Leslie Gelb wants a thorough public debate before any war with Iran:

Let’s have carefully planned and extended public hearings on the pros and cons of war with Iran. Let those hearings be conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or a special public commission established by President Obama. Let’s do the job painstakingly and systematically, especially because Election Day beckons with its talons of stupidity and rashness. Yes, yes, I realize full well that a public pretrial is far from a perfect or even a good solution. But I cannot think of another way to slow down our familiar passive march toward war, and compel its drum majors to parade their plans on why the war must be fought and how it can be won. Hearings will surely confuse a lot of people, but at least give them their democratic chance to judge.

I have no objections to hearings as such, but I agree with Greg Scoblete that they are unlikely to achieve very much unless the debate that results forces policy-makers to recognize what a disaster an Iranian war would be. There was a fairly extensive public debate before the Iraq war, but the Bush administration was bound to proceed with the invasion no matter the outcome of that debate. Congress went through the formality of providing an authorization, but does anyone doubt that Bush would have launched the war without it? As the executive has fully usurped war powers and Congress has abandoned its duties under the Constitution, it depends entirely on the members of the administration in power at the time whether the U.S. will start a war or not. There are times when the current administration seems to want to avoid a war with Iran, but things would likely be different under a Romney administration. Viewed that way, public hearings will be far less important than the outcome of the election, which is going to turn on matters unrelated to Iran or foreign policy.

My impression is that opponents of a possible Iranian war are much more vocal than their Iraq debate counterparts ten years ago, and certainly the Iraq war has created many more skeptics than there were last time. There are still strong biases in the debate that require most participants to agree that the nuclear issue is a major problem that the U.S. must “solve,” and bizarrely it is skeptics rather than advocates of aggressive war that are expected to bear the burden of proof. Something else that we all should have learned from the Iraq war debate is that an election year is the worst time to debate an issue of such importance. The opposite should be true, but it isn’t. Election years are the best time for alarmists and fear-mongers to demagogue the issue, and a general election atmosphere would inevitably politicize the hearings to a greater degree than usual.

Update: Prof. Andrew Bacevich speaks with the Atlantic Council’s Sarwar Kashmeri about tensions between the U.S. and Iran here.