On US politicos calling for war on Iran (by CP)

Supposedly every great American president was a war president. It thus should not surprise that lesser politicos, even lesser pundits and cheerleaders from the outside in ambitious pursuit of comparable greatness don't want to be left behind.

And so it has become an established custom in US politics to call for bombing this, that or another country, or all of them - presumably because it suggests toughness (an end in itself in US political posturing) and resolution (ditto) and, of course, makes for a great soundbite on TV.

Here's John McCain, then a presidential candidate, on campaign:

 

Here's John Bolton:

"To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran

... only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed."

Here's Joshua Muravchik:

"Does this mean that our only option is war? Yes, although an air campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would entail less need for boots on the ground than the war Obama is waging against the Islamic State, which poses far smaller a threat than Iran does."

Here's the sitting US Secretary of Defence, Ashton Carter (a moderate, so I hear), speaking in the imperial tense:

"The U.S. will reserve the right to use military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon even if a deal is reached Iran's nuclear program, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday.

"The military option certainly will remain on the table^*," Carter said as negotiators in Lausanne, Switzerland, struggled to reach an agreement ahead of a March 31 deadline."

Indeed, negotiations, schmegotiations - we reserve the right to bomb you anyway.

With all these options on the political menue, they may be forgiven to become conflicted over how to arrange courses. Does bombing Syria as an appetiser go well with bombing Iran as the main course? And what about Yemen for dessert? Will there be belly ache? Is there a pill against that? It's complicated!

FAIR has an excellent and sadly necessary piece on the subject:

Advocating for war is not like advocating for most other policies because ... (agressive) war is a crime. It was outlawed in 1928 by the Kellogg-Briand Pact, in which the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Britain, Germany, France, Japan and 55 other nations “condemn[ed] recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce[d] it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.”

Kellogg-Briand was the basis for the “crimes against peace” indictment at the Nuremberg Trials for Nazi leaders, several of whom were hanged for “planning, preparation, initiation, or waging a war of aggression.” At Nuremberg, chief US prosecutor Robert H. Jackson declared:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

The spirit of Kellogg-Briand was embodied in the formation of the United Nations, whose charter commits its signers to renouncing war and the threat of war:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

So to advocate for war^**, as the Washington Post and New York Times op-ed pages have done, is to incite a crime–“the supreme international crime,” as Jackson noted. How would we react if leading papers were to run articles suggesting that genocide was the best solution to an international conflict–or that lynching is the answer to domestic problems? Calling for an unprovoked military attack against another nation is in the same category of argument."

Modern international law recognises only three lawful justifications for waging war: self-defence, defence of an ally required by the terms of a treaty, and approval by the United Nations.

Iran has not attacked the US, nor an ally, they aren't gonna, and the US is not going to get a UN mandate allowing for an attack i.e. a US attack on Iran would not be lawful. Unlawful action is not an option.

^* War on Iran is an option much like killing your neighbour is an option to stop that miserable wretch from singing already - subjectively it may be a mercy killing, but police is bound to severly disapprove, use hyperbolic language like 'premeditated murder', not to mention overwhelming force - which is to mean: not really. So she keeps singing. Unless, of course, I was a hegemon. Then I could do as I please and tell the cops to take a hike.

^** In my country, as a result of Germany's history, to call for agressive war is not free speech but constitutes a felony after §80a StGB - "Aufstacheln zum Angriffskrieg" (incitment of war of aggression), punishable with up to five years in jail. That is not German squeamishness as a result of war guilt, but simply properly reflects the fact that war of agression is indeed, the supreme international crime. So, call me biased.

Comments

[Eric Dönges]

The U.S. as the Clueless Bumbler is a lot more frightening than the U.S. as the Great Satan. I think this fuels most of the conspiracy theory nonsense. The fact that it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between cheap movie plots and the nonsense coming out of Washington doesn't help either. (I'm aware the rest of the world isn't much better, but we don't have as much money for the special effects).

[LeaNder]

"I recall that Fisher wrote that the US left him something like 15, 30 minutes "

Maybe he wrote that, but was it like that? Didn't he famously convince his Green Party members in some type of Sonderparteitag? Kosovo Green Party convention?

link excerpts from his speech:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/wortlaut-auszuege-aus-der-fischer-rede-a-22143-druck.html

"Auschwitz ist unvergleichbar. Aber ich stehe auf zwei Grundsätzen, nie wieder Krieg, nie wieder Auschwitz, nie wieder Völkermord, nie wieder Faschismus. Beides gehört bei mir zusammen."

"Auschwitz is incomparable. But I hold two principles, never again war, never again Auschwitz, never again genocide, never again fascism. For me the two go together."

selling horseshoe, selling genocide.

[turcopolier]

LeAnder

"...never again war, never again Auschwitz, never again genocide, never again fascism. For me the two go together." selling horseshoe, selling genocide" Seems a bit confused. Do you think human history ended with the defeat of the Axis Powers or perhaps you hold with a now deceased German immigrant neighbor that the US created the Cold War for its own evil purposes? I asked he if she would have countenanced NATO defense of Germany against Warsaw Pact invasion. She said that, the Soviets having suffered so much would never have done that? Genocide? Who? Us? Both North and South Vietnam grew in population by a million a year during the war there. The image of the US as other than a giant ignoramus buffeted by effective and ruthless foreign interests is unconvincing. pl

[kao_hsien_chih]

BM,

Yup. The modern sinologist needs to know Japanese better than Chinese, precisely for the reason you describe: the first systematic analysis of East Asian history, the version that is not shrouded in myths and nationalistic hoopla, was done by Japanese scholars in early 20th century. In some sense, there is a serious backlash against modern scientific historical analysis with regards certain periods of history in Korea and, to some extent, China, at least, precisely for this reason. But, to the degree that even historians are human, perhaps there is peculiar Japanese bias sneaking into their analyses, and the sophisticated western audience that values scientific analyses may still wind up buying into Japanese bias precisely b/c that is the only thing that there is that is not myth-shrouded mumbo jumbo.

