How the Military Can Stop an Iran Attack
by Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith
Sometimes history--and necessity--make strange bedfellows. The German general staff transported Lenin to Russia to lead
a revolution. Union-buster Ronald Reagan played godfather to the birth of the Polish Solidarity union. Equally
strange--but perhaps equally necessary--is the addressee of a new appeal signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright and many other leaders of the American peace movement:
"ATTENTION: Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel: Do not attack Iran."
The initiative responds to the growing calls for an attack on Iran from the likes of Norman Podhoretz and John Bolton,
and the reports of growing war momentum in Washington by reporters like Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Joe Klein of Time. International lawyer Scott Horton says European diplomats at the recent United Nations General Assembly gathering in
New York "believe that the United States will launch an air war on Iran, and that it will occur within the next six to
eight months." He puts the likelihood of conflict at 70 percent.
The initiative also responds to the recent failure of Congress to pass legislation requiring its approval before an
attack on Iran and the hawk-driven resolution encouraging the President to act against the Iranian military. Marcy
Winograd, president of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, who originally suggested the petition, told The Nation:
If we thought that our lawmakers would restrain the Bush Administration from further endangering Americans and the rest
of the world, we would concentrate solely on them. If we went to Las Vegas today, would we find anyone willing to bet on
this Congress restraining Bush? I don't think so.
Because our soldiers know the horrors of war--severed limbs, blindness, brain injury--they are loath to romanticize the
battlefield or glorify expansion of the Iraq genocide that has left a million Iraqis dead and millions others exiled.
Military Resistance
What could be stranger than a group of peace activists petitioning the military to stop a war? And yet there is more
logic here than meets the eye.
Asked in an online discussion September 27 whether the Bush Administration will launch a war against Iran, Washington Post intelligence reporter Dana Priest replied, "Frankly, I think the military would revolt and there would be no pilots to fly those missions."
She acknowledged that she had indulged in a bit of hyperbole, then added, "but not much."
There have been many other hints of military disaffection from plans to attack Iran--indeed, military resistance may
help explain why, despite years of rumors about Bush Administration intentions, such an attack has not yet occurred. A
Pentagon consultant told Hersh more than a year ago, "There is a war about the war going on inside the building." Hersh
also reported that Gen. Peter Pace had forced Bush and Cheney to remove the "nuclear option" from the plans for possible
conflict with Iran--in the Pentagon it was known as the April Revolution.
In December, according to Time correspondent Joe Klein, President Bush met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a secure room known as The Tank. The
President was told that "the U.S. could launch a devastating air attack on Iran's government and military, wiping out
the Iranian air force, the command and control structure and some of the more obvious nuclear facilities." But the Joint
Chiefs were "unanimously opposed to taking that course of action," both because it might not eliminate Iran's nuclear
capacity and because Iran could respond devastatingly in Iraq--and in the United States.
In an article published by Inter Press Service, historian and national security policy analyst Gareth Porter reported
that Adm. William Fallon, Bush's then-nominee to head the Central Command (Centcom), sent the Defense Department a
strongly worded message earlier this year opposing the plan to send a third carrier strike group into the Persian Gulf.
In another Inter Press analysis, Porter quotes someone who met with Fallon saying an attack on Iran "will not happen on
my watch." He added, "You know what choices I have. I'm a professional.... There are several of us trying to put the
crazies back in the box."
Military officers in the field have frequently refuted Bush Administration claims about Iranian arms in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Porter says that when a State Department official this June publicly accused Iran of giving arms to the
Taliban in Afghanistan, the US commander of NATO forces there twice denied the claim.
More recently, top brass have warned that the United States is not prepared for new wars. Gen. George Casey, the Army's
top commander, recently made a highly unusual personal request for a House Armed Services Committee hearing in which he
warned that "we are consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready forces as
rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies." While this could surely be interpreted as a call for more
troops and resources, it may simultaneously be a warning shot against adventures in Iran.
An October 8 report by Tim Shipman in the Telegraph says that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has "taken charge of the forces in the American government opposed to a US
military attack on Iran." He cites Pentagon sources saying that Gates is waging "a subtle campaign to undermine the
Cheney camp" and that he is "encouraging the Army's senior officers to speak frankly about the overstretch of forces,
and the difficulty of fighting another war." Shipman reports Gates has "forged an alliance with Mike McConnell, the
national director of intelligence, and Michael Hayden, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, to ensure that Mr.
