ANOTHER WAR?

President Ahmadinejad is in the news again. He has resumed his call for the annihilation of Israel. The aging Liberal Lion of Israel, Shimon Peres, has responded by saying Ahmadinejad will end up on sharing Saddam Hussein's fate. More worrisome are the statements from the Iranian General who is in charge of their Revolutionary Guards. He says that Iran can defeat the United States in the event of an attack. If this is more than just rhetoric, it may mean that there is no hope of stopping the Iranian drive to get the bomb, as they are not afraid of the stick and are not interested in any carrots.

All of this, of course, leads back to the discussion I highlighted yesterday. Is the military option feasible? General Thomas McInerney lays out how it might be done. James Fallows says it cannot be done. The bottom line remains the same for me. Attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war. Just as I believe we should have treated the seizing of our embassy in Tehran in 1979 as an act of war, the Iranians will no doubt view an air campaign against their nuclear facilities as an act of war. If we are going to go to war with Iran, with all the risks that entails, then we should do it through the legal process of having Congress pass a declaration of war. As we have seen in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, the American people will not support a long, open-ended undeclared war fought with limited means. Inevitably, even when support is strong initially, that support will drain away.

But won't the military action against Iran be a short-term affair? I cannot see a scenario whereby the Iranians just lie down and beg for mercy after we have pounded them for a few days or weeks. These are the same people who sent 12-year-old boys in human waves against Iraqi tanks, artillery and machine guns during the Iran-Iraq War. They will respond vigorously with every means at their disposal. President Ahmadinejad will consolidate his control by promulgating wartime measures which will seem obvious and necessary to most Iranians as they huddle in their homes at night under blackout conditions and hear the sounds of warplanes, anti-aircraft fire and explosions. Ayatollah Khamenei will issue calls for Holy War, which will be heard by Shiites in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. If these things happen, then we will need tremendous public support for taking the measures necessary to combat them (including expansion of the military, possibly through a draft).

Iran is not Serbia. There, the bombing campaign was designed to force the government to withdraw troops from Kosovo, which they finally did. The Serbs are Europeans, not motivated by religious fanaticism, and were finally willing to see reason.

Iran is not Iraq. The Iraqis invaded Kuwait which, under the charter of the U.N., was an act of aggression that merited a massive military response. Subsequent bombing campaigns were undertaken in the context of continued Iraqi unwillingness to live up to the cease-fire that ended the Gulf War. The Iraqi government was also, like the Serbian government, a secular entity, far different from the religiously inspired rulers of Iran.

If we are to do this, then, we must do so with the firm understanding that it will not be easy. We will not have the support of the world (as we did in the Gulf War), nor will we face an isolated Communist dictator without sympathizers in the region or the world. If we attack Iran, let us call it what it is...war. Let us declare war, and fight to not only eliminate their capacity to make nuclear weapons, but eliminate the tyrannical regime, as well.

I fear the technocrats in Washington will dismiss views like mine as unsophisticated. Of course, war is also not as sophisticated as they think. It is a murderous street fight, no holds barred, with victory as its only justification.