Thereisnospoon’s excellent diary describes just how crazy an attack on Iran would be; there's not a single conceivable reason to do it, even from the narrow perspective of the neocon nuthouse. It just doesn't make sense.
But people are strange beings; a lot of things we do don’t make sense. We do, however, tend to follow patterns.
Here’s one pattern: warmakers losing a war will:
- Convince themselves that someone else is stopping them from winning, and
- Compound the disaster by attacking that someone else.
Sound familiar?
Some specifics:
In 1941, Japan was bogged down in a long, frustrating war in China. And so, unable to win a war against starving peasants with swords, they attacked the United States. The Japanese generals were neither stupid nor incompetent.
Hitler was failing to win a war in Europe at the same time. A few days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States for no discernable reason. Inconceivable. But it happened.
In 1970, our involvement in Vietnam was obviously going nowhere; the only question was how to get out. Then Nixon opened a new front in Cambodia. Nixon was extremely intelligent and, at that stage of his presidency, not completely insane.
I could spend a long time exploring the why of it, but that’s not the point. The point is that the pattern is there.
So the question is not "why would Bush attack Iran?" The question is: "why wouldn’t he attack Iran?" Is he smarter than Nixon? More competent than the Japanese military? More in touch with reality? More restrained by sane opinion?
The other question, of course, is how to stop him. If Bush, or that voice in his head that claims to be God, wants to plunge the world into hell, no amount of marches, nonbinding resolutions, or clever blogs will sway him. And if he orders it, the military, properly doing what they conceive to be their duty to their commander in chief, will do it.
But the fact is, Bush has not been authorized by Congress to start a war with Iran. Bush hasn't exactly done the Constitution any favors, but starting an unauthorized war is so far beyond anything conceivably within his powers that if he orders an attack, the Constitution is simply gone. And without the Constitution, Bush is no President and no Commander in Chief.
Thus, anyone who obeys such an order, by definition, is not obeying the Commander in Chief. For that matter, no patriotic American should pay Federal taxes if Bush were to start such a war, whether or not they support the war itself. Without a functioning Constitution we have no representation. And no taxation without representation, dammit.
What if one—just one—public figure were to say that? A lot of the forces behind Bush depend on our taxes to pay their no-bid, do-nothing contracts. They also happen to be a snivelingly fearful bunch; even the distant spectre of a tax strike might encourage them to restrain GWB's madness, and they are perhaps the only people he still listens to.
Yeah, I know—good luck finding a public figure willing to make such a statement. But hey, a man can dream.