The Persian in the Street III
The coming conservative crackup over Iran?
Christopher Hitchens wants a climbdown.
Captain Ed and most of his comment-minions want war – maybe just a little one.
I don’t know if the ABC story about Iranian shipments of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle devices to Iraq is true or not.
Captain Ed makes a very good point, by the way, allowing for the way he slants it:
For one thing, the Democrats have used Iran to attempt a flanking maneuver on the right of the GOP, arguing for tough measure against Iran, up to the use of force. Now that Iran has been revealed as a major supplier of the IEDs that have killed and maimed our soldiers, they will not easily back away from their earlier hawkish positions.
It’s possible, if not likely, that the official Democratic Party will be as useless in the attempt to stop this war as it was in attempting to stop the last one.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
March 7, 2006 @ 9:15 am
Out of curiosity, what would you like to see happen?
Comment by Barry —
March 7, 2006 @ 9:55 am
Andrew, don’t play BS. It’s your guys’ screwup. You wanted the war, you cheered it on, you support your Boy Preznit. Now your Boyz are obviously wondering if extending the war to Iran will help them or hurt, politically – which is all that it ever matter to them. Or to you.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 10:04 am
Whoah, Barry – that’s very unfair to Andrew. All conservatives, even all hawks, are not alike.
Andrew: Do you mean what I think the US should do? My plan from last year (or was it the year before) is still on the table; indeed Armed Liberal made fun of it again just the other day.
As to Iran specifically, I’m with Hitchens: negotiated climbdown. Each country is in a position to make life very very difficult for the other. I suspect that if the explosives story is true, it’s not just about the nuke quarrel but some tit-for-tat related to US support for MEK (and possibly Kurdish) operations inside Iran.
Right now perceived American military designs on Iran are the best thing the Mullahs have going for them. Kick that prop away and who knows what might happen.
What do YOU think the US should do? I’m talking Iran specifically.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
March 7, 2006 @ 10:05 am
Barry, I am genuinely curious, nothing more. I have no desire to see this war expand to Iran, but at the same time I am by no means certain what a good next step is if it turns out that Iran is waging a proxy war with us. So I’m curious what Jim’s opinion is. Your opinion, on the other hand, is of zero value to me. You know nothing about me, as is clear from your response, so I see no reason for further interaction with you.
Jim, the question still stands, not as a snide aside or some silly trap, but because I’m curious.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 10:06 am
Peace and love, guys! Peace and love.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
March 7, 2006 @ 10:10 am
Whoops, comments passing in the night.
I don’t really know, Jim. I think we’ve got more than enough war between Afghanistan and Iraq, so the idea of doubling down in Iran strikes me as singularly unwise. Not to mention I think Hitchens is correct that we would lose any support we have in Iran as soon as we started killing Iranians, so we’d just be adopting a new headache.
Off the top of my head, and I’ll probably consider this more fully over at my place after I’ve had more time to think about it, I think the best thing we can do is shift troops to the Iranian border and try to reduce their ability to affect what’s going on in Iraq while we hand security over to the Iraqi security forces. Hitchens’ ideas about engagement seem like a decent idea, although I am concerned by how blithely he dismisses the mullahs’ words. I’m not as easily convinced as he is that they don’t mean what they say about Israel, but conversely I’m not prepared to start a shooting war over it without a lot more than we’ve got to go on right now.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
March 7, 2006 @ 10:12 am
I make no promises on love, but I’m up for peace. Deal? (Hm…no winky faces in your comments.)
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 10:26 am
I want to say that, while I think it was mistargeted, Barry was reacting to a real phenomenon, the attempt by a lot of hawks, esp Republican ones, to shift blame and responsibility off the folks who actually have any power to affect the situation to those who don’t and didn’t. The Editors put it most memorably with the ”unsh;t the bed” entry. That kind of thing drives me nuts too. It just isn’t what was happening in this thread.
Andrew: if we pull troops to the Iranian border, who watches the Syrian border? I don’t think the Iraqi Army is up to that; and if they were, I don’t think Anbar province is up to it, you know?
