Is the Military Our Last, Best Hope for Averting War with Iran?

[Purveyor]

When military command is the voice of reason in a debate about a new war, you know our democracy is in trouble.

The last, best hope for averting a war with Iran lies with the United States military. The Democratic Congress, cowed by the Israel lobby and terrified of appearing weak on defense before the presidential elections, will do nothing to halt an attack. The media, especially the electronic press, is working overtime to whip up fear of a nuclear Iran and tar Tehran with abetting attacks against American troops in Iraq. The American public is complacent, unsure of what to believe, knocked off balance by fear and passive. We will be saved or doomed by our generals.

The last wall of defense that prevents the Bush administration from targeting Iran, an attack that could ignite a regional conflagration and usher in apocalyptic scenarios in the Middle East, runs through the offices of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Adm. William Fallon , the head of the Central Command (CENTCOM); and Gen. George Casey, the Army's new chief of staff. These three figures in the defense establishment have told George W. Bush and the Congress how depleted the U.S. military has become, that it cannot manage another conflict, and that a war with Iran would make the war with Iraq look like an act of prudence and common sense.

The reliance on the military command, however, to be the voice of reason in the debate about a new war is not a healthy sign for our deteriorating democracy. Compliant generals can always be found to carry out the Dr. Strangelove designs of a mad White House. Those who resist implementing decisions can easily be removed. The protective cover provided by these figures in the defense establishment could vanish.

The United States is able to launch a massive and devastating air attack on Iran's military installations. It can obliterate the Iranian air force. It can cripple if not dismantle effective communications and military command and control. It can destroy some of Iran's underground nuclear facilities. But our intelligence inside Iran, as was true in Iraq, is uneven. We do not know where all of Iran's nuclear facilities are. And it is probable that an Iranian response against American targets, such as the Green Zone in Iraq, as well as Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks on American soil, would follow. Shiites in the region would interpret an attack as a war on the Shiite community and would unleash unrest, terrorism and violence against us and our allies from Lebanon to Pakistan.

The battle is between the Cheney camp, which would like to carry out strikes on Iran before Bush leaves office, and Gates and his senior generals. Cheney, who has always been able to push aside the feckless Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is having a tougher time with the military. Fallon, for example, was successful in his attempt to block efforts by Cheney to move a third aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf earlier this year and bluntly said that "there would be no war against Iran" as long as he was chief of CENTCOM.

---EOE---

http://www.alternet.org/audits/67654/

[frogcycle]

1. yes, a mutiny is about all we can hope for

Cheney will absolutely manage to get the order issued to attack. Refusing to follow the order will then be all that's left.

Because it would not be an order while "under fire" they might be able to protest, argue, whatever for a little while. But then it comes down to "I am ordering you to" and the response of "sir I respectfully decline to carry out that order" followed by being fired and the order given to another general. It will be another Nixon friday-night massacre, and if the military stands firm it will make for interesting times.

[FightingIrish]

2. It's Called Sanity

It seems incongruent that a nations’s warriors would be its greatest advocates for peace, but history has many instances where the sanity came from the sharp edge of the sword. I don’t know why naval officers so often tend to be the ones who risk everything for principle.

I spent three summers with Bill Fallon, two as NROTC midshipmen and one in the Naval Basic Air Training Command in Pensacola, Florida. I mistook Bill for a shallow short-timer. While I was busting my butt to get the assignment I wanted, Bill was bringing up the rear of his class and earning himself a seat in the dreaded RA-5C Vigilante, the absolutely shittiest billet for a naval flight officer.

While I was working hard at becoming a civilian, Bill must have found something to love about Navy politics. He went from a very crappy assignment as a junior officer to Vice Chief of Naval Operations and most recently to the head on Central Command. At first I feared that he had grabbed the brass ring of the president’s lowest sphincter, but he has proven me wrong. If Bill Fallon and people like him may save us from the invasion of the chickenhawks, I will bless every beer we had together so many years ago.