Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Pitts issued this serious statesmanlike call to action in April. Yes, April 2012!
With the global war against terrorism, it is now incumbent on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat to clamp down on Palestinian extremists that have perpetuated violence and to restart a peace process that has collapsed.
Meanwhile, Pitts’ only slightly more clued-in esteemed colleagues are about to ram through H Res 568, which contains this astonishing clause:
The House “urges the President to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and opposition to any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.”
MJ Rosenberg, former AIPAC staffer, draws the obvious conclusion:
Think about that.
The resolution, which almost surely will pass on Tuesday, is telling the president that he may not “rely on containment” in response to “the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Since the resolution, and U.S. policy itself defines Iranian possession of nuclear weapons as, ipso facto, a threat, Congress would be telling the president that any U.S. response to that threat other than war is unacceptable. In fact, it goes farther than that, not only ruling out containment of a nuclear armed Iran but also containment of an Iran that has a “nuclear weapons capability.”
That means that the only acceptable response to a nuclear armed or nuclear capable Iran is not containment but its opposite: war.
Rosenberg notes that “13,000 AIPAC delegates were dispatched to Capitol Hill, on the last day of [AIPAC’s recent] conference, with instructions to tell the senators and representatives whom they met that supporting this resolution was #1 on AIPAC’s election year agenda.” (He also notes that this is a non-binding resolution.)
I would encourage you all to call your Congressman to discourage him or her from supporting this creepy bill, but to be honest I think that’s likely to be about as effective as waiting for Ariel and Yasir to sort it all out.