Iran...What should the Democrats do?

For starters what should the Democrats NOT do? To answer that question we have to go no further than the DLC's Marshall Wittmann. As usual he supports the messianic madman in the White House.

The Moose continues to be struck by the state of shock on the left about the reports on Pentagon planning to take out the Iranian nukes. According to the lefties, we cannot even pursue covert regime change in Teheran until there is "regime change" in Washington.

Here is some breaking news for these lefties - we have only one President at a time. And the new President will not be inaugurated until January, 2009. The period between now and then allows for the Iranians to go nuclear.

Sorry more Bull than Moose, Iran is at least 10 years away from a nuclear weapon and there is no reason to believe that this administration and it's cultists in the Republican controlled congress can make the right call which brings us to what the Democrats SHOULD DO. John Aravosis has the right idea.

1. George Bush is the wrong man to be launching yet another war.

The same president who made a disaster out of the Iraq war now wants to launch another war with Iraq's neighbor, Iran. Bush has already proven he is incompetent at running an effective war. America simply cannot afford another rash Bush misadventure.

2) Slow down, we've got ten years.

America's intelligence community estimates that Iran is still ten years away from building a nuclear weapon. There is no reason we need to prepare for war in the next few months, or even before Bush's term runs out in 2008. Give diplomacy and the international community a chance. We've got years, not months.

3) Since we have ten years, we can at the very least wait seven months until the congressional elections this fall.

America needs a Congress that is going to look into Bush's claims about Iran's nuclear program and determine if those claims are even credible. The Republican-controled Congress has already shown that it is unwilling to provide any oversight on any matters involving the Bush administration. We need someone who isn't on George Bush's team to use their subpoena power to get administration officials under oath, review the evidence, and see if Bush is right this time around. That someone is a Democratically-controled Congress.

4) It is ridiculous to consider any congressional resolution on Iran until after the fall elections.

George Bush proved with Iraq that he has no intention of using diplomacy to avoid war. His first option is always to declare war, then ask questions later. It would be foolhardy and naive not to think that Bush would take any congressional Iran resolution and immediately use it to declare war prematurely. The resolution comes ONLY after we know the intelligence is right, that Bush is telling the truth, that we have exhausted ALL other options to avoid war.

And finally, NO resolution is considered until Congress has verified that our military has been given a real plan for victory and sufficien resources to achieve it. Such a verification will NEVER happen under a Republican Congress - they simply cannot politically oversee their own president. It can only happen with a Congress run by the other political party - and that means a Democratic Congress.

5) There is no reason we need to even go to war until Bush has left office.

George Bush has proven that he is unable to wage war effectively. We will have new presidential elections in 2008, a good eight years before Iran will have nukes according to our best estimates. We should wait until Bush leaves office before considering any possible military action against Iran. There is simply no reason to rush things and permit this administration to prove its incompetence in foreign and military policy once again.

6) Bush is the not the president we want exercising the nuclear option.

There are credible news reports that President Bush isn't just considering using nuclear weapons against Iran, but that he is strongly leaning towards that option. Regardless of one's opinion on such an option, George Bush has already proven that he is not competent to run a conventional war. It would be insane to trust him to run a nuclear war.

7) Bush either lied to us, or was unable to determine the truth, about Iraq's WMD program (which we now know didn't exist). Why should we believe claims from the same president and same intelligence agencies about Iran's WMD program? We need more than President Bush's assurances.

8) What military and what money are we going to use to launch a war against Iran?

Our troops are stuck in Iraq, and Bush says he refuses to withdraw them. So what troops are we going to use to invade Iran? And is America truly prepared to fight 3 wars at the same time? That has never been US military policy, at least not in the past several decades, to be able to fight a three-front war. Our military simply is not made to fight three wars simultaneously.

Just as importantly, Iraq has cost us over $300 billion, and the estimates of the total cost of the Iraq war is in the trillions. George Bush inherited a budget surplus when he came to office, he has now put the budget into a massive deficit. We simply no longer have the money, so how is Bush going to finance a massive invasion of Iran?

Incompetence comes at a cost. George Bush has run our military into the ground our and bankrupted our government, and now wants us to give him permission to do it all over again?

9) Why is it always us?

If Iran is such a threat, then why not let the Europeans and the Russians and the Chinese take care of it? Clearly none of those countries wants a nuclear Iran on their back porch. So why is it always America that has to give our money, our soldiers' lives, and our goodwill?

An LA Times poll indicates that the American people agree that Bush is not the one to make the call.

In a telling reflection of Bush's erosion in public support, 54% said they did not trust him to "make the right decision about whether we should go to war with Iran," while 42% of respondents said they trusted him to do so.

That was a reversal of public sentiment since 2003, on the eve of Bush's decision to invade Iraq, when 55% of respondents said they trusted him to make the right decision over whether to go to war.