No Thanks to Obama

There’s good news! It looks now like there will be no war with Iran until the next administration (if the next President is John McCain). It will be some time before we know exactly how the march to war was stopped. I suspect that the professional military deserves the lion’s share of the praise. But, whatever the reason, it seems that, when it comes to giving the green light to Israeli bellicosity, there is, to borrow a phrase from the resistance movement within the Israeli military of several years back (at the outbreak of the Lebanon War), a “limit” (yesh gavul).

It is clear that the Democratic leadership had little, if anything, to do with keeping that potential tragedy from happening. It’s only in the past few days that they’ve shown any inkling of a backbone on anything. Now, though, they have enough of one to back down from cheering the next war – or the next proxy war – on. But unless the standard-bearer, Barack Obama, takes up the cause, count on the old pusillanimity to resume, especially after the economy is “fixed.” So far there’s no sign Obama has changed for the better; certainly nothing happened at debate #1 to indicate anything of the sort.

Kudos for Hillary

Since he secured the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama has been surging to the right more or less continuously, though the pace did pick up slightly just before the Denver convention. [His vote on telecom immunity was something of a milestone, along with his increased enthusiasm for ratcheting up the Bush war in Afghanistan.] Between him and Hillary, it’s now a wash.

This is especially disconcerting as the economy tanks. So far, Obama has yet to say anything to indicate that he’s not on the same page as the Bush administration (and John McCain), when it comes down to a struggle between the speculators and the people whose debts – and lives – they used for fodder. If things get worse, if Obama inherits a depression, will he side with the victims at least to the extent that FDR sometimes reluctantly did? So far, there’s no sign of it; no reason to be hopeful.

It wouldn’t be any better with Hillary, of course, but I do have to say, reluctantly, that, since the convention, she’s shown some class. Supporting Obama in Denver and afterwards and getting her husband to go along is not that big a deal; the Clintons don’t have much choice if they want to remain “viable within the system.” But turning down an invitation to attend and speak at an anti-Iran rally at the United Nations on Monday does warrant kudos. That’s the day Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will address the General Assembly. It’s the day that the most repellent shills of the Israeli Right have organized a protest. The ringleader is none other than that “first among equals,” Malcolm Hoenlein, President (for Life?) of the modestly named Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. That, by the way, is a very influential interest group which, along with others, advocates positions many, perhaps most, American Jews, not just me, adamantly reject. Among those positions: that the U.S. should go to war against Iran or at least, as Sarah Palin’s script reads, let Israel do whatever it wants in that (and all other) regard(s).

Clinton turned down the offer from the Israel lobby because Palin, the nothing from nowhere, is going to be there; not because she suddenly developed a backbone. But whatever the reason, she’s doing the right thing. That Hoenlein would invite Palin is no surprise; Right is Right. But that any mainstream Democrat would cross him is extraordinary. Hurray for Hillary! Would that Joe Biden or Obama had such cajones.

Who knows? An unintended consequence of Maverick McCain’s “from the gut” decision to choose an inexperienced, ignorant, Christian Taliban hockey mom for a running (and “soul”!!) mate just might be that other pusillanimous souls, not just Hillary, will see that they don’t have to tow the Israel lobby’s line – that the Emperor has no clothes. Hillary didn’t quite crash through the glass ceiling but, wittingly or not, she just might have made a crack, a structural one, in the Apartheid wall.

Hillary Hawkery is Back

If you squint just the right way, it is possible not to see much space between the three top Democratic contenders’ positions on Iraq. They are all officially anti-war (finally), but unlike Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, their opposition is more rhetorical than real. It comes down to this: they want to bring most of the troops home eventually but, most of all, they want to stave off the perception of abject defeat – because they don’t want America’s imperial designs to be hamstrung by any Iraq Syndrome. Of course, if you squint just a little differently, then on this matter as on nearly all others, Clinton can seem to be the worst and Edwards the best, with Obama somewhere in the middle, insofar as his position can be pinned down. But the differences are, in any case, slight. There is no good reason to get steamed up over the (increasingly likely) prospect of a Clintonite restoration on this account.

