Dennis Ross, just retired as President Barack Obama’s top adviser on the Middle East, warned yesterday that Obama means what he says when he declares that the White House isn’t ruling out military action against Tehran. Though other, senior U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have repeatedly stressed that war against Iran could have unpredictable and dangerous results, Ross said Obama is serious about using force to prevent Iran from acquiring a military nuclear capability.
The problem is, I think, that President Obama makes war more likely and not less likely by his policy of retreating before Iran's bluster and appearing as if he won't fight. My hunch is that if Iran had any lingering notions that we will stand up to them, the debacle of our non-response to losing an advanced drone to the Iranians ended those doubts.
I think President Obama remains a domestic president determined to create America as a European-style social democracy. This isn't communism. But it is a socialist tinged democracy with far greater federal control of our lives with far higher taxing and spending. We're lucky that we are seriously thinking of this path just as the Europeans on point run into the ambush of reality that you can't spend other people's money forever. The question is are we lucky enough.
But in his focus on domestic policies, foreign affairs are just a supporting thought. I think he does what he needs to do to avoid rocking the boat and risking his domestic initiatives. So he orders an escalation in Afghanistan that still had support as the "good war." And he continued the Bush path on Iraq until he could safely get off without risking being blamed for a loss in a war already won. And his homeland defense policies continue the policies that his rabid supporters insisted "shredded" our Constitution when Bush did them.
The problem is, you can retreat for a while and it looks like peace because nobody is shooting at you. But eventually, your enemies pursue and catch up. And then you find yourself at war but just farther back from where you started. And your enemies are emboldened because they think they are winning, since they are moving forward. If they can explain how a small Iran can push the giant America back by believing Allah is on their side, all the better.
So we'll have neither peace nor honor. If Iran pushes us too far because they believe they can (and indeed, must), President Obama's domestic agenda won't survive a major foreign policy defeat. So President Obama will fight. I just hope that our military has the tools to survive a nuclear Iran suddenly breaking out of their pre-weapons stage, and making a last-minute American resolve to defeat Iran a realistic prospect.
