- At April 13, 2006
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
8
The Mice of War
Last week journalist Seymour M. Hersh caused a stir in a New Yorker article in which he said the Bush administration was drawing up targeting plans for air strikes on Iran’s nuclear plants and other strategic targets. Hersh said U.S. Special Forces were already operating covertly in Iran, and that the administration refused to take a nuclear “bunker buster” strike off the table. I learned about the New Yorker piece from fantasy writer Jeff Ford (14theditch), who had an interesting post about it in LiveJournal.
(And by the way, if you’re not familiar with Jeff’s work, I highly recommend you stop reading this drivel immediately and go buy a copy of The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories. His new book, The Empire of Ice Cream, is just out this month.)
In any case, I believe Hersh: he was right about the non-existent WMDs in Iraq; about the administration’s push for war there; and about the abuses at Abu Ghraib. But there’s nothing surprising about Hersh’s article—many nations, including the U.S., maintain war plans for even the most remote contingencies. Thousands of American, Russian and Chinese ICBMs are targeted on major cities and strategic targets. That’s in peacetime. Our government would be remiss in not having plans, even military plans, to deal with an emerging Iranian nuclear weapons capability. In the hands of any other administration, such war plans would still be cause for grave concern, but not terrifying. Deterrence works only if other nations can’t be sure whether the U.S. will use nuclear weapons in response to an attack with WMDs. (And that is terrifying, but it’s not a logic unique to the Bush administration.) “Messianic” and “legacy” are the words Hersh reports hearing most frequently in connection with the president’s military adventures in Iraq and Iran.
Of the many things about the Hersh article that worries me, exhibit one is the current administration’s incompetence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter, though less in the public eye than Iraq, is rapidly devolving back to a medieval theocracy, over which the Taliban and various warlords are fighting for control. The government under Hamid Karzai is only a nominal impediment to the ambitions of these warring factions. As bad as Afghanistan is, Iraq is worse. The U.S. military controls only the ground it stands on, and barely that. Outside the U.S. circle of power—most of the populated areas of the country—the lives of ordinary Iraqis are becoming more nasty, brutish, and short each day. And this, don’t forget, is the administration’s signature effort.
Iran’s population is more than two-and-a-half times larger than Iraq’s; its area almost four times that of Iraq’s, and has an economy almost six times as large. If an invasion of Iraq was a debacle, given this administration’s track record, an attack on Iran would be global catastrophe.
It’s hard to know how seriously to take Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s bellicose rhetoric, but it seems obvious that if the U.S. attacks, even with “surgical” airstrikes, Iran will have little incentive not to launch attacks against the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.
The question becomes what do we do then? More air strikes? Do we bomb Tehran into rubble? I don’t think the administration would launch a nuclear attack in response to terrorist attacks by Iran, even on U.S. soil, but with 125,000 troops in Iraq, we don’t have a lot of other options. For that matter, even with a fresh army and no commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, an Iranian ground war would be a terrible gamble. I don’t know if it could generate a world war, but a U.S. attack on Iran would certainly further inflame Muslim sentiment against us. How many people would we have to kill or subjugate to “win”?
Perhaps worst of all, there may be no good response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Not every problem has a solution. What’s truly terrifying is that this administration is demonstrably unequipped, intellectually and morally, to make these high-stakes decisions. The president and his allies in Congress have bungled every major initiative they’ve launched.
As I said in Jeff’s blog, it wouldn’t surprise me if Hersh is right, if the president’s finger is on the trigger, and the military is already sending teams into Iran. Such a posture is entirely consistent with the administration’s reflexive reliance on military force, completely unhitched from any concern for the consequences. Even some of the neocons are caviling at this fight, and when your recklessness can scare that cadre of ideological stoners, you know you’ve achieved a perfect level of irrationality.
Perhaps the most troubling thing about the way this administration conducts foreign policy is that it has taken most Americans (neocon operatives and right-wing barking heads included), so long to be troubled by it, and that more than 30 percent of the public still supports the president’s war in Iraq. (I find the Thomas Friedman hawks most repellent of all: their cry is “We wanted a war, but GOSH! not this war!”)
Decent, honorable people can contemplate, and carry out, horrible acts in the service of what they hope is a higher good. Roosevelt and his generals ordered an unprecedented slaughter of civilians in bomber campaigns against German and Japanese cities, in the belief they were doing so for a greater good. It’s a horrible burden for the decision makers and the warriors to live with. George McGovern was a bomber pilot the 8th Air Force, flying 35 combat missions over Europe in World War II. He was disgusted by the violence and carnage, though convinced of its necessity at the time, and ran his failed presidential campaign largely in opposition to the Vietnam War. In several conversations about war and its practitioners, Rick Bowes and I have noted that the most reflexively bellicose individuals are often the ones who’ve never heard a shot fired in anger, or had to live with the guilt of having killed another human being.
(Richard Bowes, by the way, is another fantasy writer with whom you should be acquainted: his book Minions of the Moon, is transcendent.)
