A Neocon Prayer For More Anti-American Terrorism (in the New York Times)
Haven't you always suspected that neo-conservatives and other wild-eyed hawks are getting restless waiting for the next terror attack on Americans so they can get us into another war or two.
I have. I don't think they want Americans dead. No way. But I do think they feel that losing a few more now will save more later by enabling us to kill more "Islamofascists". It's a crazy mindset but quite real.
And there it is in today's New York Times. Reuel Marc Gerecht, one of the original neoconservatives now an AEI fellow, writes a piece arguing that it's time for neocons like himself to wake up and start laying the groundwork for a US attack on Iran.
His idea is clever, in a crazy way. He advocates engaging with Iran so that when engagement fails, we can attack.
"If the mullahs don’t want to negotiate, fine: making the offer is something that must be checked off before the next president could unleash the Air Force and the Navy. To make the threat of force against clerical Iran again credible, there needs to be a consensus among far more Democrats and Republicans that a nuclear-armed Iran is intolerable. If the White House tried more energetically to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear threat, if it demonstrated that it had reached out to Iranian 'pragmatists' and 'moderates,' and that again no one responded, then the military option would likely become convincing to more Americans," he writes.
For a neocon, this is not too terrible. This is how they think. They were terribly disappointed by the NIE report and are so desperate to get us into a war that they will even support negotiations as a means to get us there. Clever, in a dumb way.
But then comes the diabolical part. Gerecht says that his idea to negotiate with Tehran, as a means of achieving a war, is far better than what his fellow neocons are now doing in response to the NIE and the Bush administration's sudden faint-heartedness about bombing Iran. He has a plan. They are relying on....prayer
"What has been the response of most American hawks to this mess? Prayer. They are essentially waiting for the clerical regime to do something stupid so that they can galvanize an awareness among Americans that mullahs should not have the bomb. True, the Iranian clerics have often done the wrong thing at the right time, from aiding the bombers of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and our African embassies in 1998, to the kidnapping of British sailors and marines last year. It is possible that Tehran, which wants to cause us great harm in Iraq and Afghanistan, could again back a terrorist attack that kills enough Americans to make preventive military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities mandatory. But the Iranians know this. They know they are in the final nuclear stretch: they will likely play it sufficiently cool to make it difficult for the United States to strike them pre-emptively."
There it is. Gerech thinks that simply praying for a terror pretext for war is not good enough. It is, I guess, a start. But the US needs to do more. And that requires the fake offer of negotiations.
Can you imagine what would happen if a liberal wrote a piece suggesting that our fellow liberals are praying for a terror attack on Americans? It's inconceivable for a million reasons, starting with the fact that every goal liberals care about is thwarted, not advanced, by more war, more killing, more terror. But the #1 goal of the neocons, #1 by far, is an expanded war with Muslims (especially Iran). If Americans have to die to achieve that goal, so be it.
Please read this piece and tell me if I am interpreting it unfairly. If so, I will, as they say in Congress, "take down" my words. But I don't think I am.
Bottom line, when you take away the hate, these people have nothing left.
February 20, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course they want more American dead. It excites them. It stokes their righteous fury. They want dead soldiers who won't hold unpopular opinions or beg on streetcorners and remind them of their cowardice. They want dead civilians they can weep over and wave the bloody shirts. Do you think they care? They love it. They want pictures of charred corpses, so they can fuel their hate.
Hate can run without fuel. But oh, Hate is so much sweeter when you can burn it hot.
February 20, 2008 10:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah way. What do you think they had in mind for all the Americans they were willing to send into harm's way in Iraq? They were more than willing to have American's killed to advance their idiotic policies.
February 20, 2008 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Arrgh. Delays in posting caused me to post what Valdron had essentially already posted. Would that the system was up to snuff.
