The Iranian government is run by Shiites, and hates Sunnis. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group, spends most of its time trying to kill as many Shiites as possible. Obviously, these groups are interchangeable, right?
AMMAN, Jordan — Sen. John McCain […] said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. […] Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”
In recent days, McCain has repeatedly said his intimate knowledge of foreign policy make him the best equipped to answer a phone ringing in the White House late at night.
Thank goodness McCain had a former Democrat standing by him to correct his embarrassing gaffe.
Okay, that’s unfair, because some Democrats — including Texas rep Silvestre Reyes — who is only the fucking chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, so it’s not like his job requires him to know anything about Iran, Iraq, or al Qaeda — are likewise ignorant of the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. (Although neither Clinton nor Obama would have made McCain’s asinine error). Republicans like Terry Everett and [the late] Jo Ann Davis don’t know the difference, either, even though they lead intelligence committees. Neither do the FBI’s leading counterterrorism officers.
Our foreign policy is run by soundbite-vomiting nincompoops who adeptly advance careers — often, like McCain, selling themselves as foreign policy experts — but don’t give a shit about doing their jobs well. And our media lets them get away with it, by and large, because without the mother bird politicians vomiting soundbites, what would baby bird reporters ravenously eat?
Politicians aren’t ordinary citizens. These aren’t shoe salesmen with blogs. These are people are entrusted to take the time to make informed decisions, because ordinary citizens are too busy working for a living. It’s appalling — worse, disgusting, and in a better world impeachable — that after so many years of war and so many hundreds of thousands of lives lost, leading politicians haven’t taken their responsibilities seriously enough to learn the fucking A B Cs.
P.S. “Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.” — Senator Trent Lott.
UPDATE: McCain’s people are now claiming that this was just a slip of the tongue, which McCain corrected immediately. But he only corrected it because he had Lieberman there whispering in his ear — and he made the same slip of the tongue the previous night on a right-wing radio show.
OK I agree … Partly
No politician has enough hours in the day to know all of this. However it is important to have staff that is good and can find information it doesn’t have before the pol goes on a trip. So blame still rests with the pol… but through his demanding the best from his staff, or replacing them.
Also if you have good staff Listen to them and don’t go off the cuff. McCain often goes off the cuff….Good on personality, bad on policy. An off the cuff speech needs to include A LOT of “I’ll get back to you on that”. don’t say what you are not sure of.
Steve, this is not a minor, trivial detail that you have to be an expert to know. This is the most obvious, basic, knowledge required to discuss US policy in Iraq.
Would you vote for someone for commissioner of baseball if he couldn’t explain the difference between the outfield and the pitcher’s mound?
Would you want your kids taught math by a teacher who isn’t sure which is larger, 6 4 or 6-4? Is it unreasonable to expect someone applying for the math teacher job to know that much?
Is someone a good chef if they have to have Joe Lieberman whisper in their ear that we heat things in the stove, not the refrigerator?
No, it’s not a trivial point.
No, the ignorance is not partisan. From Congressional Quarterly (12/06):
Yes, we are all doomed.
Wow, Barry, this was the most strongly worded post I have seen by you in a long time. “Nincompoops”! Such language gives me vapors.
But, yeah, even our President didn’t learn of the Shitte/Sunni difference until after the U.S. invaded Iraq. “Shrug. Don’t see why it matters.” Boom.
This is why Jeb is considered the policy wonk among the bush Brothers.
Also this is why I would rather vote for Condi Rice then any Pol in the last 20 years. Even if you don’t like her policies at least you know she has a handle on the details.
Sometimes it is scary how much more I know of National Security policy VS the average current elected official of any party. It just should not be this way.
But then I remember that the Romans had similar problems with idiot emperors and they lasted a thousand years and maybe more depending on your political and historical accounting method
Steve, once idiot emperors started following each other, Rome went into decline. The times were slower then, and still, it did not take thousands of years to go from Pax Romana over most of Europe to barbarians at the gates of Rome. Nowadays, the world moves faster.
