And while the rhetoric out of Iran is bellicose, they are not aggressors on the scale of either Germany or Japan.

No, but their goal of Middle Eastern dominance virtually guarantees they will end up so. Besides, the logic of preemption is required by the threat of weapons of mass destruction, which wasn’t even on the table at the start of WWII, since the weapons were still theoretical at that point.

My point about war profiteering is only this: in my opinion, no one would be made any safer or benefit from another middle east conflict except profiteers and investors in defense industries. No one.

About a year back, the columnist Spengler made a convincing case that US strategic interests are advanced by chaos in the Middle East. If true, that means that as a society we all would benefit. Perhaps war profiteers would benefit most, but how would a small slice of society taking most of the benefit differ from everyday life as humanity has known it since the dawn of history? If all US citizens’ interests are advanced by Middle East chaos, there is no reason to fear it.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC14Ak02.html

Looked at from the view of Belmont Club’s Three Conjectures, my policy of pre-emptive military action to enact regime change is actually the humanitarian thing to do. The alternative, once Iran gets nuclear weapons, destroys Israel then turns its remaining nukes on the West (assuming Israel doesn’t destroy Iran with its nukes, and potentially Europe, via the Samson Option, in which an on-the-verge-of-destruction Israel unleashes a nuclear attack against Europe in retaliation for Europe’s pussyfooting support of terror disguised as sympathy for the Palestinians et al.) is the complete annihilation of Iran. At least with my option, we may end up with another Iraq, which from a historical perspective really isn’t that bad (when I say ‘historical perspective’, keep in mind I mean all of human history since the invention of agriculture, not the last 40 years, which seems to be the sum and substance of the typical American’s view of historical time), or, if we can decapitate the regime to the extent that the pro-Western youth you’ve put your faith in can actually take the reins of state, it could be better than Iraq.

So, the potential downside of your suggested course of action, which would allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, as I see it, is the destruction of Israel, the destruction of Europe and the destruction of Iran. Unless you are 100% certain that if Iran is allowed to continue its course it won’t develop nuclear weapons, the potential losses involved in your scenario should spur you to pursue alternative strategies to the one you advocate.

Thinking ahead like this, by the way, is what is meant by ‘strategic thinking’, to come back around to the first post in which you tried to insult me.

And no sense of embarrassment whatever.

Nasrallah after the summer war gained stature and notariety from across the Muslim world, from many Sunnis and Shiite alike. After an aggressive attack on Iran Muslim opinion isn’t likely to be galvanized against what might easily be viewed as a common enemy? It does depend on who you ask, but I believe it is just as likely as not.

My point about war profiteering is only this: in my opinion, no one would be made any safer or benefit from another middle east conflict except profiteers and investors in defense industries. No one. It would not prevent terrorism, and more likely would serve to foment more of it. Hopes of a moderate government in Iraq stabilizing the region are worthy but there is little evidence we will see that anytime soon.

I refrained from using “Neanderthal” to describe your doctrine yesterday.

I am, I believe, a realist. And I see no compelling reason to pre-emptively attack Iran. I do see a compelling need to sit down with them and talk, as do many others. Their express wish to talk in the past has been rebuffed in favor of finding some way of, it appears, executing the doctrine you propose. I think that is bad policy, dangerous policy, and likely to lead to more instability in the Middle East, in the long term, rather than less.

Sure is easy to play with other people’s lives, isn’t it?

The young age of the average Iranian argues against military action unless you wish to alienate the majority of the population, and perpetrate violence against the West.

You’re again assuming that the mullahs do not have a strategy to cultivate the loyalties of the young and turn them against the West. They do, as I mentioned, in the form of the promise of Middle Eastern hegemony and honorable deaths in battle. This also appeals to the Shia sense that they’ve been oppressed throughout Islamic history, which means that Iran would have imperial designs on the Middle East regardless of whether the US existed or not. Simply refusing to address this by saying these youths (again, which youth, the drugged out youth or the politically engaged youth?) want Western technology, blue jeans, blah blah blah, is naive and uninformed. If the Western-loving youth can’t see the bigger picture that regime change is going to cause some causualties on their side, too, are they really mature enough to know what they want? They should know the score better than any of us and be willing to sacrifice to see us overthrow the mullahs, if that’s what they really wanted. If I were one of these Western-loving youths sitting in Tehran right now, I’d be of the opinion that better a few of my Western-loving comrades die than that the mullah regime live. If they are incapable of making that trade-off AND incapable of remaking Iranian politics in their own, non-second-Holocaust-seeking image, they simply become expendable, in the harsh logic of international relations.

