Foreign Policy

Headline on the AOL Welcome Screen this morning:

Will Iran Be The Next Iraq?

For a moment, an icy finger of fear and dread stabbed into the pit of my stomach. But after I gave some thought to the Bush Administration’s track record, my fear melted away.

First of all, one has to remember that the American media are throwing this problem in the president’s face. They are merely acting upon their latest mission statement: "Create fear, panic, controversy and sensationalism wherever and whenever you can. And, oh yes, see if you can squeeze a few lines of news in somewhere." But, to give the media a slight nod, Mr. Bush himself handed them the interpretation of his administration as the hard-line WMD watchdogs of the world, when he settled upon the search for and destruction of such weapons as his raison du jour for attacking Iraq. Who can blame the media for assuming he must now apply that hard line to his administration’s dealings with nations like Iran and North Korea, who actually pose a real WMD threat to the world? Or for at least throwing these nations into Mr. Bush’s face, just to see what his reaction will be.

Truly, I don’t think Iran is as much of a problem to the Bush administration as we would like to believe. Mr. Bush has already shown himself perfectly capable of contradictory foreign policy. Have we forgotten how he literally turned his back on North Korea’s saber-rattling, while at the same time ramming his obvious intention to attack Iraq down the world’s throat? It isn’t much of a leap to realize that WMD were never the real issue in Iraq. What does Iraq have that North Korea does not…and the United States needs very badly? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

It could be argued that Iran, being a middle eastern nation, might stand a better chance of falling victim to Mr. Bush’s hard-ass foreign policy. Attacking Iran, which has been looked upon as an enemy nation ever since the Carter administration, would probably even play well with the American people—the hawkish, bloodthirsty faction, anyway…which seem to hold the reins these days. But there is another very real obstacle to an American attack on Iran. We don’t have the manpower. We are hard-pressed to scrape together enough military presence to clean up our own mess in Iraq. We donned our big-ass boots and stomped into what we thought was a mud puddle, but turned out to be wet concrete. Which has since hardened and has us firmly stuck in the urban battleground of Iraq.

So, don’t think it is by accident that the Bush administration has handed the Iran question to the diplomats of "Old Europe," who are actually doing a credible job at the negotiation table. Funny how France and Germany have suddenly become our wise allies again…