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THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - August 10, 2010
GOP Blank Check for War?
by: Pat Buchanan
High among the blunders of history was the "blank cheque"
Kaiser Wilhelm gave Vienna, after the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to deal with the Serbs as they
saw fit.
Five weeks later, Vienna cashed the check and declared
war, after Belgrade refused to submit to all 10 demands
of an ultimatum. Russia mobilized; Germany and France
followed. And war came, the bloodiest in all of European
history with 9 million soldiers in their graves.
Since June 1914, a "blank check" given by one nation to
another for war has been regarded as strategic folly.
Thus it is startling to learn 47 House Republicans just
signed on to H.R. 1553 declaring unequivocal "support
for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront
and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran... including
the use of military force."
These Republicans have just given Tel Aviv a blank check
for a pre-emptive war that Israel, unless it uses its
nuclear weapons, can start but not finish. Fighting and
finishing that war would fall to the armed forces of the
United States.
Who do these Republicans represent?
The Pentagon has made clear that with two wars of nearly a
decade's duration bleeding us, we do not want a third war
with Iran. For while easy to predict how such a war begins,
with air and missile strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities,
no one can know how it ends.
Indeed, how would Israel reach its targets in Iran?
Turkey would not allow Israeli over-flights. The route
over Jordan and Iraq would require U.S. military
complicity, for we control Iraqi air space. Would Riyadh
permit Israel to use its airspace to attack Iran, knowing
Tehran could create havoc in the Gulf states and oil patch
of northeastern Arabia?
The Israeli air force could destroy the nuclear power plant
at Bushehr, the heavy water reactor at Arak and uranium
enrichment facility at Natanz. But Israel cannot follow
up and destroy all the dispersed nuclear facilities and
missile sites of Iran. And no one knows what would follow.
How would Iran retaliate? Missile strikes on Tel Aviv? A
missile barrage form Hezbollah igniting another Israeli-
Lebanon war? How long could the United States stand by and
watch Israel bombarded?
Indeed, the principal purpose and result of an Israeli pre-
emptive war on Iran, bringing retaliation on Israel, would
be to drag America in to fight and finish a war Israel had
begun.
In whose interest is that? And who dreamed this resolution
up?
If America joined the attack, we would have to complete
the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities and destroy
its missile sites, coastal defenses, navy, air force and
hundreds of speedboats to prevent attacks on U.S. warships
and tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
We would have to strike all the Republican Guard bases
near Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our troops. We would
have to kill thousands of Iranians.
Would Iran retaliate by inciting the Mahdi Army to kill
our men in Iraq? Would it set Hezbollah to kidnap or
kill Americans in Lebanon? Would Iran retaliate for its
civilian dead by activating agents to commit terrorism
in the United States? No one knows.
In 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered air strikes on Libya to
retaliate for Qaddafi's bombing of the Berlin discotheque.
In 1989, in retaliation, Qaddafi blew up Pan Am 103. Death
toll: 270 men, women and children. It's called blowback.
The House Republican resolution supports Israel's use of
"all means necessary" to "eliminate nuclear threats" that
represent an "immediate and existential threat to the
State of Israel."
What "immediate and existential threat" are they talking
about?
It is Israel that has hundreds of atomic bombs. Iran has
no atom bombs, has tested no atomic device, has diverted
none of its low-enriched uranium out of the sight of U.N.
inspectors and has offered to ship half of its LEU to
Turkey in exchange for fuel rods for a U.S.-built reactor
that makes medical isotopes. And half of the centrifuges
at Natanz have broken down.
Undeniably, Iran is gaining knowledge of how to build a
bomb. But such a decision would seem idiotic from Iran's
standpoint, risking Israeli or U.S. nuclear strikes and
provoking Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to follow suit
and acquire the bomb, leaving Iran even more isolated and
vulnerable.
Three years ago, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies reached a
consensus that Iran had given up on the project of build-
ing a bomb. Do these Republicans have hard evidence Iran
is diverting its enriched uranium to such a bomb? If so,
where is it?
Have these Republicans forgotten what happened to their
colleagues in 2006, who voted Bush that blank check for
war on Iraq in 2002?
Why, with all the issues going for them, House Republicans
would announce full-throated support for a pre-emptive war
on Iran that Americans would have to fight and finish,
escapes me.
But if this is where a Republican House would take America,
into yet another war, best that we know it before voting
this fall.
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