The Next War: T-minus six months

So I was giving some thought the other day as to just how long it would be before we invaded another country. After all, the mainstream is now more in agreement with us that Iraq is a total fiasco; Bush’s approval ratings are floating consistently at 1 in 3; the war on terror is still a hot item, but seems less likely to promote overseas adventuring as it did the last two times.

Adding all of those factors up, I’m thinking February is probably when we’re going to start putting new enemies in the crosshairs. Maybe March.

Jeff, what the hell’s in your coffee? How can you think that? Americans are too tired of war to support another one.

Nah. You’re being too kind to Americans. Americans are tired of losing. Give them a spiffy new enemy to attack — and to conveniently push the bad news about Iraq off the front pages, as Iraq did to Afghanistan — and they’ll line right back up again with the flag-waving and “they can’t do that to us” rhetoric.

Who exactly do you have in mind here?

Iran, of course. We can’t go to North Korea — it’s too far and not central to our political spectrum, no matter what kind of weapons systems they might have. Besides, Pyongyang can completely pave over Seoul; I think that might be an effective secondary deterrent to trying anything.

Sure, but the Iranians can do the same to Israel.

At the cost of intensifying any conflict into something similar to World War III. Something like that would bring both the Europeans and the Coalition of Jew-Hating Nations on board in a big way. And once that happens, all hell breaks loose. Israel has nukes and would definitely use them if it felt it were a matter of national survival. We have nukes and we’ve said we’d use them if we felt like it.

You don’t think Bush wants to start World War III, do you?

No — but I wouldn’t put him past wanting to win World War III. Look at the thinking that went into the Iraq invasion; the goal there was to remake the Middle East in the neoconservative image. Now that the tactic has been proved wrong in their first choice of target, I think there’s interest in finding a new way to implement their overall and not-yet-discredited strategy (in their minds), by putting more nations in play.

What are you smoking? How can you think that Bush would still be thinking of attacking Iran, with everything that’s happened?

You need to read more Seymour Hersh. Frighteningly often, the sources he quotes are talking about operational plans for Iran, not just theoretical war-gaming.

You think the American people would stand for that?

The American people, so far, have stood for torture of the innocent, not caring much about civilian body counts, and any number of other atrocities in the name of protecting ourselves. Sure. I think the next war would go down smoothly with just a little bit of that Karl Rove lubrication.

What about Congress?

What about Congress? This is the main reason I’m thinking next February; last time we did this, it was in a similar time frame after midterm elections. Let’s review the three possibilities for early 2007:

1) Status quo of Republican control is maintained. GOP declares universal mandate of heaven while Democrats act like a eunuch who was somehow castrated thrice. Bush can do what he wants.

2) Split control of Congress. Democrats are still learning how to find their ass with both hands (and are already publicly squabbling over 2008); Bush can do what he wants while the Republican attack machine from the rest of Congress and the Fox media keep them on the defensive.

3) Democrats control Congress. Bush does what he wants, continues on his “to hell with Congress” path, goes to war on executive order, and dares Congress to attempt to stop his war legislatively. Any questions who’ll win that fight in the land of the free and the home of the fear-stricken?

But option 3 is fantasyland anyway. At best, it’ll be split, and what I’m expecting is that the Democrats will be rocked back on the defensive around September (possibly by anti-Iranian bellicosity), and Congress stays largely the same it is now.

We have far too much of our military tied up already; we’re stretched too thin to attack someone else.

You forget, we have nukes.

You have clearly gone insane.

Really? Let me remind you — how many other times in the past six years have we said, “Bush would never do that, that’s going too far, it’s unimaginable, the people wouldn’t stand for it”? Shall I make a list? Now ask yourself — do people really think that using nuclear weapons is an act of unmitigated evil, or just opening up the holiest can of American whoop-ass we’ve got?

Sure, a year or two later, when the world’s media are saturated with pictures of the Tehran Glass Fields, I’d expect to see universal repudiation of what he’d done. But that doesn’t stop him in the first place. It doesn’t prevent the army of apologists to allow it to occur — much as our originally being right about the end results in Iraq didn’t stop that from happening. And frankly, I’ve been let down too often by counting on Americans repudiating their government to think that much of anything will provoke them.

Man, that’s awfully cynical.

Okay, I’ll ask you three questions:

1) Why did George Bush invade Iraq, and how does he think he’s going to improve upon that situation in the two years he has left?

2) Do you believe the Bush administration is adverse to warfare to accomplish its goals? What political or mental process would internally dissuade the Bush administration from going to war if they made that decision?

3) If they did go forward with those plans, what political forces outside the administration would stop them?

So, yeah. I’m thinking March.

