Hypocrisy and the rationalization of power
I write something nasty about Dana Milbank, and then he goes and proves his shit.
Not So Quiet on the Third Front
"The administration, for its part, seems eager to convince Iran that President Bush is crazy enough to sanction an attack. In the Rose Garden yesterday, Brett Baier of Fox News asked Bush how confident he is that Israel won't launch a military attack on Iran before the end of the year. 'I have always said that all options are on the table, but the first option for the United States is to solve this problem diplomatically,' came Bush's mild reply.
ABC's Martha Raddatz invited Bush to 'strongly discourage Israel' from such an activity. The president declined. 'I have made it very clear to all parties that the first option ought to be to solve this problem diplomatically,' he said.
Neither did the State Department offer discouragement. Spokesman Sean McCormack, at his daily briefing, said the matter of an Israeli strike isn't 'under our control.' When it was pointed out that the U.S. controls Iraqi airspace, through which Israeli warplanes would travel to hit Iran, McCormack declined to answer a 'hypothetical question involving military planning.'
As in most things involving the Bush administration, clarity can be found in the name Cheney -- in this case the vice president's daughter Liz, speaking last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'I think the Iranians have to believe that we will use force if necessary, and I'm concerned because you had statements for a period of time there from people like the commander in Centcom, who has since been relieved, suggesting that force was off the table,' she said.
Liz Cheney further recommended doing 'everything we can to dispel this idea that, somehow, we don't have the capacity militarily to take action,' and she said it is crucial to make Iran realize, 'despite what you may be hearing from Congress, despite what you may be hearing from others in the administration who might be saying force isn't on the table, that we're serious." As for an Israeli strike on Iran, she said: 'I certainly don't think that we should do anything but support them.'
Cheney may soon get her chance. Last month, Israel held a major military drill that was widely seen as preparation for an attack on Iran's nuclear program. Around the same time, three prominent Israeli officials made public comments about the likelihood of an attack. Then came Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker reporting an increase in U.S. covert activities in Iran, along with Iran's threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which a large chunk of the world's oil passes. This week, ABC News featured an unnamed senior defense official talking about 'an increasing likelihood' of an Israeli attack by the end of the year.
In front of the cameras yesterday, Mullen tried to warn about the military problems such an attack would set off. 'This is a very unstable part of the world,' the chairman said, 'and I don't need it to be more unstable.' With troops already stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, he acknowledged that 'opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful" on the U.S. military. The chief warrior therefore appealed for "other elements of national power to change Iranian behavior, including diplomatic, financial and international pressure.'
But Mullen, informed by his discussions with Israeli military officials, did not offer much reassurance that an Israeli strike could be avoided. Iran, he said, is 'still on a path to get to nuclear weapons, and I think that's something that needs to be deterred.'
Might Iran have enough nuclear fuel to build a bomb by the year's end?
'I don't want to address that,' the chairman said.
Is Israel operating on a shorter time frame than the United States?
Mullen said past discussions 'indicated that they were.'
Is there a danger that all the bluffing could cause an actual war?
'It is high stakes, there's no question, in this part of the world, and I guess I'd just leave it at that.'"
The remarkable thing about all of this bluff and bullshit is that it has clearly, by an objective measure, made it harder, not easier, to get this situation resolved. Iran wasn't pursuing nukes as ambitiously 5 years ago, when this standoff first began. We started pressuring. They got more committed.
And no matter where pressure fails, its self-righteous advocates will always claim victory anytime we see any breakthrough anywhere, because of course if you spread your bullshit broad and wide, there's got to be somewhere you can claim victory, right? Even when everything else is going to shit.
Why do they do this?
Partly because Washington runs under a pack mentality. Everyone is always right, all the time. And when they are wrong, they would rather be wrong together then step out of line. Especially when they believe their career is at stake. Even if everyone is wrong. That's the beauty of that kind of pressure.
And much of that last fact is a matter of cowardice on the part of political leaders and observers to acknowledge failure when blame-shifting to someone not you is so much easier than taking responsibility (these are the same group of folks who lecture the rest of the country and world on responsibility for their actions, remember).
When groupthink operates, as Pat Roberts warned the country in his assessment of the rush to war in Iraq, independent and thoughtful judgment is sacraficed.
And is exactly the kind of environment that this constant drumbeat of pressure, no matter how often and long it fails, creates in Washington and around the world.
Much of this, at the bottom, is about a sad and general failure of most folks to face the failure of repression and force as a governing philosophy, especially among countries and cultures proporting to be liberal and democratic, meaning free and equal, and the matters of conscience and independent judgment that are fundamental to liberal values, the value we place on freedom and democratic engagement, and fundamental to the failures of repressive governments and cultures and repressive policies in liberal and democratic countries and cultures.
We will have to face up, just as we would have to face up to a Israeli-Palestinian peace process, no matter how many strikes on Arab and Palestinian targets take place, because facing up to those realities is the only way out.
I guess the silver lining in this period is that it will be a definitive defeat for repression. There will be no real opportunity for those to advocate repression to claim victory, anymore. Because the failures will pile up so high that, eventually, if we want to get past them we will have to embrace more genuinely liberal and democratic policies, meaning policies that honestly respect freedom and self-governance.
Until we live up to those values, we will fail. Guaranteed. Because you can't guarantee freedom and democracy, when you are disrespecting them in reality while praising them rhetorically. It just doesn't work that way. No matter how many rationalizations of power we engage in.
We have engagement to do on this question of Iran and nuclear weapons. There are important issues to get resolved that nuking their facilities will just never resolve, anymore than assassinating terrorist leaders actually ends terrorist threats when the underlying issues, like Palestinian occupation, go unresolved.
And until we live up, we will never be able to honestly claim to be the guarantors of freedom and democracy. There is no way to bullshit our way around this one. Though we are a creative bunch while we desperately try, aren't we?
It is our hypocrisy, our rationalizations of power, and, most importantly, our failure to take liberal democratic values, the values of freedom and self-government, seriously enough that are responsible for our failures.
It is a tailspin that we are stuck in, right now. But it is not a tailspin we can stay stuck in forever.
Because forever is an awfully long goddamn time to fail.
