Admiral Fallon Is Upset

03/11/2008

Admiral Fallon Is Upset


Paul Munnis


When a person like Admiral Fallon resigns as head of the Mideast Command and retires from our military then you can bet it’s not because he wants to spend the rest of his life fishing for walleye. There is something much more intense behind his resignation and the Administration is quickly putting up a smokescreen to hide it.

That something clearly has to do with the mid-east.

Fallon was the subject of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as at odds with a president eager to go to war with Iran. Titled "The Man Between War and Peace," it described Fallon as a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

The Administration is in denial that a war is being planned. So we don’t really know what the full story is. Yet like all stories it will come out in due time. Likely after Adm. Fallon has retired and he is free to speak what is really on his mind. When he does you can bet it won’t be with sympathy for the Bush Administration nor a celebration of the Bush war policies.

We recall Adm. Fallon as having made several points on nuclear war. One was that we had lived with the threat of nuclear war from a real adversary armed with ICBM’s, who has long-range strategic bombers, and had a military that matched our own. That was Russia. They still have a lot of nuclear weapons and they are still able to hit us when they want to. He asked rhetorically “what if Iran does get a nuclear weapon -- could it be any worse than what we faced with the Cold War against Russia? Would that in and of itself be a reason to go to war with Iran?” Clearly the answer to these questions is “No.”

We must go back to more fundamental questions then that.

Is the Bush Administration doing all that they can to contain Iran? For example, have they exhausted all diplomatic means to avoid war? Again the answer is “No.” Thus a war against Iran would be another unjust and uncalled for war in the mid-east.

Then we ask if the processing of refined uranium is a sufficient reason to attack Iran and to go to war against them? Again the answer is “No.” In fact Iran lacks a nuclear weapons delivery capability and what they do have is not much of a threat. We saw what it was that they provided to Lebanon to use against the Jewish nation of Israel and frankly what they had was underpowered, lacked precision guidance systems, and were little better than harassment bombs designed to intimidate the populace. As strategic weapons they were a bad joke. As delivery systems for nuclear weapons they were inadequate. Since they are not adequate and since they are not a threat to the USA because they are not inter-continental, then there is no case for attacking Iran.

Then there is the matter of the testing of a nuclear bomb. Iran has not even reached that stage yet. They have a long way to go before they are ready to test a nuclear weapon and even have a problem finding a patch of desert to test a nuke in. A quick examination of a map of the mid-east shows Iran to be surrounded.

The real threat to world peace is that the U.S. could precipitate WWIII with an attack on Iran. We can see this clearly from the UN Security Council and the problem that the U.S. has in just trying to increase sanctions against Iran. Neither China nor Russia wants to permit the U.S. to hit Iran too hard -- especially with strangulation sanctions.

Another serious problem is that the Bushies are exhausting our military and sapping its strength. The result is that they have increased the danger to America as a result. It takes strength to stand up to a threat and Bush is weakening our armed forces, destroying our economy, and he has demoralized our nation.

The Iranian government is on a short fuse with it's own people. They barely have support from the people of Iran to rule and our diplomatic mission should be to create a crisis for the Iranian government that requires them to focus on their own nation in a materialistic manner in order to retain power.

We saw the wholesale lies from Bush about this nuclear stuff when we learned that Iran had stopped work on the nuclear weapons way back in 2003. Bush had egg on his face then and he still does. Given the track record of Bush and his Administration we have no reason to trust him concerning Iran. We also need another front in the Mideast like we need a hole in the head.

Our goal in the mid-east must become simple. Disengage in Iraq turning over more and more responsibility to the Iraqis and bringing home our troops. Wrap things up in Afghanistan and bring home those troops. Once our forces are home, clean them up, re-equip them for the new world realities and put together a strategy for containing nations who are acquiring the nuclear arsenals and keep them from getting into a position where they can deploy weapons of mass destruction. We must develop a major diplomatic capability that is capable of providing world leadership in a nuclear era.

The Genie is out of the bottle now and is breeding. Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, China, the U.S., Britain, France, India, these all have nuclear weapons. We should not be attacking Iran we should be using the best and brightest among us to set a diplomatic mission to contain nuclear weapons and to prevent their spread. We should also be giving leadership on the attainment of real peace.

Bush and his Administration are not good government models for these things. That is why they must go, that is why a new Administration must be experienced and capable of taking on the toughest role in the world and succeeding at it.

Admiral Fallon is not a shrinking violet – he is in despair over something that the Bushies are up to and we Americans had better tune in and listen darn carefully. He has raised a red flag and he may be muzzled by national security restrictions. We will have to read his lips for awhile.

Americans and our Congress are not predisposed to yet another war in the middle-east.

For a detailed article by Esquire, just published today, click on this link.