Antiwar.com
23 January 2006

She wants permanent bases in Iraq - and threatens war with
Iran.

As the war in Iraq metastasizes into what General
William E. Odom calls "the greatest strategic disaster in
United States history," and the cost in lives and treasure
continues to escalate, we are already being set up for Act
II of the neocons' Middle East war scenario - with the
Democrats taking up where the Republicans left off.

The Bush administration, for all its bellicose rhetoric,
has shown little stomach for directly confronting Tehran,
and this has prompted Democratic presidential front-runner
Hillary Rodham Clinton to take on the Bushies for
supposedly ignoring the alleged threat from Iran. Speaking
at Princeton University on the occasion of the Wilson
School's 75th anniversary celebration, Clinton aligned
herself with such Republican hawks as Sen. John McCain and
the editorial board of the Weekly Standard, calling for
sanctions and implicitly threatening war:

"I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran
because the White House chose to downplay the threats and
to outsource the negotiations. I don't believe you face
threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to
others and standing on the sidelines. But let's be clear
about the threat we face now: A nuclear Iran is a danger
to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond. The regime's
pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only
underscores the urgency of the threat it poses. U.S.
policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot and should
not - must not - permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear
weapons. In order to prevent that from occurring, we must
have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by
China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible
for sanctions in the United Nations. And we cannot take
any option off the table in sending a clear message to the
current leadership of Iran - that they will not be
permitted to acquire nuclear weapons."

Never mind that Iran is 10 years away from actually
producing a usable nuclear weapon, according to the latest
National Intelligence Estimate:

"Until recently, Iran was judged, according to February
testimony by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, to be within five years of
the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Since 1995, U.S.
officials have continually estimated Iran to be 'within
five years' from reaching that same capability. So far, it
has not.

"The new estimate extends the timeline, judging that Iran
will be unlikely to produce a sufficient quantity of
highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for an atomic
weapon, before 'early to mid-next decade,' according to
four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said
the shift, based on a better understanding of Iran's
technical limitations, puts the timeline closer to 2015
and in line with recently revised British and Israeli
figures. The estimate is for acquisition of fissile
material, but there is no firm view expressed on whether
Iran would be ready by then with an implosion device,
sources said."

This administration's increasingly hysterical statements
on the alleged "crisis," supposedly sparked by Iran's
resumption of its nuclear energy program, are - as in the
case of Iraq - at variance with the judgment of the
mainstream intelligence community. Once again, the
Bamboozle Brigade - a bunch of freelancing "experts,"
shadowy exile groups, foreign lobbyists, and a bipartisan
collection of pandering politicians - is mobilizing to gin
up a war. These war propagandists, including Clinton, make
only the most tenuous connection between American
interests and the Iranians' alleged forced march to
acquire nukes. Instead, they make the argument in favor of
ratcheting up the conflict with Iran in terms of the
necessity of protecting Israel. Clinton's speech is
infused with this militant Israeli patriotism:

"The security and freedom of Israel must be decisive and
remain at the core of any American approach to the Middle
East. This has been a hallmark of American foreign policy
for more than 50 years and we must not - dare not - waver
from this commitment."

While Israel is an American ally, so are Saudi Arabia and
Jordan. And don't forget the newly installed "democratic"
and supposedly pro-American government of Iraq. Israel "at
the core" of U.S. policy in the Middle East? I don't think
so. Such an Israelicentric viewpoint, while not out of
place in an Israeli politician, seems just a mite strange
coming from an American - even if she is a senator from
New York. It ought to go without saying that the
foundations of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East - or
anywhere else - have to be predicated on purely American
interests, and that the "core" of that policy has to be
our own economic well-being, which is inextricably linked
to the stability of the region.

Do we really want to see the price of oil skyrocket to
over $100 a barrel? Is it really in our interests - or the
interests of the Europeans, for that matter - for Iranian
oil assets to be tied to the Euro and other currencies,
rather than the dollar? The economic consequences of
either eventuality are potentially disastrous for the
United States, and yet that is what the reckless
Clintonian policy of confrontation with Iran would entail.
Unfortunately, however, the grip of the Israeli lobby in
the U.S. is so firmly locked around the necks of certain
politicians that any rational discussion of what serves
our interests - not Israel's - is next to impossible.

It is the task of Israel's amen corner in the U.S. to
convince the American public, and especially to prevail
upon their elected representatives, that Israel's
interests and our own always coincide. The propaganda
campaign launched to convince us that Iran's president is
the next Saddam and Tehran is deserving of a little
regime-change assumes this, and the Clinton speech is a
prime example: "A nuclear Iran," she avers, "is a danger
to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond" - an interesting
order of priorities, to say the least. She doesn't bother
making any explicit connection between the pursuit of
American interests and this relentless campaign to
demonize the Iranians: it is enough that Tehran poses a
potential threat to Israel. For Clinton, that alone is
reason enough to go to war.