And it WOULDN’T be, if you’d just stop paying attention to national security policy! (I mean, duh….)
Our foreign policy is run by soundbite-vomiting nincompoops who adeptly advance careers — often, like McCain, selling themselves as foreign policy experts — but don’t give a shit about doing their jobs well.
This is true. But, regrettably, it is hardly limited to the executive branch.
And our media lets them get away with it, by and large, because without the mother bird politicians vomiting soundbites, what would baby bird reporters ravenously eat?
And that’s the key. It’s my opinion that the media are mostly focused on finding soundbites that they can edit to fit their pre-existing narrative. There are very few of them that are actually interested in doing journalism; digging out facts and going where the facts lead them, and then fitting the narrative to the facts rather than vice versa.
I don’t really buy that this is a gaffe. I think this is intentional disinformation. This is particularly clear in the Hugh Hewitt interview, where John and Hugh play up the idea that Obama would meet with the Iranians, even though they back al Qaeda. This is designed to prime people to read denials of these ignorant claims as a sign that Obama is weak and naive, and since very few Americans know anything about Sunnis and Shi’ites, trying to explain why McCain’s claim is facially absurd will just come across as elitist intellectuals lording their knowledge over the rest of us.
Just another way in which McCain is continuing the practices of the Bush regime.
I think this is intentional disinformation.
I tend to apply what I’ve seen referred to as Hanlon’s Razor in these circumstances – Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
How much news coverage do you think this would get if Obama had made the same mistake?
“How much news coverage do you think this would get if Obama had made the same mistake?”
Probably a lot more, because it would be a lot more surprising from either him or Clinton, although I truly cannot imagine Clinton being capable of a mistake like this.
What, exactly, is the problem?
Either Iran is helping al Q and other terrorists or it is not.
That they have different views of Islam means….
The world’s intel agencies have a great track record at holding their collective nose–presuming they have the same scruples as the majority population of their country–and dealing with who they think they have to.
The sophisticated EFPs are coming from someplace.
Any ideas?
To make one historical observation, Stalin trained the Luftwaffe for nearly a decade at a place in Ukraine called Vitebsk when the Versailles Treaty made having an air force illegal for Germany.
To say that Nazis and Communists were sworn enemies is possibly true in one circumstance or another–Hitler’s lead elements heading east passed Sov trains with raw materials heading west–but does not prove that the Vitebsk training didn’t happen.
I say the above to address some commenters who have said that because of the Sunni-Shia divide the Iranians can’t be helping the Iraq terrs. Not true.
Now, to get the denomination wrong between the two countries is a problem, but not a deal-breaker, unless you already had your mind made up. Which, I suspect, is the point here, in search of rationalization.
For the record, Jo Ann Davis is kind of… dead, right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Ann_Davis
Whoops! Thanks for the info. I added “the late” to the post before Jo Ann Davis’ name.
Richard, your post is a nice bit of sophistry, but ultimately ignorant.
That Iran can support Al Qaeda in Iraq, in that it has the ability to do so if it so desires, is not the issue. But it won’t. And the Sunni/Shia divide is the reason. Al Qaeda is not just a bunch of Sunnis, they are millitant Sunnis, and believe Shias to be heathen and are thus the enemies of any Shia state. Iran meanwhile, despite propaganda to the contrary, has acted quite rationally since September 11. It allied with US during the war in Afghanistan, which makes sense since the Taliban was an enemy of Iran. It only turned away from US when Bush decided to include Iran in it’s axis of evil.
[by the by, what an axis that is – two enemies and then a third country that has nothing to do with the first two. It would be like in 1880 saying that the greatest threat is the alliance between France, Germany and China]
So, since Iran has been acting consistently in its own national interest, vis a vis America’s wars against its neighbors, it is downright implausible that they would support Al Qaeda in Iraq, where Al Qaeda in Iraq is definitively anti-central Iraqi government and the Iraqi central government is Shia dominated and allied with Iran.
