Summary: The Bush Administration has authorized covert offensives against Iran, taking another step towards war. Or so we are told. Again. The Bush Administration and US military officers have long waged a campaign of words against Iran, firing salvos of heated rhetoric. But the Left has done its part to fan fears with waves of rumors during the past 3 years about covert ops, cut cables as a prelude to war, and annoucements that routine movements of carriers and expeditionary forces signal that the dogs of war have been unleashed.
The most recent “hot” news is “Secret Bush “Finding” Widens War on Iran“, Andrew Cockburn, Counterpunch (2 May 2008) — “Democrats Okay Funds for Covert Ops” Opening:
Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, “unprecedented in its scope.”
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Who Stopped the Talks?“, posted at Abu Muqawama (6 May 2008) — Opening:
Dr. iRack took note of some big news today: the Iranians have decided to halt talks with the United States over the security situation in Iraq until American forces stop their assault on Sadr City. According to the New York Times:…
Typically terse and excellent analysis from Abu Muqawama, about an important subject, and well worth reading. This news brings to mind — again – America’s objectives in the Middle East. Bush and his officials appear to believe that we can talk or bully Iran into allowing us to reshape Iraq into a giant forward operating base. Like so many others, I wonder how strongly we would resist Iran’s efforts to do the same with Mexico or Canada. Making the almost impossible a key foreign policy objective guarantees interesting times for America.
Also fascinating on this and similar sites are the frequent recommendations in the comments section to unleash the dogs of war — usually without objection from others. Without mention of costs (money or blood), odds of success, risks, or potential adverse consequences. Not that different from the sabre-rattling of the Bush Administration.
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No matter what the illustrations I provide in a blognote, readers top it! Yesterday’s note discussed the silliness following Admiral Fallon’s resignation, especially the rumors of a US strike at Iran. In the comments Greg Lehmann provides a better instance of post-Fallon overheating by the major media: 6 Signs the U.S. May Be Headed for War in Iran“, US News and World Report (11 March 2008). The “six signs” are as follows:
- “Fallon’s resignation“ – Of course.
- “Vice President Cheney’s peace trip” — Whether for war or peace, all travel by Cheney signals war to some folks! Also, peace trips by high US government officials are like trolleys, as they come along frequently. Not exactly a hot indicator of war.
- “Israeli airstrike on Syria” — Five month old news, so not exactly a Defcon 1 alert.
- “Warships off Lebanon” — US fleet movements are another standard element of the “about to bomb Iran” urban legends. US ships leave the Middle East (which means noting); US ships arrive … which means war!
- “Israeli comments: Israeli President Shimon Peres said earlier this month that Israel will not consider unilateral action to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. In the past, though, Israeli officials have quite consistently said they were prepared to act alone.” — Israel saying they will bomb Iran is evidence; so are statements that they will not bomb.
- “Israel’s war with Hezbollah: While this seems a bit old, Israel’s July 2006 war in Lebanon…” — Almost two years ago, and so of little relevance. Yes, this is odd to include in this list.
Sum total: almost nothing.
Please share your comments by posting below (brief and relevant, please), or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).
Other posts inthis series about the Internet: does it make us smarter or dumber?
- Will Israel commit suicide? More rumors of a strike at Iran. (22 December 2007)
- Three blind men examine the Iraq Elephant (6 February 2008)
- Cable Cut Fever grips the conspiracy-hungry fringes of the web (7 February 2008)
- Resolution of the Great Submarine Cable Crisis — and some lessons learned (8 February 2008)
- What do blogs do for America? (26 February)
- The oddity of reports about the Iraq War (13 March 2008)
- Will we bomb Iran, now that Admiral Fallon is gone? (17 March 2008)
- More post-Fallon overheating: “6 signs the US may be headed for war in Iran” (18 March 2008)
- Euphoria about the Bakken Formation (10 April 2008)
- The Internet makes us dumber: the Bakken euphoria, a case study (15 April 2008)
For more information about Iran
The Internet is our collective mind made visible, more so than print, radio, and television. It allows us to see the thought processes of our community. The recent “silly swarm” of blog posts about the “cut cable fever” in February (see here and here) showed the implusive and wild thinking of the broad community of those writing and reading sites about geopolitics (or here, about the rumors in December). These characteristics were again displayed in the posts following the Admiral Fallon’s resignation as head of U.S. Central Command.
A fun if exaggerated article in Esquire by a star in geopolitical circles proceeded his departure; much far-out speculation followed it. This is a first-cut at determining “lessons learned” from these events.
Summary
- The Esquire article was a box office success by that skilled and brilliant visionary, Thomas Barnett. Such articles are a staple of People, Fortune, and Forbes. They describe politicos, CEO’s, actors, and other public figures as brilliant, bold, brave, and beautiful. As the excerpts below show, they are fun but perhaps should not be taken too seriously.