There is a disturbing quality to Clinton's several
reiterations of fealty to Israel: it isn't only the
numbing repetition and the brazen pandering, it's also the
matter-of-fact yet still hectoring tone, the assumption
that only one position is possible:

"One cannot look at the Middle East today and not believe
that there has been progress against great odds. Former
sworn enemies of Israel are recognizing its existence, are
even talking about ways of increasing trade, commerce, and
diplomatic relations."

Surely there are more meaningful measures of progress in
the Middle East than diplomatic and economic benefits
accrued to Israel - such as, for example, the growing
movement in favor of democracy in the Arab world. But oh
no, that wouldn't do - unless, of course, any such
development is explained in terms of how Israel will gain.
A narrower, more sectarian view of the Middle East would
be hard to imagine.

Another of the War Party's talking points on the Iran
question is the argument that a conflict with Tehran is
inevitable, a tack taken by the Clinton-Lieberman wing of
the party in seeking to outflank the Republicans on the
Right while placing the blame squarely on Bush's
shoulders: "Part of the problem," says Clinton, is Iran's
"involvement in and influence over Iraq." Yet she has
never voiced regret for her vote in favor of the
resolution authorizing the invasion that brought the
pro-Iranian Shi'ite coalition government to power - far
from it. For her to decry Iranian influence in "liberated"
Iraq, on the one hand, and to continue voicing opposition
to the John Murtha out-pretty-soon-if-not-now position, on
the other, is typical of her mealy-mouthed,
passive-aggressive style of warmongering. Yet her position
is nonetheless clear. Instead of getting out, she wants to
use Iraq as a base from which to threaten Iran:

"I do not believe that we should allow this to be an
open-ended commitment without limits or end, nor do I
believe that we can or should pull out of Iraq
immediately. If last December's elections lead to a
successful Iraqi government, that should allow us to start
drawing down our troops during this year while leaving
behind a smaller contingent in safe areas with greater
intelligence and quick-strike capabilities. This will help
us stabilize that new Iraqi government. It will send a
message to Iran that they do not have a free hand in Iraq
despite their considerable influence and personal and
religious connections there. It will also send a message
to Israel and our other allies, like Jordan, that we will
continue to do what we can to provide the stability
necessary to prevent the terrorists from getting any
further foothold than they currently have."

A "quick strike" - against whom? And what could these
"safe areas" be other than permanent military bases?
Clinton is the first American politician to come out
squarely in favor of building what amounts to launching
pads for further aggression in the region. This is
something even the Bush administration has been canny
about, never acknowledging their clear plans to lay the
groundwork for such bases. Not Hillary, however: she isn't
the least bit shy about her vision of consolidating and
projecting American power all the way to Tehran - and
beyond.

She's intent on out-neoconning the neocons - a risky
proposition, given the proclivities of her Democratic
base, but one that she embraces, it seems, as a matter of
high principle. If she's running for the Democratic
presidential nomination, she should logically - in the
name of opportunism - tilt left, i.e., toward the antiwar
camp. Yet she is tilting rightward, or, at least, in a
distinctly neoconnish direction: an indication that, in
her own mind, she's already the nominee.

Surely such arrogance deserves punishment.

Right now, the main political obstacle to the peace
movement isn't George W. Bush and the Republicans: they
are plummeting in the polls, in part due to voter
dissatisfaction with the way the Iraq war is going, and
will be lucky if they can retain control of both houses of
Congress in the next election. The main danger isn't the
GOP, it's the DLC - the Democratic Leadership Council, one
of the main engines of the War Party's influence over the
Democratic elite. It is the DLC that has so far prevented
the anti-interventionist wing of the Democratic Party from
asserting itself at the national level. As the
Clintonites, the Kerryites, the Kos-folk, and the growing
antiwar caucus draw battle lines in the struggle for the
soul of the party, the scene is being set for a new
manufactured "crisis" over yet another "rogue nation"
supposedly building "weapons of mass destruction." One of
the first signs of this internecine fight is an effort by
antiwar Democrats to challenge and oust Sen. Joseph
Lieberman - the most visible and vocal Democratic
supporter of the Iraq war, and a longtime advocate of
going after Iran - in the upcoming party primary. One
wonders, however, how these "Kossacks" will react to the
increasing likelihood of Hillary as our commander in
chief: although I would love to be proven wrong, my big
fear is that, despite her Amazonian aggressiveness when it
comes to foreign policy, these supposedly "antiwar"
Democrats will find her Xena-like persona irresistible.