I think Hitchens reads the Mullahs correctly regarding Israel. Even Rafsanjani didn’t say ”We can nuke Israel cause we’re bigger!” He said that in a nuclear exchange, Israel would get the worst of it. We can always make provisions regarding Israeli security a component of the negotiations if it comes to that. It’s also true that Israel is the most powerful country in the region and more than capable of defending itself. Its military power relative to the rest of the Middle East approximates US military power relative to the rest of the world.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 7, 2006 @ 11:05 am
The problem with dismissing things like Barry’s immediate response to Andrew is that if you’re not dismissive, and you listen, you inevitably hear something like ”shift troops to the Iranian border”. Provocation much? You can’t do a ”negotiated climbdown” with conservatives, because that would involve them having to admit such elementary things as that Iran has just as much ”right” to have nuclear weapons as the U.S., Russia, Britain, Pakistan, India, or Israel, that it is inevitably going to have nuclear weapons in the near future, and that every deep ideological/ethnic conflict has so far been stabilized by the presence of nuclear weapons on both sides, not destabilized. But conservatives don’t *want* the conflict to be negotiated, they want war.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 11:42 am
Rich, I don’t think that’s true for all or even necessarily most conservatives, particularly now. It’s certainly true of a lot of bloggers and blog commenters and national-greatness impresarios and neolibertarians and the odd neoliberal too. And it’s true that nationalism, as opposed to patriotism, is the achilles heel of the American Right.
Anyway, your complaint against Andrew is not Barry’s. Barry was accusing Andrew of a specific sort of mendacity we’ve all seen from defensive hawks in the last year, year and a half. You’re saying instead, either, that Andrew really wants a war and knows that moving US troops to the Iranian border makes one more rather than less likely, OR that Andrew has a blind spot about the actual effect of such a move, at least as I interpret you.
Andrew, shorn of the rhetorical excess, Rich’s argument is, IMHO, substantially correct. Shifting troops to the Iranian border constitutes an escalation of tensions. That kind of move always has and always will. It doesn’t make war inevitable but it makes a peaceful resolution less likely. You don’t want to ”double down,” but the reason Iran seems like such a tough problem to you is that you’re wondering not ”How can we meet our goals” but ”How can we meet our goals without negotiating directly with Iran?” And that IS hard.
So it seems to me. Reactions?
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 11:45 am
It’s certainly true of a lot of bloggers and blog commenters and national-greatness impresarios and neolibertarians and the odd neoliberal too.
And don’t get me wrong here: these people speak the assumptions of the actual power centers of the current Republican Party. I’m not trying to pretend Official Conservatism or its freelance shills are some kind of marginal phenomenon.
Comment by Francis —
March 7, 2006 @ 12:26 pm
What to do with Iran? How ’bout absolutely nothing? More specifically,
1. set up in Bagdad a nonpartisan Radio Free Iran broadcasting, in Farsi, NPR, BBC and a range of pro-democracy voices. Hey, it worked for the Poles.
2. Send mixed battalions including Kurds and Sunnis as well as Shia to guard the border. We might as well start learning whether our grade 2 battalions are as ready as DOD says.
3. Don’t fund internal opposition groups in Iran.
4. Continue to work with the Russians and Chinese to see if they’re willing to do more to prevent iran from going nuclear.
5. Reaffirm to Shia leaders across the Middle East and North Africa that the US will not start nuclear war but it will finish it.
Comment by Barry —
March 7, 2006 @ 1:48 pm
Andrew, Jim, I apologize. I jumped to conclusions. I’m afraid that I’m still touchy from some family arguments over the weekend. BTW – the officiel talk show line is that it’s the fault of liberals for not offering ’constructive criticism’.
Comment by Nell —
March 7, 2006 @ 1:50 pm
It’s possible, though not likely, that the official Democratic Party will be as useless in the attempt to stop this war as it was in attempting to stop the last one.
Speaking as an official Democrat (on the smallest scale possible), I regret to report that it is likely.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 2:23 pm
Francis: That makes too much sense!
Though, actually, I doubt we have the mixed battalions to cover the border.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
Jeez, I really did write ”though not likely” didn’t I? What was I thinking?
I must’ve meant ”IF not likely.” Am going to update.
Comment by Andrew —
March 7, 2006 @ 2:32 pm
Barry, no worries; I overreacted as well, for which I apologize. Bottom line: I’m certainly not blaming people who opposed the war when it goes badly. My logic is that, since it seems plausible (I’m not 100% convinced, but I’m leaning) that the people who wanted us to stay out of Iraq were correct at the time, then asking their opinion on Iran before we make a similar mistake seems a good line of thought.
