Stop
The Iran War Before It Starts
By Scott Ritter
27 December, 2007
The Nation
In April 2001 I was invited to
Washington, DC, by a group of Republican Congressmen collectively known
as the Theme Team. The subject was Iraq. It seems that the Theme Team,
responsible for monitoring the ideological pulse of America, was somewhat
perturbed that a self-described Republican and former Marine officer,
not to mention a former UN weapons inspector, was trash-talking America's
Iraq policy. While this sort of action might have been acceptable during
the tenure of a Democratic President like Bill Clinton, it was not part
of the grand design when it came to the presidency of George W. Bush.
The conference room was packed
with more than seventy Representatives and their staffs. I provided
an opening in which I stressed that the case being made against Saddam
Hussein and Iraq, centered as it was on the issue of WMD, did not hold
water. I chastised the Republican lawmakers with a warning: If they
continued to support the policy of confronting Saddam's Iraq over a
trumped-up charge, they would not only get America involved in a war
it could not win but would end up destroying the credibility of the
Republican Party, and turn control of the Congress, and eventually the
Presidency, to the Democrats. There were questions asked, and answers
given, and in the end most thanked me for what they called an "illuminating"
meeting.
Then they proceeded to do
nothing.
Today that warning has become
reality. America is bogged down in a losing war in Iraq, the Republican
Party lies in shambles over its partisan support of a policy that was
never debated or discussed but rather rubber-stamped and the Democrats
now control the Senate and the House of Representatives. There is a
very real chance that the Democrats will take control of the presidency
in 2008, since the debacle that is Iraq will not be resolved prior to
that date.
President Bush will go down
in history with complete ownership of the Iraq War. The Republican Party
will also be tarnished by this legacy. It doesn't matter that the policies
of sanctions-based containment and regime change, which set in motion
the events leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003,
were conceived of and implemented by Clinton, or that the Democrats
in Congress were as complicit (and incompetent) in their support of
those policies through their "bipartisan" support of both
the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (which set America's policy toward Iraq
as regime change) and the War Authorization Resolution of 2002, which
punted away Congress's constitutional responsibilities when it came
to the declaration of war. To most Americans, the war in Iraq is a Republican
war, and blame has been placed squarely at the doorstep of the Republican
Commander in Chief who got us there, George W. Bush.
In his recent State of the
Union address, Bush spent a great deal of time speaking about Iraq and
his plans for how to achieve "victory" there. The Democrats,
in their various responses, rightly criticized the President and his
plans as unrealistic and insupportable. The stage has been set for an
old-fashioned showdown between executive and legislative power, where
the advantages are stacked in favor of those who control the power of
the purse (i.e., Congress), since the President's new "surge"
strategy hinges not only on the availability of troops to be surged
but also on the money to pay for it.
When it comes to Iraq, newly
empowered Democrats in Congress are getting a free ride, so to speak.
While the honorable (and right) thing to do would be to combine their
just criticism of the President's policy with a vision (and corresponding
plan) of their own on how to proceed in Iraq, the Democrats instead
seem to have taken the less risky and more politically savvy path of
simply pointing an accusatory finger at the President, demanding that
he fix what he broke. There is no coherent, broad-based Democratic plan
for Iraq other than to criticize the President. In the case of Iraq,
Democrats have demonstrated that they are just as capable of letting
American service members die in order to preserve their own political
ambition as their Republican counterparts are.
While this is abominable,
the Democrats will most likely get away with it. After all, the horror
that is present-day Iraq did not happen on their watch. Iraq is a Republican
debacle, and it will continue to play out as such politically on the
domestic front.
If I were to be invited to
go to Washington today and speak to the Democratic equivalent of the
Republican Theme Team, I would spend very little time on the issue of
Iraq. Right or wrong, the Iraq War was a product of domestic American
politics, not any genuine threat to national security, and as such the
solution for Iraq will be derived not from whatever happens inside Iraq,
surge or no surge, but rather from what happens here in America. It
will take two or more national election cycles for the American electorate
to purge Congress of those elements, Republican and Democratic alike,
who are responsible for the Iraqi quagmire.
