Fear Factor

Max Boot exhorts us to "ask yourself which presidential candidate an Ahmadinejad, Assad or Kim would fear the most" before observing that "the leading candidate to scare the snot out of our enemies is a certain former aviator who has been noted for his pugnacity and his unwavering support of the American war effort in Iraq." Kevin Drum remarks:

Now, you might think that after seven years of trying exactly this, with only the current collapse in our fortunes to show for it, the neocon establishment might at least pause for a moment to wonder if there's more to foreign policy than scaring the snot out of our enemies. But no. The real problem, apparently, is simply that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration wasn't good enough at it. Not bellicose enough. Not unilateral enough. Not warlike enough. What America needs is someone even more bloodthirsty than the crew that got us into this mess. Time to double down, folks.

The Boot view does provide a window into a fundamental mistake made by the right in its approach to foreign policy. He sees this domain as fundamentally zero sum. Syria, Iran, and North Korea are our enemies. Therefore, what's bad for them is good for us. Therefore, if they're frightened, we must be win. Therefore, if foreigners find John McCain frightening, he's a good president.

The real world doesn't work this way. If Saddam Hussein wasn't frightened of George W. Bush and the United States of America in 2002, then he was making a big mistake. He had good reason to fear Bush, just as Iranians would have good reason to fear John McCain. The trouble is that international relations isn't zero sum. Even America's relationship with someone as odious as Saddam wasn't zero sum. We were able to take action that was incredibly harmful to Saddam personally, and to the cause of his followers in Iraq, but it was also incredibly harmful to the United States. Another couple of rounds of conflict with enemies like Syria, Iran, and North Korea (and, hey, why not Venezuela, too) and we may not have any enemies left but we'll still be weaker than we were before.

Comments

Why does anyone take someone like Max Boot seriously? He sounds literally delusional at this point.

Posted by Helter | February 14, 2008 1:04 PM

But you seem to be missing the benefit that such actions provide to the psyche and inner machismo self of Boot and Kristol and the other warmongers.

Posted by gregor | February 14, 2008 1:07 PM

Well, I know which candidate *I* fear the most!...

Posted by RKU | February 14, 2008 1:10 PM

Well, as the old saying goes, the only cure for the ills of unilateral, imperialistic saber-rattling and warmongering is more unilateral, imperialistic saber-rattling and warmongering.

Posted by Pesto | February 14, 2008 1:10 PM

"Another couple of rounds of conflict with enemies like Syria, Iran, and North Korea (and, hey, why not Venezuela, too) and we may not have any enemies left but we'll still be weaker than we were before."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not sure about the net result being a lack of enemies. Isn't it more like "Whack-a-mole"? We create angry people in one country merely by our subjugation and killing of people elsewhere?

Posted by steve duncan | February 14, 2008 1:13 PM

Wouldn't they fear the liberal fascist candidate the most?

Posted by Bill | February 14, 2008 1:13 PM

Ask yourself which presidential candidate a sane American citizen should fear the most.

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 14, 2008 1:15 PM

I'm sorry, I meant to say, liberal, and therefore fascist, candidate.

Posted by Bill | February 14, 2008 1:15 PM

Pyrrhus of Epirus. That is all.

Posted by Invigilator | February 14, 2008 1:25 PM

Furthermore, that argument makes a secondary error. Bush is no longer feared *precisely* because his idiotic strategy has made America weaker, and a power less to be feared. Engaging in counterproductive Ahab-like quests that strengthens your enemies, strangely enough, causes them to laugh at you, not shake in their boots.

As such, even by that standard, Iran etc, if they are not idiots, would fear Obama or Clinton *more* not less than McCain, because they are much less likely to give themselves enough rope to hang themselves with just to prove: Look how long and big and thick my rope is!

Posted by Jorge Garcia | February 14, 2008 1:27 PM

It's a good point, Matt, but as noted Boot and the other neocons don't quite grasp the concept. They really do seem to think that we can vanquish entirely, for ever, anyone who might look sideways at the United States; that every potential adversary will drop his IED and flee should the U.S. exercise a little more - to use a favorite neocon term - "will."

Posted by Gil Smart | February 14, 2008 1:28 PM

RKU,

Well, I know which candidate *I* fear the most!...

Obama, right?

Because he's more of a cult leader than a presidential candidate?

