Causus Belli: Searching for the Just War in Iran

Apparently, deliberately trying to start a war is no longer news.  In a story that’s getting surprisingly little coverage, Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker and on NPR that United States covert operatives are soon to be sent into Iran to foment dissent among revolutionaries, assassinate key targets, and generally destabilize the region, with an eye towards putting enough pressure on Iran’s government that it might “slip up,” and take the first step towards war.  All of this, of course, is at the order of the executive branch, and done with the grumbling reluctance of the Congress: seems like a familiar saga to me.  Hersh tells the story of an administration desperate to do something – anything – about Iran before its clock runs out, and a Democratic Congress too concerned with how the issue could be spun against them to halt provocative moves that are at least likely to, and possibly designed to, start a war with Iran.

Great nations have always had their rituals for beginning a war justly – under Roman fetial law (ius fetiale), the fetial order of priests was required to conduct certain rituals to give the enemy notice of a transgression agains the Roman state, and to invoke the support of the Gods – and our ritual has, apparently, become provoking our enemy into making the first move.  If there’s anything more dangerous than the Bush Administration with a mandate and popular support, it might just be the Bush Administration with nothing left to lose.