It is incredibly frustrating to watch the Bush Administration once again manipulating congress and the American people into war with another country. Las time it was Iraq, now it’s Iran. Around the world, there is a growing concern that U.S. actions against Iran raise war risk. In Washington, few in congress seem to have the foresight of Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who has sounded the alarm on this issue.

If the State Department designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group, not only will this be viewed as provocative, it will be the first time this has ever been used against the military of a sovereign state. This will also effectively give the President full authority to wage military action against Iran under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001) and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq (2002) without any additional consultation with congress.

If congress has learned their lessons from Iraq about their responsibility in the authorization of war, they sure don’t seem to show it.  Last month, an amendment added by Senator Joe Lieberman that contains “a warning to the Iranians” passed through the Senate 97-0 . Similar language was attached to funding legislation that passed through the house 398-27. A lack of foresight is one thing, but is congress so blind that even the hindsight of events from a few years ago (that led to a currently ongoing war) is beyond their vision too?

My concern here is that the President and Vice President have got it into their heads that they can prevent Iran from potentially developing a nuclear weapons program with a series of airstrikes, and use the fact that Iran is capitalizing on the Administration’s own failures in Iraq to justify such an attack. But, just as they miscalculated the effects of invading Iraq, they are grossly underestimating the disastrous and almost immediate consequences such an attack would have on global security and economics as well as America’s international standing, to say nothing of the countless lives that will surely be lost.

Because they know the American people will never buy into their flimsy (and illegal) justifications for a preemptive strike against Iran, President Bush and Vice President Cheney seem to be quietly laying  the groundwork for an escalation of hostilities that they hope will give them the excuse they need to launch the attacks they have in mind before they leave office in 2009.

As I said, this is incredibly frustrating for me personally, because as an individual citizen there is little I can do to prevent this other than to try get the word out. I pray that I’m wrong about this, but I already went through the process of trying to remain optimistic in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. I fear that by November 2008, we will be dealing with the aftermath of an Iranian attack, not if it should even happen in the first place.

If foresight counts for anything as a quality we expect from our elected representatives, I hope that voicing my concerns now will, if nothing else, at least mean something next year. As a congressman I would have the voting authority to represent the real will and actual needs of the people of Southwest Florida to actively prevent such disastrous wars from happening again.

On this matter, however, I will be happy to be proven wrong…