CPJ member Dan O'Rourke is a regular contributor to the Dunkirk Observer.  The following, "Iran -- the Next War?" is his lastest, published on March 8, 2007.  Dan's previous columns about the Iraq War can be found on this website in "Daniel O'Rourke's columns" under "CPJ News/Opinion." 

My recent columns on volunteering, adversity, and the god-word have been “spiritual.” It’s been a while since I wrote a “political” column, but the time has come.  Many would separate spirituality and politics, but such a division is unrealistic and ultimately impossible.  Our society is in love with labeling and compartmentalization.  That gives us easy answers and can remove responsibility. We simply label the problem instead of doing something about it.  Some preachers, professors and politicians do that all too often.

The distinction, however, between the spiritual and secular doesn’t exist. There is nothing spiritual which is only spiritual. There is nothing political which is only political. There is nothing of God that is not also of man -- and woman. Spirituality takes on flesh in the political and social. The environment, immigration, the medical care of wounded veterans have enormous spiritual implications. If human respect and insecurity mute our spiritual voice and values in face of these issues and war’s slaughter, what good are they?

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned,
they've summoned up a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Leonard Cohen, “Anthem.”

I have ominous forebodings about the Bush administration’s growing obsession with Iran. I have nightmares even -- and I’m not alone.  Does the President intend to avert the exasperating spotlight from his unpopular troop escalation with a military air strike against Iran?  His appointment of Admiral William Fallon to oversee two deteriorating ground wars from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf should have
made us suspicious.

The more recent deployment of the USS Stennis, a second carrier to the Sea of Oman off the southern coast of Iran should deepen our concern.  Possibly this is only high stakes saber-rattling to force Iran diplomatically to curtail its nuclear program. I hope so, but perhaps the carriers are there deliberately to provoke the Iranians. Is another Tonkin Bay hoax in the cards? Is Bush slickly stacking the deck as
Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam?

The publication of recent intelligence linking Iran with improved armor piercing IEDs is another clue. The President and the embedded media
keep reminding us that these IEDs are killing American troops, although even the President has acknowledged that we don’t know whether the Iranian government or a black market is supplying them. Most of our casualties, moreover, have come from Sunni insurgents and not from the Shiites who are ideologically linked to their coreligionists in Iran.

A decision to bomb Iran would be yet another catastrophe for the mid-East.  It would unite the Muslin world even more fiercely against the United States and Israel. Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for the Associated Press in the 1980s, reports, “Attacking Iran could touch off a regional –- and possibly a global –- conflagration.” Iranians, moreover, have threatened retaliation by disrupting oil supplies and unleashing suicide bombers against us even here in the United States. We should not dismiss these threats
cavalierly as unrealistic or exaggerated.

Parry goes on to say, “There is growing alarm among military and intelligence experts that Bush already has decided to attack” Iran. Seymour Hersh reports in a recent issue of the New Yorker that the Pentagon is continuing contingency planning for bombing Iran. The President could implement this plan, according to Hersh, within
twenty-four hours. According to Parry, the President is only waiting for a “propaganda blitz to stir up pro-war sentiment at home.”  That
propaganda campaign, appealing to unthinking nationalism and knee-jerk patriotism has already begun.

It’s hard to understand why anyone would believe this administration’s propaganda after the misinformation, exaggeration and manipulated intelligence it fed the nation before the Iraq War. But the administration may try one more time. What, however, would motivate President Bush and his team to try and deceive us again? Besides the political advantages of changing the war focus from Iraq to Iran and skapegoating Iran for their Iraq failure, there are other reasons. But they too are unpersuasive.

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad is irresponsible and outrageously provocative.  He calls for the destruction of Israel.  He sponsors conferences for Holocaust deniers. He flaunts the United Nations by refusing to freeze uranium  enrichment  -- a possible prelude to nuclear weapons. But patience not a military strike is America’s best policy. Ahmadinejad’s party has already lost support in Iran’s local elections. Students have jeered him publicly. Even Iran’s state-run television has reported this. The Iranian people recognize his fanaticism.  He will self-destruct.  We do not have to destroy him with bunker-busting bombs.

Why not direct negotiations with Iran as the Baker-Hamilton commission suggested? Iraq has recently called a multi-nation conference of its neighbors including Iran in which the United States will participate.  That could be a good omen.  Unless, however, Bush is merely using this conference for cover like his disingenuous dealings with the UN prior to launching his war against Iraq.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson described the stakes this way. “Saber-rattling is not a good way to get the Iranians to cooperate. But it is a good way to start a new war—a war that would be a disaster for the Middle East, for the United States and for the world.

“A better approach would be for the United States to engage directly with the Iranians and to lead a global diplomatic offensive to prevent
them from building nuclear weapons.

“This is no time for chest-beating and dangerous brinkmanship. It is time for alliance-building, direct engagement and tough face-to-face
negotiations.”

Amen, Governor, amen.

Daniel O’Rourke is a married Catholic priest, retired from the administration at State University of New York at Fredonia. He lives in
Cassadaga, NY.  His column appears the second and fourth Thursday of each month. “Spirit at Your Back,” a book of his previous columns will be published this spring. Comments may be sent to orourke@netsync.net