Iran and the Irrationality Factor
by
Tom Engelhardt
by Tom Engelhardt
Ira...[fill
in the letter of your choice]
Connecting the Dots, Bush-Style
As readers
flee news on the printed page for an on-line life and classified
ads head out the door for Craigslist and points west, the Washington
Post became just the latest major newspaper to announce significant
staff cuts. With fourth-quarter revenue down 3% from the previous
year, eighty jobs – 9% of the Post's newsroom –
are to be shed in the next twelve months. According to the
New York Times, Post Executive Editor Leonard
Downie, Jr. "said other cost savings could come from having foreign
correspondents cover broad topics – terrorism, say – rather
than cover specific countries, thus allowing for the elimination
of some [Post] foreign bureaus."
This, of course,
is the route that the TV news followed long ago, shedding foreign
bureaus like so much flaky skin. Anyone who loves his or her daily
dose of news in print should be dismayed at the thought of news
bureaus abroad closing. It's just another way in which American
isolation is likely to increase, as our bubble world, so prized
by the Bush administration, continues to morph into something more
permanent.
On the brighter
side, though, assigning more reporters to "broad topics" might have
an unexpectedly salutary effect. After all, one of the strangest
aspects of the news in the Bush years has been its unwillingness
to connect regional or global dots. In most cases, foreign reporting
has consisted of stories about only one country (at most two) at
a time.
Not so long
ago, we lived in a world that the media regularly told us was being
connected in ever more complex ways – think of all that reporting
on globalization in the 1990s. But for the last several years, "just
disconnect" might have been the reigning news motto. If you read
about the Iraq War, you get Iraq, and generally little else. No
Turkey, no Israel, few Syrians, no Saudis, nor Egyptians. Reports
on our little Afghan war give you Afghanistan, but certainly nothing
about the fighters that, according to Syed Saleem Shahzad of Asia
Times on-line, the resurgent Taliban, based in Pakistani border
areas, has been sending to Iraq for training in the new ways of
guerrilla warfare. (Think: IEDs and car bombs.) You would never
know from stories in the American press that Iran bordered Afghanistan,
or that both India and Russia have complex interests and connections
there. And forget about the 'Stans of Central Asia.) Why exactly
this has been so, I leave others to analyze. That it has left our
major papers strangely demobilized when it comes to offering us
a picture of our world and so in an unequal contest with the Bush
administration is hard to deny.
After all,
the administration's top officials have had a vision of American
geopolitical dominance that has been nothing if not grandly global
in nature. In their version of the Great Game, they seldom even
bother to deal with one country at a time – often, as in Iraq,
to their detriment. It wasn't by happenstance that they named their
"war" of choice the Global War on Terror (GWOT) or that they regularly
label the Iraq War not
a war at all but a "theater" in their GWOT. In military, political,
or energy terms, they have never hesitated to connect
the dots in a vast region they once termed the "arc of instability"
– basically, the planet's oil heartlands – into patterns
of imperial dominance.
Where newspaper
reporting saw individual countries that happened to have enormous
oil or natural gas reserves, this administration has, from the beginning,
seen global energy flows. In many ways, Bush's top officials seemed
to recognize no traditional boundaries at all. No wonder they were
surprised by an insurgency largely based on gut feelings about national
sovereignty.
As we now
know, they hit Iraq running in March 2003. They were determined
to make it to Baghdad without
looking back; leave their prize Iraqi, Ahmed Chalabi, in charge;
and turn their attention elsewhere, especially to Syria and Iran.
When it came to those two countries, they were ready to connect
the dots in person and, if need be, by force of arms. They thought
they could make "regime change" a regional, and then global, way
of life.
Okay, it didn't
quite work out. Instead, they ran into a three-year-going-on-endless
roadblock. But they've never stopped thinking in these terms. The
invasion of Iraq was a stunning gamble. There's no reason to believe
that, in a pinch, an administration still made up of many of the
same figures wouldn't take another.
Bush administration
planners framed that initial gamble brilliantly, in part by moving
assertively into the vacuum of non-connection that was then our
mainstream media. With their own propaganda organs like Fox News
and right-wing talk radio in tow, they began to connect the dots
as they pleased and very publicly. There were those lines drawn
between, say, the 9/11 attackers and Saddam Hussein, or weapons
of mass destruction and an Axis of Evil, or Saddam's supposed WMD
arsenal, African "yellowcake" uranium, and possible future mushroom
clouds rising over American cities – but this part of the
story you all remember well. In doing so, they largely determined
the limits of, and nature of, what "debate" there was in our media
from September 12, 2001 to March 20, 2003.