Furthermore, let’s simply take a look at what’s happening in Iraq right now – it’s a civil war along ethnic lines. If Iran, a Shia government, is getting involved, it’s certainly not going to offer help to Sunni militias who would consider Iran an enemy. McCain’s comment reveals he does not understand this very basic fact, either he doesn’t understand the ethnic strife between Sunnis and Shias or he simply doesn’t know which major players in Iraq belong to which sect, either option means he doesn’t know fuckall about Iraq and he doesn’t care – he’s had 5 years to learn about this, that’s plenty of time if you have the least amount of interest.
RonF:
Agreed fully. But frankly, I don’t know that we wouldn’t be better off if this were deliberate misinformation rather than utter stupidity on McCain’s part. If it were deliberate misinformation, at least then, should McCain win the election, he’d at least know what he was doing. Incompetence and lack of transparency is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Raznor, you in turn make good points. There is no question in my mind that incompetence in just this kind of matter definitely put us in a hole that it’s taken us about 4 years to climb out of. I keep going back to a quote from a nameless State Department source who was asked why we didn’t take Saddam out after the 1st Gulf War. One reason that was given for public consumption was that we’d been asked not to by the other Gulf states (probably mainly Saudi Arabia, a Sunni-dominated state). But what was not so publicly discussed was “They don’t exactly have Thomas Jefferson waiting to take over.” It seems clear that someone forgot this, or wasn’t persuasive enough. The military did a fantastic job in defeating the Iraqi army. But there was no good plan for “what will happen after that, and what do we do about it?” That lack of a plan damn near made Iraq into another post-Tito Yugoslavia. It still could, but I think we’re on the right track now. Unless Bush’s successor decides to screw this up.
The difference I see between McCain and Obama is that I feel comfortable that McCain will put people into place that do know the difference between Shia and Sunni and why that’s important. Based on the character of the people he associates with in Illinois, I don’t have that confidence with Obama.
I wonder what would happen if I professed not to know the difference between Catholics and Protestants.
Raznor.
There are two issues here.
One is whether or not Iran is helping al Q.
The other is whether you think the denominational divide makes it possible or not.
It is certainly possible, historical example provided, that the first can be true despite your insistence that it is not because the two hate each other.
And, all the while you go along putting considerably more weight on religion than many of the religious do. Consider also that being in a Sunni or Shia country doesn’t mean, necessarily, that all adherents are equally fanatical about such things. Some may be more practical about it, and a nation’s intel services are likely to attract those folks.
Both themes of Islam are not a think, but made up of people, some of whom happen to believe as you do that the other side is beyond being worthy of contact, cooperation against a common enemy or being used. And some who will do what it takes regardless of what the clerics say–some of whom will bless the exigency regardless of the general take on the other side.
The IRA and the Palestinians, for another example, don’t seem to have a lot in common, speaking theologically, but they have trained their operatives together from time to time.
But I guess the question is whether your certainty about matters religious is more trustworthy than actual facts about what is actually happening. What will you do if the evidence shows Iran helping al Q along with others in Iraq?
Maybe those mullahs aren’t so nuts after all.
To use your hate-each-other meme, the Sovs did not train the Luftwaffe, did not supply Hitler with raw materials at cut-rate prices, did not split Poland with the Germans.
Couldn’t have happened. After all, they hated each other.
Molotov-Ribbentrop? Figment of somebody’s imagination.
So McCain has continued his disinformation campaign.
Now, instead of saying that Iran is supporting al Qaeda (which he admitted isn’t true), he is saying that “Al Qaeda and Shia extremists — with support from external powers such as Iran — are on the run but not defeated.”
