Khomeini's Victory

If we are to use the rational-actor model to understand American government policy since 2000, then we conclude that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and the entire staff of the American Enterprise Institute and the Weekly Standard are deep-cover Iranian agents--part of a conspiracy so immense to attempt to bring the Shia Mahdi back down to earth.

Josdhua Micah Marshall reflects on an article by Anthony Shadid:

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall January 30, 2007 12:02 AM: Complimenting Anthony Shadid's work is almost redundant.... In the US at present we tend to think of the 'Iran' issue in terms of Iranian influence (or 'infiltration' -- take your pick) on Shia militias and political factions within Iraq. But we need to pull back the frame of reference and see that before 2001 Iran was bordered on the east and west by hostile or at least unfriendly countries -- Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran almost went to war with the Taliban government in the 1990s, Shadid notes.

Over the last five years we've overthrown both governments and... created a power vacuum.... Read Shadid's narrative of events and you see that if the US government were in the pay of Iranian agents they would have been hard-pressed to find a series of actions and policies better crafted to increase Iranian prestige and power in the region and decrease ours.... As a Saudi writer told Shadid: "The United States is the first to be blamed for the rise of Iranian influence in the Middle East. There is one thing important about the ascendance of Iran here. It does not reflect a real change in Iranian capabilities, economic or political. It's more a reflection of the failures on the part of the U.S. and its Arab allies in the region."...

[H]ere we come back to the recurring theme of the Bush presidency: the president's perverse effort to be the beneficiary of his own incompetence and policy disasters.... Iran's power is waxing. And we're supposed to rely on the approach of the White House, the guys who created the terrible situation in the first place, to solve the consequences of their latest screw up. It's like a perpetual motion machine of calamity and self-justification.... "Don't tell me about how stupid I was to get us into this situation. Now that I've created a disaster this big, what's your policy to deal with it?" Sort of takes your breath away....

[W]e're in this eerie afterburn of our four long years of disaster. The public has rendered its verdict. Every thinking person has rendered their verdict. But the administration is still going on more or less as though nothing's happened. Serious thinking in Washington of The Note variety is still on a sort of mental autopilot. The story's over. All the real arguments are settled. But as of yet the car is still in drive rather than reverse.

Like the line says, first do no harm. And for the United States as a country, right now, that means doing everything constitutionally, legally and politically possible to limit the president's and even more Vice President Cheney's free hand to shape and execute American foreign policy. Sift it all out and it's that simple. Stop them from doing any more damage. All the rest is commentary and elaboration.

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now.

Comments

[save_the_rustbelt]

Saddam may have been a monster but there was a balance of Iraq and iran that was useful for many reasons.

Oops - balance out the window.

Is it 2009 yet?

[MobiusKlein]

Are they playing a larger game? Let Iran's power & prestige grow to be a counterbalance to the larger (sunni, right?) Muslim countries in the area? Let Iran/Iraq become allies to counter Saudi Arabia?

[MobiusKlein]

Are they playing a larger game? Let Iran's power & prestige grow to be a counterbalance to the larger (sunni, right?) Muslim countries in the area? Let Iran/Iraq become allies to counter Saudi Arabia?

[christofay]

Don't forget this cycle, Israel is working selling advanced avionic technology to China. The hard-eyed realists in our American govt are anticipating future show-downs with China where we will depend on our edge in air tech where we will face the Chinese fruits of Israel's business. China sells earlier technology to South Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The Chinese missile goes to Iran which is shipped to the Lebanese that shoot it at an Israeli ship which prompts Israel to beg development money, seek aide or steal technology for advanced avionics from the U. S.

Israel can't send troops to our Middle Eastern adventures and won't send aid to us, that pipeline only flows in one direction. You could say they are arming our potential adversaries. While the U. S. is Israel's ally, in what why is Israel our ally?

I do say that we owe Israel a debt for the Holocaust, but at present it looks like a one way street.

[turkey turkey turkey]

Apply Ochham's Razor and it looks like Shrub et el are Likudnik agents bent on spreading chaos in the middle east in order to kill large numbers of Arabs and Persians.

The west owes no debt to *Israel* for the holocaust. We owe a debt for our inaction to all victims of genocide--be they Jewish, Ukrainian, Roma, Tutsi, or Cambodian--but this debt is due to the people and cultures which were victimized and not to any state.

Preserve accurate history of the holocaust, protect Jewish culture and make every reasonable effort to punish surviving Nazi war criminals? Yes, without question. Offer unquestioning support to the expansionist, racist, terrorist, theocracy that is the state of Israel? Absolutely not.

