South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham speaking at an AIPAC conference
(Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the number one Israel lobby group, likes to operate quietly. The group lobbied in favor of the Iraq war, but doesn’t want anyone to talk about that (see Phil Weiss’ excellent post on that here). Now they’re lobbying for a war on Iran through a hawkish Senate resolution–but people are talking about it.
The Senate resolution was introduced last week by Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and has 35 co-sponsors, with Senator Joseph Lieberman also strongly backing the bill. The resolution is only the latest tool used by Iran hawks to pressure the Obama administration into taking a strong stance against Iran. The major problems with the bill, as Mitchell Plitnick points out in Souciant magazine, were expressed by the National Iranian-American Council:
As drafted, the resolution confuses U.S. “red lines” and significantly lowers the threshold for going to war…
As drafted, the resolution sets conditions for going to war without stating that it is not an authorization of force…
As drafted, the resolution takes options off the table for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons…
In essence, critics of the bill are saying it provides a backdoor to war.
AIPAC’s fingerprints are all over the bill. And while the powerful lobby group does not want to be seen as pushing for war, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Robert Wright called out AIPAC’s role in a much-talked about blog post for the Atlantic:
Late last week, amid little fanfare, Senators Joseph Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and Robert Casey introduced a resolution that would move America further down the path toward war with Iran. The good news is that the resolution hasn’t been universally embraced in the Senate.
As Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports, the resolution has “provoked jitters among Democrats anxious over the specter of war.” The bad news is that, as Kampeas also reports, “AIPAC is expected to make the resolution an ‘ask’ in three weeks when up to 10,000 activists culminate its annual conference with a day of Capitol Hill lobbying…”
The resolution defines keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapons “capability” as being in America’s “vital national interest,” which is generally taken as synonymous with “worth war.” And, though this “sense of Congress” resolution is nonbinding, AIPAC will probably seek unanimous Senate consent, which puts pressure on a president. Friedman says this “risks sending a message that Congress supports war and opposes a realistic negotiated solution or any de facto solution short of stripping Iran of even a peaceful nuclear capacity.”
What’s more, says [Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now], the non-binding status may be temporary. “Often AIPAC-backed Congressional initiatives start as non-binding language (in a resolution or a letter) and then show up in binding legislation. Once members of Congress have already signed on to a policy in non-binding form, it is much harder for them to oppose it when it shows up later in a bill that, if passed, will have the full force of law.”
Jim Lobe has more on the AIPAC war push here.
This bill will get massive support from Congress, especially in an election year and while AIPAC’s annual conference is going on. But, the fact that the Atlantic is exposing AIPAC’s war-mongering should be seen as progress. With Occupy AIPAC heading into town as well, and J Street holding its conference soon after, there’s a chance a counter-narrative against a war with Iran will get more play.
Phil Giraldi’s latest piece is worth the read as well:
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2012/02/22/aipac-declares-war/
If you go to AIPAC’s site, I think the word Iran shows up more times than the word Israel….
How sad, Ben Cardin signed on to this. He ran for the then open senate seat against Michael Steele by pointing out how he was opposed to the Iraq war. Sly, ain’t he?
One way to counter and/or dilute the effect of 10,000 AIPACers roaming the halls of Congress submitting their asks, is to have 10,000 Occupy*, or better, constituent activists roaming the halls of the Congressional office buildings at the exact same time making the specific and exact opposite ask.
Needless to say, with a one-page point paper/”quad chart” on why it’s bad for the district as a leave-behind: $10/gal gas, 10th rotations/broken military, kids without parents, infrastructure collapse, missed green opportunities, lucrative in-district mil R&D spending going to external/foreign O&M, etc., etc., etc. Given that a war with Iran is 99% raw bad policy, there are plenty of negative district anecdotes and policy implications to chose from.
That’s 200 people per state. It’s possible. Probably even enough transplants in DC to do it. The personal ask from a constituent is Very effective. Particularly effective if the AIPACers are NOT constituents, which, if memory serves, I don’t believe they are in the vast majority of cases.
Wonder how Dick and Jane will feel once Obama concedes to help Israel’s attack on Iran this year and gas spikes up to $10.00 per gal, and Iran manages to knock out one of our floating city aircraft carriers?
One of the more frustrating points about all of this war talk in the MSM is there doesn’t seem to be any discussion with how bad things could turn out. In fact there are a few articles, saying how easy it would be.
I think there is little that Iran could do to punish Israel — I suspect their missiles are not accurate enough to do more than just terrorize the civilian population. Nor will Iranian armies overrun US bases in the region. We simply have too much fire power.
However, I suspect the embassy in Baghdad will be over-run and those 16,000 staff and security forces would be wiped out or taken prisoner.
The big loss could be the fifth fleet, or any of her ships that may be in the Persian Gulf if war breaks out. A number of us have mentioned here at MW the known fact that Iran is armed with Russian designed and built cruise antiship missiles that may just be too fast for our anti-missile defenses (google sunburn s-22 or yakhontz and Persian Gulf if you want to read some hair raising scenarios). This seems to be completely unthinkable to the MSM pundits that a second rate power like Iran could sink our fleet.
If the Iranians inflicted some serious damage on our Navy, closing the Straits of Hormuz would be a foregone conclusion. Ten dollar a gallon gasoline would not be an exaggeration, maybe even $20.
The biggest danger is how we would react to losing our warships in the Gulf. The worse case, would be that a traumatized US would blindly retaliate with nuclear war. If the Straits were closed this might prompt the US to try to seize the Iranian shoreline at least. This will not be that easy — there is mountain range with peaks of 5000 feet elevation just 10 miles from the shoreline. These would have to be occupied to protect shipping in the straits. Mountain fighting is not easy — advantage to the defenders. Recall what happened to the US armies in N. Italy during WWII when they became totally bogged down in the mountain fighting.
The worst case scenarios involves the effectiveness of those Russian antiship missiles — they have never been tested in combat so it is impossible to predict how they will work. But the consequences could be dire indeed. If worse comes to worse, I just hope that the American people will finally wake up and drive AIPAC out of the corridors of power in this country.