Stop War Against Iran

February 1, 2007

By Joe Miller

Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons are doing their very best to manufacture a war with Iran, just as they did with Iraq. Robert Dreyfuss has an excellent piece (1) on Bush's new push to war on the TomPaine web site today. The following are the first four paragraphs:

"Since President Bush's State of the Union address last Tuesday, the White House has manufactured a crisis that pits the United States against Iran. In what looks like the military and diplomatic equivalent of a full court press, Washington has unleashed a barrage of threats, maneuvers and limited military actions that seem calculated to set the United States on a collision course with Iran in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. All in all, it is an exceedingly risky and dangerous gambit.

"Even if the intent is not to create a shooting war between the two countries, one false move by radicals on either side could ignite exactly that, whether by hardliners in Iran seeking to cement their influence as the rising, hegemonic power in the Gulf or by frustrated U.S. neoconservatives desperate to prevent the final collapse of their misadventure in Iraq by expanding that war to include Iran, and perhaps Syria.

"By now, the elements of Washington�s brinkmanship in the Gulf are well known: Bush's pledge to use U.S. military and intelligence capabilities against alleged Iranian activity in Iraq; the dispatch of a second U.S. aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf; the shipment of Patriot missile batteries to defend American-allied Arab Gulf sheikhdoms; the seizure of several teams of Iranian diplomats and personnel in Baghdad and Irbil; and the report that the White House had issued "kill or capture" orders to U.S. forces in Iraq who encounter Iranian operatives.

"Meanwhile, the United States has stepped up pressure on U.S. allies and Western banks to stop doing business as usual with Iran's economic institutions and pushed for sanctions against Iran over its alleged plan to acquire nuclear weapons. It has also dropped hints about orchestrating an oil war against Iran by colluding with Saudi Arabia to drive oil prices downward. At the same time, the administration has issued a series of wildly inflated charges that Iran is involved in masterminding the Iraqi insurgency, is providing weapons and IED explosive devices that are killing U.S. troops and, most recently, was behind a well-coordinated raid in Karbala, in which a fleet of SUVs disguised as carrying American forces kidnapped and executed four U.S. soldiers."

Writing yesterday, Robert Parry, reported (2) that the "Iran Clock is Ticking" and that military and intelligence sources tell him that "preparations are advancing for a war with Iran starting possibly as early as mid-to-late February. The sources offer some differences of opinion over whether Bush might cite a provocation from Iran or whether Israel will take the lead in launching air strikes against Iran�s nuclear facilities."

Focusing on the latter, at another point in the same article, Parry offers the following important speculations/observations:

"According to intelligence sources, Bush's Iran strategy is expected to let the Israelis take a lead role in attacking Iran's nuclear facilities in order to defuse Democratic opposition and let the U.S. intervention be sold as defensive, a case of a vulnerable ally protecting itself from a future nuclear threat.

"Once American air and naval forces are committed to a new conflict, the Democrats will find it politically difficult to interfere at least in the near future, the thinking goes. A violent reaction from the Islamic world would further polarize the American population and let Bush paint war critics as cowardly, disloyal or pro-terrorist."

Congress and the American public must stop the Bush/Cheney/Neocon push to war with Iran (and the escalation/surge of troops in Iraq as well).

An important step was taken in this direction today with the release of an open letter (3) by legal and human rights groups from many countries warning of the "illegality of any offensive military action by the U.S. against Iran." The letter was addressed to all members of Congress, the Bush administration, and the U.S. Armed Forces, and closes by urging:

"The President, Vice President, and all other members of the Bush administration who have a decision-making role with regard to taking military action in Iran, to immediately renounce such efforts to engage in this war;

"The members of the military to refuse any requests by the administration to invade or take other military action against Iran in light of the illegality of such actions; and

"That Congress immediately pass a binding resolution reaffirming the United States� legal obligations and informing the President and the administration that it will not concur in any invasion of or military action against Iran, would refuse to approve funding for any such military action, and would consider actions taken in contravention of the resolution as impeachable offenses."

We all need to do whatever we can to raise our voice, and encourage others to raise their voices, to derail the horror and disaster -- for everyone -- that will be war with Iran, and the horror and disaster -- for everyone -- that is war in Iraq.

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Joseph Miller
Department of Psychology
51 Madeleva
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556

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Stop War Against Iran

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