February 20, 2008 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
MJR: I believe that you are interpreting these ramblings of Mr. Gerecht correctly, though the route to this outcome or its "inner logic is more convoluted and cultural-psychological than you or I, or anyone can state easily in a few words. An an anthropologist I sense that the far right includes in its inner logic a deep-seated meme that promotes a notion of martial sacrifice, the sacrified, and the sacrificial with respect to certain members of the corporate national(istic) "body", a meme that most liberals do not share, at least not quite the same one or so near the surface. The 'soldiers' whom the leaders of the right (self-appointed mostly, except for persons such as Dick Cheney) see these soldiers or citizens that would need to die as literally expendable in the service of the greater cause. The military today has been shaped by this under-analyzed logic of recruiting from the underclass, the under-developed persons-- whatever descriptions one wants to put on this sensitive topic -- with a marked sense that this sacrifice is what they are good for, even meant for (for otherwise they are not worth much.) Cheney's sense of his value and role exemplifies the other side of this inner logic: those who lead but do not put their lives on the line, because, they are not of the sacrificial underclass. Cheney says he had "other priorities" than military service during Vietnam. So did many of us. But then and especially now, he is totally complicit in recruiting the volunteer armed forces today, with its falling bar of acceptability in terms of the recruits socially regarded, tested, measured worth. It is as if the Cheney armed services cultural strategists are saying: this is the best thing these citizens can do for the nation. Recently, reporters aired a military assessment that claimed that the kind of operations in Iraq our troops engage in now, given their missions, weapons and armatures simply don't demand or require the so-called smarter, higher quality soldier, so the "dumbing down" of the military is not really a problem in this context. The military can get by with these less-capable volunteer recruits. I am reminded here of the French philosopher Jacque Derrida's point (following dozens of scholars) that in ancient Greece, the upper-class leadership allowed for and supported a small underclass of relatively socially misshapen persons, persons it could and did regularly call upon to be sacrified as scapegoats (in the original metaphorical sense of the concept, the pharmakeus) during times of great trouble or stress. This meme of sacrificing members of the corporate body is a deep one in the human psyche. In terms of nationalist psychology, it competes with its flip side, the heroic ideal of the sacrifice of the especially capable, the hero. (John McCain will run on this plank of our psyche, as one who was extra-capable, put his life on the line and returned the better man still (as did Kennedy and Bush senior present themselves; and Kerry tried.) Cheney is like Reagan in this regard. This ideal of heroic risk to the point of nearly certain sacrifice is behind the appeal of the a movie such as "300." It crops up regularly in our glorification of the great heroes of the American Revolution, also in the story of the Alamo, where the heroes are capable but flawed, older men -- Closer to today's problem, this ideal shows up in story of the enormous sacrifice of the very capable but still ordinary citizen-soldiers of the greatest generation in WWII. So, yes, the right dreams of this kind of necessary sacrifice. We all must do our part, the parts to which fate has differentially assigned us.
February 20, 2008 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
from Ha'aretz this morning
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has resumed his verbal attacks on Israel, coining it a "filthy germ" and "savage beast" established by Western states in their bid to dominate Middle East nations.
Ahmadinejad's remarks were broadcast on Iranian television on Wednesday, just days after a top commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard called Israel a "cancerous germ" which would be wiped out by Hezbollah, Army Radio reported.
Guards commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari was quoted by the Fars News Agency on Monday as saying: "IN THE NEAR FUTURE, we will witness the DESTRUCTION of the cancerous germ OF ISRAEL BY the powerful and competent hands of the HEZBOLLAH combatants."
You think it's all a neocon plot?
February 20, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. Ha'aretz. So do you think that Ahminejad was speaking in English or Hebrew on Iranian television?
Personally, I would have assumed he might have chosen to speak to Iranians on Iranian television in the Iranian language, but I'm just funny that way.
Speaking of which, do you think Jafari was speaking in English or Hebrew on the radio? What do you think? I wonder how he managed to speak in CAPITAL LETTERS like that? That's a pretty hard trick, don't you THINK?
Or maybe its just propagandistic mistranslations of empty bombast that no one should take seriously, except for hyperventilating girly-men?
It's a big world out there...
February 20, 2008 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Critics of any discussions might respond that the Iranians might say yes, but to only low-level talks in Switzerland, not in Washington and Tehran. In so doing, the mullahs could bind the United States to meaningless, stalling discussions while the regime perfected uranium enrichment, increased the range and accuracy of its ballistic missiles and advanced its nuclear warhead designs."
