Dempsey, Rational Countries, and the Apocalypse
Iran wants to be safe, to prove itself, to be a regional hegemon, and to protect Muslims. Iran has pretensions, might take a different path, will work with the UN, and responds to American foreign policy. All these comport comfortably with the Western sense of what countries could and should do and why. If there are practical reasons for Iran to pursue nuclear capability, there must be practical reasons for it to stop.
But practical is not the same as rational.
Contrary to Goldberg, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability did not begin with the invasion of Iraq, and any fears Iran had about being next on President Bush’s hit list were quickly allayed. The ayatollahs regarded the overthrow of Sunni, militaristic, aggressive, secular Saddam as an opportunity to pursue their own goal of expansionist, transnational Shi’ism.
The revivalist Shi’ite impulse has nothing to do with protecting Iran or regional hegemony. Ahmadinejad says and believes he has been chosen to expand God’s realm, and he isn’t the only one who thinks this is the time. The important thing is not whether God did or didn’t, but that it is, for apocalyptic Shiites, a positive impulse — doing God’s work — not a negative one. “For the glory of God” precludes abandoning the quest and precludes finding merit or friends in the secular, liberal, decadent West. It precludes democracy at home and tolerance abroad. It demands sacrifice.
Nuclear capability — used or held — will make it harder by orders of magnitude to take action against an Iranian regime that sees itself as the rational center of a new world order.
[1] Is Bashar al-Asad rational as he uses mortars on the city of Homs, kills children in Hama, and cuts off refugee escape routes? Yes. His goal is to survive as Syria’s ruler and prevent the massacre of his heterodox Alawite minority. The alliance with Iran serves that end. The Obama administration wasted bloody months appealing to Asad to be a “reformer,” and trying to “woo” him from Iran to the West. To permit access to power by the majority would be suicide. To give up Iran would be the same. The U.S. could provide nothing as meaningful as being alive and in control, and he rationally calculated that we would allow him to remain so.
And the Iranians could make a pretty good case about us, too.
We blow up lots of civilians with drones. We’ve bombed more countries than I can count (Libya most recently). Sure, we don’t try to kill them, but they are dead all the same. Just pass out some cash to their relatives and all is okay…
We prostrate ourselves and give up all our dignity just to fly. We lock up more people than any other country on Earth thanks to the ridiculous drug war? Not to mention the harassment of people who just have allergies or colds (might make meth out of it, better criminalize those people and put them in jail, too)
Are we rational? Or are we constantly afraid of everything – afraid of muslims, afraid of drugs, afraid of Satan (Santorum at least), afraid of sports drinks mixed with alochol, heavy metal, rock N roll, dungeons and dragons, alcohol, the list goes on and on all the way back to the pilgrims and witches.
I mean, bath salts. The country has been having a moral panic lately about bath salts. And you say we’re rational?
Why are there no like buttons on the PJ networks? I want to upvote this man for making an honest and clear– and rational– post.
Are you implying that believing in the existence of Satan is irrational? Take a look around! Evil exists, and denying that fact is irrational. Furthermore, evil is not a random force, but rather one led by the first rebel.
Don’t forget t!ts. We are really afraid of t!ts. They must be hidden and never exposed. God fobid!
I agree, Iran is being perfectly rational. Look at it from their perspective: The US has been rattling sabres at them for over 30 years, we supported and gave material aid to Saddam throughout the Iran-Iraq war in the ’80s, we’ve bombed three of their neighbors, we’ve invaded and occupied two of them, we have a huge naval base on their doorstep, and we constantly sail carrier groups around the Persian Gulf. Most Iranians, even those who don’t support the regime, view the US as an existential threat to the nation, that’s why the majority of Iranians support their nuclear program. They have seen that nations that have a nuclear capability, such as Russia, China, and N. Korea, don’t get attacked by us, and they have determined that a nuclear deterent will discourage any potential US agression.
