Special Edition of:
THE 21st CENTURY POPULIST
Pre-Empting The Pre-Empters
By Don Schellhardt


I am bringing “The 21st Century Populist”, my Internet column of 2003, out of retirement -- temporarily -- for a Special Edition article on the possibility of a “pre-emptive” attack on Iran by the Bush Administration.

I have put “pre-emptive” in quotes because the classic meaning of pre-emption is to strike someone first, before that someone strikes you. Traditionally, the term has not stretched far enough to include attacks on people or countries who may have some ability to attack you, but show no imminent intention of actually doing so. The more accurate term for what President Bush may have in mind is “sneak attack” -- as in the Japanese “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which America rightly condemned as immoral.

On January 11, 2007, I delivered to the Richmond Office of Senator James Webb, D-VA -- newly elected and already, apparently, the most publicly visible Senate opponent of a pre-emptive attack on Iran -- a personal letter which urges the Senator to move beyond oral opposition to the introduction of actual, concrete legislation to block such an action by law.

In my package for Senator Webb, who represents me (following my recent return to Virginia after several months in Colorado), I included the text of legislative language he can use, if he wishes, as a starting point for drafting his bill. I saw the need to enact such legislation way back in April of 2003, only a few months after the war in Iraq began, and I included the text of actual proposed legislation in my “21st Century Populist” Internet column. You can assess the language for yourself by going to http://wkjce.org/Don/21st_CENTURY_POPULIST/ and clicking on the April 19, 2003 article entitled “Containing The Damage”.

I urge each of you to urge your own U.S. Senators to contact Senator Webb and offer to
co-sponsor with him legislation to prevent an attack on Iran. Further, if you are a voter in Virginia, I urge you to take the additional step of urging Senator Webb to “take the lead” on this issue.

I also urge each of you to urge your U.S. Representative to support a “companion bill” on this subject in the House of Representatives.


** PLEASE NOTE:

Send snail mail to the nearest DISTRICT OFFICE for your two U.S. Senators and one U.S. Representative. As a less effective (but still workable) alternative, send E-Mail Messages to their offices in Washington. DO NOT send snail mail directly to Capitol Hill, however, since security measures, established after 9/11, typically delay delivery of mail by 3 months or more. **


In any event, here is the reasoning -- or, more precisely, speculation -- which led me to urge Senator Webb to introduce, immediately, legislation that would bar any use of Federal funds, from any source, for a so-called “pre-emptive” strike against Iran, North Korea or any other nation:

I have been wondering about the scattered and intermittent, but persistent, media reports of various plans to bomb Iran -- with or without “bunker buster” nuclear weapons, and perhaps with Israel as a “proxy” attacker. I have also heard unofficial, unconfirmed and secondhand oral reports, purportedly from U.S. military personnel, about various preparations.

Are these reports genuine “leaks” by concerned insiders? Are they deliberate “disinformation”, designed to bluff Iranian leaders into abandoning their nuclear aspirations? Or are they “trial balloons”, designed to pre-test the nation’s reaction to actual “pre-emptive” action?

I don’t know. If these reports are “trial balloons”, however, then America is in deep trouble -- because the reaction from our political, business and media leaders has been nil. Much hostile fire has been directed at the initially rumored, and now confirmed, reports of a troop “surge” in Iraq. Yet, judging by what is publicly visible, the reports about Iran have not been taken seriously.

Of course, oral outcries alone are not likely to deter this President from attacking Iran, but a new statute might do so, or at the very least complicate his task considerably. Indeed, it occurs to me that the troop “surge” in Iraq may be serving, at least in part, as a “red herring” -- or, in military terms, a diversion. Most Congressional Democrats, and many Congressional Republicans, seem to be focused on finding legislative ways to block the troop “surge” in Iraq. Meanwhile, however, no one seems to be focused on enacting an actual, concrete, binding statute to block an attack on Iran.

To use a football metaphor: Could Congress be “piling it on” a decoy, while the player who really has the ball is sneaking down the field? I do not say this is happening: I only say it might be.


As a fellow citizen of this American Republic, I urge you not to take any chances.

I urge you to urge your legislators to pre-empt the pre-empters.

Not with words alone -- but with words that form a new LAW.


COPYRIGHT 2007 BY DON SCHELLHARDT

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