I was sort of hoping that BushCo would go quietly into the night instead of seeking ways to manufacture an excuse to send our already-overtaxed military into another adventure war that we’ll certainly lose in Iran. I was too optimistic—looks like there’s already attempts to manufacture a crisis like Gulf of Tonkin in the 60s and the fake WMDs that were the excuse to get us into Iraq (remember those?). The blogger at Daily Kos doesn’t hold his punches in declaring that the threatening maneuvers reported by the Navy were most likely bullshit that’s being drummed up to get some enthusiasm behind a confrontation with Iran. The Guardian is a bit more circumspect.
Doubts intensified last night over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, after Pentagon officials admitted that they could not confirm that a threat to blow up the US ships had been made directly by the Iranian crews involved in the incident.
Several news sources reported that senior navy officials had conceded that the voice threatening to blow up the US warships in a matter of minutes could have come from another ship in the region, or even from shore.
The concession came on the day that a formal American complaint was lodged with Iran over the incident, and just 24 hours after President George Bush, on tour in the Middle East where he will be discussing policy towards Iran, warned Tehran to desist from such aggression and said any repetition would lead to “serious consequences”.
I suspect a pattern of attempts to try to force a confrontation that would be an excuse for war.
Then Thursday came a U.S. raid on an Iranian consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil. By the end of the day, rumors of war with Iran had spread to normally cautious corners of the Internet. The Washington Note wondered aloud if Bush had issued an executive order to commence military action against Iran and Syria. Was the raid a deliberate provocation and the preface to war?
I recommend reading the whole article by Juan Cole. Trying to write this blog post is hard, because the facts on the table are so ridiculous that I flinch to describe them. If you were writing fiction, you wouldn’t be so bold as to suggest that the American people almost elected a presidential administration that blatantly lied to get us into war with Iraq after stealing the election in a manuever that had echoes of proto-fascist coups of the sort neocons love to fund in other countries, pretended they didn’t tell the lies that got us there, got re-elected in another race that’s a bit too close to call, and then, when his adventure was was going south, tried to provoke another adventure war that was even more likely to be lost. If it was a movie, it wouldn’t get greenlit. You’d be laughed out of the studio for suggesting something so implausible. Poo-poohing the idea that BushCo will deceive us into a war with Iran is so tempting, so tempting. But he lied to get us in Iraq. Poo-poohing him now would be fucking foolish.
That Bush wants to have a war with Iran can only mean two things. Either he’s completely delusional and thinks we’ll win, or he knows what every other person with the talent to tie her shoes can tell you, which is that our already overstretched military can’t handle it and we’ll lose for sure. (In the former case, my guess is he’s hoping they can create the idealized Republican war, fought mainly by overpaid mercenaries. A completely privatized war! Bush finally gets the dream for the aristocrats of America—a return to medieval standards, with petty royalty having private armies paid for by taxpayer money.) In the latter case, is it possible the Bush wants to start a war he knows we’ll lose?
Why would someone do something like that? Well, think about it. If a war was started in a few months, you hold hang the exploding disaster over to the Democrat who wins in a country that’s sick to the teeth of putting up with war-mongering panty-sniffing Republicans. Leave them with a disaster that they’ll have to clean up—maybe even the hope is that if the federal government can be crippled enough, the Democrats won’t be able to institute some of the social spending that improves people’s lives and could make them really popular. (More middle class entitlements=more the Republicans have to find ways to dismantle=more votes for the Democrats as people seek to protect our entitlements.) Is it a last bid to strike the Democrats, with the price being paid “only” in Iranian lives and the lives of the working class Americans who populate our military (and of course by the middle class taxpayer)? Bush doesn’t even hide the fact that he sees war as a political weapon for his party back home, bleating prior to the 2004 elections about how he’s a wartime president and how you can’t buy that kind of popularity. The war with Iraq was timed in such a way that it was likely to still be popular during the election season. Why not use a war that’s going to be unpopular immediately to strike at the Democrats? Remember this quote:
There’s a big question hanging over President Bush’s Iraq policy: Why now? Why, more than 11 years after the Gulf War, is it suddenly so urgent for the U.S. to go after Saddam Hussein now?….
Why did the Administration wait until September to make its case against Iraq? White House chief of staff Andrew Card told The New York Times last week, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.'’
