Posted on 01/15/2014 9:08:18 AM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
As we approach the centennial of World War I, we will read much of the blunders that produced that tragedy of Western civilization.
Among them will be the “blank check” Kaiser Wilhelm II gave to Vienna after the assassination by a Serb terrorist of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
If you decide to punish the Serbs, said the Kaiser, we are with you.
After dithering for weeks, Austria shelled Belgrade. Within a week, Germany and Austria were at war with Russia, France and Great Britain.
Today the Senate is about to vote Israel a virtual blank check—for war on Iran. Reads Senate bill S.1881: If Israel is “compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” the United States “should stand with Israel and provide … diplomatic, military and economic support to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence.”
Inserted in that call for U.S. military action to support an Israeli strike on Iran, S.1881 says that, in doing so, we should follow our laws and constitutional procedures.
Nevertheless, this bill virtually hands over the decision on war to Bibi Netanyahu who is on record saying: “This is 1938. Iran is Germany.”
Is this the man we want deciding whether America fights her fifth war in a generation in the Mideast? Do we really want to outsource the decision on war in the Persian Gulf, the gas station of the world, to a Likud regime whose leaders routinely compare Iran to Nazi Germany?
The bill repeatedly asserts that Iran has a “nuclear weapons program.”
Yet in both 2007 and 2011, U.S. intelligence declared “with high confidence” that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
Where is the Senate’s evidence for its claim? Why has Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not been called to testify as to whether Tehran has made the decision to go for a bomb?
Why are the American people being kept in the dark?
Are we being as misled, deceived, and lied to about Iran’s “weapons of mass destruction,” as we were about Iraq’s? The bill says that in a final deal Iran must give up all enrichment of uranium. However, we have already been put on notice by President Hassan Rouhani that this is an ultimatum Iran cannot accept.
Even the reformers of Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009 back their country’s right to a peaceful nuclear program including enrichment.
Senate bill S.1881 imposes new sanctions if Iran fails to live up to the interim agreement or fails to come to a final agreement in six months.
Yet the Senate knows that Iran has warned that if new sanctions are voted during negotiations, they will walk away from the table.
Why is the Senate risking, or even inviting, a blowup in these talks?
When the interim agreement was reached, it was denounced by neocons as “worse than Munich.” Now the War Party piously contends this Senate bill is simply an “insurance policy” to ensure that the terms of the deal are met and a final deal reached.
It is nothing of the sort. This bill is a project of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, designed to sabotage and scuttle the Geneva talks by telling Tehran: Either capitulate and dismantle all your enrichment facilities, or face more severe sanctions which will put us on the road to war.
What terrifies AIPAC and Bibi is not an American war on Iran, but an American rapprochement with Iran.
Who are the leaders of the push for S.1881? Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, the biggest recipients of AIPAC campaign cash.
Last weekend, the Obama National Security Council finally belled the cat with a blunt statement by spokesperson Bernadette Meehan: ”If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action [against Iran], they should be up front with the American public and say so.”
Exactly. For whether or not all these senators understand what they are doing, this is where their bill points—to a scuttling of the Geneva talks and a return to the sanctions road, at the end of which lies a U.S. war with Iran.
A majority of Democratic senators have thus far bravely bucked AIPAC and declined to co-sponsor S.1881. However, all but two Republican senators have signed on.
If, after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the GOP has once again caught the war fever, the party should be quarantined from the White House for another four years.
Press Secretary Jay Carney says that if S.1881 passes, Obama will veto it. The president should tell Congress that not only will he veto it, but that if Israel decides on its own to attack Iran, Israel will be on its own in the subsequent war.
Obama should order U.S. intelligence to tell us the truth.
Is Iran truly hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear bomb? Does Iran have a nuclear bomb program? If so, when did Tehran make that decision?
Or are we being lied into war again?
I think the hope of us who tend to a more localized US focus is that without the US as an ever present factor, the Sunnis and the Shiites will return to their prime concern of countering each other. And with a lessened US involvement, Israel and the Saudis might act on their common interests and common danger to produce a more durable regional stability.
