Once again Seymour Hersh wastes our time with an essay that would have been more suitable for a psychiatrist’s couch, accompanied by the question, “Doctor, why do I keep making up these things?”
The doctor might say, “what things?”
And Hersh would say, “you know, these stories saying that America is preparing to go to war with Iran, that we’re going to bomb them, that secret military units are running all over Iran, that we’re supporting killer fanatics. That sort of thing.”
It’s some sort of wacky compulsion with him. Back in the spring of 2006 Hersh told us that the Bush Administration, a.k.a. the Great Satan, “has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack…teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups…(Hersh’s sources) say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.”
Last summer, he announced again that we were on the verge of war with Iran. “This summer, the White House…requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran…The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere…”
We did not bomb, of course, and those alleged plans have vanished from the latest “revelations.” This time around he tells many of the same stories, except without the bombing. And this time he refers to a secret Presidential “Finding,” approved with bipartisan Congressional support, that makes all these things legal. Now it’s just the alleged support for ethnic minority groups, the collection of information about the Iranian nuclear program, and generally seeking to “destabilize the…leadership.” For extras, he suggests that some of our Special Forces have sneaked into Iran, kidnaped some members of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, and dragged them across the border into Iraq for interrogation. But he just can’t help himself. In the midst of discussing these alleged operations, he suddenly and inexplicably erupts in yet another of his “we’re going to bomb them!” seizures.
A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates…warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America…” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization)…
In other words, Gates denies the senator’s account. Hersh can’t quite bring himself to say that, so he sticks it between parentheses. You have to parse Hersh very carefully, because he carefully uses words that don’t exactly admit that he doesn’t have much of a case, but show it nonetheless. Take his remark at the top of the story, in which he leads the reader to conclude that we’re spending a mountain of money to destabilize Iran. “These operations,” he writes, “for which the President sought up to (my emphasis) four hundred million dollars…” But the question is not what he asked for, but what he actually got. Inquiring minds would like to know the actual budget, but it seems Hersh does not know it. The language he uses covers everything from zero to four hundred million. The “operations” he describes (most of which I doubt) are pretty small potatoes, like providing funds for Iranian dissidents in order to fight back against the brutal repression (missing from Hersh’s account) that Tehran has directed against its own people, with particular savagery against the Ahwaz Arabs and the Balouch, along with religious groups such as the Baha’i. I think even the frolicsome crowd at CIA’s Directorate of Operations would have trouble crafting a four hundred million dollar invoice for such things.
As so often in Hershian lore, you can pretty much forget about solid information or identifiable sources. His favorite source, who provides many of the juiciest quotations, is simply called “a Pentagon consultant.” Those who don’t live in Washington can’t possibly imagine a)how many of these characters work the city’s streets or b)how many of them claim to know absolutely everything of significance. If you take Hersh seriously, this guy is privy to conversations among small handfuls of people in the Oval Office. I suppose there may be such a person, but it’s hard to take it on blind faith, especially when Hersh quotes him as being pretty incoherent. The Consultant shifts tense and substance in a single paragraph:
Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. (ML: an anti-mullah group under American arrest in Iraq) coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts…
So first we hear that the bad guys “may well” get money from the USG, because a new task force “WILL work” with them. Then, one baited breath later, he says that they are already “getting,” and indeed stashing lots of it away in their own bank accounts.
One wonders why Hersh didn’t at least get the tenses consistent. One wonders why The New Yorker editors didn’t insist on it. In fact one wonders if anyone at The New Yorker did any checking of Hersh’s “facts.” As Roger Simon pointedly asks, who are these sources? Does The New Yorker even know?
Hersh even makes sources of on-the-record statements look bad. He fancies that lots of senior military officers in the Pentagon are fighting a desperate war against warmongers like Bush and Cheney, going all-out to stop tomorrow morning’s bombing run against the Iranian nuclear reactors. In this month’s episode, Hersh’s hero is Admiral William Fallon, briefly in charge of our Central Command until he was suddenly terminated. Hersh would have us believe that Fallon was fired because of his opposition to Administration policy. Hersh cites the following statement by Fallon as the sort of thing that got him into trouble in the White House:
…late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”
But President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said precisely that, numerous times. Whatever the reasons for the firing, it certainly wasn’t a statement that was totally in sync with announced Administration policy. If Fallon was indeed fired for something he said, it’s more likely this sort of thing, which Hersh admiringly reproduces:
“Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” he told me. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”
Again, one wonders where the editors have gone. Sure, everyone’s an individual; but in a dictatorship of the sort that rules Iran, only a few people matter. If I were the president, and I heard the head of Centcom talking like that, I too would want him out of there.
That leaves us with Hersh’s encouraging claims that we’re striking back at Iranian military forces on both sides of the border, that we’re supporting some minority groups against the regime, and that our Special Forces guys are running around Iran, gathering information on the nuclear program. We should be so lucky.
I would be delighted if American soldiers were (finally) taking steps against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on their own turf. It has been known for some time (although Hersh, not having heard it anonymously from his omniscient consultants, somehow doubts it) that the Iranians have been training terrorists on their own territory, and then sending them into Iraq and Afghanistan to kill as many people as possible, above all, our troops. Until quite recently, our soldiers were not permitted to initiate action against the Iranian officers who sometimes accompanied the terrorists, even in Iraq. But then, roughly about the same time as the change in doctrine that accompanied the surge, we and the Iraqis started to operate against the so-called “Special Groups” that were in cahoots with the Iranians, and the Quds Force officers who supported al Qaeda. It seems logical that these operations should extend to the training camps across the border, and to the Iranians who run them and command the terrorist squads. Otherwise, one tacitly accepts the legitimacy of Iranian attacks across the border, but denies our right to fight back on their terrain.
So far as I can discover, no such operations are taking place. A high-ranking intelligence official in the United States Government, who has proven reliable for many years, told me categorically that we do not capture, kill, or kidnap anyone in Iran, and that our troops have been told they cannot cross the Iranian border, even in “hot pursuit.” So unless Hersh has real evidence, I’m going to doubt it, even though I wish it were true.
Are U.S. Special Forces collecting information about the Iranian nuclear program? I sure hope so, even though Hersh seems to think there’s something wicked about it. In this connection, he seems to me to reveal a great deal about the sources of his information. He praises the linguistic and cultural skills of CIA “agents and assets,” implying that Special Forces don’t have such skills. Nothing could be farther from the truth; Special Forces have excellent linguists. Indeed, many CIA officers do their language training at Monterey, at the celebrated language school run by the military. Hersh thinks CIA is somehow culturally superior, which it isn’t. It’s the kind of idea that is more likely to come from an Agency employee than from someone in uniform, from the sort of guy who thinks our military is composed of untutored lunkheads, while the CIA–with its long record of failure that even Inspector Clouseau would envy–is composed of MENSA members.
I don’t know anything about support for the minority groups (although I do know that a program with one of the major tribes was totally shut down more than a decade ago), but I’m against it. The regime in Tehran is hollow, having lost the support of the vast majority of the Iranian people. The Iranian people are in fact the greatest threat to the regime, and we should support them all, not group by group or tribe by tribe, but as an entire nation. Our support should be almost entirely political, not military. It must start with an open declaration that we wish to see the end of the regime and that we will support a peaceful democratic revolution. Just as in the successful Reagan strategy against the Soviet Empire, the revolutionaries’ most urgent requirements are communications devices, and we should get them cell and satellite phones, laptop computers, servers, and anti-filtering software to beat the filters the mullahs have obtained from the Chinese censors and other friends. And we should turn our own broadcasts, as in VOA, into sources of accurate information about the latest developments inside Iran.
Hersh doesn’t know very much about Iran, judging from the sources he quotes to bash the alleged support for the two tribes and the M.E.K. Iran is a far cry from the description approvingly quoted from Professor Vali Nasr, who holds forth at Tufts and the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue,” Nasr told me. “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic”
Professor Nasr studied with Frank Fukuyama, but apparently never heard that Germany is younger than the United States, by nearly a hundred years. And Iran is ethnically very different from France or Germany, which have long had basically homogeneous populations. Only half of Iranians are Persians; the rest range from Azeris, Kurds and Balouch to Ahwaz Arabs, and many other tribes. But Nasr is quite right (as is Hersh, who uses him as a proxy) to oppose any American policy that supports ethnic separatism. It’s worse than a crime; it’s stupid. When you’ve got most of the population on your side, you want to embrace it as a whole, not divide it into smaller units that might spat with one another.
It’s hard to even raise this kind of consideration while talking about Hersh, because he lives and writes in a world in which you only get half the story at best, and that half consists of sliming the United States. One would never know from reading Hersh that Iran has been waging war against us for nearly thirty years, and we have yet to respond. He seems not to know that there are military documents, photographs, confessions, and captured laptop computers proving that Iranians operate inside Iraq. If he does know, he doesn’t inform his readers. He writes as if anyone who acknowledges the murderous role of Iran in the world, and wants an end to its evil regime, automatically favors armed war against it, even though many of us are unstinting in our criticism of the mullahs, favor regime change, but oppose a military campaign.
And so I imagine his doctor saying to him: “Well, Mr. Hersh, it seems you’re an obsessive/ compulsive neurotic, doesn’t it? You keep writing the same story over and over again, with minor variations, year after year.”
And I hear Hersh saying: “Yes, but it feels so good when I finish writing it, Doctor. Every time. And they even pay me for it.”
UPDATE: Ron Rosenbaum adds more, focusing on Hersh’s botched description of the infamous NIE on the Iranian nuclear program. You should read it.
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David Thomson:Seymour Hersh’s credibility was destroyed long ago. No self respecting publication should ever publish his rants. Hersh remains in the limelight only because the Left does not believe in facts. Everybody supposedly has a right to their “truth” regardless of the evidence. Everything is relative and who is to say what is either true or false? In other words, the leftist culture is now fully committed to a full blown non-violent form of nihilism.
ML:
I think it’s remarkable that a person of his reputation can keep on writing the same story, even though the facts seem to be the opposite of what he says. This administration is not set on war with Iran, quite the contrary. It has shied away from confrontation with Iran in all ways except sanctions.
Jun 30, 2008 - 2:51 pm Charlie (Colorado):If you take Hersh seriously, this guy is privy to conversations among small handfuls of people in the Oval Office. I suppose there may be such a person,…
… and if there is, he’s currently unemployed.
