Deja Vu in Iran: Iraq All Over Again But Worse
Will someone, please, get the bullies off the playground, or, at least, call in some adults?
President Bush’s decision to turn to Gates was a sign of the White House’s “desperation,” a former high-level C.I.A. official, who worked with the White House after September 11th, told me. Cheney’s relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration, and Gates’s nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that the Vice-President’s influence in the White House could be challenged. The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”—former aides of the first President Bush—“piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”
From the man who opened our eyes to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the single event which many have pointed to as the turning point in the failed US invasion and occupation of Iraq, Seymour Hersh has a new warning siren out in this week's New Yorker concerning Part Two of the Bush Administration's vision and strategy for a New Middle East...... Operation Iran.
It is almost funny, if it were not so offensively sad that this administration seems to be accountable to no one, not even the American voter. One would think that after the "thumping" they took on Nov. 7 , they would sound a more conciliatory tone.... I won't even suggest that they may have learned their lesson, because true to their modus operandi, fear is a more effective impetus than either conscious or shame.
And now with the full measure of the debacle in Iraq still not accounted for, the drum beat is on for preventive war with Iran. As Hersh points out, leading neoconservatives are already doing their own "thumping".... of their chests,
In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little choice. “Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,” he wrote. The President would be bitterly criticized for a preëmptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives “need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes.”
The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President’s staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington, Wurmser “believes that, so far, there’s been no price tag on Iran for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention inside Iraq,” the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney’s office “want to end the regime,” the consultant said. “They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in Iran.”
Perhaps, there is some hope that wiser ones will step in and save the administration from itself....
It is almost funny, if it were not so offensively sad that this administration seems to be accountable to no one, not even the American voter. One would think that after the "thumping" they took on Nov. 7 , they would sound a more conciliatory tone.... I won't even suggest that they may have learned their lesson, because true to their modus operandi, fear is a more effective impetus than either conscious or shame.
And now with the full measure of the debacle in Iraq still not accounted for, the drum beat is on for preventive war with Iran. As Hersh points out, leading neoconservatives are already doing their own "thumping".... of their chests,
In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little choice. “Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,” he wrote. The President would be bitterly criticized for a preëmptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives “need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes.”
The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President’s staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington, Wurmser “believes that, so far, there’s been no price tag on Iran for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention inside Iraq,” the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney’s office “want to end the regime,” the consultant said. “They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in Iran.”
Perhaps, there is some hope that wiser ones will step in and save the administration from itself....
President Bush’s decision to turn to Gates was a sign of the White House’s “desperation,” a former high-level C.I.A. official, who worked with the White House after September 11th, told me. Cheney’s relationship with Rumsfeld was among the closest inside the Administration, and Gates’s nomination was seen by some Republicans as a clear signal that the Vice-President’s influence in the White House could be challenged. The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”—former aides of the first President Bush—“piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”
However, according to Joshua Muravchik, what the US needs to get back on track is to be saved by some more good 'ol neoconservatism:
Fix the Public Diplomacy Mess. The Bush administration deserves criticism for its failure to repair America’s public diplomacy apparatus. No group other than neocons is likely to figure out how to do that. We are, after all, a movement whose raison d’être was combating anti-Americanism in the United States. Who better, then, to combat it abroad?
In other words, while the neocons are busy pointing out how wrong the Bush Adminsitration got it, they are ignoring the fact that they are the ones who gave it to them in the first place! .... And now they want us to turn to them for help!!!All I can think is SCREAM!
Labels: Bush, Foreign Policy, USA
posted by Dahlia at 12:51 PM
1 Comments:
Even Israel is opposed to bombing in Iran. Not for your reasons, as is no surprise. They opppose it, because, to get support of the Russians and Chinese, settlement with Palestine, would be a condition.
Turkey would be willing to give minor criticism, and airspace, in exchange for selling out the Northern Iraq Kurds.
Opponents of the Iranian regime, as my blog team member Maryam Namazie, don't want US help.
Halberstein has to be taken seriously. I met him during the Vietnam War period.
Post a Comment
<< Home