Posted by SoCalJustice | February 14, 2008 1:35 PM

Not only does the Boot idea hurt the US by making more people our enemies, it also makes it more likely that enemies of ours will actually become each others' allies with the intent of checking American power. Four to eight more years of Bush^2 would bring the likes of Chavez, Putin and Kim Jong Il closer together out of self-preservation. They might not sign a security pact, but if the US acts crazy enough they just might. They will also have the added benefit of using the "big evil rich foreigners are trying to push us around and make us look weak" electoral card in places like Russia, Iran and Venezuela. At the same time, countries that should be stronger ideological allies of the US, especially young democracies, would just be further turned off by the US and not take seriously anything a falling superpower would try to do.

Remember, these are the same guys who think Iran freed the hostages because they feared Reagan while ignoring the fact that Reagan went behind Carter's back during the election to negotiate with Tehran. His administration, after all, ended up selling weapons to Iran.

Really, by the neocon's logic, the genocidal violence the Soviet Union unleashed on Afghanistan should have been the height of their power instead of the last gasps of a dying empire.

Also, didn't the CIA conclude that the purpose behind bin Laden releasing his tape right before the election was to get Bush re-elected because he was good for recruitment?

Posted by Reality Man | February 14, 2008 1:40 PM

Boot's argument is far stupider than you make it out to be, Matt. You can make the case that the nature of international relations is zero sum--and indeed, Waltz, Mearsheimer et al do make this argument--but what they're talking about is economic and military power, not fear.

Fear is irrelevant if the United States is not a credible threat to the leaders of the nations that Boot mentions. Leaving aside the issue of Boot's threat selection, posing a credible threat is not about "who's in charge" as he seems to be claiming. Rather, it's about assessing the military capabilities of the United States and the political support for any hostile action we might undertake. We can bluster all we want, but as long as we're tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq I don't think Assad, Kim or Mahmoud are going to sweat all that much -- regardless of whether McCain, Obama or Arnold Schwarzenegger is currently seated in the Oval Office.

Finally, an actual zero sum analysis of international politics says that if the United States and several other nations are engaged in a conflict, the relative power of nations not involved in that conflict must increase. You could make an argument that this is exactly what happened after WWII, where the ruination of Europe allowed the USA to emerge as a superpower and, (outside the realm of great power politics) enabled the wave of decolonization that characterized the postwar period.

In conclusion, Boot's argument is bad and he should feel bad.

Posted by Statler | February 14, 2008 1:44 PM

You mean, if what you're doing has had the opposite of its intended effect, the solution ISN'T to do more of it? Who knew?

Posted by Steve LaBonne | February 14, 2008 1:46 PM

I agree completely with Max Boot, that's why I support the re-animated corpse of Jeffrey Dahmer for president. I think we'll be rolling him out as soon as we can stop him from eating himself.

What an idiot.

Posted by Crusty Dem | February 14, 2008 1:46 PM

The sad fact here is that Boot really believes this is what counts. War being negative-sum is one way to look at it. Another way of putting it is that these idiots think we can accomplish all of our goals simply by attempting to crush all of our enemies. It is amazing, but what they truly do not understand, is that our goals cannot be accomplished that way.

Posted by mpowell | February 14, 2008 1:48 PM

Shorter Boot: We should elect a President based entirely on my perception of the beliefs of foreign dictators.

Posted by JoshA | February 14, 2008 1:58 PM

Personally, I want to know:

(1) How Boot (and, presumably, McCain) are going to pull all these wars or pseudo-wars off simultaneously without imposing a draft. (Actually, I suspect McCain is dumb enough to try to do the latter if he gets elected. Facts must be faced: if that man was any denser, light would bend in his vicinity.)

(2) How we're going to terror-bomb North Korea without raising the little problem of the fact that they have, you know, THE Bomb?

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | February 14, 2008 2:00 PM

"The sad fact here is that Boot really believes this is what counts. War being negative-sum is one way to look at it. Another way of putting it is that these idiots think we can accomplish all of our goals simply by attempting to crush all of our enemies. It is amazing, but what they truly do not understand, is that our goals cannot be accomplished that way.

Posted by mpowell | February 14, 2008 1:48 PM"

Very true. Having no enemies running other states doesn't matter if you've shot yourself in the foot enough times in the process that you can't do anything. It's like bringing a live grenade to a track meet to blow up the other runners, killing the competition but also blowing off your own limbs in the process.

