June 20, 2019
Weak Case Against Military Action Against iran
Timothy Birdnow
W. James Antle III argues that war with Iran would spell doom for the Trump Presidency.
From American Conservative:
Whether one thinks a military response to Iran is warranted or wise, I disagree with Antle's logic; Bush wrecked his own presidency, it was not the fault of his Iraqi invasion. Iraq was the shoal which foundered Bush's ship of state, but in the end it was Bush himself (and his rotund pucillanimous brain Karl Rove) who failed to defend his decisions. That was always the maddening thing about the Bush Administration; Bush simply would not contradict the media. That was Rove's strategy; to simply move on rather than fight mischaracterizations and half-truths. Bush conceded the "no WMD's" meme rather than provide evidence (which he had) of those weapons and how they were moved out of Iraq prior to the war. Bush telegraphed the war, and gave Saddam Hussein plenty of time to move his stockpile. Bush no doubt had this information, but he wouldn't use it because (probably) the CIA and others didn't want him to do so. Knowing what we do now, and remembering that the CIA did in fact run a black op on Bush via the Valerie Plame affair (which led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor) we can conclude that either Bush was lied to by his intelligence people OR they dropped the ball. Either way, Bush should have come clean with the American People. He didn't, and the end result was people stopped trusting him.
Bush also ignored things, like Iran's involvement in the insurgency. Iran sent men and weapons to the insurgents, a lot of them, and we ignored it. That was stupid; you can't win a war if you don't strangle the enemy. Also, he bought this stupid idea of "winning hearts and minds" which is something you do AFTER winning a war, not in the middle of it. The end result was Iraqi civilians were more afraid of the insurgents than of us, and we got little help from them. You cannot win a war that way. Bush was naive in believing Iraqi citizens would risk their own lives to help us.
But most of all Bush simply failed to explain what he was doing and why. He never explained his overarching strategy. He went into Afghanistan. He went into Iraq. The Iranians were in a pincher move. Had his strategy worked we could have squeezed them, but of course the Russians were having none of that and Bush didn't understand the simple fact that we were making Russians very nervous. Nervous Russians are going to act. I have little doubt they helped the Iraqi insurgence.
Trump is a different beast altogether. He WILL explain his thinking, and not kowtow to the media as Bush did. He'll tweet. He'll hold rallies. Bush just went into hiding.
Bush had other negatives. He accepted whatever abuse the press wanted to heap on him. He spent huge amounts of money. He promoted '70's policies like ethanol, wind and solar energy. Under Bush's watch Federal regulations exploded. He was unconcerned when oil prices spikes, thinking nothing of three dollar a gallon gas. He signed everything the Democrats sent him - even joking about it at the White House Correspondents Dinner. And when the mortgage crisis broke he refused to put blame where it belonged (his Administration had tried in vain to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) but took the blame. He then signed off on the draconian reforms the Democrats were pushing to "save capitalism by suspending it.".
His staunchest defenders were glad to see him go. I know I was.
And his replacement was one of the worst candidates in history - the detestable John McCain. McCain loved shafting conservatives, and he offended the base of the party. Also he was running against the first black nominee in history.
Bush was the guy who wrecked his Presidency, not the Iraq War. Iraq didn't help, because it was poorly handled and we weren't trying to win so much as nation build. We would have been better served to allow a dictator to take over and impose order. He might be an sob, but he would be OUR sob! Instead we created a power vacuum that Islamists were quick to try to fill.
Antle is profoundly wrong in his assessment of the causes of the Bush malaise. Bush was more like Jimmy Carter than Ronald Reagan.
Antle continues:
The cakewalk crowd has reemerged to assure us that pinprick strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities are possible and that the regime in Tehran will prove a paper tiger. But everywhere their promises have turned to ash. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or cheering throngs greeting America’s finest as liberators. Groups ideologically similar to the Islamists who attacked us on 9/11 emerged from Iraq and Libya as more powerful, not less.
End excerpt.
No.