There is no way that you can read that as anything other than disinformation. It is probably technically true, Shia groups get support from external powers such as Iran, and al Qaeda probably gets support from external groups such as radical clergy in Saudi Arabia, but it was carefully written to be misread as a repeat of the outright lie he got caught telling yesterday. He doesn’t list what external groups support al Qaeda, only the external power that supports the Badr Brigades (and he doesn’t name names, so it seems as though he is saying that the Iranians support the Mahdi army, even though the evidence for that is pretty weak, while the evidence that the Iranians support the Badr Brigades is very strong), so the obvious reading of the statement is that Iran supports both Shia groups and al Qaeda in Iraq (which isn’t closely associated with bin Laden’s organization, but when you drop the last two words, you can serve both Republican and AQinIraq propaganda purposes at the same time).
I think you have to make some deft and squiggly razor cuts to not see this as intentional disinformation at this point. Yesterday, you could read it as McCain is pig ignorant of the situation in Iraq, and hasn’t surrounded himself with staff who could teach him anything about Iraq, unlike Obama, but today I can’t see any way to read it as anything other than McCain was a little too obvious in his lie yesterday, but he and his staffers worked all night to come up with a restatement of the lie that can be parsed so it is merely confusing and obfuscatory.
It might be worth remembering that “Iranians” is not one guy. There are many factions within Iran’s government, and among religious and civil society.
Richard,
Certainly, if there were evidence that Iran was supporting al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, that would trump the religious divide. Given that there is no evidence for such a thing, the religious divide provides an explanation, and should help to serve as a mnemonic device. If you find yourself trying to remember who Iran supports in Iraq, you can just think about the fact that one of the major fault lines in the civil war in Iraq is between the Shia and the Sunni, and that the neighboring Shi’ite country supports the Shi’ite factions, not the most extreme Sunni faction.
It isn’t that Iran isn’t capable of supporting al Qaeda in Mesopotamia if they wanted to, it is that they aren’t, for pretty obvious reasons, and that it is easy to remember that and not accidentally claim that Iran supports al Qaeda if you have any clue of what is going on in Iraq.
It is worth noting that McCain admits that his statement yesterday was wrong. But like good disinformation, that doesn’t stop his followers from arguing that it wasn’t. “Oh,” they say, “the situation is just too complex to say that Iran isn’t supporting al Qaeda, maybe some shop keeper in Yazd has been sending care packages to them. We could call that Iran supports al Qaeda, couldn’t we?” Or you could just say that the US and other external powers support al Qaeda, the Mahdi army, and the Iraqi government. Really, which group it is that the US supports hardly matters. Hell, the US is complex and not simply the government, so we could just say that the US supports al Qaeda. It wouldn’t make much sense, it would be misleading and confusing, but there would be some non-obvious reading in which it wasn’t false, and really what more could we ask of our presidential candidates. As long as they don’t lie in every possible interpretation of their words, everything is hunky-dory.
So, let’s say that Iran is not supporting al Q, but is supporting other terrorists.
Does that make a difference in what our actions ought to be regarding Iran?
What we see here is a pile-on, making a small error into something huge, because you don’t have anything really huge.
It would have been better to let it go than to advertise your huge shortage.
I agree all terrorists are equally abhorrent. Let’s start with Luis Posada.
Is it your contention, then, that we have to now fabricate evidence, invade, occupy, and bungle up every country in the world that cheers on terrorism? Because that includes allied countries such as Saudi Arabia, and having to do the tedious work of amassing million-plus body counts in all these countries probably means we have to resort to forced conscription, and even worse, raised taxes on the wealthy. And why stop at terrorism? It isn’t the only moral wrong. State sponsor of violent paramilitary gangs that target political opposition is as bad, as I’m sure you’ll agree, so why not other allies like Colombia? Who needs allies? 9/11 changed everything.
And what of that set of countries that, akin to terrorism, initiated violent wars of convenience on manufactured evidence for calculated political reasons circa 2003? I don’t think the US could use the wage-war-and-occupy strategy in this instance, because it would lead to a self-referential mindfuck that would make Escher’s head explode.