Déjà Vu
All Over Again in Ira…
They were
of course ascendant in that period, which would seem to explain
a lot. But here's the strange thing: The Bush administration is
now in the dumps and the President's ratings again heading for something
like
freefall. The latest Pew
poll gives him a 33% approval rating, leaving him heading for
depths of unpopularity previously reached only by Richard Nixon
in his pre-Watergate moment. And that's not the worst of it. The
President's strongest suit, handling terror, has plummeted as well
to 42%, an 11 point drop since January; while his once cherished
trustworthiness sits at a paltry 40%. In the most recent Wall
Street Journal/NBC News poll, Americans say they "prefer
Democratic control of Congress after the mid-term elections" by
a 50 to 37% margin; and, perhaps more strikingly, "a congressional
candidate urging the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq within
a year would gain favor by a 50 to 35 percent margin, while one
advocating staying ‘as long as necessary' would lose favor by 43
to 39 percent." And it's not as if matters are going peachily elsewhere
either. In Iraq, for instance, everything seems to be plummeting
(except civilian death tolls) – and that includes, for instance,
electricity
availability and oil
production.
And yet, give
this administration credit. By connecting those dots (while the
media generally doesn't), they have been able, despite their position
of increasing weakness, to continue to frame, and so drive, the
debate, such as it is, in this country. Under the circumstances,
this is nothing short of miraculous – the latest example being
the way they have both escalated and contextualized the nuclear
crisis with Iran (with a goodly helping hand from that country's
fundamentalist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) simply by following
– almost without contradiction in the press – a well-trodden
Iraqi path.
On a visit
to Washington recently, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister,
remembering the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, commented:
"It looks so déjà vu, you know. I don't believe we should
engage in something which might become self-fulfilling prophecy."
What's déjà
vu, of course, is the way the administration has been assertively
connecting its chosen Iranian dots to other dots of its choice.
In the first of a new wave of Iraq
speeches (before the hawkish
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies), the President spoke
of how the Iranians were sending the makings for advanced IEDs (roadside
explosives) into Iraq to kill Americans. ("Some of the most powerful
IEDs we're seeing in Iraq today includes components that came from
Iran. Our Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, told
the Congress, ‘Tehran has been responsible for at least some of
the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing
Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devises'
in Iraq.") Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld accused the Iranians of "dispatching the Al-Quds Division
of its Revolutionary Guard to ‘stir trouble inside Iraq.'" Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice declared Iran the "central banker
for terrorism" in the Middle East as well as the single most dangerous
threat to the United States on the planet. And just last week, the
administration released its latest version of the U.S.
National Security Strategy, reiterating its belief in "preventive
war," threatening a future Iran/U.S. "confrontation," and ramping
up that relatively impoverished, fractious, mid-sized regional power
with enormous oil and natural gas reserves, into a near Cold War-level
public enemy number one. Its key line was, "We
may face no greater challenge from a single country than from
Iran," and Secretary of State Rice began running with it instantly.
Every one
of these statements, as well as a drumbeat of others in recent weeks,
is at best questionable; a number like the IED charges are probably
ludicrous. (For those wanting to understand why, don't miss Juan
Cole's recent piece at Truthdig.comin
which he writes, "The guerrillas in Iraq are militant Sunnis who
hate Shiites, and it is wholly implausible that the Iranian regime
would supply bombs to the enemies of its Iraqi allies.") But every
one of these claims and assertions has one thing in common –
a familiar ring to it from the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This
is especially true, of course, of the various charges about Iran's
nuclear program (which Cole also handles superbly).
When it comes
to Iranian WMDs, no serious analyst claims that the country could
possibly produce a nuclear weapon for, at best, years; yet at this
moment we find ourselves in a crisis leading, many signs indicate,
to the possible launching of a massive "preventive" American air
attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, some in heavily populated
urban areas, and undoubtedly Iranian air defenses as well, later
this year or early in 2007. For those in the media who claim that
the U.S. military is too overstretched for such a campaign, think
again. This is true only of the Army, which probably would not be
used. Despite a recent
upsurge in air attacks in Iraq, the Air Force and especially
the Navy are quite underutilized right now and reputedly raring
to show their stuff. On the other hand, unlike Iraq, which was in
2003 a toothless, fifth rate power incapable of harming Americans,
the Iranians do have a multitude of ways of striking back –
including at the 130,000 American troops just across the border
in tumultuous Iraq.
When it comes
to the Iranian nuclear program in particular, the Bush administration
has been nothing short of brilliant in connecting only those dots
that put it in the worst possible light, while isolating it from
every other nuclear program on Earth, from what Jonathan Schell
has dubbed our global "atomic
archipelago." At this, top administration officials continue
to prove themselves unbelievably competent; in part because, without
those Downie-esque "broad topics" to cover, the press – with
rare honorable exceptions like a recent Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler
Post piece, U.S.
