[NYTr] How the Military Can Stop an Iran Attack

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Nation - Oct 9, 2007
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20071022&s=brechersmith

How the Military Can Stop an Iran Attack

by JEREMY BRECHER & BRENDAN SMITH

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 force 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.