The War About The War

InsideThoseFiveWalls
RevoltingGeneralsVille

OK.

I just finished reading Sy Hersh's latest on the Iranian folly titled 'Last Stand' and I am now both slightly heartened and simultaneously even more deeply concerned than ever.

Why?

Well, slightly heartened because if Hersh is right, and he usually is, it looks like the Generals have had enough:

A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ”

You got that?

Apparently factions within the American military has decided that now is not the time to play the Strangelove or the good German roles, which sounds like a good thing. And Hersh lays out all the reasons that run the gamut from the moral to the pragmatic. The latter category includes things like this:

According to retired Army Major General William Nash, who was commanding general of the First Armored Division, served in Iraq and Bosnia, and worked for the United Nations in Kosovo, attacking Iran would heighten the risks to American and coalition forces inside Iraq. “What if one hundred thousand Iranian volunteers came across the border?” Nash asked. “If we bomb Iran, they cannot retaliate militarily by air—only on the ground or by sea, and only in Iraq or the Gulf...."

{snip}

“Their first possible response would be to send forces into Iraq. And, since the Iraqi Army has limited capacity, it means that the coalition forces would have to engage them.”

Again, that just makes good common sense.

But then, just for good measure, and/or to scare the crap of out of all reasonable thinking people, Hersh goes on to plum the mindset of the people who are actually driving all this madness:

In contrast, some conservatives are arguing that America’s position in Iraq would improve if Iran chose to retaliate there, according to a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon’s civilian leaders, because Iranian interference would divide the Shiites into pro- and anti-Iranian camps, and unify the Kurds and the Sunnis. The Iran hawks in the White House and the State Department, including Elliott Abrams and Michael Doran, both of whom are National Security Council advisers on the Middle East, also have an answer for those who believe that the bombing of Iran would put American soldiers in Iraq at risk, the consultant said. He described the counterargument this way: “Yes, there will be Americans under attack, but they are under attack now.”

Wow.

It sounds like Creative Destructionism on Crack to me.*

Or, perhaps more to the point, 'The Eve of All Destructions'.


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*And I link to Mr. Ledeen on purpose here, because he has been both a cheerleader and an active participant in the creative destruction of American Exceptionalism since the days of Billy Carter. Yes, that's right Billy, not Jimmy, Carter.
The more I think about it, the more I figure it may be time to resurrect HST Fridays. I've got a good one that I've been saving for just the right moment. Hopefully will get it up tomorrow.

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