There aren’t many people who have access to that kind of meeting; assuming it happened (which I assume only for the sake of argument) this story was followed with a flurry of “Jesus Christ, who blabbed to Hersh” phone calls, a quick investigation, and at the very least termination of some guy’s access.
Jun 30, 2008 - 3:06 pm javad behbahani:The notion only half of Iranians are Persians is bogus. It is not supported by any fact or census.
ML:
Every serious resource on Iran cites that figure. Have a look at the CIA Fact Book, for example.
Jun 30, 2008 - 3:18 pm Jim M:The guy had one story right in his entire life and that was the massacre by William Calley and Company in Vietnam. Absent that he has been wrong so much on every story (Korean Plane shoot down by the Soviets, Reagan and the cold war, Israel and their nukes, the Iraq war ect and ect) One can be consistently right by saying he always is wrong. But hey just like the JFK killing, folks lap it up all of the time if it feeds their anti-govt view of the world.
Jun 30, 2008 - 4:20 pm Sandy:I agree. Hersh makes things up. He invented Abu Ghraib; he even invented someone call Richard Perle. Fortunately, he revealed his plans early in writing about My Lie.
Jun 30, 2008 - 4:32 pm David:Hersh is an odd character. He’s at times, over the years, been a talented journalist. The My Lie incident is the notable case in point. However, journalism is a what-have-you-done-lately sort of business, and one can’t live for decades on a story, even one of that magnitude. So he continues to write, and at this point he makes a fool of himself more often than not.
My chief objection to him has always been not the unnamed sources he uses, but the fact that he over-relies on one or two of them to make a point. Often, in the past, he has written whole stories, or at least passages of them, around one or two of these unnamed sources. The problem often is that said unnamed source has ulterior motives for what he’s leaking to Hersh. These often reflect realities that are outside the scope of what Hersh is reporting, but he’s unable to hear anything other than the criticism of Bush that he wants to hear. One instance of this was his book “Chain of Command” which reprinted some of his essays on the early part of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Amusingly, one chapter (formerly an article) was written basically at the behest of an unnamed Air Force officer, criticizing the way the Pentagon was running the war in Afghanistan. The gist of the article was that if the silly Pentagon hadn’t placed restrictions on what, where, and how often the Air Force bombed things, the war would have been over long before. The next article used an unnamed Marine officer from the Pentagon as a source, and said essentially the opposite: that the Air Force had pretty much lost us the war with their indiscriminate bombing of the whole country. If the two articles hadn’t been reprinted in book form the contradiction in terms wouldn’t have been as apparent, and worse, the internal military politics of the Pentagon are lost on Hersh: the Air Force always thinks it can win the war (whatever war you’re talking about, back to WW2) if only the stupid land-bound generals get off of their backs, and the Marines *hate* the Air Force, think they’re absolute morons. Hersh, eager to print something about the inept Rumsfeld, the evil Cheney, and the hapless Bush, of course ignores all of this background noise in order to recount his main theme: insiders in the Pentagon criticize the way the war’s being run, and insist they know how it could be run better. Yeah right.
ML:
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. You’re absolutely right about the politics of the Pentagon, and about Hersh’s use of sources to make points he’d already…embraced, let’s say? The problem is that this sort of journalism makes it even more difficult to raise the real issues, because they melt away in the mists of the fantasy land.
Jun 30, 2008 - 5:26 pm Tom W.:If there is an operation in Iran, it would be so “black” that nobody would know about it except the people taking part.
We still don’t know which special operations forces were deployed in the initial Iraq invasion. Stories abound of Jordanians, Israelis, Turks, Germans, etc., but no hard evidence has surfaced.
The Pentagon admits that at least 10,000 combat operators were there; our total number of such troops (excluding SOF in support roles, psychological operations, and civil affairs) was less than that in 2003, and we wouldn’t have deployed anywhere near our entire strength.
A heck of a lot of operators from other nations were there, but we’ll never know the real story, which is as it should be.
Jun 30, 2008 - 6:24 pm fred:I think Sy Hersch belongs in the padded room with regular meds for his added comfort and calm. The only people who believe his tripe are the Loony Left devotees who should occupy the neighboring padded cells. I think this guy has rarely told the truth, because his habit over the years has been to gradually descend into the cesspool of believing his own lies. He might occasionally get some tidbits of information, which he then uses as the core of a vast web spun from his imaginative use of threadbare information. He missed his true calling, but I doubt he would give Tom Clancy a run for his money.
Jun 30, 2008 - 7:08 pm R. Head:What is this guy talking about? For starters, we never even invaded Iraq. We pre-emptively fought them defensively. Liberal media propaganda. I can’t imagine would give this guy the idea that we had some sort of belligerent intentions towards Iran. Its been over 50 years since the CIA and British intelligence overthrew their democratically elected government. Arabs have short memories. I’m sure its all a part of the past with them now. PROTECT ISRAEL.
ML:
Careful with your irony; Iranians hate it when you call them “Arabs.”
Jun 30, 2008 - 7:24 pm Steve Schippert:Well, well. The Doctor is ‘IN.’
Clearly.
Jun 30, 2008 - 7:25 pm j green:I did a quick check on this ruffian on Wikipedia to refresh my memory. Of course, his previous printed babblings about Iran were still fresh in my mind, but I just wanted to look anyway. Something caught my eye while skimming it. Mr. Hersh said the reason for Hillary’s “hawkish” views on Iran was “Money. A lot of the Jewish money from New York.” I guess everyone who thinks Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons got paid by Jewish people? I’m sorry, forgive me for being vague, Mr. Hersch: those people are all paid specifically by only those Jews from New York (that’s the most definitive thing I have ever heard Hersch say.)
I have a scoop for Hersch: Maybe evil Israel is even more involved–maybe they are giving Iran the weapons also? I think this is worthy for Sy Hersch to sharpen his pencil and write it down. Its a story only worthy of his brilliance.
But I digress–I would ask that same question about Mr. Hersch. What benefit, monetary or otherwise, does he have for his bouts of tourettes syndrome which are transcribed as these rants he calls articles?
Hersch is an imitation of a journalist, his articles are all phony, and his “research” is all fabrications and make-believe fantasies which are as close to the truth as a junkie’s hallucinations. He is beyond the help of a psychiatrist–they should put him in a straight jacket and place him in one of those bright white rooms with 24-hour bright light that his Iranian heroes use for torture.
Jun 30, 2008 - 7:27 pm winston:Exactly. I think Bush should have done such stuff 6 years ago and this is a bit late now. I wrote about what I think on my own blog. http://thespiritofman.blogspot.com/2008/06/darn-late.html
I think this guy Hersch needs to take his pills before writing again!
Jun 30, 2008 - 7:40 pm Alexis:Perhaps there should be a writing contest where contestants imitate the writing style and content of Seymour Hersh. Two kinds of prizes would be given. One kind of prize would be given for the most faithful imitation of Mr. Hersh’s writing style and the other kind of prize would be given for the most humorous parody of Mr. Hersh’s version of journalism.
Jun 30, 2008 - 8:32 pm Tom A:I find all of these rants against Mr. Hersh a little odd.
He was right about the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up.
He was right about the misdeeds in Abu Ghraib prison.
He doesn’t write as if he is any more certain of his facts than is warranted by their hearsay nature *and* — perhaps most critically — the no comment/no denial response from those in power on his key allegations is extremely telling.
If he wrote such that he could be soundly discredited on any central point, surely his critics in a position to do so would relish the opportunity.
Please substantiate your complaints against him. He seems a very careful , courageous and valuable sort of journalist — not least because his credibility is established by his record.
Jul 1, 2008 - 12:45 am Dom:I sometimes wonder whether Hersh is being used by those within government who are either seeking to embarrass the administration by feeding him lies. There is, no doubt, internal rivalry between government departments and perhaps some self-serving officials have their eyes on a post-Bush era, so wish to distances themselves from it. Or perhaps they are resistant to a more aggressive approach towards Iran and wish to scupper the policies of the Bush administration.
Alternatively, the administration is using him as a propaganda exercise to instill paranoia within the Iranian regime. If the Iranians believe that certain parts of the opposition (such as ethnic separatists) are financed by the US and are therefore more powerful than they actually are, then Washington can have some leverage over Tehran, regardless of whether or not such financial support is provided. If Hersh isn’t lying about his sources (which are sufficiently vague that they could be the personal views of the White House cleaning staff for all we know), then it is possible that he is being manipulated by the very people he opposes.
Jul 1, 2008 - 4:07 am Don:The “division” of the Iranian population by causing “spats” setting one ethnic group against another seems somehow familiar? . . . oh, yes!! It is the Democrat strategy in this election cycle, talk “inclusiveness” and “change”, walk “devisiveness” and “isolation”. Divide and conquer is a political as well as military concept
Jul 1, 2008 - 4:30 am fred:Well, one thing is certain. In the years ahead, perhaps after they retire, there are going to be some interesting “tell all” books being written by those who were leakers inside the government. And then the veil will be lifted so that we can see who these vile creatures are. I’m sure they will be popular among the cocktail party crowd, but amongst us ordinary Americans they will mostly be viewed as traitors.
Jul 1, 2008 - 5:33 am Tom A:Dom: *of course* he could be being “used” by competing interests within the government - that’s generally the game reporters play to get information. So, I would say he and his editors at the New Yorker would be quite aware and wary of that possibility. One has to consider such angles on *any* information one reads, as well - publishing online is so easy that the signal quality is correspondingly degraded. All of that said, a veteran source from a long established publication which elicits only the sort of non-denial denials that this one has should certainly make one pause to consider the possibility that he actually got it exactly right…
Jul 1, 2008 - 5:35 am Tom A:Fred: Someone goes to great lengths to bring you the information that your government is lying to you and otherwise subverting the principles of democracy in the pursuit of policies that benefit themselves and their close associates while leading to the displacement, injury and death of untold millions of innocent civilians - and you call them “traitors”?