Posted by Reality Man | February 14, 2008 2:07 PM

This will be the campaign if Obama is the nominee. Hope vs. Fear. McCain will try to scare people into voting him into office. I don't think it will work.

The New York Time's has a good editorial on good news from Iraq today.

But that can't keep be right, because Iraq was the worst mistake in human history. And even though Hillary voted for the worst distaster in human history people will vote for her over Obama because she's more experienced. Or something.

Posted by Peter K. | February 14, 2008 2:26 PM

someone please tell me why fatuous and frivolous and foolish and well plain stupid small individuals like Beinart and Boot and Kristol and Bill Bennett and O'Hanlon get anointed as individuals who have ANYTHING worth hearing to say about anything.

Posted by della Rovere | February 14, 2008 2:42 PM

Great post, Matt. This is why I read your stuff.

Posted by Neil in Ottawa | February 14, 2008 2:46 PM

Chavez, Putin and Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad all use the US like Hitler used the Jews. The US is used as the great satan, the one who can be blamed for all a countries problems.

The Iranians are rioting because of gas lines. Does Ahmadinejad admit this results from the Iranian government spending all it's money on a nuclear program rather than on new refineries? No, blame the US and the evil George W. Bush.

With Obama - Ahmadinejad & Co. are terrified because they won't have GWB to use as a scape goat anymore. They can rail against the Obama administration as much as they want, their people aren't going to buy it.

Could you imagine the Chavez propaganda machine trying to portray Obama as the source of all Venezuala's problems? They will try but I don't think it will work.

Posted by jmo | February 14, 2008 2:52 PM

Go back to Gore Vidal's apercu that neocons are "fat boys with asthma talking tough". McCain's wet dream is that America is the America of old pre-Vietnam dealing death blows to any and all comers. He's still stuck in that cockpit raining bombs down on inconsequential challengers to American hegemony.

Posted by Trevor | February 14, 2008 2:54 PM

Matthew, your view of the value of instilling fear is somewhat ahistorical, since it apparently does not extend beyond the year 2003. Osama Bin Laden repeatedly upped the violence in his attacks, because he repeatedly had the meassage reinforced, over many administrations, from Beirut to Somalia, and beyond, that fundamentally there was little to fear from the United States, in terms of how it may respond to being attacked. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait because he thought there was little to fear from the United States. He did not energetically avoid putting forth the possibility that he was still actively developing weapons of mass destruction, because, right up until the tanks crossed the borders, he did not really fear that the U.S. would remove him by force. He still had plans, if he could get the sanctions removed, to restart his weapons programs, because he did not really fear the U.S. would remove him by force.

This goes well beyond the last few deacades in the Persian Gulf, of course. North Korea invaded South Korea after Dean Acheson mistakenly gave the impression that there was little to fear in way of a U.S, response to the invasion. I won't go Godwin by recalling events prior to Korea.

Yes, it can be strategically inadvisable to automatically favor any act designed to foster fear in an enemy, but I think this post does greatly discount the utility of fostering fear, or perhaps more accurately, too greatly discounts the cost of failure to foster fear.

Posted by Will Allen | February 14, 2008 2:58 PM

Wouldn't they fear the liberal fascist candidate the most?

Classic.

Posted by J.B. | February 14, 2008 3:09 PM

Will Allen,

Are you an actual mind reader, or just playing one online?

I take it that five years of active, expensive, and bloody fear-fostering has yielded enough of a return to keep on keeping on.

Posted by rickhavoc | February 14, 2008 3:12 PM

the neocon establishment might at least pause for a moment to wonder if there's more to foreign policy than scaring the snot out of our enemies. But no. The real problem, apparently, is simply that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration wasn't good enough at it. Not bellicose enough. Not unilateral enough.

Two problems with the Drum analysis.

1. There is far more to the neocon establishment's foreign policy ideas than "scaring the snot out of our enemies." Neoconservatives have greater intellectual-development in their foreign policy ideas than any comparable element in the Democratic party (although I personally believe their theories all happen to be wrong).

2. Many proper and accurate criticisms can be directed at McCain's for his foreign policy ideas, but "he's too unilateral" is not a proper or accurate criticism.

Posted by Shinyk | February 14, 2008 3:23 PM

Well, rickhavoc, one doesn't have to be a mind reader when Hussein tells the FBI, while in captivity, that he never really believed that the U.S. would remove him from power, or when one can see archival evidence that Acheson's remarks about U.S. interests encouraged the communist invasion of South Korea. Or when Bin Laden specifically writes that the U.S. behavior in Beirut and Somalia proved that there was nothing to fear regarding the power of the United States. You go ahead and believe what you want, however.

