from TheNation.com, via AlterNet:
Will the Military Halt an Iran Attack?By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, TheNation.com. Posted October 10, 2007.
With little reason to have hope in Congress, peace activists are calling on the military to restrain Bush.Sometimes history -- and necessity -- make strange bedfellows. The German general staff transported Lenin to Russia to lead a revolution. Union-buster Ronald Reagan played godfather to the birth of the Polish Solidarity union. Equally strange -- but perhaps equally necessary -- is the addressee of a new appeal signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright and many other leaders of the American peace movement:
"ATTENTION: Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel: Do not attack Iran."
The initiative responds to the growing calls for an attack on Iran from the likes of Norman Podhoretz and John Bolton, and the reports of growing war momentum in Washington by reporters like Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Joe Klein of Time. International lawyer Scott Horton says European diplomats at the recent United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York "believe that the United States will launch an air war on Iran, and that it will occur within the next six to eight months." He puts the likelihood of conflict at 70 percent.
The initiative also responds to the recent failure of Congress to pass legislation requiring its approval before an attack on Iran and the hawk-driven resolution encouraging the President to act against the Iranian military. Marcy Winograd, president of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, who originally suggested the petition, told The Nation:
If we thought that our lawmakers would restrain the Bush Administration from further endangering Americans and the rest of the world, we would concentrate solely on them. If we went to Las Vegas today, would we find anyone willing to bet on this Congress restraining Bush? I don't think so.
Because our soldiers know the horrors of war -- severed limbs, blindness, brain injury -- they are loath to romanticize the battlefield or glorify expansion of the Iraq genocide that has left a million Iraqis dead and millions others exiled. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/audits/64818/