Jul 1, 2008 - 5:43 am drunkbeater:how dare this traitor write this kind of inflammatory lies about this noble and honorable government! how dare this traitor to all things American be allowed to publish these lies about our honorable nobility in Washington D.C., which would never do anything like this in secret! How dare he talk like our government would pull this crap behind the backs of the American people! I think Hersch should be publicly branded and strung up for publishing such dishonest crap! anyone who criticizes this great and noble administration should be publicly humiliated and thrown into jail! Even if some of his facts are correct, I don’t care! Who is he to take this kind of secretive important information and share it with citizens. What gives him the right to do that? what kind of country does he think this is where he can just publish bad stuff about our government and think he can get away with it! American citizens don’t care about this kind of stuff … we know our government will do right by us! Look at Iraq! Look at our economy! What a steaming pile of dung this article is. I’m gonna crack open a beer and try to calm down. I can’t believe they let people like him try and scorn the name of this great nation. All journalists who don’t write good stuff should be strung up! Nothing but traitors and cowards.
ML:
Sarcasm, especially when overdone, is often self-defeating. Just tell us how you feel :=)
Jul 1, 2008 - 6:38 am Dom:God Bless George W. Bush.
Tom A: It is entirely plausible that Hersh has been misled (perhaps there is an Iranian monarchist within the US State Department who resents the lobbying power of other rival groups so is seeking to embarrass the administration). In this case I really think he has just stacked up a load of familiar conspiracy theories and there is nothing new to offer, particularly in terms of hard evidence. The trouble is that we cannot verify anything he says and his argument doesn’t stack up. Mr Ledeen that US support for armed groups from ethnic minorities would be evidently detrimental to US interests while failing to deal any significant blow against the regime.
I would add that the regime undoubtedly persecutes people on the basis of ethnicity just as it does on the basis of religion and political ideology - I would hope that ethnic rights, not separatism, have a place in the discourse of democratic change in Iran given that half the population appears to be from a minority. Ethnic persecution is well documented, although Hersh appears to have little sympathy for the victims of the regime by portraying them, collectively, as traitors (isn’t this stance fuelling separatism?).
Jul 1, 2008 - 6:56 am Tom A:Dom (and others): my main plea was that people offer some sort of substantiation for their critiques of the piece. Hersh has gotten it right very substantively and importantly more than once in the past. All of the critiques here seem to be nothing more than bald conjecture. Sure it’s plausible that there could be interests that would want to mislead him. It’s also plausible that his story is 100% accurate. As I said, if we’re going to debate purely from a plausibility perspective, then a veteran reporter and an established publication both with reputations for veracity to protect beats, to my mind, at least, an administration that has conducted itself as this one has and which cannot seem to robustly deny any of the details asserted in the piece.
This argument about whether or not the story is true, however, is most likely a straw man. Those who would support the type of policy it suggests are simply blowing smoke about the truth of the article and/or loyalty of the author and his sources. They don’t care. They see no reason to object if it were true and, in fact, would only be upset that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney’s intentions might be thwarted by premature exposure.
Jul 1, 2008 - 7:27 am Ari Lamm:Mr. Ledeen,
Communications support for dissidents and pronouncements by the U.S. that we support a peaceful democratic revolution are all well and good. But do the dissidents want our support? I seem to recall reading a number of articles detailing objection on the part of dissidents to American help. The rationale seems to be that they do not want to be perceived as being on the side of the Americans. Is this true? How would you respond to this claim?
ML:
The same way I did during the Cold War, when some said it was counterproductive to support the Soviet dissidents. It proved very productive, as leading dissidents from Bukovsky to Sharansky have said in great detail. And dissidents can refuse to accept any offered help. But they should have the choice.
Jul 1, 2008 - 8:54 am maximus:In Mr.Ledeens article you read:
“…..
The Iranian people are in fact the greatest threat to the regime, and we should support them all, not group by group or tribe by tribe, but as an entire nation.
…
oppose any American policy that supports ethnic separatism. It’s worse than a crime; it’s stupid. When you’ve got most of the population on your side, you want to embrace it as a whole, not divide it into smaller units that might spat with one another.”
These words and your knowledge about the current regime makes you a good freind of iranian people and one of the best Iran experts in the field!I hope the next admin take advantage of your expetise!
Well said!
Jul 1, 2008 - 9:23 am Jeff Perren:Long Live Iran
Down With Islamic Republic
“[M]any of us are unstinting in our criticism of the mullahs, favor regime change, but oppose a military campaign.”
Sorry I’ve not read enough of your material to know already, but why would you be opposed? Since the Iranians have absolutely nothing to gain from diplomatic engagement, have consistently refused any concessions, and are virtually immune to sanctions, what other option is there?
Respectfully,
Jul 1, 2008 - 9:40 am dan:Jeff Perren
The fact is Seymour Hersh provides nothing but matter for political demoralization, even in the couple occasions in which his accusations have been substantiated by more than “[some department] officials.” Knowing a little about active measures, I’m tempted to conclude that Hersh is a very valuable agent more than a “journalist.” I’m particularly thinking of the role he played in reporting CIA misdeeds, which reporting as I understand was largely responsible for the Church Commission, the body that provided a political pretext for the triumph of a particularly naive form of geopolitical sentiment and which led directly to the institutional dysfunction that contributed to the success of 9/11 hijackers. The problem with Hersh is he provides - obviously knowingly - the usual suspects with props for the kind of pre-existing hostility/stupidity that is blind to even the possibility that our foreign rivals are capable of and responsible for moral atrocities that we would have no reason to pursue. His work is instrumental in shoring up the, as it were, institutional aversion to understanding the foreign psychologies with which Americans are so unfamiliar and to which they are blind - and blinded. Unfortunately, Hersh’s “reporting” makes it more likely that such people will never be shaken from their naive and senitmental and subtly hostile view that “everyone is just like us, except better since they are our victims.” Hersh is a disgrace.
By the way, I keep hearing this idiocy that someone “broke” the Abu Ghraib story: this is nonsense. The first article on Abu Ghraib appeared in January of the relevant year in the New York Times, citing the US ARMY as the source of the matter. It was only approximately 6 months later that the thing was developed into an active measure to politically assassinate the Bush Administration. Look it up your damn self - I don’t have time or interest.
Jul 1, 2008 - 9:45 am Bugs:Hersch - the New Yorker’s Pentagon gossip columnist.
Jul 1, 2008 - 9:49 am j green:Hersh is a very clever writer. He doesn’t write about this topic in a fair light, and its hard for the innocent bystander/lay person to realize that. But upon a closer examination, any intelligent human being will be forced to determine that Hersh’s article is a bunch of contradictory nonesense and simply gibberish, to-wit:
Notice in his most recent collection of Iran ranting he says “…the Administration also revived charges that the Iranian leadership has been involved in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq…directly, by dispatching commando units into Iraq, and indirectly, by supplying materials used for roadside bombs and other lethal goods. (There have been questions about the accuracy of the claims; the Times, among others, has reported that ’significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement.’)”
We know Iran is deeply involved. Deep involvment cannot possibly be much deeper than killing and acts of war. To say otherwise, as Hersh (and, according to Hersh, the NYT) says above in parenthesis no less, is a bold-faced lie. Hersh himself even quotes Admiral Fallon in this very same article disproving Hersh! “…When I [Admiral Fallon] arrived at CENTCOM, the Iranians were funding every entity inside Iraq. It was in their interest to get us out, and so they decided to kill as many Americans as they could….”
So how deeply do we know about Iran’s involvement? Deep enough to know Iran’s involvement constitutes acts of war.
And to use wording about the Adminsitration “reviving” charges makes it seem like its under the Administration’s control–they are the ones reviving after all. The Iranians, who are commiting these acts of war, have nothing to do with it according to Hersh’s nuanced writing style which uses as a master to hide his own agenda.
Kinder people would call him a has-been. I think he is a dunce and a never-was.
Jul 1, 2008 - 10:05 am Dom:“When you’ve got most of the population on your side, you want to embrace it as a whole, not divide it into smaller units that might spat with one another”
What if the Iranian regime is the divisive force? It is a racist regime, so what is wrong with supporting Kurdish groups against Tehran? Just as women and religious minorities should be supported in their struggle, ethnic groups should also be supported. That doesn’t mean supporting separatism, it’s just another pressure point.
Jul 1, 2008 - 10:21 am Dom:“They see no reason to object if it were true and, in fact, would only be upset that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney’s intentions might be thwarted by premature exposure.”
Equally, Hersh has an agenda. He is not providing any evidence to back his assertions, but is giving the opinions of anonymous sources. His article is pure conjecture based on opinions he has received. One says that the president was focused on “undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change” and is “working with opposition groups and passing money.” What does this mean? Of course the president wants to undermine Iran’s nuclear ambitions - almost the entire world is united against Iran’s nuclear proliferation, that’s why the UN sent in the IAEA! Does the Bush administration want regime change? Every Western democracy would like to see a change in the regime - one of the world’s worst human rights violators, which executes feminists, communists, liberals, homosexuals - and in order to support democracy it is evident they need to support the freedom of speech for the regime’s opponents. Is there a problem with this? How else should one deal with Iran’s democratic deficit without bolstering democratic movements? Is it such a bad thing to fund, say, a human rights documentation project run by the regime’s opponents? Listening to and supporting opposition groups does not equate to military action. Then a Pentagon consultant is quoted as saying “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates.” That doesn’t mean a covert war is being planned or fought, just that in this guy’s opinion there is opposition to such action. Again, Hersh offers no proof of anything. When you interrogate his article, you get nothing in the way of evidence.
Jul 1, 2008 - 10:44 am Selma:The case is that you can never say that you have an entire nation who is against their government. Iranians are again different from other nations in this way that they prefer a long-lived savage dictatorship to any kind of foreign interference. So for sure America in that sense does not have the support of Iranians (as Persians). But for the other ethnical groups the case is different; as they live a life of consistent discrimination that is felt in their every-day life. Every kind of racist attitude and policy is practiced against Iranian minorities by both the Iranian government and the Persian group. So at the same time that it is very improbable to see an approval from the Persian group for any kind of American interference in Iran’s affairs, it is quiet the contrary regarding the Iranian minorities such as Kurds, Balouches, Turks, Ahwaz Arabs, & etc. Due to the many difficulties that these ethnical groups meet in practicing their human rights, due to the high level of racist discrimination practiced by Persians in general and the Iranian government in particular against these peoples whose number reaches a total of more than 40 millions (60 % of the whole Iranian population), very obviously they are eagerly after a way that may save them from this savagery of Iranian Government. Unfortunately, it seems that there is no way to get rid of this black situation as Iran is getting more powerful day by day, and maybe it will come one day that Iran becomes a second Pakistan in oppressing its people and threatening its neighbors. So whatever the solution it will be welcomed by Iranian minorities, and that is for sure.
ML:
Iran is already an oppressive country that threatens its neighbors. Sixty percent for non-Persians is very high, according to most sources, from the World Bank to CIA. And a big majority of all Iranians oppose the regime, it isn’t just the minorities. That has been documented by several polls, including one famous one about three years ago conducted by the Ministry of Information.
Jul 1, 2008 - 12:20 pm Tom A:This is some of the best written reader response I’ve seen on the ‘Net about these issues and having stumbled upon the site seeking out critiques of Hersh’s latest article, I really have no sense as to why that is. Who are you people?
The problem is, while very well written in comparison to other reader response, it seems to also be simply strongly - and well - stated opinion - articulate hyperbole and little more. That’s disappointing. Do you all *feel* so strongly about the righteousness of armed struggle against Iran that you can’t draw back contextualize the case, a bit? What sources give you your sense of confidence in your opinions? The way I read 20th century history, Iran’s extreme socio-political situation (intolerant, islamist rule) is a reaction to the extreme injustice of the puppet government and economic exploitation that was engineered by and to the benefit of Britain and the U.S. Iran has a long, proud and complex history as a nation. We got our asses righteously handed to us in ‘79 - and should probably also be held liable for the extremism of the movement that was provoked by the injustice of what went before. Applying the same policies (hell, headed up by the same political and economic players) that gave the righteous rationale to the revolution, in the first place seems like an idiotically retrograde response. Are you all really just still fighting to “return the Shaw to power” (metaphorically speaking)? If not, and without the military dominance inherent in colonial days, how exactly do you see a solution being arrived at? And how will further military action possibly be beneficial?
At least hearing intelligently posed opinions that would seem to be in favor of further escalation of the military conflict in this region gives me some clarity with respect to current oil prices. I wonder if we’ll see a $50-$60/barrel drop in price if we manage to get to inauguration day and power passes to an Obama administration *without* any major conflict or provocation?
Jul 1, 2008 - 12:28 pm Mike_K:Hersh is beloved by the political left until he bites the hands that feeds him. From 2004:
“But before that, guess who said the following about the 1997 Sy Hersh book, The Dark Side of Camelot, which is critical of former President John Kennedy? “This book is a fiction and we don’t intend to comment any further on this maliciousness and innuendo.” That would be the same Senator Ted Kennedy who now virtually echoes Hersh’s allegations. Kennedy historian Arthur Schlesinger called Hersh, “the most gullible investigative reporter I’ve ever encountered.”
That book — which included claims that President Kennedy brought dozens of prostitutes to the White House; that he was treated for venereal diseases; that he had been married to a Palm Beach socialite before he married Jackie; and that Ted Kennedy served as a “bagman” for the president in the crucial West Virginia primary, paying off county chairmen including Charles Peters, now publisher of Washington Monthly — was denounced by scores of Democrats when it came out, beginning with Ted Kennedy and other Kennedy stalwarts such as Schlesinger and former presidential advisor Theodore Sorensen. Sorensen called it “a pathetic collection of wild stories.”
That’s different.
Jul 1, 2008 - 12:39 pm Rob Crawford:Actually, Hersh didn’t uncover My Lai. He got leaked some information about an investigation the military had already started. Just like Abu Ghraib, what he did was take a case of our military policing itself and turn it into an indictment of the military itself.
He’s not a reporter; he’s a propagandist.
Jul 1, 2008 - 12:43 pm fred:Iran is a nation that has very frequently, even well before Mamoud Ahmadinejad, vowed to destroy the Zionist Entity when it has the ability to do so. I realize that there are cultural patterns of rhetoric within Islamic societies that lend themselves to hyperbolic speech, and some in the West discount these threats because “they are only exaggerating and are speaking to their own people for the pacification of their passions.” The liberal/Leftist elites of the West do not take Iran’s threats to use nuclear weapons against Israel and the United States seriously.
Sy Hersch and his ilk challenge our right and prerogative to smash the Mullahs’ toys. They believe we have no right to do this, and they seek to use all means in their power to protect Iran from the imperialist designs of the U.S. government. Sy Hersch is NOT an unbiased journalist, and his defenders on this blog discussion know this very well, but for convenience of their own arguments choose to ignore it. They then call those of us who are his critics knuckledragging hayseeds who lack subtlety of understanding. We understand Sy Hersch very well.
In a world of nuclear proliferation, with rogue states making strides in acquiring these weapons for the purpose of theological Armageddon and nuclear blackmail, a policy of pre-emptive strikes against these facilities is realistically the most responsible option. MAD does not apply to clerics and their political sycophants who welcome the return of the Mahdi. MAD remains the only option after these criminals let fly with their weapons, and then the Devil is going to collect a horrific tally in the tens of millions - mostly in the Muslim world.
As a self-loathing Jew, Sy Hersch is certainly entitled to his masochistic fantasies. But when that proclivity translates into actions which help our enemies to kill millions of innocent people and incinerate an entire nation of his ethnic cousins, it enters the realm of moral reprobation. Sy Hersch is not a responsible journalist. He fancies himself as an anti-imperialist, moralizing crusader against the very government which has done more than any nation in history to advance and promote liberty.
Iran is an out-of-control state sponsor of Islamic terror. Anyone who cannot see this or refuse to see it cannot be reasoned with. I do not care a whit if these words are considered hyperbolic and reactionary. At least I clearly know my biases and what they are for.
Jul 1, 2008 - 1:00 pm harry:Seymour Hersh reminds me of the scene in “Patton” where a donkey carrying a cart refuses to budge on a bridge thus bringing Patton’s advancing army to a halt. Arriving at the scene comes Patton asking what the hell is going on? The soldiers tell of their plight. Patton goes to the donkey, takes out his gun, shoots it in the head and dumps the carcass off the bridge allowing the army to continue its advance. Now this is what needs to be done to the Seymour Hirsh jackasses of the world. Al Gore, Pelosi, Harry Reid and a few others also qualify.
Jul 1, 2008 - 1:00 pm Tom W.:“Are you all really just still fighting to ‘return the Shaw to power’ (metaphorically speaking)?”
Which Shaw? Robert Shaw? He’s dead, unfortunately, although even as a corpse he’d do a better job running Iran than the mullahs.
Jul 1, 2008 - 2:16 pm dan:Tom:
Personally, I am in favor of military escalation based on the public pronouncements by Iran, the IAEA, and other parties, including the European negotiating team of 3 years and little effect, that Iran is pretty clearly pursuing and will soon acquire the ability to produce its own nuclear weapons. This represents an unacceptable increase in its offensive and defensive military capability for several reasons. From largest to smallest: the ability to attack Israel, the ability to deter attacks on Hezbollah, the ability to deter attacks on itself after provocations by Hamas and Hezbollah or some other combination of proxy groups in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, the ability to provide nuclear weapons to terrorists or groups themselves, the ability to coordinate more brazen attacks with its Russian and/or Chinese allies, the ability to directly hit Europe via medium-range missile, the ability to hit the USA with smuggled weapons.
Iran is a revolutionary government - that is, a clique of fanatics who have dug their claws into a once vaguely sympathetic society and have converted the country into an engine of ever-expanding personal plunder. It also a key component in the Russian-Chinese-South Asian strategic conglomerate. Without Russia, Iran would have no nuclear program, no modern weapons, and Hezbollah and Syria would have no strategic cover; without China its economic isolation would be much easier to impose. This was also one of the reasons for taking out Saddam; Russian Foreign Minister Primakov was personal friends with Saddam Hussein and the latter’s entire government was basically an undeclared SSR. Allowing Iran to establish itself as a nuclear state in the middle of the Ummah under the leadership of that government would be incredibly destabilizing - and, among other things, it would remove any reasonable rebuttal to the Egyptian, Saudi, and other Arab states’ desire and ability to purchase their own nuclear “deterrence.”
There is a good argument that we are being provoked into this Middle Eastern adventure, wasting precious resources in trying to convert a tribal and illiterate people to advanced mature concepts such as democracy, and exposing our efforts to easy sabotage in a region rife with byzantine hostilities, venal leaders, and porous borders. We are also told military aggression inside Iran will trigger Persian National Feeling and result in a slaughter of US forces, possibly a mass invasion of Iraq, and in any case enduring profound hatred of the USA. Fine - one of the little noted reasons for our difficulties in Iraq is the *people who live there.* That still doesn’t mean that a nuclear Iran, free to unleash its well-established proxy forces (how about those al Qaeda “under house arrest” in Iran, for example?) and to pursue its fanatical policies - a much less hypothetical eventuality - would be better. Just because there are no great choices doesn’t mean we should retreat into the propositions of diplomatic fantasists, pacifists, or paleoconservatives who long for a largely fictional time of Fortress America. They’re just gonna keep on trying to acquire those nukes, and one day they will have them unless they are forced - forced - to stop.
The real problem is all this blithering criticism: if Europe and the US could jst gang up for 1 month on these guys without providing all those lovely opportunities for political opportunism, this would all be over in no time. Instead, the West divides against itself - just as our enemies knew would happen.
Jul 1, 2008 - 2:31 pm dan:*from smallest to largest - my bad.
Jul 1, 2008 - 2:33 pm j green:The point is that 1) Sy Hersh offers no evidence–just the credability of his “sources”, 2) said sources are never identified (which of course leaves open the possibility of journalist manipulation by sources with agendas of their own, and 3) everything he says defies realities of which we are all well aware. And now people ask why this scoundrel’s article is criticized.
The people commenting here are, for the most part, objective people who considered Mr. Hersh’s journalistic history, considered the actual facts we are all aware of, acknowledged the lack of citations, and detemrined their opinions accordingly.
Hersh’s article stands solely on what littlw credability that Hersh has. No sources, no facts, no nothing. Look at all the vagueifying grammatical tools he has unleashed on his poor unsuspecting readers. Nothing he says adds up to anything beyond meaningless babbling.
I didn’t see the word “Shah” mentioned once at all in any of this so why one commenter would think this relates in any way to a Shah is beyond me. This is about the Mullahs having American blood on their hands and Sy Hersh not mentioing that as a fact, which it is. Its about honesty in journalism.
