Why We Need To Talk About Iran

Mar 8, 2007

By Jon Soltz s
oltz@votevets.org

Our organization, www.votevets.org, is in a fight to hold politicians accountable for flawed military strategies and blatant disregard for veterans’ issues.

We owe the success of our Body Armor ad to the amazing response it received on the blogs.

What I really want to focus on today, is the launch of a joint initiative between VoteVets.org and Ret. General Clark’s WesPAC: StopIranWar.com. We’ve produced a series of Video Blogs that examine how a war with Iran will affect U.S. Security, our troops in Iraq, and the overall stability of the Middle East.

The media spotlight on Iraq lately has featured the escalation as a central issue, when the more pertinent question we should be asking is about the looming confrontation with Iran. The push to send more troops into Iraq is directly related to what has become a proxy war with Iran. The administration is bolstering our military presence in Iraq in a vain attempt to create temporary security in the area, to create military leverage with Iran.

Anyone who’s fought in Iraq or studied the conflict at all has known, since the invasion, that Iranian involvement has increased inside Iraq. What we want the American public to understand is that by removing Saddam Hussein's regime, the U.S. administration has enabled Tehran to grow their influence in Iraq. We should be holding the Bush administration accountable for strengthening Iran, inside of Iraq.

Instead of allowing the administration to control the debate on why we should fight Iran, we should be grilling them about how their failed policies are responsible for the fact that Iran poses a larger threat now than it did 6 years ago. We should not only be asking why we should or shouldn't attack Iran, but even more importantly, why has the administration waited six years to respond to this issue?

Wesley Clark: StopIranWar.com

StopIranWar.com

All Americans want to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons and interfering on the ground inside Iraq. Yet President Bush’s saber rattling gives the US little additional leverage to engage and dissuade Iran, and, more than likely, simply accelerates a dangerous slide into war. The United States can do better than this.

Whatever the pace of Iran’s nuclear efforts, in the give and take of the Administration’s rhetoric and accusations, we are approaching the last moments to head off looming conflict.

Cannot the world’s most powerful nation deign speak to the resentful and scheming regional power that is Iran? Can we not speak of the interests of others, work to establish a sustained dialogue, and seek to benefit the people of Iran and the region? Could not such a dialogue, properly conducted, begin a process that could, over time, help realign hardened attitudes and polarizing views within the region? And isn’t it easier to undertake such a dialogue now, before more die, and more martyrs are created to feed extremist passions?

Please join the Iraq War veterans at VoteVets.org and me and sign the petition to President Bush today. Military force against Iran is not the solution now, and if we adopt the right strategy, perhaps it need never be. Urge him to work with our allies and use every diplomatic, political, and economic option at our disposal to deal with Iran. War is not the answer.

http://www.stopiranwar.com/