I did consider the possibility that Iran would see the shifting of U.S. troops to the border as provocative, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a non-starter for the policy. As long as we’re not going to start anything, I sincerely doubt Iran is going to do anything more than yell and carry on about our provocation. So if we shift troops to that border but leave them only in place in order to attempt to at least reduce the movement of Iranian supplies into Iraq, then I think it’s a viable policy. Does anyone here think that Iran will take our movement of troops towards the border as sufficient provocation to attack us first?
Jim, I have no objection to negotiating directly with Iran. Seems like a good step to me. I just want something in place to try and reduce Iran’s ability to supply the insurgents while we’re talking to them about eliminating the resupply voluntarily. Yes, the troops on the border might ratchet up tensions, but there is a rather marked difference between troops deployed to patrol the border and troops massed for an invasion, and the Iranians are hardly stupid; they will be able to see the difference. Further, why not combine the two efforts: tell the Iranians that we’re shifting troops to reduce cross-border traffic in arms and supplies while concurrently opening a dialogue with Iran?
Having said all that, I think I like Francis’s suggestions, although I would leaven the class 2 battalions with some U.S. support initially at least to maximize their effect.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 3:04 pm
Andrew, thanks for clarifying. This is a good discussion.
Here’s a theory for people to chew on: IF Iran is sending explosives into the US, it’s at least partly as ”free samples.” IOW, the message is: ”We can get a few of these into Iraq. We’ve got a LOT of them back home. Keep that in mind should you decide to invade.”
I’m not completely sold on this theory. It’s high-risk. (So is conniving at getting the greatest power in the world to wax your next-door neighbor when the GPIW hates your guts too.) It’s low-probability. (Surely Iran has heard that even the hawkiest hawky hawks would rather do airstrikes than a ground invasion.) And it tips their hand should it come to a ground war. (The US is working on countermeasures already. Does this mean that Iran has something else up its sleeve yet, that they can show us the armor-piercing mine card?)
So probably, at least something else is mixed up in their motives, assuming it’s really happening.
Comment by Andrew —
March 7, 2006 @ 3:33 pm
There’s the rub, of course. I know that there have been reports of this IED for a long time, but I’ve never heard anything on where it was coming from. If it is Iran, I think we need to do something to dissuade them from such actions, but war strikes me as a particularly poor method for doing so. (Uncle Remus’ tar baby springs to mind.) If the reports are accurate, then this is a very troublesome problem that doesn’t offer a clear solution, in my opinion.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 7, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
Andrew, sorry, but as a conservative, you’re *supposed* to be more realistic than a goody-goody idealistic liberal like myself. Right? Yet you have wildly unrealistic ideas. Therefore, I suspect that you really can’t be as unrealistic as you sound, and really want war.
Let’s look back over your proposal, OK? You write: ”As long as we’re not going to start anything, I sincerely doubt Iran is going to do anything more than yell and carry on about our provocation.” This is wrong in so many ways, I’m going to have to number them.
1. We are going to start something. The troops would be moved to the border not by imaginary reasonable people, but by the Bush administration. Who are already trying to provoke Iran.
2. You seem to think that we have a strong hand vis-a-vis Iran. We don’t. Iran can hurt us in any number of ways related to increased support for the insurgency. They are a *bordering nation-state* with the *same language and religion* as the main faction in the country that currently permits us to be there.
3. Moving troops to Iran’s border, in the context of our rhetoric, is not just provocative to Iran. It will universally be understood, throughout the world, as a provocative act. If Iran ”yells and carries on”, it will be heard.
4. Moving more troops to the border does nothing to interdict putative explosives in any case. Who are those troops? Either U.S., who don’t know the area well enough to stop smuggling, or Shia who participate in it. You move troops to a border either to prepare to invade or to prepare to repel invasion, not to stop smuggling.
5. We have no ability to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons other than world persuasion. Israel is not going to launch a raid on a country that might soon actually be able to hit back. Therefore, moving troops to the border ensures that Iran gets nuclears weapons, with the full and tacit approval of the only part of the world community that might be able to stop it. Which is pretty much inevitable, but doesn’t have to happen quite so soon or in this context.
So you’re a warmonger. Perhaps an unitentional one — I can’t judge motives — but you suggest actions that are well known to be provocations by standard international diplomacy.
Comment by the talking dog —
March 7, 2006 @ 3:48 pm
Iran is five to ten years away from being able to make a bomb according to this, supposedly based on American and Israeli intelligence estimates.