Posted by Will Allen | February 14, 2008 3:49 PM

Ooops, guys, Shinyk has now set bounds on what criticism is "proper and accurate" of McCain. Make sure you update your belief-systems accordingly.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | February 14, 2008 4:47 PM

Likewise, Will Allen, one doesn't have to be a mind reader to notice that shocking and awing our enemies didn't help much in Iraq, or in Vietnam for that matter. One might even note that seven years of bungling and tying down most of military in Iraq makes it difficult for an American President to scare the snot out of anyone for the the foreseeable future.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | February 14, 2008 4:57 PM

I think it's even a bit worse than that. The neocons and their supporters don't just believe that we need the president who's the most likely to use force, but the one who is personally the toughest. They share with Bush this weird "l'etat, c'est moi" attitude that head of each country is that country, and what matters is our being able to say "our president can beat up your president."

Look at almost any statement by Giuliani supporters -- since he had no actual military or foreign-policy experience, it wasn't about how he'd fight "the terrorists," it was all about how he was personally so tough that they wouldn't dare attack us. (And for the converse, see their frequent insinuations about Clinton, that we can't have a woman in charge because those Arab leaders wouldn't respect her.)

Posted by Redshift | February 14, 2008 5:08 PM

MY, sarcastically: Therefore, if foreigners find John McCain frightening, he's a good president.

There is truth to that. Foreigners opposed to the USA justly feared what Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan were capable of when pushed to the wall. So they didn't. Nixon called it the madman theory - that the NORKs, Chicoms, Soviets, and various buttfuck proxy nations did not want to mess with a slightly unpredictable, possibly unstable or overreactive President or an energized American mob supporting nuclear annihilation of a threat...

It plays well when you have a divided government with concerned liberal Democrats going around telling global media and foreign leaders that they barely have "Ike stopped, Nixon restrained, Reagan deterred" but they best sit down and work out a deal soon on Vietnam Peace or removing the Soviet missiles from Europe or all hell could break loose. Then the Left played a positive role with good cop, bad cop neotiations. "Give us a deal to stop Reagan or Nixon or you might see Marines, B-52s, and your harbors mined. Only we can stop those Republican madmen."

Just like Saint Martin did negotiating with white powers that be. "You guys have an opportunity to work with me and give me what I want, non-violently, but if you shut my efforts down, you know you will have to deal with disappointed blacks provoked into violence, riots, burning whole city blocks down instead"

Whereas with a weak Democrat like Carter, it was 4 years of anti-Americans shaking down the punk for his lunch money, and with Clinton, it was let him downsize the military more than he should for "peace dividends" for his welfare-hungry backers - while we gather strength...

The real world doesn't work this way. If Saddam Hussein wasn't frightened of George W. Bush and the United States of America in 2002, then he was making a big mistake.

FBI interrogations show that Saddam was not afraid of Bush. He made a very big mistake in thinking he had enough UN officials, French, Russians, and Arabs bribed that he was safe from attack. He played the big bluff, scorned 17 UN Security Council resolutions, because he thought refusing to renounce WMD kept the USA and Iran off his back.
He also told the interrogators that his plan was to go full bore with all his resources once Sanctions ended and he kicked out the hapless UN inspectors again to renew crash nuclear bomb and long-range missile programs. With Saddam's main fear being the Iranians would get the Bomb 1st.

If you can't be loved as a nation, as TDR said, it is almost as good to be feared and respected and have your critical wishes honored, lest the American people rise up in just wrath.

With the dismal failure of the UN to fix any significant conflict, it's ineffectuality obvious - global stability rests on the leaders of powerful, stable nations gathering alliances outside the UN and the collapsing post-WWII system, hoefully working in rough synchronicity - and setting the bounds and limits. Not toothless resolutions by Euroweenies or jewish Human Rights lawyer-activists mostly laughed off.

Posted by chris ford | February 14, 2008 5:16 PM

Ooops, guys, Shinyk has now set bounds on what criticism is "proper and accurate" of McCain. Make sure you update your belief-systems accordingly.

It is Drum's suggestion that McCain represents a candidate more unilateral (less inclined to engage in UN processes, less inclined to take input from allies) than Bush. I don't know of any evidence to support that claim and Drum offers none.

