The Universal Bogeyman

Michael Hirsh on the new blame Iran for everything strategy coming out of the White House:

Today the administration is casting Iran as America's biggest bogeyman on every front. National missile defense? Once Kim Jong Il of North Korea was identified as the target of this expensive project. No longer. In a speech Tuesday at National Defense University, Bush declared that "the need for missile defense in Europe … is urgent" because "Iran is pursuing the technology that could be used to produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles." Mideast peace? Never mind that the Palestinians are mixed up in a civil war of their own making and blaming the Israelis. Much of it is really the fault of "Iranian aggression," as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared on Wednesday. "To see Iranian actual penetration now of these more radical elements of the Palestinian terrorist groups is really quite troubling," she told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. U.S. generals are now routinely trotted out to blame Iranian interference and arms shipments for the continuing Islamist insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, though Tehran plays at best a minor role there.

Recall something similar from before the Iraq War, not only a particular tendency to inflate the Iraqi nuclear front and the Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda, there was this habit of dramatically overstating Iraq's significance in the broader world. Not only was Saddam's support of Palestinian rejectionist a bad thing about his regime, but somehow ending this support was the key to peace. And now again we see that if the administration's "get tough" strategy toward Iran's nuclear program isn't working and getting tougher is unlikely to work, so now we're told that getting tough will solve all kinds of problems all around the world.

Comments

The public will believe whatever line Bushco pushes. Apathy and ignorance enable Bush to do what he does. For our collective indifference, for our inability to discern truth from lies many people will perish.

Posted by steve duncan | October 29, 2007 7:54 AM

So why do you think the gender balance of Senator Clinton's advisors is more important than her Lieberman-Kyl vote to help Bush bomb Iran?

Posted by Petey | October 29, 2007 8:01 AM

Seems like we are moving to an adult 'Lord of the Flies' world. All our problems are the fault of an imaginary 'beast'.

The shocking thing is that even after the Iraq debacle, not one public leader is willing to stand up and demand an end to this madness. What is wrong with these people?

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | October 29, 2007 8:09 AM

There's nothing particularly illogical about talking about North Korea when you want to put missile defenses in Alaska and talking about Iran when you want to put them in Europe.

Posted by southpaw | October 29, 2007 8:09 AM

I don't know what to say about this anymore. Any real war is worse than every hypothetical war, because a hypothetical war hasn't happened, yet.

I don't think it would have been a win to invade Germany before WWII. Then you would be occupying Germany, and what then? It would probably only have delayed WWII.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | October 29, 2007 8:24 AM

The true universal bogeyman for neocons is “historicism.” Heaven forbid that Western Christians take pride in their own ancestral traditions and forsake Jacobin universals.

Posted by Bede | October 29, 2007 9:08 AM

Notably Austro-Hungaria started the war with Serbia in WWI, because they saw Serbia as a growing threat. This war was supposed to prevent a worse war. It ended up killing about 10 million people. Before WWI, many Europeans thought like neocons. And like Zionists, too, for that matter, since racism or more generally ethnic bigotry was intense in those days (there were also colonial wars).

Posted by Bengt Larsson | October 29, 2007 9:30 AM

"Never mind that the Palestinians are mixed up in a civil war of their own making and blaming the Israelis."

Never mind that the Israelis, together with the Americans, eagerly pushed for a civil war in Palestine by isolating its elected government and funneling arms to Fatah.

Posted by Christmas | October 29, 2007 9:38 AM

Why do you keep posting these frightening pictures of Islamofascists approaching? Its very upsetting.

Posted by Jim W | October 29, 2007 9:43 AM

Well if the crime is having distractingly lovely women, then Iran is guilty, Guilty, GUILTY!!

Somebody alert Michael Totten.

Posted by jamey | October 29, 2007 11:02 AM

Matt stop showing us pictures of those ragheads every time you talk about i ran, it makes us wanna nuke them less.

Posted by Bitch please | October 29, 2007 11:41 AM

Thanks, Christmas for stealing my thunder. Your post is exactly right. The Palestinian Civil War was absolutely fomented by the US/Israel. After Hamas won elections, the Palestinians were given a choice--a cruel embargo or ejecting their democratically elected government. As always, the main-stream media whitewashes the actions of outsiders in this affair.

Posted by Matthew | October 29, 2007 2:08 PM

Why show all these pics of nice, normal looking Iranian scenes? Every country, no matter how evil and aggressive its government, has people walking around going about their business.

No American, no matter how hawkish, has any issues with Iranians stuck in traffic jams, etc. It's the missiles, the nuclear reactors, the Revolutionary Guards, the Ayatollah, and the basij militias about which we concern ourselves.

The only thing that persuades me that an attack on Iran is a bad idea is the possibility of Khatami running for election in 2009. Ahmadinejad is too unstable and anti-Israel to trust with nukes IMO.

Posted by Sam | October 29, 2007 2:44 PM

"There's nothing particularly illogical about talking about North Korea when you want to put missile defenses in Alaska and talking about Iran when you want to put them in Europe."

Except that North Korea would never attack the US unless attacked by the US, and the same is true of Iran. Even in the vague case that Kim attacked South Korea, and the US defended it, and was on the verge of overthrowing Kim, even then it would depend on Kim's actually having a missile system that could mount a warhead AND reach something other than Alaska, all of which was decades away if ever.

And even less so for Iranian missiles against Europe. Under what geopolitical conditions would Iran be interested in attacking Europe, absent an attack on Iran by Europe? And how many decades will it be for Iran to obtain: 1) a warhead that can be delivered by missile; 2) a missile to deliver it (last estimate I think was 2015 at best); 3) nukes at all given that they have no nuclear weapons program.

It's just stupid to suggest otherwise.

The more obvious suggestion is that the missile defense system is against China in the East, and Russia in the West. Saying it is North Korea and Iran as justification is just nonsense.

The real justification, of course, is simply that this crap costs money in exchange for campaign contributions and the right to throw taxpayer money around like it was air.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 29, 2007 7:06 PM

Sam, get a fucking clue.

"Ahmadinejad is too unstable and anti-Israel to trust with nukes IMO."

Ahmadinejad has ZERO control over the non-existent nukes. Anybody with ANY knowledge of Iran should know that by now. Ahmadinejad has about the same power in Iran as Condi Rice has in the US - enough to talk publicly, and maybe put ministers in departments, and that's about it.

Also, if Iran started trying to get nukes NOW, they wouldn't have them until long after Ahmadinejad was out of power, given how many people who have power in Iran don't like him.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 29, 2007 7:11 PM

Rich, where do you get off saying that Ahmadinejad has ZERO control over Iran's nuclear program? Iran has a plural leadership. Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad, and Khamanei run things.

Someone just pressured out a relatively moderate nuclear negotiator and he is publically very much behind the nuke program.

Even if Ahmadinejad had ZERO control over the nuclear program, how much do you want to see Khamanei in charge? He once said "we should not be afraid to contemplate a nuclear destruction of Israel, as Israel could only destroy a fraction of the Islamic world."

Just think about the consequences of Iran lobbing nuclear missiles at Israel. You might not care about 7 million Israelis dying, but Israel would strike back, killing tens of millions of Iranians. In a day, it would be the bloodiest war ever.

Iran has a history of suicidal manuevres. Think of how chose human wave attacks against Iraq instead of an armistice.

Even if Iran doesn't use its nukes, who knows what the future will bring? What if the regime weakens and Iran becomes another weak state, like Pakistan?

Posted by Sam | October 30, 2007 10:16 AM