Richard Lugar Makes Sense On Iran
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (18) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Why Are These Men Smiling?
It is becoming conventional wisdom that Iran is set to be the big winner in Iraq.
This wisdom has developed despite five percent of its population being junkies, 25% of whom are infected with HIV/AIDS, a birth rate at sub-replacement levels, a large scale flight of university and professionally educated citizens, an oil industry descending into the crapper, domestic subsidies that eat up 15% of Iran’s oil revenue, political instability, a stock market that has shed over 20% of its value since October, capital flight on the order of $700 billion, and the predominance of Iranian women in brothels of the Gulf States and Europe.
The Washington Post sketches out the conventional wisdom but, oddly enough, it is Richard Lugar that uses it like a piñata.
Read on.
In the social sciences there is the term agency which essentially holds that humans have the ability to exercise free will and make decisions. When groups and persons are infantilized, one of the first things done is to strip them of agency. Hence, the downtrodden don’t have the ability to raise their lot in life, the victims of crime are blameless, voters believe political ads, etc. This happens in what should be serious conversations in history and political science, too.
As Charles Mann observes in 1491 (this is from streiff’s must-read book list) we have succeeded in writing a history which strips Indians of agency. We succeeded in doing that to ourselves in Vietnam. We are doing it again in Iraq.
The Washington Post reports that many of our erstwhile Middle Eastern friends (and I use the term lightly and advisedly considering zero of the 9/11 hijackers came from nations we would consider our enemy) are hedging their bets on the outcome in Iraq.
While the headline reads With Iran Ascendant, U.S. Is Seen at Fault the article really draws a picture of a vast regional social-political-military conflict in which it is by no means certain that Iran is either ascendant or doing particularly well.
Iran has deepened its relationship with Palestinian Islamic groups, assuming a financial role once filled by Gulf Arab states, in moves it sees as defensive and the United States views as aggressive. In Lebanon and Iraq, Iran is fighting proxy battles against the United States with funds, arms and ideology. And in the vacuum created by the U.S. overthrow of Iranian foes in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is exerting a power and prestige that recalls the heady days of the 1979 Islamic revolution, when Iranian clerics led the toppling of a U.S.-backed government.
Against this we find:
As that struggle deepens, many in the Arab world find themselves on the sidelines. They are increasingly anxious over worsening tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims across the Middle East, even as some accuse the United States of stoking that tension as a way to counter predominantly Shiite Iran. Fear of Iranian dominance is coupled, sometimes in the same conversation, with suspicion of U.S. intentions in confronting Iran.
"It was necessary to create an enemy to justify the failure of the American occupation in Iraq," Talal Salman, the editor-in-chief of as-Safir, a Lebanese newspaper, wrote in a column this month. "So to protect ourselves against the coming of the wolf, we bring the foreign fleets that fill our lands, skies and seas."
[…]
In an attempt to contest Iran's influence, the United States has sought to form an axis among Sunni Arab states it considers moderate: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and smaller countries in the Gulf. Israeli officials have spoken about a possible alignment of their country's interests with those states to arrest both Iran's influence and its nuclear program.
In November, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would try to deepen ties with those states, some of which have yet to recognize Israel, in what Israeli analysts saw as an opening bid to create an anti-Iranian bloc.
There is a growing backlash that indicates Iran may have overplayed its hand.
Potentially more far-reaching is the sectarian tension that the struggle has ignited. In the Palestinian territories, Israeli officials say, Iran has been increasingly successful in influencing the chaotic political situation, particularly by funding the Hamas-led government.The connection has not gone unnoticed in the Palestinian street. At two rallies this month for Fatah, the movement led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, crowds directed chants at Hamas, a Sunni Arab group. "Shiites, Shiites," they shouted.
Across the Middle East, once antiquated words have sprung up in conversations about Shiites -- Safawis, for instance, drawn from the name of a Persian empire that brought Shiism to Iran. In Lebanon, posters have gone up in Sunni neighborhoods portraying leaders united by little other than their Sunni sectarian affiliation: Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister killed in a 2005 car bombing, and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas who was assassinated by Israel in 2004.
[…]
Iranian officials have repeatedly warned against the phenomenon, fearing it will curb their leverage in an Arab street that remains majority Sunni. Many in the Arab world watch its gathering force with a sense of helplessness.
The Saudi government, for instance, took the unprecedented step of blaming Hezbollah for the war with Israel last summer, it is supporting the government of Lebanon against Hezbollah’s machinations, and it has warned Iran to stop interfering in Iraq and to stop attempting to spread Shi’a Islam.
