Thunderbull
John Bolton wants to bomb Iran. No, seriously.
Mr Bolton said that striking Iran would represent a major step towards victory in Iraq. While he acknowledged that the risk of a hostile Iranian response harming American’s overseas interests existed, he said the damage inflicted by Tehran would be “far higher” if Washington took no action.
“This is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do,” he said. “Then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.”
Let me first air out a pet peeve. Apparently, in order to be a really good idea, a military operation now need only represent a step toward victory instead of actually being one. This is the kind of thing that gives postmodern conservatism a bad name.
Now then. To my further irritation, it’s not that John Bolton’s information train is jammed, it’s that the train keeps winding up at the same — wrong — station. Clear interest in not getting badly beaten in Iraq? Check. Acknowledgment of risks posed in theater by Iran? Check. Emphasis on selecting prudent courses of action? Check. It’s like he loads a perfect souffle into the oven and it comes out an ugly, bloodthirsty Critter.
Why this atavistic insistence on the pre-9/11 strategy of undeclared-war bombing runs? Doesn’t Bolton understand the nature of the threat? Seriously, it’s frustrating. The man is intelligent, thoughtful, clearsighted, and dead wrong on bombing Iran, which is not the prudent thing to do. It will not only represent a major step towards uncontrollable violence and regional instability, it will be a major step in that direction. Hell, it might actually even be uncontrollable violence and regional instability!
You want to prudently drop something on an Iranian training camp? How about thousands of leaflets saying
We know who you are. We know what you’re doing. Please stop. (Next time we won’t say please.)
All the benefits of bombing the camp, none of the unsightly general war. I, too, am incensed that Iranian efforts are going into killing American soldiers. But the war those soldiers are fighting is in Iraq, and if we want it to be in Iran, we’ve not only got to actually start a war with Iran but we’ve got to suffer the consequences. In neither case are the ends of responsible neo-imperialism served. I’m still looking for a neocon whose passionate interest in bombing Iran is overruled by the weight of prudence. There’s got to be one somewhere. …Right?
I dunno. People have been arguing the regional instability thing for years, and it doesn’t look any better or worse than when Bush started, well, people in Iraq aren’t being tossed into industrial pulp shredders, so I suppose that is a big plus.
— Mark · May 7, 04:41 PM · #
There is enough of a pattern of this at this point that I question the basis of your “intelligent, thoughtful, clearsighted.” I mean, why? Because he had some insights on UN functioning and streamlining at one time? And had no good idea how to sell them anyway, or couldn’t be bothered?
— Sanjay · May 7, 05:12 PM · #
And so after your nicey-nice leaflets get made into toilet paper and roundly ignored, then what, o wise and prudent one?
— Michael Simpson · May 7, 08:23 PM · #
For all the nice things you say about Bolton, I really don’t see that he has a deeper understanding of Iran than my dog.
We’re deeply hostile to Iran and trying to set up a puppet state on their border. Of course they’re going to be involved. If Iran sent an army to overrun Mexico and set up a hostile government, we wouldn’t be impressed with Iranian warnings not to get involved either.
Our interests and Iran’s are really pretty similar. We’re both supporting the same government. We both want stability. We both want US troops out. If anyone in the Bush administration had any brains we’d have an excellent chance of doing a deal.
— Peter · May 8, 12:17 AM · #
Obviously Bolton isn’t being thoughtless – no doubt he’s heard similar ideas (for leaflets), but a glance at Iran’s own “atavistic insistence” on maintaining the status quo in spite of the efforts of both unilateral and multilateral diplomacy might suggest a more practical and timely solution. That seems (to an inexpert eye) to be the sense of his career (including his work at the U.N.): that inconsequential / “prudent” diplomacy does not adequately further the interests of the United States.
At what point does “next time we won’t say please” – which implies identifiable wrongdoing on Iran’s part – actually become next time? – especially when “this time” already involves military actions.
— Tony · May 8, 07:10 AM · #
The problem with Bolton’s plan is not conceptual, it’s practical.
In order for bombing campaigns against Iranian training camps to be effective, they must be conducted with a level of intensity that is simply not within our character to perpetrate anymore.
You cannot instill fear in an enemy if you yourself are afraid of being ferocious. We cannot be ferocious— the 24 hour news culture won’t allow it. Tactics that won WW2 for us cannot be employed because they’re unseemly to watch on the nightly news. In spite of updates to technology since then, you still have to be willing to, you know, kill people and break things. Wage war, in other words.
Somewhere along the lines, we got this peculiar notion that war didn’t have to be hell. Someone thought up the idea that we could have a bloodless war in which nobody suffered, and everyone else went along with it. That’s a mistake, and while I’m happy to see it hasn’t cost us as dearly as I thought back when “shock and awe” turned out to be “shuck and blah,” I don’t think we can do much to deter Iran unless we have the willingness to be brutal.
Sabre rattling only works if you actually have a sabre, and are willing to use it.
— Greg D · May 9, 05:12 PM · #