On Iran

Seymour Hersh has a great new piece in the New Yorker on the steps the Bush Administration is taking to prepare for possible military action against Iran. It's quite a lengthy piece, but it's a must read for some seriously disturbing information.

If one assumes that Hersh is on the level (and he's got the rep for being on the level) then we have some interesting things to tackle: one is the amount of tension between the White House and the uniformed military over the issue of Iran and other things- but that tension is a story that usually get glossed over. Hersh provides some details, and, as expected, it's what you'd fear.

My one (one of many) dislikes about the current administration is the power-grabbing kick they're on. They hailed Bush as a new conservative, the culmination of what Reagen began and made it no secret that they intended to right what they saw as the imbalance in power that arose after Watergate. Watergate weakened the executive, Reagen revived it and Bush wanted to bring its power back. Problem is he went way, way too far and Congress has been criminally negligent in not reining him in. Gitmo would be the first example (the Supreme Court decision has put the kybosh on that) in the face of not wanting to give terrorists POW status and not wanting to treat them like normal criminals, the Bush Administration essentially made shit up, just because it could.

Second would be the scandal at DOJ right now. This, to me is a far more censurable offense than anything to do with Iraq. And Nancy Pelosi should pull her head out of her ass and do something about this. Or Leahy or someone. Someone should grow a spine and slap the executive around HARD on this one. The DOJ NEEDS to be an independent agency that, if necessary can stand up to the President if it has too. Its impartiality and independence has to be absolutely sacrosanct. The fact that evidence is pretty much there that the White House and former top officials in DOJ made hiring decisions based on political leanings and not on merit is a slap at the independence and impartiality of the agency and it undermines it. The fact that Democrats aren't doing anything about that signals to me that they don't want to. The real danger is, given the general trust-worthiness of our political class (note sarcasm) is that now that the Bush Administration has helpfully set the precedent, Democratic Administrations in the future can do the exact same thing and point out the precedent. The DOJ then becomes a potential partisan football. Just what we need.

And now, Hersh hints at a third over-reach and that's with military strategy in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. And once again, it seems as if the general lack of knowledge about the world and eagerness to get caught in pre-conceived notions could spell disaster for us, yet again. Conservatives may rightly point out reports that Iraq is slowly but surely heading in the right direction (the MSM under-reports this and I've always taken the view that one needs to look at the big picture- cries of total chaos, when studied carefully revealed that violence was confined to certain areas of Iraq, like the Sunni Triangle, while life teetered on in the rest of the country.) but it seems as if the Bush Administration wants to take strategies that worked in areas like Waziristan and apply them to a whole country. And they want to take ethnic tensions and use them to undermine the Iranian government. The military, of course, thinks this is stupid and tension results. The White House makes the facts, it seems, and the military have to make events adhere to the facts.

Not a pretty picture. I'm not a fan of military action against Iran unless it becomes absolutely necessary- and forgive me for not trusting the Bush Administration to decide when it is absolutely necessary. The wrong kind of military action at the wrong time could lead to immense blowback that could have generational consequences for American policy in the region. There are tensions in Iran (Kenneth Pollack's The Persian Puzzle is a great read if you're looking for the low-down on Iran. I highly reccomend it.) but I think they're of a political and generational nature more than an ethnic one. Sure, Kurds in Iran may agitate for independence, same with the Azeri minorities- but Iran has been a cohesive entity for centuries. It wasn't just drawn out by some overpaid, pompous British official after World War One. Playing the ethnic card will not work. If we must undermine, we have to embolden the opposition and moderate clerics- and when the Bush Administration public sneered at the reform movement in the last Iranian Presidential Election, it's no wonder we ended up with Ahmadinejad and company. Rafsanjani and Khatmai may not have been the greatest friends to America, but one could maybe say that they were reasonable people (or what passes for reasonable anyway.) The present Iranian government? Not so much.

The democratic opposition needs to be emboldened in Iran. The Administration should stop playing ethnic games and start crafting a strategy that works. If anyone noticed, Ahmadinejad has been handed several defeats politically- Larijani (highly regarded somewhat moderate negotiator for the nuke thing) was made speaker of the Meglis- and they were irritated enough at the lack of economic progress at home to hold up Ahmadinejad's nominee for the oil ministry several times.

Iran could be easy. The Bush Administration, in pursuing idiotic, totally useless ethnically based strategies is playing the wrong game. Start co-opting the Meglis. Start exploiting the fact that there are moderates in Iran and there's a whole generation of very young people who don't remember the Shah, don't give a damn and just want to have a good time without these old guys in robes bringin' em down. Import some rock n'roll and take the time to craft an image of America as a bastion of freedom and prosperity.

That is the true task we face with Iran. Anywhere else, we end up fighting history more than anything else. The Iranians don't like the US Government and they don't trust the US Government. We need to go around their government and re-introduce ourselves to the people. Re-brand America. Work with the reform movement and start finding the right cracks in the regime to exploit. With Democratic (albeit flawed) institutions already in place, we only need to effect the removal of the Mullahs from political life in Iran to establish a democratic government. In effect, it would somewhat ironic if the Bush Administration recognized that the best Iranian policy they could pursue would be one encouraging the virtues of separation of church and state- or in this case, mosque and state.