Last week, in a move virtually ignored by the media, probably because they couldn’t seem to find a breaking point in their saturation coverage of the Republican freak show that has dominated the airwaves for months now, Senators Joseph Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and Pennsylvania’s own Bob Casey introduced a Senate resolution whose aim is to push America further down a road whose ultimate destination is war with Iran.
“Senate Resolution 380 — To Express the Sense of the Senate Regarding the Importance of Preventing the Government of Iran From Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Capability”, doesn’t have much support in the Senate at large — thank God, or Allah, or whomever — but that may be due to change in the coming weeks as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) plans a push in favor of the resolution in a very big way, by sending 10,000 activists to Capitol Hill for a day of heavy lobbying on the last day of AIPAC’s annual conference.
One of the key aims of the resolution is to change the point of intolerance that the United States has been clinging to as to what will constitute justification for a military move against Iran in order to wipe out its nuclear facilities. Up to now, the Obama administration has drawn the line at Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon. Senate Resolution 380 wants to move the line in the sand to the point at which Iran acquires the capability to build a bomb, whether they actually have or not.
Of course, no one can say exactly what constitutes “capability”, and the resolution does nothing to clarify that issue. Most analysts, but not all, define nuclear capability as being able to develop a weapon inside two years. If we use that as the standard, our murky intelligence suggests that it’s very likely that Iran has already crossed that particular Rubicon, which means that the resolution opens the door to a bombing campaign against Iran at any time. But a closer look at the resolution invites American involvement that is much more committed than a just few sorties to knock out Iranian nuclear facilities.
Because Iran is in the process of moving many of its facilities underground to where bombs cannot reach — something that the Israelis believe is happening at a pace that may have already rendered Iran largely immune from an airborne attack — it is entirely possible that Iran might remain “capable” even after a bombing campaign. In that case, the only thing that bombing would accomplish would be to strengthen Iran’s resolve to develop a nuclear weapon, sweeping all diplomatic efforts off the table.
Then what? American boots on the ground in Iran? To do what, exactly? And even if there were a clear mission, Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan. A land invasion of Iran will make Vietnam look like St. Ronnie of Bonzo’s foray into Grenada.
The resolution also demands that Iran stop enriching uranium, in spite of the fact that enrichment is allowed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And in addition to that, it demands Iran eliminate its ballistic missile program. This is something that has never been demanded of any other nation before. Even after the first Gulf War, the international coalition imposed a 150 kilometer maximum on Saddam Hussein’s ballistic missiles, but did not demand that he eliminate them. Iranians are keenly aware of this, and would have to be wondering why they are being singled out for all of these restrictions to which no other nation has ever had to submit.
The only purpose of this resolution, it seems to us, is to bring the United States closer to having justification for a war with Iran, something which AIPAC seems to be working overtime in order to achieve. There are a total of 15 Democratic senators who supported this resolution (not counting co-sponsor Casey), and this was only after an intense AIPAC lobbying effort, which focused primarily on Democrats who are considered to be vulnerable (“vulnerable” defined here as being involved in difficult reelection campaigns in which their Republican opponents are challenging their pro-Israeli bona fides, which proves that even though some Senators are unable to define the word “capability”, everybody knows what “vulnerable” means).
Here at OMT, we have to admit to being bitterly disappointed in Bob Casey for being a co-sponsor of a resolution which forsakes diplomacy so nakedly in favor of a military option that the United States has no business getting involved with. It’s ironic that 10 short years after the events that lead up to war with Iraq — an ugly, dishonest black mark on American history if there ever was one, resulting in a war that cost thousands of American lives, trillions in American treasure, countless thousands of Iraqi lives, and a decade of instability in a region of the world that needs instability the way Hugh Hefner needs a girlfriend — that we have Senators who are eager to get America back to war, abandoning all attempts at a peaceful resolution. And who, tellingly, have apparently submitted themselves completely to the influence of a powerful lobby whose aim is to drag the United States into a fight that has the potential of throwing the entire planet into political, economic, and quite possibly military chaos.
We are not surprised in the least when we hear Little Ricky Santorum spout off so irresponsibly on the campaign trail about how eager he is to get his hands on the reigns of presidential power so that he can bomb Iran back into the stone age. He’s a mindless authoritarian demagogue, a potential dictator for the ages. A man who, should by some unimaginably awful turn of events actually be elected President of the Unites States this fall, would in short order, we have no doubt, take his rightful place in the pantheon of history’s hideous psychocrats, and in the process plunge the United States — and if he has his way, all of mankind — into the conflict that will ring down the curtain once and for all on homo sapiens sapeins, clearing the way for the planet to cleanse itself of mankind’s damage over the period of the next several million years, setting the stage for the rise of some other shrew-like creature to rear up on its hind legs, look around, and start the whole madness all over again. It’s one hell of an environmental policy Little Ricky has there.
It’s one of the reasons that Pennsylvania voters gave Bob Casey an 18% victory over Santorum back in the 2006 Senate race. Of course, Casey has made no secret about his conservatism. His father, the former governor, although a Democrat, was a staunch pro-lifer. So is the Senator. We knew when we voted for him that he was not exactly at the forefront of progressivism, but at least he wasn’t Rick Santorum.
Not completely, anyway.
But apparently just enough to share Little Ricky’s thirst for Iranian blood.
