Not Time to Attack Iran
Why War Should Be a Last Resort
Obama speaks about the U.N. Security Council's sanctions on Iran (Kevin Lamarque / Courtesy Reuters)
In "Time to Attack Iran" (January/February 2012), Matthew Kroenig takes a page out of the decade-old playbook used by advocates of the Iraq war. He portrays the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran as both grave and imminent, arguing that the United States has little choice but to attack Iran now before it is too late. Then, after offering the caveat that "attacking Iran is hardly an attractive prospect," he goes on to portray military action as preferable to other available alternatives and concludes that the United States can manage all the associated risks. Preventive war, according to Kroenig, is "the least bad option."
But the lesson of Iraq, the last preventive war launched by the United States, is that Washington should not choose war when there are still other options, and it should not base its decision to attack on best-case analyses of how it hopes the conflict will turn out. A realistic assessment of Iran's nuclear progress and how a conflict would likely unfold leads one to a conclusion that is the opposite of Kroenig's: now is not the time to attack Iran.
Time to Attack Iran. Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option
In early October, U.S. officials accused Iranian operatives of planning to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States on American soil. Iran denied the charges, but the episode has already managed to increase tensions between Washington and Tehran. Although the Obama administration has not publicly threatened to retaliate with military force, the allegations have underscored the real and growing risk that the two sides could go to war sometime soon -- particularly over Iran’s advancing nuclear program.
The Splintering of Al Shabaab
A Rough Road From War to Peace
Washington's repeated
attempts to bring peace to Somalia with state-building initiatives have
failed, even backļ¬red. It should renounce political intervention and
encourage local development without trying to improve governance.
An AMISOM battalion in Mogadishu. (United Nations Photo / flickr)
For the better part of five years, much of Somalia's long-suffering population has been caught in a deadly stalemate between al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked militant group, and African Union peacekeepers, known as AMISOM. The peacekeepers are tasked with defending the country's weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which, despite years of backing from regional powers and the West, remains politically dysfunctional and incapable doing anything resembling governing. Fielding an army of its own remains a distant aspiration.
The Next War of the World
The Next War of the World
In 1898, H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, a novel that imagined the destruction of a great city and the extermination of its inhabitants by ruthless invaders. The invaders in Wells' story were, of course, Martians. But no aliens were needed to make such devastation a reality. In the decades that followed the book's publication, human beings repeatedly played the part of the inhuman marauders, devastating city after city in what may justly be regarded as a single hundred-year "war of the world."
Slain Border Patrol Agent’s Family Files Lawsuit in Fast & Furious Scandal
Kurt Nimmo
The family of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government. Terry was killed on December 14, 2010, by drug cartel bandits in Arizona. Investigators found two AK47s at the scene that were linked to the government’s Fast and Furious gun-running operation.
Under
Fast and Furious, the ATF orchestrated the sale of guns originating in
the United States to Mexican drug cartels financed by international banks.
According to William Newell, former ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division, the Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were “full partners” in Operation Fast and Furious.
The family of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government. Terry was killed on December 14, 2010, by drug cartel bandits in Arizona. Investigators found two AK47s at the scene that were linked to the government’s Fast and Furious gun-running operation.
Under
Fast and Furious, the ATF orchestrated the sale of guns originating in
the United States to Mexican drug cartels financed by international banks.According to William Newell, former ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division, the Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were “full partners” in Operation Fast and Furious.
IRAN: The Next War on Washington’s Agenda Politics
Paul Craig Roberts
Only the blind do not see that the US government is preparing to attack Iran. According to Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “Active war preparations directed against Iran (with the involvement of Israel and NATO) were initiated in May 2003.”
Coverage Roundup: Afghanistan and Pakistan
It was a busy day for news from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Here is a roundup of coverage from The New York Times:
- Panetta Sets End to Afghan Combat Role for U.S. in ’13 | In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home. Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. Read the article here.
Petraeus: General, Spymaster, Comfortable in Casual Wear
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON — When David H. Petraeus testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, it was a rare public appearance by America’s onetime most famous general who by tradition has gone into virtual hiding as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the spymaster, who oversaw the troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, now has a biographer who is keeping his name in lights, at least on the set of “The Daily Show:’’ Paula Broadwell, a doctoral candidate and 39-year-old major in the Army reserves who is the author of “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.’’
Karen Bleier/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDavid Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.A Quick Roundup of the Pentagon’s Proposed Budget Cuts
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta outlined on Thursday
the first major step — he called it a “down payment” — of shrinking the
Pentagon after a decade of war. Included in the proposal: limit pay
raises for troops, increase health insurance fees for military retirees
and close bases in the United States. Of those proposals, our colleagues
Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker write that pay-raise limits, though
modest, “are certain to ignite a political fight in Congress, which
since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has consistently raised military
salaries beyond what the Pentagon has recommended.”
For more on the exact budget reductions, as well the political challenges the changes may present to the Obama administration, the effects on military benefits and the changing nature of the United States’ force presence throughout the world, read their full article here.
You can read the Pentagon’s proposal in full here.