Until American politicians
from either party show that they care more about the lives of the men
and women in the armed forces who operate in harm's way than they do
about their own political fortunes, we will remain in Iraq. It takes
courage to stand up against this war when the tide of public opinion
continues to hold out hope for victory. "Doing the right thing"
is a thing of the past, it seems. "Doing the politically expedient
thing" is the current trend. The American public may have articulated
frustration with the course of events in Iraq, but this feeling is derived
more from a frustration at being defeated than from any moral outrage
over getting involved in a war that didn't need to be fought in the
first place. Congress takes its cues from the American people, and until
the American people are as outraged over the mere fact we are in Iraq
as they are over the rising costs of the conflict--human, moral and
financial--then Congress will continue to dither.
If I were to address a Democrat
Theme Team equivalent, I would focus my effort on trying to impress
them with the issue that will cost them political power down the road.
This issue is Iran. While President Bush, a Republican, remains Commander
in Chief, a Democrat-controlled Congress shares responsibility on war
and peace from this point on. The conflict in Iraq, although ongoing,
is a product of the Republican-controlled past. The looming conflict
with Iran, however, will be assessed as a product of a Democrat-controlled
present and future. If Iraq destroyed the Republican Party, Iran will
destroy the Democrats.
I would strongly urge Congress,
both the House of Representatives and the Senate, to hold real hearings
on Iran. Not the mealy-mouthed Joe Biden-led hearings we witnessed on
Iraq in July-August 2002, where he and his colleagues rubber-stamped
the President's case for war, but genuine hearings that draw on all
the lessons of Congressional failures when it came to Iraq. Summon all
the President's men (and women), and grill them on every phrase and
word uttered about the Iranian "threat," especially as it
has been linked to nuclear weapons. Demand facts to back up the rhetoric.
Summon the American-Israeli
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or any other lobby promoting confrontation
with Iran, to the forefront, so that the warnings they offer in whispers
from a back room can be articulated before the American public. Hold
these conjurers of doom accountable for their positions by demanding
they back them up with hard fact. See if the US intelligence community
concurs with the dire warnings put forward by these pro-war lobbyists,
and if it doesn't, ask who, then, is driving US policy toward Iran?
Those mandated by public law and subjected to the oversight of Congress?
Or others, operating outside any framework representative of the will
of the American people?
If a real case, based on
facts as they pertain to the genuine national security interests of
the United States, can be made for a confrontation with Iran that leads
to military conflict, so be it. America should never shy away from defending
that which legitimately needs defending. The sacrifice expected of our
military forces, while tragic, will be defensible. But if the case for
war with Iran is revealed to be as illusory as was the case for war
with Iraq, then Congress must take action to stop this conflict from
occurring. This is the Democrats' issue now, the one that will make
or break them in 2008 and beyond.
If hearings show no case
for war with Iran, then Congress must act to insure that the United
States cannot move toward conflict with that nation on the strength
of executive dictate alone. As things currently stand, the Bush Administration,
emboldened with a vision of the unitary
executive unprecedented in our nation's history, believes
it has all of the legal authority it requires when it comes to engaging
Iran militarily. The silence of Congress following the President's decision
to dispatch
a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf has been
deafening. The fact that a third carrier battle group (the USS Ronald
Reagan) will probably join these two in the near future has also gone
unnoticed by most, if not all, in Congress.
The President and his advisers
believe that they are acting in accordance with the authorities given
to the executive by the US Constitution, and by legislative authority
as well, as provided for in both the Authorization for Use of Military
Force resolution
of September 14, 2001 (after the attacks of September 11, where Congress
not only authorized the President to use military force against the
perpetrators of the terror attacks but also against those nations deemed
to be harboring people or organizations involved in the attacks), and
the Authorization of Military Force Against Iraq resolution
of October 2002 (where Congress concurred that any presidential action
would be "consistent with the United States and other countries
continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists
and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations
or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist
attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001").
The National Security Strategy
of the United States, most recently promulgated in March 2006, lists
Iran as the number-one threat to the United States, not
only in terms of its yet-to-be-proven nuclear weapons program but also
from its status, as declared by the Bush White House, as the world's
leading state sponsor of terror. The Bush Administration has repeatedly
linked Iran with the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks and has
accused Iran of harboring people and organizations involved in that
attack. If left unchallenged by Congress, the Bush Administration firmly
believes it has all of the authority required to initiate military action
against Iran without Congressional approval.
This is not an idle statement
on my part. One needs only to read the words of President Bush during
his recent State of the Union address:
Osama bin Laden declared:
"Death is better than living on this earth with the unbelievers
among us." These men are not given to idle words, and they are
just one camp in the Islamist radical movement.