Cheney's office is not the dominant conduit of information and planning on Iran to Mr. Bush."
Every indication is that the "war about the war" is ongoing. Hersh recently reported that the attack-Iran faction has
found a new approach that it hopes will be more acceptable to the public--and presumably to the Pentagon brass. Instead
of broad bombing attacks designed to eliminate Iran's nuclear capacity and promote regime change, it calls for "surgical
strikes" on Revolutionary Guard facilities; they would be justified as retaliation in the "proxy war" that General
Petraeus alleges Iran is fighting "against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq." According to Hersh, the
revised bombing plan is "gathering support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon." But Israeli officials are
concerned that such a plan might leave Iran's nuclear capacity intact.
Appeal to Principle
The appeal for military personnel to resist an attack is primarily based on principle. It asserts that any pre-emptive
US attack on Iran would be illegal under international law and a crime under US law. Such an attack would violate
Article II, Section 4, of the UN Charter forbidding the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any state. Since Iran has not attacked the United States, an attack against it without
authorization by the Security Council would be a violation of international law. Under the US Constitution and the UN
Charter, this is the law of the land. Under the military's own laws, armed forces have an obligation to refuse orders
that violate US law and the Constitution. And under the principles established by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal
after World War II, "just obeying orders" is no defense for officials who participate in war crimes.
But the petition also addresses some of the practical concerns that have clearly motivated military officers to oppose
an attack on Iran. It would open US soldiers in Iraq to decimation by Iranian forces or their Iraqi allies. It would sow
the seeds of hatred for generations. Like the attack on Iraq, it would create more enemies, promote terrorism and make
American families less safe.
The petitioners recognize the potential risks of such action to military personnel. "If you heed our call and disobey an
illegal order you could be falsely charged with crimes including treason. You could be falsely court martialed. You
could be imprisoned."
But they also accept risks themselves, aware that "in violation of our First Amendment rights, we could be charged under
remaining section of the unconstitutional Espionage Act or other unconstitutional statute, and that we could be fined,
imprisoned, or barred from government employment."
In ordinary times, peace activists would hardly be likely to turn to the military as allies. Indeed, they would
rightfully be wary of military officers acting on their own, rather than those of their civilian superiors--in violation
of the Constitution's provisions for civilian oversight of the military. But these are hardly ordinary times. While the
public is highly dubious of getting into another war in the Middle East, there now appear to be virtually no
institutional barriers to doing so.
Military-Civilian Alliance
Is there a basis for cooperation between the military brass and citizens who believe an attack on Iran would be criminal
and/or suicidal? Perhaps. The brass can go public with the truth and ask Congress to provide a platform for explaining
the real consequences of an attack on Iran. They can call for a national debate that is not manipulated by the White
House. (They can also inform other players of the consequences: tell Wall Street the effects on oil and stock prices and
tell European military and political leaders what it is likely to mean in terms of terrorism.) The peace movement has
already forged an alliance with Iraq War veterans who oppose the war and with high military officials who oppose
torture; a tacit alliance with the brass to halt an attack on Iran is a logical next step.
Such an approach puts the problem of civilian control of the military in a different light. The purpose of civilian
control, after all, is not to subject the military to the dictatorial control of one man who may, at the least, express
the foolishness and frailty that all flesh is heir to. The purpose is to subject the military to the control of
democratic governance, which is to say of an informed public and its representatives.
What contribution can the peace movement make to this process? We can cover military officials' backs when they speak
out--no one is better placed than the peace movement to defend them against Bushite charges of defying civilian control.
We can help open a forum for military officers to speak out. Many retired officers have spoken out publicly on the folly
of the war in Iraq. We can use our venues in universities and communities to invite them to speak out even more
forcefully on the folly of an attack on Iran. We can place ads pointing out military resistance to an attack on Iran and
featuring warnings of its possible consequences from past and present military officials. And we can encourage lawmakers
to reach out to military officials and offer to give them cover and a forum to speak out. Says petition initiator Marcy
Winograd, "I'd like to see peace activists and soldiers sit down, break bread, march together, testify together and
forge a powerful union to end the next war before the bloodletting begins."
The peace movement leaders who appealed to the military had to break through the conventional presumption that the brass
were their enemies in all situations. Such an unlikely alliance could be a starting point for a nonviolent response to
the Bush Administration's pursuit of a permanent state of war.
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