Steve Clemons, author of the Washington Note blog and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, discusses his belief that President Bush is not yet completely on board with Vice-President Cheney’s plan for war with Iran, some phone calls he received from “very senior administration officials” that confirmed his recent article along those lines, the continuing fight between the neocons and everyone else, the continuing danger of a Cheney end-run and a war begun “accidentally” and then made large, the role that Robert Gates is playing in checking Cheney’s power, the recent demonization of Iran’s president and the need for people to influence the Congress to stand up to the presidency on issues of war.
MP3 here. (19:09)
Steven Clemons directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to promote a new American internationalism that combines a tough-minded realism about America’s interests in the world with a pragmatic idealism about the kind of world order best suited to America’s democratic way of life. He is also a Senior Fellow at New America, and previously served as Executive Vice President.
Publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note, Mr. Clemons is a long-term policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He has served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute, Senior Policy Advisor on Economic and International Affairs to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and was the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center.
The fault with Steve Clemons informative analysis is that he, like many others, views Dick Cheney as a reckless and irresponsible executor of warlike policies.
That description fits the president much more than it does his vice president.
George Bush style is to come up with a wild feckless notion; and let those around him take care of the details; or come up with arguments to dissuade him from going through with it.
In preparing for Iraq war Cheney took care of detail planning. In doing so, he calculated the risks involved and its immediate consequences. He found occupying Iraq to be easy and doable.
An attack on Iran, even as envisaged by the most optimistic neocons, is fraught with unforeseen the-day-after effects. There are too many known unknowns and unknown unknowns about an Iran-attack for somebody like Cheney to put his neck out for.
As far as US policy on Iran is concerned President Bush originally expressed his desire to bomb Iran. People around him pointed out that it was not as simple as it looked. That the idea must be evaluated and preparations made.
Bush administration is right now in the process of preparing and evaluating a war with Iran. The more they evaluate the less doable and feasible this undertaking seems to become.
President Bush has already got the wind and is sulking. Cheney does not give away anything of substance about the matter in order to protect his own reputation.
Utterances by small time discredited neocons can safely be ignored as far as Iran is concerned.