Our brilliant management of the aftermath of our invasion of Iraq, to wit, destroying virtually all existing Iraqi institutions in the name of ”de-Baathification” at the behest of likely Iranian agent Ahmad Chalabi, created a vacuum which SCIRI, Badr-ist militias and other alternative institutions likely to be friendly to Iran could fill. And so they have.
Short answer: Iran is not a current threat. The possible deal for processing of fissionable materials entirely within Russia makes the threat level go from ”limited” to ”negligible”.
The irony, of course, is that, after their performances before the Iraq invasion, just how can we trust American or Israeli intelligence estimates about Gulf State WSDs (a UO expression I’m nostalgic for).
The only reason to attack Iran now is to enhance our own Praetorian state and because Dubya’s poll numbers might be so low that the GOP losees one or both Houses of Congress in November. There is no strategic reason to do so, nor any legitimate political or geo-political reason to do so. If the threat of doing so were matched with a diplomatic initiative in a pincer movement that might get results from Iran, then God bless. But this, like the Iraq adventure, appears to be much, much more calculated for domestic consumption (and ironically, it will be Hilllary Clinton and Joe Lieberman that have Bush’s back on this one.)
My own policy preference on Iran right now? Follow the lead of our European allies, and try to actually coordinate a result based on carrots and sticks. Hey, try engagement for a change. Failing that, make isolation work where we can, by inter alia (1) buying Russia’s program… outbid Iran for it (money is money), (2) replacing funding of our Department of Defense from general revenue and income tax to a special per gallon excise tax on petroleum products (the average household will have a wash as income tax will go down); watch market incentives suddenly create alternatives to fossil fuel, (3) eliminating textile and other tariffs for products from Pakistan… whoah… I better calm down.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 4:11 pm
There was comment spam here a moment ago. Now there is not. A post that is nothing but a link to your site, with no relevance to the topic under discussion, is comment spam.
In case there is any doubt.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 7, 2006 @ 4:13 pm
Hate to pick on Francis as well, who is much more reasonable, but think about this one: ”Reaffirm to Shia leaders across the Middle East and North Africa that the US will not start nuclear war but it will finish it.”
What does that mean, really? One of the problems of nuclear proliferation is that you can’t really tell where any particular bomb came from. It’s not like anyone is going to launch a ballistic missile.
So say that a nuclear bomb wipes out an American city. Then what? We kill every man, woman, and child in Iran just on general principles? Let’s say that we even claim to have evidence that Iran’s government planted the bomb, which they deny and counterclaim that the evidence was planted by a terrorist group. I mean, we already lied ourselves into one war. If we start launching nukes based on our word that we have evidence, everyone else in the world is going to assume that we’re insanely lashing out and murdering millions of scapegoats. No one who says this ”we’ll finish a nuclear war” bit ever seems to think about what it means.
There’s only one real solution to this whole problem, and it’s the same one as was used with the USSR. Stop treating this as a military problem, dignify our opponents with full representation in real-conservative as opposed to fake-conservative world power structures, wait and see whose internal contradictions bring them down first.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2006 @ 4:26 pm
Rich, please, I know you feel strongly about this stuff, so I’m asking as a favor: please stop impugning Andrew’s motives specifically.
Everyone: Rich raises some substantive points well worth discussing.
Andrew: Rich is right. You’re underselling the risk/provocation of a move in force to the Iranian border. (There’s also still the matter of the ”back door” we’d be leaving open by doing so.) Rich: Of course, smuggling explosives in to blow up someone’s troops is also provocative.
We can start tracing the t;ts and tats back to 1979 or 1953 but the bottom line is, IMHO, something I wrote back in 2002: ”Some people worry that the Iraq War may ’spin out of control.’ The truth is, it’s *supposed* to spin out of control.”
So here it is, spinning out of control, right in front of us. For certain values of ”out of control” at least. That oxymoron in the original quote/paraphrase was a literary device!
PS There’s a post after this by Rich which I agree with completely, the ”real-conservative political structures” one. Make Iran a status-quo power, or at least give them the opportunity to be one. Raw geopolitical logic destins them for regional-power status. Once they have it, they’ve got something to lose. They do already of course, which is why, if they’re up to something in Iraq, they’re taking pains to be relatively circumspect about it. But really enmesh them in the same web of dependencies with which we enmeshed the Russians and Chinese.