If you do, please produce it. Otherwise, Drum's criticism is inaccurate. It's also improper because it's inaccurate. If you're unable to produce such evidence, I suppose I can safely assume you agree with me and were just being snarky.

Posted by Shinyk | February 14, 2008 5:22 PM

If I were an official in Iran and somebody who likes to sing bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran gets into the White House, I think I might tread cautiously, just on the off chance he not just be whistling Dixie.

Posted by SLC | February 14, 2008 5:29 PM

LaFollete, perhaps it escaped you when I wrote that one could not blankly state that any act which was designed to instill fear in an enemy was a good thing. I merely thought Matt was understating the value of instilling such fear, by ignoring the track record of such failure over the past 50-plus years.

Posted by Will Allen | February 14, 2008 5:43 PM

Oh let's just get down to it. Have you seen Max Boot, John Podhoretz, Bill Kristol, Bob Kagan? Not exactly virile specimens of manhood.

Most of this rhetoric comes off as some kind of self-hypnotic viagra.

Posted by DonkeyKong | February 14, 2008 5:49 PM

And for the converse, see their frequent insinuations about Clinton, that we can't have a woman in charge because those Arab leaders wouldn't respect her

Uh, the Neoconservatives believe the US will be safer once the Arab World has been shocked, through confrontation, into an embrace of liberal democracy (and with it, secular modernity). To the Neocons, a tough, confrontational, (hypothetical) female President offering dictates to the Arab leaders would force the entire Arab world to confront and possibly rethink some of its barbarisms, which would give the Neocons great satisfaction. I'd be surprised if any Neocon ever said this, let alone frequently.

I have, however, heard Pat Buchanan say something like this, but he considers the Neocons his ideological enemies.

Posted by Shinyk | February 14, 2008 5:49 PM

"Does Ahmadinejad admit this results from the Iranian government spending all it's money on a nuclear program rather than on new refineries?"

Well, from what I've read, the Iranian nuclear energy program has been in the cards for something like thirty years now. Even independent US think tanks have agreed Iran has to have it to avoid running out of fuel to SELL rather than CONSUME.

The gas issue is more recent, and according to Iranian news reports, should be resolved within the next couple of years, sometime in 2009, IIRC.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 14, 2008 7:31 PM

"[Saddam]...still had plans, if he could get the sanctions removed, to restart his weapons programs,"

Well, no. Whatever he thought of his plans, once the UN cleared him of having WMDs in 2003, the UN would have forced a monitoring program on him that would have prevented him from ever having nuclear weapons.

Whatever oil money he might have made after getting the sanctions removed, he would have required decades to rebuild his shattered military. He would have been no serious threat to Iran by this time, let alone anyone else. Any threat to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia would have gotten his butt kicked again by the US.

So what was he going to do with his military? Basically stomp on the Shia occasionally and, to the degree the no-fly zones allowed it, the Kurds.

Who in the US would have cared besides Ahmed Chalabi and Max Boot and Bill Kristol?

And of course, Dick Cheney. We forget that ALL of this Iraq war nonsense was about oil for Cheney and Israel for the neocons and the Zionist freaks. Even Israel wasn't immediately on board for attacking Iraq - they wanted the US to attack Iran, and only supported attacking Iraq when the neocons and Cheney assured them the US would attack Iran shortly after Iraq. Just didn't work out that way, to Israel's major disappointment.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 14, 2008 7:39 PM

Most of the US enemies are perfectly well aware of the size and power of the US military. If they weren't before Iraq, they certainly are now.

Nonetheless, the reality is that the US can't win any Fourth Gen War scenario. Iraq proved that, Afghanistan is also proving it, and Lebanon proved it for Israel (twice).

Thus, while the leaders of various states recognize that they are at great risk from US belligerence, the leaders of non-state actors are basically only worried about personal assassination if their personal security teams screw up or somebody rats out their location. They know their organizations cannot be defeated by conventional military means, either by the states in which they reside or the US or Israel.

And even a country like Iran really has little to fear from the US. The Persians have been around for thousands of years, and have little to fear from a mere 200 year old country like the US. They have 75 million people, and unless the US resorts to a major nuclear attack, ninety to ninety five percent or more of those people will continue to survive and carry on the fight and preserve the Persian culture for the next several generations.

