Washington
I did a guest spot on a Denver talk radio show last week, and was stunned when the program’s hosts turned the topic to Iran.
Talk is cheap. But the hosts were ready – in fact, sounded downright eager – to beat the war drums.
The U.S. must attack Iran, they argued, because its Islamic leaders are suicidal zealots – indistinguishable from the Sept. 11 hijackers – ready to sacrifice themselves and millions of fellow Muslims in a nuclear exchange if they can take Tel Aviv or New York with them.
My radio hosts are not alone. In neo-conservative quarters here, the trumpets are sounding.
“There are those who see a tyrant regime” and are working to push the U.S. into a “cataclysmic” war, said Steven Clemons, director of the New American Foundation, a think tank that held an all-day conference on Iran’s nuclear ambitions last week.
There is talk of a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, of bombing campaigns and “surgical” air strikes.
After watching Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan crash their presidencies in Tehran, it would not surprise me if George W. Bush and a compliant Congress also met disaster on the hard rock that is Iran.
It’s a nation of 70 million people, the size of Alaska, with oil and gas reserves on a par with Saudi Arabia. Its mountain ranges and deserts and teeming cities can hide dozens of weapons facilities. A U.S. or American-sanctioned Israeli air assault on those installations would fortify Iranian resolve and play into the hands of the country’s radical leaders.
“The odds that the use of force will be counterproductive are staggeringly high,” said Flynt Leverett, who served as a Middle Eastern expert at the White House and the State Department during Bush’s first term.
Were Americans ever cowed by a sneak attack? Not with the Maine. Not at Pearl Harbor. Not after Sept. 11. Why should the Iranians be different? They sent their 10-year-old children into battle in the Iran-Iraq war.
We could never sleep soundly after launching an air strike on Iran. Air power alone seems unlikely to wipe out a nuclear weapons program that has had time to hide beneath reinforced barriers.
“It will look great, but it will be feeble,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Air power “is not a panacea. It’s not an answer. What it would do is solidify 70 million Iranians.”
And even Donald Rumsfeld might concede that the United States cannot subdue a nation with the topography of Alaska and a population larger than that of France with our battered military resources. There is no doubting the forces’ courage and commitment, but our Army and Marines “are so stretched right now they couldn’t take on another commitment if they tried,” said Wilkerson.
The U.S. would be faced with a major decision. “It’s called conscription,” he said – we’ll be drafting young adults and parents again.
And what of America’s unfinished business? Before we start another war, it may be worthwhile to consider:
The war in Afghanistan is far from over. As casualties mount, our NATO allies are discovering that we’ve given them what rugby players call a “hospital pass”: a handoff in the war against the Taliban that has led to an immediate and painful collision. Violence is mounting, and the narcotics trade is flourishing.
We haven’t won the war in Iraq. Last Monday, investigators from the Government Accountability Office warned Congress of “deteriorating conditions” in Iraq, “evidenced by increased numbers of attacks and Sunni-Shia sectarian strife.” That same day, news broke of a Marine intelligence report that concluded we’ve lost the battle for Iraq’s crucial Anbar province.
We haven’t won the war in Waziristan. Five years after President Bush declared he would do whatever it takes to get Osama bin Laden, he continues to taunt us and plot further attacks, reportedly from a secure sanctuary in this border region of western Pakistan.
In the end, the U.S. and its allies will triumph in the war on terror by winning over the world’s billion Muslims and depriving the terrorists of their support. Can we do that by rampaging through one Muslim country after another?
The New America conference’s conclusion: It is time to wield the tools by which the West fought and won the Cold War. “The answers are not easy, but they are simple,” Ronald Reagan said then.
Energetic diplomacy, containment and deterrence worked against the likes of Stalin and Mao. The White House would be well advised to arm our allies in the region, but open direct talks with Iran, and seek a “grand bargain” on the issues that are beginning to boil.
Because “the military options,” said Wilkerson, “are grim.”
John Aloysius Farrell’s column appears each Sunday in Perspective. Read and comment on his columns at The Denver Post’s Washington Web log (denverpostbloghouse.com/ washington).
