The Workday Liberal

Stories detailing administration plans to bomb Iraq are coming fast and furious this week. Now we learn that The Council on foreign Relations knows all about these plans.

In my last post I speculated on a possible October surprise by this administration in an attempt to influence domestic politics. The story from the CFR seems to indicate that the administration may bring on a debate on military action with Iran in July of this year. This would tend to indicate that we can expect the same tactic we saw in 2002, with a debate on military action being brought in the heat of a midterm election.

I have two points to make.

We need to make elections independent of this type of spurious debate. In 1991, then President Bush made a point of not bringing the case for the eviction of Saddam from Kuwait until the midterm election of 2000 had passed. This demonstrates the honorable conduct of Bush 1, in contrast to the crass political conduct of Bush 2. If Iran posed an immediate threat and it simply had to be dealt with in a matter of weeks, there may be a case for this type of conduct. But Iran clearly is not an immediate threat, and any action would be preventative in nature. To cause this issue to be raised during the heat of a campaign seems dirty in some way to me. We can only hope that if events play out as the CFR predicts they will that this administration will be seen for what they are doing and they will pay a price for it.

Second, I wonder if this will actually work in the administrations favor in this particular case. Is America ready for another preemptive war in the Persian Gulf while we are currently witnessing the results of that same type of thinking in Iraq? How does the administration actually expect this to action to play in the broader war on terror and with our few remaining allies? Is our word on the impending threat going to be taken seriously after the example provided with the leadup to the Iraq war? It seems that these types of questions being raised may bring some uncomfortable answers. What happens if the Congress, having learned a lesson about giving this president unfettered power and then being led into the Iraqi quagmire, actually does not give the President what he wants?

I suppose we shall see what we shall see, but I fully expect the Iran question to be a very large issue in the coming election. Let us not forget the lessons we ought to have learned in Iraq.