How
The Military Can Stop
An Iran Attack
By Jeremy Brecher
& Brendan Smith
11 October, 2007
The
Nation
Sometimes
history--and necessity--make strange bedfellows. The German general
staff transported Lenin to Russia to lead a revolution. Union-buster
Ronald Reagan played godfather to the birth of the Polish Solidarity
union. Equally strange--but perhaps equally necessary--is the addressee
of a new appeal signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright
and many other leaders of the American peace movement:
"ATTENTION: Joint Chiefs
of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel: Do not attack Iran."
The initiative responds to
the growing calls for an attack on Iran from the likes of Norman Podhoretz
and John Bolton, and the reports of growing war momentum in Washington
by reporters like Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Joe Klein of Time.
International lawyer Scott Horton says European diplomats at the recent
United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York "believe
that the United States will launch an air war on Iran, and that it will
occur within the next six to eight months." He puts the likelihood
of conflict at 70 percent.
The initiative also responds
to the recent failure of Congress to pass legislation requiring its
approval before an attack on Iran and the hawk-driven resolution encouraging
the President to act against the Iranian military. Marcy Winograd, president
of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, who originally suggested the
petition, told The Nation:
If we thought that our lawmakers
would restrain the Bush Administration from further endangering Americans
and the rest of the world, we would concentrate solely on them. If we
went to Las Vegas today, would we find anyone willing to bet on this
Congress restraining Bush? I don't think so.
Because our soldiers know
the horrors of war--severed limbs, blindness, brain injury--they are
loath to romanticize the battlefield or glorify expansion of the Iraq
genocide that has left a million Iraqis dead and millions others exiled.
Military Resistance
What could be stranger than
a group of peace activists petitioning the military to stop a war? And
yet there is more logic here than meets the eye.
Asked in an online discussion
September 27 whether the Bush Administration will launch a war against
Iran, Washington Post intelligence reporter Dana Priest replied, "Frankly,
I think the military would revolt and there would be no pilots to fly
those missions."
She acknowledged that she
had indulged in a bit of hyperbole, then added, "but not much."
There have been many other
hints of military disaffection from plans to attack Iran--indeed, military
resistance may help explain why, despite years of rumors about Bush
Administration intentions, such an attack has not yet occurred. A Pentagon
consultant told Hersh more than a year ago, "There is a war about
the war going on inside the building." Hersh also reported that
Gen. Peter Pace had forced Bush and Cheney to remove the "nuclear
option" from the plans for possible conflict with Iran--in the
Pentagon it was known as the April Revolution.
In December, according to
Time correspondent Joe Klein, President Bush met with the Joint Chiefs
of Staff in a secure room known as The Tank. The President was told
that "the U.S. could launch a devastating air attack on Iran's
government and military, wiping out the Iranian air force, the command
and control structure and some of the more obvious nuclear facilities."
But the Joint Chiefs were "unanimously opposed to taking that course
of action," both because it might not eliminate Iran's nuclear
capacity and because Iran could respond devastatingly in Iraq--and in
the United States.
In an article published by
Inter Press Service, historian and national security policy analyst
Gareth Porter reported that Adm. William Fallon, Bush's then-nominee
to head the Central Command (Centcom), sent the Defense Department a
strongly worded message earlier this year opposing the plan to send
a third carrier strike group into the Persian Gulf. In another Inter
Press analysis, Porter quotes someone who met with Fallon saying an
attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch." He added, "You
know what choices I have. I'm a professional.... There are several of
us trying to put the crazies back in the box."
Military officers in the
field have frequently refuted Bush Administration claims about Iranian
arms in Iraq and Afghanistan. Porter says that when a State Department
official this June publicly accused Iran of giving arms to the Taliban
in Afghanistan, the US commander of NATO forces there twice denied the
claim.
More recently, top brass
have warned that the United States is not prepared for new wars. Gen.
George Casey, the Army's top commander, recently made a highly unusual
personal request for a House Armed Services Committee hearing in which
he warned that "we are consumed with meeting the demands of the
current fight and are unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary
for other potential contingencies." While this could surely be
interpreted as a call for more troops and resources, it may simultaneously
be a warning shot against adventures in Iran.
An October 8 report by Tim
Shipman in the Telegraph says that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has
"taken charge of the forces in the American government opposed
to a US military attack on Iran." He cites Pentagon sources saying
that Gates is waging "a subtle campaign to undermine the Cheney
camp" and that he is "encouraging the Army's senior officers
to speak frankly about the overstretch of forces, and the difficulty
of fighting another war." Shipman reports Gates has "forged
an alliance with Mike McConnell, the national director of intelligence,
and Michael Hayden, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, to
ensure that Mr. Cheney's office is not the dominant conduit of information
and planning on Iran to Mr. Bush."
