Bush: No Tax Cut for Corporations

Robin Wright writes in The Washington Post: "Fourteen months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered to talk to Iran, the failure of carrot-and-stick diplomacy to block Tehran's nuclear and regional ambitions is producing a new drumbeat for bolder action, including the possible use of force.

"The emerging debate -- evident in an array of new reports, conferences and commentaries -- is still in the early stages, but some of the language urging the Bush administration to be more aggressive during its final 17 months is reminiscent of arguments from think tanks and commentators that shaped the case for invading Iraq.

"'A lot of people were willing to give diplomacy a chance, but at some point there have to be results,' said Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, an advocate of the Iraq war. . . .

"Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates are committed to economic sanctions and pressure through the United Nations. But proponents of tougher policy reflect the views of a small part of the Bush administration open to military options if Iran does not suspend a uranium-enrichment program that can be subverted for a nuclear bomb.

"The drumbeats are also louder because of Iraq. . . .

"'Discussions about attacking Iran began with the nuclear issue, but it has now become a silver bullet to also deal with Iran's activities with Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, and even to provoke a process of regime change,' said Augustus Richard Norton, a retired Army colonel now at Boston University.

"A possible timetable has emerged as well. 'The consensus I'm hearing is to give the [U.N.] Security Council process more time but not unlimited time, and, at some point in the spring of 2008, there has to be a good hard look at whether that process should continue and whether other options should then be considered,' said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert for the Congressional Research Service."

Here are some of the examples Wright provides of the drumbeat: Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute; Kori Schake in the Hoover Institution's Policy Review; the Heritage Foundation Web site and Norman Podhoretz in Commentary.

The article does not include any quotes from the wide range of experts -- essentially, almost everyone who's not a neoconservative -- who believe a U.S. attack on Iran would backfire even more spectacularly than the Iraq war has. Such an attack, those experts say, could set off a wave of terrorist attacks here while further radicalizing the Iranian leadership, rendering the Middle East even more chaotic, and making the U.S. even more of an international pariah.

For contrast, consider this startling blog post for TPM Cafe by the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, Anne-Marie Slaughter: "Here is my nightmare. The Cheneyites succeed in creating a situation in which Bush does decide to bomb Iran. Iran retaliates, as they openly threaten to do, with terrorist attacks against us on U.S. soil. That tilts the election. I can imagine a Karl Rove political calculation that would buttress a Cheney-Addington national security calculation, probably with Eliot Abrams' support.

"This scenario is one that any Democrat, of any type, and any moderate Republican . . . should be taking seriously and fighting against."

Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum puts Slaughter's comment in context: "Let me get this straight. Anne-Marie Slaughter, one of the most accommodating, serious, centrist, liberal foreign policy players on the planet, has just said that she thinks it's entirely possible that the Bush administration will launch a foreign war next year in order to help the Republican Party win an election. . . . [T]he Bush administration is now so widely viewed as unhinged and malignant that even traditionally serious(TM) people like Anne-Marie Slaughter think nothing of suggesting that they might well start a war with Iran for purely partisan gain. I really can't think of any past administration that would have provoked this kind of reaction from someone of AMS's stature. Journalists should take note."