No Blank Checks for the GOP — or Likud
High among the blunders of history was the “blank cheque” Kaiser Wilhelm gave Vienna, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to deal with the Serbs as they saw fit.
Five weeks later, Vienna cashed the check and declared war, after Belgrade refused to submit to all 10 demands of an ultimatum. Russia mobilized; Germany and France followed. And war came, the bloodiest in all of European history with 9 million soldiers in their graves.
Since June 1914, a “blank check” given by one nation to another for war has been regarded as strategic folly.
Thus it is startling to learn 47 House Republicans just signed on to H.R. 1553 declaring unequivocal “support for Israel’s right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran … including the use of military force.”
These Republicans have just given Tel Aviv a blank check for a pre-emptive war that Israel, unless it uses its nuclear weapons, can start but not finish. Fighting and finishing that war would fall to the armed forces of the United States.
Who do these Republicans represent?
The Pentagon has made clear that with two wars of nearly a decade’s duration bleeding us, we do not want a third war with Iran. For while easy to predict how such a war begins, with air and missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, no one can know how it ends.
Indeed, how would Israel reach its targets in Iran?
Turkey would not allow Israeli over-flights. The route over Jordan and Iraq would require U.S. military complicity, for we control Iraqi air space. Would Riyadh permit Israel to use its airspace to attack Iran, knowing Tehran could create havoc in the Gulf states and oil patch of northeastern Arabia?
The Israeli air force could destroy the nuclear power plant at Bushehr, the heavy water reactor at Arak and uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. But Israel cannot follow up and destroy all the dispersed nuclear facilities and missile sites of Iran. And no one knows what would follow.
How would Iran retaliate? Missile strikes on Tel Aviv? A missile barrage form Hezbollah igniting another Israeli-Lebanon war? How long could the United States stand by and watch Israel bombarded?
Indeed, the principal purpose and result of an Israeli pre-emptive war on Iran, bringing retaliation on Israel, would be to drag America in to fight and finish a war Israel had begun.
In whose interest is that? And who dreamed this resolution up?
If America joined the attack, we would have to complete the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and destroy its missile sites, coastal defenses, navy, air force and hundreds of speedboats to prevent attacks on U.S. warships and tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
We would have to strike all the Republican Guard bases near Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our troops. We would have to kill thousands of Iranians.
Would Iran retaliate by inciting the Mahdi Army to kill our men in Iraq? Would it set Hezbollah to kidnap or kill Americans in Lebanon? Would Iran retaliate for its civilian dead by activating agents to commit terrorism in the United States? No one knows.
In 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered air strikes on Libya to retaliate for Qaddafi’s bombing of the Berlin discotheque. In 1989, in retaliation, Qaddafi blew up Pan Am 103. Death toll: 270 men, women and children. It’s called blowback.
The House Republican resolution supports Israel’s use of “all means necessary” to “eliminate nuclear threats” that represent an “immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.”
What “immediate and existential threat” are they talking about?
It is Israel that has hundreds of atomic bombs. Iran has no atom bombs, has tested no atomic device, has diverted none of its low-enriched uranium out of the sight of U.N. inspectors and has offered to ship half of its LEU to Turkey in exchange for fuel rods for a U.S.-built reactor that makes medical isotopes. And half of the centrifuges at Natanz have broken down.
Undeniably, Iran is gaining knowledge of how to build a bomb. But such a decision would seem idiotic from Iran’s standpoint, risking Israeli or U.S. nuclear strikes and provoking Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to follow suit and acquire the bomb, leaving Iran even more isolated and vulnerable,
Three years ago, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that Iran had given up on the project of building a bomb. Do these Republicans have hard evidence Iran is diverting its enriched uranium to such a bomb? If so, where is it?
Have these Republicans forgotten what happened to their colleagues in 2006, who voted Bush that blank check for war on Iraq in 2002?
Why, with all the issues going for them, House Republicans would announce full-throated support for a pre-emptive war on Iran that Americans would have to fight and finish, escapes me.
But if this is where a Republican House would take America, into yet another war, best that we know it before voting this fall.
Words of wisdom.
Nice work Pat .. you write this kind of thing well. It’ll be our servicemen that will bear any retaliation from Iranian assistance to insurgents in Iraq/and Afghistan in particular. Is this not infringing on US sovereignty allowing another country to declare war on our behalf? These are acts of war that are being considered after all.
How long does it take to train Pastuns to use a sniper rifle effectively? Shoulder launched G to A or anti tank rockets? it’s not that complicated after all we did it to help the very same ethnic groups to fight the Soviets and it’s an open invitation.