But it’s different with Iran, as a very instructive piece by Juan Cole in the October 17 salon.com makes clear. On Cole’s analysis, the Republican contenders, all but Ron Paul, are falling over each other trying to be perceived as the most bellicose. So far, the most loathsome of that contemptible crew, Rudy Giuliani is ahead in this race, as in the larger primary contest in which it is, so to speak, embedded. Thinking she has the nomination sewed up and therefore looking forward to the general election, Hillary Clinton, having been forced to repent (without quite saying so) of her chicken hawkery on Iraq, is now back at it on Iran. The other Democratic contenders, the “electable” ones anyway, are bad on Iran too; they too want to leave “the military option” on the table. But, according to Cole’s analysis, their positions, or at least their rhetorical postures, are markedly better than Clinton’s.

Hillary was the only candidate in the Senate to vote for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment (declaring Iran's Revolution Guards "terrorists."), No one should be surprised: Hillary’s stance is vintage Clintonian politics (Bill or Hillary style; it makes no difference!) Being determined to govern from the center (actually, the center-right), promoting a military strike against Iran makes perfect sense, given the latest polling data. And, if that isn’t enough, it’s also pleasing to the Israel lobby. Cole even cites reports that the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment was written by AIPAC! All the leading Democrats are in AIPAC’s grip, but the Clintons are and always have been more than usually servile. And why not – haven’t they found throughout their careers in “public service” that there’s a good percentage in it!

According to Cole, even the Congressional leadership of the Democratic Party is ill-disposed to follow the Clintons into endorsing yet another Bush war – especially one that anyone with any sense (in or out of the military) opposes and that only Dick Cheney and his still virulent neo-conservative advisors want. But that could change if and when it becomes clear that Hillary will be the nominee. The Clintons have dragged the Democrats to the right before; they will do it again (if we let them).

NOTE: to say that, on Iran, the position of the Democratic Congressional leadership is at least a quantum level better (less bad) than that of the leading contender for the Democratic nomination is not to say that the leadership’s position is anything but horrible, as a very perceptive article on Nancy Pelosi, by Margaret Kimberly in The Black Agenda Report, makes eminently clear.

A Critical Experiment in the Making

The Mearscheimer-Walt hypothesis – that the Israel lobby influences U.S. policy towards the Middle East more than any other causal factor (including rationally defensible assessments of “the national interest”) – is about to be tested. Let me explain:

In The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud distinguished illusions from delusions. Illusions are beliefs that are sustained not because they satisfy rational criteria for belief acceptance but because they express unconscious desires. Therefore illusions could be true beliefs, though they usually are not. Delusions are illusions maintained in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. Freud regarded belief in God as an illusion; someone’s belief that he or she is God would be a delusion.

Before the Iraq War, the neoconservative goal of transforming Middle Eastern countries into weak, investment friendly, Israel friendly states with governments similar to the one in the US was an illusion in Freud’s sense. Just as belief in God is defended by ingenious, though ultimately fatuous, arguments, so too were neoconservative proposals for remaking that part of the world. But the neoconservative position was vulnerable to real time confutation. This happened within months of the time the first phase of their project, the subjugation of Iraq, began. Some of them still blame the failure of the Iraq War on the Bush administration’s incompetence; some of them still think that the hapless General Petraeus will turn defeat into victory. But these are delusions in Freud’s sense. In 2003, the neocons and their fellow travelers – Dick Cheney, for example, and George W. Bush – were only fooling themselves, as Freud thought people do when they believe in God. In 2007, with four years worth of incontrovertible evidence attesting to their foolishness, they’ve gone beyond that, just as people do when they believe that they are God.

Strictly speaking, the neoconservative movement is not the same thing as the Israeli lobby, though there is as little political space between them as, say, between Bill and Hillary Clinton. For most purposes, the two are the same. Strictly speaking, neoconservatives are not the only ones affecting policy in the Bush administration. But they do run the Vice President’s office and, on all matters of interest to him, Cheney always gets his way. The Middle East is of great interest to Cheney. This is why, for all practical purposes, he is as much a part of the Israel lobby as a target of its machinations.

The most recent bout of neoconservative war mongering – target Iran -- might only be a bluff. Unlike the President, the Vice President and the neocons behind him are smart enough to think and act strategically. But evidence is mounting that Cheney and the neocons and the Israel lobby will get the war with Iran that they badly want. Seymour Hersh’s article in October 8 New Yorker supports this prediction; so too does the recent increase in Bush administration prattle about Iran’s role in fighting American troops in Iraq. In recent weeks, Fox News has, again, become the vanguard of the War Party. In short, the signs are ominous. We could well find ourselves again on the brink of a precipice.

