WASHINGTON
High among the blunders of history was the "blank cheque" Kaiser Wilhelm gave Vienna, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to deal with the Serbs as it saw fit.
Five weeks later, Vienna declared war after Belgrade refused to submit to all 10 demands of an ultimatum. Russia mobilized; Germany and France followed. And war came, the bloodiest in all of European history with 9 million soldiers in their graves.
Since June 1914, a "blank check" given by one nation to another for war has been regarded as strategic folly.
Thus it is startling to learn 47 House Republicans just signed on to H.R. 1553 declaring unequivocal "support for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran ... including the use of military force."
These Republicans have just given Tel Aviv a blank check for a pre-emptive war that Israel, unless it uses its nuclear weapons, can start but not finish. Fighting and finishing that war would fall to the United States.
Whom do these Republicans represent?
The Pentagon has made clear that with two wars bleeding us, we do not want a third. For while easy to predict how such a war begins, no one can know how it ends.
The Israeli air force could destroy the nuclear power plant at Bushehr, the heavy water reactor at Arak and uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. But Israel cannot destroy all the dispersed nuclear facilities and missile sites of Iran. And no one knows what would follow.
How would Iran retaliate⢠Missile strikes on Tel Aviv⢠A missile barrage from Hezbollah igniting another Israeli-Lebanon war?
If America joined the attack, we would have to complete the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities and destroy its missile sites, coastal defenses, navy, air force and hundreds of speedboats to prevent attacks on U.S. warships and tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
We would have to strike all the Republican Guard bases near Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our troops. We would have to kill thousands of Iranians.
Would Iran retaliate by inciting the Mahdi Army to kill our men in Iraq⢠Would it set Hezbollah to kidnap or kill Americans in Lebanon⢠Would Iran retaliate for its civilian dead by activating agents to commit terrorism in the United States⢠No one knows.
In 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered airstrikes on Libya to retaliate for Gadhafi's bombing of the Berlin discotheque. In 1989, in retaliation, Gadhafi blew up Pan Am 103. Death toll: 270 men, women and children. It's called blowback.
The House Republican resolution supports Israel's use of "all means necessary" to "eliminate nuclear threats" that represent an "immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel." What "immediate and existential threat" are they talking about?
It is Israel that has hundreds of atomic bombs. Iran has no atom bombs.
Three years ago, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that Iran had given up on the project of building a bomb. Do these Republicans have hard evidence Iran is diverting its enriched uranium to such a bomb⢠If so, where is it?
Why House Republicans would announce full-throated support for a pre-emptive war on Iran that Americans would have to fight and finish escapes me.
But if this is where a Republican House would take America, into yet another war, best that we know it before voting this fall.
Pat Buchanan is the author of the book "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War.'"
