Will Obama Play the War Card?
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Republicans already counting the seats they will pick up this fall should keep in mind Obama has a big card yet to play.
Should the president declare he has gone the last mile for a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear program and impose the “crippling” sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war.
And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate.
Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with him at the president’s side, could assure his re-election. Last week, Reid whistled through the Senate, by voice vote, a bill to put us on that escalator.
Senate bill 2799 would punish any company exporting gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its homes.
And cutting off a country’s oil or gas is a proven path to war.
In 1941, the United States froze Japan’s assets, denying her the funds to pay for the U.S. oil on which she relied, forcing Tokyo either to retreat from her empire or seize the only oil in reach, in the Dutch East Indies.
The only force able to interfere with a Japanese drive into the East Indies? The U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser in 1967 threatened to close the Straits of Tiran between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba to ships going to the Israeli port of Elath. That would have cut off 95 percent of Israel’s oil.
Israel response: a pre-emptive war that destroyed Egypt’s air force and put Israeli troops at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Straits of Tiran.
Were Reid and colleagues seeking to strengthen Obama’s negotiating hand?
The opposite is true. The Senate is trying to force Obama’s hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a track to war — a war to deny Iran weapons that the U.S. Intelligence community said in December 2007 Iran gave up trying to acquire in 2003.
Sound familiar?
Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made clear the Senate is seizing control of the Iran portfolio. “If the Obama administration will not take action against this regime, then Congress must.”
U.S. interests would seem to dictate supporting those elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and re-engage the West. But if that is our goal, the Senate bill, and a House version that passed 412 to 12, seem almost diabolically perverse.
For a cutoff in gas would hammer Iran’s middle class. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia on their motorbikes would get all they need. Thus the leaders of the Green Movement who have stood up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah oppose sanctions that inflict suffering on their own people.
Cutting off gas to Iran would cause many deaths. And the families of the sick, the old, the weak, the women and the children who die are unlikely to feel gratitude toward those who killed them.
And despite the hysteria about Iran’s imminent testing of a bomb, the U.S. intelligence community still has not changed its finding that Tehran is not seeking a bomb.
The low-enriched uranium at Natanz, enough for one test, has neither been moved nor enriched to weapons grade. Ahmadinejad this week offered to take the West’s deal and trade it for fuel for its reactor. Iran’s known nuclear facilities are under U.N. watch. The number of centrifuges operating at Natanz has fallen below 4,000. There is speculation they are breaking down or have been sabotaged.
And if Iran is hell-bent on a bomb, why has Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair not revised the 2007 finding and given us the hard evidence?
U.S. anti-missile ships are moving into the Gulf. Anti-missile batteries are being deployed on the Arab shore. Yet, Gen. David Petraeus warned yesterday that a strike on Iran could stir nationalist sentiment behind the regime.
Nevertheless, the war drums have again begun to beat.
Richard Daniel Pipes in a National Review Online piece featured by the Jerusalem Post — “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” — urges Obama to make a “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue” by ordering the U.S. military to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Citing six polls, Pipes says Americans support an attack today and will “presumably rally around the flag” when the bombs fall.
Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card and make “conservatives swoon,” in Pipes’ phrase, to save himself and his party? We shall see.
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book Churchill, Hitler, and ‘The Unnecessary War,’ now available in paperback.
Filed under: Election, Politics, War
Wow… do I leave overly-socialistic Japan to come home to war-crazy America? This is the hardest decision of my life.
Apparently learning history is overrated. We are eternally doomed to repeat it. And with leaders like ours, who needs enemies?
When I see the Obama administration beating the same war drums as the Neo-Clowns, I can only think of one thing. Who benefits the most from war after war?
Not the families of our brave service persons, they pay the biggest toll of all, with their lives, weather they die in action, suicide from PTSD, and major loss of limbs, (Let alone the toll on their non-serving families & friends here stateside.)
I think it all boils back to what former President Dwight Eisenhower said before he left office in 1961 ….”we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
How many sweetheart deals will contractors (Mercenaries) get? How many crummy overprice flack jackets that don’t work will we buy? How many meals will Halliburton overcharge us for?
How many Americans must die in action or from un-treated PTSD before we the people say enough?
