January 18, 2006
Another Undeclared War?
By Pat Buchanan
Is the United
States about to launch a second preemptive war, against a nation
that has not attacked us, to deprive it of weapons of mass destruction
that it does not have?
With U.S.
troops tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Pakistanis inflamed
over a U.S. airstrike that wiped out 13 villagers, including women
and children, it would seem another war in the Islamic world is
the last thing America needs.
Yet, the
"military option" against Iran is the talk of the town.
"There
is only one thing worse than ... exercising the military option,"
says Sen. John McCain. "That is a nuclear-armed Iran. The
military option is the last option, but cannot be taken off the
table."
Appearing
on CBS's "Face the Nation," McCain said Iran's nuclear
program presents "the most grave situation we have faced
since the end of the Cold War, absent the whole war on terror."
Meeting
with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bush employed the same grim
terms he used before invading Iraq. If Iran goes forward with
nuclear enrichment, said Bush, it could "pose a grave threat
to the security of the world."
McCain and
Bush both emphasized the threat to Israel. And all the usual suspects
are beating the drums for war. Israel warns that March is the
deadline after which she may strike. One reads of F-16s headed
for the Gulf. The Weekly Standard is feathered and painted
for the warpath. The Iranian Chalabis are playing their assigned
roles, warning that Tehran is much closer to nukes than we all
realize.
But just
how imminent in this "grave threat"?
Thus far,
Tehran has taken only two baby steps. It has renewed converting
"yellowcake" into uranium hexafluoride, the gaseous
substance used to create enriched uranium. And Iran has broken
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seals at its nuclear
facility at Natanz, where uranium hexafluoride is to be processed
into enriched uranium. But on Saturday, the foreign ministry said
it was still suspending "fuel production."
However,
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared, "There are no
restrictions for nuclear research activities under the NPT,"
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Iran has signed.
Here, Iran's
president is supported by his countrymen and stands on the solid
ground of international law. Yet Secretary of State Condi Rice
said last week, "There is simply no peaceful rationale for
the Iranian regime to resume uranium enrichment."
Is Condi
right?
Unlike Israel,
Pakistan and India, which clandestinely built nuclear weapons,
Iran has signed the NPT. And Tehran may wish to exercise its rights
under the treaty to master the nuclear fuel cycle to build power
plants for electricity, rather than use up the oil and gas deposits
she exports to earn all of her hard currency. Nuclear power makes
sense for Iran
True, in
gaining such expertise, Iran may wish to be able, in a matter
of months, to go nuclear. For the United States and Israel, which
have repeatedly threatened her, are both in the neighborhood and
have nuclear arsenals. Acquiring an atom bomb to deter a U.S.
or Israeli attack may not appear a "peaceful rationale"
to Rice, but the Iranians may have a different perspective.
Having seen
what we did to Iraq, but how deferential we are to North Korea,
would it be irrational for Tehran to seek its own deterrent?
And, again, just how imminent is this "grave threat"?
"We
don't see a clear and present danger," Mohamed ElBaradei
of the IAEA has just told Newsweek.
Some put
the possibility of an Iranian bomb at 10 years away. Con Coughlin,
defense and security editor of the London Telegraph, writes that
the 164 centrifuges in the Natanz pilot plant could enable Iran
to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single bomb --
in three years.
If the threat
were imminent, Israel, which invaded Egypt in 1956, destroyed
the Syrian and Egyptian air forces on the ground in a surprise
attack in 1967, and smashed an Iraqi reactor before it was completed
in 1981, would have acted. And with an estimated 200 nuclear weapons,
Israel is fully capable of deterring Iran -- and of massive retaliation
if she is attacked by Iran.
Iran has
attacked neither Israel nor our forces in the Gulf, and the Ayatollah
Khamenei is said to be reining in Ahmadinejad. So, it would seem
that Iran does not want a war.
Congress
thus has the time to do the constitutional duty it failed to do
when it gave Bush his blank check to invade Iraq at a time of
his choosing.
Few today
trust "intelligence reports," War Party propagandists
or the word of exiles anxious to have us fight their wars. Congress
should thus hold hearings on how close Tehran is to a nuclear
weapon and whether this represents an intolerable threat, justifying
a preventive war that would mean a Middle East cataclysm and a
worldwide depression. Then it should vote to declare war, or to
deny Bush the power to go to war.
The "Bush
Doctrine" notwithstanding, if Congress has not put the "military
option on the table," neither George Bush nor John McCain
can put it there. That is the Constitution still, is it not?
Copyright
2006 Creators Syndicate