Nixon and Kissinger sought a way out of the abject failure of their efforts to salvage Kennedy’s and Johnson’s war in Vietnam by extending hostilities into Cambodia (with thoroughly catastrophic consequences for the Cambodian people). Their desperate measure failed, of course. Cheney and Bush, knowing nothing and having learned nothing, seem primed to follow suit. Already they’re concocting (and changing) pretexts for war, just as they did before they set out to occupy Iraq. At first, it was Iran’s nuclear program that was the problem; now it’s the help Iran gives to the Iraqi insurgents who make roadside bombs (killing and maiming our troops). It’s also hinted (why not!), as it was in the early days of the Iraq War, that Al Qaeda will somehow be set back by a “preemptive” war against Iran. Whatever works – not that Cheney and Bush care much about public support. They are delusional, after all. Indeed, they may even believe that “history” will praise them for their vision and courage. And, if that isn’t enough, God is on the Decider’s side.

In reality, of course, the main beneficiary of the Iraq War has been the Iranian government. Cheney and Bush have turned Iran into a mighty regional power and, by putting the country at risk, they have strengthened nationalist and theocratic forces, empowereing the least democratic elements of Iran’s political class. In reality too, the Iranian government is eager to consolidate its gains. That’s why its spokesmen have made repeated offers to help the US establish stability in Iraq. [For a recent and conspicuous example, see The Financial Times (October 1) interview with Ali Larjani, Iran’s chief of Security. According to Larjani, if the US would just adopt a program for withdrawal (even of the weasely kind the Democrats have proposed), Iran would use its considerable influence to bolster the Iraqi government and to bring it back more fully under American control.] But reality is impotent in the face of delusion. When Iranians talk peace, Cheney and Bush prepare for war, remembering that the devil comes wrapped in sheep’s clothing!

Were the US to undertake sustained military action against Iran, even if only in the form of a (Bill) Clinton-style bombing campaign, the predictable consequences would be disastrous. The American position in Iraq would become incalculably worse, oil prices would go through the ceiling, relations with China and Russia would be set back years, and American interests at home and abroad would be in far greater jeopardy than they now are. The unpredictable consequences are worse still: they could include a full-scale regional war involving Israel and therefore nuclear weapons. That is only the most foreseeable of the unpredictable consequences.

Should it come to that, can we put it all down to Cheney’s and Bush’s delusions? Or perhaps to their delusions plus Bush’s concern with his “legacy” – as if he still has a chance not to go down in history as the worst President ever. Or perhaps, being at their wit’s end, Cheney and Bush just want to “go for broke.” No doubt, all of the above would enter into an explanation for the next war, should it come to pass. But Cheney and Bush can’t force the entire government – including the military and the intelligence establishment – into doing what is so clearly irrational and contrary to American interests on their own. They will need support – not from we the people, but from our political class. They will need the support of the people the Israel lobby controls. The executive branch is full of such people; Congress is even fuller. As they go, so goes the nation. If the US attacks Iran, it will be because Israel and therefore the Israel lobby wants it to happen.

To be sure, the Israeli right (and increasingly too, the Israeli center and center-left) and the neocons are of one mind. But, after Iraq, the neocons no longer have the clout they once did. They still have the Vice President’s office and Joe Lieberman and Fox News and The Weekly Standard but nobody in “the mainstream” takes any of them seriously anymore. Disgracefully servile as they may be, mainstream – aka “liberal -- media are at least not delusional. Neither are most Republicans and nearly all Democrats. If Cheney and Bush do manage to concoct a war against Iran in the face of so much opposition, if they succeed in doing something so plainly wrong-headed, the only plausible explanation is that what Israel wants Israel gets – thanks to the effectiveness of the Israel lobby.

The lobby used to be a taboo subject. It has become less so recently thanks to two best-selling books: Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (Simon & Schuster, 2006) and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s scrupulously documented and carefully argued The Israel Lobby (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). Both books have been smeared by the usual suspects, though Carter’s reproaches towards Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank are so tepid and incontrovertible that it takes considerable ingenuity to find something to dispute. Perhaps this is why so many of Carter’s critics criticized his book without reading it (or so one must infer based on the criticisms they advance). Mearsheimer and Walt’s book is different. At least some of its claims are disputable.

