If Petraeus Won't Shill For War, Bush Will Have To Do

By Cernig

So what happened to neocon stenographer Sarah Baxter's claim in the London Times that Petraeus would confirm Iranian forces were directly involved in recent battles in Basra? There was no such confirmation forthcoming. Yet this story and another equally false claim from the equally neocon-friendly Daily Telegraph that Petraeus would signal a move to strike back at Iran for its alleged meddling got considerable neoconservative attention here in the US in the days before Petraeus' testimony. As I said at the time, it was all about raising the ground level of discussion about Iran so that, whatever Petraeus actually said, it could be used to bang the war drums a bit harder.

The General, however, failed to deliver more than the tiniest bit of ammunition for their fevered dreams of more war. In his testimony, he confined himself to talk of Special Groups aided by Iran and although he used language like ""nefarious activities" and "malign influence" he didn't add any new details to the pot at all. He won't even help the Al Qaeda in Iran narrative along.

Even David Ignatius, although giving it a heroic try, couldn't find any new and compelling causus belli. But he did signal the preferred rightwing narrative - that:

With al-Qaeda on the run in Iraq, the Iranian threat has become the rationale for the mission, and also the explanation for our shortcomings. The Iranians are the reason we're bogged down in Iraq, and also the reason we can't pull out our troops. The mullahs in Tehran loom over the Iraq battlefield like a giant "Catch-22."

And that:

Fighting a war against Iran is a bad idea. But fighting a proxy war against them in Iraq, where many of our key allies are manipulated by Iranian networks of influence, may be even worse...A U.S.-Iranian dialogue is a necessary condition for future stability in the Middle East. But the wrong deal, negotiated by a weak America with a cocky Iran that thinks it's on a roll, would be a disaster

The War party's notion of reversing who feels "cocky" always involves a bigger hammer - if fighting a proxy war is worse than a real war then there better be a real war, quick. Diplomacy only comes afterwards. Even if the notion that a proxy war is actually worse than a full-on one using tanks, bombs, ships and planes is simply ludicrous even on the basis of casualty arithmetic, to say nothing of the effect an open war would have in the region.

So, if St. Pet won't deliver, then the next best thing - and I mean that literally, for the Right worships Petraeus now far more universally than it does Dubya or McCain - is George W. Bush, president. McClatchy reports:

WASHINGTON — President Bush warned Iran on Thursday that the United States will "act to protect our interests," as the White House heightened its rhetorical attacks on Tehran for allegedly shipping sophisticated roadside bombs to Iraq and supporting Shiite Muslim militias there.

"The regime in Tehran has a choice to make," Bush said. It can enjoy close ties with its neighbor or continue "to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups, which are terrorizing the Iraqi people and turning them against Iran ."

"If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners," Bush said at a White House appearance to announce his plans for Iraq in the months ahead.

...Bush said that Iraq is the "convergence point for two of the greatest threats" to the United States : al Qaida and Iran . He failed to note, however, that al Qaida, a fundamentalist Sunni group, and Iran , run by radical Shiite clerics, are themselves bitter enemies. Nor did he note that U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and his Dawa Party have a longstanding relationship with Iran , as does the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq , the largest political party in Iraq's parliament.

Bush also neglected to mention that the cease-fire between Iraqi security forces and the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr was brokered in part by the commander of the Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that the U.S. blames for supporting international terrorist groups and attacks on American soldiers in Iraq .

And, in two days of congressional testimony this week, Bush's senior advisers said there are limits to Iranian influence in Iraq , due to a long history of enmity, including the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

"What we're looking at here are some clear limits on how far the Iranians can press in Iraq before they get a significant backlash from the Iraqis themselves," U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said Thursday.

As Reidar Visser notes: "What Crocker failed to mention was that his own administration’s main Shiite partner in Iraq [ISCI] is the only sizeable Shiite party that fought on the Iranian side." That in turn led our own Eric Martin to write that "the Bush administration places a greater emphasis on the prospect of securing permanent military bases and beneficial terms for foreign investment in the oil sector (which ISCI and the Kurds appear willing to dangle) than it does for limiting Iran's influence". Because limiting Iran's influence would be better served by backing the Sadrists, who are in Iran's orbit but not wholly owned by them, than it would by backing Iran's Dawa and ISCI proxies.

That, then, seems to be the state of play at the moment. The Bush administration and its Wormtongue think-tank advisors are split between the Faster Please faction and the All About The Oil Money faction. Both see advantages to continuing to level accusations at Iran and describing it as one pole of a new Axis of Evil along with Al Qaeda. One wants war just because, the other wants war if it means arms trade and oil bourse profits. Which one will win out in the end has yet to be decided - and it's a feud that is perpetuated in John McCain's duelling foreign policy advisory camps. Re-electing a Republican to the White House means that the faction feud between moderate and hardline zealots will continue unabated, perhaps for years, and thus make any resolution of the twin problems of the Iraq occupation and relations with Iran intractable and unsolvable. Meanwhile, the chances of a cataclysmically fatal error in conducting either will only increase.

Update

Phil Carter efficiently sums up what's wrong with the Bush picture:

The president's strategic picture of the war on terrorism is like a photo negative -- the exact opposite of reality. Bush argues that "Iraq is the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century." But that's not really accurate -- Iraq is the cause and the accelerant of these threats to America, the main reason we are losing the global fight for hearts and minds.

And right on cue, the Usual Suspects clamor for Waaagh!

On his radio show this morning, Bill Bennett told the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol — who had a personal meeting with President Bush yesterday — that a “conclusion” he drew was that the hearing was “less an argument for getting out of Iraq than going into Iran.” After suggesting that Iran may “have to pay some price at some point on their own soil,” Kristol said that President Bush authorizing an attack of some kind before he leaves office is not “out of the question”:

BENNETT: Do you think there’s any chance that, and we won’t ask you to reveal anything confidential, do you think there’s any chance that we might take some action against some aspect of the Ira…against Iran, let’s put it that way, before the president leaves office?

KRISTOL: We didn’t really talk about that, in all honesty, directly. I don’t think it’s out of the question. I think people are overdoing how much of a lame duck the president is.

Appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show last night, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said that he wished the Bush administration would tell the Iranians that “unless they stop it, we’re going to take action.” “I’m not talking about all out war,” added Lieberman before saying, “they ought to believe that we’re going to hit those training camps.”