An American attack on Iran is almost certain

Glenn Greenwald has today posted one of the most discouraging articles on the American actions in the Middle East that I have read since the Bush administration was idiot enough to preemptively attack Iraq.

Glenn makes a strong case that an attack on on Iran is close to inevitable. In the last two paragraphs of this post I make my case for a window of between April and June 2008 as being the most likely time for that attack.

Glenn starts by explaining that the Democrats in Congress are caving in to the Republicans on every front (led by Hillary Clinton) because they fear that to oppose the actions of Bush and Cheney in Iraq will raise antagonism towards Democrats in the 2008 election and permit a return to Republican control of Congress. This argument of Glenn's is a continuation of his post yesterday. Glenn's argument is roughly as follows:

Sen. Karl Levin came back from a two day guided tour of U.S. military bases and officer's messes in Iraq with the message from those high-ranking officers that the surge is working, but that the Maliki government has failed to take advantage of the political space that the success of the surge provided. (In this he is supported by Hillary Clinton who will sell out anyone to become President in 2008.) But of course, Levin's message is a load of crap. (See my previous post From GI's; we aren't winning, aren't wanted and can't win in Iraq from the New York Times OpEd by the 82d Airborne sergeants.) Glenn says:

As a matter of substance, Levin's call for the Prime Minister to be replaced is, of course, completely nonsensical. As Hilzoy pointed out, the political failures in Iraq are not due to Maliki's failures and replacing him will therefore achieve nothing. Beyond that, as Rosen explained in the Democracy Now interview:

The Iraqi government doesn't matter. It has no power. And it doesn't matter who you put in there. He's not going to have any power. Baghdad doesn't really matter, except for Baghdad. Baghdad used to be the most important city in Iraq, and whoever controlled Baghdad controlled Iraq. These days, you have a collection of city states: Mosul, Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Irbil, Sulaymaniyah. Each one is virtually independent, and they have their own warlords and their own militias. And what happens in Baghdad makes no difference. So that's the first point.

Iraq is so disintegrated, so ethnically cleansed, so broken that, as Rosen points out, it does not really exist as an entity any longer:

Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don't think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias --from areas that are now mostly Shia. . . . And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they're never going to let it go.

Rosen reports that the number of externally displaced Iraqis is now close to 3 million -- most of them Sunnis, representing a sizable portion of the Iraqi Sunni population which, in turn, further ensures Shiite sectarian militia control of most of the country. Always obscured by the exciting debate over whether we are "winning" is what happens if we "win" -- the installation of an Iran-and-Syria-friendly Shiite "government" surrounded by an ethnically divided country armed and ruled by sectarian militias loyal to a whole variety of Middle East actors. In light of all of that, Sen. Levin's claim of "military progress" is just incoherent.

The load of Levin crap is intended to allow the Democrats to win big in November of 2008. The beltway Democrats fear that if they attack the actions of the administration they can be painted as unpatriotic and as not supporting the troops while they are in combat. It is this avoidance of discussing the Administrations' idiocy that is causing the surreal "...recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day." which the 82d Airborne sergeants wrote about in their Sunday NY times OpEd.

If it were just the current status of the war in Iraq, that would be bad, but it is actually a lot worse than that. The problem is that Cheney and the Bush administration have determined to attack Iran before then. Glenn Greenwald quotes from an article by former CIA Officer Robert Baer in Time Magazine entitled Prelude to an Attack on Iran. He

...casts such an attack as virtually inevitable prior to the end of the Bush presidency, and likely much sooner than that:

Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. . . .

Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to democratic and a friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.

And what do we do if just the opposite happens -- a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

The purpose of attacking Iran is to destabilize the Iranian government and cause it to fall and be replaced. But Glenn has the following opinion (as do i)

Given our militarily weakened state, the latter goal seems virtually impossible. And, ironically as always, a bombing campaign against Iran would do more to strengthen that government than anything else we could do. But Iran is the Evil Enemy. And Enemies must be attacked and bombed and harmed. The people who think that way are very much still in control, beginning with the Oval Office, and it is very difficult to see how that outcome will be averted. Certainly the likes of Carl Levin aren't going to stop it.

Anyone who thinks that a military attack on Iran will cause the overthrow of the Iranian government should look at the history of the Soviet Union.

The purges of high military leaders by Joe Stalin were not conducted because Joe was an evil man. They were conducted because the USSR was highly unstable and Stalin's collectivization efforts had made a revolt quite likely. Stalin was negotiating peace with Germany because he feared losing control of the USSR in the case of war.

But then the Germans attacked the USSR, and instead of overthrowing Stalin they rallied behind him in the Great Patriotic War. Americans often don't realize it but other than in the Pacific, which was a battle of primarily Navy and Marines, the deadliest, most significant, and most massive battles of WW II were fought in the USSR. Soviet citizens may have hated Stalin generally, but they hated the German invaders more.

Iran is one of the oldest nations on Earth. The people there may not like their current government but they will join together to repel any attacker and to prevent that attacker from achieving their goals. Americans reacted exactly the same way September 12, 2001, and Bush/Cheney/Rove/Rumsfeld stupidly threw away their opportunity to lead a unified America against the real terrorists who attacked us.

Only stupid or ignorant people would ignore the reality that an American attack on Iran will unify the Iranian people behind whatever government they have, no matter how much it is disliked. Bush is both stupid and ignorant, and Cheney is certainly ignorant. Yet based on their stupidity and ignorance, along with the acquiescence of the Democratic politicians in Washington, the U.S. is going to soon initiate another unnecessary and unwinnable war in the Middle East.

The Democratic politicians are sitting on their hands for fear of losing the election in November 2008. If they sit on their hands past the excessively early primaries, they need not fear primary challenges. I'd guess that the main reason Cheney/Bush haven't attacked Iran yet is exactly that. Such an attack would cause the defeat in the primaries of too many Democrats who are supporting the war in Iraq and soon, Iran.

The primaries are why I think we have not yet attacked Iran. As soon as the primaries in the larger Blue states are over, Iran will be attacked. The Democratic politicians, by their silence when it counted, will be comitted to support the attack.

If the attack is done no later than about June 2008 things cannot have gone to crap badly enough yet to be a major threat to Republican reelections in November 2008. That makes a window of between about April and June as the most likely time-of-attack. Look for sharply increased media propaganda just before that.

Sure hope I'm wrong.