Crazed retired US Air Force general urges war on Iran
I can't get full-text versions of Wall Street Journal articles online. So it's good that on Friday WaPo blogger Bill Arkin offered some substantial excerpts from a crazed and inflammatory opinion piece that retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney had in that day's WSJ...
Arkin tells us that McInerney's favored approach to Iran would be,
- what he calls "minimal military pressure" through a "tit-for-tat" of U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities every time an American soldier is killed with a so-called "explosively formed penetrator," a shaped charge being used in Iraq in IED attacks. A soldier is killed in Iraq, the U.S. bombs in Iran, that's McInerney's recommendation.
- The idiocy of this "calculated response," as McInerney calls it, is not only that such a direct attack would be a declaration of war, but also it imagines a level of control in the world and in warfare that doesn't exist in the real world.
First, it imagines that Tehran indeed controls what happens in Iraq and that the regime itself is indeed responsible for the EFPs. There are some who desperately want to trace the EFPs back to the Iranian regime, but that is by no means a foregone conclusion.
Second, McInterney's calculated response wrongly imagines that the United States can bomb and control what happens thereafter. Haven't we yet learned that this doesn't work, that it didn't work in Afghanistan, where we are still fighting and not controlling the situation on the ground; and it certainly did work in Iraq, where we are just hoping for an honorable exit?
Don't worry though: If escalation indeed occurs, McInerney is happy and ready with what he calls an "air offensive" and a military strategy directed at Iran that he likens to the Reagan administration's military buildup that bankrupted the Soviet Union and won the Cold War...
McInerney lives in cloud cuckoo-land. (Didn't stop him working in the past as a Vice President for the huge US defense contractor Unisys/Loral.)
Arkin does us all a service by underlining this:
- Fortunately for us, the professionals in the military dismiss this kind of armchair generalship for what it is: amateurish and promiscuous speculation devoid of any political context or reality.
Arkin continues,
- But what about the Iranians? I'm afraid they read this drivel in the Wall Street Journal and imagine that it is some kind of "message" written by White House neocons, that it is an American threat.
Of course, sophisticated Iranians will see it as just another article and will cable back to Tehran or caution their bosses not to be spooked or provoked. On the other hand, hard liners in the Iranian regime will believe every word, using and misusing such a description of war as justification for their own desired Iranian moves, moves that push us closer and closer to confrontation.
This just goes to prove that there are clumsy and foolish players on both sides, in Iran and in the United States.
It should be a reminder that before we declare Iran the next enemy we think through the implications of our own declarations. Even our words can be like bombs dropping, the effects of which we don't really understand and can't control.
- The conspiracy theorists will pick up on the news out of San Diego that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier battle group will sail Monday for the Persian Gulf as meaning WAR with Iran...
The USS Nimitz is sailing Monday, but Navy spokesmen tell The Los Angeles Times that there will be no overlap of three aircraft carriers in the Gulf.
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower will be returning to the United States.
The decision to send another carrier to the Gulf is itself a signal of a change; at least for now, it appears that the United States will maintain a two carrier presence in the region rather than just one.
Even if that two carrier presence isn't specifically intended to be directed at Iran, it does have that effect.
Aircraft carrier exercises, moreover, such as the one the United States recently concluded, the "largest" since 2003, have the impact of signaling American military readiness.
One can't help but think that Iran's capture of the Royal Marines and sailors must be connected to the desire to have some kind of bargaining chip at a time when Tehran perceives that America is readying for war.
I am worried, though, about what Arkin writes about the general political mood in Washington regarding Iran:
- Iran has not so slowly taken on the mantle of favorite enemy to many in Washington, even to the geopolitically challenged who seem content, even desperate, to join the neocons in blithely referring to war there as more justified than Iraq.
I found this article by Indian correspondents interesting, but at the same time frightening. They say there has been a declaration of the UAE that they won't allow US to use his soil for military operations against Iran, that they aren't concerned by the conflict between US/Iran and would stay neutral. Personnally, I find that very worrying : why would the UAE care to tell that if they didn't fear it could happen ? is this UAE statement's confirmed ?
Pepe Escobar also says interesting things, analysing the capture of the 15 UK soldiers in the waters of the Shat al Arab.
Arkin makes a better fist than most mainstream media writers of the necessary attempt to escape his own subjective national perspective, and makes some good points. Admittedly, it appears he's chosen to go spear-fishing in a barrel with this attack on McInerney's idiocy.
"The conspiracy theorists will pick up on the news out of San Diego that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier battle group will sail Monday for the Persian Gulf as meaning WAR with Iran"
LOL! Like it takes a "conspiracy theorist" to recognise that if the US is planning to attack Iran, it would like to arrange to have an extra carrier there or on the way when it happens! Obviously it isn't conclusive, but it's a point to take into account.
"Of course, sophisticated Iranians will see it as just another article and will cable back to Tehran or caution their bosses not to be spooked or provoked."
Just as "sophisticated Americans" recognised Ahmadinejad's "rally the political base" rhetoric about the desired end of the "zionist regime" for what it was, and understand Ahmadinejad's position outsde the military chain of command. But if you engage in any discussion with Americans about Iran, and especially concerning the speculation about whether Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, among the first assertions you will have thrown at you are that an attack is justified because Ahmadinejad threatened to destroy Israel, and because he is too dangerous to be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
Helena, the USAF has long been a keen supporter of air strikes on Iran (for years, indeed, for I remember reading articles about this very topic years ago). It's the same imperial delusion that military force potentially equates to power. You can bet that were the USAF to launch even a single bomb on Iran, there would be mass protests not just in Iran and Europe, but also in Sunni Arab countries where leaders are already very weak. Such a strike would also give Iran a green-light to develop nuclear weapons, as it would show them that the international agreements (namely the NPT) that it is subject to are not worth the paper they are written on. Iran's leaders, in fact, could at this stage ask for nothing better than an air strike, which would almost certainly be ineffective and cause huge blowback.
"Iran's leaders, in fact, could at this stage ask for nothing better than an air strike, which would almost certainly be ineffective and cause huge blowback."
This must surely be right, and that's why I tend to assume that if the US attacks it has to attack big. They have to go for widespread devastation or even regime change. They can't afford to leave an Iran behind that isn't either under "friendly" control or in Iraq-style turmoil.
(Don't get me wrong - in my opinion such an attack would both be another monstrous war crime, and would probably be doomed to failure. However, the US regime clearly doesn't see things as I do on that score. I suspect that a Clinton-style pin-prick strike is not going to be attractive to them, nonetheless.)
Does General McInerney have any idea who is blowing up US troops in Iraq? The Sunni insurgents resent Iran as much, or more so, than the US. If his plan were implemented it would provide a fresh incentive for the Sunni nationalist resistance and the Salafists to attack US forces. How did this guy ever rise to the rank of general? Is this what passes for strategic thinking in the US?
Helena Cobban,
This seems extremely scary