And that lack of awareness, finally, is the most damning indictment of the Bush administration. Aside from the president’s cosmetic turn as a Texas Air National Guard pilot, none of the top officials in his administration have ever served in uniform, and the president himself only did so to obtain a safe perch on which to avoid the Vietnam war. That’s not to say that only former combatants can make informed, humane decisions about war, but administration officials’ scrupulous avoidance of combat certainly casts a long shadow over their decision to send thousands of Americans to die, and to cause the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqisthe vast majority of whom are non-combatants.
The President of the United States is an elephant in a roomful of mice, some of whom he’s sworn to protect; others he’d like to protect if he could; and some he’d kill immediately, given the chance. But the position carries so much power that every move the president makes, not just military decisions, kills some mice. Institute a minor rule change at the Department of Health and Human Services, and its a statistical certainty that someone will die as a result. Announce an economic program to boost development in Louisiana, and it’s a given that someone, somewhere will suffer from unintended consequences. Launch a war against a foreign country, and no matter how just the cause, you can be sure thousands of innocents will die, and tens of thousands more plunged into chaos and misery.
You would think that five years of bearing such inhuman responsibility would sober any person, but not the president, apparently, nor his top advisors. Having made the gravest possible choice in Iraq with catastrophic results, the administration appears poised to repeat its mistakes in Iran. As the president thunders around the room in search of his legacy, all the mice can do is try to scamper out of the way.
c3fyn
Cogent. All too cogent. And I think of this snippet of Dubya in action. Still smug, still completely…out of touch? I don’t even know what to call it anymore. I wonder if I would have the same feelings watching the French aristocracy in the 18th century, but I don’t know if even that compares.
*sigh*
kijjohnson
You always think these things out so clearly, and it’s always depressing. True, clear, and depressing.
We the mice despair because we can’t get the elephant to stop flailing around long enough to hear us. He just slams around in a panic, and we have to keep jumping out of the way and watching in despair as he steps on our families and strangers alike. This is the charitable interpretation: just as likely is that the elephant is willing to sacrifice a few good mice in his quest to eradicate all the evil mice — and everything defined by the elephant (or more accurately, his handlers).
The only thing that would sober GWB down is possession of a forebrain.
Did you see that the pharmacy at Swedish Medical here in Seattle has been refusing to fill ANTIBIOTIC PRESCRIPTIONS that came from an abortion clinic? I am fucking ashamed of my species, I really am.
arian1
My father is trying to get back to Iran to see his family before they, and he get oo old to make it. It’s hard because I want him to go to see them, but I am scared of what might happen when he gets there. I have nothing but foaming hate for this administration right now and what they are doing. It makes me not sleep.
shunn
Josh Marshall, speaking of Iran, made the following point a couple of weeks ago about the foreign-policy types who advocate various positions in good faith:
(He also talks about the Hersh article this week.)
mckitterick
When I first heard about this, I thought, “Surely the band of selfish, radical conservative idealogues can’t be that stupid.” But I think all one needs do is listen to one of the Bushite administration talk to reporters and you realize that either they are truly evil – I mean in their Satan’s Minions definition, consciously serving the forces of evil – or incredibly retarded (no, that’s unfair to the mentally challenged; they’re beyond simple unintelligence) and hypnotized by their own lies.
I hate Bush and his minions. I used to scoff at the neocons and their railing against liberal “hatred,” but how else can a sane person respond to willful acts of evil against humanity?
Fuck calls for impeachment; I want Congress to move that he be executed as a war criminal and traitor to our country. And all his shit-eating minions who draw up these stupendously insane plans, ignoring realities while destroying our world.
loloc
Rock on Dude!
There I times when I can’t hold in the outrage anymore and it comes vomitting out onto my LJ. Most of the time I don’t publish it figureing that no one want’s to hear that. That they’ll just scroll on by, that they’re too inured to the horror that is our country that it won’t make a dent.
Thanks for letting me know that there are people out there like me.
Anonymous
Thanks for the pointer.
I have a theory that in our country of Goddamn Individualists and Pioneers, we still fall out into sub-groups we don’t like to admit: leaders and followers.
Leaders are alphas (and betas) who do what’s best for the team/family. Followers are omegas (and others) who are anxious for approval from everyone, including those who depend on them. Leaders have a hard time taking instruction from others, and followers have a hard time giving it.
In England, with its historical delineated class structure, I think people more readily understand that not everyone is born to lead. In America, we think by virtue of being Americans we all have the potential to shed class restrictions and become leaders. We forget that innate disposition affects us too.
It’s like anyone who doesn’t display leadership qualities is thought less of. But what kind of madhouse would we live in if we were all leaders?
Anonymous
Of course, now that winter is over (except for tonight, when it’s 28 degrees outside in Kansas), I finally have a winter-worthy vehicle: A lovely Saab Turbo Convertible.
So, Bob, it’s been a while… how’s everything in the Great Northeast?