Brinksmanship

Brinksmanship — it's a term from the Cold War. Remember the Cold War? The Soviet Union and the United States snapping at each other's heels, angling for advantage, pushing one another to the brink . . . but no farther?

Remember The Bedford Incident? Betcha don't. It didn't win any Oscars for its stars Richard Widmark or Sidney Poitier. But it had the most stunning grand finale of any film I've ever seen.

Widmark is the captain of a nuke-armed submarine cruiser. He's chasing a Soviet nuclear sub that makes feints into U.S. waters. As he obsessively pushes the Russians, hard, he creates an environment of hair-trigger nerviness and fear among his crew.

Poitier, a journalist who's along for the ride, asks him what he'll do if the Russians finally have enough of this bird-dogging and decide to shoot a missile in Widmark's direction.

Widmark retorts, "If they fire one, we'll fire one." The young sailor with his finger on the nuclear button only hears the last two words. He hears them as an order. He pushes the button. The screen explodes in white light. Then all is silence. We have created the end of the world.

BushCo is setting up the Iranians, setting us up, playing a new version of brinksmanship — or, as Bush probably calls it, "chicken."

The press — at the very least the cable news stations — is falling for it. Stop it, boys. That brilliant white light is not, repeat NOT, the Rapture.

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Update:

See Kevin Drum ("...The Bush/Cheney team is plainly doing its best to provoke a casus belli that will justify a military response against Iran...") and his money quote from Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Also, Larry Johnson at the Booman Tribune.

AND, the inimitable Digby.

Scott Ritter weighs in and implores the Democratic Congress to act:

Summon all the President's men (and women), and grill them on every phrase and word uttered about the Iranian "threat," especially as it has been linked to nuclear weapons. Demand facts to back up the rhetoric.

Summon the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or any other lobby promoting confrontation with Iran, to the forefront, so that the warnings they offer in whispers from a back room can be articulated before the American public. Hold these conjurers of doom accountable for their positions by demanding they back them up with hard fact. See if the US intelligence community concurs with the dire warnings put forward by these pro-war lobbyists, and if it doesn't, ask who, then, is driving US policy toward Iran? Those mandated by public law and subjected to the oversight of Congress? Or others, operating outside any framework representative of the will of the American people?

If a real case, based on facts as they pertain to the genuine national security interests of the United States, can be made for a confrontation with Iran that leads to military conflict, so be it. America should never shy away from defending that which legitimately needs defending. The sacrifice expected of our military forces, while tragic, will be defensible. But if the case for war with Iran is revealed to be as illusory as was the case for war with Iraq, then Congress must take action to stop this conflict from occurring. This is the Democrats' issue now, the one that will make or break them in 2008 and beyond. [Emphasis added — EDN]

If hearings show no case for war with Iran, then Congress must act to insure that the United States cannot move toward conflict with that nation on the strength of executive dictate alone. As things currently stand, the Bush Administration, emboldened with a vision of the unitary executive unprecedented in our nation's history, believes it has all of the legal authority it requires when it comes to engaging Iran militarily. The silence of Congress following the President's decision to dispatch a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf has been deafening. The fact that a third carrier battle group (the USS Ronald Reagan) will probably join these two in the near future has also gone unnoticed by most, if not all, in Congress. . .

. . . If left unchallenged by Congress, the Bush Administration firmly believes it has all of the authority required to initiate military action against Iran without Congressional approval.

Read it all.

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Update to update:

Atrios echoes "Stop it."