Iran and the Continuing Bush Fiasco

The Bush Administration continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth on Iran. It says one moment that there is no plan to attack Iran and the next moment it cranks up the rhetoric and never, never contradicts its friends in the right wing media who are itching for war as a way....; well, no one is sure what they're trying to do.

Reuters has the story on Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

The United States is not planning for a war with Iran but is determined to stop Iranians supplying bombs for deadly attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

The Bush administration has stepped up its rhetoric against Iran in recent weeks, prompting speculation it could be laying the ground for a military attack.

The United States has also sent a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region, a move widely seen as a warning to Iran.

But Gates said the United States was pursuing a purely diplomatic path....

A purely diplomatic path. Wow, Robert Gates didn't take long to step into the Bush bubble. He does realize doesn't he that he's dealing with a team of incompetents who are driven more by domestic politics than a serious foreign policy? Diplomacy. If Bush were serious, he'd be hiring some heavyweight envoys by now. Are we running the risk of a third war so an incompetent president can look tough while his incompetent secretary of state pursues bungled diplomacy with little credibility? Or are we heading for a third war so an incompetent president can blame his fiasco on others? It's a very thin line between the two possibilities and neither are acceptable (one quick note: I supported the war in Afghanistan but one reason I came out against the war in Iraq is that I kept reading about a great deal of civilian bungling that was going on in Afghanistan; sometimes a president has to show that he can truly win one war before he starts a second).

Those still defending the president, whether they work for him or are in Congress or in the media, better get their act together and ask the obvious question: what are the American people getting out of Bush's incompetent handling of not one but two wars with the potential of a third war? Americans do not doubt the abilities of our military but they have good reason to doubt the abilities of politicians—not just Bush and his inner circle by the way—who seem to pay more attention to pleasing their base than getting the job done. And conservatives who fantasize that an attack on Iran will somehow win the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and give us something useful in Iran to boot don't belong in world affairs. The Republican radical right wing agenda is dead and has nothing useful to offer. Democrats and the few rational Republicans left in Congress need to nail the door shut against any further nonsense.

James Fallow in The Huffington Post has more thoughts on Iran:

If we could trust the Administration's ability to judge America's rational self-interest, there would be no need to constrain its threatening gestures toward Iran. Everyone would understand that this was part of the negotiation process; no one would worry that the Administration would finally take a step as self-destructive as beginning or inviting a war.

But no one can any longer trust the Administration to recognize and defend America's rational self-interest -- not when the President says he will carry out a policy even if opposed by everyone except his wife and dog, not when the Vice President refuses to concede any mistake or misjudgment in the handling of Iraq. According to the constitutional chain of command, those two men literally have the power to order a strike that would be disastrous for their nation. The Congress has no official way to prevent them from doing so -- it is interesting, and alarming, to think that in practice the safety valve might be the professional military, trained to revere the chain of command but faced with what its members would recognize as ruinous instructions.

What the Congress can do is draw the line. It can say that war with Iran is anathema to the interests of the United States and contrary to the will of its elected representatives. And it should do that now.

Congress has been patient with Bush, too patient in fact. More than five years of war with little concrete results is pathetic. Launching a war in Iraq we did not need with a deliberately misleading case for that war is impeachable. We are indeed constrained by political realities that make impeachment difficult but Congress has a responsibility to our nation to draw a clear line that holds Bush to account (and that line can be more concrete than what Fallows seems to suggest). Any Republican who will not check the recklessness of George W. Bush is simply avoiding resposibility. Real diplomacy can still take place and when it happens, the world will have no difficulty recognizing it, but what we are now seeing is mush; it is not credible and looks far too much like cover for Bush's incompetence.