Jul 1, 2008 - 2:51 pm j green:I venture to think the Doctor in the above blog diagnosing the unstable Hersh was in fact the learned Dr. Ledeen.
My compliments to you on an exemplary diagnosis.
Jul 1, 2008 - 2:58 pm Ken Besig:Certainly Seymour Hersh is not out of his mind, nor is he simply making up tales to frighten us with. Mr. Hersh is a serious journalist who must at least believe what he writes and at the very least has based his critique on real sources, however doubtful their credentials. I will further assume that his commentary was an attempt to dissuade the American government from any military attack on Iran’s nuclear program, and as an advocacy journalist, Mr. Hersh has every right to do this.
However, having said all this, it must be made absolutely clear that for me and many others, Iran is now the greatest, most concrete, most immediate, and most serious military threat to the Middle East and the rest of the world.
Iran has already surrounded Israel with it’s proxies Hizballah in the North, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, certain parts of the Palestinian controlled areas in the West, and of course, the Syrian armed forces.
Iran is continuing to finance, arm, equip, and train these various armies and militias, as well as the various terrorist groups throughout the region for use in Iran’s upcoming war against Israel but also for use against American interests and America’s other allies in the Middle East.
It seems that the only thing missing from the Iranian military battle planning is their nuclear ballistic missile program, which we all know is going full speed ahead and is probably unstoppable.
I posit unstoppable because the Iranians have dispersed the program in especially hardened sites throughout Iran, thus making it difficult to for any attacking force to even find it’s many sites much less hit them successfully.
Moreover, the Iranian air and civil defence forces have been preparing for any attack, by Israel or the US, for at least the past year, thus making a surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear program a near impossibility and which could well turn into a route for the attacking forces.
Indeed, any military attack on Iran’s nuclear program by Israel or the US, whether successful or as is more likely not, would certainly cause major disruptions in the worlds oil supply making the price of a barrel of oil skyrocket.
Furthermore, even an unsuccessful American, or as is more likely an Israeli, air attack on Iran would almost certainly lead to an all out attack on Israel by Iran and her proxies. Thus along with the inevitable international isolation and condemnation of the Israeli attack which would almost certainly follow, Israel could well be forced to fight a three front war which she just might not be able to win, while at the same time the rest of the Middle East is going up in flames after Iran sets her terrorist network into motion.
For me, as an Israeli American Jew, the most hideous and tragic aspect of this entire conundrum is that I remain convinced that Iran is planning to throw the entire world into an Armegeddon type war just as soon as they complete the production of a nuclear ballistic missile.
But I also wholeheartedly believe that if Iran suffers a military attack before then, she will definitely unleash every force at her disposal to try to destroy at least Israel, and try to throw the rest of the world into complete and irreversible economic, social, political, and military chaos. God help us!
ML:
ML:
Yes, he probably believes it, and of course he can write whatever he wishes, as we all can. It’s up to the rest of us to sort it out, at which the blogosphere excels.
I rather doubt that Iran is remotely ready for war with either the US or Israel. That little charade of digging–or announcing that they are digging–more than three hundred thousand graves along the Iraqi border, that’s the sort of thing that’s done by people who are trying to stall for more time, hoping to get the bomb and thus deter us. And of course they could just be laying mines.
One thing we know, however: the attacks against Israel and the United States will keep coming, at times and places of Iranian choosing. They have been waging war for nearly thirty years and will not stop now.
Jul 1, 2008 - 3:26 pm Tom W.:“God help us!”
Oh, please. Stop.
This reeks of the “elite Republican Guard” garbage spewed by the mainstream media before both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Israelis haven’t unleashed the full power of their military since about 1973. Despite what you’ve heard about the 2006 Lebanon War, the reality is that Hezbollah’s missiles weren’t able to do anywhere near the damage that everyone expected. The vaunted Russian Kornet anti-tank missiles took out a grand total of two Merkava tanks. More were damaged–some heavily–but only two were destroyed. It took over 700 Kornets to destroy two Merkavas. Woo-hoo!
The Israelis learned from their mistakes and have retrained their forces. If they attack Iran, they will first neutralize the Hezbollah and Hamas threats on their borders.
The Israelis also have the ability to destroy Iranian ballistic missiles in the booster phase, which means their defense technology is much further along than is generally assumed.
Sure, oil will spike for a short time, but if the Israelis and the U.S. attack Iran, it’s going to be a knockout blow that will destroy the mullahs’ offensive military capabilities for good. This won’t be some symbolic pinprick that will allow the Iranians to retaliate. The global economy won’t crash, because the fighting will be over quickly.
Besides, everyone expects an attack, which probably means that something different is in the works. Tommy Franks pulled off a sneak attack right under the media’s noses. We were able to keep Saddam from blowing all the oil wells in southern Iraq, even though they were wired with explosives.
Have a little faith. Have things ever turned out as badly for the U.S. and Israel as the “experts” predicted?
I think you know the answer.
Jul 1, 2008 - 5:45 pm narciso:For every Mylai , or even the “Copper Green’ assertions about Abu Ghraib, there are myriad fibs, lies, distortions. There were military intelligence officials at Abu Ghraib; but they were not systematically overseeing the operation, like the case with Quahtani, at Gitmo, KSM, Abu Zubeydah, Al Nashiri at posts in Thailand and Poland. early example was the story of Jesse Leaf; the Iran analyst that taught the SAVAK to torture employing Nazi techniques; doubtful but it serve as a pretext for Ahmadinjad’s crew in rallying support for the holding of
Jul 1, 2008 - 5:54 pm John in TX:the US Embassy employees. Then there is the
matter of the shootdown of KAL OO7; which he
chalked up to a deliberate US Govt. plot. The
Samson option; relied on two unreliable sources who would give Curveball a run for his money, one of which was Ari ben Menashe, a clerk in the Foreign Ministry; spinning his
Walter Mittyesque tale of Mossad derring do.
His reporting tried to discredit the Saddam plot against Bush. He floated the debunking of the attack on the Al Shifa plant in the Sudan. Most recently he tried to attribute the rise of the Islamist Fatah al Islam, to
the Hariri govt; which was ironic considering the problem the Lebanese army had dealing with them. This latest piece, will serve the purpose of deligitimazing any cooperation with the US govt; so when the Iranians get the bomb; he’ll blame the same
govt. that tried to stop it.
Ledeen’s a smart guy, so maybe he can explain why there is all the talk about bombing the nuclear facilities. Maybe some, but the processing takes a lot of electric power (the reason Oak Ridge was near the TVA, right?), so why not simply blast power plants , lines and distribution facilities since they’re on top and the nuclear stuff is built underground. No super-bunker buster needed, no dispersion of uranium, no fallout and it preserves the evidence. You want destabilization? Turn off the power. The mullahs will be history if that’s what it takes to get the lights, frig and AC back on.
ML:
What do I know? I’m against bombing, as you know, and if I were the Secretary of Defense and were ordered to wreck Iran’s nuclear program, I don’t think I’d call for a massive bombing raid. There are other ways, obviously, one of which you’ve identified.
Jul 1, 2008 - 6:03 pm Ira Zad:Sy Hersch is just doing his job: throwing the war planners off balance and wreck their timing. And yes, he gets paid to do it. But by more than just the New Yorker. Let’s say he and Vali Nasr get their incomes from the same sources.
If a war is not coming, it sure seems like a lot of wasted time and energy being thrown around for a smoke screen, doesn’t it?
A revolution will never come from inside of Iran, people are sleep walking through life in Iran, and some have benefited financially from the regime. The nouveaux riches in Tehran who have gotten fat under this regime from being penniless under the Shah will never attempt to overthrow it. And there are a lot of them, too. Add the fear, paralysis, and disillusionment of the rest of the mullah-hating majority, and it sure does not add up to revolution!
The Iranian people, sadly, deserve what they have due to their own selfishness, inaction, and acquiescence with the mullahs regime.
Trying to foment a revolution in Iran from outside is like trying to kindle wet wood. It won’t work with Iran.
We need a ‘force majeur’ to kindle things, a real huge one.
There is only one way left. Let’s be honest about this. And the sooner and bigger it happens, the better, as time is certainly not on our side.
Islamo-Fascism with its leaders in Tehran is on the march. You cannot revolt your way out of a mega trend in its initial stages.
Jul 1, 2008 - 8:36 pm Dan:Was European fascism overthrown by a revolution?
Let’s get real here. The time has come to strike and strike hard.
Or risk seeing B.Hussein Obama in a big bed with Tehran mullahs in a happy political orgy the like of which we have not seen since Jimmy Carter.
Professor,
our window of opportunity is closing.
The Iranians, with European help, are hardening the targets.
An assessment of the damage we delivered to IRAQI hardened targets, by using such things as “bunker busters,” doesn’t leave us with much confidence in our ability to “degrade” those targets the Iranians have more intensely hardened.
The hardening goes on daily.
Not to mention, they’re burying targets under residential areas, thus using their own citizens as human shields.
Furthermore, they’re dispersing what they can.
Are you content to provide them additional time, so that they might intensify their use of human shields, and provide them more time to disperse and to harden their infrastructure?
The policy you articulated years ago, {over a decade ago, AND WHICH WOULD HAVE WORKED}, has, by the passage of time, and because of the window of opportunity that is rapidly closing, ————————- is now fraught with peril for the United States, for the West and for Israel. For while we’re trying to destabilize that regime, {and we’re trying to destabilize it with a CIA that is the poster child for incompetence and insubordination…}, the Iranians are finishing and perfecting their Manhattan Project.
Bush blew it.
Condi blew it.
Powell blew it.
Cheney should have resigned in protest, and he has no influence anymore within this administration.
That Manhattan Projection will be allowed to proceed to final perfection, —————————— and then it simply becomes a matter of counting corpses.
The Bush administration will go down as history as the worst ever. And all because history will see that THE result of all its various policies, merely resulted in the establishment of a date certain for the extermination of millions of people in a nuclear holocaust.
That’s all we’re waiting for now —————————————————————- the mushroom clouds.
So many delude themselves that the ruling council only desires regional supremacy, and merely desires to be a “player.” Fools! The ruling council are ALREADY players, the whole world is discussing them, pondering them, focusing on them, mulling them, begging and pleading with them to come into some rough conformity with the spirit of the age.
