"If, in the dying light of the Bush administration,
we go to war with Iran," says the March Esquire,
"it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war
with Iran, it'll come down to the same man."
The piece describes this top military figure as the
last obstacle to the Bush administration's
persistent push for war with Iran: "It's left to" him
and him "alone … to argue that, as he told
al-Jazeera last fall: 'This constant drumbeat of conflict
… is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be
no war, and that is what we ought to be working [for].'"
That was Adm. William "Fox" Fallon speaking, top U.S.
commander in the Middle East, last of the Vietnam vets
in the high command, and, yes, the very same Adm.
Fallon who has just submitted his resignation as head of
Central Command. What makes this particularly
ominous is that, according to former Defense
Intelligence Agency analyst Patrick Lang, Fallon
told him, upon taking over at Centcom, that war
with Iran "isn't going to happen on my watch."
Lang asked him how he thought he could stop it:
"'I have options, you know,' Fallon responded, which
Lang interpreted as implying Fallon would step down
rather than follow orders he considers mistaken."
Do I really need to draw you a picture to get you
to imagine what's coming next? This is as clear a
signal as any that the Bush administration
intends to go out with a bang – one that will shake
not only the Middle East but this country to its
very foundations.
In a statement, Fallon hinted at the reason for his resignation:
"Recent press reports suggesting a disconnect
between my views and the president's policy
objectives have become a distraction at a critical
time and hamper efforts in the Centcom region.
And although I don't believe there have ever been
any differences about the objectives of our policy in
the Central Command Area of Responsibility, the
simple perception that there is makes it difficult
for me to effectively serve America's interests there."
What "efforts" is he hampering but the effort
to drag us into another war?
Fallon has long been a thorn in the administration's side:
while in Egypt, on a tour of his Centcom command, he
assured President Hosni Mubarak that there would be
no attack on Iran, which leaked to the Egyptian media.
Washington was livid. "I'm in hot water, again," he
confided to Thomas P.M. Barnett, the Esquire
journalist who accompanied him on his trip.
He's been in hot water with administration hawks –
including the president, wildest hawk of them all –
before. Last fall, he was quoted by Pentagon insiders
as calling Gen. David Petraeus an "
ass-kissing little chickensh*t" for telling the president
what he wanted to hear on Iraq and the "surge."
Long an advocate of engagement with China as well as
Iran, Fallon has been relentlessly attacked by the
neocons as "soft and accommodating." After Fallon
began reaching out to the Chinese, the response was
delayed but vehement – and telling – when it came:
"It was only after the Pentagon and
Congress started realizing that their
favorite 'programs of record'
(i.e., weapons systems and major vehicle
platforms) were threatened by such talks
that the sh*t hit the fan. 'I blew my stack,'
Fallon says. 'I told Rumsfeld, Just look at
this sh*t. I go up to the Hill and I get three
or four guys grabbing me and jerking me out
of the aisle, all because somebody came up
and told them that the sky was going to cave in.'"
The military-industrial-neocon complex, as it were, has
been working overtime to get him out of the way of their
war plans, and this week they finally succeeded. Not that
Fallon is all that surprised, I'll bet. Speaking freely to
Barnett, he telegraphed his resignation:
"Sitting in his Tampa headquarters office last fall,
I asked Fallon if he considered the Centcom assignment
to be the same career-capping job that it'd been for
his predecessors. He just laughed and said, 'Career
capping? How about career detonating?'"
It's a detonation that will reverberate throughout
the Middle East, prefiguring the mega-explosion to
come. One can hardly imagine a clearer indication
that the White House has made the decision to go
to war with Iran . It's just a matter of
when and how the administration can
provoke an incident.
That's why U.S. warships are patrolling the
Lebanese coast; and why our warships are playing
hide-and-go-seek with Iranian gunboats in the Gulf.
It's the reason the Israel lobby has been
beating the tom-toms for war, and the reason
the anti-Fallon, Petraeus, has been so vocal
about the Iranian roots of our Iraqi problem.
With Fallon out of the way, the road to war –
a regional conflagration that will make the invasion
of Iraq seem like a holiday picnic – is cleared.
Get ready for World War III.
Responding to the spectacle of a failing presidential
candidate offering the front-runner the second spot
on the ticket, Barack Obama didn't confine himself
to mocking Hillary's presumptuousness; he also
attacked her judgment and specifically her foreign
policy. He coupled a dig at her vote to approve the
conquest of Iraq with her support for the Lobby's
resolution, championed by Joe Lieberman, to target
Iran's Republican Guard as a "terrorist group,"
which he characterized as "saber-rattling." The
Lieberman resolution was clearly meant to give
legal cover to the Bush administration if and when
they order U.S. troops in Iraq to cross the border
into Iran in hot pursuit of "terrorists," i.e., the
Iranian military.
We know, when push comes to shove, where Hillary
stands on this. Obama's stance is less clear. We know he
won't rule out military action against Iran, as he told the
Chicago Tribune, yet his recent pronouncements –
"I won't be browbeaten into launching a war that was
not necessary," he said of the Clinton 3-in-the-morning
attack ad – indicate opposition to the War Party's Iran
project. If Obama is smart, he'll launch a preemptive
strike against the idea of going to war with the Iranians
– before the president acts.
The antiwar movement had better get off its big, fat butt.
If ever there was a time to step up to the plate, it is now.
The firing of Fallon – clearly he was pressured to step
down – raises the stakes considerably: it means the odds
are we'll be at war just as the presidential campaign season
reaches a dramatic crescendo on the Democratic side of
the ledger, and at the moment Republican candidates for
Congress begin to campaign in earnest. The antiwar
movement can have an effect on the course of events,
and, God willing, head Bush off at the pass, but only if we
hit key pressure points on the body politic – Congress,
and Obama-for-President headquarters.
Don't bother with Hillary. She's hopeless on this issue and
all other foreign policy questions. She votes, talks, and
acts in concert with the Lobby, and we can count on her
for one thing and one thing only: using this crisis to
catapult herself and her circle into power.
As for Obama – he is with us, instinctively, but he may shy
away from taking a more definitive stand on account of
bad advisers, and, perhaps, a fear of going out on a rather
creaky and insubstantial political limb. The Lobby, after all,
is not inclined to support him, and will go all out against him
if he gets in its way. Obama needs to know that if he stands
up to the War Party, the people are with him.
After calling your congressional representatives and asking
them what they intend to do to stop this madness, call
Obama's Senate office. Be polite, be clear, and be brief. Let
them know how you feel about the prospect of war with Iran,
and tell them it's time for Obama to speak out loud and clear:
866-675-2008.
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