- Admiral Fallon’s resignation following its publication should be no surprise. “Stupid boss, smart subordinate” media reports have gotten many promising executives unceremoniously canned.
- Most interesting was the “silly swarm” on the web afterwards, worrying that this meant that an attack on Iran was coming. Contrast this with more reasonable reports from ”establishment” sources such as…
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“
It’s Not All About Iran“, Elaine M. Grossman of Global Security Newswire, posted at Defense and the National Interest (13 March 2008)
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Most important, Barnett’s article has several disturbing aspects about how the long war might be changing America.
Stand by for action!
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Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (aka Stratfor) has built a well-deserved reputation for reporting, analysis, and forecasting geopolitical events. But just as valuable, I believe that they provide a reliable window into the thinking of US corporate and political elites. In this respect they have proven especially prescient about Iraq. Five years after the invasion most Americans do not understand why we are there, which Stratfor clearly saw even before the first airstrikes. We planned to occupy Iraq and build bases from which to project power throughout the Middle East. For more on this see yesterday’s post.
This widespread blindness of Americans about the goals of this long and expensive war is one of its many anomalies. Needless to say, none of this has surfaced in the Presidential campaign — despite its record length and unprecedented media coverage. Best not to confuse and upset the proles.
Here are excerpts from Stratfor’s reports on Iraq, from before the invasion. Note the increasing focus on bases.
“Smoke and Mirrors: The United States, Iraq and Deception” (21 January 2003)
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As more data comes in, it is increasingly apparent that the great Submarine Cable Crisis of 2008 was another false alarm. Yet again a large chunk of the blogosphere went crazy over a non-event. A follow-up to this post of 7 February.
I. “Conspiracy Theories Behind Those Cut Undersea Cables“, Ben Worthen, Blog of the Wall Street Journal (6 February 2008)
Reports that a fifth undersea communications cable in the Middle East has been damaged in less than a week - further compromising Internet access in countries there, and knocking Iran off the grid entirely - are triggering wild conspiracy theories about who’s at fault, from Islamic extremists to the CIA. But BizTech readers can proceed with global business as planned: the reports aren’t true.
So says Stephan Beckert, research director at TeleGeography, who studies these cables for a living. … Beckert tells the Business Technology Blog that he hasn’t heard anything about a fifth cable from his sources in the industry and that the newspaper that reported the outage, the Khaleej Times in the United Arab Emirates, seems to have double counted two of the cables and missed a fourth one entirely. Beckert also tells us that one of the cut cables wasn’t cut at all - it’s down because of a power outage. And while Iran is experiencing Internet slowdowns just like the rest of the Middle East, it isn’t off line.
Beckert says that the most likely explanation is that a fishing boat damaged the cables by catching them in its net or that a ship accidentally cut them with its anchor - these are responsible for 65% and 18% of cable problems respectively. The first two cables were only 400 yards apart, suggesting that they were damaged in the same incident. “It might have been sharks with laser beams on their heads but I’m guessing it’s not,” says Beckert. Viewed this way, it’s two incidents in a week, which is higher than average but not unusual - last year their were 50 damaged cables in the Atlantic alone.
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Important news! Hot! Significant! Just off the presses, posted at hundreds of sites on the Internet…
“Connecting The Many Undersea Cut Cable Dots“, by Richard Sauder, NPC Intelligence Associates (4 February 2008).
The last week has seen a spate of unexplained, cut, undersea communications cables that has severely disrupted communications in many countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. As I shall show, the total numbers of cut cables remain in question, but likely number as many as eight, and maybe nine or more.
They continue with some alarming and wildly speculative theories about this act of techno-terrorism. Who did and why? Established news media and bloggers have also reported these puzzling events.
“Conspiracy theorists ponder ongoing web outage“, The Times (6 February 2008): “Three undersea cables carrying vital web traffic were cut within four days last week, and no one yet knows why.”
“Four cable ‘cuts’ in a week: Conspiracy nuts light up the phones“, Richard Koman, ZDnet (6 February 2008)
Fortunately there is usually at least one voice of reason amidst the cacophony of the web (from whom I borrowed this title). Perhaps nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Note that Mr. Singel actually consulted a relevant expert.
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What happened in the Straits of Hormuz on 6 January? Malcolm Nance, in an article at the Small Wars Council, assures us that “the most recent incident is neither an attempt to create a modern-day Gulf of Tonkin incident nor a move by the IRGC to a new tactic”. While Nance’s background gives assurance that his technical analysis of the incident is authoritative, is he correct about the intent of senior DoD and Administration officials?