Comment by Andrew —
March 7, 2006 @ 4:35 pm
Rich, I believe part of our dispute is that we are attempting to address different problems. My concern is dissuading Iran from providing the Iraqi insurgency with weapons (assuming, in fact, that they are doing so), not preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Responses to your points:
1. If it is a fact ’we’re going to start something’ as you say, then our discussions here are of theoretical value only. Your claim has no bearing on the wisdom of shifting troops to the Iranian border.
2. In fact I think we have very little leverage over Iran, and I’m curious what makes you think I think we have more. If I thought we had significant leverage over Iran, I’d simply advocate using that to convince them to stop supplying the insurgency with weapons. Since I do not believe we have that kind of leverage, I look to alternative means to shut down the flow until and unless negotiations prove fruitful.
3. I have no doubt that Iran’s complaints will receive a hearing in the world. But if the level of provocation never rises above shifting troops to cover the border (and, again I point out that troops attempting to seal a border will be deployed in a manner very different from troops deployed for a pending invasion), then unless Iran actually attacks our forces, the provocation will result in nothing more than some hurt feelings. I believe that is a reasonable trade-off for a reduction in the arms supplied to the insurgency. Now, if you believe that such a provocation will be sufficient to force Iran to attack us, then that is a different argument, but it does not appear to be the one you are making. I submit that the number and types of troops necessary for border patrols could be tailored to reduce the level of provocation to avoid this (and would recommend making this move in such a way as to minimize the provocation in any case). And as I noted earlier, I prefer the idea of using Iraqi forces leavened with certain U.S. assets, which should be still less provocative.
4. This is unlikely at best. You’re suggesting that placing troops along the border in order to run interdiction patrols will have no effect on weapons smuggling? I cannot say you are absolutely wrong, but I can say that the odds are against your being right. While some level of smuggling will continue to get through, the right troops should be able to at least reduce the volume.
5. Incorrect. We can nuke Iran into glass, for example, which would guarantee no Persian bombs for quite some time. Perhaps you meant to say that we have no methods for preventing Iran from developing a bomb that you’re willing to endorse, in which case we are in agreement, as I have no desire to see the U.S. at war with Iran or to see Iran attacked by U.S. forces with the goal of eliminating or retarding their nuclear program. As for world persuasion, it would appear that Iran has little use for world opinion as evidenced by their recent remarks about stringing the EU3 along while continuing to build their nuclear program. I would therefore submit that there is no acceptable way of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power and that our best available option would then be to find a way to make sure that a nuclear Iran will not utilize those weapons by engaging them diplomatically and economically.
Bottom line, I prefer Francis’s proposals as the best method for dealing with a difficult situation. You are, of course, free to place me in the ’warmonger’ category if you so choose, but I submit that your use of terminology in that case is so imprecise as to render it meaningless.
Comment by Andrew —
March 7, 2006 @ 4:44 pm
Jim, to address your point vis-a-vis Syria, we would need to change our balance of forces in Iraq, but we could provide some coverage to both borders. This would, of course, potentially overstretch our forces, but it is a feasible option for a short-term solution while we attempt to engage Iran. As for the situation ’spinning out of control,’ I think we can still prevent that if we do not act rashly (perhaps a vain hope). As long as the fighting is constrained to Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a nuisance but not a fatal one. If we bring Iran or Syria into play, then I think we lose any hope of closure at a reasonable cost.
I concur with Talking Dog’s assessment regarding going to war with Iran, with one caveat. If Iran is supplying weapons to the insurgents, we do have a legitimate reason to make war on them. However, I do not believe it would be in our best interests to do so.
Also, Rich is quite correct about nuclear retaliation. I should have caveated my agreement with Francis. Once a nuclear device detonates in an American city, retaliation is little more than throwing good money after bad. MAD was only a feasible policy as long as it was not invoked. Once missiles are in the air, launching a counterstrike may make people feel better, but it’s not improving the situation any.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 7, 2006 @ 5:17 pm
Jim writes: ”Of course, smuggling explosives in to blow up someone’s troops is also provocative.”
Do we have any actual evidence that this is being done? I refer you to kenmacleod.blogspot.com, which has no internal links:
”According to The Times today, British diplomatic and military officials have withdrawn earlier claims that infrared-triggered IEDs used by Iraqi insurgents are supplied by Iran. It never seemed very plausible that the technology of the shaped charge was a mystery to Iraqi army officers, not to mention that of the television remote control or the burglar alarm. (That story always had the fingerprint of Brit disinfo, which is that anything smart done by natives is evidence of a hidden hand: Jews and Bolsheviks in the good old days; more recently, and I must say a personal favourite, the tale in the early 70s that the violence in Northern Ireland was in part a People’s War organised by Peking through a network of Chinese restaurants.)”