In recent times, it has also
become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists
who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate
the Middle East.
Many are known to take direction
from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like
Hezbollah, a group second only to Al Qaeda in the American lives it
has taken.
The Shia and Sunni extremists
are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. But whatever slogans
they chant, when they slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked
purposes: They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle
East and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale. In
the sixth year since our nation was attacked, I wish I could report
to you that the dangers have ended. They have not.
And so it remains the
policy of this government to use every lawful and proper tool of intelligence,
diplomacy, law enforcement and military action to do our duty, to find
these enemies and to protect the American people. [Author's emphasis]
What is unrealized in this
passage is the loud applause given by members of Congress to the President's
words.
Democrats in Congress have
the opportunity to nip this looming disaster in the bud. The fact that
most of the Democratic members of Congress who enjoy tenure voted in
favor of the resolutions giving the President such sweeping authority
is moot. Democrats are all capable of pleading that they were acting
under the influence of a Republican-controlled body and unable to adequately
ascertain through effective oversight the genuine state of affairs.
This is no longer the case. The Democrats in Congress are in firm control
of their own destiny, and with it the destiny of America. A war with
Iran will pale in comparison with the current conflict in Iraq. And
if there is a war with Iran, this Congress will be held fully accountable.
Democrats should seek immediate
legislative injunctions to nullify the War Powers' authority granted
to the President in September 2001 and October 2002 when it comes to
Iran. Congress should pass a joint resolution requiring the President
to fully consult with Congress about any national security threat that
may be posed to the United States from Iran and demand that no military
action be initiated by the United States against Iran without a full,
constitutionally mandated declaration of war. Those who embrace the
notion of a unitary executive will scoff at the concept of a Congressional
declaration of war. They hold that the power to make war is not an enumerated
power per se. While statutory authorization (i.e., a formal declaration
of war) is enumerated in the Constitution, the reality (as reflected
by the current War Powers Act) is that the powers of bringing America
to a state of war are not so much separated as they are linked and sequenced,
with Congress exercising its control over budgetary appropriations and
the President through command.
There may well be merit to
this line of argument. But one thing is perfectly clear: Only Congress
holds the power of the purse. While a President may commit American
forces to combat without the consent of Congress (for periods of up
to 180 days), he cannot spend money that has not been appropriated.
There is, in the passing of any budget, inherent authority given to
the President when it comes to national defense. However, Congress can,
if it wants to, put specific restrictions on the President's ability
to use the people's money. A recent example occurred in 1982, when Congress
passed the Boland
Amendment to restrict funding for executive-sponsored actions,
covert and overt, in Nicaragua. While it is in the process of getting
a handle on America's policy vis-à-vis Iran, Congress would do
well to pass a resolution that serves as a new Boland Amendment for
Iran. Such an amendment could read like this:
An amendment to prohibit
offensive military operations, covert or overt, being commenced by the
United States of America against the Islamic Republic of Iran, without
the expressed consent of the Congress of the United States. This amendment
reserves the right of the President, commensurate with the War Powers
Act, to carry out actions appropriate for the defense of the United
States if attacked by Iran. However, any funds currently appropriated
by Congress for use in support of ongoing operations by the United States
Armed Forces are hereby prohibited from being allocated for any pre-emptive
military action, whether overt or covert in nature, without the expressed
prior consent by the Congress of the United States of America.
However it is worded, the
impact of such an amendment would be immediate and could forestall any
military moves planned by the Bush Administration against Iran until
Congress can fully familiarize itself with the true nature of any threat
posed to the United States. President Bush seems to be hellbent on making
war with Iran. The passage of time is, in effect, the enemy of his Administration's
goals and objectives. By buying the time required to fully study the
issues pertaining to Iran, and by forestalling the possibility of immediate
pre-emptive action through budgetary restrictions, Congress may very
well spare America, and the world, another tragedy like Iraq. If a Democrat-controlled
Congress fails to take action, and America finds itself embroiled in
yet another Middle East military misadventure, there will be a reckoning
at the polls in 2008. It will not bode well for the Democrats currently
in power, or those seeking power in the future.
Scott Ritter,
a former Marine intelligence officer, served as a chief weapons inspector
for the United Nations in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author,
most recently, of Target
Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change
(Nation Books).
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights