Let’s start with Arthur Herman, a wise and eloquent writer who wrote an important piece for Commentary a while back. Herman’s overall argument was that our attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq could not have been avoided, and in the course of explicating all the reasons, he raised the issue of deception. Were we deceived by our own lousy intelligence? His answer was no, we were deceived by Saddam himself:
by far the most important deceiver was Saddam himself. For more than a decade, he had consistently acted like a guilty man, evading inspections and moving trucks from palace to palace in the dead of night. Even his own army officers, Feith writes, believed he was hiding biological and chemical weapons. And as became clear from his post-capture interrogations, this was precisely the impression he intended to convey, assuming that it would be enough in itself to deter not only an American invasion but an insurrection by Iraqi Kurds or Shiites, or even—his most consistent worry—an attack by Iran.
It never seems to have occurred to Saddam that an American President would take him seriously enough to decide that his supposed WMD stockpiles and programs had to be destroyed by any means necessary.
Actually, I think that the interrogations show that Saddam was also deceived, but that is beside the point here. He rightly stresses that the Americans bought in to the deception, and as a result Saddam was destroyed. Deception is a multi-edged sword.
Somebody might point that out to the mullahs in Tehran. Of late, they have trotted out deception after deception:
By far the most hilarious–bringing back memories of al Qaeda’s claim early in the war to have captured an American soldier, only to have the “hostage” turn out to be a G.I. Joe toy–was the recent photo of a “new warplane,” which on examination was another plastic toy.
This was of a piece with the Photoshopped “evidence” of “new Iranian missiles,” which was doubly deceptive: it was an old missile, not (as claimed) a new one, and there was only one of “them,” not (as claimed) four launched simultaneously.
They have many other deceptions, and this sort of trickery is so common–and our actual knowledge so poor–that it’s sometimes very difficult to sort out the gold from the dross. A few days ago, the Iranians informed Mr. al Baradei that they would no longer permit his UN inspectors to look at their nuclear program. And then Ahmadi-Nezhad tells the world that Iran has doubled the number of centrifuges humming away to enrich uranium. Is it true, or just another plastic toy? We don’t know.
And so we are facing a situation vis-a-vis Iran that is remarkably similar to the one we had to contend with re: Iraq. A hostile dictatorship, actively attacking American soldiers, sponsoring terrorism, and crushing its own people. Oddly enough, Iran’s greatest risk is convincing us they are on the verge of an atomic bomb. And they’re trying.
Of course, we’re not their only audience, a lot of their deception is aimed at their own people. They are trying to convince Iranians that there is no hope for them from the West, because the Islamic Republic is just too potent. But that, too, runs the risk of backfiring.
And that’s why they’re killing anyone who steps out of line. Thirty in one day today.
How will this play out? I don’t know. This administration certainly doesn’t want to attack Iran. But we may be deceived into doing it.
PJM Home
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4 Comments
1. j green:The Libs play dumb so they can keep complaining. If someone went to a cop and deceived him by fakely confessing to killing someone (like Saddam saying to us that he had an array of weapons) and that cop had reason to believe someone had in fact died (as the Bush and Clinton administrations had real intel which pointed to weapons), then that cop is compelled to act and he would be derelicting his duty if he didn’t. Now you might say that my cop scenario is stupid and highly unlikely that some oaf wuold confess to doing something he didn’t, but what Saddam did was exactly as stupid.
I wouldn’t call Iraq (or Iran) a case being “deceived” per se. I would call it being “compelled” or “obligated” or “forced”. Any administration that ignores the intelligence is performing a dereliction of its most sacred duty to protect the U.S. from all threats.
On the Iran topic, we often talk about the farce that is the the “Grand Bargain” scenario that infatuates U.S. adminsitrations. Iran is not interested in our Grand Bargain because they have one of their own–and they are moving towards it with all the speed they can muster and no negotiation is necessary. Their “insurance policy” is the bomb. This sets them on an inevitable collission course with the West.
Saddam may well have been a victim of disinformation himself, thinking he had bigger teeth than he had, coupled with his refusal to allow us to verify anything, but we have confirmed that Iran is indeed moving towards its goal.
Jul 28, 2008 - 9:22 am 2. Dan:A regime that willingly, nay, gleefully eradicates its own citizens, is a regime likely to endure.
The Soviets and the Warsaw Bloc collapsed only when they sent the signal that they lacked the nerve to hose down the opposition in the streets.
Tehran has sent no such signal.
Recall how they sent Hezbollah into that university campus a couple of years back. They had no compunction about turning a place of education into a charnel house.
They consider those opposed to them as kuffir, not just political opponents but apostates of islam.
So far Tehran has been very successful in selling their people to pass on the huge showdown with the regime, because the West, in the interest of “stability,” will side with the regime and NOT the people.
That regime isn’t going anywhere, not unless we make it.
And Washington isn’t interested in empowering the people, they’re clearly interested in buying off the ruling clique, or as some think tank types phrase it, “co-opting” them.
This isn’t going to end well.
Jul 28, 2008 - 9:57 pm 3. Ira Zad:Dan said: “That regime isn’t going anywhere, not unless we make it.”
I agree wholeheartedly and completely. The wishful thinkers in the west who dream about an internal uprising toppling the Islamic Terrorist Republic of Iran are sorely mistaken. Wake up and smell the coffee, please. Iranian regime has won politically against the west inside of Iran and in the eyes of many Islamists worldwide. Iranian regime gives warmth to the rest of the Islamists in the world that “yes, defeating US politically is possible, Look at us, they say, we have done it.” –Also, militarily, through assymetric warfare and terrorism in Iraq they dealt a big blow to the US and Iraqis. The notion that they (the Iranians) now have totally been defeated in Iraq is premature at best. More like a strategic withdrawal by Iran for nuke gambit talks to go on giving Iran more and more time to kill.
There is only one single solution left on the table to solve the Iranian dilemma, and that is hitting them with all we got, and hitting them hard, the harder the better. That is the only way left to rid the world of this dirty regime; and it is getting increasingly later and later as Rice’s portege Bush continues to twidle his thumbs and mark time until he leaves office in un-glory.
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:22 am 4. Ira Zad:Why Bush Folded on Iran
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/31/iran/
Let’s go home, it’s all over for Iran.
Aug 3, 2008 - 5:45 pmThis administration will be a despised one by left, and the right as well. A blot of shame in our foreign policy history.