"If you buy the premise, you buy the bit": legitimizing war on Iran

The quote in the title is attributed to Johnny Carson, and as I wrote in a previous citation of this trope, "it means that if the audience accepts your basic concept, they'll enjoy your joke, sketch, etc."

Arthur Silber observes Peter Beinart ostensibly arguing against an attack on Iran... while accepting every premise for conducting such an attack. Beinart's reservations hang on the slender thread of America's military-intelligence establishment not yet claiming that Iran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

As Arthur notes once again, arguing in terms of intelligence reports is a fool's (or authority servant's) errand:

It is always irrelevant to major policy decisions, and such decisions are reached for different reasons altogether. This is true whether the intelligence is correct or not, and it is almost always wrong. On those very rare occasions when intelligence is accurate, it is likely to be disregarded in any case. It will certainly be disregarded if it runs counter to a course to which policymakers are already committed.

The intelligence does not matter. It is primarily used as propaganda, to provide alleged justification to a public that still remains disturbingly gullible and pliable -- and it is used after the fact, to justify decisions that have already been made.

Beinart, for the moment, advises against an attack on Iran by Israel (one presumably supported by the United States, whose political figures loom large in his post). Yet, he's fully legitimizing the idea of an attack in the event that the prevailing wisdom of "experts" swings the other way, to "ZOMG, Iran is on track to have nukes!"

Here's how Beinart frames the topic:

The debate over whether Israel should attack Iran rests on three basic questions. First, if Iran’s leaders got the bomb, would they use it or give it to people who might? Second, would a strike substantially retard Iran’s nuclear program? Third, if Israel attacks, what will Iran do in response?

Stopping the beating hearts of untold Iranians somehow doesn't make the list of considerations. One could argue that Beinart is merely describing how others are debating. Why then, one might wonder, doesn't he so much as mention—let alone recoil in horror about—that callously missing element?

Finally, it's remarkable how blithely Obama skates in Beinart's "critique." The administration has filled the national discourse with ominous talk about Iran and is harming Iranians (among others) and inflaming tensions with "crippling sanctions." But the Peace President is chided merely for his failure to "echo" skeptics about the existence of an Iranian nuke program.

In today's Career Liberal world, the buck stops anywhere but 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Sez the subhead for Beinart's post (possibly the work of Daily Beast's editors, rather than the author's):

From the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the head of Mossad, the experts are speaking out against attacking Iran over its nuclear program, but hawks like the GOP presidential candidates are drowning out the warnings.

The real culprits are the Commander-in-Chief wannabes!

If, on Obama's watch, we do end up exercising our bipartisanship-given-right to pulverize a bunch of Persians, one hopes the dead and dying understand that the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the One True Bad Party. Not that the thoughts, feelings, and lives of Iranians are worth a moment's consideration, mind you.