An unsurprising "October Surprise"

A minor hazard of opinion writing is that some readers imagine you take dictation. Because this column generally finds Democrats less objectionable than Republicans, I'm often warned that my wrongheadedness will doom my party's candidates. I got that a lot after criticizing Israel's blundering attack on Lebanon, less so now that 62 percent of Israelis say Prime Minister Ehud Olmert should resign.

An official disclaimer: I'm a Democrat largely by default and do not participate in politics. Lacking the requisite toothy smile, I'm neither an avid partygoer nor much of a joiner. The last voluntary organization I enrolled in was the Central Arkansas Beagle Club, whose gatherings feature more four-legged than two-legged members.

That said, I've been thinking about how Democrats ought to respond to the seemingly inevitable White House "October Surprise" involving Iran.

Not that it'd be much of a surprise. GOP savants are pounding the war drums. Weekly Standard columnist and FoxNews regular Fred Barnes asks how Republicans can avoid a "nasty defeat" in November's congressional elections. "The place to start is Iran," he writes. "The diplomatic option is exhausted. No one expected the mere possibility of economic sanctions to cause Iran to halt its program to build nuclear weapons. And it hasn't. Now Bush must brook no dissent in pursuing stern sanctions ... It's also time to make clear to Iran that the military option is indeed an option."

It'd be interesting to observe Bush scolding the Russians, much less the Chinese, who currently finance the ever-growing U.S. budget deficit.

The Washington Post's neoconservative scribe Charles Krauthammer takes a tougher line. Stopping Iran's nuclear program through diplomacy, he thinks, has always been "a fantasy. It will take military means. There would be terrible consequences from an attack. These must be weighed against the terrible consequences of allowing an openly apocalyptic Iranian leadership to acquire weapons of genocide."

It's unlikely Krauthammer himself envisions being more than mildly inconvenienced by said "terrible consequences."

It might infuriate both men to be reminded how succinctly Reichmarshall Hermann Goering articulated the same strategy during his 1946 Nuremburg war crimes trial. "Naturally, the common people don't want war," he said. "...(But) the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Once maybe, twice, maybe not. A substantive rejoinder to GOP war-mongering might point out that hysterical fears about "rogue nations" going nuclear have been a frequent theme in U.S. politics since 1945. Everybody would prefer that Iran remain outside the nuclear "club." But at what cost? If Pakistan, Israel and India can have nukes, not to mention North Korea and France, how many thousands of lives and billions of dollars should be expended in a (probably futile) effort to stop the Persians from getting what they doubtless see as anti-invasion insurance?

Oddly, it's a reality Krauthammer acknowledges in explaining the futility of attacking North Korea: "Once a country has gone nuclear, there is no return. The nukes themselves act as a deterrent against military measures."

Precisely. If neocons didn't want Iran to muscle up, they shouldn't have fed Bush that "Axis of Evil" line equating Iran with Iraq, its worst enemy, then invaded and trashed the place. Maybe the United States should have accepted the Persians' offer of help against another hereditary foe, Al Qaeda, in 2001. As Iran's deft maneuvers involving its Shiite co-religionists in Iraq and Lebanon have shown, they do know the territory.

Yes, Iran has an unpleasant, authoritarian government. But "apocalyptic?" Come on. The Ayatollahs more closely resemble, say, the College of Cardinals than they do Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. They hold ideas that strike most Americans (and many Iranians) as deeply nutty, but they govern more by tradition and consensus than brute force.

For all the absurdity of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, he holds no authority over Iran's armed forces. While hostile to Israel, the Iranians harbor no territorial ambitions. They haven't invaded anybody in centuries. For what it's worth, "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Khameni calls nuclear weapons immoral.

We got into this mess by installing the Shah in a 1953 military coup, then training the Savak, his hated secret police. Intelligence experts say Iran's years away from developing nukes. So what's the big hurry?

But that's definitely too much explaining for voters who see Eye-ran and Eye-raq as identical lunatic asylums run by nuts in beards and turbans. So I'd say that for all their tough talk, the neocons act like a cartoon elephant afraid of a mouse. Last time we trusted the Bush White House, we ended up stuck in Iraq. Now they want to double the bet? No thanks.

And I'd keep asking, "Where's Osama?"

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.