Does anyone know the story behind H.R. 1553? That is, whether this is something that is really the product of an organized push by AIPAC or etc., or just the product of this or that particularly fevered House member who maybe got some others to sign onto same who are either similarly fevered or who believe AIPAC and Co. want it? 57 doesn’t seem all that big a number.
In any event to the degree it *is* AIPAC inspired—and it could well be doing so just at a low level for right now—it’s really a rather remarkable thing in essence being an open attempt to threaten Obama and therefore an open insult to him as well. Sort of like the equivalent of Netanyahu trying to go over his head to put pressure on him.
As noted might not really be AIPAC/Israel sponsored though, which would be interesting. After all if it *is* then surely it would be big evidence that Israel is indeed readying to whack Iran. If not though, and if AIPAC doesn’t get behind it, that correspondingly seems to me some evidence that no, Israel isn’t really intending to start bombing Tehran.
I know that in the pages of the America Conservative Israel is seen has a cancer that must be expunged. And that Iran is a happy go lucky bunch who are still reeling from 1953. But maybe some of you people might consider the possiblity that a nuclear arms race in a region that has most of the worlds oil reserves might be just a little bit of a problem
Bill, it seems to me that a regional arms race would be far preferable to an active world war.
From a moral perspective, I find it hypocritical that the United States is the self-appointed arbiter of who can and cannot possess nuclear weapons. The United States is the only country ever to use nuclear weapons, and their utilization incinerated several hundred thousand women, children, and men too old to fight. This is especially appalling since the large majority of our highest ranking military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur, believed that the atomic bombs were not necessary to effect a surrender from the Japanese.
It gets worse. One of the major underpinnings of the paranoid case for attacking Iran is statements by their President, who has no foreign policy authority. The real authority, the religious rulers, has specifically disavowed the pursuit and use of nuclear weapons in writing. Why is it that one statement with less applicability is taken seriously but the other is treated as a lie?
Secondly, throughout the past 70 or so years, all peoples bombed under the assumption that bombing would make them complacent and yield have instead, due in part to the inevitable slaughter of innocents, have resisted even more strongly afterward. This was the case in Germany and Japan, it was the case in Vietnam, it was the case here after 9/11, and it has always been the case with Israel. The assumption that the Iranians will respond differently is absurd.
This is about the usual cynical GOP game of currying favor with right-wing American Jews for fundraising, and with end times evangelicals who support Israel in order to induce a nuclear holocaust and the Rapture… which is also for fundraising. This corruption ends when it is legislated that money is not speech, that the public airwaves should freely serve the public during elections, and the lobbyist moneychangers are thrown out of the temple of democracy. Period.
Don’t worry about it. A 13 story mosque at ground zero. Its the future people. Good luck with that,
@Bill Pearlman: No, it’s two blocks from ground-zero. But, then adherence to truth is not a cardinal principle among hasbarats and other likudniki.
Dennis, Japan had effectively surrendered when the USA decided to use the bomb. They used the bomb to “send a message” to the Soviets. A war crime, indeed.
The answer to the question of the author is very simple. It is already written in United States document of declaration of independence. Declaring war by any people other than Americans is not part of the document.
Boy Dennis, I’m sorry you weren’t around then. I’m sure Truman could have used brilliant advice like that. However, the marines and the men in the B-29′s might have thought differently. But what they hell, to you they were just war criminals right.
Jane, I grew up in NY still live there. And worked downtown. I know the area And I know what staking out territory means. Where do you grow up, a gated community in the suburbs. But no matter. The Jews in the US are on the way out and the Moslems are on the way in. See how that one goes.
Bill,
Everyone knows that disarming Israel is the necessary first step to a nuclear free Middle East. It is in fact the only country in the region with nuclear weapons – and therefore the only country that is spurring a nuclear arms race. Let’s deal with Israel and Iran won’t be an issue.
Are you in?
Greg,
Ahmadinejad has also disavowed the pursuit and use of nuclear weapons. What are these “statements” you are referring to?
I guess the history of American Interventionism is owned by the Interventionists save Pat Buchanan….right Bill ?
Bill you’d be too extreme for Haaretz. Firstly does not Israel have nuclear weapons? Secondly we have freedom of religion in the US and the cultural center is widely supported in New York. Keep your bigotry to yourself.
Objecting to the deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians by an organised state military blank chequed by the US taxpayers is not anti Jewish buddy. And it does not make your allies lives any easier. It’s not a question of religion or race bud cos I really couldn’t care less.