First, what exactly are we talking about? Air strikes, commando raids, tech warfare, or boots on the ground? Antle seems to think we are going in with troops in a Shermanesque march to the sea (the Kaspian, in this case.) He seems to forget that we won a war against Serbia with air power alone during the Clinton Administration. He also forgets that we kicked out a pro-Soviet regime from Iran in the '50's with no problem. The Iranian People really DO like America, unlike Iraq. They have tried to mount revolutions against the Ayatollahs in the past, unlike Iraq which never did any such thing. Antle's argument equates two very different nations.
And saying there are no weapons of mass destruction is just play dopey. Iran has partially enriched uranium and tried and true blueprints courtesy of A.Q. Khan's nuclear network. They are developing missiles capable of delivering such weapons. They have been going more slowly because they want to develop an implosion device rather than a gun-triggered weapon, because the implosion device is smaller, makingit easier to deliver. It's more complicated to trigger, however, which is why Iran has been taking time. The gun trigger is easy.
But the point is not to wait for a test but to act before Iran has a weapon. Once they have one there is nothing we can do. This isn't that hard to understand. And the enrichment program is everything. Once you reach about ten percent enrichment it takes only a few weeks to enrich to the ninety plus needed for a bomb.
Now, Antle may well be right, and this could perhaps lead to a political backlash. He certainly may be right in thinking we will screw this up. But I do not agree with his reasoning as to WHY this is wrong. It may be the public will turn against him, but we do not know that. Trump gets his message out. He isn't Bush; he'll stand his ground and defend his decisions and call out those who betray their country (as many in the media did back during the Gulf War.) And he'll probably insist we win, not win hearts and minds. You can do that after victory.
Trump was right to stay out of Syria. We had nothing to gain, and would only have wound up facing the Russians, who see Syria as a vassal state. They are close allies of Iran, too, and any action against Iran would be tricky at minimum, and quite possibly is a terrible idea. I am not advocating for an invasion. But I am saying the anti-war camp is not making an effective argument. There argument is simplistic and based more on emotion than logic.
W. James Antle III argues that war with Iran would spell doom for the Trump Presidency.
From American Conservative:
Just as their last turn at the wheel wrecked the Bush presidency and eventually left Barack Obama in power alongside three-fifths Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, the Republican Party’s wildest hawks could now ensure that Trump is a one-term president. The president once understood this, telling Jeb Bush, "Your brother and his administration gave us Barack Obama…. Abraham Lincoln couldn’t have won.â€
Whether one thinks a military response to Iran is warranted or wise, I disagree with Antle's logic; Bush wrecked his own presidency, it was not the fault of his Iraqi invasion. Iraq was the shoal which foundered Bush's ship of state, but in the end it was Bush himself (and his rotund pucillanimous brain Karl Rove) who failed to defend his decisions. That was always the maddening thing about the Bush Administration; Bush simply would not contradict the media. That was Rove's strategy; to simply move on rather than fight mischaracterizations and half-truths. Bush conceded the "no WMD's" meme rather than provide evidence (which he had) of those weapons and how they were moved out of Iraq prior to the war. Bush telegraphed the war, and gave Saddam Hussein plenty of time to move his stockpile. Bush no doubt had this information, but he wouldn't use it because (probably) the CIA and others didn't want him to do so. Knowing what we do now, and remembering that the CIA did in fact run a black op on Bush via the Valerie Plame affair (which led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor) we can conclude that either Bush was lied to by his intelligence people OR they dropped the ball. Either way, Bush should have come clean with the American People. He didn't, and the end result was people stopped trusting him.
Bush also ignored things, like Iran's involvement in the insurgency. Iran sent men and weapons to the insurgents, a lot of them, and we ignored it. That was stupid; you can't win a war if you don't strangle the enemy. Also, he bought this stupid idea of "winning hearts and minds" which is something you do AFTER winning a war, not in the middle of it. The end result was Iraqi civilians were more afraid of the insurgents than of us, and we got little help from them. You cannot win a war that way. Bush was naive in believing Iraqi citizens would risk their own lives to help us.
