Will Obama Play the War Card?

Republicans already counting the
seats they will pick up this fall should keep in mind
Obama has a big card yet to play.

Should the president declare he has
gone the last mile for a negotiated end to Iran`s
nuclear program and impose the

"crippling" sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be on
an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight
to war.

And should war come, that would be
the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the
House and half a dozen in the Senate.

Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S.
clash with Iran, with him at the president`s side, could
assure his re-election. Last week, Reid whistled through
the Senate, by voice vote, a bill to put us on that
escalator.

Senate bill 2799 would punish any company exporting
gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a
limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of
the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its
homes.

And cutting off a country`s oil or
gas is a proven path to war.

In 1941, the United States froze
Japan`s assets, denying her the funds to pay for the
U.S. oil on which she relied, forcing Tokyo either to
retreat from her empire or seize the only oil in reach,
in the Dutch East Indies.

The only force able to interfere
with a Japanese drive into the East Indies? The U.S.
Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Egypt`s Gamel Abdel Nasser in 1967
threatened to close the Straits of Tiran between the Red
Sea and Gulf of Aqaba to ships going to the Israeli port
of Elath. That would have cut off 95 percent of Israel`s
oil.

Israel response: a pre-emptive war
that destroyed Egypt`s air force and put Israeli troops
at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Straits of Tiran.

Were Reid and colleagues seeking to
strengthen Obama`s negotiating hand?

The opposite is true. The Senate is
trying to force Obama`s hand, box him in, restrict his
freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that
would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a
track to war—a war to deny Iran weapons that the U.S.
Intelligence community said in December 2007 Iran gave
up trying to acquire in 2003.

Sound familiar?

Republican leader Mitch McConnell
has

made clear the Senate is seizing control of the Iran
portfolio. "If
the Obama administration will not take action against
this regime, then Congress must."

U.S. interests would seem to
dictate supporting those elements in Iran who wish to be
rid of the regime and re-engage the West. But if that is
our goal, the Senate bill, and a House version that
passed 412 to 12, seem almost diabolically perverse.

For a cutoff in gas would hammer
Iran`s middle class. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij
militia on their motorbikes would get all they need.
Thus the leaders of the Green Movement who have stood up
to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah oppose
sanctions that inflict suffering on their own people.

Cutting off gas to Iran would cause
many deaths. And the families of the sick, the old, the
weak, the women and the children who die are unlikely to
feel gratitude toward those who killed them.

And despite the hysteria about
Iran`s imminent testing of a bomb, the U.S. intelligence
community still has not changed its finding that Tehran
is not seeking a bomb.

The low-enriched uranium at Natanz,
enough for one test, has neither been moved nor enriched
to weapons grade. Ahmadinejad this week offered to take
the West`s deal and trade it for fuel for its reactor.
Iran`s known nuclear facilities are under U.N. watch.
The number of centrifuges operating at Natanz has fallen
below 4,000. There is speculation they are breaking down
or have been sabotaged.

And if Iran is hell-bent on a bomb,
why has Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair
not revised the 2007 finding and given us the hard
evidence?

U.S. anti-missile ships are moving
into the Gulf. Anti-missile batteries are being deployed
on the Arab shore. Yet, Gen. David Petraeus warned
yesterday that a strike on Iran could stir nationalist
sentiment behind the regime.

Nevertheless, the war drums have
again begun to beat.

Daniel Pipes in a

National Review
Online piece featured by the
Jerusalem Post—"How
to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran"—urges
Obama to make a
"dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him
as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue" by ordering
the U.S. military to attack Iran`s nuclear facilities.

Citing six polls, Pipes says
Americans support an attack today and will
"presumably rally
around the flag" when the bombs fall.

Will Obama cynically yield to
temptation, play the war card and make
"conservatives
swoon," in Pipes` phrase, to save himself and his
party? We shall see.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan
needs

no introduction to
VDARE.COM readers; his book State
of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America, can
be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How
Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost
the World,
reviewed

here by

Paul Craig Roberts.