The Iranians saw what Vietnam did to the US - despite more recent claims that the US actually "defeated" Vietnam, then "lost" the defeat at the Paris talks (which is nonsense). The Iranians understand that any US attack on Iran will result in a ten-or-more-year bleeding of the US that will leave the US militarily, economically and geopolitically prostrate. Sure, the Iranian economy and infrastructure will be mostly destroyed over those ten years as well. But that can be rebuilt and will be once the US finally gives up.

Conventional war is now mostly obsolete except on a very local level (Iraq vs Iran in the 80's). No major state can impose its will permanently on any other or even on much smaller states. The available technology and tactics doesn't allow it.

So trying to "scare" other countries really doesn't work any more.

Iran is not afraid of McCain, or Obama, or Clinton, even though it is quite aware that any of the three is probably going to start a war with it.

Neither is North Korea given that the Pentagon forecasts 50,000 US casualties within ninety days of a war with the North.

What people are "afraid" of is a "pointless" war like Iraq where nothing is gained and much is lost. So they will go to some lengths to avoid that. But if they see war is the intent of the US, they will deal with it rationally by causing enough damage to the US that it loses more than it gains. This is the 4th Gen strategy and it almost always works.

In fact, this is generally how war works out. This is what the Allied nations did to Germany and Japan, and what the Third World did to Russia and the US in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

You start a war, you lose.

Note that claiming the other side "started" the war by kidnapping two soldiers, or firing at a US Navy ship (without evidence), or crossing the Polish border, doesn't cut it.

You start a WAR when you mobilize your military and attack across another country's borders. Period. Everything else is just an "incident". You want to "tit for tat", fine. Anything else is "starting a WAR."

If the US starts a war with Iran, North Korea, or with the Taliban in Pakistan, the US will lose.

But of course, the goal of such wars is not to "win" anyway - it's to be paid great gobs of money for the privilege of making the weapons for the war. The only winner in war is the weapons business. People continually forget this, thinking that war is for some overriding political or geographical or "humanitarian" purpose. It never is. It's for money and power. Always.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 14, 2008 8:07 PM

Hack - Well, no. Whatever he thought of his plans, once the UN cleared him of having WMDs in 2003, the UN would have forced a monitoring program on him that would have prevented him from ever having nuclear weapons.

Ah, yes, the Mighty UN! Who easily forced their super-duper monitoring programs on any nation their Supreme Moral authority chose, preventing the nuke bomb programs of India, Pakistan, Israel, N Korea, South Africa, Iran, Iraq, and Libya.

Yes, we all know how effective the UN is at getting such stuff done!

******************
Hacks optimistic remarks on the invincibility of 3rd World buttfuck nation employing his 4th Gen warfare against occupying troops only works if we play that game with exposed grunts scattered in-country doing silly "nation-building" - rather than go with a full on mainly remote precision war to destroy Iran's modern infrastructure, grab the oil fields, and immobilize the nation.

20,000 JDAMs, each costing about 13K, 3,000 cruise missiles at 1.8 million, but each taking out on average 6 million worth of Iranian infrastructure and military assets. End point, after 4 weeks? No radar, no airports, no functioning Air Force, telecomm centers, TV or radio stations, no rail terminals, no major highway bridges intact. No surviving Navy. Telecomm towers gone, electric power plants wrecked for years, nation 95% in complete blackout, saving only local generators soon to run out of fuel. No functioning oil refineries. No way to move surviving troops and armor to anywhere near the Gulf, Gulf oil fields. Special Ops targeting Iranian leadership.

Or, somewhere before the Endpoint we offer the Supreem Leader a deal. End the Armed Revlutionary Guard structure, offer free and fair Geneva-monitored elections, end support of Hezbollah and other Shiite terror efforts, fully disclose & end the nuke bomb, nerve gas, biowar programs. Keep all nuke plants going on as long as IAEA tracks fuel rods, keep control of oil and gas fields.

Posted by chris ford | February 14, 2008 9:34 PM

Mr. Hack, you have somehow come to the conclusion that something called "Iran" can either fear, or not fear, something. This is inaccurate. People fear things, not political abstractions. Whether or not certain individuals can have fear instilled in them is simply a function of the credibility of the threat being communicated. Now, it is true that the cost of the U.S. waging war in Iraq for five years reduces the credibility of any subsequent threat to other actors, given that they can rightly infer that the U.S. cannot afford a limitless number of such projects. The fact of Saddam Hussein going to the gallows, however, is not completely without teaching value, especiallyt if a future U.S. President lets it be known that there will be no effort at nation building, only at tyrant killing. This was the best argument in favor of simply rolling a grenade into the spider hole that Hussein was found in, and then leaving.

