The War Party

A classic in the Iran hawk literature in the form of a National Review editorial. It leads with the stunning hypocrisy of charging another country with interfering in Iraqi affairs:

When one country trains a force to infiltrate and destabilize its neighbor, it has committed an act of war. And by now, it is hardly a secret that Iran has been funding, arming, and training radical factions of the Mahdi army. Still, most American politicians have been reluctant to call Iran’s behavior exactly what it is: an act of war against Iraq, and against the United States.

Then come seven additional grafs of bloviating, followed by the necessarily vacuous conclusion: "Iran won’t stop so long as there is no price to its acts of war. The controversy over Lieberman’s remark shows how we aren’t prepared to make it pay one." What price should Iran be made to pay? Are the likely consequences of extracting said payment really that Iran will back down? Or will this launch a spiral of escalation? It's hard to say since National Review won't even say which policy they're advocating. But they want to widen the war, in some sense, to somehow include Iran, even though they have no particular measures in mind or sense of the overall strategy thereby served.

Thanks to J.T. for the pointer.

Comments

Let's see... if my memory serves... there was, once upon a time, a war between Iran and Iraq. It began with an attack by Iraq. It lasted eight years, and there were a million or so casualties. A large fraction of Iran's present leadership are veterans of that war. There are 'fountain of blood' memorials to the war's dead in Iran. Now, how do you think Iranians would react to aggressive military action by Americans from Iraq. Just asking.

Posted by MattF | June 19, 2007 8:08 AM

Re Iran

Attached is a link to an op-ed by Daniel Pipes describing a report prepared by two MIT graduate students which analyzes the capability of the IAF to take out Irans' nuclear production sites. Their conclusion is that, contrary to popular opinion, it is eminently doable.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181570268568&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isec.2007.31.4.7

Posted by SLC | June 19, 2007 8:35 AM

Attached is a link to an op-ed by Daniel Pipes describing a report prepared by two MIT graduate students which analyzes the capability of the IAF to take out Irans' nuclear production sites.

LOL!

Posted by WillieStyle | June 19, 2007 9:26 AM

Whitney Raas is a Research Analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia. She conducted this work while completing graduate studies in nuclear engineering and political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Austin Long is a doctoral candidate in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the MIT Security Studies Program, and Adjunct Researcher at the RAND Corporation.

LOL indeed. A woman and a nerdy graduate student doing military analysis. What is the world coming to.

Posted by Archit | June 19, 2007 9:36 AM

And when one country actually invades and destablizes a neighbor what exactly has it done? I guess in their world we've already declared war on Iran. So, who is supposed to be paying a price for acts of war? American exceptionalism is a curious thing.

Posted by Archit | June 19, 2007 9:47 AM

Yeah, that's hysterical: a research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses with a background in nuclear engineering and a member of MIT's Security Studies Program researching potential military strikes on Iran. What could those idiots know about anything?

If they knew anything, they'd know that Iran is the most fearsome military power on the continent of Asia and is impervious to any form of military strike. The can only be appeased.

Posted by Harry | June 19, 2007 9:52 AM

Re Archit

"LOL indeed. A woman and a nerdy graduate student doing military analysis"

I hope that any women reading this blog have a savage response to the sexist comment by Mr. Archit. I would point out that Ms. Raas is currently employed by the Center for Naval Analysis, one of the most prestigious military think tanks in the world, an indication of her military analytical capabilities. I suspect that Mr. Archit couldn't even get in the door of that institution for a job interview.

Posted by SLC | June 19, 2007 9:58 AM

So let me get this straight, the idiot neocons can't get a war going with Iran by fabricating the charge that they're developing nuclear weapons, due to the lack of any evidence, so they're trying to "get" Iran on some sort of international "interference" charge, for which they also have no proof. I'm sure this war willl have all brilliant long term strategic thinking go into it that the last one did. Oi.

Posted by The Other Brian | June 19, 2007 10:06 AM

By National Review standards, almost all of Latin America has the right to stage a sneak attack on the U.S. Guatamala could lead the charge - maybe they could bomb our network of used car dealers.

One of the more hilarious things about American hawks is, of course, that the countries that the American defense establishment has spent decades allying us with - countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - are untouchable, even though, of course, they have inflicted and are inflicting much more death on the U.S. than Iran ever did. I mean, the Iranian hostage crisis ended with not one american casualty, whereas, in Pakistan, during the same period, the Pakistan government looked on with approval as a crowd ransacked the American embassy in Karachi and killed several American employees. Steven Coll uses that incident to introduce Ghost Wars. The American response was, of course, severe - we started shipping more funding to the Pakistanis and joined with them in building up the international jihad movement, centering it on driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Good job, conservatives!

At the moment, of course, the Saudis are sustaining the Sunni insurgency. There's no doubt about that. And there's no reporting on that, except accidentally. Meanwhile, we have MIT doofuses figuring out how to attack Iran in some really neat way. A very typical response by an establishment that has run American foreign policy into the ground every chance it gets.

Best option is obviously making peace with Iran - releasing the Iranian diplomats kidnapped by the Americans in Iraq - and, not incidentally, dropping the pretense that the U.S. is or should be running Iraq's foreign policy. The Iraqi government, on all levels, has made it quite clear that it regards Iran as an ally.

Long term, though, we need to confront the hawkish foreign policy establishment in this country, at every turn, for being grossly stupid, negligent, a danger to America's long term interests. Their appalling short sightednes, and their being in the thrall - usually - of the petro-chemical corporations - is expressed in their long and dishonorable record of failure.

Posted by roger | June 19, 2007 10:19 AM

A woman and a nerdy graduate student doing military analysis. What is the world coming to.

Why not? If Rosie can get on TV and claim through her own research that WTC was downed with explosives or that there was no plane at the pentagon.....and she's kind of a woman although she looke like a Bull.

Posted by Fred Jones | June 19, 2007 10:30 AM

SLC: Irony!

Posted by Archit | June 19, 2007 9:49 PM

Do these guys think that the Soviet Union should have invaded us for arming the mujaheeden during their war with Afghanistan?
I bet they don't.

Posted by merlallen | June 20, 2007 5:30 AM