And to see how readers like you would cut the defense budget, check this out
For more on the exact budget reductions, as well the political challenges the changes may present to the Obama administration, the effects on military benefits and the changing nature of the United States’ force presence throughout the world, read their full article here.
You can read the Pentagon’s proposal in full here.
And to see how readers like you would cut the defense budget, check this out
The Next War
By JEFFERY DELVISCIO
As
the new year begins, At War is taking a look at a series by our
Washington correspondents dubbed “The Next War.” The articles examine
the American military and the decisions confronting it in a new age of
austerity, from the cuts to come, to the costs of technology and the
vision of a newer, leaner fighting force.
Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesLeon
E. Panetta, center, in the Rose Garden in 1995 as President Bill
Clinton announced a Bosnia peace agreement. From right are Vice
President Al Gore and Anthony Lake, the national security adviser.
Panetta’s Pentagon
Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesLeon
E. Panetta, center, in the Rose Garden in 1995 as President Bill
Clinton announced a Bosnia peace agreement. From right are Vice
President Al Gore and Anthony Lake, the national security adviser.How to be a dictator
Quick study: Alastair Smith on political tyranny
A.B. | LONDON
ALASTAIR
SMITH is professor of politics at New York University. The recipient of
three grants from the National Science Foundation and author of three
books, he was chosen as the 2005 Karl Deutsch Award winner, given
biennially to the best international-relations scholar under the age of
40. He is co-author of “The Dictator’s Handbook: How Bad Behaviour is Almost Always Good Politics” (2011).Fairly confusing
The politics of fairness
Fairly confusing
by W.W. | IOWA CITY
FAIRNESS played a central role in Barack Obama's state-of-the-union address,
and I suspect it will play a central role in the president's
re-election campaign. But what does Mr Obama have in mind when he
deploys the f-word? It may not be the case that fairness is, as Scott
Adams, the creator of Dilbert, puts it,
"a concept invented so dumb people could participate in arguments". But
it cannot be denied that fairness is an idea both mutable and
contested. Indeed, last week's state-of-the-union address seems to
contain several distinct conceptions of fairness worth drawing out and
reflecting upon.Toward the beginning of his speech, as Mr Obama was trying to draw a parallel between post-second world war America and today's post-Iraq war America, he offered this rather stark choice:
A fistful of dollars
Facebook may be a good bet for investors now; but regulatory problems lie ahead
Pathetic Scholarship: Michael Emmett Brady. by Mark R. Crovelli
Nothing in
the academic world reeks more revoltingly than the man who labels
anyone who disagrees with him a shoddy scholar. Such a desperate
act of intellectual dishonesty is a sure sign that the man who resorts
to it possesses not a shred of intellectual integrity and is utterly
incapable of honest discourse. The fact that few scholars ever stoop
so low is primarily due to the fact that their peers are readily
capable of recognizing the tactic for what it is: puerile name-calling
masquerading as argumentation.
Nevertheless,
there do exist a few simple-minded souls in the academic world who
are undaunted by the crassness and fallaciousness of the ad hominem
and the non sequitur. For men of this ilk, scoring cheap
points against an opponent is more important than forming sound
arguments or even clear thinking.
No Country Will Exit the Euro Zone This Year: Jim Rogers by Ron Haruni
Billionaire
investor and chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings, Jim Rogers
believes that no country will exit the euro zone this year.
“I don’t
think we’ll see anybody will leave the euro zone in 2012, there
are 40 elections in 2012 there will be more problems this year.
Governments everywhere will do their best to make sure we get through
elections. Maybe in 2013 you should panic and certainly by 2014
you should be panicked but 2012 will be better,” Rogers told
CNBC Monday.Get Off the Road to War: Stop the Sanctions on Iran by Michael S. Rozeff
It would be
nice if the U.S. kept its word when it signs those international
agreements that are in some kind of accord with rights and advance
the international maintenance of rights.
The U.S. has
not done this with Iran.
The U.S. and
Iran signed the Algiers
Accords in 1981 to end the hostage crisis. See also here.
Point 1 of the accords is titled "Non-Intervention in Iranian Affairs".
It reads (in full):
"The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's internal affairs."
Florida: God’s Waiting Room for Freedom by Brian Wilson
A
post-Florida Primary Review.
Of sorts.
Another primary; another late night of Required Talk Show Homework. While much happened that deserves comment, one big, fat lie must be mentioned.
An alleged reporter on Faux News said "Romney got the most votes in all categories, women ... and the Tea Party." These Fox clowns already have zero credibility with me. They don't have to French kiss
Romney in public to prove it.
Of sorts.
Another primary; another late night of Required Talk Show Homework. While much happened that deserves comment, one big, fat lie must be mentioned.
An alleged reporter on Faux News said "Romney got the most votes in all categories, women ... and the Tea Party." These Fox clowns already have zero credibility with me. They don't have to French kiss
Romney in public to prove it.
Obama's Maddening, Winning Speech
He will marginalize his opponents as the bloodless Numbers People.
Bemused election-year observers remarked that both ObamaCare and the nation's entitlement bomb passed unmentioned. In his reply, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels noted that we are not going to be able to outrun the simple math on entitlement spending. That's true. We can't. But Mr. Obama just may for the next 10 months.
Associated Press
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