Democrats, war with Iran and Republicans for a pro-peace third party

"Don't Mugwump that war, my friend..."

Gareth Porter, who has provided some of the best commentary on the diplomacy and the politics of the Iraq War, takes a lot at the question, Does Hillary Support War with Iran? Huffington Post 10/15/07.

He takes a close look at Clinton's triangulating on threatening war with Iran, voting for the prowar Kyl-Lieberman resolution but also supporting the Webb amendment banning Bush from starting a war with Iran without Congressional approval. It's not splitting hairs to observe, as Porter does, that "calling for a vote on the issue is not an indication that Clinton is opposed to war with Iran".

He also reminds us that the information available to us publicly at this moment in time strongly indicates that Cheney and Bush intend to launch a high-risk and completely unnecessary war against Iran.

But we now have Sy Hersh's most recent report in The New Yorker, that there has been "a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning" on Iran by the Bush administration. That comes on the heels of a reliable report in August that Cheney had been pushing for a limited strike on bases in Iran that would be aimed at provoking an Iranian response and my own analysis that Lieberman was coordinating his own pro-war amendment in July with the U.S. military command production propaganda supporting war with Iran.

Clinton's failure to utter the slightest protest in the face of a real threat of war must be taken as prima facie evidence that Clinton has no fundamental disagreement with war against Iran. Unless the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa send a signal that they will not accept a Democratic candidate who is not ready to stand up against war with Iran, the chances of preventing such a war recede to the vanishing point. (my emphasis)

I'd like to think the bolded statement is too harsh a judgment. But I can't argue that it is. This is not just a marginal positioning issue. War with Iran would almost certainly be a crime in international law (which is a positive thing to OxyContin Republicans, we have to remember) and would compound the strategic disaster we know as the Iraq War. It's a time for leaders to take clear stands on an Iran War, not to triangulate and comma-dance around it.

Sadly, Porter is also correct that neither John Edwards nor Barack Obama have taken a clear stand in opposition to expanding the war to Iran, either:

Unfortunately, neither Edwards nor Obama have done anything to indicate that they will actively oppose war against Iran either. The only hope for reversing the present momentum for war is that Democratic voters will begin a massive shift to a candidate who has been straightforward in opposing war with Iran from the beginning. Bill Richardson declared in an op-ed last February, "Saber-rattling is not a good way to get the Iranians to cooperate. But it is a good way to start a new war - a war that would be a disaster for the Middle East, for the United States and for the world."

That is the position the voters must rally around decisively in the primary states. And there is no time for dallying over candidates based on other issues and qualifications. The anti-Iran war shift has to happen right now. (my emphasis)

I'm certainly sympathetic to the sentiment.

Of the three major candidates, I've been more favorable to Edwards, and I've given up on Al Gore entering the race. Edwards has been willing to address the problems of poverty and restricted opportunity for working people in America straightforwardly. Of the three, he looks to be the most pro-labor and the most willing to pursue policies aimed at reversing some of the results of the political class warfare the Republicans have waged on behalf of the most wealthy, with notable effectiveness for the last seven years.

But their reticence on expanding the Iraq War into Iran makes me look much more favorably on Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich as primary candidates. Especially since Dodd just came out forthrightly with a bid to stop the Cheney-Bush drive to give telecoms retroactive immunity for criminal actions in violation of laws on surveillance.

This brings up a situation where Ron Paul could wind up putting Mitt Romney or Benito Giuliani in the White House with a third-party candidacy. If Cheney launches his war on Iran within the next few months and the Democratic nominee winds up supporting it, that won't win them any Republican-leaning votes. No matter how jingoistic Democrats they try to make their support for an Iran War sound, the Republicans will accuse them of being traitors for half-heartedly supporting it, or for not demanding that MoveOn.org supporters be placed in concentration camps, or whatever.

But it will give a steroid injection to Ron Paul's "a plague on both your houses" posture accusing both major parties of being prowar. That phrase, "a plague on both your houses," was one that Franklin Roosevelt once used while trying to arbitrate some intractable labor-management standoff during his Presidency. It inspired CIO leader John L. Lewis in perhaps his most famous speech, where he rolled out his trademark Biblical purple prose to declare sadly, "Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows."

So will the American public and our soldiers in the Middle East if that scenario comes to pass. Enough antiwar voters will be disgusted enough to be tempted to either stay home or vote for Ron Paul on a third-party ticket. The fundis would be unlikely to support him, because Paul is not sufficiently anti-choice on abortion for their taste, he criticizes "Christian Zionism" and he's opposed to the fundis' sacred crusade in Iraq (and maybe soon to be Iraq-Iran).

So he want pull many Republican base voters. But he could pull some Democratic-leaning voters, even some hardcore Dem base voters. And he could also get enough publicity with his accusations that the Republicans and Democrats were equally bad on the Iraq(-Iran) War that some Dem-leaning independents might decide to vote for the Reps because they think there's no foreign policy differences between the two parties but are also worried that Democrats might want to give some of their tax money to "undeserving" people of color who they prefer to see suffer for their "bad choices".

Far-fetched? Widening the war to Iran could throw a huge monkey-wrench into Presidential politics. And check out this report by Jose Antonio Vargas, The Disciples of Ron Paul, Spreading the Word in N.H. Washington Post 10/15/07:

In a state where Patrick Buchanan upset Bob Dole, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, more than a decade ago, anything is possible, says Andrew Smith, a pollster and director of the University of New Hampshire's Survey Center. As of last November, 26 percent of New Hampshire's electorate were registered Democrats and 30 percent were Republicans. But the biggest block of voters - 44 percent - were undeclared. Forty percent to 45 percent of those, Smith says, leaned Democrat and 25 percent to 30 percent Republican.

But whatever their backgrounds, the Paulites have catapulted a Republican candidate often described "eccentric," "unknown" and a "long shot" into a spotlight. Paul may be the candidate who has tapped into that independent and frustrated portion of the electorate that in every race is looking for a third way. ...

A University of New Hampshire poll last month showed Paul at 4 percent in the state. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, also from last month, had him at 3 percent. "The other campaigns aren't worried that he'd win the primary. They just don't know who his supporters are and whose support he's taking away," Smith adds. "His poll numbers aren't high now, but it's only October. And they could see him getting 10 percent of the vote here. If you get 10 percent of the vote in a crowded field, well, you might finish third." (my emphasis)

The corporate Republicans and the theocrats can block Robert Welch Ron Paul from getting the nomination. But a third- or second-place finish in New Hampshire could give him just enough gas to make a third-party run in the fall more credible.

And don't think the Republicans won't be willing to channel funds to a Ron Paul third party campaign if they think it has the potential to kick the electoral votes of one or two big states to the Republicans. If Blackwater types can donate to the Green Party for that purpose, they can donate a Loon-for-President third party effort, too.

Expanding the war to Iran, with the Democratic candidate supporting the war but trying to mugwump enough to not totally alienate the base, could provide an ideal opening. (Mugwump = straddling the fence)

Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, iraq war, iran war, john edwards, mugwump, ron paul