An interesting counterpoint to this article was an op-ed by Richard Lugar also in today's Post. Lugar, a minor deity in moderate Republican circles, places Iraq in a larger context.
We need to recast the geo-strategic reference points of our Iraq policy. Some commentators have compared the Bush plan to a "Hail Mary" pass in football -- a desperate heave deep down the field by a losing team at the end of the game. Actually, a far better analogy for the Bush plan is a draw play on third down with 20 yards to go in the first quarter. The play does have a chance of working if everything goes perfectly, but it is more likely to gain a few yards and set up a punt on the next down, after which the game can be continued under more favorable circumstances.The president's plan is an early episode in a much broader Middle East realignment that began with our invasion of Iraq and that may not end for years. Nations throughout the Middle East are scrambling to find their footing as regional power balances shift in unpredictable ways.
At the center of this realignment is Iran, which is perceived to have emerged from our Iraq intervention as the big winner. We paved the way for a Shiite government in Iraq that is much friendlier to Iran than was Saddam Hussein. Bolstered by high oil revenue, Iran has meddled in Iraq, rigidly pursued a nuclear capability, and funded Hezbollah and Hamas.
But the pendulum of Middle East politics may be swinging back against Iranian assertiveness. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states and others have become increasingly alarmed by Iran's behavior and by widening regional sectarian divisions. Because of this dynamic, U.S. bargaining power in the Middle East is growing. Moderate Arab states understand that the United States is an indispensable counterweight to Iran.
Lugar, in short, sees the same conflict as does the Post’s correspondent, but instead of a story in which two or the players, the United States and Sunni Arab regimes in the Middle East, are without agency, i.e. passive pawns to be smacked about at the whim of Tehran, but he sees it as a multiyear, multifaceted conflict in which sectarian differences and fear of Iranian influence may strengthen the US position in the region.
I would disagree with Lugar on many particulars in his column. I think that a “punt” in Iraq would be more the equivalent of punting on first down in the middle of a successful ground game. I think his pooh-poohing of the Bush policy of democratization is short sighted in that it relies on the enmity of Iran to reorder the Middle East politically. Relying, as Blanche DuBois said, on the kindness of strangers is hardly a sound foundation upon which to build a regional policy. And his seeming willingness to write off Iraq rather than treating it as a central campaign in this struggle is counterintuitive to the remainder of his column and his concentration on Iran and studious avoidance of comment on islamofascism is hard to explain.
In the main, though, I think Lugar does a more cogent and coherent job of sketching out the battlefield than anyone else commenting on Middle East in government.
The larger picture though is one of a conflict between two competing forces. One force, the US, has time on its side. The other, Iran, is fighting against time. For Iran to succeed it must not only be skilful, it must be very lucky. For the US to succeed, it merely needs to stay in the game.
None of this is not to say that a very difficult conflict faces us in southwest Asia. It does. But the notion that Iran is either driving the train or preordained to succeed is simply fatuous.
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Relying, as Blanche DuBois said, on the kindness of strangers is hardly a sound foundation upon which to build a regional policy.
It's not the kindness of the Gulf states that Lugar is relying upon. It's fear -- fear of Iran -- and their own considerable self-interest in self preservation.
For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.
but to the point, fear is a fairly fragile way of accomplishing anything in the long run unless you are going to modify underlying behavior.
My criticism of Lugar on this is that he ignores the long term issues of governance in our allies and hopes that a fear of the Iranians will put off their inevitable collapse until after the Iranians are vanquished.
That we knock over all of those allies today and take a chance on free elections? And then what would be the outcome if the Muslim Brotherhood were the new government in Egypt?
How, exactly, would that improve the situation?
What is interesting about this analysis is that the subtext is that Iran is a sick society, and that if contained it will eventually self-destruct.
That is most likely the case. The Iranians have a young population that is sick of the Mullahs. The regime's days, left to its own devices, are probably numbered.
But the fun thing about you, Streiff, is that understanding the facts you would still cheerlead a U.S. attack on Iran. I've watched you do this before. You'll release some reasonable critique of the situation in the ME, such as understanding that Al Queda is a small part of the insurgency in Iraq or that Sunnis can't possibly govern Iraq or win a civil war.
Then, you'll jump up to defend adminstration policy that is clearly based on an analysis of the situation completely contradicting your own. This will be the same situation. At some point, if we hit Iran, you will be out there defending the decision knowing full well that time and anti-Persian feeling in the ME is likely to accomplish a laudable goal (end of the Mullahs) without the U.S. firing a shot.
But one thing you keep coming back to is the need for Democracy in the Muslim world. Are you really on-board with that?