Additionally, according to the Washington Post, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is more powerful now than they’ve been since the early days of the Islamic Revolution.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/31/AR2007033101105.html?hpid=topnews

Key section:

The Guard gained stature during Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq, when it fought some of the toughest battles, provided human minesweepers and took huge casualties. That generation has now come of leadership age, said Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, the author of “Warriors of Islam,” a book about the Guard.

“They fought as young men, and now they’re middle-aged. They have gone from the battlefield to mayoralties, governates and management of ministries,” Katzman said. Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was a senior Guard commander.

Maybe if Iran were just made up of ‘aging mullah’s and ‘pro-Western youth’, you might have a point. But it isn’t and your ‘youth’ are probably not going to be a match for the Revolutionary Guards any time soon. Seriously, I don’t know what you are basing your optimism on with regards Iran, other than the fact that you’ve repeated the optimists mantra so many times you can’t think anything else.

What’s more, in 936 words you could give me no answer to that simple, I dare say, ancient question of how pounding anyone into submission will act as a deterent against future ambitions and violence.

How do you think the world got it’s current politico-military configuration? It was by the current world powers pounding into submission would-be world powers. Hell, the world’s current configuration is called the “Post-WWII world”, not the “Post-UN Security Council Negotiations world”! Identifying rivals to hegemony and pounding them into submission is almost the definition of history. When Joyce wrote of history, he didn’t call it “A series of polite negotiations resulting in the realization that all disagreements between states were just misunderstandings”, he called it “A nightmare from which I am trying to awake”. The way you write, it’s as though pounding Germany and Japan into submission didn’t work. Do you just string words together not knowing what they mean?

Especially in the current context, whether real or imagined, of a clash of cultures, of the West against Islam, where the Shiite/Sunni divide is likely to take a backseat under the perceived threat of further Western hegemony in the region.

Depends who you ask. One of the leading Saudi sheiks just pronounced the Shia to be worse enemies of Islam than either the Jews or Americans. The rationale, of course, is that whereas no Sunni would ever become a Jew or a true American, he might become a Shia. So, again, your analytical superficiality shows through in your belief that somehow your statement about the Sunni/Shia divide being submerged under the need to confront a common enemy is analytically sound.

Your doctrine is a dangerous one, promised to benefit war profiteers and investors… but no one else. No one else. What’s in your stock portfolio…?

I hedge myself against disaster, for sure. It’s relatively easy and I suggest everyone should. It probably won’t matter, because when a nuke goes off somewhere in the world and my hedge offsets my losses, the government will probably take the money anyway through some kind of ‘terrorism windfall’ tax. C’est la vie.

However, the notion that I’m somehow trying to profit personally shows AGAIN that you don’t really read what I’m saying. If I wanted to profit personally from the current global situation, in which naive men like you are leading the West (and me) down a path of destruction, I’d just become a Muslim. Obviously, I am what the politically correct would call a “Neanderthal” with “regressive” ideas. I would fit right in in Islam. And I’d even get to have four wives, should I want them.

AWJ: In international relations, yes, if one is the hegemon, one should strive to be held in awe by ones enemies and be primus inter pares among ones allies. In domestic relations, I prefer small r republicanism, mainly because I don’t think people should preoccupy themselves with politics as much as they would have to in a democracy. Although, if I did have to live in a democracy, I prefer the Greek system of election by lot, rather than the demagogy of direct elective democracy.

Just checking that we’re on the same wavelength here.

The young age of the average Iranian argues against military action unless you wish to alienate the majority of the population, and perpetrate violence against the West. The “welcoming” showers of gratitude and flowers in Iraq was quickly squelched by the bumbling incompetence of the Provisional Authority in country. I would be hardpressed after a devastating air attack on Iran, with no followup boots on the ground, no “Provisional Authority”, to believe our “liberation” of that population would be well received by those left in the chaos in Iran. Or quickly forgotten. For all your articulation and historical perspective, you fail to mention how this detail might be handled. More bombs, perhaps? Scorched earth?

What’s more, in 936 words you could give me no answer to that simple, I dare say, ancient question of how pounding anyone into submission will act as a deterent against future ambitions and violence. Especially in the current context, whether real or imagined, of a clash of cultures, of the West against Islam, where the Shiite/Sunni divide is likely to take a backseat under the perceived threat of further Western hegemony in the region.

Your doctrine is a dangerous one, promised to benefit war profiteers and investors… but no one else. No one else. What’s in your stock portfolio…?

And you prove yourself a “strategic thinker” by this circular argument?

Brian asked where is the “strategic logic” in my position and I replied that the logic is “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me”. That is an example of a strategic position. You seem to imply that you think it’s incorrect. I think the time is long past for that debate to continue, but, I’ll humor you and ask why? If your rationales are the ones you list (attacking Iraq, weakening our military, etc.), they are all fairly superficial and historically ignorant, as I will now show you.

As Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch has argued many times, and I agree, attacking Iraq was not a strategic mistake and there were enough legitimate concerns about Saddam having WMD to merit invasion and regime change. Go back and look at the ‘state of the art’ intelligence about Iraq. The consensus bonorum was that Saddam had or would soon have WMD even a nuclear scale. Something that was later confirmed when it was reported that he was about a year away from enriching uranium. Oh, and don’t forget that Saddam wanted people to think he had WMD, as a deterrent, ironically enough. I was initially a supporter of the “democracy” project, but I am much more skeptical now that some “empirical” evidence has come in showing that the Iraqis seem content to vote along confessional lines and have very little concept of “the greater good” outside of a religious context. There are things worth dying for, but that isn’t one of them.

Secondly, I don’t see how you can claim that our Iraq mission has weakened the military. On the contrary, the operational experience we are gaining will be valuable so long as the Middle East remains unstable, which seems likely to be a long time. Plus, having an operational base in the middle of the region is a major strategic asset.

Third, our credibility is bolstered by following through on threats like the ones we made to Saddam, not decreased. If a bunch of dictators and assorted anti-American groups dislike that, I don’t see the point in caring. “Can’t we all just get along” is fine as an opening negotiating position (in fact, I am well aware that “friendly tit for tat”, in which I commit to not making an unfriendly move until the other guy makes one, is “empirically” the best strategy for multi-round interactions), but at some point in the negotiations, if you realize the sides are too far apart for their to be any ‘win-win’ situation, it turns into a zero-sum game. Essentially, that’s what happened with Saddam in 2003 and it is what is happening with Iran now. You may be an unknowing victim of “conflict aversion”, which afflicts game participants who are afraid to walk away from a negotiation, once it’s been entered, without a deal, so they take a worse deal. Like a guy who can’t so no to the overpriced options at the car dealership. The Muslim world is offering us an overpriced deal and you just can’t wait to hand over the check.

Fourthly, simply by not being a Muslim, I am morally superior to the jihadis. Period. That “religion” is simply the divinization of all men’s worst traits (loutishness, sentimentality, aversion to change, willingness to submit, sexual anxiety, etc.). I say “men” for a very precise reason, since they are the only ones who gain anything from Islam. For everyone else, it’s nothing but downside, including men at the lower end of the status ladder in Muslim society. And if I were a woman, I’d rather have been born into even a primitive animist society than a Muslim society.

Fifthly, “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me” was Tiberius’ credo vis-a-vis the Roman Senate, as he tried to maintain the Empire against those Senators who would try to break it apart. As history showed, the Roman Empire was extremely durable, so “empircally” my philosophy of governance has a very long tradition of sustainability. If you want to debate the subtleties of technological change and the sustainability of empire under my theory of governance, fine, because that’s a debate worth having, but, as I said before, your objections against my position, as stated, are superficial and historically ignorant.

Sixthly, by relying on the as heretofore impotent Western-loving Iranian youth, you exclude yourself from historical agency. At the very least, then, you should support military action for regime change, since the regime in question that would be changed is the very mullahs you claim the youth do not support. However, you miss a huge factor in this which is that those very youth are being courted by the aging mullahs, with the promise of both material rewards (Middle East hegemony) and “spiritual” rewards (honor in Paradise for dying in battle). There are definitely a lot of dissidents in Iran, but they are obviously too disorganized (or strung out, as my understanding is that hard drug use is rampant in Iran. Do you really want to throw your geopolitical lot in with a bunch of druggies?) to matter in the relevant timeframe. Iran is now reportedly going to get enough nuclear fuel for a weapon within a matter of years. Are your youth going to rise up and take the reins of state by then? What level of certainty do you have about that?

So, for all these reasons, nothing you said has been persuasive. We should go to war with Iran and we should pound them into submission like we did the Germans.