Matt Yglesias at TAPPED (The Ledeen Doctrine 11/29/04) puts a benign spin on this column of Iran hawk Michael Ledeen, who was a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal: Europe's Ritual Dance National Review Online 11/29/04.
Matt's take on it is:
Ledeen, in other words, after all the bluster, doesn't want us to do very much. Instead, he thinks that through increased levels of rhetorical (and perhaps financial) support for the opposition we can provoke a crisis that topples the regime. According to this way of thinking a limited airstrike at Iranian nuclear facilities would be unnecessary and probably counterproductive.
While it's certainly important to pay attention to what people are actually saying, this is also Michael Ledeen of the Iran-Contra scandal. A proxy war against Iran is a high-risk undertaking. American troops are in Iraq, where they are vulnerable to an Iranian proxy counter-action, or even a direct strike by Iranian troops. And if Iran is being militarily attacked by a significant US-backed Contra-type force, they would presumably try to use their nuclear program as a bargaining chip to put a stop to it.
That would likely mean a new round of advancement of the nuclear program, which would then give the Iran hawks a reason to escalate their war rhetoric against the newly "urgent" nuclear threat in Iran.
The key phrase in Ledeen's piece is "regime change," as we see in this passage (my emphasis):
Whether that is true or not, I have long argued that Iran is the keystone of the terrorist edifice, and that we are doomed to confront it sooner or later, nuclear or not. Secretary of State Powell disagreed, and he was at pains recently to stress that American policy does not call for regime change in Tehran - even though the president repeatedly called for it. And the president is right; regime change is the best way to deal with the nuclear threat and the best way to advance our cause in the war against the terror masters. We have a real chance to remove the terror regime in Tehran without any military action, but rather through political means, by supporting the Iranian democratic opposition.
It's also worth noting that this viewpoint is firmly rooted in the Cold War-era understanding of terrorism as primarily a problem of state sponsors of terrorism. Ledeen claims in the paragraph just quoted that "Iran is the keystone of the terrorist edifice," and that "regime change" in Iran is the best response to that.
Whether Ledeen believes all this literally or not, establishing "regime change" as the official goal of us policy in Iran along with active support to armed opposition, is committing the US to a course of escalating tensions with Iran. I hope the Congressional Democrats don't make the mistake of seeing this as a "moderate" alternative that will allow them to "look tough" on Iran without actually supporting war. They should insist as the opposition party that the administration adopt a straightforward policy toward Iran and put honest with Congress and the American people about what it implies.
There's a lot to criticize about the now-defunct Weinberger-Powell doctrine on the use of military force. But one of its strengths was that it recognized, at least in theory, that adopting a policy with military implications without being prepared to provide the necessary military force to carry it through was an undesirable thing. If the US is going to adopt "regime change" as a goal in Iran, then we shouldn't be under any illusions that that will be achieved on the cheap by funding a few exile groups to make propaganda and buy guns.
What's odd about Matt Iglesias' analysis of this is that he seems to recognize all of this, as he explains in the remainder of his post. Yet he seems to think that that Ledeen's proposal is benignly misguided rather than pernicious, the latter being a more realistic evaluation.
But I don't know what Michael Ledeen's particular intentions are. Of course, not knowing such things doesn't seem to stop him from speculating freely about them. For instance, he states in a passage that is all-too-typical of shallow partisan Republican prouncements about our European allies (who the Republican Values crowd sees more as another set of hostile foreigners):
At the same time, I rather suspect that the Europeans, like many of our own diplomats, would be secretly pleased if someone else - that is to say, Israel - were to "do something" to rid them of this problem. When they whisper that thought to themselves in the privacy of their own offices or the darkness of their own bedrooms, they mentally replay the Israeli bombing of the nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq, in 1981, an attack they publicly condemned and privately extolled. They would do the same tomorrow, sighing in relief as they tighten the noose around Israel's neck. Rarely has the metaphor of the scapegoat been so appropriate: the burden of our sins of omission loaded onto the Israelis, who are then sacrificed to atone for us all.
Does he have a shred of real evidence that European leaders or diplomats are quietly hoping for an Israeli strike on Iran? Much less any knowledge of what they whisper to themselves in "the darkness of their own bedrooms"? (Bombing attacks make for pretty kinky pillow talk, if you ask me.) Or is it just Republican propaganda to sneer at the feckless, duplicitous Europeans and convince Republican Values voters at home eager to be conned again that a preventive military strike against Iran is really a fine thing? And, of course, there is the swipe at European democracies for their alleged anti-Semitism, unlike good Christian Right leaders in America who back aggressive Likud Party policies in hopes that those policies will speed up the coming the apocalyptic war in which they foresee most of the Jews of the world being slaughtered.
This also makes me curious as to whether there is any real basis for his historical claim that European countries "privately extolled" Israel's 1981 military strike on Iraq. The NATO countries, including the US under the Reagan administration, publicly condemned the attack as illegal. As the Bush administration seeks to build up war fever against Iraq, we'll see many factoids like this tossed out that will become standard parts of the Foxist case for war, and our sad excuse for a mainstream press corps will pick up a lot of them, and of course the Big Pundits will repeat them faithfully. Those of us in the reality-based community still wonder about whether claims like this are actually true or not. However old-fashioned that seems in what the Christian Right hopes will be the Republican Values era.
1 comment:
Bruce:
There is no doubt in my mind that one way or another, something will happen with Iran, be it this year or next, or anytime within the next four years. I also have no doubt that when it happens, we could be heading into a long period of darkness, whether it is Israel that strikes or us.
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