Great. Let's have a vote in Pakistan. Right now, what do you say? How about we let the nuclear armed Pakistanis vote in a free and fair election? I'm sure the Madrassas will turn out the boys by the bus load.
Are you willing to risk that? How about risking it in Egypt? Or Jordan?
Last time I checked, free elections in the Muslim world have favored the most Islamist and radical elements available.
Why are you so bent on getting more of it? Is it because you really believe it, or are you just carrying more water for the Bush Administration's loopy leftist polices?
Elections in Iraq solved nothing. You claimed them as triumphs, but nothing changed on the ground. The Shia run the place, the Sunnis won't accept it, and the Kurds are doing their own thing up north. Lebanon had free elections followed by a war with Israel that was prompted by a party to those elections named Hezbollah.
What on Earth makes you think that this policy of destabilizing our friends in favor of electing our enemies is going to ever work?
When I visit and speak to Republican groups in my capacity as a Balkan area specialist, I note that they are increasingly unwilling to keep talking about Muslim Democracy. After the Somali cab drivers in Minnesota, the ongoing lawsuits seeking more accomodation for Muslims in the public square, and the election of a Muslim to the House of Representatives - Republicans are increasingly more concerned about controlling Muslim immigration to the U.S. and securing our borders. That way we, at least, won't end up like Britain and France.
You're selling something no one is interested in buying. Muslims have Democracy in Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Their answer to it has been to try and impose the Sharia. Americans, and especially Republicans, aren't blind to this.
If Muslims can't embrace civil society in Western Europe, then why are we supposed to risk our future on the idea that they will embrace it in Cairo?
heard this crap before? Oh, I know, every single post you've ever made on this subject.
Look, jaszkowski, I agree that you have reasons for your beliefs and I have refrained from violating Godwin's Law. For the life of me, I can't understand why you can't understand that you don't have a pipeline to the truth, that much of what you believe is subject to error, and that a lot of people have a different opinion on what needs to be done.
We've tried your way for 50 years. Fifty years of propping up corrupt and fragile regimes, of being associated with the corruption and oppression all the while talking human rights and democracy.
Your way got us Iran. Your way is going to get us what will happen in Egypt when Mubarrak dies and what will happen in Syria when Assad finds his head on a pike. Your way will bequeath us a hardcore Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia. I've had it with this senseless propagation of the status quo at the expense of our values and our security.
Most muslims, here and in Europe, do not advocate Shari'a. Most do not commit honor killings. Most muslim cabbies don't care what you do in their cab. Most simply go about their business. This drawing of religion/ethnic wide generalities based on a few cases has a fairly unpleasant name.
Most muslims, here and in Europe, do not advocate Shari'a. Most do not commit honor killings. Most muslim cabbies don't care what you do in their cab. Most simply go about their business. This drawing of religion/ethnic wide generalities based on a few cases has a fairly unpleasant name.
What do you base that on? If the majority of Muslims in Europe don't support the Sharia, then what is driving the growth of Islamic courts on the continent. I visit Europe four or five times a year, every single year.
I'm blind I suppose. Or just a bigot. A big fat racist, I suppose. Silly me walking around Europe seeing the cultural transformation of the continent as Europeans live in fear of offending a minority who is willing to burn the place down if they don't get their way.
I suppose I'm over reacting. After all, I don't have a pipeline to the truth.
Then again, the Assyrian refugee family in our parish is helping to resettle are here after their oldest daughter committed suicide following a gang rape by Shi'ites. They don't have a very favorable picture of Islam.
But they're over reacting I'm sure. This is all the work of a nasty minority. I'm sure the moderate, civil majority will speak up against the imposition of Muslim law any day now.
After all, you said so didn't you? I may not have a pipeline to the truth, but you seem to. Despite all history to the contrary, you seem to know best.
Well, God bless you and I hope it works out. You still didn't answer my question though. Are you really ready to take your convictions to the next level? Why not call for elections now in all of those nations like Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan?
If you're worried about life after Assad's head on a pike, then you admit that Assad is not nearly as bad as it gets. Well, why don't we just go ahead and get this out of the way now?
Why not? Let's not have stupid and naive people like me telling lies about the good Muslim majority out there. Let's let them all vote and then I can be proven to be a silly little Slav with no idea about anything.
Of course, I'll live long enough to see Muslim Europe, so we'll be there with a bird's eye view of how that little experiment turns out.
I've just been silly for resisting the overwhelming power of your intellect. Here I've been trained for years, by professionals, no less, that the plural of anecdote is not data and now I find your trips to Europe simply invalidates all empirical data to the contrary.