[kao_hsien_chih]

I've always had the suspicion that, at least sometimes, phoney economic reasons are put forward to justify actions that are not economically motivated.

Territorial disputes over teeny islets in East Asia are supposedly motivated by alleged mineral and oil wealth beneath the seas surrounding them. Well, I don't know about the Senkaku/Diaoyu situation very well with regards mineral wealth, but I do know that, with regards the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute (my Korean relatives will kill me if they know I'm using both names...), South Koreans spent a lot of money mucking about to find the alleged mineral and gas/oil deposits around the islets that's supposed to be so valuable and found nothing worth talking about. (Yet, the economic rationale is still invoked as to why the dispute is so heated.) The only thing that matters in these disputes is pride and "principle," that they won't let those uncouth whoever get these useless pieces of rocks...because, um, they ain't so useless.

I imagine the same thing is at work with regards Kosovo and Bosnia. They are about as worthless economically as those silly East Asian rocks, I think. But those who are holding on to them, for whatever "irrational" reason, have to justify why they are trying so hard to hold on to them so dearnly....

[The Moar You Know]

I am a lifelong Dem and I hate to tell you this, but the GOP is far from being "virtually all of the U.S. politicians calling for war". The Dems in this regard have been an absolute disgrace since the 1990s and are at the point now where they're willing to sign off on pretty much anything.

How many Dems voted for Bush's AUMF against "terrorism" in September of 2001, the authorization for the "Forever War"? Oh that's right - every single Democratic member of both houses of Congress save one - Barbara Lee.

[Babak Makkinejad]

You are too intelligent to be obstinate.

You can move to Tehran, where a 10-kilton nuclear weapon explosion will create more casualties than there are hospital beds in the Near East.

That is the difference between living with a nuclear retaliatory capability and not having one.

[confusedponderer]

Leander,
re: Auschwitz and the German 68ers - there's an excellent book on the topic: "Utopia or Auschwitz", by Hans Kundnani. From, the description:

"One thing above all separated the radical students who demonstrated on the streets of West Berlin and Frankfurt in 1968 from their counterparts in Berkeley or New York. In the US, the baby boomers grew up in the shadow of what Tom Brokaw called the greatest generation. In its place, Germany had the so-called Auschwitz generation. What became known in Germany as the '68 generation' or just the Achtundsechziger had grown up knowing that their mothers and fathers were directly or indirectly responsible for Nazism and in particular for the Holocaust. Germany's 1968 generation did not merely dream of a better world as some of their contemporaries in other countries did; they felt compelled to act to save Germany from itself. It was an all-or-nothing choice: Utopia or Auschwitz. Kundnani shows that the struggle of Germany's '68 generation also had a darker side. Although the 'Achtundsechziger' imagined their struggle against capitalism in West Germany as 'resistance' against Nazism, they also had a tendency to see Auschwitz everywhere and, by using images and metaphors connected with Nazism to describe events in other parts of the world, they relativized Nazism and in particular the Holocaust ..."

[Alba Etie]

Al Spafford
"Mission Accomplished ! And your welcome America !"
If memory serves - "Prime Minister" Cheney ordered the first bombing of Baghdad while the IAEA inspectors were still in Iraq looking at sites ..

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks CP for this comment!

[The Beaver]

CP

Didn't James Baker hav ethe upper hand on that after the oil companies let it be known that they were NOT interested in exploiting the Iraqi plants or exploring the resources? They didn't want the price of oil to go down. The Saudis who had the ear of Baker wanted the same thing.

[Cee]

CP

Revenge? The Serbs were against the Germans.

I didn't support the war against them when we sided with the criminal KLA.

[different clue]

Matthew,

TR's legacy includes National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges, some National Parks, and so forth. Those are remembered by many.

[different clue]

One could try to undermine American Exceptionalism directly with countermemes and counterconcepts. One could say that American Exceptionalism is just America's version of the Chinese Middle Kingdom Complex. Not so exceptional, eh?

One could push for American Ordinary Okayness. "I am an American Okayness Ordinarian." Also called American Ordinarianism. These things might sound like unpatriotic insults AT FIRST. But with enough chipping away they might become understood as no such thing, and might lead to healthier better national self-images and goals.

[different clue]

Valissa,

And so they remain trapped in the monkey trap of their own choosing, fists tightly clenched around the NATO banana. Who will tell Europe to drop the banana? Who will convince Europe that a North East Atlantic Treaty Organization (NEATO) would be a perfectly fine thing to create and belong to?

[different clue]

Babak Makkinejad,

Did Syrian intellectuals translate works from German into Arabic? Decades ago, if not more recently?

[charly]

A nuclear security blanket is useful against stronger powers, not weaker powers, and in the European region there are no stronger powers. Besides the EU has nukes of its own.