IRAN: Pre-emptive Action Needed Now

The scuttlebutt among the BTH this week was that Cheney is dissatisfied with the pace of progress against Iran through the diplomatic route. He, along with perhaps a brace or so other residual Bushite chickenhawks, is thinking, so they say, that the USA will need to do something before he and the Bushite Administration sink into the sunset. We know the process: Revisit those contingency plans, start the PR program, make threats, impugn the loyalty of your opponents, make “surgical” air strikes. History will thank us for them.

Perhaps the yammering is due merely to the presence of Iranian President Ahmadinejad in the U.S. for the General Assembly. Certainly he’s inflammatory; just look at the controversies on his laying a wreath at Ground Zero and making a speech at Columbia. (For the record on those minor flare-ups: there was probably a legitimate security concern about his going to the WTC site, and his appearance at Columbia did little credit to him or the University, though it’s good he can’t claim he was censored or silenced.) Ahmadinejad’s a petty despot, a demagogue, an unapologetic hostage-taker and serial liar. Like Bush, he got elected through a fluky combination of circumstances and failed to deliver on his electoral promises to his country. Unlike Bush, he’s not going to be re-elected.

Unless, of course, we take the bait and attack Iran, which will rally nationalistic support behind him. The most important fact to consider regarding Ahmadinejad is that he is not, regardless of his title, the decision-maker in Iran’s government: he’s a puppet of the mullahs, a floater of trial balloons for them. They will serenely sit by and let them pop; on the other hand, they will use any successes he can bring them.

We should insist that Iran live up to the provisions of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory nation. We should make it clear that, far from gaining respect, Iran's regime will be vilified and punished if it goes on to develop nuclear weapons. We should not be goaded and fall foolishly into their trap, nor let the Israelis do it for us.

The measure passed by Joe Lieberman and passed overwhelmingly in the Senate to officially portray the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization is the first planned step in the awful, militaristic drumbeat which leads to madness. Now, before Cheney forms a new WHIG for Iran, we should take pre-emptive action. I call upon Congress to pass a resolution, perhaps as an amendment to the Defense Department authorization bill now before it, prohibiting the Bushites from taking aggressive military action against Iran’s territory without specific authorization from Congress. Speaking hypothetically, if that can’t won't protect us against rogue action from our government, I’d suggest some sort of public action to put Cheney in “protective custody” against Iranian threats, or to cut off his “undisclosed location” from communication with the outside world, until January 20, 2009.

We are not “the herds that are feeding yonder, (that) know not the meaning of yesterday or today” (Nietzsche, “The Use and Abuse of History”). We can do better than this.