This part stands out to me, it reinforces the belief from many on the right and many who have a deep sense of patriotism in this country of the failures of the US government and the UN to alleviate conflicts throughout the world. You know if only the our military could act unilaterally to protect itself from any threat which it deams imminent then all of our security threats would be under control. The part that they leave out when taking this position is that the alliances you make from the point of a gun(US military) may not be all that you bargained for. Also acting this way has an effect on how the rest of the world views the US. The point is that from everything I have read, the Iranians are at least 10 years out from making any real progress on nuclear armement and that does not necessarily include nuclear ballistic capabilites. The other point is how much money are they going to spend doing this, and how does that affect its culture.
The thing I take away from this is that many fellows both in the private sector as well as the government believe that War is a just means for getting to an ends. War is a tool that should be used in certain situations. Justifying those situations to the American people is a much harder thing to do!
February 20, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
What with Afghanistan and Iraq temporarily off the front pages what's a neo-con to do but attack Iran so they can get the country moving in the "right" direction again.
February 20, 2008 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The article, in NYT, just rambles on. The only point I could gather was his eagerness to go to war. Unlike Bill Kristol and co., Ruel wants to slip war as the only option in case where talks fail. The war with Iran is self fulfilling prophecy -- he knows talks, at some point, will fail!!
I have thought about Iran developing nuclear weapons. Over a period of time I have come to conclusion that that Iran going nuclear does not matter. US instead wasting international capital on Iran should focus their attention on Pakistan and southeast Asia.
February 20, 2008 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bill Kristol must be treated as no more than a 'conversation' piece. There was a guy who used to roam the streets of the San Francisco financial district calling himself the Emperor, I think, Napolean. He dined in the best restaurants, gratis, slept in the best hotels, gratis, and generally led a pleasurable life. Nobody believed his spiel, but because he had become a tourist attraction he was kept around. (But, at least our resident newspaper didn't give him a column!)
February 20, 2008 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
These neocons have really lost touch with reality and seem incapable of stepping back to take a look at the big picture.
Perhaps if the US wasn't falling apart on so many levels from healthcare to border insecurity...perhaps if Iraq hadn't happened...maybe then a few Americans would think it important to borrow more money from China to try and control countries like Iran that are half way around the world (with troops we don't have).
And war with Iran by pulling nearly the same WMD stunt that was used for Iraq? That's preposterous.
As far as I can tell, Americans are done with war-- and these crazed war-pushers.
February 20, 2008 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think, Valdron, that you'd twist yourself into a pretzel rather than accept the most obvious interpretation - that these men are to be taken at their word.
February 20, 2008 10:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, offensivetoyou, I think the simpler interpretation is that you're just shitting us, excuse my language.
We've already seen that 'wipe Israel off the map' quote attributed to Ahminijad has been proven to be a propagandistic deliberate mistranslation.
Despite the fact that it was exploded for the fabrication it was years ago, it still makes the rounds regularly, transmitted by dull witted dupes and by knowing liars, both doing their part as agents of the 'big lie' technique perfected by the Nazi's. Just keep repeating the lie until people believe it.
So here you come in, entering the conversation with a an off topic interjection of equally farfetched and propagandistic nature.
And I'm supposed to take you seriously?
I don't think so.
ROTFL!
February 21, 2008 1:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I highly doubt that Mr. Gerecht is any more interested in diplomacy than the rest of his neocon fellow travelers--what I read here is a Trojan Horse in the New York Times, laying out the dastardly reasons why Iran is the latest implacable foe...
Is it just me, or is this redolent of the runup on Iraq?
Gerecht is just putting new lipstick on the same old pig in a poke that these guys have been trying to sell.
It seems like these guys are having a hard time trying to create their next 'nuclear madman,' and are now going at it by committee; Is it the mad mullahs, or is it Syria? Current credible analysis says it is neither.
Nor do the wingnuts ever provide an answer as to why MAD is suddenly inoperable in this situation--instead, we are supposed to take on faith (again), that 'Madman X' hates the US and Israel soooo much that they are willing to toast their own country, and throw their own ruling order in the crapper in order to make a strike.
