Is Iran To Be Attacked By America?

Is President Bush planning yet another war?  I think so.  As do many others.

The saber-rattling from the Bush White House over Iran has been in full operation over the past months, and even though American foreign policy in Iran is still a mystery to many citizens who have not explored the issue deeply enough, there is sufficient information that is known for concerned citizens to be queasy.

Iran is clearly in the scopes for this president with his very low approval ratings, as he grabs for anything in a last bid attempt to be something other than an impotent leader suffering after two failing terms in office.  President Bush used war once for pure political gain……why not twice?  What is more bloodshed to a man who did nothing more in the military than keep Texas safe from Oklahoma? 

While this blog holds to the belief that a nuclear Iran is an untenable situation for the Middle East, it also holds to the understanding that diplomatic exchanges are the route to alleviating long simmering issues in the region. 

Today the New Yorker builds on that theme.

Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders”—the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world—“have weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”

Technorati Tags: Iran, ForeignPolicy, TheNewYorker, SeymourHersh, MiddleEast