[Slocum]

So Saddam and the Taliban, however repressive and brutal, were usefully hostile to Iran and should have been maintained (perhaps even supported)? Back to realpolitik, then, eh?

The argument that we should have left Saddam in power because we lacked the capacity to put a decent government in its place is one thing, but the argument that we should have left Saddam & Sons alone because they were useful to us in counterbalancing Iran? Ugh.

[Let's say it's a twofer: create a murderous anarchy in Iraq that's worse than Saddam Hussein, and increase the potential for a crazed regime expecting the imminent return of the Twelfth Imam to do damage to its neighbors.]

[dcb]

Slocum,

As I recall the original justification for the invasion was that Saddam posed an immanent threat to the US.

The fact is, Saddam's Iraq was not an immanent threat to the US. Further, it's pretty clear that the Bush administration knew this fact and attempted to conceal it, and confuse the American people about it.

The "argument" about whether or not we were justified to have invaded in light of the demonstrated absence of WMD, based on whatever moral rationale is moot.

[Chris]

Matt Yglesias has already laid the groundwork for this theory (in a June 2004 article in TAP): http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7799

"To make a long story short, the results of a second Bush administration would be as follows: A bankrupt United States possessing a broken military -- as Phillip Carter has recently reported for the Prospect, it will take years to reconstitute the supplies that have been cannibalized for the Iraq venture -- faces off against a nuclear-armed Iranian regime that’s seen its two regional adversaries replaced with failed states in which Iran-affiliated warlords wield disproportionate influence. The American people need to start asking themselves, whose side is Bush on?"

[quartz]

I see a dog being wagged. After the SOTU went over like a lead balloon and surge opposition growing with Congress moving toward a bipartisan anti-surge resolution, the administration needs to change the subject fast. Suddenly the Iran "threat" is being hyped at top volume. They may even calculate that actually dropping a few bombs on the place will give the Pres a rally 'round effect. Very scary stuff.

[wkwillis]

Christofay
As I recall, the US built the largest army, navy, and air force in history and stomped Germany into the ground in 1941 to 1945, the same years that Germany went from harassing and looting the European Jews (sort of like what many countries in the world are doing right now to their ethnic minorities, countries like, say, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and India) to outright extermination.
Germany and much of the rest of Europe may still owe Israel a debt, but we don't. We attacked the countries that persecuted the European Jews and punished them severely.

[kharris]

"There is one thing important about the ascendance of Iran here. It does not reflect a real change in Iranian capabilities, economic or political. It's more a reflection of the failures on the part of the U.S. and its Arab allies in the region."

The same thing could be said about Israel in the time of David, though there was no US involved in the collapse of neighboring states back then. Israel enjoyed an era of peace with the powerful neighbors (though not internal peace), prosperity and relative influence, so long as the big guys were busy chopping themselves up.

Do we assume that Iran, which has not been able to get out of its own way for some time - high jobless rate, rotting oil sector, a dash of Dutch disease, a constant tussle between moderates and mullahs - will turn itself around and become a long-lasting power? Is Iran today not going to fail the way Israel did as Solomon's blood grew cold? I realize that my question seems aimed at suggesting the answer, but that is not my intention. I don't think I know this one, and I wonder if anybody else does.

[a different chris]

> will turn itself around and become a long-lasting power?

And, if they suceed, will that power be in any way a threat to us? We are heading down into Mad Cheney's "1 percent" range with Iran.

I, like for the first time ever, agree with Slocum: using the bloody bulwark that was Saddam against Iraq is not supportable. But he probably disagrees with me that we never needed any bulwark at all. Iran is just not a danger to us, or even Israel. Israel is a useful boogieman-under-the-bed for the politicians to keep the kids from getting up int the middle of the night, they have no intention of doing anything towards Israel. Hell they never finished dithering about whether they should attack Afghanistan or not, and the Taliban was a real problem for Persia.

Yet I'm supposed to think they're going to attack Israel, let alone us. How stupid can people be?

As Seth Edelbaum says, the ignorance about that country is breathtaking.

[bigTom]

Well yes, we need to ask why we are so horribly afraid of Iran. It seems to me we are still suffering from the national neurosis that Iran inflicted on us in 79. And of course our politicians find it convienient to reinforce and exploit this neurosis. So of course we can't think rationally about that country. Yes Iran, and Shiism is gaining influence/power with respect to the Sunnis, but really is one likely to be any more or less friendly to us than the other?