But let’s say they’re doing it. They can afford to be more provocative than we can at the present time, because they have a stronger hand. That does not mean that we get to do equal or greater provocation.
Andrew remarks that ”If it is a fact ’we’re going to start something’ as you say, then our discussions here are of theoretical value only.” Not at all. The Bush administration will try to get away whatever it can: what it can get away with depends on public opinion in the U.S. If public opinion in the U.S. approves of moving troops to the Iranian border, based on arguments about intercepting explosives, then the Bushians will have a ready-made platform from which to create additional reasons for war.
Comment by Francis —
March 7, 2006 @ 5:41 pm
there is a difference between launching nuclear retaliation and having foreign nations believe that you will.
if we don’t have a clear fingerprint on the source of the Bomb that levels Manhattan, I’d hope that our leaders would not blame iran faute de mieux (because there’s no one better). I doubt, however, that any government could withstand the public pressure to retaliate against someone, and North Korea, Iran or both leap to the front of that line.
That being said, Israel may have second strike capacity, or it may not. Having the US confirm, quietly, to the MENA and North Korea leaders that the US will serve as Israel’s second strike capability, in the case of nuclear attack only, should serve to make even the most die-hard theocrat reconsider.
Yes, I understand full well the consequences of the US launching second strikes — like WWIII. We can cross that bridge, however, the day that Tel Aviv is a nuclear wasteland. Between now and then, though, the idea is to avoid nuclear war by persuading those who might think that nuclear war is winnable that it is, in fact, not.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 7, 2006 @ 5:44 pm
Here’s a longer response to some of Andrew’s points. He writes: ”My concern is dissuading Iran from providing the Iraqi insurgency with weapons (assuming, in fact, that they are doing so), not preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”
My concern is not with either of these things, primarily, but with extricating the U.S. from a war which I consider to be both immoral and ill-advised. (Note: I am not a general pacifist, I object to this war specifically.)
”But if the level of provocation never rises above shifting troops to cover the border ”
I should point out that there are already credible reports of U.S. raids past the Iranian border, though of course not in U.S. media. Once again, your recommendations for how border troops should be disposed have no relationship to how they will actually be disposed. What you’re really writing is just a several-years-later version of the fantasy of the well-managed war. Perhaps liberals are more familiar with it because the liberal hawks mostly were forced to give it up years ago? (Note: I was also never a liberal hawk.)
”You’re suggesting that placing troops along the border in order to run interdiction patrols will have no effect on weapons smuggling? I cannot say you are absolutely wrong, but I can say that the odds are against your being right.”
I don’t think that interdiction patrols have any real effect on smuggling, no. I mean, what would be the best way to smuggle explosives into the U.S.? Hide them in a bale of marijuana. In the case of Iraq, I’d guess that the presence of troops along the border will actually increase smuggling — all of those trucks going back and forth with supplies, run by either an Iraqi army that mostly hates us or a U.S. one that mostly either stays in base or drives by with no idea of what is being said by whom.
Comment by Andrew —
March 7, 2006 @ 5:49 pm
Rich, you can’t have it both ways. If your argument is that we should not move troops towards the Iranian border because it makes it easier for the Bush administration to make the case for war, that’s a reasonable argument. It creates the potential for some kind of border incident that could be used to further escalate the situation. (On the other hand, the administration really doesn’t need more if Iran is providing weapons that are killing U.S. Soldiers. I suspect that such news would be sufficient to inflame Jacksonian America and give President Bush the cover he needs to expand the war. I don’t think he’d need to resort to a border subterfuge.)
That leaves open the question of what you would consider an appropriate response if Iran is supplying munitions to the insurgency. I’m not wedded to any particular method, and it appears that the issue may not even exist, which would be the best possible answer. Still, strictly speaking in theoretical terms, I’d be curious to know what, if anything, you believe would be an appropriate response to Iranian provocations.