Every indication is that
the "war about the war" is ongoing. Hersh recently reported
that the attack-Iran faction has found a new approach that it hopes
will be more acceptable to the public--and presumably to the Pentagon
brass. Instead of broad bombing attacks designed to eliminate Iran's
nuclear capacity and promote regime change, it calls for "surgical
strikes" on Revolutionary Guard facilities; they would be justified
as retaliation in the "proxy war" that General Petraeus alleges
Iran is fighting "against the Iraqi state and coalition forces
in Iraq." According to Hersh, the revised bombing plan is "gathering
support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon." But Israeli
officials are concerned that such a plan might leave Iran's nuclear
capacity intact.
Appeal to Principle
The appeal for military personnel
to resist an attack is primarily based on principle. It asserts that
any pre-emptive US attack on Iran would be illegal under international
law and a crime under US law. Such an attack would violate Article II,
Section 4, of the UN Charter forbidding the threat or use of force against
the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Since
Iran has not attacked the United States, an attack against it without
authorization by the Security Council would be a violation of international
law. Under the US Constitution and the UN Charter, this is the law of
the land. Under the military's own laws, armed forces have an obligation
to refuse orders that violate US law and the Constitution. And under
the principles established by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal after
World War II, "just obeying orders" is no defense for officials
who participate in war crimes.
But the petition also addresses
some of the practical concerns that have clearly motivated military
officers to oppose an attack on Iran. It would open US soldiers in Iraq
to decimation by Iranian forces or their Iraqi allies. It would sow
the seeds of hatred for generations. Like the attack on Iraq, it would
create more enemies, promote terrorism and make American families less
safe.
The petitioners recognize
the potential risks of such action to military personnel. "If you
heed our call and disobey an illegal order you could be falsely charged
with crimes including treason. You could be falsely court martialed.
You could be imprisoned."
But they also accept risks
themselves, aware that "in violation of our First Amendment rights,
we could be charged under remaining section of the unconstitutional
Espionage Act or other unconstitutional statute, and that we could be
fined, imprisoned, or barred from government employment."
In ordinary times, peace
activists would hardly be likely to turn to the military as allies.
Indeed, they would rightfully be wary of military officers acting on
their own, rather than those of their civilian superiors--in violation
of the Constitution's provisions for civilian oversight of the military.
But these are hardly ordinary times. While the public is highly dubious
of getting into another war in the Middle East, there now appear to
be virtually no institutional barriers to doing so.
Military-Civilian
Alliance
Is there a basis for cooperation
between the military brass and citizens who believe an attack on Iran
would be criminal and/or suicidal? Perhaps. The brass can go public
with the truth and ask Congress to provide a platform for explaining
the real consequences of an attack on Iran. They can call for a national
debate that is not manipulated by the White House. (They can also inform
other players of the consequences: tell Wall Street the effects on oil
and stock prices and tell European military and political leaders what
it is likely to mean in terms of terrorism.) The peace movement has
already forged an alliance with Iraq War veterans who oppose the war
and with high military officials who oppose torture; a tacit alliance
with the brass to halt an attack on Iran is a logical next step.
Such an approach puts the
problem of civilian control of the military in a different light. The
purpose of civilian control, after all, is not to subject the military
to the dictatorial control of one man who may, at the least, express
the foolishness and frailty that all flesh is heir to. The purpose is
to subject the military to the control of democratic governance, which
is to say of an informed public and its representatives.
What contribution can the
peace movement make to this process? We can cover military officials'
backs when they speak out--no one is better placed than the peace movement
to defend them against Bushite charges of defying civilian control.
We can help open a forum for military officers to speak out. Many retired
officers have spoken out publicly on the folly of the war in Iraq. We
can use our venues in universities and communities to invite them to
speak out even more forcefully on the folly of an attack on Iran. We
can place ads pointing out military resistance to an attack on Iran
and featuring warnings of its possible consequences from past and present
military officials. And we can encourage lawmakers to reach out to military
officials and offer to give them cover and a forum to speak out. Says
petition initiator Marcy Winograd, "I'd like to see peace activists
and soldiers sit down, break bread, march together, testify together
and forge a powerful union to end the next war before the bloodletting
begins."
The peace movement leaders
who appealed to the military had to break through the conventional presumption
that the brass were their enemies in all situations. Such an unlikely
alliance could be a starting point for a nonviolent response to the
Bush Administration's pursuit of a permanent state of war.
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