4GW combatants fight for the moral high ground as previous generations of soldiers fought for hilltops. {Note: this is a matter of emphasis. Bismark brilliantly and carefully sought useful casus belli as today’s Iraq insurgent snipers seek good locations in their urban geography.} Successfully managing media coverage can exert powerful geopolitical leverage. The actual events are just raw material — something that has not changed since 1964.
Gareth Porter takes the same facts as Nance, but adds two off-the-record quotes from government officials and spins a different narrative. According to him, officials were attempting to manipulate the news in a similar — if not as ambitious — way as the Johnson Administration officials who parlayed the Gulf of Tonkin incident into a major war for America.
Who is correct? Here is the information. You decide. After 43 years, we now know the truth of the Tonkin Gulf incident. Perhaps in 2051 we will discuss this again.
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America has made many geopolitical mistakes, some very serious. Nothing critical for a superpower, so long as we do not make too many.
Israel operates far closer to the edge. Small, geographically and economically vulnerable, surrounded by enemies, and heir to millennia of western antisemitism (Passages from Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies could be read with applause at some American universities). This insecurity makes them more likely to take bold gambles — and increases the odds of mistakes having horrible consequences.
In the 20 December issue of Newsweek Michael Hirsch describes Israel as about to gamble, again:
I came back from a trip to Israel in November convinced that Israel would attack Iran,” Bruce Riedel, a former career CIA official and senior adviser to three U.S. presidents–including Bush — on Middle East and South Asian issues, told me Thursday, citing conversations he had with Mossad and defense officials. “And that was before the NIE. This makes it even more likely. Israel is not going to allow its nuclear monopoly to be threatened.”
The mechanics of such a strike are beyond the scope of this blog. Here are a few key points (see the links below for more):
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Pat Lang perfectly captures the narrative for the release of the new National Intelligence estimate about Iran.
The “jungle telegraph” in Washington is booming with news of the Iran NIE. I am told that the reason the conclusions of the NIE were released is that it was communicated to the White House that “intelligence career seniors were lined up to go to jail if necessary” if the document’s gist were not given to the public. Translation? Someone in that group would have gone to the media “on the record” to disclose its contents.
The left finds this meritorious. The right considers this treasonous. Both miss the larger dynamic at work. Jim Hoaglan explains it in this excerpt from his December 9 op-ed in the Washington Post.
Domestically, the most significant fact about the NIE is its public manifestation. The White House was powerless to prevent publication of a document that made Bush aides unhappy and uncomfortable. The administration went along because it knew that the document — and any attempt to suppress it — would have been immediately leaked. …
The intelligence community has made itself a separate agency of government, answerable essentially to itself. This NIE makes clear that for better or worse, spy agencies today make the finished product of policy rather than providing the raw materials.
That significant change in the ways of Washington should not go unremarked, even if on balance the consequences of publication of the assessment are positive: As its authors clearly intended, the document removes any basis for the U.S. military strikes on Iran that many of us have argued would be unwise and unnecessary. …
Bush bears heavy responsibility for the collapse of presidential authority on his watch. His reckless disregard of the hard work and details of governance have made followership a difficult and dangerous pursuit under him. The spies understand and reflect that reality in their thinly disguised disavowal of his gravely compromised credibility.
But technology and other forces are undermining hierarchical relationships in social and professional organizations everywhere. Bush’s successor should not anticipate — with even medium confidence — that things will snap back to “normal” in the world of espionage when he or she arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
This is just another step in a long process for America
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Why has starting wars – aggressive wars, for conquest – usually proved fruitless in the modern era, the past few centuries? Perhaps back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Perhaps because so often the aggressors know so little about their targets, their designated victims. Japan’s elites knew little about America in 1941 – neither its industrial strength nor the determination of its people. Their education proved expensive.
Now the drums of war are beating as hawks urge war with Iran. How much do we know about Iran? Some recent works suggest that we, as so often true in life, know far less than we believe.
First, four articles by the provocative “Spengler”, writing for the Asia Times. The first three paints a picture of a dying regime, dangerous to strike out while it still has strength. The last describes a sad, even pitiful, picture of Iran’s inner life. This is a nation than in a single generation has seen its fertility rate drop by 90%, from 6.5 to .66 – amongst the lowest in the world.
- The demographics of Radical Islam (23 August 2005)
- Demographics and Iran’s imperial design (13 September 2005)
- Why Iran is dying for a fight (13 November 2007)
- Jihadis and whores (21 November 2006)
Next is a subscription only article from the November 9 issue of The New Republic, discussed briefly in Spengler’s 13 November article above. Well worth the read.
