Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran

By Tony Karon

".......And it’s from that point that we must begin our discussion on Iran, and the media’s role in preparing the American public for another disastrous war of choice. The “necessity” in the American public mind to go to war in Iraq was established through the mass media — a failure for which there has been precious little accounting. But that failure runs far deeper than is typically acknowledged even by critics: It was not simply a case of the media failing to properly and critically interrogate the spurious claims by the Administration of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction capability. Sure, even the likes of France and Germany suspected that Saddam may, in fact, have still had a few piles of chemical munitions left over from the Iran-Iraq war. The point, however, is that they did not see these as justifying a war. They recognized from the outset that invading Iraq would cause more problems than it would solve.

The more important failure of the U.S. media, then, is its failure to question the basic proposition that if Iraq had, indeed, had unconventional weapons, then an invasion and occupation of that country was a wise and prudent course of action......

The very same crew of neocons and liberal hawks and the Israeli political establishment and its allies in Washington, are goading America to attack Iran. They insist Iran is going hell for leather to acquire nuclear weapons, and allowing it to do so represents a mortal threat to the West, Arab moderates and Israel. And just when a convenient excuse was needed for the U.S. failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, wouldn’t you know it, it’s those darn Iranians “interfering”. Don’t even think about discussing, what, are you Neville Chamberlain or something? Don’t you know it’s 1938 all over again?.......

The drumbeat for war against Iran is actually more subtle than it was in the case of Iraq: The Administration denies it wants war and insists it seeks a “diplomatic solution” to the standoff over the demand that Iran cease uranium enrichment. But by “diplomatic solution,” the Administration and its allies simply mean an Iranian surrender to U.S. terms as a result of non-military pressures. There’s no room to question, here, the basic assumption: (a) that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons; (b) that, as Senator John McCain put it, “the only thing worse than going to war with Iran is an Iran with nuclear weapons.”......

.....The mythology last time around was that invading Iraq would transform the Middle East in a healthy way; this time it is that a “surgical strike” taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities or Revolutionary Guard facilities would settle the matter. Hardly. Iran would respond in an asymmetrical fashion, that would cost many thousands of American lives in Iraq and elswhere over the next decade, might disrupt world oil supplies and more. Together with the Iraq misadventure, it would ensure that the Bush Administration leaves a legacy that might be a latterday equivalent of the Hundred Years War between England and France; an open-ended conflict with the population of most of the Muslim world that the U.S. can’t really win.......

At this stage, the U.S. media corps that facilitated the Iraq catastrophe ought to be asking the question, can the Bush Administration do any worse than it has already done in plunging the Middle East into bloody chaos and in destroying countless American and Arab lives — and doing irreversible damage to U.S. interests across the planet. The answer, of course, is yes, but only if the U.S. media once again enables it. "