Campaign Is Aimed at Iran's Leaders – has proved so abysmally
incompetent in creating more reasonable patterns on its own.
But let's,
for a moment, imagine a Washington Post reporter taken from
the South Asia bureau and assigned to an overarching global nuclear
beat. Let's imagine that he or she started with India, a country
which, unlike Iran, would be in thorough violation of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), had it ever signed on. With a major
military program and now nuclear-armed, it has come to the brink
of nuclear war more than once with its nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan.
Our President, of course, just visited India and offered it a non-proliferation-whacking
sweetheart deal on nuclear fuel and technology. Next door, of course,
is nuclear-armed Pakistan, a shaky military regime and U.S. ally
that has lost control of some of its border regions to the Taliban,
elements of al Qaeda, and a growing fundamentalist opposition which,
should it ever come to power, would find itself instantly in possession
of a full-scale nuclear arsenal.
Skip Afghanistan
(nothing but warlords and opium) and you've made it to Iran, whose
nuclear program, begun with American help back in the days of the
Shah and continued with secret aid from our ally Pakistan, is now
in question. Then jump over to Israel, which, like India, has never
signed on to the NPT and possesses (but refuses to publicly acknowledge)
a near-civilization busting arsenal of 200–300 nuclear weapons.
You can read the American press for months at a time without the
slightest mention of the Israeli
nuclear arsenal, though the as-yet-nonexistent Irani dominates
the front-page day after day.
Finally, that
Post reporter might take a glance at the country charging
Iran with nuclear crimes worthy of a future full-scale assault,
the U.S. (You can also hunt our press practically in vain for any
discussion of the Iranian nuclear "arsenal" in the context of the
American one.) In fact, the Bush administration has been intent
on expanding and "modernizing" our already staggering nuclear arsenal
of almost 10,000 weapons, while putting new nuclear weapons on the
drawing board and dreaming about how to use "tactical nukes" in
future "rogue wars" against countries like Iran. Meanwhile, the
Soviet arsenal decays and the relatively small Chinese one remains
fairly stagnant. According to scholars Keir A. Lieber and Daryl
G. Press in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine
("The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy"), the administration has by
now come close to achieving a Cold War dream state: nuclear dominance.
"Today, for the first time in almost 50 years," they write, "the
United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy.
It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy
the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first
strike." When you try to connect a few of these dots, a possible
future Iranian "bomb," while still unpalatable, takes on a somewhat
different look and you have to wonder about the administration's
threats of war.
Or let's imagine
a reporter from some other downsizing newspaper being pulled from
the disappearing Paris bureau and given the History-of-the-Bush
Administration-in-the-Middle-East archival beat. Might not that
broad-topic journalist pull together the déjà-vu-all-over-again
aspect of our present Iran build-up and, connecting just a few dots,
make something of it? In fact, Robert Dreyfuss has already done
this chillingly at
Tompaine.com, pointing out everything from the "brand-new Office
of Iranian Affairs at the State Department, which looks suspiciously
like a step toward creating the Iraq war planning office at the
Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans" to the Chalabi-like
Iranian exiles gathering in Washington and the new talk of a "coalition
of the willing."
That former
Paris bureau reporter might even have noticed a déjà vu that
Dreyfuss missed: These days, as in the run-up to the Iraq war, there
is much connect-the-dots analysis (and some reporting)that steps
outside the administration-defined Iranian box, but it's almost
all on the Internet, and so, as in 2002-03, when it comes to Iran,
most Americans see little of it. (Just to offer a few examples in
addition to Cole and Dreyfuss, there was Ira Chernus at Commondreams.org,
writing on Dubai as an administration "home base" for a new cold
war against Iran; Ian Williams at the invaluable Asia Times
on-line, considering the "slippery
slope" to war; Ehsan Ahrari, also at Asia
Times, on "Iran's turn for a ‘coalition of the willing'"; and
Tom Porteous at Tompaine.com
on the return of "regime change.")
It's an indication
of the administration's success in driving the media before it and
making its Iran agenda our agenda that, in a recent poll (as Inter
Press Service reporter Jim
Lobe pointed out), "Some 27% of respondents cite Iran as Washington's
greatest menace – three times the percentage who ranked it
at the top of foreign threats just four months ago." A recent Zogby
poll revealed that, while surprising numbers of Americans are now
thoroughly sick of George Bush's war in Iraq, 47% of Americans nonetheless
favor some kind of military action, "preferably along with European
allies, to halt Iran's nuclear program."
Call it connecting
the dots – yet again – Bush-administration style. It's
sobering that the media learned so little from the last major round
of this back in 2002-2003 and is reporting the Iran crisis only
within the bounds of what the administration cares to have debated,
while Bush, Cheney, and associates let the UN process on Iran play
itself out over the coming months and prepare (possibly along with
the
Israelis) for a major military strike that could lead the planet
into energy (and economic) chaos.