Another thing I get tired of hearing is how every new tinpot dictator that comes down the pike is “another Hitler” and that our failure to overthrow him and occupy his country is “another Munich.” My response is: When Iran’s Rouhani or Syria’s Assad controls all of one continent and good sized chunks of neighboring continents, let me know. Otherwise, it all sounds like a hysterical little kid throwing a hissy fit.
Nazi Germany for a time had the world’s most potent army and air force. Iran couldn’t overrun Iraq when they still had the Shah’s first class military hardware. People can argue the danger Iran can pose through Hezbollah and other terrorist activities, but they’re nothing like the world power that Neville Chamberlain faced at Munich.
Moreover, Hizbollah's primary target isn't the United States. A lot of people seem to conflate Israel's conflicts and national security concerns with ours. They aren't one and the same and never have been.
Remember how Slobadon Milosevic was supposedly "the new Hitler." As I recall, Hitler controlled just about everything from the North Sea to the Ural Mountains. Milosevic couldn't even hold onto a chunk of the Balkans the size of New York state. And Bashar Assad, the latest "Middle Eastern Hitler" and allegedly a mortal threat to US National Security, can't even defeat a group of rag-tag rebels in Allepo. Some "Hitler" he is.
Some people have a knee-jerk reaction to the name "Buchanan," and seem to hate him more than any leftist Democrat or liberal Republican. It makes them completely incapable to arguing the merit of his ideas, so you get ad hominem instead.
So don't expect a straight answer for how the GOP went from being the party of rational non-interventionism in the early 20th century to crusading Wilsonianism a century later.
You are wrong. Iran is building missiles that can reach Europe. When it gets nukes it will threaten Europe, Israel and Saudi Arabia with them. We have allies and interests in Europe and the Middle East and Iran will soon be in a position to mess around with them. Russia, China and Iran will carve up the Middle East oil resources and nations. Short of this they will tell Arab oil nation how much oil to sell and to whom and to pay $10/barrel tax to Iran
As for the Saudis, they're much bigger sponsor of Islamist jihad than Iran will ever be.
Iran has been attacking us in Iraq for years. Using roundabout ways of course. They arm proxies armies. They like to have others do their dirty work. Like Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack Israel
Iran is trying to control Iraq since Iraq has a Shiite gov’t right now. They invented chess...you are still playing tic tac do
Saudi Arabia is or was an ally. They are very upset by our recent cave-in on Irans nuclear program
Like Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack Israel
Israel isn't part of the United States. We don't need to fight a war with Iran on their behalf, or to support an Israeli initiated war that would destablize the region still further.
Saudi Arabia is or was an ally. They are very upset by our recent cave-in on Irans nuclear program
You think it's a coincidence that Bin Laden, most of the Al Quaeda leadership, and most of the 9/11 bombers were Saudis? And not malcontents from the slums, but members of the Saudi ruling class? Whenever there's jihad being fought, where do you suppose the money comes from? Yemen or Sudan can't afford to bankroll Islamists in Asia and Africa. The Saudis can, and they do in order to prove their religious bona fides to the pious masses. So all this talk about "fighting terrorism" with trumped-up enemies in Iraq, Syria, or Iran is rather laughable while our leaders bow (Obama) or hold hands (Bush) with the Saudis.
The Saudi were still our allies. Maybe Obama has pushed them permanenatly into Moscow arms.
Under Obama we have stopped Israel from attacking Iranian nukes a few times. The USA has not been fighting Israel’s wars. The opposite is true. It has been preventing Israel attacks against Iran.
Israel is on our side and should be supported same as Saudi Arabia. This is totally negated under Obama-Kerry. Instead we thrown in with Iran by easing sanctions for getting absolutely nothing in return. The Obama program is to screw your historical allies and cave into America’s rivals and enemies.
recent Iranian statements have ridiculed us saying we caved in, in these recent negotiations. Muslims can smell weakness like a tiger does.
Given the choice between trusting Netanyahu and America's manifest national interest and a hack who shill for Hitler and say Churchill as the warmonger and an ideology, my choice is clear.
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