More on the Next War

Spencer Ackerman has a pithy analysis of what Fallon's resignation portends:

Gates said in a press conference just now that no one should think the move reflects any substantive change in policy. That sure won’t be how Teheran sees it. The Iranians will consider Fallon’s resignation to indicate that the bombing begins in the next five minutes.

The Iranians may well be correct. The problem is, we don't know what the administration's policy is. I've gotten to the point where anything rational that comes out of the White House is probably a smokescreen for what they really want to do.

I've seen a couple of pieces pro and con on Fallon's resignation centered around disagreement with policy and civilian control of the military. Digby notes:

CNN military expert General David Grange (ret.) says that this is how an officer responds when he disagrees with an administration's policies and feels decisions have been made that he can't in good conscience carry out. I don't know if Grange knows Fallon or knows his motives, but he seems to think that Fallon resigned in protest --- which is actually worse than if he were fired.

The problem with the "civilian control" point of view is simply that senior military officers are not only there to implement policy, they are there to advise on policy, which to me is a much more important function. The degree of public disagreement is variable -- Colin Powell was outrageously insubordinate over DADT and became a media darling -- not so muich for his position as for publicly disagreeing with president Clinton. Contrast the fact that Bush has systematically disposed of every senior officer who showed any independence, leaving us with a bunch of yes-men leading the military.

To get back to what our policy toward Iran is, who knows? Dick Cheney, maybe. Our general goal seems to be to destabilize the Middle East as thoroughly as possible (shades of Bush I, who refused to end the Gulf War, leaving it for Clinton to clean up). Do I think that Bush will be rattling sabers? Sorry -- I'm so cynical about this administration and it's overriding agenda of politics uber alles that my only possible answer is, of course -- there's an election coming up and the Republicans are in serious trouble. Watch for a lot of tension along about late August. (Digby thinks the saber-rattling will be a facet of incompetence. I'm not so sure. I think it's going to be deliberate -- not that these people know what they're doing, but they have mastered the art of fucking up big-time. However, I think her idea of building an infrastructure to remain in power while out of power has a lot to be said for it.)