But most of all Bush simply failed to explain what he was doing and why. He never explained his overarching strategy. He went into Afghanistan. He went into Iraq. The Iranians were in a pincher move. Had his strategy worked we could have squeezed them, but of course the Russians were having none of that and Bush didn't understand the simple fact that we were making Russians very nervous. Nervous Russians are going to act. I have little doubt they helped the Iraqi insurgence.
Trump is a different beast altogether. He WILL explain his thinking, and not kowtow to the media as Bush did. He'll tweet. He'll hold rallies. Bush just went into hiding.
Bush had other negatives. He accepted whatever abuse the press wanted to heap on him. He spent huge amounts of money. He promoted '70's policies like ethanol, wind and solar energy. Under Bush's watch Federal regulations exploded. He was unconcerned when oil prices spikes, thinking nothing of three dollar a gallon gas. He signed everything the Democrats sent him - even joking about it at the White House Correspondents Dinner. And when the mortgage crisis broke he refused to put blame where it belonged (his Administration had tried in vain to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) but took the blame. He then signed off on the draconian reforms the Democrats were pushing to "save capitalism by suspending it.".
His staunchest defenders were glad to see him go. I know I was.
And his replacement was one of the worst candidates in history - the detestable John McCain. McCain loved shafting conservatives, and he offended the base of the party. Also he was running against the first black nominee in history.
Bush was the guy who wrecked his Presidency, not the Iraq War. Iraq didn't help, because it was poorly handled and we weren't trying to win so much as nation build. We would have been better served to allow a dictator to take over and impose order. He might be an sob, but he would be OUR sob! Instead we created a power vacuum that Islamists were quick to try to fill.
Antle is profoundly wrong in his assessment of the causes of the Bush malaise. Bush was more like Jimmy Carter than Ronald Reagan.
Antle continues:
The cakewalk crowd has reemerged to assure us that pinprick strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities are possible and that the regime in Tehran will prove a paper tiger. But everywhere their promises have turned to ash. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or cheering throngs greeting America’s finest as liberators. Groups ideologically similar to the Islamists who attacked us on 9/11 emerged from Iraq and Libya as more powerful, not less.
End excerpt.
No.
First, what exactly are we talking about? Air strikes, commando raids, tech warfare, or boots on the ground? Antle seems to think we are going in with troops in a Shermanesque march to the sea (the Kaspian, in this case.) He seems to forget that we won a war against Serbia with air power alone during the Clinton Administration. He also forgets that we kicked out a pro-Soviet regime from Iran in the '50's with no problem. The Iranian People really DO like America, unlike Iraq. They have tried to mount revolutions against the Ayatollahs in the past, unlike Iraq which never did any such thing. Antle's argument equates two very different nations.
And saying there are no weapons of mass destruction is just play dopey. Iran has partially enriched uranium and tried and true blueprints courtesy of A.Q. Khan's nuclear network. They are developing missiles capable of delivering such weapons. They have been going more slowly because they want to develop an implosion device rather than a gun-triggered weapon, because the implosion device is smaller, makingit easier to deliver. It's more complicated to trigger, however, which is why Iran has been taking time. The gun trigger is easy.
But the point is not to wait for a test but to act before Iran has a weapon. Once they have one there is nothing we can do. This isn't that hard to understand. And the enrichment program is everything. Once you reach about ten percent enrichment it takes only a few weeks to enrich to the ninety plus needed for a bomb.
Now, Antle may well be right, and this could perhaps lead to a political backlash. He certainly may be right in thinking we will screw this up. But I do not agree with his reasoning as to WHY this is wrong. It may be the public will turn against him, but we do not know that. Trump gets his message out. He isn't Bush; he'll stand his ground and defend his decisions and call out those who betray their country (as many in the media did back during the Gulf War.) And he'll probably insist we win, not win hearts and minds. You can do that after victory.
Trump was right to stay out of Syria. We had nothing to gain, and would only have wound up facing the Russians, who see Syria as a vassal state. They are close allies of Iran, too, and any action against Iran would be tricky at minimum, and quite possibly is a terrible idea. I am not advocating for an invasion. But I am saying the anti-war camp is not making an effective argument. There argument is simplistic and based more on emotion than logic.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
01:20 PM
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