De-fund A New "Preemptive" War

In this recent tightly reasoned article, Patrick Cockburn, perhaps the most acute observer of the mess in Iraq, explains why we are seeing this incestuous interaction raise again its ugly head with the beating of anti-Iranian war drums in the echo chambers of Versailles on the Potomac.

It is conceptually easy to stop the mad rush to a so-called "preemptive" war against Iran, which it should be noted, is the only country in the world now surrounded by potentially hostile powers armed with nuclear weapons — i.e., Sunni Pakistan to the east, Russia to the north, Israel and the U.S. in Iraq to the west, and the U.S. Navy to the south in the Arabian Sea. If "deterrence" worked against the Soviet Union and the United States, when each was armed with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, why won't thousands of nuclear weapons deter a hopelessly surrounded Iran, even if it develops a nuclear weapon, which is not at all certain? Congress can end the madness by simply using its constitutionally unquestioned power of the purse to prohibit the expenditure of any money whatsoever for an attack on Iran.

So the question before the House, and the American people, is whether the irrational Politics of Fear will once again be reinforced by the irrational Politics of Fright, or will the new legislative majority muster the courage to tell the President, Vice President, and Karl Rove, as well as their cronies, "Enough! Have you no shame?"

Chuck Spinney is a former Pentagon analyst and whistleblower.

[1] The best book I have read analyzing the question how foreign policy is a product of unresolved internal tensions is Robert Dallek's The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs, Oxford University Press, 1983.