Our soldiers are dying for you right now. We pay all your bills and now our congress may pass a resolution to allow Israel to declare war for us. We’ve become your chattels enjoy our sovereignty Bill. Sometimes it takes a real friend to say hey it’s time for Israels military and their Us stooges to back off a bit. It’s our soldiers who will die from Aipacs sabre rattling. Yours are safe in Israel blinding young American girls. Don’t bother bitching Bill just be the first one to say…thank you.
“However, the marines and the men in the B-29’s might have thought differently. But what they hell, to you they were just war criminals right.”
We all know that war crimes are those heinous acts performed by those the U.S. has defeated in war, never by the pure and good U.S. or its “closest friend and ally” Israel. I don’t know whether you caught the documentary “Fog of War” which extensively interviewed Robert McNamara a few years back. McNamara spent WWII basically overseeing and planning the bombing of Japan, and that involved the bombing of then largely wooden cities such as Tokyo, whose inflamation took many more lives than the subsequent nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasacki. In the course of the interview, McNamara recounted a conversation he had during the war with then Col. Curtis LeMay in which LeMay raised the possibility that, if the U.S. lost the war, he and LeMay would be tried as war criminals. So there was an awareness at the time that much of we were doing, e.g., bombing of civilian populations, cleary violated the “rules of war.”
I had relatives who served in WWII, and I have a mixed view of our use of atomic bombs to end the war with Japan. Overall, I think their use was justified since their use did bring the war to an end and prevented the loss of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of American lives that an invasion of Japan would have produced. But war is a nasty business, and nobody fights a war with clean hands. I have a hard time understanding why it’s acceptable to kill someone with a 500-lb. bomb but not a nuclear weapon or poison gas.
When the Kaiser gave his full support to Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia, which they wanted to do, it’s my opinion that he felt the war would be contained between the two nations. It was Russian reaction that turned what was regional conflict into a European and hencforce a world conflict. The Russians did not prevent Austria-Hungary from annexing Bosina and perhaps the parties felt the Russians would not do anything in this matter as well. Russian support for fellow Slavs has always been inconsistent at best and duplicitous at worst. Certainly the Czar was not looking to start a war with Germany. Tragically however, that’s the way events pushed them themselves toward. It’s no different today.
Attacking Iran would be the beginning of the end for the economic, political and social structures in the world that were formed after WWII. Such an act would trigger armed conflicts all over the world, not just the Middle East region, with unknown consequences for the future. The USA and Israel cannot expect launching hostilities against Iran will be a short game, Iran is not Iraq nor Afghanistan. Unlike the author, I don’t think the use of nuclear weapons against Iran could have such a serious and groundbreaking result as it had in Japan…no, the use of it would give no doubt that the USA will be facing another Vietnam with more serious repercussions for its status in the world, and Israel would probably disappear as a state.
I as well as Dennis find it hypocritical that the USA critics Iran for not even confirmed information on “developing nuclear weapons” when they where the first ever users of such a weapon, and they are the ones who so happily give them to Israel. Taking this into account, Israel is more dangerous than Iran. Yet who are we aiming at?
I, as a regular person, would advise both the USA and Iran to simply sit and shut up, Ahmadinejad will have to leave power one day, he’s no dictator as Saddam Hussein. It is clear to everyone Iran posses no thread to the world as much as the world powers do, so they are the ones we should be fighting. I repeat again, hostilities against Iran would not only trigger a WWIII, but the complete turn around of the status quo of the world, and that if the world manages to survive.
@Bill Pearlman: I have no especial love for the Muslims, but that still doesn’t mean I want America to continue to be treated like Israel’s bitch.
Did anybody stop and think that all the talk of destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons making capability is in ITSELF causing them to forge ahead in that endeavor?
These people are not dumb. They are the descendants of the persians —- they didn’t invent the wheel a couple of weeks ago. They see that North Korea can sink a South Korean ship (an act that started little things like the Spanish American war) and all we do is hem and haw — because a REAL lunatic has nukes in North Korea, and we dare not attack him.
They want some “nuclear-power teflon” too. Most of the young people in that country are SICK of the mullahs and the fundamentalist drabness of their lives. But they will react the same way that I reacted on 9/11 if they are attacked — “castrate the bastards who did this to us”.
What garbage.
You seem to view Americans as a bunch of hapless dolts who are forever being led astray by some nefarious power or other.