For one thing, their explanation of the lobby’s influence is arguably too “mainstream” insofar as it relies uncritically on standard accounts of interest group politics. [Mearscheimer’s and Walt’s reliance on the explanatory strategies of mainstream political science effectively allows them to formulate their explanations in ways that cannot reasonably give rise to spurious charges of anti-Semitism. However, for the legions of American Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, who defend Israel with the mindless zeal with which Stalinists once defended the Soviet Union, this is evidently of no account!] Mearscheimer and Walt also rely too much on second-hand, journalistic accounts, and too little on primary sources. [This last reproach is forgivable inasmuch as it will take years before primary sources become accessible.]

But it is their explanandum, their object of explanation, that is most debatable. They may have overdrawn and therefore misrepresented the phenomenon they invoke the Israel lobby to explain. This is far too vast a question to examine here. I will therefore only venture the opinion that they do correctly describe the vicissitudes of American policy towards Israel/Palestine, and that they are right in their assessment of the role the Israel lobby has come to play in determining American policy in this domain. But I am more wary of their contention that the Israel lobby exercises similar powers over the entirety of American Middle East policy. I am especially wary of their account of the lobby’s role in instigating the Iraq War. Israel had little fear of Saddam Hussein’s military or its non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”; not even the Israeli right claimed that Iraq posed an “existential threat” to Israel. Of course, Israelis did prefer that the American, not the Iraqi, army control Iraq; and they would certainly have been pleased had a stable and successful pro-U.S. government been installed there. Therefore, once the war was in the works, Israel and therefore the Israel lobby supported it. They made the neoconservative vision their own. But it is far from clear how much effect the lobby, as opposed to influential neoconservatives in the Bush administration, had. Had the lobby opposed the war, would it still have happened? It is impossible to say. Would the war not have happened, but for their support? This is what Mearscheimer and Walt believe. However on this too, the jury is out.

But a critical test of the Mearscheimer-Walt hypothesis, or at least of the part of it that concerns Iran, will take place over the next few months. Rightly or (almost certainly) wrongly, the Israeli government – and most Israelis – do consider Iran an “existential threat.” As Mearscheimer and Walt maintain, the lobby’s main interest all along has been to overthrow the Iranian theocracy and replace it with a government as friendly to Israel’s as in the days of the Shah. For Israel and its lobby, even when Iraq was the focus of attention, Iran, along with Syria, was the ultimate target. It is clear that the lobby is now working overtime, through its contacts in the media and in the administration, to make a war happen. Given how utterly and transparently contrary to US interests a war with Iran would be, and inasmuch as no one outside neoconservative circles wants a war – certainly not anyone in the military or the intelligence establishment and not even in the saner regions of the Bush administration – this will be a test of the lobby’s might. Thus the jury may not stay out on the Mearscheimer-Walt hypothesis for long; it may not be necessary to wait for archives to open or for Bush administration functionaries to publish their books. A critical experiment is in the making; decisive evidence may come in sooner than we think.

Whatever happens, one thing is overwhelmingly clear already: the leadership of the Democratic Party will do the lobby’s bidding. So will the “electable” candidates. At last week’s “debate,” when Mike Gravel accused Hillary Clinton of voting yet again for war – this time by supporting the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment to authorize the use of force against Iran – she could only respond with one of her contrived belly laughs (as if in an attempt to achieve one of those “here we go again” moments Ronald Reagan found so useful). Barack Obama is not much better, though at least he had the decency not to cast a vote. John Edwards did criticize the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment. But he has never renounced his shameful pandering on Iran at the Herzilya Conference earlier this year. To this day, he will not rule out a “military option.”

There is still a chance that sanity will prevail. But Cheney and Bush have proven themselves time and again immune from rational persuasion and indifferent to public opinion. However they are weak and isolated, and cannot go it alone. For them and the neocons behind them to get the war they want, they need the help, or at least the neutrality, of key sectors of the political class. This is why the best chance, maybe the only chance, of stopping Cheney and Bush is a vigorous Democratic display of opposition to more military adventures. That’s exactly what we’re not getting, and not likely to get. Clinton may be beyond hope, but perhaps Obama and Edwards are not. Now is the time to pressure them unstintingly; to force them to prove Mearscheimer and Walt wrong. The future of the neocons’ delusion is not yet settled. There is still time to act – to force the more “progressive” Democrats to act like progressives, to use the power they have. As long as they remain abjectly in the thrall of the Israel lobby, the prospects for avoiding disaster are dim. Then indeed -- here we go again.

