Frank Rich gives the Petraeus/Crocker Show the Hook.
Tomorrow, Frank Rich gives the Petraeus/Crocker dog and pony show the hook in favor of some real news. Instead, he went to the documentary movie "Standard Operating Proceedure" about the Bush administration's torture policies.
Not just any movie, but “Standard Operating Procedure,” the new investigatory documentary by Errol Morris, one of our most original filmmakers. It asks the audience not just to revisit the crimes in graphic detail but to confront in tight close-up those who both perpetrated and photographed them. Because Mr. Morris has a complex view of human nature, he arouses a certain sympathy for his subjects, much as he did at times for Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary, in his Vietnam film, “Fog of War.”
More sympathy, actually. Only a few bad apples at the bottom of the chain of command took the fall for Abu Ghraib. No one above the level of staff sergeant went to jail, and no one remotely in proximity to a secretary of defense has been held officially accountable. John Yoo, the author of the notorious 2003 Justice Department memo rationalizing torture, has happily returned to his tenured position as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. So when Mr. Morris brings you face to face with Lynndie England — now a worn, dead-eyed semblance of the exuberant, almost pixie-ish miscreant in the Abu Ghraib snapshots — you’re torn.
Ms. England, who is now on parole, concedes that what she and her cohort did was “unusual and weird and wrong,” but adds that “when we first got there, the example was already set.” That reflection doesn’t absolve her of moral responsibility, but, like much in this film, it forces you to look beyond the fixed images of one of the most documented horror stories of our time.
Yet I must confess that, sitting in MoMA, I kept looking beyond the frame of Mr. Morris’s movie as well. While there’s really no right place to watch “Standard Operating Procedure,” the jarring contrast between the film’s subject and the screening’s grandiosity was a particularly glaring illustration of the huge distance that separates most Americans, and not just Manhattan elites, from the battle lines of our country’s five-year war. If Tom Wolfe was not in the audience to chronicle this cognitive dissonance, he should have been.
Rich goes onto argue that this country has now developed a sense of collective numbness about this war, as though resigned to its failure. Of course, the Bush administration is continuing to defend the McCain Doctrine of perpetual warfare and the occupation of Iraq, and the right-wingers are continuing to put up their vitrol and scaremongering over what might happen in the event of withdrawal. But Rich argues that the debate is over and that we will be forced to withdraw even if John McCain were to win.
He argues that increased majorities in the Democratic Congress, combined with the growing unease of Senators like George Voinovich, will create a veto-proof majorty that even John McCain can't thwart. But if this is the case, then we have to factor a possible invasion of Iran into the scenario. The Bush administration could calculate that given these political dynamics, they may have nothing to lose with an attack on Iran. But right now, there are three obstacles that are preventing the Bush administration from attacking that country:
1. Congress; even the Bush administration, through Rice, has admitted that Kyl/Lieberman, does not amount to an authorization of the use of military force. Look for the Bush administration to use weasel words and find inventive ways to twist the law to justify a bombing of Iran. Or, look for them to build forces to the point where Iran makes a false move and the Bush administration can make them look responsible. But the problem is that if there is an attack on Iran, we may have the votes for impeachment; the most common excuse this Congress has for not getting things does is the lack of votes. So, if Conyers can threaten the President with the impeachment card, then that suggests that support of a bombing of Iran would be out of the question for Congress.
2. Defense Secretary Gates -- he has been a lifelong advocate of better relations with Iran. However, he is wavering at this point, making ugly noises about arms for Sadr coming through Iran. There are hawkish elements within Iran who want nothing better than to lure this country into a conflict that they can't win and clear the field for Iran to become a regional powerhouse.
3. A draft. The biggest difficulty in selling a war with Iran is the possibility of a draft. Right now, we simply don't have the resources based on what we've got; after all, we are a volunteer army, not a drafted army. Our resources are already stretched to the breaking point by Afghanistan and Iraq. But the problem with selling a war with Iran is that a draft would be political suicide -- the American public would shift from resigned apathy to anger and create a public outcry that Congress can't ignore. And Iran has three times the people that Iraq does, along with a disproportionate number of young people.
This is why I suggest that the Bush administration may, instead of actually attacking Iran, is laying the groundwork for John McCain to do so should he win this election. If John McCain wins, he can attack Iran within his first or second year, call the draft to provide the boots on the ground, and rely on weathering the political fallout in time for the 2012 elections, where he would count on the collective belief of this country that we don't change horses in midstream to get reelected. He would pick his own compliant defense secretary, since he would not have to worry about daddy watching over his shoulder like W. does. And he could follow the lead of Republicans for decades and create a Republican-Blue Dog coalition that would lay any legal groundwork necessary.
Another consideration that even the Bush administration understands is international legitimacy -- the problem is that the current British PM, Gordon Brown, is flatly opposed to an attack on Iran. That is another major difference between Iran and Iraq -- Bush was able to use Blair's support and two UN resolutions against Iraq as an excuse to attack Saddam. McCain would need David Cameron to defeat Brown and then turn around and lend his support to an invasion of Iran. Then, he would need to lay the groundwork for more UN sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.
Obamathon