The US has sent soldiers to Europe to die in the 100′s of thousands, to Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Central America, Afghanistan, Iraq for reasons of their own and with the single goal of furthering US interests.
Congress has no problem giving Israel “a blank check” to start a war because they know as well as you do it’s a no-risk statement.
The US is not going to be sending troops to “save” Israel.
They didn’t in 48′, 56′, 67′, 73′ or in any of the other conflicts Israel has been in.
The US may send some weapons, make some statements or other at the UN, etc… but you know as well as the House Republicans who signed H.R. 1553 that that is where it will end.
I can’t tell if your anti-israel, just plain dumb, or have some other agenda that leads you to portray the most powerful nation in the history of this planet as some innocent sucker that doesn’t know what it’s own interests are.
“But they will react the same way that I reacted on 9/11 if they are attacked — “castrate the bastards who did this to us”. ”
Well, if we do attack Iran, let’s hope they act as irrationally as the U.S. did after 9/11—and attack someone else such as Venezuela. I find it interesting that, after Iran helped us overthrow their enemy the Taliban in Afghanistan, we rewarded them by naming them as part of the infamous “Axis of Evil.” The only thing each member of the so-called Axis of Evil had in common was neither Iraq, Iran nor North Korea had any connection to 9/11 whatsoever. And our leaders (as well as the current leader of Israel), such as Barack Obama, like to think of Iran as irrational!
We are winding down a war in Iraq after more than seven years against an “enemy” that did not attack us, had no connection to 9/11 or Al Qaeda, possessed no WMDs, and constituted no threat to the U.S. And, after nearly 10 years, we are ramping up a war against an entity, the Taliban, that was not responsible for 9/11, unless you subscribe to Netanyahu’s off-the-wall theory that the Taliban instigated Al Qaeda to attack the U.S. on 9/11. And these two little adventures have cost over 4,000 American lives, countless maimed and wounded, and over a trillon dollars. And we try to maintain with a straight face that Iran is an irrational actor on the world stage. And we express puzzlement over why Iran may think it necessary to develop nuclear weapons.
In the meantime, the U.S. is busy trying to persuade the Europeans to allow the U.S. to pay for and build a missile defense system to protect against a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapon, as if a country that has not attacked any of its neighbors in over a 100 years will suddenly (and irrationally) decide to use a nuclear weapon against a continent that has treaty assurances from the U.S. to respond militarily to any attack. It sure sounds nuts to me—and I’m not referring to Iran.
After reading so much drivel including the sandbox play of Bill and Jane it’s refreshing to read Edgar’s take which in my opinion best sums up the present reality. It seems to me what constitutes America’s interests are decided by the politicians we elect. Understandably people have differing notions about what those interests should be and they are being redifined depending on who has power.An Obama administration has views on this matter which differ from GW Bush’s which differ from Rand Pauls.In this great country the voters still decide.
“Well, if we do attack Iran, let’s hope they act as irrationally as the U.S. did after 9/11—and attack someone else such as Venezuela.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++II doubt very much that the Iranians will have a persian “Condoleezza Rice” ignoring intelligence warnings about an attack — I suspect that they will know exactly who attacked them, and respond accordingly.
We can’t rely on them filling their key positions with incompetents.
On any given Sunday, you can hear Hagee and his followers screaming about the necessity of US intervention with Iran. And the same goes for many other evangelical religious groups who believe the end of days is in Isreal’s future fate. Perhaps these 47 Republican congressmen were visitied by these evangelicals on the many pilgrimages they make to DC to get the ear of their elected officals on this issue.
In the doctrine of premillennial dispensationalism, Isreal plays an important and crucial role. Pitting Isreal against Iran may be just the ticket for the dispensationalists.
Save America. Abandon Israel.
“The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”
George Washington, 1796.
GW was such a dude. He really was. Our overmilitancy was everything they warned against and still we do it.
Thank you Pat for ringing the alarm bells before the neo-cons and their Likudnik handlers fool us into yet another war paid by our twenty-somethings’ blood, and the treasure that could have gone to create jobs for our suffering Middle Class.
But those 47 don’t give a damn about the US since they are answerable to a “higher entity”.
Israel is not going to attack Iran. Israeli’s only pretend to act crazy, like Ronald Reagan did with the Europeans at times. It would be a disaster for Israeli business to get involved with another war. Israel has a large arms industry, like America did during the cold war. If you will recall, the cold war made a lot of money for the military-industrial complex. So too with Israel in its coming cold war with Iran. When Iran gets the bomb, this will be great for our industry. America will also give us a few extra billion a year so we don’t go crazy.