Thursday, July 22, 2004
Invasion of Iran
Juan Cole in his latest thinks that another Bush administration would lead to an invasion of Iran. I do not know if this is necessarily so, but there certainly has been and continues to be a group in the White House that thinks this way, and has thought so since Iran was included in the Axis of Evil. There are also the nagging problems of Iran's continued playing with the idea of developing a nuclear weapon, a weapon that apparently many otherwise Western-oriented Iranians do not see why they should not have. There is also the matter of allowing al-Qaida agents to cross the country. This was at a time that Iran and the United States were acting like allies in bringing down the Taliban. One can only conclude that, like Pakistan, there is a group within the security services of Iran that thinks and acts quite differently than the government itself. Iran has also supported groups that the Israelis like to think of as terrorists, but are actually part of a national struggle against Israel. Their support for these groups is a major reason that the Iran haters would like to attack.
There are two major reasons that we should not attack Iran, almost no matter what the provocation. First, Iran is a much larger country than Iraq, in population in square miles, and in resources. Again, initially we might easily break through the country's defenses, but again this could lead to endless struggle against a people much larger and more united than the Iraqis.
There is also the important matter of human rights. Many people think that we were justified in going into Iraq primarily because it was under the rule of a monster and a monstrous system. Saddam was willing to sacrifice millions to his megalomania. We could find similar reasons to go into North Korea, with an even more egregiously evil government, and perhaps into Sudan and a few other states. However, Iran does not belong in this group. It is governed by a mixed theocratic-democratic system. Many liberals are being imprisoned and otherwise squelched. But it nevertheless has one of the most vibrant movie industries in the world. Unlike most of the Islamic world, its women take an active part in public life, restricted primarily by clothing requirements much less rigorous than those in Saudi Arabia or most of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unlike North Korea and its peers, the Iranian government reacts to international pressure, relaxing its oppressions on many occasions to satisfy this audience. If we were to attack Iran for human rights violations we would have a long list of perhaps forty other states that should be on our agenda.
We cannot operate in the world in this way. Nor can we justify the casualties that inevitably accompany war in enterprises with a justification as flimsy as we would have in this case.
Juan Cole in his latest thinks that another Bush administration would lead to an invasion of Iran. I do not know if this is necessarily so, but there certainly has been and continues to be a group in the White House that thinks this way, and has thought so since Iran was included in the Axis of Evil. There are also the nagging problems of Iran's continued playing with the idea of developing a nuclear weapon, a weapon that apparently many otherwise Western-oriented Iranians do not see why they should not have. There is also the matter of allowing al-Qaida agents to cross the country. This was at a time that Iran and the United States were acting like allies in bringing down the Taliban. One can only conclude that, like Pakistan, there is a group within the security services of Iran that thinks and acts quite differently than the government itself. Iran has also supported groups that the Israelis like to think of as terrorists, but are actually part of a national struggle against Israel. Their support for these groups is a major reason that the Iran haters would like to attack.
There are two major reasons that we should not attack Iran, almost no matter what the provocation. First, Iran is a much larger country than Iraq, in population in square miles, and in resources. Again, initially we might easily break through the country's defenses, but again this could lead to endless struggle against a people much larger and more united than the Iraqis.
There is also the important matter of human rights. Many people think that we were justified in going into Iraq primarily because it was under the rule of a monster and a monstrous system. Saddam was willing to sacrifice millions to his megalomania. We could find similar reasons to go into North Korea, with an even more egregiously evil government, and perhaps into Sudan and a few other states. However, Iran does not belong in this group. It is governed by a mixed theocratic-democratic system. Many liberals are being imprisoned and otherwise squelched. But it nevertheless has one of the most vibrant movie industries in the world. Unlike most of the Islamic world, its women take an active part in public life, restricted primarily by clothing requirements much less rigorous than those in Saudi Arabia or most of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unlike North Korea and its peers, the Iranian government reacts to international pressure, relaxing its oppressions on many occasions to satisfy this audience. If we were to attack Iran for human rights violations we would have a long list of perhaps forty other states that should be on our agenda.
We cannot operate in the world in this way. Nor can we justify the casualties that inevitably accompany war in enterprises with a justification as flimsy as we would have in this case.
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