The Irrationality
Factor
If this administration's
top officials have proven to be dreamers on a planetary scale and
immensely competent at setting the terms for debate in this country,
they are in so many other ways utter incompetents. If we want to
use that increasingly common term for them, however, we have to
think a little about what it really means. At the most basic level,
inside their bubble world these insular beings and their remarkably
insulated President undoubtedly believe that they are ready to correct
for errors and apply lessons learned in Iraq to the Iran crisis,
but there is one lesson they are guaranteed not to have learned,
the simplest but most difficult one of all: Know thyself.
In fact, their
inability to gain any perspective on themselves guarantees their
dangerous incompetence in the Iran crisis to come. Imagine, for
instance, that their second leading diplomat, UN ambassador John
Bolton, recently offered this assessment of the prospect of negotiations
with Iran: "I don't think we have anything to say to the Iranians."
His statement – and it could be multiplied by so many others
from Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and associates – represents
one aspect of their incompetence: hubris (or call it arrogance).
To that should be added a profound belief – on this they are
the ultimate fundamentalists – in preponderant American power,
especially in its military guise, as well as in their ability to
wield it with precision and invariably to their advantage.
Throw in the
fact that they are not only the greatest gamblers in our history,
but also control freaks of the first order, and you already have
a combustible meld of "incompetence" factors. If they do move against
Iran, they will surely be blinded by their arrogance, overly impressed
by the power they think they wield, and ridiculously sure of the
plans they have made for various contingencies to come.
And yet the
single thing that can be guaranteed about any air assault on Iran
is that, whatever anybody's plans may be, events will quickly spin
out of control – and that they will then be stunned and unprepared
to deal. The result will be the "incompetence" for which they are
already well known as well as disaster for us all.
At least one
more factor should be added to the mix: irrationality. This is not
a word we usually associate with the United States government. It's
the sort of term normally left for Arabs who are, of course, known
to be overemotional, closer to those more primitive, "tribal" emotions,
and consequently deeply irrational. (In the American context, by
the way, Iranians should be thought of as Arabs, even though they
aren't.) Whatever our flaws and mistakes, we tend to assume that
we are civilized
and reasonably rational. This is why we don't worry enormously about
our own singular nuclear arsenal. We know that, unlike the many
revenge-bound, irrational, rogue regimes out there, not even the
Bush administration would, in the end, use such weapons – even
though, of course, the U.S. is the only country to do so to date.
While the
Bush administration may have incredibly destructive military powers
at its command, it's worth remembering that its officials are anything
but supermen and women. Don't imagine them simply as Machiavellian
manipulators of the rest of us. They are instead blunderers like
the rest of us – only more so. We already know from reports
seeping out of Washington that the administration is "riven
by divisions" over, and confusions
about, its Iran policy. The box its officials have been intent
on creating to lock in the international community, the Iranians,
and the American public may, sooner or later, come to feel like
a kind of prison to them as well from which the only release, many
months down the line, could appear to involve the mad act of pulling
the superpower trigger. In other words, they may find themselves
backed into a corner of their own making.
 What
we face, in fact, are two fundamentalist regimes, American and Iranian
– each in the process of overestimating the hand it is playing;
each underestimating its enemy; each in the grip of a different
kind of irrationality. It's a frighteningly combustible mix. All
those people who believe that the administration's Iran approach
is just so much saber-rattling and bluster, part of a reasonably
rational plan to create bargaining chips, or force the Iranians
to the table on more favorable terms, should divest themselves of
such fantasies. We are on the path to madness, which also happens
to be the path to $100 a barrel oil and possibly some kind of economic
meltdown. Then again, dreams of riches have often gone hand-in-hand
with madness. Why not now?
 [Note
to readers: Let me recommend The
Global Beat, a website which I mined heavily for this piece
(as I often do). A project of Boston University, it is compiled
by Tony Karon of Time magazine and bills itself as offering
"resources for the global journalist." You don't have to be a journalist
or even a student of journalism, however, to benefit from its superb
once-a-week run-downs of crucial news articles on and analyses of
foreign-policy crisis points (with extremely useful links). Check
it out and take a look as well at Karon's always fascinating, periodically
updated blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan.]
March
20, 2006
Tom
Engelhardt [send him mail]
is editor of TomDispatch.com,
a project of the Nation
Institute. He
is the author of several books, including The
Last Days of Publishing: A Novel and The
End of Victory Culture. Orville Schell is the Dean of the
Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley
and a contributor to the New York Review of Books as well
as Tomdispatch.com. His most recent book is Virtual
Tibet, Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood.
Copyright
© 2006 Tom Engelhardt
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