Comment by Andrew —
March 7, 2006 @ 6:12 pm
Heh. Left a dangling phrase above. It should read that if you want to argue against moving troops to the border because you think it’s a bad political move that’s fine, but then you can’t turn around and say that ’we are going to start something.’ It’s an either-or proposition. Either the argument can affect public opinion and influence the administration away from expanding the war, or the argument is useless because the administration is determined to go to war.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 7, 2006 @ 7:08 pm
I don’t think it’s either-or at all. The Bush administration will start whatever it can start; it is clearly easier for it to do so if it has a large number of troops stationed near the border. That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for it to do so otherwise. But your argument, which is predicated on the troops being sent to stop explosives, doesn’t hold up if you question the predicate.
What would I consider to be an appropriate response *if* Iran is supplying weapons? Leaving Iraq. Oddly enough, that is the same response that I suggest if Iran is not supplying weapons.
Comment by matthew hogan —
March 7, 2006 @ 7:41 pm
”Assume that the Iranians are within measurable distance of nuclear status. Appearances sometimes to the contrary, they are not mad—or not clinically insane in the way that Saddam Hussein was and Kim Jong-il is.”
Judging by verb tense, I wonder how Hitchens divined that Saddam is cured of his alleged insanity, or is dead.
Comment by Barry —
March 7, 2006 @ 10:10 pm
Andrew, you were slipping in your various posts, from Iran possibly supplying weapons, to Iran supplying weapons being assumed. Please be aware that few here will believe such a thing, until proven by honest men (meaning nobody working for Bush).
Considering that the Bush admininstration left what I’ve seen estimated as) a couple hundred thousand tons of conventional munitions unguarded for several months (at least!), there’s not too many things which Iran would have to supply.
The only thing that guerrillas would need fresh might be AA missiles. I haven’t seen anything in the media about that many missiles being used.
If Iran has shipped in a few hundred launchers (with trained gunners), things in Iraq would get highly problematic.
Comment by buermann —
March 7, 2006 @ 11:06 pm
Where’d this idea that Iran would be supporting the Sunni insurgency even gain any traction? Least of all the idea that it’d be a provocation, if it justified military action against Iran wtf would the invasion itself justify against the US?
Comment by Doctor Memory —
March 8, 2006 @ 1:04 am
Oh for the love of all that is holy. We’ve gone in 4 short years from discussing fictional Weapons of Mass Destruction to completely irrelevant Weapons of Extremely Limited Destruction.
Is Iran smuggling materials to make IEDs into Iraq? Here’s an answer: who cares? Here’s an even better question: If Iran were smuggling in explosives and if tomorrow a magical force field were to spring into being along the entire Iraq/Iran border that stopped 100% of that smuggling, would it in any way impinge the insurgency’s ability to make bombs? No, it would not, because the insurgency already has all the explosives it needs, thank you very much.
p.s. the Iran-Iraq border is over 1500 kilometers long. Maybe if all 150,000 coalition troops held hands and stood across it…
Comment by Doctor Memory —
March 8, 2006 @ 1:07 am
(On a slightly less aggrieved note, Rich states in #20 that Iraqi Shia share ”a language and religion” with Iranian Shia. The latter is true, but the former, as I understand it, is not: Iraqi Shia are ethnic Arabs and speak Arabic. Iranians largely speak Persian/Farsi.)
Comment by Tequila —
March 8, 2006 @ 5:43 am
Not sure how much border troops would stop infiltration anyway. Any Iranian agents wanting to come across the border are likely doing it through the very legal, very lucrative shrine pilgrimage business. Want to try and stop that? A guy named Sistani would tell you to push off very quickly.
And it’s hardly like they’re bringing explosives across the border. As noted, there’s plenty already in Iraq. Any aid the Iranians are bringing in is in the form of expertise and money. Don’t really see how you can stop either with the pilgrimage trade going strong.
Comment by Andrew Olmsted —
March 8, 2006 @ 9:44 am
A few final notes.
First, while I was not as careful as I should have been in noting it, all of my thoughts regarding response to Iran were, of course, predicated on the assumption that Iran is, in fact providing the IEDs to Iraq. I would not advocate taking measures such as moving U.S. troops to the border without better evidence that was the case.