They’re players alright.
Only the Almighty can avert what’s coming.
So say your prayers.
Jul 1, 2008 - 8:47 pm j green:I usually agree with Ira Zad on most things. For example, I am also certain that Vali Nasr and Sy Hersh have the same backers.
And I agree generally that an attack would destablize the government–but I don’t think that is the only way. Dr. Ledeen is right that their government is extremely hollow. There are many lesser measures that can be taken. The Iranian people will also blow with the wind, by which I mean that if a definitive global measure was taken (for example, cutting off their gasoline imports) then the people would rise up. They are primed. Even those “prosperous” people are themselves starving by normal standards. I know a lot of people inside Iran also, and all are skinny, miserable, and dissatisfied. Every single one.
Ira Zad’s point is well taken, and the measure of an attack (the bigger the better, as he says) will definitely 100% do the job, but we need even less than that. We need something serious that people over there can actually grasp and sink their teeth into. There are many many ways this can be done.
Another opportunity we cannot let pass is immediatley freezing fake foundations like Alavi and IMAN. We are simply not being serious abuot this whole ordeal and time is running out.
Don’t get me wrong, I will not feel at all bad if bombing occured in a few hours (I would be happy in fact) because we have little time and only few choices, but time has not yet run out and neither have our choices, though we are very short on both.
Jul 2, 2008 - 1:02 am Tom A:No, no George Bernard, of course.
Jul 2, 2008 - 1:31 am Tom A:Has Iran shown any territorial acquisitiveness in the modern era?
It seems to me that their jockeying and posturing — including their support of various anti-Western groups in various other territories is 100% defensive. And if *you* can’t figure out what it is that they might have to defend themselves against, then *you* haven’t been paying attention.
ML:
So killing Jews in Argentina is “defensive”?
Jul 2, 2008 - 5:08 am Tom A:Here’s a little help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Late_Modern_Era_.281921.E2.80.93.29
Operation Ajax?
SAVAK?
Supporting the poison gas using dictator who is at war with you?
Bringing back into Iraq the very same oil companies whose ejection prompted operation Ajax?
ML:
Don’t forget that the statement “supporting the poison gas-using dictator who is at war with you” applies to both Iran and Iraq. It is rarely pointed out that we gave military intelligence to Iran as part of the hostage ransoms, and then, in a Rube Goldberg sort of foreign policy, turned around and gave similar intelligence to Iraq. Heh.
Hmmm, yeah, what *does* Iran have to feel defensive about?
Jul 2, 2008 - 5:55 am Tom A:“ML: So killing Jews in Argentina is “defensive”?”
So, you think it was to gain territory? or as a first step toward a plan for genocide?
*If* what you are positing is that it was *morally reprehensible,* I’ll certainly grant you that, but do you really want to try to tally direct or by-proxy killings as a way of deciding who has the moral high-ground, here?
ML: You said “their support of various anti-Western groups in various other territories is 100% defensive.” I don’t think killing Jews at a Social Center in Buenos Aires is “defensive.”
Jul 2, 2008 - 6:18 am Blue Sun:Last summer, it appears from White House insiders that Dick Cheney was all ready to go into Iran.
All that stopped him was the resistance of Admiral William J. Fallon, appointed by President Bush to succeed General John Abizaid as commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) on January 4, 2007. This made Fallon General Petraeus’s boss. As combat commander of CENTCOM, he was an immovable force against an invasion of Iran last year.
This year, on March 11, 2008, SecDef Robert Gates announced Fallon’s resignation. This was interpreted widely as due to his unyielding opposition to military action against Iran.
A month later, Bush sockpuppet, General David Petraeus was chosen by Bush to succeed Fallon as CENTCOM commander.
Was Hersh wrong last year? Or was he right on the money, but Admiral Fallon managed to block Cheney at the last moment. My bet is on Fallon. But, now, with Fallon gone and a Bush loyalist in his place, and the old Iraq marketing machine at full speed, I think there is a very real possibility that Seymour Hersh’s prediction will come true, just a year late thanks to a heroic stand by Admiral Fallon.
It is interesting that so many of the comments are nothing more than ad hominem abusive comments filled with mockery and derision (and an absence of hard fact), and many more simply pronounce him wrong because he disagrees with the writers’ own dearly-held preconceptions and ideology.
Thomas Jefferson once commented,
“Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.”
No wonder I see so much ridicule on sites like this. Hmmmmm…
ML:
Some of the ridicule is because a lot of Hersh’s claims are ridiculous, some of it is itself ridiculous, I agree. Lots of the most offensive stuff gets censored; I don’t much like gratuitous nastiness. Thanks for your thoughtful post.
That said, I don’t think it parses. I think Fallon was removed because his own people couldn’t bear him, not because of his politics. His views on the Middle East were well known before he was appointed, and as I wrote in my blog, his statements are totally in sync with official administration policy. Further, if you, as Hersh, believe that he was purged because he was opposing war with Iran, then it is only logical to conclude that he lost that fight. Bushitlercheney would then be in a position to launch. But they didn’t, and my view is that they didn’t because they never intended to do it.
I find your portrayal of Petraeus unconvincing. He famously opposed the bushitlerchency strategy in Iraq, called for a fundamental change, and got it. That is not the way sockpuppets behave. And I have no reason to think Petraeus wants a military attack against Iran. So far as I know he’s never said any such thing. Indeed, I don’t know of a single senior person in this administration who does want war with Iran.
The Hersh crowd says that Cheney does want it. If so, he’s lost that debate. We’re not going to bomb Iran. If any such thing happens in the remaining months of this administration, I don’t think it will be done by us. I have said this as long as Hersh has been warning we would bomb Iran tomorrow morning, which is to say several years. So far I’ve been right, and he’s been wrong. Maybe things will change, life is full of change. So let’s touch base in six months, ok?
Jul 2, 2008 - 7:02 am Tom A:“ML: You said “their support of various anti-Western groups in various other territories is 100% defensive.” I don’t think killing Jews at a Social Center in Buenos Aires is “defensive.””
Yes, if you ask me, the reports on this incident never did really add up.
Was someone targeted? Was it a reprisal for another killing? How exactly did it make any sense at all — or are we to gather that we are fighting monsters, who, unlike us, kill for pleasure or for no reason at all?
If it was essentially motivated as part of some larger struggle to achieve security within the bounds of their own territory, then why would it not be right to call it “defensive”?
And it was by proxy, correct? Do we pretend that our agencies have not caused the death of innocents in our own proxy battles?
ML:
Just read “The Iranian Time Bomb,” it’s all there. Several Iranian leaders have been indicted for mass murder, and they are now on the Interpol Watch List. You really should not use “defensive” to describe a bombing attack against Argentinian Jews.
Jul 2, 2008 - 7:51 am Blue Sun:John in TX wrote “Ledeen’s a smart guy,”
A bit of history on Signore Doctore Ledeen:
IF YOU’RE GOING TO PRETEND TO SPEAK ITALIAN, GET THE WORDS RIGHT. IT WOULD BE “DOTTORE,” IF YOU WERE JUST TRANSLATING “DOCTOR” BUT THE CORRECT TERM WOULD BE “PROFESSORE.”
In 1974, Ledeen moved to Rome, Italy, where he specialized in the history of Italian Fascism. He wrote a defense of “Fascism as a movement” as opposed to “Fascism as a regime”, a distinction made by Fascism apologist Renzo de Felice. The book was entitled “Universal Fascism, the Theory and Practice of the Fascist International.”
I DID A BOOK LENGTH INTERVIEW WITH DE FELICE, IN WHICH HE INTRODUCED (I THINK FOR THE FIRST TIME) THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN “FASCISM MOVEMENT” AND “FASCISM REGIME.” IT IS HIS THEORY, NOT MINE, ALTHOUGH I, LIKE MOST SERIOUS HISTORIANS OF FASCISM, BELIEVE THERE IS MUCH TO RECOMMEND THE DISTINCTION. I HAVE NEVER DEFENDED ANYTHING ABOUT FASCISM, I LOATH IT. AND THE BOOK IN WHICH THE DISTINCTION APPEARED WAS CALLED “INTERVISTA SUL FASCISMO,” PUBLISHED BY THE LEFT-WING PUBLISHER LATERZA.
SO ZERO-FOR-THREE THERE.
In 1976, he co-write “Fascism: An Informal IntroductionTo Its Theory And Pracice,” with Renzo de Felice.
THAT’S THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE INTERVIEW. I ASKED THE QUESTIONS.
In 1980, Ledeen worked for SISME (the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service). At that time, he was circumstantially tied to the notorious secret society, the infamous P2 Masonic Lodge, which functioned as a criminal shadow government.
I HELPED CONDUCT ONE TABLE-TOP EXERCISE INVOLVING THE BEST WAY TO COOPERATE WITH FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS. I HAD NO TIES, CIRCUMSTANTIAL OR OTHER, TO ANY MASONIC LODGE, INCLUDING P2.
Many in the CIA, including Vincent Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, have strongly implied that Ledeen was the man who organized the meeting between members of Douglas Feith’s Pentagon office and the Italian security services to promote the forged Niger yellowcake memo and bring it to the notice of the White House. Giraldi wrote a piece in “The American Conservative” implying that Ledeen may have the “intermediary in coordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing.” In fact, “The American Conservative” has long maintained that Ledeen is a strong sympathizer for Italian Fascism and he is “a clear apologist” for the “Fascism as Movement” philosophy.
AS I HAVE SAID MANY TIMES, CANNISTRARO AND GIRALDI ARE LIARS. I HAVE NO CONNECTION OF ANY SORT TO THE NIGER AFFAIR. THEIR LIES ABOUT MY INVOLVEMENT IN THE NIGER STORY HAVE BEEN REFUTED BY NUMEROUS REPORTERS, INCLUDING DAVID CORN AND MICHAEL ISIKOFF, WHO CERTAINLY HAVE NO BRIEF FOR ME. AND IF THERE WERE DECENT LIBEL LAWS IN AMERICA I WOULD HAPPILY SUE CANNISTRARO AND GIRALDI, ALONG WITH “THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE.”