I know. I know. I want to scoff at my own paranoia, too. But let’s remember. BushCo is not above stealing elections, getting into war by lying to the public, defying the Constitution by spying on Americans without warrant, torture, secret prisons, and generally suspending the Constitution. The man bidding to be BushCo Pt. II, Rudy Giuliani, tried to use 9/11 as an excuse to suspend elections, a 3rd world dictator move. I’m currently reading Molly Ivins’ last book, Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch’s Assault on America’s Fundamental Rights, and in it she notes that before BushCo, she dedicated most of her freedom-fighting time to the 1st Amendment (helping push back against wingnuts in various counties that are trying to burn books and force schoolkids to pray), but in the last few years before her death, she was involved in cases involving 9 out of 10 of the Bill of Rights. Full-blown assault on this country. To quote Ivins:
I am so freaked out about what is happening to freedom in this country, if I were anyone else but me, I’d be staging a pitched, shrieking, quivering, hysterical, rolling-on-the-ground, speaking-in-tongues fit.
I’m scared to death, too. I’m eyeballing the Democratic contenders and weighing this and that, but at the back of my mind, I have this haunting fear: “Will any of you do what it takes to get our country back the way it should be?” It won’t be easy. There’s a lot of damage to undo, and it looks like Bush is looking to make more.
21 Responses to “BushCo wants to work one more war in, for old times’ sake”
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Plus, only in a movie could a foreign occupying force, which also happens to be the large military in the world, demand that the immediate neighbour of the country that it’s occupying “desist from such aggression” when they ostensibly find their forces challenged in that country’s own territorial waters.
Nope, nope, nope! This is the time we have to be even more vigilant – this is when they are going to try and finish the job.
I think you’re right — the plan is to get the country bogged down in a war that a Democrat will have to pull us out of, then blame them for everything. It seems to be the plan on the domestic side, too — make everything horrible, stick the Dems with the chore of having to pull the nation back from the brink, then whine that Democrats raise taxes. Do everything you can to hamper efforts to make America better or more free or less warmongering.
Ride the whining back into office and start to work on making things awful again. It’s a long-term strategy — every few years, the Dems will try to fix things, but they’ll never quite get things right again, making it a bit easier for the Reps to again make life awful for everyone other than the mega-rich…
The guardian is probably more circumspect because its only months ago that a number of British sailors and marines were “interned” by Iranian patrol boats.
Obviously nobody has anything good to say about Bush. However, Irans government makes Huckabee look moderate. Just becuase a war with them would be a disaster doesn’t mean they aren’t being agressive. The Iranian armed forces can be pretty gung-ho aggressive, the USA isn’t alone in that. I think past behaviour would put these things down as pretty much par for the course for the Iranian Guard.
Sure, it could be a fake, but given the pathetic “evidence” Colin Powell had to take to the UN it would certainly be a step up in their bullshitting capabilities.
I strongly suspect that there will be no war with Iran. The military leadership gets it, even if the neocons don’t. Throw in the fact that a lot of neocons have left the administration (most importantly Rumsfeld), which seriously weakens Cheney’s hand, and I think the impetus for war is nowhere near as strong as it was for Iraq. Rice also seems to have something of a moderating influence - she’s not really a genuine neocon.
Bushco needs to keep Iran hyped as a threat b/c that’s their standard trick for keeping people distracted from the appalling domestic policies of the administration.
While the iranian government and military aren’t exactly bff’s with the good old USA, the population of IRan is surprisingly pro US. It would be a HUGE PR mistake for us to go int here now. HUGE.
Frankly, if I were the democrat who got elected after Bush forced us into a pointless war I would have an amazing exit strategy.
I would take George Bush, and all of his cronies, anyone who went along with this disgusting plan of his. I would put them all on a plane. I would fly them to Iran. And just as their plan landed, all of our planes would take off carrying our troops. Perhaps for good measure I’d paint a really big “We’re Sorry” on the bottom of the plane.
I just finished reading the book “Mistakes were made, but not by me” and it gave really good insight into the behavior of W. (Among other things.) Essentially, he has to keep digging our country into a hole in order to justify to himself that he hadn’t made a mistake, because he can’t accept that he made a mistake. It helped me to understand it, but I don’t really feel a ton better that our country is being controlled by someone this delusional.
However, Irans government makes Huckabee look moderate. Just becuase a war with them would be a disaster doesn’t mean they aren’t being agressive.
No one is arguing that Iran is full of sweetness and light. Like the US, there are warring factions within Iran, and some of them would probably be happy to start a war with the US. That doesn’t mean that letting them do that would be a great idea.
If the war would be disastrous for the US, why do you think we should go into it anyway?
“However, Irans government makes Huckabee look moderate.”