Second, there are two good reasons to care if Iran is supplying these weapons to Iraq. The first is that it would be considered a casus belli by many Americans and would therefore make it easier for President Bush to get support for military action against Iran. Therefore, I believe that offering alternative solutions to the problem is a good way to undermine some of the war fever that could result. Second, the weapons we are discussing are not typical IEDs. The commenters who have pointed out that the insurgency has plenty of conventional explosives are correct, but these IEDs mentioned in the ABC report are significantly more powerful than those the insurgency normally constructs. (Note that this does not mean they necessarily come from outside the country; they could have found a new stockpile of materials or this may just be a new development in the ongoing battle between the offense and the defense. Again, all of my discussion is intended to be hypothetical responses to the possibility of Iranian provocations.) Therefore, if they are coming from Iran, we have good reason to want to shut them off even if doing so will not reduce the volume of IEDs, because it would at least reduce their effectiveness.
I’d also like to reiterate that while I do not believe that we could shut down the Iran-Iraq border, I know that we could have an effect on weapons smuggling if we made it a priority. The U.S. military has numerous systems that could be put to good use in an anti-smuggling mode. The fact we would not stop all smuggling is not a sufficient argument for not trying.
Finally, I’d like to express my appreciation to Jim for the chance to discuss these issues. It has been a good time, at least for me, so thanks to all who’ve participated.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 8, 2006 @ 9:45 am
”On a slightly less aggrieved note, Rich states in #20 that Iraqi Shia share â€a language and religion†with Iranian Shia. The latter is true, but the former, as I understand it, is not: Iraqi Shia are ethnic Arabs and speak Arabic. Iranians largely speak Persian/Farsi.)”
The number of Iranians who speak idiomatic Iraqi Arabic is large enough for just about any sized corps of agents you’d like to imagine.
Comment by Frank —
March 8, 2006 @ 10:01 am
As a lurker I feel I should say how much I liked the discussion too. Usually Jim’s posts only get a few comments, It’s nice to see a longer discussion.
Even though he is right wing scum. (smileys seem to be unavailable.) I think Mr Olmstead deserves some credit for being gracious above and beyond the call. Not that it isn’t reasonable for Rich to generally assume that any given Republican is lying in any given statement, but its not always conducive to good conversation.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 8, 2006 @ 10:05 am
Sorry about the smiley issue, folks. It’s one of the lingering text validation issues. You CAN get a <G> if you type out the HTML code for the less-than (ampersand-lt-semicolon, without the dashes) and greater-than (ampersand-gt-semicolon, without the dashes) signs with a big ol’ Capital G in the middle.
As this comment will prove!
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 8, 2006 @ 11:32 am
I just have less and less tolerance for opinions that don’t presuppose certain things that I think should be well-proven by now, such as the essentially malign U.S.-electoral focus of the Bush administration with its concomitant lying about war aims. If they say that they want to move troops to the border to stop explosives smuggling, of course they don’t want to move troops to the border to stop explosives smuggling. Can’t we just take that as a given? This kind of credulous policy chat was tolerable 3 years ago, 2 years ago, grating perhaps but bearable a year ago. But now?
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
March 8, 2006 @ 11:45 am
On the subject of resistance to admissions of what we’ve done, current and in the future, here’s a poem.
Comment by Barry —
March 8, 2006 @ 2:17 pm
Nice poem, Rich. And that’s why I went off on Andrew so quickly – he was and is a war supporter, and seems to be ’selectively unanalytical’ in evaluating recent history.
Comment by Andrew —
March 8, 2006 @ 6:44 pm
We’re all ’selectively unanalytical’ in our thinking, Barry. Confirmation bias and mental filters guarantee that there are certain pieces of information we weight more or less highly (or simply disregard). Rich notes as much in his comment. It’s the way of the world. How we deal with that is, of course, up to us. You may dislike my beliefs, but I am at least willing to come here and try to understand other points of view. If you are actually interested in changing the opinion of someone who supported the war, this is your chance. I can make no guarantees, of course, but I am seeking out alternate points of view in an attempt to expand my perspective.
Comment by Barry —
March 8, 2006 @ 9:39 pm
Andrew, I don’t expect to change your mind. It’d be nice, but at this point we’re down to those who are in on the con, those who want an excuse to hate, the serious kool-aid drinkers. You’re in that third category.
It’s going to be hard to persuade the last 30-odd percent of the American people about this administration, but we really don’t have to. If we keep witnessing truth, and holding up the history of these people to the light, we can prevail, at least a bit.
So my debates here aren’t intended to convert; that’s a possible benefit.
Comment by Corpuscallosum —
March 16, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
Wouldn’t the appropriate metaphor be “climb out” rather than “climb down” since it is obviouslys a giant crater we have stumbled into?
Metaphors are important. They do lead to action, afterall.