Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
The interesting contradiction of those who think that all we need to do is better understand those trying to destroy us is that the only ones who apparently don’t understand the terrorists are those calling for understanding.
–John Moreschi, commenting on a post at the neo-neocon blog.
In my previous post, where I worried about the Iranian nuclear threat, commenter GT asked what I propose to do.
Obviously the direct application of force will be difficult, which is why the mullahs have been able to get as far as they have in developing nuclear weapons. However, I speculate that we will do better in the long run if we take more risks now.
In particular, I have in mind:
-More pressure on Syria.
-A campaign of sabotage and assassination against Iran’s nuclear industry.
-Retaliation, including sabotage and assassination if necessary, against foreign firms that supply Iran’s nuclear industry.
-Bombing of key Iranian facilities, even if we can’t destroy them all and even if we risk dispersing some radioactive material.
-An information campaign to make clear what we want: the dismantling of nuke sites and abandonment of the nuke program, preferably accompanied by overthrow/assassination of the mullahs, and ideally democratization. Make clear that we will hold Iran’s leaders personally responsible for their hostile actions.
Yeah, we would have to kill people and the Iranians might end up hating us. Too bad. Our fundamental security should be non-negotiable. What happened to all the talk about an axis of evil and about nations being either with us or with the terrorists? Some of us took those ideas seriously and still do. The Administration will get more domestic support if it does not appear wobbly.
National leaders should be willing to risk their careers to do what’s right. Bush is a lame duck with three more years to get something done. I think the American people would go along with forceful action against Iran if Bush explained why it is important. Will he do it? I don’t know.
It seems plain to me that Bush weakens his case by compartmentalizing the war. Are we in a global struggle against Islamic fundamentalist imperialism or merely a war against some bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan? If it’s the latter, why are we putting our people at risk over there? OTOH, if the war and combating WMD proliferation by hostile dictatorships are really important, as I think they are, we should not hesitate to use force against an Iranian regime that embodies the worst of Islamic fascism and is openly pursuing nuclear weapons. The Administration has a strong case if it would make it.
Bush and his colleagues seem to be institutionally tongue tied. I fault them for it, but they are what they are, we are stuck with them for the foreseeable future, and anyway they are probably as good as any political leaders we are likely to get. Complaining about their mistakes and ineptitudes won’t help, nor will rationalizing inaction because many Americans don’t support that which was never adequately explained to them. A nuclear Iran worries me, but suggestions that we can’t do anything about it and may as well learn to live with it are deeply troubling. I don’t like the attitude. I also think we would do better to force the issue than to allow the mullahs to get nukes on their own timetable.
UPDATE: In the comments, Lex makes a good point about covert-action campaigns.
Rick Moran gets it right. Not only is Iran a pressing danger, so are the incompetence and partisanship of key CIA personnel:
Now, we can choose to believe what we read and what we see or we can listen to the very same people were saying in July of 2001 that al Qaeda was not a threat. And let’s not forget most of these same analysts concurred in the estimates regarding Iraqi WMD.
The point is that regardless of recent steps to reform our intelligence capability, it appears that we’re still working with a dysfunctional system where agency personnel feel perfectly comfortable with leaking classified information in a bid to influence both Administration policy and the political process. No one expects everybody to agree on everything. But the American people have a right to expect that the unelected bureaucrats who work at the CIA allow policy making to reside with those we have entrusted for the task – the elected representatives of the people.
(via Jim Miller)
Despite being a very busy guy, New Sisyphus took some time out to write a very cogent, very considered essay on why it was right to take the war to Iraq (emphases mine):
A number of reasons made dysfunctional Baathist Iraq the obvious choice: it was a once-prosperous, multi-ethnic community in the heart of the Islamic world that had been brutalized by an insanely aggressive regime that not only had invaded neighboring countries twice but had used long-banned chemical weapons in doing so. It also had an on-going program to further develop WMD for its use. It had used WMD against its own population to strengthen its rule by fear. It was still technically at war with the United States, violating a cease-fire almost daily by firing upon American pilots. It had attempted to assassinate an ex-President of the United States. It was supporting suicide bombing in Israel by providing financial benefit to such fanatic’s families. It had given refuge to terrorist groups and terrorist leaders. In short, Iraq was the poster child for the type of dysfunctional political culture that had given rise to the grievance-based ideology of Islamic Fascism.
Thus, Iraq presented the President with a convergence of strategic sense and tactical opportunity. Strategic, in that a conversion of Iraq to a more democratic and prosperous country would provide a counter-model to that proposed by the Islamic Republic and Bin Ladenism in the heart of the Islamic world; tactical in that its WMD program, aggressive behavior and some links to terrorist groups represented a threat to the United States.
In sum, the short-term problem of active Al-Qaeda support was solved (to some extent) by the change of regime in Afghanistan while the long-term problem of Islamic Fascism would be countered by the democratic rise of a new Iraq, leading to the spread of the ideals of democracy and liberty in the greater Middle East. Together, both prongs, along with the aggressive use of law enforcement domestically and abroad, diplomacy, and special operations in remote theatres, make up the wider War on Terror. Both were prompted by the adoption of war goals by the President, whose judgment was largely colored by what he felt were the central lessons of 9.11.
…
Thus, for the NY Times and liberals at large to say that Iraq had “nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks,” is to miss the larger point the President is making, made last night and will continue to make for the rest of his term. Iraq is central to the President’s war aims in that he seeks to inject a radical new order in the heart of the Middle East, one that will present an alternative and democratic space that will deflate the appeal of the fascism that gave rise to 9.11 and similar attacks.
For liberals to pretend not to understand all this—for them to lose their vaunted sense of nuance and understanding—reveals a profound and distasteful dishonesty on their part, as well as a whiff of desperation. Beyond indicting Bin Laden in District Court for the Southern District of New York, liberals have been without a strategic plan on how to win the War on Terror. In fact, they would deny such a war even exists.
Exactly. They didn’t get it during the Cold War, and they don’t get it now. Their ostrich-like perspective and their paranoid style of rhetoric has, unfortunately, stripped them of all credibility on issues of national security and foreign policy.
One important point, which I readily concede to antiwar friends, is that the Iraq War was a war of choice. Indubitably. But that’s like trying to decide where in the house to lay the roach traps, or even trying to decide whether to merely mop up after roach attacks, or proactively going after the roaches, or even worse, doing nothing at all. Similarly, Iraq was a crossroads of Islamofascism (of which bin Ladenism is only a variant), was already in a state of hostilities, and had provided plenty of legitimate reasons for the resumption of military operations.
Read the whole thing; it is without a doubt one of the best essays out there.
[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]
This survey of events [Galloway, Canada, Newsweek, Uzbekistan] suggests (and it just my opinion) that the real strategic danger to the cause of freedom and democracy isn’t from the noisemakers of the Left but from the temptation to betray principles for tactical gain. It lies on the very same path that Galloway, Martin and Newsweek, in their cunning, have taken. The Left hitched its wagon to the worst men of the 20th and 21st century and it is dragging them into the dustbin of history. Let’s go the other way.
This is an important point and one too often forgotten by proponents of realpolitik. Our advocacy of human rights and democratic self-rule are not PR, they are force multipliers and critical to our strategy. We use them not to be PC but because the alternatives failed. That’s why it’s important not to brush the Uzbek crackdown under a diplomatic rug, even if the regime is our ally (and why we shouldn’t ignore things like this).
The realpolitik response to Uzbekistan — we should cut the regime some slack because we need our bases there — misses the point. In the modern world our political and military effectiveness depend at least as much on our being perceived as principled and reliable as on control of real estate.