The disturbing thing is that, during his 2004 race for the Senate, Obama took the position that war against Iran might be necessary if the world was unable to convince Iran to surrender its nuclear ambitions. See, for example,
http://politicalinquirer.com/2007/11/01/obama-said-us-should-not-rule-out-strikes-on-iran-during-2004-campaign/ While his opposition to the Iraq War received all the attention, his bellicose attitude toward Iran was generally ignored during his 2008 Presidential campaign. What makes his position about Iran even more disturbing is that he was taking it during a campaign where he had no Republican opposition after Jack Ryan was forced to withdraw.
“How many Americans must die in action or from un-treated PTSD before we the people say enough?”
Until, there is a Draft, war will only remain a matter of politics rather, than a matter of conscience.
Just for the record that NRO piece Pat cited was penned by Daniel Pipes, not Richard, although I think the former is indeed the son of the latter.
Not important, except that justice would seem to require noting that whereas Daniel seems nothing but a great loudmouth Richard is indeed a great historian.
(And having just made a whopper myself on an earlier thread I thought I’d take advantage of Pat’s mistake to ostentatiously say that anyone can make an innocent mistake….)
Starting a war for electoral advantage… you don’t think the voters could see through that? As tactics go, it sounds rather bush league….
Living overseas for twenty years , I can say it’s time to close down the empire — start with Okinawa and South Korea . If South Korea can’t defend itself , we have failed miserably in training our allies .
Pipes pere was overrated but at least was a serious man unlike Pipes fils, who my father knew well at Harvard and misses just being able to yell “shut up Dan!” too.
Anyway, I can believe that Obama could do this if backed into a corner for his own re-election, but he won’t do it to save Harry Reid. Pat’s analysis of why it may have the intended effect seems essentially right, but the rationale by Pipes is absurd. In the end I think this is another example of certain Republican talking points getting the best of Pat, but somewhat more credible than when he buys into the line about the coming repeat of ‘94.
This question is a matter of morality and calculation. I have no idea what Obama’s moral sensitivity is but he would have to be sociopath to start a war just to help with the mid-term elections.
I do suspect that his calculation would be that throwing the nation into an elective conflict would not work again. It’s been done. My sense of the public mood is that war weariness has taken hold. People want to get out of places we are fighting, not enter new ones. Unless the Iranians are stupid enough to engage in a real provocation, I think Obama will hold off.
Obama’s base is already disappointed in him. A voluntary war would cause a fatal, irreparable l breach. The Lobby would give him tons of money but left-wing manpower would desert him en mass, perhaps causing a left inspired primary battle. Any Democrat President with FOX News cheerleading his war would be as vulnerable as it is possible to be.
If war comes, we paleo’s will have a golden opportunity to show the American public what true conservative values are. The media will be casting about for any anti-war voices they can find, and in a big war, they will have to give us air time no matter how much they detest us.
[...] Will Obama Play the War Card? [...]
I think Pat’s off the mark on the next election. The Democrates will still loose. The people of the US has been awaken about Obama’s agenda. And there is no way to save them war or no war its over for them. But if the republicans dont listen to we the people their gone too.
Wow, “Jim,” proofread much?
Anyway, I found it so ironic that PJB wrote this: “And the families of the sick, the old, the weak, the women and the children who die are unlikely to feel gratitude toward those who killed them.” I mean, the poor, weak and sick in the US are so marginalized by the healthcare debate, it’s disgusting. I guess we must sympathize with Iranian poor and sick but not American ones – they’re all just welfare lazies.
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A highly decorated WWOne Marine General figured it shortly after WWI and wrote “War is a Racket” – his story is free on the web – General Smedley Butler.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
If only we would read and learn from history.
War is very profitable for some and that is why, for all the campaign promises, we will be in Afghanistan and Iraq for a long long time, no matter which puppet is in the White House.
Obama has made many mistakes, but I don’t think for a nonosecond that he will take the U.S. to war with Iran. Mr. Meehan is right: Such would almost certainly result in a 2012 primary challenge from a Democratic Left already pissed of with the President, and he does not wish to be Gerald Ford in 1976.
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Bush’s policy was that they would negotiate with Iran if it gave up its nuclear program first. “Surrender your rights first, and then we’ll see… ”
Obama’s policy was to hold a highly publicized meeting, call it a “negotiation,” order Iran to deliver all its enriched uranium on a silver platter, and then grant Iran some possible future consideration. Same strategy, slightly different context. Again the message was, “Surrender your rights first, and then we’ll see… ”
Obviously the US is not serious about negotiations, only the appearance of being reasonable.
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