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.
Former Marines Owen West and his father Bing West pen a detailed article in Popular Mechanics about the tactical lessons learned in Iraq.
Now seems like a good time also to recall an earlier post about the good work that Popular Mechanics did in debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories.
[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]
A&L links to Frederick R. Kagan’s “Power and Persuasion” in the Wilson Quarterly. Like most important balances (of tenderness, discipline & love in child raising or of customers, employees & profit in business), the one between the military, diplomacy & a certain humility in victory is obvious; nonetheless, finding the right proportions and being sure enough of those proportions – courageous enough – to persist is difficult. May we hope Bush is stubborn where it counts. If it achieves this balance, America’s non-imperial imperialism will not be an oxymoron but a paradox. Keegan argues:
For the United States, there is no path that will spare it criticism and even outright opposition, but its broad goals of spreading freedom and political reform are ones that a great many people in the Muslim world and beyond will be able to accept. The challenge is not only to continue balancing power and persuasion but also simply to continue—to persist in the face of adversity and despite arguments that the very exercise of power ensures that the United States will never persuade and never prevail.
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)