The question posed in the header may shock many people, especially as the take in most of the corporo-media has been to treat the letter by 47 Senate Repukes to Iran as something of a political prank, a joke. But it's no joke, and blistering takedowns of these imps (led by one cotton-wool brained Sen. from Ark. named Tom Cotton) by the NY Times and Financial Times don't mince words on how subversive and dangerous an act it was.
Cotton is supposed to be a former vet, but by his reckless and stupid instigation, trying to disrupt careful negotiations with the Iranians, this idiot could be responsible for starting a nuclear exchange down the road which could quickly escalate.
Don't believe it? Then you don't know history, even recent history. You have zero clue of how escalation and a few blunders can set a path to the unthinkable. And this may well explain why a bozo like Cotton could act so precipitously and unthinkingly. Because former military or not he doesn't know jack about history.
Most of us at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis in October, 1962, didn't know it was a real crisis at the outset. While JFK had appeared on national television and presented images of Russian missiles under wraps, the general media consensus and take from the military and Joint Chiefs is that these were 'dummies' - not armed. (The meme had taken hold that the Russian technicians didn't get a chance to mount the warheads).
Only 30 years later, did Robert McNamara learn (while attending a conference on the crisis in Havana) that more than 100 of the missiles were really armed with single megaton warheads and ready to launch. He reported all this in the excellent documentary, 'The Fog of War'. (Which every serious citizen needs to watch!)
What originally was intended to be a naval blockade of Russian ships could have quickly degenerated if the insane fool, Gen. Curtis Lemay, had his way and JFK had launched an invasion of Cuba. As McNamara learned much later, Castro was ready to order all missiles launched if that had occurred. In the documentary, McNamara reports he asked Castro if he'd really have destroyed his country and started a nuclear war merely because of a U.S. invasion. Without hesitation, he affirmed, "Yes, I would!"
Those of us living then only learned later, with the release of the war room tapes (published in ‘The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, by Ernest R. May and Philip K. Zelikow , 1997, President and Fellows of Harvard College), how close we came to seeing the world blown to bits. And it would only have taken Kennedy obeying the demands of one loony tune crank general. (One that LBJ idolized, btw, and developed backchannels with behind JFK's back.). As reported in the book:
"the Strategic Air Command moved from the general Defense Condition 3 to Defense Condition 2, the level just below general war. In addition to ICBMs and submarine-based ballistic missiles, every available bomber – more than 1,400 aircraft- went on alert. Scores of bombers, each loaded with several nuclear weapons and carrying folders for pre-assigned targets in the Soviet Union, were kept continuously in the air around the clock with shifts- refueled by aerial tankers."
While Repuke Sen. Tom Cotton is no Gen. Curtis Lemay, his rash actions in formulating and dispatching this subversive letter to Iran could incept such collateral damage down the road that it potentially leads to as serious an outcome as we nearly had in Oct., 1962. Think only of the consequences if the letter actually derails the peace process and ultimately leads to war with Iran, which both the 'pukes and Israel's Netanyahu desperately want.
And why should bomber strikes on Iran lead to nuclear war? As a conceptual template, look no further than the excellent 1983 Brit film, 'Threads'. What commences as localized military power plays in Europe - much as we're seeing now in Ukraine with NATO and Russia - quickly metastasizes to NATO-Russian confrontation in Iran (think oil!).
Once NATO and Russian forces appear in the same theater, events quickly deteriorate. From the initial strikes on a nuclear reactor at Isfahan, to the accidental sinking of the Russian ship Kirov in the Straits of Hormuz, to the deliberate exchange of two tactical nuclear weapons (with radiation blowing over Pakistan). You know that each misstep almost foretells the next and you sense the inevitable, even before the air raid sirens scream in Sheffield - immediately followed by an air burst - which delivers an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) that knocks out all electricity.
Within hours we then see the escalation to a full scale nuclear war - with 3,000 megatons exchange (210 megatons on the UK alone) . By then there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Those not incinerated in the initial multi-megaton blasts, face the agony of radiation poisoning and the horrific death that portends. By the end, only a few survive, and struggle to grow meager crops even ten years after the nuclear winter.
In the final scene we behold a young woman of maybe 18, strapped to a filthy gurney and giving birth. She writhes in pain, screams to 100 -plus decibel levels (no pain killers) and ultimately the midwife presents her with an infant with a frog-like face, scales and small scaled horns. As she hysterically screams in horror at her mutant, grunting offspring, the film pans to black and the credits roll.
This is perhaps the film Tom Cotton and his cotton-pickin' moron Reepo colleagues ought to have watched before pulling their recent theatrics!
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/61401/the-washington-post-will-kill-us-all
And:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/61390/a-reasoned-response-to-a-washington-post-call-for-war-with-iran
Also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/medea-benjamin/61367/tom-cotton-is-the-worst-bully-in-the-senate-here-are-10-reasons-why
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-boardman/61363/why-47-republican-senators-should-not-be-viewed-as-traitors
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-wellen/61359/republican-senators-letter-to-iran-has-some-invoking-the-t-word
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