Face it, you have exactly one issue here. You believe that Christians in the Arab world haven't been treated right. (If I hear another story about the Assyrian family in your parish I know I will just gag, you've been using this story ever since you started posting here). And you're right. They aren't. But I have the solution to that. Move. Go to a Christian country, somewhere where you can practice your faith openly.
Unfortunately, where you seem eager to base all your convictions on the absence of freedom provided a small minority you seem equally blind to the fact that every culture has to start the road towards something approaching plualism somewhere. You're essentially arguing that democracy could not work in the Old South because they had slaves and poor whites and non-landowning whites were frozen out of a political system controlled by the wealthy. It was true at that time, but to say it was true, period, is simply given the lie by what we see today.
You're entitled to your feelings and opinions, but don't try to convince me that your way makes an iota of sense. We've tried it for decades in all areas of the world and it has failed everywhere it has been tried and has a uniform record of leaving behing anti-US and anti-Western sentiment.
If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, you'll understand why I'd like to try something that really hasn't been tried yet.
Why don't you give my way fifty years and then tell me it can't work.
Where is it?
The Old South was Christian. The treatment of the slaves was an open offense to the Christian faith. So was Jim Crow. That is why all over the world Christians eventually shut down the slave trade and abolished slavery.
But not in the Sudan, nor in many other Muslim areas. There it still thrives. Or didn't you notice that.
Religion matters. Not all religions are the same. Your strategy assumes that they are. That a peaceful evolution to pluralism is possible, and that American policy can affect that change.
Since your way is policy right now, we'll have a chance to see it work. I suppose, then, that you are all in favor of even more Muslim immigration to the United States, for example?
You don't see any possibility of the kinds of radical social transformation occurring in Europe happening here?
Or, are we just imagining what's happening in Europe?
"You'll release some reasonable critique of the situation in the ME"
Mark it down, because I am going to go out on a limb and predict that Streiff will, in the future, post another reasonable, educated, thoughtful critique here that deals with the situation in the middle east.
When people disagree, it's often productive to establish the common ground.
I've talked about this with people of Persian origin who are recently returned from Iran. The people there don't like the regime, but they blow off steam by more-or-less openly flouting the weirder strictures of Islamic law. If it were possible to lift up a few burkas on a Teheran street without getting your head chopped off, you'd find a lot of miniskirts and painted toenails.
However, the people aren't interested in rising up against a regime which is troublesome but not really cramping anyone's style overly much. What they fear are the blood, sweat, toil and tears that will likely come with a transition to some other regime. And that's enough to keep them quiet.
I'm not sanguine that you will ever see an Iranian analogue to the Cedar Revolution.
And if they do vote the way you seem to fear they will (as I fear they will), then we will know where the real source of the problem lies. We will know Exactly what it is about their culture that encourages the violence. We will know what the next step must be. We won't like it and may even put it off a few years, but we will know what we will eventually have to do.
If, on the other hand, they vote like I hope and pray they would, then, again, we know where the problem lies. The next step in this case would be harder to determine, but at least there'd be less blood when we figured it out...
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
the concept is analogy
My point is that this is a poor analogy, because it is not on all fours with what Lugar is relying upon but rather is designed to make Lugar's ideas more easy to refute. There is a word for such a thing: a straw man.
but to the point, fear is a fairly fragile way of accomplishing anything in the long run unless you are going to modify underlying behavior.
Fear is, as H.P. Lovecraft is oft-quoted as saying, the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind. Niccolo's observation is also worth remembering: "From this arises an argument: whether it is better to be loved than feared. I reply that one should like to be both one and the other; but since it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking."
More to your point, this dispute is not over the goals in the ME, but rather the means and the time frame.
For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.
which I admit to being.
Look up the definition of strawman, von. I am so tired of seeing that term flung about.
I will admit to a poor analogy and an obviously failed attempt to be cute, but I didn't construct a strawman if for no other reason the people Lugar is relying on are strangers to us culturally and politically.
And Machiavelli, and as it turns out Lovecraft, were right about fear. The point here is that what Lugar is attempting to do through fear of Iran is not even one step removed from us installing friendly dictators. If Iran is removed as a threat, and I would say that could happen with a thunderclap as it did in Rumania, do we want a situation where the Arab regimes go back to funding terrorist attacks against Israel or allowing anti-Western terrorism to flourish or do we want to see the equilibrium in the Middle East moved permanently in a positive direction.
I think Lugar is right about the short term but terribly wrong about the long term
While we're at quotes Francis Quarles offered this observation on people motivated by fear:
Our God and soldier we alike adore.
