I was once riding in the back of a shit-brown, late model Dodge Aspen station wagon that was rear-ended at high speed by a Mack truck.
The moment had a particular unreality to it. As adrenaline and endorphins flooded my brain to freakishly enhance my senses, physical events, including my own ability to move, seemed to slow down to a crawl. Both a participant and a spectator, I watched the accident with detached fascination, utterly helpless.
I felt the same way one night last week watching the Democratic presidential candidates argue who was best able to stand up to George Bush to prevent the coming war with Iran.
After all, they’ve been doing such a wonderful job on Iraq.
The discussion of the merits of war versus diplomacy with respect to Iran seemed beyond pointless. Bush and Cheney and their ilk have clearly moved beyond that dumb ol’ debate to how and when to wage the war. Indeed, 53 percent of Americans said in a recent poll they believed the U.S. would attack Iran prior to the next presidential election.
 John Warner |
Someone should tell the Democratic candidates.
If Bush holds true to form, the timing of military action will be determined not by the strategic situation on the ground, but the political calendar here at home. That suggests the Iran issue could be coming to a head in December for two reasons. First in order to force the tangible issue of war (in the abstract, everyone favors peaceful resolution of problems) into the early caucuses and primaries that will likely determine the 2008 presidential candidates, and second, to force moderate Republican senators and representatives to take a stand on the issue while they still face the potential of primary challenges from the jingoistic, militaristic, right wing of the GOP.
As an added bonus, what better time to highlight an Islamofascist threat than Christmas?
The Administration is, after all, not interested in a serious, fact-based and reasoned public debate on this issue, but rather wants only to drum up support for its next holy war in an emotional, factually confusing and time-compressed context where speculative arguments appealing to irrational fear have a natural advantage.
A December timetable is suggested by other factors: the escalating rhetoric coming out of the Administration, the imposition of economic sanctions last week—sanctions that, given the price of oil, are unlikely to have much short-term effect, and possibly even the timing of the Defense Appropriations Bill, which could be voted on in early December.
The idea that the Democratic-controlled Congress—beset by timidity, ineptitude and Senate rules under which a determined minority can obstruct virtually anything—can stop Bush is laughable.
The late-September Senate vote on the Kyl-Lieberman resolution demonstrates their problem.
A "sense of the Senate" resolution that, among other things, declared Iran’s armed forces a terrorist organization, Kyl-Lieberman easily passed by a 76-22 vote with plenty of Democratic help, including Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). Clinton and other democrats have hung their hats on the fact that since the resolution falls short of providing express authority for military action, Bush must come back to the Congress for further authorization before attacking Iran. Ha!
The resolution, however, is clearly part of an effort to create a public record against Iran to justify a military strike without the Senate’s further consent.
I don’t believe Clinton and other Democratic senators who voted for the resolution were either ignorant or naïve about its purpose or effect. Rather, they feared that had they voted the resolution down to defeat, their vote would be painted as an anti-troop, if not pro-Iranian, action. Ask former Senator Max Cleland about how that works.
Virginia Senator Jim Webb strongly opposed the resolution on both principled and practical grounds. In addition, as early as last March, Webb saw the writing on the wall and introduced legislation specifically to prohibit the Administration from using appropriated monies to launch military action against Iran without further Congressional approval. That bill, however, has gone nowhere.
The fact is that this coming war will not be stopped without significant Republican help. Only two Republican senators, Chuck Hagel (Nebraska) and Richard Lugar (Indiana), voted against the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, although Webb has pointedly noted that each is a senior member of the Foreign Relations committee and among the more knowledgeable senators on these matters.
Is our other senator, John Warner, who is said to have influence with GOP moderates in the Senate, willing to step forward?
Warner is a longtime member of the Armed Services Committee, and therefore, presumably, also among the better-informed senators on this issue. And while Warner did not join Hagel and Lugar in opposing Kyl-Lieberman, nor does he seem quite in concert with the Bush-Cheney program either.
For one thing, according to Warner’s Chief of Staff Carter Cornick and military advisor Sandy Luff, Warner’s position is that "anything short" of military action directly aimed at protecting America or American interests "would require an authorization from Congress." That is arguably a large loophole, but it is also recognition of a limitation on executive power, something seen all too rarely on the Republican side. More specifically, it suggests that Warner believes an attack aimed at Iran’s nuclear program would require legislative approval, though he might view action aimed at preventing harm to our troops in Iraq differently.
In any event, Warner doesn’t seem in much of a hurry to press matters with Iran. The U.S., Luff said, "ought to methodically…use all instruments of national power…before the last resort," meaning force, a subtle softening of the language used in Kyl-Lieberman.
"It is in our best interests at this point," Luff added, "to let things [in Iran] percolate and unfold in their own time."
Webb’s office did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Perhaps in attempting to divine Warner’s position on this complex issue, I’m interpreting the words of his staff with my heart and not my head, inventing a nuance that is not there, because to halt the march toward another disastrous war, to get us out of the way of the Mack truck inexorably bearing down on us, it will be up to senators like John Warner to stand up and do what is right.
Alan Zimmerman is a Charlottesville-based writer.