.
(Alas in this forum it has become necessary to attest to one's faithfulness to the cause lest he finds himself rather than his reasoning assailed so, for the record, I have long maintained here that Iraq was the wrong war partly because it made a war against Iran impossible. Iran has always been the real threat, the possibility of Iran obtaining atomic weapon would be devastating for America's national interests and for the world because it would invert the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, because it would cause the Arab nations to disintegrate even more, further cause them to go nuclear themselves, Spike the price of oil, tie America's hands militarily, much as they are tied against North Korea, and certainly raise the risk of atomic devastation.)
Buchanan argues another side which is plausible and on first examination, factually accurate:
Iran has no nuclear weapons, has never had nuclear weapons, and has never even produced bomb-grade uranium. According to our own intelligence agencies in 2007 and 2011, Tehran did not even have a nuclear weapons program. Under the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, the only way Iran could have a nuclear weapons program would be in secret, outside its known nuclear facilities, all of which are under constant U.N. inspection.
Where is the evidence that any such secret program exists? As for the U.S. charge that Iran is "destabilizing" the Middle East, it was not Iran that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, overthrew the Gadhafi regime in Libya, armed rebels to overthrow Assad in Syria, or aided and abetted the Saudis' intervention in Yemen's civil war.
Trump pulled out of and trashed Obama's nuclear deal. He imposed the sanctions that are now inflicting something close to unacceptable if not intolerable pain on Iran. He had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard declared a terrorist organization. He sent the Abraham Lincoln carrier task force and B-52s to the Gulf region.
Many of these points will be raised against the administration the minute the shooting starts. We have seen this dynamic played out before in Vietnam and in Iraq. The president is not just commander-in-chief he is in many ways the personification of the nation and, in war, he is the personification of the war effort. The Kaiser and the Czar fell when their armies with whom these leaders had been identified disintegrated.
You complain that "Buchanan never served five minutes in uniform - so any military assessments he makes are suspect." Yet one might say the exact same about Donald Trump's biography-unless you count military high school as time in uniform. Donald Trump did not enter the Oval Office like a five-star general who just defeated the Nazis.
My point is that the president as Chief Executive Officer, commander-in-chief, personification of the nation and ultimately responsible for the success or failures of war, must carry the country with him and keep the country, and Congress, with him. Those presidents who fail, fall. Witness Lyndon Johnson.
The groundwork for military operations has simply not been laid and the country is not behind this or any president waging war on this record. Churchill roused Britain to its finest hour and carried the nation through the darkest days of the war because his warnings had been so terrible and so vindicated that "none could now gainsay me." Roosevelt presented an image of isolationism promising no boys would go to war all the while turning the screws on Japan , much like Trump is now doing to Iran, until he got a Pearl Harbor which thoroughly unified the nation and carried us through the first dark months of World War II. But George W. Bush, despite diligent cultivation of support for the war, went into the Iraq war with a disunited nation and, predictably, suffered irreparable damage when the occupation went bad.
This President has a genius for feeling the pulse of the nation and whether wittingly or otherwise, he made precisely the right political move at this state of affairs.
Trump set forth his policy clearly and he deserves credit for it. Buchanan himself acknowledges it:
"No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!"
This is the principle that the president must take to the people while he continues to do what he is doing, tighten the screws with sanctions, launch cyber attacks, and await developments whether it be capitulation or Pearl Harbor. Above all, the people must understand this to be in the fundamental existential interest of the United States and something of a moral crusade.
He must be as sly as Franklin Roosevelt.
Trump is probably one of the smartest presidents we have ever had, and definitely the hardest working.
Why are you swearing on FR?
A no less logical conclusion is that there were efforts to get the bomb, but no direct or unbroken 40 year path.
If you claim there's more logical certainty to your argument than it deserves, you weaken your argument.
Pat, after all these years you still don’t understand the Iranian regime. Stick to subjects you do.
The way to have an attack on Pearl Harbor is to ignore all the signs and go to sleep. The way to have the world think of the United States as weak and maybe attackable, is to be spineless, drop millions/billions on the ground for countries that hate us and be dependent on those same countries for our oil.
The way to stand tall and avoid a war (if it’s possible, the is is the ONLY way) is to maybe play chicken with some of the worst and dangerous countries in the world. And be sure they know our military is TOP and we don’t need their oil any more... they have nothing to wage a stand off with... NEGOTIATE and maybe you will save your position in your infested dictatorship over there.
” Killing 150 civilians in response sounds murderous by any measure”
They would have targeted military/IRGC installations. That’s who would have been killed, not civilians.
Trump was never as anti-interventionist as Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan.
And that's one of the main reasons I believe that Iran DOES have a nuclear weapons program.
Silly man. When you begin any negotiation you start high. Then observe the reaction and wait for a counter. So Trump knows that his “demands” are only a jumping off point. The sanctions can be lifted at any time. Its up to the Iranians at this point. If the IRANIANS choose death and a trip further back into stone age, its on them. Not Trump. Sure they come out talking a tough game but a war with the US would certainly wreck Iran, the Iranians know this.
I am sure all those young men who died via Iranian IEDs in Iraq were grateful for the Iranian help in crushing ISIS there....before a bomb tore their humvee to shreds.
“... all of which are under constant U.N. inspection.”
Wrong! Only those facilities that Iran has OPENED to inspection are known. Undeclared or secret sites are NOT inspected.
I agree. Now it that had been a U-2...
To understand Pat Buchanan you must first realize he has a real problem with Israel and Jews and he never misses a chance to suck up to Moslems. This whole screed was covering up for Iran.
That’s a bingo.
We just say Bingo.
Yes... I was quoting “Inglourious Basterds.”
One of those movies I never get tired of watching.
I was sad when Diane Kruger got whacked.
Also really enjoyed Fassbender’s character and performance.
Bon-Jorn-No!
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