Remember how I said in the last post that responsible strategists do not have the luxury of presuming the Iranian regime will fall in the wake of a U.S. attack? Because Jamie Fly and Gary Schmitt are violating my directive.
This piece advocating a war against Iran with maximal objectives is beyond a trainwreck. It’s the first Wale record. It’s Donovan McNabb on the Redskins. It’s Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis.
The funny-but-actually-horrible thing here is how reminiscent Fly and Schmitt’s argument is of, say, fall 2002. You’ve seen this play run before. A few reasonable people start thinking aloud, well, OK, maybe Iraq’s WMD is threatening enough to consider war. (Yo, Matthew Kroenig, how does it feel to be Kenneth Pollack?) Seizing an opening, the hawks come to jimmy the Overton Window even further: “If the United States seriously considers military action, it would be better to plan an operation that not only strikes the nuclear program but aims to destabilize the regime, potentially resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis once and for all.” It’s like they took a 2002 op-ed agitating for the Iraq invasion and did a find-and-replace.
I mean, seriously. This is actually a line in the op-ed: “More troubling are, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the ‘known unknowns.’”
Enough eerie cosmetics. Fly and Schmitt’s case relies on this and this alone:
A limited strike against nuclear facilities would not lead to regime change. But a broader operation might. It would not even need to be a ground invasion aimed specifically at toppling the government. The United States would basically need to expand its list of targets beyond the nuclear program to key command and control elements of the Republican Guard and the intelligence ministry, and facilities associated with other key government officials. The goal would be to compromise severely the government’s ability to control the Iranian population. This would require an extended campaign, but since even a limited strike would take days and Iran would strike back, it would be far better to design a military operation that has a greater chance of producing a satisfactory outcome.
Of course, there is no assurance that the Iranian regime would immediately crumble under such an onslaught. But as the cost to the country of the strike and the weakness of the current regime became clear, the door would open for renewed opposition to Iran’s current rulers. It is sometimes said that a strike would lead the population to rally around the regime. In fact, given the unpopularity of the government, it seems more likely that the population would see the regime’s inability to forestall the attacks as evidence that the emperor has no clothes and is leading the country into needlessly desperate straits. If anything, Iranian nationalism and pride would stoke even more anger at the current regime.
For two dudes so apocalyptic about the consequences of a nuclear Iran, they’re absolutely sunny about the ease with which a new era of sunshine will warm southwest Asia once the American bombs drop. Let’s count the optimistic assumptions: (a) an air campaign can fatally weaken the Iranian regime; (b) a U.S. ground invasion is unnecessary to do so; (c) an “extended [bombing] campaign” is consequence-free; (d) it “seems more likely” that the Iranian people would overthrow the Iranian regime, rather than curse the American bombs that killed their relatives, neighbors and countrymen; (e) “Iranian nationalism and pride” favor the foreign bomber and not the regime that have relied on stoking that nationalism and pride since 1979 against precisely the foreigner doing the bombing; (f) whatever follows the Islamic Republic of Iran is rad. Manic depression is a frustrating mess.
Schmitt and Fly extend not a single thought for what happens the day after the Iranian regime falls. Nothing. Not one. Because as we all know, the years following April 9, 2003 in Baghdad vindicated this model of American strategymaking in every particular.
Simply put, these guys have written themselves out of the realm of responsible strategymaking. Will Mitt Romney take their phone calls?
Photo: Flickr/Sophistikittinlin
2012.01.18
And once the bombing starts, the missiles start to fly. How long before we realize we’ll have to put a Brigade Combat team and a Marine Expeditionary Force down on the ground in Southern Iran to try to stop the missiles and speedboats against tankers.
Oh. But wait. There’s missiles falling on Israel. They’re coming out of Western iran and the problem is it’s only 800km to Israel, and nothing we do can change the map. Can you occupy Western Iran? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say “no”. Not without eating something you can’t swallow…
mikey
2012.01.18
Uh, yeah, because while it’s totally stupid to pretend Iraq didn’t happen, it’s brilliant to assume that any argument about an impending threat must be wrong just because Iraq was, right? Please. If you want to argue, argue, but simply pointing out the similarities makes no case whatsoever.
2012.01.18
This part, in particular, is stunning:
Did you even, like, read the article? They’re advocating we leave afterwards, not occupy. You know, the exact opposite of what we did in Baghdad. Snark has to make sense, you know.
2012.01.19
And I vividly recall being assured in 2003 that a prolonged Iraq occupation was unnecessary; that we’d be down to 30,000 troops by September 2003; etc. The point is about the fantasies that undergird the case for war. Noting that Fly & Schmitt are making optimistic promises supports my case.
