I have no interest in debating whether there is a rising danger of war with Iran.  Anyone who thinks otherwise can find plenty of other people to go play blog with.  And, for the moment, anyone who believes planning to attack Iran is the appropriate way to deal with our real or imagined conflicts with that nation is invited to go cheerlead someone else about it.  I'll be blunt; I'm writing this to those already convinced that there is an approaching war with Iran, not to nay sayers or skeptics.  

A call for action has been sounded.  The real struggle to stop a war with Iran is upon us, and we, the netroots, have a critical role to play to stop this incredibly dangerous escalation of violence.  What might begin as a "U.S. surgical strike" against "designated targets" inside Iran would surely not end there.  Bush and Cheney continue playing with matches.  They burned down the house in Iraq last time, but this time the whole neighborhood may go up in flames.  The time for Netroots action is NOW.  

War with Iran won't start with an invasion.  It won't take months of prepositioning troops on Iran's borders to prepare for.  War with Iran, if it comes, will start suddenly in the middle of the night from some air force base in Germany, and from aircraft carriers stationed in waters off the Middle East. The approaching War with Iran will be denied by our leaders until the literal hour that the first bombs strike Iran.   If the Bush Administration has its way, there will be no Iran War Resolution debated in Congress. The start of this war will resemble when U.S. planes bombed Libya in 1986, or when Bill Clinton sent U.S. cruise missiles into Afghanistan trying to blow up Bin Ladin, but Iran is not another Libya under Gaddafi, or another Afghanistan under the Taliban.  

The start of War with Iran will be sudden, but the aftermath will be long and bloody. The cycle of widening conflict an attack on Iran will trigger will essentially be irreversible once U.S. bombs land inside that nation.   Our best and maybe only chance to prevent it is by making the public political atmosphere absolutely toxic to any and all saber rattling against Iran, starting NOW.  

We have a Neocon administration in the White House, and only slim Democratic majorities in Congress; some of our own Democrats have waxed hawkish about the "madman in Tehran", much like some of them waxed hawkish about the "madman in Baghdad" in 2002.  Many of our own leaders find themselves distracted by presidential politics, much as they were by then upcoming mid term elections while Iraq was debated in 2002.   The public too is distracted.  When they aren't wondering where Anna Nicole Smith will be buried, they might spare a moment or two to bet on the 2008 Presidential horse races.  And the Titanic keeps sailing toward the Ice Berg.

Our work is cut out for us.  We have never been called on to do more important work than to stop another war, but that is the task now before us.  When the IWR was being debated the netroots was in its relative infancy; our collective inability to stop the war with Iraq fed most of the anger that propelled our growth into the force we have become today.  Now it is put up or shut up time for all of us.  The alternative is another decade of death, another decade of anger, another decade of trillions spent on national security trying to defend against threats to America that our own nation's policies gave original rise to.

So the fight is on.  To wage Peace we all have just been given a new banner to rally around.  www.stopiranwar.com is now live on the web; there is nothing subtle about that name and no one is likely to forget it.  The site is designed to reach a mass audience; nothing about it screams out "partisan", nothing about it screams out "liberal" or "progressive" either, and that is completely intentional.  Organizing a protest movement to stop a war that hasn't actually begun yet isn't easy. Even with massive organized resistance, preventing any war is difficult once the drum beat for it has already begun, and it surely has been pounding hard for months now pushing conflict with Iran.  

We are passionate, we are determined, but our numbers are small, so what can the Netroots really do to stop an Administration that is out of control from taking America to war with Iran?   The answer is simple to state but far more difficult to execute. We can and must break out of our own introspective net boxes and carry this challenge onto a far wider political playing field.  Bush and Cheney may not be facing any more elections but most Republicans sitting in Congress will be. They are worried about the future of the Republican Party if it yet again ends up on the wrong side of an unpopular war.  America: Black, White, Yellow, Red, Blue and Purple America; has no stomach for further unnecessary wars. Our people don't want a fight with Iran, not when there is every reason to believe that sane policies can still prevent it. We can stop this.

We can freeze the movement toward war against Iran with a broad based American movement against that war. This issue has to go mainstream and it has to go there fast. StopIranWar.com is our best vehicle to get there.  We will never receive a more credible platform than this to reach out to America from.  Consider these few snips from StopIranWar.com found under that perennial web site feature; "About Us":

"About Wes Clark
Wes Clark rose to the rank of four-star general as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe during thirty-four years of service in the United States Army...

WesPAC - Securing America's Future, formed by Wes Clark, was founded on the belief that a truly secure America demands sound, wise leadership and a renewed commitment to the values that have made our nation great: service, integrity, and accountability.

About VoteVets
VoteVets.org is a pro military organization founded by Veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan to be the voice of the 21st century patriot. Our mission is to ensure that today's soldiers have the necessary resources to successfully complete their missions abroad and the support they deserve when they come home. We are committed to winning the war on terror and preserving the strength of our military..."
http://www.stopiranwar.com/?page_id=9

With all well due respect to Air America, which daily keeps the netroots fires burning; with full appreciation for sterling leftist voices like Noam Chompsky and Amy Goodman who continually pull the curtains back on reality, and with real admiration for the continuing principled quest for peace of Dennis Kucinich, they are not the break out voices that a broad cross section of America will hear piercing through the denial that shrouds approaching war with Iran.  They do not carry the same credibility on War and Peace with the general public that a retired Four Star General and a well regarded disciplined organization of America's most recent war vets can.  

Undoubtedly there are many actions that all of us can and should be doing over the coming months to prevent a disastrous war with Iran.  Yes we should loudly protest against it, on the web, on the air, and on the streets.  Yes we should continually pressure Democrats running for President to emphatically turn against the lightest clank of saber rattling against Iran.  But we can start right now, the very hour you read this if possible, by mass mailing information on www.stopiranwar.com to every person we know regardless of how we know them or what their typical political viewpoints might be.  

The Netroots has to jump start the debate inside America about the approaching war with Iran.  We can't wait for the mainstream media to do that for us.  Our numbers may be too small for us to wage and win that debate alone with all who need to hear it, but we won't have to.  America does not want another war.  Once the issue of War with Iran is fully in public play the tide against it will surge with the strength needed to give real meaning to that word.  Our job, the Netroots' Greatest Challenge, is to make that public debate ever present and unavoidable.  Over the coming week I intend to write letters to newspapers I never read, I intend to go to web sites that I never visit, I intend to send emails to people who have never heard from me online before, and I will ask them to heed the warning being sounded at StopIranWar.com.  Please join me in whatever ways that you can.