[Marxism] NY Times takes what might almost be considered a stand against war with Iran

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Of course, Bush's denials are just an attempt to keep the war plan,
which was not supposed to become public knowledge quite this soon, on
track which calls for emphasizing the diplomatic track now while
insisting that everything, and especially ONE THING, remains on the
table if that fails.  Even the bombing is not the last stage -- and the
bombing raid could easily be expanded to hit the full range of
nuclear-related targets  (military bases of all kinds, government
offices, universities -- don't forget the importance of "intellectual
capacity" in Iran's nuclear threat --  South Tehran neighborhoods that
do not support recognizing Israel, and other legitimate sites).

The bombing, like the first war against Iraq, would be the last step in
proving the necessity of invading Iran.  When the bombing fails to
eliminate the nuclear threat (the wicked government will still be there,
the intellectual capacity will not have been destroyed as world peace
requires -- invasion is to become more clearly the only option.

After all, Ahmedinejad is another HItler, right? While nothing can be
another holocaust --  the Holocaust was so very special -- absolutely
anyone who isn't enthusiastic about Israel can be another Hitler.
They're a dime a dozen. The US rulers and their media can cook up five
or ten new ones while U wait.
Fred Feldman






http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/opinion/11tue1.html?th=
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/opinion/11tue1.html?th=&emc=th&pagewa
nted=print> &emc=th&pagewanted=print

April 11, 2006 Editorial

Military Fantasies on Iran Iraq shows just how badly things can go wrong
when an administration rashly embraces simple military solutions to
complicated problems, shutting its ears to military and intelligence
professionals who turn out to be tragically prescient. That lesson has
yet to be absorbed by the Bush administration, which is now reportedly
honing plans for airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Congress and the country need to ask the administration just what is
going on, and just what it hopes to accomplish by this latest saber
rattling.

If the administration's real goal is to change minds in Iran and
energize diplomacy, it is not going about it in a very smart way. If,
instead, it intends to proceed with a bombing campaign when and if
diplomacy fails, Congress and the public need to force the kind of
serious national debate that never really took place before the American
invasion of Iraq.

Routine contingency planning goes on all the time in the Pentagon, but
the discussions on Iran seem to have progressed beyond this level, with
high administration officials pushing the process and dropping indirect
hints of possible future American military action in language that
sometimes recalls statements made before the invasion of Iraq.

The Washington Post reports tha



tTTt two main options are being seriously considered - a limited strike
against Iranian nuclear-related sites or a broader campaign against a
wider range of military and political targets. The planners are also
looking at ways America could use tactical nuclear weapons to penetrate
Iran's heavily reinforced underground uranium enrichment complex at
Natanz. The British government is said to take Washington's planning
exercises seriously enough to have worked out security arrangements for
its own diplomats and citizens in the event of American air attacks.

War with Iran would be reckless folly, especially with most of America's
ground forces tied up in Iraq, where they are particularly vulnerable to
retaliation from Iran and its Iraqi Shiite allies. Nor is there any
guarantee that such a conflict would remain limited to airstrikes.
Bombing alone probably cannot destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities,
some of which are underground and fortified, and possibly others in
unknown locations.

In fact, Iran already has much of the material and know-how to make
nuclear bombs, and is believed to be about 10 years away from building
them. The best hope for avoiding a nuclear-armed Iran lies in
encouraging political evolution there over the next decade. It is
important to make clear to the Iranian people that they have no need for
nuclear weapons and would actually be better off without them.

Years of frustrating diplomacy have not managed to deflect Iran's
nuclear ambitions, but American airstrikes are not likely to either. The
best they could hope to achieve is delay, but that result would be far
outweighed by the likely consequences.

An American bombing campaign would surely rally the Iranian people
behind the radical Islamic government and the nuclear program, with
those effects multiplied exponentially if the Pentagon itself resorted
to nuclear weapons in the name of trying to stop Iran from building
nuclear bombs.

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