Beating The War Drums

A few quick thoughts on Iran. Just a casual look around the blogoshpere turns up an awful lot of pieces dealing with the idea of Iran - either warning of the growing Iranian “nuclear threat”, advocating military action to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon, or in fewer instances, warning against the consequences of attacking Iran. Perhaps it’s laziness on the part of the punditocracy, since a rehash of the case for/against war with Iran kind of writes itself at this point; but it does seem like there’s a growing expectation that there will be some military action against Iran soon (something I humbly note that I predicted back in June).

Unfortunately for the pro-action crowd, their arguments are pretty weak. Take this recent piece in the Weekly Standard, which makes the case that the US has to take military action against Iran to protect the world’s oil supply, since if there was an outbreak of hostilities, it would negatively impact the world’s supply of oil (feel free to scratch your head over that bit of logic). The pro-action crowd also maintains that Iran’s nuclear capabilities can quickly be eliminated through a series of air strikes that will have no negative reprocussions. And if you believe that, I have some lovely beachfront property along the Straits of Hormuz to sell you.

Sadly, we’ve seen this movie before. Military action in Afghanistan was suppose to quickly decapitate al-Qaeda and eliminate the country as a terrorist safe-haven. Our soldiers in Iraq would, supposedly, be greeted as liberators, met with candies and flowers and Iraq’s oil revenues would pay for the whole invasion to boot. We all know how well those two scenarios played out. But sadly as Arnaud de Borchgrave reports in today’s Washington Times, those lessons of history seem to have been lost on the crop of neoconservatives still rattling around Washington DC; he quotes Reuel Marc Gerecht who says that Iran’s response to military action will be “minimal” and that an attack will “rock the system” in the region - basically shoveling the same stupid line the neocons pushed seven years ago about Iraq.

If we indeed are set on military action against Iran then, let’s hope our leaders do a much better job planning for the day after the attack as they do for when the bombs fall.