Ledeen is also a shameless historical revisionist about his own policies. In November of 2006, when the neocons like Richard Perle, David Frum, and Ledeen were trying to blame the failing Iraq war on Bush, Rumsfeld, and everybody but the neocons, Ledeen wrote in NRO:
“I do not feel ‘remorseful,’ since I had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy. I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place and I advocated - as I still do - support for political revolution in Iran…”
Yet, in 2002, in NR, Ledeen argued for “the desperately needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein,” claiming “that Saddam is actively supporting al Qaeda, and Abu Nidal, and Hezbollah.”
WAR TAKES MANY FORMS. I’VE REPEATEDLY DISCUSSED MY PREFERENCE FOR POLITICAL, RATHER THAN MILITARY METHODS. I LAID OUT A POLITICAL STRATEGY IN “THE WAR AGAINST THE TERROR MASTERS.” I PLEAD GUILTY TO HAVING FAILED TO SAY THIS EACH AND EVERY TIME I WROTE ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR, BUT ONLY SOMEONE ACTING IN BAD FAITH CAN SYSTEMATICALLY IGNORE MY WRITING, WHICH BLUE DOES.
An aging Abu Nidal had been retired and inactive for almost 20 years at that point, and why a secular, socialist Ba’athist leader would be simultaneously supporting al Qaeda (a radical Sunni Islamic fundamentalist group that had called for his overthrow) and Hezbollah (a radical Shi’ite Islamic fundamentalist group controlled by Saddam’s worst enemy, Iran, which was also trying to overthrow him) simply begs human intelligence.
IT SHOULDN’T BE NECESSARY TO POINT BLUE TO THE ABUNDANT LITERATURE SHOWING SADDAM’S COLLUSION WITH AL QAEDA, NOR TO EXPLAIN YET AGAIN THAT SUNNIS AND SHI’ITES HAVE LONG WORKED TOGETHER.
And, despite his claim that he favored political revolution in Iran, not war, on this very website he has claimed:
“I have little sympathy for those who have avoided the obvious necessity of confronting Iran”
THAT IS NOT A CALL FOR INVASION. “CONFRONTING” IS A DIFFERENT THING.
“This is a particularly good moment to go after the mullahs, because they are deeply engaged in a war of all against all within Iran.”
DITTO
“Just as the likes of General Abizaid need to be replaced with generals who are prepared to attack targets like the terrorist training camps (especially those used by Hizbollah) in Iran and Syria, so we need civilian leadership that will attack our enemies politically.”
YES, I THINK WE SHOULD ATTACK THE TERRORIST CAMPS. THAT’S CALLED LEGITIMATE SELF DEFENSE, IN MY VIEW.
In talking about Iran, he wrote in NR, “The talk about peace, and the endless ‘plans’ that emerge from one capital or another, are no more and no less than stalling tactics by those who oppose the president’s vision. Peace in this world only follows victory in war.”
To determine what Michael Ledeen’s beliefs are, you first have to specify which day you are talking about.
I wouldn’t trust his pronouncements and analyses further than I could spit a rat.
Quotes attributed to him include:
“we are a warlike people (Americans)…we love war”
IS THAT FALSE? I DON’T THINK SO.
“Change — above all violent change — is the essence of human history”
CERTAINLY TRUE
“the only way to achieve peace is through total war”
I’D HAVE TO SEE THE CONTEXT, BUT AS A RULE PEACE OCCURS WHEN ONE SIDE DEFEATS THE OTHER IN WAR; THE TERMS IMPOSED BY THE WINNER ARE CALLED “PEACE.”
“The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people”
INTUITIVELY OBVIOUS
“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business”
Jonah Goldberg of the National Review personally recalls Ledeen saying the last quote in a speech in the early ’90s. Goldberg calls this the “Ledeen Doctrine.”
TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT. I WAS TALKING ABOUT MACHIAVELLI’S POINT THAT FEAR IS MORE RELIABLE THAN LOVE. I SAID I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, EXCEPT BY…DEMONSTRATING POWER. IT WAS NOT A POLICY RECOMMENDATION, HEH.
He is also an avowed admirer of Niccolò Machiavelli.
TRUE ENOUGH. HE’S ONE OF THE GREATEST THINKERS OF ALL TIME.
ML:
This is the sort of gratuitous personal attack I usually delete, but since Blue was thoughtful enough to combine the usual slimes from libelous individuals in one place, I’m going to insert my remarks into the text of his comment.
Jul 2, 2008 - 8:12 am Blue Sun:ML,
First of all, Bush has been publicly talking about a military blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. That is, by international law, and offensive military action. Second, if it is Israel that first bombs al Quds headquarters or suspected nuclear facilities, few in this country would doubt that they were doing it as our surrogate, with full exhoration by Bush and Cheney. Certainly Iran and the entire Islamic world will see any attack by Israel as a surrogate attack for the United States, so the effect will be to put the U.S. and Iran on a full war footing. All Iran has to do is sink one oil tanker in the Straits, and the skyrocketing marine insurance rate will most likely give us $500/bbl oil prices almost overnight.
As for Cheney, he never gives up looking for a cassus belli for attacking any of the countries on his original list, as specified by Rumsfeld’s memo of 9/30/2001. In addition to Iraq, they specified Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia. We are currently fighting a low-intensity covert action in both Iran and Somalia, so things are moving forward in Cheney’s and PNAC’s plans.
Cheney tried the nuclear threat (but was blocked by the delayed release of the NIE), the EFD threat (but couldn’t produce concrete evidence), the arming of Iraqi militias (though the one militia Iraq has been most involved in arming and training for decades is the Badr Brigade, who wear the Iraqi Security forces uniform and are controlled from within the Green Zone by Maliki’s chief supporter Abdul Aziz al-Hakim), and anything else he thinks will gin up our hatred and fear for Iran.
If it looks like McCain (the new horse for the neoconcservative dominionists now that Bush is a swayback) isn’t going to win the election, I wouldn’t even be totally surprised to see some sort of “terrorist threat or attack” against the U.S. or “aggressive action” against Iraq become the pretext for a U.S. bombing attack on Iran, followed by a declaration of martial law in America and a “postponement” of the election.
After all, Cheney and the rest of the PNAC crew know that if Obama wins, their last chance to invade Iran and neutralize it as a potential threat against Israel is over.
Jul 2, 2008 - 8:28 am Ira Zad:Suddenly, I see stars and feel that I am in Dreamland…Area 51’s got nothing on the way I am feeling now! LOL
Jul 2, 2008 - 8:51 am Ira Zad:Both Mottaki (the regime’s FM) in Madird today, as well as Admiral Mullen called military attack on Iran ‘craziness’.
What’s wrong with this picture when a high ranking US Admiral agrees with our enemies?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,375242,00.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aybTLOnt5kQs&refer=home
Jul 2, 2008 - 10:40 am narciso:WHEN YOU WRITE IN CAPITAL LETTERS, DON’T YOU IN INTERNET PARLANCE, that indicates you’re practically screaming. Actually Vincent Cannistraro (who’s been on the record as believing that OKC and TWA 800 were islamist
Jul 2, 2008 - 10:47 am Tom A:terrorist attacks)and Phillip Giraldi (who’s been a flack for Syrian jihadists, and recently wrote a piece where he tries to insinuate that Mossad were responsible for
9/11, by ommission if not commission) track record isn’t very good on these matters, specially the Niger story (ie; Rocco Martino’s ties to French as well as Italian
intelligence)or the London Telegraph actually discovering the forgers were two junior staffers at the Niger embassy in Rome.
Some commentators here, seem to think hitting
the Israeli embassy and the Jewish Community Center in Argentina, are rational responses to taking out a Hezbollah chieftain. The Al Quds division of Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Guard Corp (Vevak-Sepah-Pasdaran) is indeed
the group responsible for the EFPs, the development of Hezbollah; since the era of the late Mustafa Chamran, the protectors of
Muqtada Sadr, and the tormenters of the Iranian people. The last NIE ignored these details as well as the Mousavian letter to Khamenei outlining the degree of deception vs. the PC2 and the IAEA. Now we have Sy Hersh whose errors have been manifestly pointed out, and who was giving briefings on Iranian radio not so long ago. We have Sydney Blumenthal who’s early misdeeds begin with associate with the KGB’s catspaw Phillip Agee, and go on from there.
OK, so you all are saying that the massacre at the Jewish Community Center in Argentina was in response to an assassination — so it was somehow intended as retaliation, but should not be considered as “defensive” or even”rational” because so many innocent lives were directly targeted, right? Can I be getting this straight? You are now anxious to spill the blood of as many Iranians as you can get your bombs on in retaliation for their retaliation to your - how was it, again, that you justified that assassination, originally? I suppose there is a moral distinction to be made between saying “I want to kill 100 children to teach my enemy a lesson” and saying “I don’t care if it’s likely that I will kill 100 children so long as I teach my enemy a lesson” — but my guess is, if such judgments were made in this universe, you’d both be going to hell for it.
Jul 2, 2008 - 2:38 pm Tom W.:“Second, if it is Israel that first bombs al Quds headquarters or suspected nuclear facilities, few in this country would doubt that they were doing it as our surrogate, with full exhoration by Bush and Cheney.”
Jeez, I’m confused!
I thought the Israelis controlled the U.S. Now you’re telling me that we control the Israelis?
Do we trade off control of each other, like a sort of geopolitical S&M couple who switch roles as the dominant and the submissive, just to keep things spicy?
Is that how it works?
Jul 2, 2008 - 2:39 pm Ira Zad:There’s a viscous rumor on the net just now that Iran may be blinking, it says that they are purportedly accepting 5+1 negotiations and suspending enrichment for 6-weeks. The source is the always wrong and unreliable (like Hersh) rumor monger, Porter, but I am not sure what to make of it. I hope it is just that: a ploy rumor designed to stop pressures on Iran.
But if it is true, Condi’s N.Korean style gambit/deal/behind-the-scenes-ploy may be working. She intends to stop Israel and Cheney in their tracks. She is no friend of either, nor is she a friend of Iranian people.
Condi needs a deal real badly to stop attack on Iran. And Israel wants to attack to stop a deal.
So which one will come first? The attack or the deal?