Posted by Will Allen | February 15, 2008 2:04 AM

I also must note the supreme silliness inherent in making confident pronouncements about what the U.N. would ensure.

Posted by Will Allen | February 15, 2008 2:10 AM

The trouble is, Mr. Ford, there are other countries in the world which are getting VERY tired of the United States' psychopathic willingness to slaughter millions of foreigners for electoral publicity stunts.

Your enthusiasm for mass murder is unsurprising (as with most mass murderers you are not proposing to put yourself in harm's way) by American standards, but the rest of the world has grown weary. And the rest of the world is much more powerful than the United States.

Behaviour of the kind which you advocate will doom your nation. I don't feel sorry for you, but there are hundreds of millions of Americans who are not psychopaths. They will suffer, regrettably, and most will suffer more than you are likely to (since I presume you are rich).

Posted by MFB | February 15, 2008 8:54 AM

"Hacks optimistic remarks on the invincibility of 3rd World buttfuck nation employing his 4th Gen warfare against occupying troops only works if we play that game with exposed grunts scattered in-country doing silly "nation-building" - rather than go with a full on mainly remote precision war to destroy Iran's modern infrastructure, grab the oil fields, and immobilize the nation."

Chris Ford,

Do you honestly think that destroying Iran as a functioning society will improve our national security? Considering how such Hun like tactics will alienate the overwhelming majority of Middle Easterners (including young Iranians who want to restore good US-Iran relations), and promote the fiercest and longest-lasting wave of jihadism against the US that we have ever seen, your bloodthirsty prescriptions will be the worst foreign policy disaster ever for the US. Dubya will seem like a genius compared to a you.

Time is not on the side of the Iran's ruling clerics and their disciples like Ahmadinejad; as the more US friendly younger generations begin to run Iran more and more, we will be able to restore good relations between the US and Iran, and gain a powerful Shiite ally against Sunni Al Qaeda. Just as the split between the Communist Chinese and the Soviets laid down the foundation for the end of the menace of global Communism, the split between Shia and Sunni in the Middle East can serve as the foundation for the end of the menace of global jihadism. That is, unless we follow your ideas, squander the opportunities of a lifetime, and unite the whole of the Middle East in a century long jihadist crusade against the whole of the Western world.

So when are you going to join John McCain's foreign policy advisory team?

Posted by eltoro | February 15, 2008 10:38 AM

The UN had a specific monitoring program designed for Iraq. This comes directly from the IAEA, the people charged with dealing with Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Part of the UN Resolutions was that once Iraq was cleared of having WMDs, that monitoring program would have been put in place - as I explicitly said, preventing that would have been in violation of the UN Resolutions and would have authorized the use of force against Iraq.

Ford's nonsense about "destroying Iran" is irrelevant. As I've said before, Iran's infrastructure can easily be destroyed. Iraq's was.

Yet, in Iraq, the US has lost against an insurgency which would be one fourth or less the size of an Iranian insurgency. Iran has been planning asymmetrical and insurgent war against the US for some years now.

The US will lose any war against Iran. It will take ten years or even more, but the US will absolutely lose, just as it lost in Vietnam, just as it lost in Iraq, and just as it is losing in Afghanistan.

Ford's reference to "moving armor" is just stupid. Iran's armor will be destroyed early on, that is obvious. 4th Gen War rarely relies on armor, so that is irrelevant.

OTOH, it is possible, as William Lind has suggested, that Iran could, with the luck of bad weather to ground US air power, manage to get enough of their troops across the border into Iraq to roll up the US forces early on in the conflict. I personally find this doubtful, and more doubtful that the Iranians would even try it, when insurgent war is so much cheaper and more effective.

And Ford thinks the US will just attack Iran and "then leave". Moronic. The goal for Dick Cheney is to seize the Khuzestan oil province in Iran. That means putting boots on the ground indefinitely, just like Iraq. And those boots will be shot up indefinitely, just like Iraq.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 16, 2008 2:21 AM

clearly, boot got the shit beaten out of him on a regular basis in high school.

Posted by logicat | February 16, 2008 6:42 AM

MESSAGE

Posted by ISHMAel back | March 5, 2008 7:28 AM