The President is essentially using the anti-Zionist quotes of the President of Iran as the equivalent of the writings of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf and Lenin’s What is to be Done?. If we ignore Ahmedinejad’s fiery rhetoric we will be just as guilty of appeasement as Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier.
I understand and am fully sympathetic to the Jewish cry of “Never Again”. The world would be foolish to ignore the threats against Israel issuing from people like Nasrallah and Ahmedinajed. That is why I support international efforts to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. However, there are innumerable differences between the threat Iran poses to the United States and the threat Nazis and Soviet Communists posed to the West.
The first and most obvious difference between the two situations is that the West possesses an overwhelming military advantage. We are no more able to occupy Iraq than Germany was able to occupy Russia, but we can literally end all life in Iran within minutes if they ever engage in an attack on our homeland or use a nuclear device against one of our allies. We have an overwhelming deterrence that simply did not exist for the powers that faced Hitler. It’s true that Hitler could have been (relatively) easily defeated at an early stage, but not without a large sacrifice in treasure and lives, and not with the flip of a switch.
Iran would be emboldened by an American retreat for Iraq, and they would be even more emboldened if they came into possession of a nuclear device. (The intelligence community still estimates they are ten years away from obtaining one). But they would be unable to acquire much new territory. Perhaps they might annex part of southern Iraq. They could potentially take a chunk of Kurdistan. But we could always thwart such efforts just as we thwarted Saddam’s attempt to take Kuwait.
Another difference is that Ahmedinejad in not as powerful within the Iranian government as Hitler was in the German government. Ahmednijehad’s predecessor, Mohommed Khatami, was famously ineffectual in getting his priorities passed into law. Iran is ruled by a Council of Guardians that has the power to negate any legislation it deems un-Islamic and even to disallow candidates from standing for office if they are not ideologically pure enough. Unlike Hitler, the Council of Guardians is not a charasmatic and wildly popular institution.
Iran, and the Shi’a revolutionary theology movement more generally, are definitely a major anti-American force in the Middle East. This fact is a major reason why Middle East experts like Anthony Zinni and Pat Lang opposed replacing Saddam Hussein with a Shi’a majority government. It’s also why they saw Israel’s attack on Lebanon as self-defeating. It only served to raise the popularity of Hezbollah, which is the Lebanese chapter of revolutionary Shi’a theology.
It’s inevitable that even Sunni Arabs will be drawn to Muslim movements that are successful at stymieing America, while their own leaders do nothing. It’s a recognition of this fact that leads neo-conservatives to conclude that Carter and Reagan failed us when they backed down respectively, in Iran (1979-80) and Lebanon (1982-3). It is this recognition that leads them to advocate attacking Iran now. At the very least, they are afraid of the consequences of giving Iran a strategic victory by drawing down our troops in Iraq.
What these thinkers need to do is not to draw strained parallels to pre-war Nazi Germany, but to start thinking outside the box. What we want to do is remove, as much as possible, the causes of Islamist grievance, and thereby reduce the appeal of radical ideology in the region.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, would do more to drain the appeal of radical Islamists than to hammer out a settlement of the Palestinian question. This cannot be done by democratizing the Middle East. In fact, it is not safe for American interests, or even the world economy, to democraticize the Middle East prior to hammering out a final agreement. The evidence for this is the electoral success since the invasion of Iraq of Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egpyt, the Shi’a Revolutionaries in Iraq. Free elections in Jordan and Saudi Arabia would bring similar victories for hardline anti-Zionists and anti-Americans.
From the perspective of Israel, it is certainly a frightening prospect to see both the rise of democratically expressed hostility from their neighbors and the bellicose rhetoric coming for an Iran that is pursuing nuclear know-how. But both they, and the U.S. Government should do a little cost-benefit analysis and come to the obvious conclusions. The immediate causes of radical Islamist terrorism are opposition to the oppression of U.S./Israeli allied Arab governments in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, the continuing occupation of Palestine, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. They should now see the futility of overcoming this hostility through democratization. In fact, it only makes matters much worse, much less stable, and enormously more dangerous. If we can’t afford more democracy, and we can’t sustain occupation, what, then, are our alternatives?
One thing is for sure. Doing more of the same in not an alternative that has any prospect for success. It will only continue to drain our coffers, destabilize the region, and motivate a new generation of holy warriors.
We must remove the irritants. Settle the Palestine question, withdraw from Iraq, and only then pursue democratization.
How will we prevent such acts of “appeasement” from encouraging the Islamists to continue the fight and further endanger both Israel and the United States? First, removing the main irritants will reduce the appeal of jihad. Second, we have an overwhelming nuclear deterrent. Third, the region still depends on the rest of the world’s appetite for energy. It will always be a concern for Israel that some radical regime might give a nuclear device to terrorists. Pakistan could do it today. Iran could do it tomorrow. The Russians could launch ICBM’s at San Francisco this afternoon. Ultimately, we have to rely on a combination of counter-prolifieration, a nuclear drawdown, and the doctrine of assured destruction.
It appears that the Republicans plan to hype the existential threat of such an unlikely attack to justify the warrantless domestic surveillance of everyday Americans, the torture of Muslim prisoners (both of the terrorist and the innocent variety), and the unending occupation of Iraq.
