Aohell

Mission Un-Accomplished

Three years ago, give or take, President George Bush claimed an end to combat operations in Iraq. "Mission Accomplished" read the banner. Within a few days, the statement had been reworded: it was only an end to major combat operations.

In this time of no major combat operations, the US armed forces remain heavily committed to Iraqi security. Sadly, the Iraqi government is in the hands of factions who are on the knife's edge of civil war. Compounding the whole affair is Iran's rush for nuclear technology. While there were no nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons (NBC weapons, to use the term that once rankled a major news network, but nevertheless more accurate than the fear-mongering WMD abomination) in Iraq, Iran is unquestionably developing them at breakneck pace.

Bush may be the President Who Cried Wolf. Iraq didn't have any NBC weapons. It didn't even have any coherent NBC development programs. Bush and his crew sold a pack of lies to the American people and managed to get a lot of America's poor to sacrifice their jobs, limbs, and even lives for the billions of dollars at stake in war profiteering for Dick Cheney's close friends. Now that there is a very real threat from Iran, very few people are willing to support a headlong charge into war.

Personally, I'm against war, period. I don't care what Iran's got. Nobody should engage in an offensive war, ever. The US has its own nuclear weapons. It need only promise mutually-assured destruction, and Iran will behave itself as much as the USSR did, back in its day. Yes, there were proxy wars, but the balance of terror kept The Big One from happening.

My objections aside, the reasons behind the attack on Iraq - haven for terrorists and NBC weapons - either do exist in Iran or soon will, in the case of nuclear weapons. The US promises it will deal with Iran and does not rule out military options. The US is either bluffing or able to make good on its threat.

If the US is bluffing, Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. Iran will not suffer for doing so: its oil makes it very popular among developed and developing nations.

If the US is not bluffing, it will be able to invade Iran only if it institutes a draft or completely abandons its adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, which I see as much more remote possibilities than the draft. The soldiers go in... and then what?

In 1962, the US prepared to invade Cuba over its acquisition of Soviet nuclear weapons. The US thought Cuba had not yet acquired the warheads: Cuba had, in fact, acquired 190 of them and they were ready to use. Castro even advised Khrushchev the weapons should be used in the event of a US attack on Cuba. It would have meant the destruction of all life on Cuba, but Castro was willing to go such a route.

The US media has been reporting Iran has been anywhere from six months to a few years away from developing nuclear weapons for the last few years. What if the US miscalculates about the nuclear armament of Iran? What if it invades a nation not on the verge of acquiring weapons, but one that has them ready to launch? The current regime in Iran seems willing to take as much of the US and its allies with it in the event of a war.

Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons. It was safe to invade and beat up. Iran is a different story. I believe Bush is attempting to prepare America for another war, this one on a much larger scale than the bloody peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush's credibility is already weak from his mishandling of Iraq. It would be a rotten shame were he to regain it sufficiently to involve America in an exercise that resulted in the destruction of nations, possibly including itself.

Watch out.