Much like the Cheney/Bush administration seems to use communist Russia as inspiration for what they wish to do to America, I’m sure, whether he realizes it or not, places that are a theocratic dictatorship like Iran are inspirational to The Huckster. If you listen to what he actually says, instead of assuming he can’t possibly mean it, he would be one scary POTUS…
“Rice also seems to have something of a moderating influence - she’s not really a genuine neocon.”
Colin Powell was a “moderating influence”, and wasn’t a NeoCon either, and besides he wasn’t genuinely incompetent. Look at how well his influence worked out…
“It would be a HUGE PR mistake for us to go int here now. HUGE.”
In that case, given the Cheney/Bush track record, were certain to attack Iran…
“I strongly suspect that there will be no war with Iran. The military leadership gets it, even if the neocons don’t.”
This is one time when an uprising of the military (to defy a Cheney/Bush call to war) doesn’t look quite as scary - and, ironically, having that thought scares the hell out of me.
This is exactly how people like (the late dictator of Germany) get into power…
The military won’t go for this one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some kind of crisis or standoff.
Anybody else remember Somalia. We’re just going to go in there and provide security so the UN can deliver aide and we’ll most certainly be out before Clinton takes office in a few weeks. No big deal. Then clearly the Bush Senior administration has no idea what they’re getting into or how to get out and they hand the whole mess over to Clinton. And now still to this day I get to hear wing-nuts telling me about the awful “nation-building” mess that Clinton created in Somalia.
Did I hear someone say “Gulf of Tonkin”?
Tim Kreider clears away your doubts:
After primary is the talk around arm force blogs. (We have new prez, so everybody can adjust their geopolitics and war strategy.)
Iran will eventually need to be dealt with.
Hopefully the Israelis will take out their nuke facilities for us as they did in Osirik in 1981.
However, if not I believe President Bush has the courage to whack them sometime after Election Day and before Inauguration Day. Remember in 2004 he waited until after the election to stage the battle of Fallujah.
I suspect we will be seeing a glorious fireworks show over the skies of Tehran in December.
Hopefully it will increase the profits of Haliburton.
Iran will eventually need to be dealt with.
Hopefully the Israelis will take out their nuke facilities for us as they did in Osirik in 1981.
However, if not I believe President Bush has the courage to whack them sometime after Election Day and before Inauguration Day. Remember in 2004 he waited until after the election to stage the battle of Fallujah.
I suspect we will be seeing a glorious fireworks show over the skies of Tehran in December.
Hopefully it will increase the profits of Haliburton.
Iran will eventually need to be dealt with.
Hopefully the Israelis will take out their nuke facilities for us as they did in Osirik in 1981.
However, if not I believe President Bush has the courage to whack them sometime after Election Day and before Inauguration Day. Remember in 2004 he waited until after the election to stage the battle of Fallujah.
I suspect we will be seeing a glorious fireworks show over the skies of Tehran in December.
Hopefully it will increase the profits of Haliburton.
Now remember there are two sides to every story. It could be that Bush is pushing this as part of the confrontation policy with Iran, but it could also be that the Pentagon is pushing it because they want something from the White House.
I don’t trust Bush, but people in the Pentagon haven’t covered themselves in glory either.
Ah, there’s nothing better than the “First Day of School/War”- a new Captain America backpack full of newly sharpened pencils, brand-new maps and notebooks, unopened Crayons and the smell of Laura’s freshly baked cookies for everyone in the Oval Office, is there, W?
Good times, good times…
Scott, I was struck by the similarity of your scenario to the one described in the “Shallow Reasons” thread (in which we hear of a guy who’s foisting responsibility on his wife for a messy household, and threatening to leave her). The micro to your macro, you might say.
That Bush wants to have a war with Iran can only mean two things. Either he’s completely delusional and thinks we’ll win, or he knows what every other person with the talent to tie her shoes can tell you, which is that our already overstretched military can’t handle it and we’ll lose for sure. (In the former case, my guess is he’s hoping they can create the idealized Republican war, fought mainly by overpaid mercenaries. A completely privatized war! Bush finally gets the dream for the aristocrats of America—a return to medieval standards, with petty royalty having private armies paid for by taxpayer money.) In the latter case, is it possible the Bush wants to start a war he knows we’ll lose?
There’s an old saying that winning and losing are events in the minds of the participants.
Your air force is not overstretched, as far as I know. It is quite possible that the Bush Administration might consider a bombing campaign as a containable event, and pass it off as a “successful” response. That it would lead to easily foreseeable consequences could be left for someone else to clean up.
Exit George, feted for having shown those ragheads a thing or two.
Now reading - Fiasco by Thomas Ricks. Recommended.