I am new to TPM, and must be frank that I have abused this site.  It has become for me something of a means of distraction.  I skip the stories pertaining to abuses of justice and the escalating war in Iraq, in order to get to my current drug of choice:  the ongoing Democratic primaries. 

These are important, of course, but in long run something of a sideshow when I step back to look what is being hidden the plain sight, a possible (and some say most probable) war with Iran.

The signs that we are on the path to such a war are manifold, and come not just from fringe elements but from players throughout the political spectrum.  (Note, for example, the March 11 piece from US News and World Reports). 

The signs are also blaringly obvious:  policy papers advocating war, the Kyl Lieberman Amendment, an already-in-effect economic operation against Iran (see: http://www.chris-floyd.com/;  March 25, 2008 ), warfare in the area, perhaps designed to test weapons capabilities, an ominous visitation of Dick Cheney to the region (he visited before the Iraq war, as well), etc. 

Today, if I may be indulged, I highly recommend you check out a guest column in Juan Cole’s blog. Earlier this month, William Polk, a former member of the Policy Planning Council for North Africa, the Middle and Central Asia, founder of the Middle Eastern Studies Center of the University of Chicago,  and past president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, wrote a guest column that is (if anything is) a must read. 

The link is here:  http://www.juancole.com/2008/03/iran-danger-and-opportunity-polk-guest.html

In this article, Polk methodically sets out the portents of a war with Iran, and the cataclysmic effects of such a war, effects so devastating the level-headed Polk finds himself forced to invoke Hobbes.

As for portents, Polk notes (among many): 

It is because a massive build-up of forces inevitably creates the “climate” of war. Troops and the public, on both sides, come to accept its inevitability. Standing down is difficult and can entail loss of “face.” Consequently, political leaders usually are carried forward by the flow of events. Having taken steps 1, 2 and 3, they find taking step number 4 logical, even necessary. In short, momentum rather than policy begins to control action. As Barbara Tuchman showed in her study of the origins of the First World War, The Guns of August, even though none of the parties really wanted to go to war, none could stop the process. It was the fact that President Kennedy had been reading Tuchman’s book just before the Cuban Missile Crisis, I believe, that made him so intent on not being “hijacked by events.” His restraint was unusual. More common is a surrender to “sequence” as was shown by the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It would have taken a major reversal of policy – and considerable political bravery -- to halt either invasion once the massive build-up was in place. No such effort was made then. Will it be now? I think the odds are against it.

In fact, moves are being made, decisions are being taken and rationale has been set out that point in the opposite direction. . .