That leads us to the crux of why your sophisticated approach to international relations is doomed to fail. In countries like the one above, a majority of its citizens may actually recognize how depraved and mind-boggingly idiotic its own belligerent government is. Why should people who don’t support their own government’s evil actions pay the brunt of the price for its folly? It’s *their* limbs, not the military bureaucrats’, that’ll be torn from their bodies and left to decompose on the side of the road.
That’s why the saner among us – that is to say, the non-wingnuts – don’t take war lightly. Government is not a neutral vector that gets us from point A to point B. You conservatives are so attuned to this when it comes to giving free milk to inner city schoolchildren, yet can’t seem to grasp that never is it truer than when it is applied to the military. I want to remove the crazy, warmongering faction that has a stranglehold on Iran right now, and I want President Ahmadinejad to be deposed. But at what cost? Millions of Iranians? War against Iran – that’s what McCain is trying to push. Do you support it in spite of these costs, or do you just try not to think of it?
We have always had to contend with hostile foreign regimes, and we’ve always lived in a world without terrorism. Yet we’ve gone along fine without having to invade, occupy, and babysit a sectarian civil war in all of them. That just shows how far low the current Republican Party has taken us.
Richard,
It is possible that the next president of the US will have some say over policy inside Iraq. It might be good for that president to have some idea why it won’t work to pressure Iran to stop supporting AQ-Mesopotamia. It might be a good idea if the next president could tell the difference between the Mahdi Army and AQ-Mesopotmia. Hell, it might be a good idea if they could tell the difference between the Badr Brigade (backed by Iran) and the Mahdi Army (not backed by Iran), even though they are both Shi’ite groups. It might even be a good idea if the next president can tell the difference between al Qaeda and AQ-Mesopotamia (they aren’t the same thing).
What McCain’s statements reveal (go on, keep insisting it is just that he is an ignoramus, I don’t buy it) is that he doesn’t care about any of those silly little nuances, all he cares about is saying the words al Qaeda over and over in the same sentence with Iran.
Apparently, that works for you.
Sylph.
Seem to have hit a button. Do you have that on a macro, or whatever it’s called? And because you have no solution but a bloody one to the question doesn’t make me the warmonger.
Point is, folks, that terrorists in Iraq are getting help from Iran. Question is what do we do about it and what difference does it make if al Q is a group of terrorists in Iraq not getting help from Iran?
It makes a huge difference to what we do about it and how.
The main group in Iraq getting backing from Iran are not particularly at war with us. SCIRI and the Badr Brigades are the main group supported by Iran, not the Mahdi Army or any of the Sunni groups. I know, I shouldn’t confuse you with the scary names of the bad mens, when all that matters is that there are scary bad mens somewhere who get backing from scary bad mens somewhere else. Must smash scary bad mens.
I think Richard is the best proof that McCain knew what he was doing. I doubt if McCain had said Iran was supporting SCIRI and the Badr Brigades that Richard would have known who he was talking about. Not, apparently, that it matters. McCain says that Iran backs bad men in Iraq, and that is enough for Richard. No need for evidence, no need for specificity, no need to understand what the group that Iran backs is trying to do, or why Iran might be backing them. No need to try to work our way out of the situation by paying attention to the actual situation. Iran supports bad men, what are we going to do about it?
If you can’t distinguish bad mens in Iraq, then you end up getting into fire fights with Mahdi army militiamen when there is a truce. If you can’t distinguish bad mens, then you can’t figure out which groups of Sunni insurgents can be bribed to stop fighting the US. Etc.
The idea that the president of the US doesn’t need to be able to correctly identify the groups fighting in Iraq and their alliances and feuds if we are going to succeed (and for me at this point, succeed means withdraw in a way that doesn’t worsen the civil war) is insane and terrifying. Admittedly, our current president clearly doesn’t understand any of this, so one can see how a loyal Republican would be forced to insist that it doesn’t matter.
McCain is old and he is on a tight schedule in the middle east. This can lead to momentary errors. I saw the video and he corrected his error almost instantly. There have been times I have called my children by their wrong names.