Even at the brink of danger; not before;
After deliverance, both alike requited.
Our God's forgotten, and our soldiers slighted.
Look up the definition of strawman, von. I am so tired of seeing that term flung about.
You may be tired, and the term may be overused, but it's apt here. As for your desire that I look it up -- as if I'm some idiot who uses the not-so-big words without understanding them -- I'll chalk it up to grumpiness on your part and not take personal offense. (Ahh, but I could resist. Here's WikiPedia's example of one common strawman "Oversimplify a person's argument into a simple analogy, which can then be attacked." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man. Compare to your admission above: "I will admit to a poor analogy and an obviously failed attempt to be cute ....") BTW, there's no requirement that the strawman be intentional -- or, for that matter, that it be composed of Blanche Dubois.
That said, I'm still enjoying the fact that there's a smidgeon of common ground on this one.
von
For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.
especially to people who are committed to the idea that we have "failed" in Iraq (I'm not saying you're one of those), but here goes one more time anyway.
We've inserted ourselves into a very strong position in the ME simply by virtue of our position on the ground and our demonstrated willingness to use force. We paid dearly for having acquired this advantage, in the most precious commodity available (the blood of brave soldiers), but the price was worth paying.
We're now in a position to actively shape (the word is chosen carefully) events in the ME for decades to come. And we must shape them to our advantage. I say this in full recognition of the fact that the US is unique among world powers in that our own best interests are served by the presence of freedom elsewhere, so there is no violation of moral principle here. Also, from the strong position we occupy, it's entirely possible to shape events without a large, disastrous war.
Now freedom and democracy are not the same thing, but I won't engage the question of democracy as a strategy for the ME. Streiff can speak more capably to that point that I can. My point remains that we have purchased strength and influence in the ME and we need to use it. People who view our actions to this point as failure can perhaps be excused for taking the next logical step and desiring to cut their losses. But the error is in misperceiving the situation as it stands now. We have not failed.
In specific regard to Iran: in business I'm always the first one to shout "don't underrate the the other guy!" But here I think the danger is the opposite. The Iranians are not ten feet tall.
I'm willing to endure a thousand more quibbles and disputes just to hear Streiff suggest again that Lugar may be partially right, albeit with some qualifications and while missing the larger picture, on some foreign policy matter. We take our common ground where we can get it.
For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.
It was before the fall election. Rice had been taking a hammering from the Faster Please Caucus (Michael Ledeen, the American Spectator's blog, NRO's staff) over her plan to engage Iran but only after they had decided to suspend enrichment.
The writer of the profile, which was written after an interview with the WSJ editorial board, seemed nonplussed over the impression that Rice seemed to think we had time to wait out political developments in Iran. For a year, there had been apocalyptic warnings of war in Iran, and there had been a general distaste over the outcome of the Lebanon war. Now, in retrospect, Condi appears to have been wise to have counseled restraint.
The Iranians overplayed their hand. They have roused Arab opposition, even as the liberal blogosphere called the Administration "incompetent" for refusing to walk into a Second Munich with the Ayatollahs. A year ago, Ahmadhi-Nejad was on top of the world. Now, not so much-his difficulties, both domestic and foreign, multiply.
They are still met with Kissinger's choice, to be a nation with normal interests, or a cause, with an abnormal, crusading zeal. But in the interim, the Iranian Government has made one great mistake:
They have reminded the Arabs that they are not Persian. The Iranians have hit thier high watermark, imho.
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it"-Winston Churchill
Maliki's government has just come down hard-- 200+ dead hard--on a Shiite militia that wanted to kill not-so-militant Shiites. Once more, Iraq is not, and is unlikely to engage, in a Civil War. Maliki's move is a strong indication that the not-so-militant Shiites and their companion Sunnis comprise a strong enough political force to allow him to stomp on both sets of militants and, with our help, actually reduce violence to a manageable level.
Also again, the emphasis on Shiite-killing-Sunni-killing-Shiite-killing... has swamped the AQ call to "Drive the Crusader out of the Holy Land." If it is admitted by most Muslim countries that we have helped defuse the regional sectarian violence, the AQ call to arms will have suffered a severe setback. And what would the Dems do then?
With indications that their oil production is decreasing and that they need massive foreign investment to update their whole economy, they really do seem to be in a bind. The downside to that is that cornered rats can be dangerous. In the past we have seen countries use anger at foreign governments to mask economic crisis. It would also go a long way in explaining why they seek nuclear power. If they do obtain it, you can bet that every other country in the region will want it. I am still not sure that Pakistan should be of at least equal concern as Iran. They have the bomb and they are very unstable.