As Obama heads squarely into the nomination, my thoughts have turned to the general election. Given the complete lack of intellectual honesty of the Bush administration, and its irrational focus of seeing every problem in the Middle East as a nail to be pounded down, I have been wondering about the impact an attack on Iran might have on the general election. I pose this more to get insight from the varied and informed voices on the KOS.
We have heard, and been threatened with, impending attack on Iran for quite a while now. Supposedly Admiral Fallon was forced to resign over his unwillingness to exercise military strikes. Seymour Hersh has written about it. Pundits have debated every which way about it. Mc"Cane" made a song about it. Clinton favors full scale obliteration.
I have been unable to find any recent polling on this question, that last being November of 2007, when slightly more than half of Americans favored military action against Iran.
There is considerable division about when a strike on Iran should take place – if at all. Twenty-eight percent believe the U.S. should wait to strike until after the next president is in office while 23% would favor a strike before the end of President Bush’s term. Another 29% said the U.S. should not attack Iran, and 20% were unsure. The view that Iran should not be attacked by the U.S. is strongest among Democrats (37%) and independents, but fewer than half as many Republicans (15%) feel the same. But Republicans are also more likely to be uncertain on the issue (28%). - From Zogby
Around the same time, two thirds of Israelis were against military strikes on Iran.
There has been persistent, trumped up evidence of Iranian evil intent in its Nuclear program and its supplying weapons to Iraqi militias (a quick note that there is plenty more reporting indicating the evidence is being dummied up).
Recently the chatter of attacks on Iran has again increased, as reported here on the KOS, and in these thoughts from the Mirror on America.
I do not doubt that the Administration would attack Iran. However, I do believe short of something much more lethal and dramatic than a speedboat closing on a US cruiser, Americans will not buy another conflict. They certainly have not bitten on any of the bait being paraded by the administration yet. Also given the administrations reverse midas touch (the charmin touch maybe), one wonders if any limited strike would accomplish anything other than driving oil prices through the roof, which could not be helpful to McCain, even with a 100 year gas tax holiday. The administrations bellicose rhetoric has had seemingly counterproductive effects, by empowering Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas. It is hard to imagine that a US attack would not further empower these regional players.
I have read here that there are contingency plans to delay the election in the face of an domestic terrorist attack. I again think that idea would be an impossible sell short of a catastrophic attack that in some way paralyzed the US.
In my theoretical musings, such a stupid attack would seem likely to backfire, and as always, backfire on the party who would initiate it. However, maybe I am missing something. So I open this thread to other Kossacks to see what they have to say.