Infertile Crescent: Iran, Denmark of tomorrow?, by Philip Jenkins
How to respond to a threatening but dying nation? Containment seems to me the preferred method, but this is a complex question. Any thoughts on this – please comment below.
The context of this is demographics, if not the destiny of nations than a major contributor to it. China’s bumper crop of single men – with no local women to marry. Iran with a surplus of unemployed men, followed by a population collapse. These are the hidden trends that shape the world, in difficult to predict ways.
For more information about Iran
Wolf Pangloss wrote an interesting and detailed reply to Part I of my series on The Long War. In it he describes why Iran is our enemy. As a timely rebuttal see The Iranian Challenge in The Nation, by Trita Parsi (author of the newly released Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. (Yale), and president of the National Iranian American Council). This describes 6 myths about Iran.
- Iran is ripe for regime change.
- Iran is irrational and cannot be deterred.
- Iran is inherently anti-American.
- Enrichment equals a nuclear bomb.
- Iran seeks Israel’s destruction.
- The pressure on Iran is working.
I am no Middle East area expert, but these seem pretty accurate (although I question #4, as it is true only over the short term). But the strategic context to this debate is seldom discussed. Let’s consider two aspects of the wider game.
First, history shows that the very existence of a hegemon impels other states to ally against it. Worse, our new fondness for attacking other states must incite fear and encourage alliances against us. This is clearly happening today amongst the emerging powers of Asia — China and Russia. Let’s not encourage this natural tendency, let alone accelerate it. Attacking Iran would do both, at warp speed.
Second, strength encourages boldness — often disastrously so (Napoleon’s invasion of Russia). But even worse, so does the illusion of strength. America’s position today is precarious, with both internal and external weaknesses — both geopolitical and financial. Note my previous posts about Peak Oil and the US dollar. Adding the stress of another war at this time seems extremely unwise.
Note that rumors are again circulating about a strike at Iran by Israel, best stated in this January article in the Times: Israel plans nuclear strike at Iran. Almost certainly a bluff, in my opinion. Using nukes would make Israel a pariah, far more so than it is today. They would be global criminals, almost certainly hit with punitive measures such as elimination of foreign aid and trade sanctions. These would put Israel’s very existence at risk.
For more information about Iran
I strongly recommend reading this. Gary Sick is someone to listen to; note bio below.
“Musharraf and the Shah” by Gary Sick, Intenational Herald Tribune (26 October 2007)
Excerpt:
What is happening today in Pakistan takes me back to the time when the Iranian revolution was brewing, when I was the desk officer for Iran on the U.S. National Security Council.
The ultimate reason for the U.S. policy failure at the time of the Iranian revolution was the fact that the United States had placed enormous trust and responsibility on the person of the shah of Iran. He - and not the country or people of Iran - was seen as the lynchpin of U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf.
Everything relied on him. …
A brief biography of Gary Sick
Professor Gary Sick is a senior research scholar at SIPA’s Middle East Institute, and an adjunct professor of international affairs at SIPA. He is the author of All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter With Iran (Random House 1985) and October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan (Random House 1991). Professor Sick served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. He was the deputy director for International Affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to U.S. foreign policy. He is also a member of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and the chairman of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East. He was the executive director of Gulf/2000, an international research project on political, economic, and security developments in the Persian Gulf, being conducted at Columbia University from 1994 to 1995 on behalf of the W. Alton Jones and Rockefeller Foundations.
Part V of this series provoked many emails requesting more symptoms showing the decline of the State (DOTS) in America. I wish all the questions I received were so easy to answer. This essay will give some general background and a specific example. The ur-text for DOTS is Martin van Creveld’s The Rise and Decline of the State. [DNI Editor's note: See also van Creveld's "The Fate of the State"] He gives vast evidence of DOTS in America, such as the shifting of core functions like primary education and security from public to private entities - either for profit companies or non-government organizations (NGO’s).
The privatization of education is a major media story, especially efforts by the government to resist the rise of home teaching and for-profit schools. The privatization of security has occurred more quietly and is perhaps more significant. Private security detectives/guards outnumber police in America by approximately 1.1 million to 800 thousand, and their numbers are growing faster. The total number of private guards does not even include in-house guards, such as for companies and schools - nor mercs, such as those Blackwater brought in to guard the mansions of New Orleans following Katrina.
These are just the first symptoms of America’s DOTS. The State’s loss of power means not just diminished functions but an overall loss of authority. For example, generations of lies have eroded the credibility of America’s government - and its replacement by NGO’s as reliable sources of information and analysis. We see this today as Americans seek to learn about events in the Iraq War.
Even pro-war groups seek alternative sources of information to official reports and the establishment media. Hence the development of a cottage-industry of privately supported bloggers reporting from Iraq, such as Michael Yon and Bill Roggio.
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