News Analysis: Do we have the power to prevent the looming conflict with Iran?

The Melbourne IndyMedia reported on a well-attended public meeting in Sydney of the World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party (SEP)"to oppose the escalating US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the preparations for new illegal wars of aggression against Iran and other countries targetted by Washington. The featured speaker was David North, chairman of the WSWS International Editorial Board and national secretary of the SEP in the U.S." Speaking first was James Cogan, a WSWS staff writer who blamed the media for giving credibility to Bush’s claims that the mobilization of 21,500 more troops would stablize the region and help the Iraqi govenment become a “functioning democracy”. Cogan believes that "the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is a war crime of historic dimensions, carried out by the American capitalist elite and its international allies to seize control over the second largest oil reserves in the world.”
Then David North spoke about the history of the United States world economic rise and fall. North believes that “if the most important factor in the fate of world capitalism in the twentieth century was the rise of the United States to the position of global economic pre-eminence, then the most important and explosive factor in the beginning of the twenty-first century is the breakdown of this dominant position. The dissolution of the Soviet Union has been interpreted by significant sections of the American ruling elite as an opportunity to employ military force to offset and counteract the consequences of its increasingly serious economic weaknesses." So "with no significant military opponents to place restraints on the unbridled use of its military power certain American analysts came to call this the “unipolar” moment. From that point on, there has been a pattern of increasingly reckless and self-aggrandising policies." This has pinnacled with the Neo-Cons' (headed by Dick Cheney)goal to occupy and control the Middle East and their oil. And even though the NeoCons are utilizing this unipolar moment, U.S. supremacy has passed. Power is now diffused between multiple states and groups.
"The megapower status of the US is a dominant fact of life on the planet today states Fawaz Turki, Special to Gulf News , though "declinist" scholars, such as Paul Kennedy in his The Rise and Fall of Empires, and Walter Meade in another declinist treatise called Mortal Splendour, have been warning the American establishment, since the late 1980s, that wanton arrogance, or hubris, can easily lead to overreaching, and overreaching to collapse."

With this knowledge in hand, the Republicans have been able to stall the vote on the resolution to disagree with the President on the war with Iraq. How can this be? It continues to show the American people that we have no say. The Democrats cannot even take a stand for a non-binding resolution and they are the majority. How are we going to end this conflict and keep from starting another one?
Further, in the Washington Post today is Bush's budget for 2007/2008. Increasing military spending dramatically for the remainder of 2007 and 2008 under the guise of global terrorism including funds to keep nuclear activity out of the hands of countries that we deem as possible terrorists (Iran). The Office of the Budget has the numbers included in the WP article. Can we not stop this insanity or in the name of funding the troops is Congress going to be compelled to give Bush what he wants - enough funds to make his move in Iran? The $2.9 trillion budget as characterized by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) "uses deception to hide a massive increase in debt, and its priorities are disconnected from the needs of middle-class Americans." The President "insists on spending billions on $150,000 tax breaks for multi-millionaires at the expense of the middle class," and his budget "hands out favors for the oil and gas industry while eroding health coverage for children and seniors." Bush continues to do his own thing not outside of public opinion. James Fallow, a correspondent for the Atlantic believes that "no one can any longer trust the Administration to recognize and defend America’s rational self-interest — not when the President says he will carry out a policy even if opposed by everyone except his wife and dog, not when the Vice President refuses to concede any mistake or misjudgment in the handling of Iraq. According to the constitutional chain of command, those two men literally have the power to order a strike that would be disastrous for their nation. The Congress has no official way to prevent them from doing so...What the Congress can do is draw the line. It can say that war with Iran is anathema to the interests of the United States and contrary to the will of its elected representatives. And it should do that now. But they can't even get a non-binding resolution to the floor for a vote.
It appears the only way there will be change is if U.S. citizens stand up and let their government know what they want. In an article by William Huges on Media Monitors Network, he gives us a course of action - "America is going down the toilet! What are you going to do about it? Let me suggest that you make a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s essay, “Live Not by Lies,” and send it to your House of Representative member in the U.S. Congress and also to your two U.S. Senators. Put a personal note with it and say something like this: “No more lies. End the Iraqi war. No war with Iran. Bring our troops home, now. Put America’s interest first and work to reverse global warming. My Republic isn’t a global cop for the Wire Pullers of the New World Order. And--Impeach Bush and Cheney!"