5 thoughts on “The Next War: T-minus six months

  1. Wow…

    1) Who the @#$&%! are you talking to?!?

    2) The “bad news in Afghanistan” is so far off the front pages, I guess, that I’m not hearing about it at all. Do you believe Afghanistan is worse off now than Russia was three years into its democracy? Some of the satellite nations went through full scale civil wars before achieving stability. I don’t remember the punditry declaring them failures. Do I need to remind you that it took us 13 YEARS to write a working constitution?

    3) Did I miss the announcement that Iraq will always and forever remain in the state it’s in today? What happens when the fighting dies down, we bring our troops home, and normalcy begins to emerge in Iraq (in whatever form that takes)? Is it required that this occur before Bush leaves office, or can he take credit for doing some good even if it takes them 13 years too?

    4) Could war with Iran possibly be motivated by something other than American partisan politics? Here’s a scenario that seems much more likely (and hence, much more scary) to me: Iran invades Iraq. Now that their Hezbollah facade has failed to launch World War III, they’re probably scheming with Syria to do something else to provoke us. And if Iraq were invaded tomorrow, would we have any choice but to help defend it? Would Israel? And as soon as Israel dropped a bomb (of any kind), would it not give a sort of twisted rationale to Iran/Syria to invade Israel? And, of course, the big question: If all of this happens, how can we find a way to blame the whole thing on George W. Bush?

    5) I’m too lazy to find the link, but I seem to remember you predicting Syria as our next invasion target a few years back. Maybe you’ll be right twice…

  2. 1) Hypothetical skeptic. Made for an easy format to write the post.

    2) Considering many people are today calling Russia a failed democracy, you picked an interesting state for comparison. And we didn’t take 13 years to write the Constitution, we took 13 years to recognize the failures of, and rewrite, the Articles of Confederation. You might as well argue that since we had a civil war 85 years later, it took that long for us to “really” be a country. My point being that it’s extremely valid for us to judge Iraq based on current results and not wait for some hypothetical better future.

    3) Last I heard, we’re building eight permanent bases in Iraq. Not sure what qualifies as “normalcy after we bring the troops home”, since it looks like we’re going to have troops there for as long as we’ve had troops in Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Unless of course the next revolution throws them out. As I’ve said before, I’m not sure how to judge the unarguable good of deposing Saddam, versus the unarguable bad of the current anarchy, combined with the unarguable tragedy of the lives lost past and present. What I can judge is that it’s not comparable to the American revolution, as we chose that for ourselves, versus having it imposed on us from outside.

    4) I’m not entirely sure what would happen in your Iran scenario. What I’ve been hearing is that it wouldn’t exactly take an invasion — the Iranians are more likely to be greeted with flowers and bunnies than we were, and would be better equipped to fight that civil war than we are the current one. I’m also not hearing that Iran and Syria are exactly the allies you suggest them to be.

    4a) Yes, of course, I’d be quite happy to see the world descend into World War III so long as I get to blame Bush for it. Yeesh. Brian, if you can’t assign Bush the credit or blame for what’s going on in Iraq and the political consequences thereof, you’re incapable of holding a rational discussion about the topic.

    5) Yes, I did. I was happy to be proven wrong then, and I’ll be happy to be proven wrong now. I’ll also point you to what I said about the Iraq invasion in 2002 and early 2003, and you can judge my analysis then against current thinking for further insight into my thought processes.

  3. 1) Man, you’ve got to get out more…

    2) The only people calling Russia a failed democracy are the same ones calling America a failed democracy. See, because Putin revoked some of their civil liberties and Bush passed the USA PATRIOT Act, and these are bad things. Therefore, the country is a FAILURE.

    My point being that it’s extremely valid for us to judge Iraq based on current results and not wait for some hypothetical better future.

    Funny – everything you wrote before that was making me think it’s not at all valid to judge Iraq based on current results. If Iraq has a new constitution in 2016, falls into civil war in 2088, and emerges a world power in 2092, could we point to George W. Bush as their George Washington? Will it still be a failure at that point? When’s the cutoff date?

    3) Anyone who thinks “pulling the troops out” means going down to zero is dreaming. I don’t believe we’ve ever fought a war without leaving some military presence behind. Are you suggesting Germany was a quagmire because we still haven’t gotten our troops out? No matter how this turns out, I’m glad we have bases there. They’ll be extremely strategic for decades…

    4) Iran and Syria have certain interests in common (cough…Hezbollah…cough…). Drawing the West into a world war would probably qualify as well…

    4a) I’m happy to assign Bush the credit or the blame for what goes on in Iraq (we did say credit or blame, right?) To blame him for an Iranian invasion of Iraq, though, would be like blaming Steve Wozniak for the NeXT machines…

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