You can read the freshly released The National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism to get an idea where the GOP wants to take this nation. It’s a recipe for both permawar and for the end of the American Empire. It’s unaffordable, immoral, strategically insane, and a blatant cover for a raid on our national treasury to pay for armaments and protect the interests of energy companies. The GOP must be stopped. Get out the vote!!
also available in orange.
Booman, you and Steven are on a roll today. Thank you for thinking. We have a group of great thinkers here. I applaud each of you here that do think well and write down those great diaries. Like you said the vote is important, but the vote must not get stolen once again, as in the past. We have a duty to see to that process. We all will have a post to stand on that day that we all vote. Some one stole the place where the voice should change the process instead of the almighty $$$$$$$$!
We can define the wrongs but making it active and doing in action what is necessary is what it takes. I simply can not understand why we elect those like your Casey to do our requests in our seat in our government. Like those who use the lobby to get money to pad their pockets for spending now or for their padded future. There is much that is wrong with our government and it did not happen over night. It will not be over night that it will change for the better; however, we do have to stop electing bad representatives to our government to do our bidding as we are the ppl that matter not that special group that do not have anything to do with us of if they do it does us wrong. We are really in a world of hurt out here. Something big has to happen for us to get this train-wreck back on the track of recovery and moving once again.
Anyhow thinks again for your thoughts and place for us to place our down for our voices to be heard. Hopefully together we can bring some peace to our minds and hearts that we can work for the betterment of all. hugs.
Ultimately, we have to rely on a combination of counter-prolifieration, a nuclear drawdown, and the doctrine of assured destruction.
Let me play devils advocate here, or repub opposition really, concerning this doctrine of assured destruction! Before 9/11 and before islamic radical fundamentalism, I would agree that sanity in the old Soviet Union won out so that this assured destruction had STRONG deterrent power. However post 9/11, I must say that such suicidal deterrence does not seem to be effective in the radical fundamentalist jihadist mindset. Can you really argue otherwise, and do you really thin most American voters will believe you post 9/11??
Think about this NG.
On a very simplistic level, we have a new problem. That problem is the emergence of suicidal terrorists. Give a suicidal person a nuclear device and there is little deterrence to them using it.
But…
Look at how hard it is to make a nuclear bomb. It took North Korea about 10 years to make three.
Iran has only enriched a microscopic portion of what they would need to make a single bomb and we estimate that it will take them 10 more years to make one.
Add to this that all nuclear explosions leave tell-tale return to sender fingerprints.
The question is, why would a nation-state labor for years in secret to create a bomb and then give it away to a terrorist?
How would they avoid being obliterated in response?
Do I think the American people can understand this? It won’t be easy given this new propaganda campaign. But we must try.
If you are asking my how and why the suicidal religious fanatic gets to this , well I cannot precisely!! However, I can say that given the fact that these suicidal types seem to exist in large numbers in the fundamentalist jihadist(?sp) Islamic world, well as the saying goes, Houston, I think we have a problem! You/I/we must CLEARLY deal with that concept to win elections because you know what the opposition is going to say!!
It’s long past time to break the habit of responding to specious arguments. Underlying all the ranting, the administration is scared shitless that the polls may be accurate. So just because these guys throw bones doesn’t mean anyone has to chase them.
I’d be more likely to point out who they’re talking to, rather what bullshit they’re putting out there. Try to remember the last time any administration flack talked to a non-military, centrist organization. That’d be somewhere around 1999.
on MSNBC.
Anyone else notice what answer is conveniently missing?
are we worse off?
That would have gotten my vote.
Again, an excellent piece on the Middle East that mirrors my thinking quite closely.
Essentially, the following paradigm exists where the US is trying to pursue three mutually incompatible goals in the Middle East. Achieve regional hegemony; support Israel; and pursue some vague process towards democratization.
The first two goals have been the fundamental pillars of the United States’s Middle East policy since WWII. But as 9/11 proved, that status quo was proving to be increasingly and uncomfortably costly. In this regard, Bush and co are right. Its just their solution was so asinine.
What was the Bush administration’s response? Pursue the fundamental pillars – support for Israel and an attempt to achieve regional hegemony – to a sort of logical extreme. All the while ignoring that the fundamental incompatibility of these goals is what created 9/11. To some how paper over the fundamental illogicality of this, Bush et al. advanced the idea that the problem was a lack of democracy, while willfully ignoring the fact that free elections will lead to the election of politicians fundamentally opposed to both the pre-existing goals which the Bush administration had only more forcefully pursued in the wake of 9/11. The contradiction became obvious in the 4 month period that included the very strong Muslim Brotherhood showing in Egypt’s late 2005 Potemkin elections and Hamas’s victory in early 2006. This fact was further driven home by the United States’s failed diplomacy surrounding the Lebanon-Israel War this summer.
Why dont we take them up on this. A nuclear free middle east removes all threat from Iran to Israel and from Israel to Iran, so it is a winner for all. Oh but I forgot the real aggressors are us and Israel, which is the only explanation for not seizing this offer which is the sanest thing tio come out of any sides mouth in a long long time.