The aim of Iran to be a regional hegemon is also perfectly rational, in light of their history. Iran has a very long history, going back nearly three thousand years, of being the dominant power in the area, and a great deal of their national pride is tied up in that. In their view, they are just maintaining, or regaining, their rightful place in the world.
What is happening in Iran is beyond a simple understanding of rational vs irrational.
Following the rhetoric and actions from Iran one finds increasing radicalization and increasing emphasis on military and political power. They are moving away from the idea of a religious revolution to one that looks increasingly like Nazi Germany.
In psychological terms this is a form of Groupshift. This is the phenomenon whereby in a group setting, attitudes and beliefs become increasingly more extreme. This is particularly true where there is a Supreme Leader, as individuals within the group behave in ever more extreme ways in order to gain approval and status. Some historians believe that this is how the holocaust evolved and it is no accident that same goal is now expressed openly in Iran by leaders and in the government controlled press.
To read some of the statements coming from Tehran now would have been shocking a few decades ago. Now it does not get a mention in the media.
Fueling the increasing extremism in Iran is the steady erosion of the goals and promise of the Shiite Islamic Revolution. This stands in distinction to the Israeli ideology, Zionism, the establishment of a Jewish homeland, which has succeded and has only the goal of survival now. This infuriates the Khamenists who see a clear path to glory within their grasp by eliminating the Jewish state.
One question: Why isn’t Saudi Arabia receptive to pipelines being built, so that
the straits of hormuz wouldn’t be used for the transporting of oil and other petroleum products?
I would think oil picked up on the southern portion of the Arabian peninsula would be less subject to a bottle neck than oil that has to go through the straits of hormuz.
We should allow Syria – rebels, religious fanatics, government officials, all of them – to do as they please without our interference. In case you haven’t noticed, none of our interventions have done anything which might be characterized as “good for American interests”; they have only changed who was in power after the shooting stopped. We do not need any more of our young men and women killed in pursuit of some imaginary Holy Grail, neither the illusion that we can create a democracy in societies which have never experienced any impulse toward it nor experience of it; nor the delusion that we somehow possess the wisdom to (1) determine the ‘right’ outcome and (2) the best way to reach it as well as (3) the common sense and ability to achieve that outcome. They’re called “foreign” countries in part because they do not share any common cultural elements with us. They’re called “independent” countries because the idiots in Washington who are destroyed our society have to legitimate authority over those countries. If those aren’t good enough reasons to refrain from trying to play the world’s policeman, then I don’t know of any.
I suspect that Barack is our Manchurian Candidate. He’s Islam’s man on the inside. His goal may be to end all the U.S. relationships in the Middle East and Elsewhere. It must be so because he’s leaving Iraq and Iran will move in. He took out Quadaffi even though he knew that Al Queida was lurking among the rebels. One of their first acts was the fly the Al Queida flag on top of the government building. He’s actively working to deliver Israel to the Iranians by not helping them and trying to stall any efforts to take out nuclear facilities. He’s delivered Egypt to the Islamists. Next up in the batting order is to take out Bashir Assad. The evidence is staring us right in our faces.
Actually, I suspect Mr. Obama is a doctrinaire’ leftist academic, who still hasn’t processed the idea that theories and pronouncements that get him fawned over and admired in a faculty lounge at Harvard accomplish exactly nothing useful in the real world.
The damage he does is simply because he refuse to accept that his worldview, which is built on leftist groupthink, works out to fantasy off the campus. He redoubles his efforts every time it fails, because to do otherwise would require him to question the dogmas he came up in, and that he simply cannot do. He is constitutionally and emotionally incapable of conceiving that the basic and even advanced concepts of progressivism are wrong in any way whatsoever.
In a cloistered academic at Harvard this would be amusing, in a twisted sort of way, but on the whole fairly harmless. In the President of the United States, it has the potential to be catastrophic.
clear ether
eon