The Impending Catastrophe: Can We Combat It?

It is not necessary to delve very far beneath the surface to realize that Democrats and Republicans are essentially of one mind. But they are also electoral competitors, obliged to appeal to (somewhat) different constituencies for votes and to (somewhat) different sectors of the ruling class for money. Thus they each have an interest in the other side foundering, and since they enjoy an effective duopoly, they each do best, or think they do, by situating themselves as close to the “center” as they can without losing their own supporters. The majority of their constituents may wish they were situated elsewhere, more to the left or to the right, but if their funders don’t, and if their constituents have or think they have nowhere else to go, there is no need to accede to their “base’s” wishes and good reason not to. This is why the 75% of the population now opposed to the Iraq War has gotten only words from the Democratic Party’s leadership. This is why too, should the Cheney-Bush administration decide to launch yet another war, this time against Iran, the Democrats can be counted on to do nothing to stop it. Indications are that plans for a major bombing campaign are already drawn up and that a PR offensive is about to begin . Given how the Democratic led Congress has operated since January, one wonders why Cheney and Bush even feel the need for PR.

Why indeed? Cheney and Bush seem determined to go for broke or, as more capable and saner minds might say, to go out with a bang, not a whimper. But having failed so thoroughly for so long, they must by now realize at some level that in seeking to save themselves by devastating Iran, they’re betting on the longest of long shots. They must also realize what every military theorist since Clausewitz has understood: that wars can’t be fought for long against the manifest will of the people whose soldiers are in harm’s way. Cheney and Bush are battling against public opinion – in Iraq. Should they bomb Iran, PR isn’t going to help them. That could pose an additional electoral problem – not for them, since they are the lamest of lame ducks, but for the Republican Party. They seem not to care. If that is the case, then the only ones who can stop them are in the ruling classes they serve. But, in all likelihood, those characters won’t move until the Republicans’ political problems become generalized social problems that threaten their own fundamental interests in the continuation of the regime. Cheney knows what the stakes are. He got a glimpse of what can happen when the center doesn’t hold in his formative years – when, like many of his hawkish contemporaries, his “priorities” led him to cheer on the Vietnam War without fighting in it. [Bush’s story is similar, though he may have been too oblivious then, and too dense now, to grasp the stakes.] This is why the only thing that can deter Cheney and Bush, besides a revolt in their own ranks, is fear that a spirit of rebellion will be reborn. The Democrats in Congress could deter them by defunding their wars, and they could distract them by impeaching the perpetrators of those wars. But they will do neither. Even if they had the courage, they are too wedded to the regime themselves.

Lying the country into yet another war would seem a fool’s errand, since the word is now out about how they did it before. But the Cheney-Bush forces are not deterred by folly, and their contempt for the public is limitless. With Democrats for opponents, they just might still get their way. Thus the situation is dire. Should Cheney and Bush get their longed for war, they’ll have finally turned on an opponent that can and will fight back – not just in the form of a disorganized resistance, as in Iraq, but in a more coherent and potentially dangerous way. The world will pay dearly.

The Iraq War is part of a larger plan to maintain strategic control over the Middle East and central Asia and its petroleum resources. Somewhat independently, the ideologues the Bush administration empowered also wanted to use the war to turn Iraq into a neo-con utopia – subservient to American and Israeli interests, exemplifying neo-liberal economic policies and as much American-style (i.e. capitalism and especially imperialism friendly) “democracy” as possible. Ironically, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. To be sure, there are American firms in industries close to the Cheney/Bush administration making bundles of money off of the murder and mayhem. But, for the most part, the war has harmed the economy more than it has helped it -- though the full extent of the harm may not become manifest for a while. This will redound eventually even back to the Halliburtons and Blackwaters. A low tide lowers all ships.

