Watching Ahmadinejad at the U.N.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 at 4:45AM Reminds me of how, every few years or so, America's entire civilization is almost brought down by some shock comic/show that has a ton of people up in arms.
They come, they go. We tend to dress them up with far more perceived power than they ever truly wield.
And when it's a savvy politician (which Ahmadinejad truly is) with a gift for inflammatory rhetoric, we lap up the propaganda, letting little men play our big nation for fools.
Because this dynamic is so encouraged by Israel and Saudi Arabia, it would seem we have a critical mass for whipping the American public--or just enough of it--into the requisite war frenzy. I am not naive about that dynamic. It's the way our republic works and always has. I supported it completely on Saddam, but that was because, as I wrote in the original Esquire article, that choice would force America to finally take strategic ownership of both the region and the Gap at large, and no matter how painful our first forays are, that decision had to be made eventually.
But now in, we have to play the board as we find it. Iran's rise and reach for the bomb are hardly surprising, nor is the Shia revival. Both must either be accommodated or we'll have to commit ourselves to Iran's takedown and remaking, and the truth is, we simply cannot extend ourselves that extra step in our current international isolation (thanks to Bush). You might not want to hear that, but there it is.
So we'll be forced to compromise, as will the Saudis and Israelis, or they'll simply be forced to live in more danger, like Europe was forced to do for a solid quarter century after WWII.
Why? Because Iran's takedown is simply too much for India, China and Russia to accept right now, especially with this administration. Our trust factor around this planet is incredibly low. Bush has spent his political capital and spent it badly.
Supposedly Bush's team advises leading presidential candidates on Iraq to make sure they don't box themselves in--just in case they win. In my opinion, those candidates should be mentoring Bush on Iran, so he doesn't do anything stupid that boxes them--and our nation--into strategic tensions with rising New Core powers that we do not need.
Meanwhile, those of us who see the soft kill option working best on Iran make our own efforts in that direction. When you think effects-based operations, your possible list of weapons expands dramatically.
Reader Comments (10)
The problem here is that the current state of worldwide communications. While most people here rely on the major media rather than the source itself, the rest of the world can look at the original sources. Other can hear A’s speech and Bollinger’s introduction and judge for themselves. Does anyone know that A invited the entire Columbia faculty to visit any university in Iran and this fact was not reported? The forced conclusion from this is that the US media does not tell the truth.
Without cowboys muscling major media outlets, Columbia University and even C-SPAN. The world may have seen an America which respects and reports truth.
All of which has its ironies. Someone could suggest to A that since WW2, all nations that have cooperated with the US benefited. None became vassal states and all became more prosperous. In Dr. Barnett’s term it pays to be in the Core.
1 See Hitler’s Pope by John Campbell and IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black
A couple of things.
First, what is "just enough" of the American public in this case? Remember there's plenty of Bush-cynicism here, too -- not as much as in Russia, but probably more than in India. My impression at the time was that building support for the last war was not as easy as people seem to think it was in retrospect and the people who were badgerd into supporting that effort despite their doubts are now experiencing some serious buyer's remorse. So given a more skeptial public and smarter opposition both at home and abroad, can they reach the magic number?
Second, you earlier lamented that Israel & Saudi Arabia were willing to fight "down to the last American", but here say they will be forced to compromise. That point could be either very reassuring or very ominous, depending on when everyone realizes they'll be forced to compromise. How is that looking?
That is, the oil for food scandal is the source of our isolation. Every country involved in that scandal (save Australia, a minor player I believe) was against the Iraq incursion. Their vocalizations of other reasons (Besides wanting to keep the back dealing secret and continung) not to support the war seems to have kicked the global anti-american dissaffected-in-wait peeps up a notch and gave them the entré to go whole hog into Neocon Hegemony Agenda mode. Which certainly resonates wherever Soviet-twisted leftism has been sown.
And the not-unrelated interest of many countries around the world to keep on good terms with oil-producing Middle Eastern countries, no matter what they do, is another cause for isolation. If we are against the oil suppliers, other nations will be glad to use that fact to isolate us further from the pipeline.
I tend to view the blame Bush view of this as a distilation of a number of complex factors that, for the sake of politics, has been bumper-stickered down to "Bush is a stubborn cowboy who has isolated America... and oh by the way, vote for me!"
I could be wrong though.
kev: though you have a point on Oil for Food, the Bush admin's incompetency and unnecessary unilateralism cannot be explained away thereby.
Good grief, how ironic that it was the people here with the American version of Ahmadinejad's views that were outraged at him being allowed to speak. Being gracious hosts and asking incisive questions would have been a much better tack. Instead we got Spy vs Spy.