i keep finding things that i'm horrified by, and want to blog about, but i can't figure out what to say about them.
The Blog | Gary Hart: The October Surprise | The Huffington Post:
It should come as no surprise if the Bush Administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election.
Were these more normal times, this would be a stunning possibility, quickly dismissed by thoughtful people as dangerous, unprovoked, and out of keeping with our national character. But we do not live in normal times.
[...]
In more rational times, including at the height of the Cold War, bizarre actions such as unilateral, unprovoked, preventive war are dismissed by thoughtful, seasoned, experienced men and women as mad.
2 Comments:
The answer to this is Rank Fucking Stupidity. On both Gary Hart and the Prez's sake. This can not be done for several reasons. Let me count the ways:
* Our military is already stretched thin in Iraq. Adding a third front will only make things worse.
* Doing such will require more manpower than recruitment can satisfy. Therefore a Draft is needed.
* Even now, a law reactivating the Draft is political suicide. This is NOT something someone heading into an election wants on the books. It'll be Congress that passes a draft, not Bush, so this is a major problem.
* Popularity of the Iraq conflict is waning, and gearing up the aparatus for war on Iran will be much, much harder now. It can't be done in the 6 weeks left until the mid-terms. The Iraq PR build-up took months, and had the added benefit of UN resolutions with the phrase 'or else' in them. Iran can't be done in weeks.
* There are no 'authorizations of force' on the books yet, like there was for Iraq. This can change in the next 6 months if Bush & the GOP Congress decide it needs to be done, but that'll be spending a lot of political capital
In my opinion the biggest thing preventing a war on Iran is lack of military capacity. That issue can't be ignored. Sure the president can authorize secret raids into Iran in order to provoke a wider conflict that'll force us to widen hostilities. But doing that deliberately will take more than 6 weeks, and do absolutely nothing to ensure a GOP victory in 2008. It may even harm it if a draft authorization bill passes one house.
Fear mongering. Plain and simple. Can't stand the stuff.
it'd be nice if you were right. but i'm not counting on it.
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