From the War in Iraq to the Iranian Crisis

During a speech on Tuesday, Barack Obama officially proclaimed the solemn end of the American troops’ “combat mission” in Iraq. The 50,000 remaining men are operating under a “symbolic” heading. He should specify the “changing nature” of the mission of these 50,000 men and reaffirm his intention to complete their withdrawal by 2012.

It is still a great day for Obama, who showed his opposition to the war while serving on the Illinois Senate in 2003. He was one of the few U.S. senators to participate in peace demonstrations. Five years later, when the war became unpopular, the memory of that opposition contributed to his electoral victory almost two years ago.

There was still something a bit mysterious about this war. How did public opinion come to support a war launched without deliberate provocation by the “enemy,” because of a pure, baseless accusation, a suspicion, a belief in a single program development of weapons of mass destruction that ultimately proved non-existent? How could the invasion of a country, without a good and obvious excuse, be debated in the media as a legitimate policy opinion, and finally accepted as a necessary act? These questions are still being debated, not only academically, but politically.

Obama alone, or nearly so, can boast; he is said to have been one of the few American politicians to have seen the light and said no to these aspects.

But now the same mechanism seems to be up and running in the media because of rumors and drumbeats, this time against Iran, if you believe Tony Karon, an editor of Time.com. Karon stressed Friday that last month, sources within the Obama administration told Time magazine that bombing Iranian nuclear facilities “was back on the table.” Karon also refers to remarks made on CNN by former CIA director Admiral Mike Hayden, who said that “inexorable momentum” toward the confrontation is building and the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities is more “viable” for the Obama administration than it was for George W. Bush.

Finally, a very recent investigation by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic Monthly has revived the debate.

Karon told the author he is very influential in the pro-Israeli American circles and has easy access to power in Israel itself.

Goldberg wrote that by next summer Israel will destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities; although the “high” sources in Jerusalem he cites are convinced that Iran will not attack their country when it has a bomb, at the least “they also wave the white flag.”* The message of Israel to Americans, according to Karon, would be: “You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will.”

The infernal machine was switched against Iraq because Bush wanted it to be. Obama himself is immune from such suspicions regarding Iran. The mechanism suggested by Karon is slow and complex in regards to Iran.

We are still anxious to hear what Barack Obama will say on Tuesday, not about Iraq — Iraq and the Middle East being what they are, this is a challenge, but we’ll see — but on the “appearances” in Iran. If he is silent, it will be just as eloquent.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.