Bush won't seek a vote for attacking Iran. It will not take a resolution from Congress to start a war with Iran; it will just take an executive order to launch some cruise missiles and deploy some bombers. Speaking only for myself, I am not looking to Congress now for leadership. I am looking to organize enough direct pressure from the American people to make Congress follow us.
Our political class, by and large, has lacked the courage to advocate for Peace with Iran. I do not consider favoring talks with Iran to be advocating for Peace, not if every other word uttered by those who favor such talks further demonizes that nation and its current leadership and focuses ONLY on what Iran needs to do to become an acceptable member of the international community. I do not consider that real leadership. For now I will settle for members of Congress ceasing being part of the problem pushing us to fight with Iran.
Too many members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, actively play up or into saber rattling against Iran. That is what has to stop immediately. That is a political problem in a broad sense, not a legislative problem per se. What peace activists failed to do enough of last time was counter the climate of fear, fed by saber rattling about our "enemies”, that laid the groundwork for Democrats to let the Iraq war to happen. A toxic cocktail of fear and derision was served up to the public in the build up to the Iraq war that actually preceded the IWR vote in 2002.
The same is being tried toward Iran right now. It surely sets the stage for an American attack on Iran. We need to unset that stage, immediately. We need to launch a PR campaign for diplomacy and coexistence with Iran. The public is our intended audience now, not Congress. If we reach the public we will affect Congress, including many Republicans now serving there who, unlike Bush and Cheney, do plan to run of office again some day. We will affect Republican Party candidates who are running for President as well, because to an extent they need to be sensitive to public opinion now in order to have a chance of winning. And yes we need to affect those Democrats running for President who have not been consistent enough about their own firm commitment to a peaceful resolution of our issues with Iran also.
My goal is to make half the Republicans in Congress call Bush urgently on private lines telling him NOT to attack Iran. I want our political class across the board to be forced to become peace panderers, competing with each other to say that they alone can do the best job of keeping the United States OUT of future conflicts in the Middle East. I want every Presidential candidate to be floating the names of specific special envoys that they intend to dispatch to Tehran as soon as they take office. I want ten stories in the media discussing the disastrous spiral of conflict that an attack on Iran would likely set off for each one that speculates on where the IED's blowing up inside Iraq are being manufactured. I want We the People to click the tuner and change this war channel.
This is not beyond our ability if we try. The American people want no further wars, we need to deflate the fear mongering, and sound a clear warning over the real threat now facing America; another decade of Neocon sponsored wars. Our time to shine is now. The country we save may be our own. Please join with America’s war veterans who oppose the approaching war with Iran. Go to
http://www.stopiranwar.com/ to help General Wes Clark and VoteVets.org fight the surge to insanity that is pushing us into the next war: Stop Iran War. Time for Peace is running out.
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