2012.01.19
Saying it won’t be NECESSARY is different than suggesting we leave, regardless of necessity, from the get-go. The point of your article, ostensibly, is that Fly and Schmitt are acting like the Iraq War didn’t happen, but the fact that they’re explicitly suggesting we simply leave (not leave if such-and-such is fulfilled, which is an important distinction) shows otherwise. It’s them explicitly adapting the idea to a post-Iraq world, and thus it undermines the sarcastic thrust of the criticism.
2012.01.19
Have it your way, but that’s an awfully credulous reading.
2012.01.19
Actually, I think it’s merely a more accurate reading of the Iraq War, but whatever. Moving on to this:
Please read the second to last paragraph of the piece, wherein they do, in fact, talk about what might happen if the regime were to change. Normally I wouldn’t bother to correct this sort of thing, but given how you made the accusation so unequivocally (“Nothing. Not one.”), it seems fair to point out that it isn’t, like, true, and stuff.
2012.01.19
The authors mention it in the vaguest possible terms and say that because human rights activist Shirin Ebadi believes Iranian public support for nukes is exaggerated, our attacks would be successful in ending Iran’s nuclear program.
The fact that they use her statement might cause one to wonder if they had also read her earlier public statements that a US attack on Iran “would bring disaster not freedom” (Op-Ed, The Independent, Feb. 19, 2005). Who knows? And did they look for any more representative data about Iranian public opinion of a nuclear program, such as this 2010 poll (poll: Iranian Attitude Toward Nuclear Weapons)? Again, hard to say.
It’s almost like these highly-paid analysts want to protect themselves from having too much information about their targets.
2012.01.19
Um, linkies:
Shirin: ind.pn/z1SeKt
Poll: bit.ly/zHCyE3
2012.01.19
You’re talking right past the point:
Saying they’re wrong, or vague = one thing.
Erroneously claiming that they didn’t say a single thing about it (“Nothing. Not one.”) = another.
The quote wasn’t that they said nothing meaningful, or didn’t say enough, etc. The criticism goes well out of its way to emphasize a point that simply isn’t true. The whole thing feels designed to take some fairly standard objections and, through the sheer force of its exaggerated language, make it seem far more scathing than it is.
2012.01.19
good point, Spencer. things have to heat up inside Iran to make a bombing campaign a less than desperate endeavor,
2012.01.19
I note from the Foreign Policy Initiative website that Mr. Fly (love that name!) worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense under Rumsfeld and (uh) the Bush 2004 election campaign in Ohio. Not a very deep bench in the Republican Foreign Policy team, is there?
2012.01.19
“You’re saying, avoid that howling vortex with the chain lightning and skull clouds? But I swear I see Disneyland on the other side! You can see it if ya squint just right…”
2012.01.19
I’m impressed you were able to avoid mentioning their subtitle….”Go big– then go home”. ’cause that, like, worked last time around…..
The article is a joke, it has to be. The contrast in understanding of Iran and strategy and basic IR between it and the Colin Kahl piece is just mind boggling.
2012.01.19
In some ways this article is refreshing, as insane as it is. It dispenses with one of the biggest pieces of dishonesty about an Iran war, that it would be a small affair. The article may still embrace the fantasy that it will be quick and easy, but at least it starts to acknowledge that to make war you truly have to make war. I believe that is a first for war advocates.
2012.01.19
Laughed out loud at the Final Crisis reference. Poor Grant.
2012.01.19
It’s a good thing that they used their big words so that their bullshit article could be published in Foreign Affairs.
2012.01.19
Its also noteworthy, in my opinion, that in their essay they make a Freudian slip by calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. the Republican Guard (Saddam’s henchman). It has since been updated by Foreign Affairs to be the Republican Guard Corps, I guess to make it more similar to IRGC?
2012.01.22
Nice catch!
2012.02.11
I don’t favor go big, then go home. I favor go big, stay out of the cities, wreck their economy, steal the oil, plunk down a US military base on the Iranian side of the Gulf, and wage a conventional war against anything Iran sends against us. Oil money is the root of Iranian evil. No money, no uranium, no nukes. The population in the oil fields is low, they can be evacuated. A few can be hired. Draw a line around it and make a new country, call it “Americus”, or something. Let the Ayatollahs keep the cities.
It isn’t very sweet, and it isn’t very nice. All it has to be is better than nuclear war. And it is.
If the US can have a military base in communist Cuba, we can have one in islamist Iran. Same difference. Think outside the box.