N&O plays a dangerous game

In their quest to fill in content gaps, the N&O is giving column space to war propagandists:

I take it personally: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to murder me, my family and my people.

An Israeli attack might harm U.S. interests and disrupt international oil supplies (though I doubt it would cause direct attacks on U.S. installations, troops or vessels). But, from the Israeli perspective, these are necessarily marginal considerations when compared with the mortal hurt Israel and Israelis would suffer from an Iranian nuclear attack.

Sounds like a pretty good deal, right? Let us (Israel) attack Iran unimpeded, and the cost to the U.S. will be minimal. Well, I've got news for the N&O staffer who thought this was an appropriate piece for your editorial page: The author knows this fantasy scenario is inaccurate, and that a conventional attack by Israel not only won't be successful:

The problem is that Israel’s military capacities are far smaller than America’s and, given the distances involved, the fact that the Iranian sites are widely dispersed and underground, and Israel’s inadequate intelligence, it is unlikely that the Israeli conventional forces, even if allowed the use of Jordanian and Iraqi airspace (and perhaps, pending American approval, even Iraqi air strips) can destroy or perhaps significantly delay the Iranian nuclear project.

It will also likely lead to a pre-emptive nuclear strike by Israel against Iran, which the author has no problem with:

The best outcome will be that an Israeli conventional strike, whether failed or not — and, given the Tehran regime’s totalitarian grip, it may not be immediately clear how much damage the Israeli assault has caused — would persuade the Iranians to halt their nuclear program, or at least persuade the Western powers to significantly increase the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran.

But the more likely result is that the international community will continue to do nothing effective and that Iran will speed up its efforts to produce the bomb that can destroy Israel. The Iranians will also likely retaliate by attacking Israel’s cities with ballistic missiles (possibly topped with chemical or biological warheads); by prodding its local clients, Hezbollah and Hamas, to unleash their own armories against Israel; and by activating international Muslim terrorist networks against Israeli and Jewish — and possibly American — targets worldwide (though the Iranians may at the last moment be wary of provoking American military involvement).

Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best — meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal.

Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards.

You may be asking yourself why this newer op-ed piece reprinted in the N&O promotes the idea of a (successful) conventional strike, when it's plain the author feels otherwise. The answer for that is really simple: The author knows there must be an escalation of violence leading up to an Israeli nuclear attack, or that attack won't happen.

This is a dangerous game, dear editors. Just as the neocons were able to engineer an Iraqi invasion by making the media their ally, so goes the push for a military solution to the Iran situation. Don't play, or we will all pay.