If it is a deal, then this story gets sadder by the day. Support for revolution? What revolution? Only deals.
http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/07/more-on-iran-ac.html
Jul 3, 2008 - 12:24 am John D Edwards:You are naive sir if you think there are no plans in place for the bombing of, or war with Iran. I agree it is unlikely and would be stupid if carried out, but Hersch is doing a great service by keeping this issue at the fore. We know that this administration is capable of foolish things (like all administrations) and we have learned from the run-up to Iraq, that unless journalists act “pre-emptively”, the story will be told and manipulated by the administration. There is more truth in Hersch’s work than in all the nonsense about Iraq we were fed by the administration.
Jul 3, 2008 - 4:16 am John R:Reading this thread is truly depressing. I happen to share Dan and Ira’s opinions more or less. I’m depressed by the complete unreality of some of the others posting here. Tom’s comment about a war costing millions of lives, for example. Millions, really? Or exaggerating the Abu Ghraib story way out of proportion in its portrayal of our military and the exemplary men and women who serve. But most of all, for their complete lack of recognition (denial is probably more accurate)of the evil, awful nature of the Iranian terror masters. Nobody here so far is lauding the wonderful skills of Bush and the administration. But we’re also not putting them in the same camp as the terror masters. But some of you are. And that’s disgusting.
Jul 3, 2008 - 6:51 am Tom A:To John R: I believe “displace” was one of the verbs in a list (killed, injured and displaced, if memory serves) that referred to the “millions”… But, hey, you’re really only swatting at straw men in your comments, anyway. You’ve been misled to focus your aggressiveness on one particular set of “bad guys” (and, yes, in many cases, truly, deeply reprehensible guys - no argument there) in order to make you ready to accept all the collateral damage to the innocents and your own culpability in their suffering — perhaps to make you willing to sacrifice all that you hold dear — and for what? Do you honestly find in your study of these matters that there is some sort of comic-bookish “good guys” and “bad guys” scenario at work here? I ask you to do nothing else but to read — from as neutral a source as you can find — an encyclopedia of some sort — the history of Iran in the 20th century. My sense in such matters is that the “side” that holds more power bears greater moral responsibility for how the conflict proceeds. In this case, in my estimation, that would be us.
Jul 3, 2008 - 7:18 am Ira Zad:Thanks John R and J green.
Another day, another delay, another appeasement, a ‘carte blanche’ issued to the Islamic Theocracy of Terror in Iran. So the endless ‘hell’ for the world and the Iranian people continues, as state department fossils headed by an incompetent and ignorant sec. of state think hard to find new ways to weasel their unworthy selves out of history. Do not be surprised if Condi suddenly announces a N.Korean-style worthless and treasonous ‘agreement’ with Iran regime which could be sprang on us before long. And that, if it occurs, will be like the NIE: it will knock the military option off the table, this time may be for good.
And B.Hussein Obama(BHO) will take charge of the rest of the surrender during his term. Does Israel know that its abandonement (satrted by Condi) will be complete under BHO? Iranian people know theirs will be.
You are right, the situation “is” depressing.
Jul 3, 2008 - 8:35 am j green:I don’t understand at all this discussion here regarding the Jewish Center in Argentina. I’ve watched it unfold for a couple of days and still can’t get it. I think Tom A is a little too educated for his own good and for me to understand him. Defensive, etc, have nothing to do with anything.
Hitler said the holocaust was defensive (retailiation because the Jews were “sucking the life from Germany” whatever that means). Were my sources not “neutral”?
An Iranian president and others have warrants outstanding for their arrests in connection with this massacre on their orders on foreign soil and the victims were targetted because of this obsession Iran’s mullahs have always had and continue to have for killing Jews. These are simply facts. They still warn us frequently that they will erase the “zionist entity” off the map, yet when they actually attack Jews we are surprised? Even some call it “defensive”?
Now, how are you too smart for your own good? You are better informed because you read “neutral” sources and we should do the same. I guess by “neutral” you mean that they also state “their side” (kind of like “they were sucking the blood out of Germany?”) The materials you read, written by the regime’s stealth cronies no doubt, have planted in your head things like why they did it, what is their psychology, it was defensive, what is the root cause, and now, the enlightened person that you are, you are actually talking about the subject on their terms–by mentioning those dumb counterpoints and not realizing it is a massacre.
Even after reading my response here, it probably won’t trigger an epiphany for you. You will probably want to defend your untenable position, and that’s a credit to how enlightened you are and how well you synthesized their propaganda. Now, are your sources so neutral, after they planted these seeds so firmly into your head?
Let’s not talk about this community center bombing on their terms like “defensive” any more, please. That’s insulting to the innocents who died and not really constructive. There are no buyers here for that snake oil–take it to CNN and Sy Hersh.
Jul 3, 2008 - 10:23 am Tom A:I continue to be impressed by the length and general thoughtfulness of the responses on this board. Seriously. I know that these issues often call for moral outrage more than diffident consideration. The problem is that given the history of the last 100 years (only the years of focus, no claims that they are singular in their outrages) it seems to me that roughly speaking “both sides” (I say roughly and use quotation marks because such things can hardly be said to have only two sides) have legitimate claims to the court of moral outrage and I see that outrage being used by much cooler heads to pursue much drier and bank-able ends.
To continue to talk in terms of genocide and world conspiracies serves no other purpose than to give justification to - better yet, cover to - the bloody power and revenge seeking interests on both sides of this conflict.
But, then, that depends. It’s actually fairly easy to see the wrong-headedness of going to war; you all could have shut me up long ago by simply asking “What then?”. I suppose I only ask my country to avoid the seductive jingoism of “justice on our side, battling against the evil on theirs” — it’s simply never true. War is always a vast tapestry of horror and injustice on all sides. War is never to be wished for or entered into with anything but the gravest sense of the tragedy of our condition that we could not find an alternative — nearly any alternative - to this. That ain’t what I’m hearing in everyone’s analysis, here. If you *want war* you are in a state that will lead to escalating violence and that you will come to regret. If you are the most powerful nation in the world and *want war* you are simply lazy, not honest in your intentions and allegiances, or take pleasure in the misery of others. That is, you aren’t someone I tend to agree with on most days.
ML:
Okay, you’re a moral relativist. I get it. But like so many moral relativists, you are forever condemning us for our jingoism, without noticing that the jihadis are trying to kill anyone that disagrees with them. Not what I would call great moral uplift, if you get my drift.
Jul 3, 2008 - 12:34 pm j green:Tom, you keep saying this is all about outrage. Let us be clear: it has nothing to do with outrage and its not about emotional at all–”not one iota,” (to quote Ahmadinejad.
An objective cold sober look at the hard facts leads to my conclusion. There is no retailiation, retribution, court of emotional opinion, none of these elements which you have single-handedly injected into this discussion. And when you say those, you repaint the entire discussion as such. And another thing–most here actually don’t support war with Iran, per se (pursuit of Iranian agents killing American Troops in Iraq and running back into Iran is legitimate self-defense so that’s different).
Dr. Ledeen has long been a proponent that you can still wage a war by means other than militarily (for example, one element is by TV by fixing VOA). And you yourself know all these things already, yet you still say what you say.
You may not agree with some of the viewpoints, but don’t belittle everyone’s analysis by painting them as a bunch of midget-minded emotional war-mongers with an axe to grind on Ahmadinejad’s or Khamenei’s skull because they looked cross at Israel. That is not at all what it is.
If anyone, you are the emotional party–just look at the basis for your claims of “millions dying” and “they are just as right as you are in the court of emotionalities” or whatever kangaroo court you made up.
Jul 3, 2008 - 2:20 pm Ron Kean:Watch out. Even a broken clock is right one time every day.
Jul 3, 2008 - 7:54 pm Ira Zad:It looks like Condi pulled it off, Iran regime is offering a nuke deal: http://newsmax.com/newsfront/iran_nuclear_enrichment/2008/07/03/109852.html
And US Dept of State immediately rewards Iran: http://newsmax.com/newsfront/Envoy_iran_attack/2008/07/03/109714.html
How can you help a revolution in Iran when we are actively making all sorts of deals with all the remaining evil of axis countries?
You want depressing? Just wait, it may become suicidally so a bit later on.
Jul 3, 2008 - 9:20 pm Tom A:A moral relativist? I don’t think so - actually I think I’m more of a moral absolutist than those of you whose sympathies are skewed by the accidental associations of your birth. I think what’s “wrong” with me in most of your eyes would be more that I truly believe that *all* of humanity is striving, in equal measure, to live moral lives (so, if you find evil - or good - in one society, you are equally likely to find it in similar abundance, in another). I think there is something universal about our moral sense that then gets projected through the prisms of our local culture and history. I think we are fundamentally irrational creatures and that we use reason to communicate coherently in relatively peaceful times and to construct agreements, which buttress our lives against the storms of our unreasonable natures. War is in a category by itself and is always immoral. It is simply a sign of failure on our part to build the social structures necessary to mitigate against its being necessary. But I don’t mean that passively — as in, “Oh we just need to institute a world government and we can do away with war” — this sort of description of what I mean leads to paranoid fantasies of the stifling nature of such over-arching power structures and advances the conversation not at all. Rather, I think, such arrangements - such institutions - are only visible in retrospect — once they are visible they require their own array of continual critical assessment and adjustment. What is called for in prospect is a recognition of the wider context of any particular conflict. How wide? It’s fascinating actually - merely by digging deeper to understand the competing claims and considering further the history of the conflict, one comes to the point where the emotional appeal to immediate bloody action fades. That’s how wide. It’s not that conflict and strife disappear from life (that would be boring), but that the impulse to murder is sublimated.
OK, I’ve gone off the deep-end, here, a bit, I realize. I’m no academic. I don’t have this philosophy systematically worked out or connected with the proper labels to the wider world of thinking on such matters. I’m reaching for something in reaction to the craziness of the calls for war I see around me. Discussion boards such as this one - and topics as serious as this - are probably not the place to be quite so tentative and openly speculative. I’ll come back when I can stand and fight to the last.
Jul 4, 2008 - 1:00 am John R:Tom A’s last remarks demonstrate that he’s really a poseur. Oh, and please spare me your patronizing history lessons, sir. You checkmated yourself in this argument by admitting “war is always immoral”. I hate to break it to you but there is such a thing as a just war. In this current war - a war declared on us by our enemies, the just side is us and those who oppose the jihadists. That you have nothing to offer in the way of defeating them is what set some of us off in this thread. That is until now - now that we know you admit your inability to distinguish good guys from bad guys.
Jul 7, 2008 - 5:09 am