In the coming showdown
with Iran, the cliches -- never mind some of our allies -- are
not on the side of the Bush administration. I am referring to
that bit of wisdom about generals preparing to fight the last
war -- or the one about history repeating itself, ``the first
time as tragedy, the second as farce.'' These and others will
be cited to use the disaster in Iraq as a lesson of what would
happen with Iran. Still, let me offer a different cliche: None
of the above.
I would be the last
one to say we should ignore history. The war in Iraq is truly
an education in the school of hard knocks. The U.S. has lost over
2,000 men and women -- and the Iraqis far more. The war cost us
both prestige and respect and it has further eroded the faith
people once had in government -- both its competence and its honesty.
It is now routine to hear President Bush denounced as a liar.
I, for one, cannot agree. I fear he is merely a fool.
The arresting combination
of a president so tragically mismatched with his times is not
likely to be repeated. The one saving grace of the Iran crisis,
if it comes to that, is that it will achieve fruition about five
years down the road. We can all take comfort in the 22nd Amendment,
which limits a president to two terms. The culmination of the
Iran crisis will be the next president's headache.
I do not use the
word ``crisis'' lightly. The evidence keeps accumulating that
Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, not merely a source of nuclear
energy. This is not just the fear of the Bush administration with
its sorry record of distorting intelligence, but also of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, with its admirable record of standing up
to Bush. The difference is a major distinction -- and so, too,
is the apparent concurrence of Britain, Germany and France, the
latter two hardly knee-jerk American allies anymore. At least
on late night TV, France is a virtual enemy.
An Iranian bomb is
a serious matter. It could trigger a Middle East arms race, just
about the last thing the world needs. Egypt would get its own
bomb and so would Saudi Arabia. Israel, which already is believed
to be a nuclear power, might be tempted to strike first. After
all, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while still subordinate
to the country's religious leaders, is a foul-mouthed demagogue
who has already vowed to obliterate Israel. His heady combination
of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism is more than repellent;
it's scary.
Obviously, the preferred
route to a solution is the diplomatic one. But what if that won't
work? Well, then, truthfully, I don't know. But I do know that
it would be a mistake to take the military option off the table.
The temptation to do this will be great, especially among Democrats,
and the war in Iraq will be cited over and over again. But one
could just as easily cite the first Gulf War, which accomplished
its objective with a minimum loss of lives. The difference between
one war and the other is the difference between father and son.
Poppa Bush knew what he was doing.
History is a buffet
of lessons -- take what you want and move on. The U.S., acting
through NATO, ultimately intervened in the Balkans and it worked
-- instructively, with airstrikes. Lives were saved. The U.S.
intervened in the Vietnamese civil war and it didn't work. Lives
were wasted. The current war in Iraq is a debacle so far, but
almost everything about it has been incompetently handled -- too
few troops, too few allies, too much looting, too many insurgents
and much too much Rumsfeld. Not even the stated justification
for the war -- those weapons of mass destruction -- has held up.
Lucky for Bush he is not a doctor. He'd be sued for malpractice.
Clearly, a chastened
Bush administration has learned a thing or two. Its recent rhetoric
regarding Iran has been moderate. In his State of the Union address
on Tuesday, Bush brought up Iran but throttled back on his standard
bellicosity, merely saying ``the nations of the world must not
permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons.'' Nothing about
``evildoers.'' Bush must know, as surely as do the Iranian mullahs,
that he has had his one war of choice -- and he botched it. The
next president can either be shackled by that failure or guided
by it. Whatever the case, it will not be a time for cliches.
©
2006, Washington Post Writers Group