On the other hand McCain lived … LIVED through the Vietnam war in a visceral way that none of us can have any perspective on. He Understands the shear confusion political micromanagement of a war can cause. Vietnam was the essence of Political Micromanagement. This is one mistake McCain is very Unlikely to repeat. Bad men in Iraq is handled by saying to the SECDEF give me a report on the security situation so we can review options. This repeats in greater detail all the way down to the NCO level if required. And one thing we must remember is the modern American Military NCO is very capable and educated. Many at the E-6 level have a bachelors in addition to their military specific qualifications. In the Navy many E7s (Chief) have a masters or two.
And last year I was speaking to an O3 (LT or Capt) who had two PHD’s and was working on a masters.
Richard, just out of curiosity, what do you think should be done with Iran? I’ll take your word for it that you’re not a warmonger, and I take from a lack of any rebuttal to my post that you recognize that invasion and occupation would be stupid and counterproductive.
It’s certainly not true that all old people have the difficulties you describe; nor do I see any indication that McCain was any more interested in getting details right when he was younger.
That said, these excuses don’t go far if you want to convince people to support McCain. If he becomes President, will McCain be younger and no longer on a tight schedule? If he has to be younger and at his ease in order to know the most basic, essential facts about foreign policy, then he can’t be a good President.
If you saw the video, you know McCain only realized his error when Joe Lieberman corrected him. In a radio interview the day before, McCain made the same error without correcting it (presumably he didn’t have Lieberman at his side).
“and I take from a lack of any rebuttal to my post that you recognize that invasion and occupation would be stupid and counterproductive.”
And you would both be in good company. The CENTCOM commander just left command over that issue. There’s more to it than that, but it boils down to that.
Back when the Shah was run out of town, Carter made the one sensible remark of his presidency when he pointed out that the Iranian people have a long tradition of self-rule and they will be alright. They will sort it out eventually. It won’t help to let it look like some batch of foreigners is pulling the strings.
The Iranians are runnig people in Iraq, however you want to characterize those people – I think they are causing a lot of bloodshed, and I’m not the only one – but I can also understand why Iran as a nation might want to shape events right next door. If we saw Mexico melt down, how long would we stand by?
I’m glad to hear that, Jim. It shows that the country has actually changed since five years ago.
My main interest is in not seeing another war and occupation. Not only because it would be a “strategic miscalculation” – make no mistake, it would be that too – but because passively accepting seven-figure mortalities when it’s abundantly clear that it’s far from necessary is pretty fucking immoral.
That being said, the US does have an interest to protect if the Iranian government is supporting attacks on American troops in Iraq. The correct way to go about this is to isolate the Iranian government, which would not be able to stand on its own without tacit support from nations like Russia and China.
Lea said:
I wonder what would happen if I professed not to know the difference between Catholics and Protestants.
You would greatly surprise all your listeners, 95% of whom at least think they know the difference. As opposed to 95% of the American public not having a clue as to the difference between Shias and Sunnis and therefore having no idea you made a mistake in the first place. Or caring, for that matter. Unfortunately.
I’m not sure “surprise” is the word I would use.
For the record, I have some understanding of the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, as we learned a bit about Martin Luthor in seventh grade music (of all classes). I admit to being pretty fuzzy on the details of the different Protestant denominations.
Sylph.
I didn’t say I’m not a warmonger. I said that your inability to come up with a solution other than a bloody one doesn’t make me the warmonger.
IOW, what we have here is an attempt to avoid the question because the only answers anybody can figure out are unpleasant.
So we accuse somebody who asks the question of being a warmonger.
If you could think of something reasonably benign which would solve the problem, you’d be shouting it from the rooftops in an attempt to demonstrate how awful the folks promoting a violent solution are.
But you can’t think of anything else, either. Which puts you with the warmongers.
So…avoid the question.
