When Civilians Are More Militaristic Than The Military

I grew up in Argentina in the 70s. At that time the military had staged a military coup and committed tremendous atrocities, including killing my cousin David Varsavsky and nearly killing my father, a Harvard trained physicist whose only crime was to stand for democracy.

So to me it is puzzling to see that nowadays in the States it is not the military, but civilians, who promote military adventurism. The latest plans are the proposed invasion of Iran. As we all know, Iran is a much harder country to invade than Iraq. It is considerably bigger, with a terrain similar to Afghanistan and a larger population. If USA did so poorly in Iraq it´s hard to imagine how an attack on Iran would fare any better. Indeed as Israel showed in its failed invasion of Lebanon last summer, this type of limited military intervention only makes radical groups like Hezbollah, or radical governments like the Iranian one, more powerful.

Military intervention in the Middle East has proven to fail in its two forms: the invasion, as in the case of USA in Iraq and the attack as in the case of Israel in Lebanon. Both resulted in tremendous loss of civilian lives and destruction of essential infrastructure. The innocent pay while the terrorists flee.

So in this irrational atmosphere, I was pleased to see that according to the Sunday Times the new rational voices are coming from the armed forces themselves. It seems that many generals threatened an en masse resignation should the civilian Bushistas choose to invade Iran.

While I believe that Iran is a threat to the Middle East and to the world, attacking or invading this nation only makes radical anti western groups stronger. There´s enough proof that the average Iranian person is as fed up with the Iranian regime as we are outside of Iran. Why make it easier for the teocrats to continue running the country?