The war has also removed a potential, though minor, strategic threat to Israel. However, in doing so, it has set in motion a process likely to lead to a failed state in Iraq (an outcome far worse for Israel than Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was). Worse still, the Cheney/Bush wars have destabilized Middle Eastern governments friendly to American imperialism. Should some or all of them be replaced by islamist governments, Israel will rue the day the neo-cons got their way. From an Israeli point of view, there have already been setbacks. The election of a Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and the failed military adventure in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 are portents of things to come. To be sure, the Israeli economy is doing well, thanks to a burgeoning “homeland security” industry supported by the United States and Europe, and Israel still has overwhelming military superiority in the region. It still has unquestioning U.S. diplomatic and military support as well. But even if all this lasts for a while longer, it would be hard to make the case that, on balance, Israel has benefited from the Iraq War. In the not too distant future it may look instead like that war advanced processes in Israel/Palestine and outside it that make the prospect of a two-state solution – and therefore the indefinite survival of an ethnically cleansed “Jewish state” – more remote. The Israeli government and their representatives in the United States think a war against Iran can salvage all this. As much as Cheney and Bush, they are dreaming.

In fact, the main beneficiary of the Bush wars has been Iran. With the experience of the Iran/Iraq War still fresh and with its core issues still unresolved, the Iraqi army and the Saddam Hussein government posed a far greater strategic threat to Iran than to Israel. That threat is now gone. Of course, there is now a new threat from the Americans that spells trouble for Iran in the short-run. But, in the longer term, the situation the American invasion of Iraq brough about is a godsend, as it were, for the Iranian mullahs. Thanks to the Iraq War, Iranian influence over large segments of the Iraqi population has become enormous. Should Cheney and Bush get their way, it will become more enormous still. Should the U.S. bomb Iran, this will become evident immediately in Iraq, where, even with the vaunted “surge,” the occupation is enfeebled to the point of powerlessness. But Iraq is not the only place where Iran can cause trouble for the United States. The United States itself is such a place. But, then again, for Cheney and Bush, “homeland security” was never much of a concern.

The other main beneficiaries of the Cheney-Bush wars are, of course, the promoters of political Islam, including Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda suffered heavy losses in the early stages of the Afghanistan War. But the “coalition’s” incompetence and the Cheney/Bush government’s collusion with pro-Al Qaeda interests in Saudi Arabia and in the emirates of the Persian Gulf negated that advantage soon enough. Meanwhile, the perpetual war the U.S. has unleashed has exacerbated the threat of Islamic terrorism everywhere. The War on Terror – actually a self-inflicted war on American Constitutional principles and traditional liberties and on the rule of law itself – has been as abject a failure, in its stated aims, as the other Bush wars have been. Here too, the likely consequence of Cheney’s and Bush’s plans for Iran will be catastrophic. Should they get their way, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

If it we leave it up to the Democrats, they will get their way. Perhaps, if Cheney and Bush had it in mind to start a war against some other country, Venezuela perhaps or Cuba, having already failed so conspicuously on their own terms in Afghanistan and Iraq, common sense might prevail over Democratic “principles” and electoral calculations. But Iran is and has long been Israel’s first and foremost bugbear and the Democrats are in AIPAC’s pocket. On the “need” to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and/or impeding American efforts in Iraq – the two components of the coming PR campaign Cheney and Bush are about to launch – every Democratic contender in the current primary cycle, except of course the “unelectable” ones, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich, have been unequivocal. Iran must be stopped; anything goes. Should Cheney and Bush go on the offensive, expect Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to be more abject and therefore more bloodthirsty than the rest; but they’ll all go along.

The call has gone out many times to support no Democrat who supports the Iraq War. As the nature of the Democrats’ support has become increasingly obfuscated though no less real -- to the point that they even Hillary Clinton is now officially “against the war” -- that call has fallen increasingly on deaf ears. But surely even moveon.org types can demand of every candidate at every venue that they speak out against a war with Iran, and resolve to hold elected officials accountable should they, yet again, be Bush aiders and abettors in this latest, most dangerous, neo-con adventure. Public pressure alone will not suffice, however; not so long as it is confined to an electoral arena that marginalizes all but the palest dissent. To stop Cheney and Bush, it will be necessary to escalate the social costs for the regime, not just the political costs for the incumbents or would-be incumbents of its offices. That was the lesson of the anti-Vietnam War movement. It is a lesson that must be learned by the anti-war movement today. With the Democratic leadership dead set against impeachment, it makes no sense to play for time. There is no choice but to play for real.