As to what I would do: I would acknowledge that major issues are not likely managed by minor forces. And major forces sometimes are bloody. If it’s not conventional war, it’s sanctions. Sanctions kill huge numbers of people–or not, depending on your position. Sanctions were killing Iraqi babies and were awful until the invasion at which time sanctions were so humane they should have been tried for at least two more years. I hope I’m not offending you by explaining the basics.
If we don’t do something, Iran will get nukes. Then we have a problem. A bloody problem.
Or we could foment insurrection and civil war. Bloody.
Or we could bomb relevant installations, repeatedly, to forestall whatever it is we don’t like, but not invade and occupy. That would probably weaken the establishment enough to allow insurgency and civil war.
Or we could, as QE I used to say in the mid and late sixteenth century, delay in order to enjoy the benefits of time. Of course, in those days, disease could be counted on to take off a substantial proportion of the potential enemy leaders in any given five-year period. Who knew what the lineup would be in France, Spain, the Low Countries, the Papacy in five years’ time? But we can’t count on just waiting until things heal themselves. Gerontology is entirely too capable these days. So if time, unencumbered by decisive action, didn’t bring us any advantages, we’re back to bloody, but worse.
Unfortunately, I don’t see any non-bloody solution. Nor am I in a position to judge which would combine a reasonable likelihood of success and the least bloodshed.
I’d like to see us bombing relevant installations on the grounds that it would cost fewest lives, but I can’t say that there would be no horrendously bloody civil war once the army and the guard, and the secret police were weakened, various leaders disappearing. The lid could come off. That’s rarely pleasant.
Hypothetically, a really successful decapitation strike (at a level of success which can’t be guaranteed and ought not be hoped for) would shatter the mechanisms of oppression so thoroughly that it would be obvious to the citizenry that no further effort on their part would be necessary. That would have the happy benefit that the fewest lives would be lost and those being mostly the leading candidates for a quick trip to Hell.
I see blood.
Alternatives would be welcome, especially if they have some basis in the real world.
FWIW, let me crudely repeat Wretchard:
During the Cold War, we knew what the Sovs COULD do. Our concern was their intent.
We know the intent of the Islamofascists; to kill or conquer us all.
We don’t know their capability.
Once they acquire the capability to nuke us, they will.
We will respond, after a certain number of nuke attacks, by slaughtering scores of millions of Muslims around the world.
Presume that we do not, for some reason.
India, China, Russia, all have nukes and are targets for Islamofascists. And they are less bound up by scruples than we are.
Conclusion. If the terrs get nukes, we will see nuclear warfare whose primary victims will be Muslims in numbers beyond counting.
So, unless there is some genuine fallacy in this, it would probably be worth the effort to keep nukes out of the hands of terrorists. Especially for Muslims.
“I’m glad to hear that, Jim. It shows that the country has actually changed since five years ago. ”
The country hasn’t really changed – chicken hawk security moms are still running around in their SUVs with yellow ribbons on them. Maybe now they are tired of the war, maybe a couple of years ago they weren’t, but neither position is much of a change because they never had much of an opinion, or buy-in, or sacrifice invested in the matter either way. They are too superficial and too trivial to be able to change much either way.
The important change has been in the officer corps, and the officer corps is getting a little jumpy about it. The first moment of this change was in Gulf I, when Vietnam vet majors who were now the senior generals told Bush I he could have a war, but then he needed to shut up and go back to his White House. They weren’t happy abiout treating civilian leaders like that, it made them feel shaky, but what are you going to do in the face of hopeless incompetence. Now that question has come back a hundredfold, and no one is happy about the necessity of treating the (for sake of argument) legitimate civilian authority like a dangerous imbecile. It has nothing to do with respect for the man and lots t do with fear for the Constitution. And more than anyone they know how valid that fear is these days.
Lea, my point being that if you said “I don’t know the difference between Catholics and Protestants”, most people would think you had a serious deficiency in your knowledge base. But if you say “I don’t know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis”, most people would think “neither do I”. Someone running for President should know, but few people do know, and few people appreciate why it’s important that a Presidential candidate should know.