Democrats Dither As Cheney, Neocons Plot To Nuke Iran

Democrats Dither As Cheney, Neocons Plot To Nuke Iran​

By Paul Craig Roberts​

The Washington, DC, think-tank, The American Enterprise Institute, camouflages its purpose with its name. There is nothing American about AEI, and the organization’s enterprise is fomenting war in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies. Its real name should be The Likud Center for Middle East War....

Recent polls show that the majority of the American people are no longer fooled, no matter what politicians say and media report. The election last November demonstrated the electorate's lack of support for continuing the war.

The problem is in implementing the will of the people. Democrats in Congress are not only recipients of AIPAC, oil industry, and military-security complex payoffs just as the Republicans are, Democrats are also behaving very cynically. They believe that it is Bush's policy that gave them control of Congress in November and that by continuing to let Bush prevail, they will clean up on a larger scale in 2008. They believe that their antiwar base has nowhere else to go.

Their cynical logic is probably correct as far as it goes. Bush is being blamed for the war and its failure. The longer this goes on, the worse the situation for the Republicans. Prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, I wrote in a column that the unintended consequences of an invasion would be the destruction of Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement. It has taken longer than I thought, largely because of Americans’ blind desire for revenge for 9/11, but the prediction is on track.

The problem with the Democrats’ cynical logic is that allowing Bush to prolong the war in Iraq increases the chances that Cheney, Israel, and the neoconservatives can contrive a war with Iran. Most experts, and many in our own military, think that a war with Iran would go very badly for us, endangering our troops in Iraq by exposing them to more intense attacks from the more numerous Shiites, who would be armed with Iranian weapons that can neutralize our tanks and helicopters, leaving our fragmented and divided troops isolated and cut off from supplies and retreat routes.

The pending disaster would play into Cheney's hands. With America faced with the loss of an army, Cheney and the neoconservatives would likely succeed in convincing Bush to nuke Iran. Cheney and Rumsfeld have already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack against non-nuclear powers. Surprised by the inability of the US military to prevail in Iraq and by Israel's military failure against Hezbollah, the neocons concluded that the only way to establish US/Israeli hegemony over the entire Middle East is to nuke Iran. The neocons believe that using nuclear weapons against Iran will demonstrate to the Muslim world that they have no alternative but to submit to US hegemony.

- rest of this very good column at www.vdare.com/roberts/070525_aei.htm

Seeing the Democrats fold like a bad hand in poker in the Iraq conflict funding debate, I have no confidence that the Congress would stop President Bush from leading this nation into a third disastrous Middle East conflict while the first two are still going down the drain.

 

1) Thank you, hillclimber1, for admitting you advocate a worldwide American empire. I appreciate it.

2) I am afraid that the Democrats don't really want to see the Iraq conflict end before November 2008. As long as Bush's Folly in Iraq is a drag on the GOP it will make it easier for the Democrats to increase their majorities in the Congress and to win the presidency in November 2008.