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House Panel Dismisses Iran Talks, Considers Time for War
A House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Israel’s security last week quickly devolved into partisan attacks over the Obama administration’s handling of Israeli relations and calls for a more confrontational U.S. approach towards Iran.
A House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee
hearing on Israel’s security last week quickly devolved into partisan
attacks over the Obama administration’s handling of Israeli relations and calls
for a more confrontational U.S. approach towards Iran. For some Committee
members, the question was not whether the U.S. should strike Iran’s nuclear
facilities, but rather when the U.S. should to it.
Representative Michael Turner (R-NY), joined
his colleagues in dismissing the very real possibilities for diplomacy that
still exist, stating, “Many of our diplomatic and economic options
are pretty much exhausted.” Turner asked the witnesses, “At
what point should our conversations begin with the strategic and tactical?”
The Heritage Foundation’s James Phillips testified that the
Obama Administration has “frequently gone out of their way to publicly devalue
prospects for success of a US military strike.” His critique did not
acknowledge the consensus among military leaders and national security officials
in both the U.S. and Israeli, including former Bush Administration officials,
who have publicly warned against military strikes on Iran.
Phillips laid out a plan for dealing with Iran that called
for President Obama to hold more meetings with Israeli Prime Minster Netanyahu,
increase war rhetoric, and set strict conditions limiting on any further
diplomatic efforts with Iran.
Elliot Abrams, a top advisor in the Bush White House who
played an important role in the push for war with Iraq, similarly criticized President Obama and called for a more public campaign by the White House
to demonstrate willingness to use military force. Abrams asserted that Obama
was intentionally distancing itself from Israel to appease Arab allies, a claim
that was rejected as “fundamentally mistaken” by the dissenting witness, Martin
Indyk.
Indyk argued that the robust U.S. military presence
throughout the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan was sending a clear message to
Iran. He defended President Obama by highlighting Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s
declaration last year that U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation is “better now
than he can ever remember”.
Representative Gary Ackerman (D-NY), who will retire at the
end of this Congress, cautioned that Americans must consider what a military
conflict with Iran “would cost in lives, chaos and cash.” He warned, “Anyone
who supposes that a strike on Iran would be surgical, or a brief episode
without severe consequences, is delusional.”
Ackerman
criticized both witnesses and Congressmen for spending too much time
discrediting and attacking the current administration rather than discussing
and solving critical issues in the Middle East. Blaming Obama for instability
in the Middle East, he said “is like blaming Bush for throwing Pluto out of the
list of planets”.
2012-09-28 07:01:32
Source: http://www.niacouncil.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8605
Source:
Idiots. Let Israel handle the Iranian situation. If we start waltzing into another regime change war, it will ruin this country economically and politically. No more US soldier blood for bullshit causes.