{"id":1548,"date":"2010-02-03T12:30:39","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T20:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2010-02-03T12:30:39","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T20:30:39","slug":"the-neocon-plan-to-save-obamas-presidency-bomb-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1548","title":{"rendered":"The NeoCon Plan To Save Obama’s Presidency: Bomb Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you weren’t already repulsed by the rampant cynicism and callousness of the uber-right in America, then an article just published in the National Review should do the trick.<\/p>\n

Notorious NeoCon, Daniel Pipes, penned a column<\/a> that purports to be offering President Obama advice on how to improve his favorability ratings: Bomb Iran!<\/p>\n

The notion that any president should order military engagement for the purpose of shoring up polling numbers can only be acceptable to far-right vultures like Pipes. But Pipes is serious about this. The article is not titled “How to eliminate the Iranian Nuclear Threat.”<\/em> It is titled “How to Save the Obama Presidency.”<\/em> He even cited as an example the polling bump George W. Bush got after 9\/11:<\/p>\n

“Just as 9\/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This advice from Pipes could not be more wrong, both morally and strategically. On the moral scale, Pipes is suggesting that the President put the lives of American troops at risk for political gain. He argues that this would be “a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him.”<\/em> Why Pipes thinks that that is an appropriate justification for war, he never adequately explains.<\/p>\n

But Pipes is also wrong from a strategic standpoint. He asserts that such an attack “would require few ‘boots on the ground’ and entail relatively few casualties.”<\/em> This shallow assessment ignores the obvious lessons of past military debacles in the region. It is particularly surprising given that Pipes himself admitted that he had misread the risks associated with the war in Iraq. In his article<\/a> in April of 2003, he belittled admonitions from regional experts that the invasion of Iraq would exacerbate tensions, escalate terrorism, and aid the recruiting efforts of Al Qaeda. He dismissed those warnings saying, “Actually, the precise opposite is more likely to happen.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Pipes predicted few casualties in Iraq as well. He also bought in to the myth that the war would be short, would reduce terrorism, would produce stability, and that the Iraqis would greet us with candy and flowers. We all know now that the experts were right and Pipes was grievously wrong, as he himself admitted three years later in an update to his original article.<\/p>\n

Will we have to wait another three years for Pipes to confess that his fatally flawed judgment failed him again? It certainly hasn’t stopped him from making a similarly erroneous assessment with regard to Iran. And this time he wraps it in a grotesquely political cloak to conceal his true intentions.<\/p>\n

Pipes freely admits that he has no interest in seeing Obama’s popularity rise. So the suggestion to bomb Iran is not really a gesture of support for the Commander in Chief. It is more likely an expression of Pipes’ own obsession with hostility, and his thirst for blood. It is evidence of his antipathy for the people of the Middle East. And it is affirmation of his inability to form unbiased conclusions on serious matters like war.<\/p>\n

For this he would sacrifice American and Iranian lives; he would promote the cause of jihadists; he would destroy the nascent democracy movement in Iran; and he would commit our nation to a third battlefront in a part of the world that is already unstable and distrustful of our motives. He is advising nothing less than a Crusade. And we know what happened the last time we had one of those.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you weren’t already repulsed by the rampant cynicism and callousness of the uber-right in America, then an article just published in the National Review should do the trick. Notorious NeoCon, Daniel Pipes, penned a column that purports to be offering President Obama advice on how to improve his favorability ratings: Bomb Iran! The notion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,16],"tags":[183,715,716,491],"class_list":["post-1548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-wankery","tag-barack-obama","tag-daniel-pipes","tag-iran","tag-national-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-oY","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":942,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=942","url_meta":{"origin":1548,"position":0},"title":"John McCain: The Opacity Of NOPE!","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/9\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In this historic election year, the people have a choice of unprecedented clarity. 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