Does this sound like any dictator/despot/strongman in history?
February 20, 2008 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Every important news agency in the world posts in English as well as its native language. That includes Fars.
Further, a google search of "Mohammad Ali Jafari+Israel" reveals that many, many news agencies reported the same story as Ha'aretz...and that Israel lodged a formal complaint with the U.N. based on it.
That's on one side.
On the other we have an individual - you - who is far from stupid but is so wedded to a desperately wrong world-view that he would rather resort to ill-mannered sarcasm and ridicule than do some very simple fact-checking.
February 21, 2008 3:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Referring to an article in Ha'aretz, offensivetoyou asked, You think it's all a neocon plot?
No, just "verbal attacks" as you yourself quoted from the news article. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has resumed his verbal attacks on Israel...
An AFP article also used the same phrase, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, in the latest of a spate of anti-Israel verbal attacks by Iran... and added for good measure, Iran has stepped up its rhetoric against Israel in the last days after the murder of Mughnieh...
Now note the wording in this article from the AP. In a letter to the council, Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazee referred to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Jan. 14 warning that all options were on the table... and It was Olmert's clearest sign yet that he would be willing to use force to counter...
Is it your opinion that these news agencies have wrongly interpreted the very different types of threats coming from each country? Or are you suggesting that the US should attack Iran with real life-threatening weapons because of its rhetoric?
February 21, 2008 6:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Rosenberg,
A few days ago you characterized the head of Hezbollah as an evil man who wished to extirminate world Jewry. I can't remember whether you extended that to his principal sponsor - Iran - but I should think it warranted (I would have liked to quote you but was unable to access the archives this morning).
You hold a very Left, strongly anti-war position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and all things Middle-Eastern. It seems you should recognize that those to the right of you would have a much darker view of Hezbollah and Iran, one which justifies planning for a military response. But you don't.
Is that because you share Valdron's head-in-the-sand approach to all unpleasant facts? Or Seashell's willingness to spin (Iran's overt threats are merely verbal bombast while Olmert's much more ambiguous statements are warnings of real physical violence to come)? Or do you have some other explanation?
February 21, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Or Seashell's willingness to spin...
Good god. One of the quotes came from YOUR news source. How does that translate into seashell's spin? You're a 24 hour laundromat all on your own.
February 21, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seashell's point is that Ohmert is making actual threats to physically attack Iran. In contrast, Iran's 'threats' amount to verbal bombast.
You call this spin. I have to call bullshit on you, sorry.
Frankly, I'm not terribly interested in your approach of cherry picking your rhetoric in order to demonize the side you don't like.
I'm sure that if I went through Ohmert and Sharon's statements, I could find equally diabolical rhetoric or statements. And if I employed the use of inappropriate, loose and misleading translation, I bet I could find some pretty outrageous stuff.
But what would it amount to? Fuel for gasbags? No thanks, can't be bothered. It's not something that contributes anything meaningful to the discussion on either side, and simply fuels more bombast and invective.
Does Iran actually represent a direct security threat to Israel? Not a chance and everyone knows it.
If it did, Israel wouldn't have spent the eighties and early nineties selling weapons to an Iranian regime considerably more radical than the one in place now.
Does Hezbollah have any chance of destroying Israel? None, whatsoever. Ten or fifteen thousand organized guerilla fighters without air force or navy are not going to be driving six million people into the sea any time soon.
Is there any serious evidence that Iran or Hezbollah is actively working to seriously damage or harm Israel. None.
Hezbollah's approach since Israel pulled out of Lebanon, has been overwhelmingly domestic, and its actual activities have been predominantly tit for tat. Israel drops a bomb, sends a missile, assassinates an official, or fires across the Lebanese border... they reply. Otherwise, for the most part, they mind their own business.
We should all have enemies like that.
As for Iran, well, I'd say that getting the price of Tomatoes down, getting Ahminajad to take a bath, making sure the Americans don't invade, firming up a pipeline through Pakistan, and about five hundred other things are a bigger priority to them than whacking Israel.
But hey, that's just me, living in the real world. Go figure.
February 21, 2008 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink