EDITORIAL – Jumping to guns, not best option

Whelp, here we are again.

No reason to be surprised. We may be getting pretty used to our… Whelp, here we are again.

No reason to be surprised. We may be getting pretty used to our government leading us down the road to war with some country or another in the Middle East all in the name of freedom, democracy and justice.

In and article appearing in the April 17 issue of The New Yorker, reporter Seymour Hersh writes that our government, “while publicly advocating democracy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack.”

What happened to diplomacy? Is talking so out of style or time intensive that we just jump to the guns and bombs? And we mean real diplomacy. Actually start a dialogue, go back and forth — yes this may take some time and effort — and then, if all else fails, explore military options. None of this “So, uh, how about you stop developing nuclear technology,” to which Iran responds, “well, no. We kinda like having nukes,” followed by a large “BOOM” as Tehran is lit up like Christmas. Cue the banners prematurely declaring victory and the president in an unflattering jumpsuit.

According to the article, the White House has begun penetrating Iran on the ground, making contact with minority leaders who could potentially be pro-democracy. Officials believe that a “sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.”

Have we really explored all of our diplomatic options as thoroughly as we can? And if the answer to these questions is “yes” then we need to evaluate our resources, already stretched thinly across the Middle East, and assess if we are in a position to make a move in an effective way. Are there people waiting for us to liberate them, with open arms and cooperation. Overestimating the amount of potential support we would have and underestimating the difficulty of the undertaking were two catastrophic mistakes we should have learned from in Iraq.

This whole thing disturbingly resembles the path to war in Iraq. You would think that as the United States still sits on the smoldering ashes of a living reminder of why the preemptive approach to foreign policy is so risky — especially when executed as well as this administration is known for — we would be much more cautious than this plan indicates.

Ahmadinejad may not be the greatest guy ever. In fact, he’s a pretty shady ruler. The New Yorker said that there are people in the White House referring to him as a possible Adolf Hitler. This is the guy, after all, who said Israel should be destroyed. And now these guys have nuclear technology in their possession? Yikes.

Events in Iran are serious and deserve our full attention. However, before we engage in any aggressive action, we must take advantage of our past mistakes and act with more foresight. Avoiding another conflict — that would be incredibly similar to Iraq on a larger, potentially more lethal scale — is in everyone’s best interest, as it would certainly, based on our track record, end in disaster.