I found this article from Foreign Affairs in a tweet by Glenn Greenwald , a thank you to him. What is very fascinating about this opinion piece is that, for being so brief, it has three people credited with it’s writing. That must have presented some logistical problems about who wrote what, it sounds a bit like the old Abbott and Costello routine. As Mr. Greenwald pointed out in his tweet, this seems like the standard Party of War rationalizations for attacking Iran, but perhaps the authors Eric S. Edelman, Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. and Evan Braden Montgomery were attempting to demonstrate rhetorically that a consensus exists about such a policy. When, in fact, it doesn’t exist except argumentatively, as a postulate of the authors. Words are powerful, as we’ve all seen in the endless propaganda barrage before the assault on Iraq. But more important are the voices used to deliver the message; the men who deliver the messages must be public men with a certain prestige, a standing in the world of policy intellectuals, that lends weight to their case. Mr. Edelman, as Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs (2001-2003) is such an establish figure, along with his companions Mr. Krepinevich Jr. and Mr. Montgomery. But these are the same people that led America to brutally attack Iraq, in the name of an impending ‘mushroom cloud’, a manufactured rhetorical mirage. So it’s the same old crisis, that demands immediate decisive action, against a foe that is beyond the reach of rational argument: this has become the brutalizing,destructive, shopworn political cliché of the Party of War, and it’s coterie of Liberals, Conservatives and Neoconservatives.

Political Observer