The New Yorker has tickled my interest in yet another current event that not too many people get familiar with simply because it doesn’t make the front of the newspapers or US Weekly. I guess I should first of all credit them with getting a hold of such sensitive information and turning it into an amazing 4000 word article that, if read by the masses, might change a lot. Isn’t it strange that if people read maybe one publication every few days for a year we’d see a drastic increase in public awareness and thus a vastly improved government because of voter education. If Dick and Jane just read the NYT, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, even USA Today (cringe), a couple times a week things would be so different. But Dick is too busy watching what happens when FOX turn your neighborhood into a gameshow!, and Jane would rather catch up on what disease Paris Hilton gave to some unassuming club hopper last week. Suffice to say Thomas Jefferson’s vision of the masses educated by newspapers is dead, or at least paused by TiVo.
OK well onto the article. It’s basically about how Prez Bush is stepping up the clandestine operations in Iran and other charged areas around the Middle East at the urging of his advisors and the warnings of military leaders. Each side brings up interesting points, too bad interesting doesn’t always mean intelligent.
Bush, Cheney, and Rice are all about secret operations as long as they’re doing the job of igniting ethnic tensions in northern Iran in hopes of toppling the theocracy Ahmedinijad has set up in Tehran. There’s one problem: there is no ethnic tension in Iran! At least not on the level that a country like Iraq or South Africa has. There is nationalism in Iran, and not the benign kind (though benign nationalism is kind of an oxymoron), and by throwing special forces who can kill with a toothpick into an area like that, you don’t fuel the fire of ethnic tension you add to the flames of nationalism.
The U.S. has always been supremely talented at operating under ostensible circumstances. Whether it’s in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, or Iran we can kill leaders with one hand tied behind our back and leave those countries faster than a crackhead after some chocolate. The problem is that eventually, people find out. And while no one ever really punishes us for doing it, it has made us into the Roseanne of the U.N. Now we’re starting to step into dangerous territory by attempting clandestine operations in a country that’s actually settled and stable. That’s like trying to break up a Mormon family, just not going to happen.
Bush has been warned that unless Iran does something “really stupid” in the words of one admiral, nothing good can come out of cloak and dagger tactics in Iran. Congress doesn’t even fully know what’s going out there because of the Commander in Chief’s right to order military deployment without clearance. If we’re prepping for a war in Iran, this is not the way to do it. Spying, sure. Economic terrorism, might as well. Propaganda attempts, why the hell not? Funding and preparing Sunni and Shiite militias (some of which various generals and admirals have called as bad or worse than Al Qaeda) is not what we need to do.
We’ve been going about this the masculine way and need to do it the feminine way. When two guys are in a fight, they have a fist fight, and that’s it. It’s over with after that. Bruises heal the relationship and you’re fine in a couple days. When two girls get in a fight, they prepare total warfare. Nothing is off limits, they are out to destroy the other girl’s life. Boyfriend? Screw him in the school bathroom. Popular? You’ve got tape of her in the gym with Coach Reynolds. Good looking? What the hell did you think those long nails are for? I think it’s about time we went about this the girl’s way. If they really want a war with Iran, ruin its life first, then it’s easy.
Homework: As always, pick up the newest copy of the New Yorker. There’s also a great article in Dwell about a new house in Amsterdam that is off the hook. Coming in the next few weeks: A review of a book called “The Concrete Dragon” on China’s new urbanism, just in time for the No Human Rights Fest ’08! (olympics)
NB: I am NOT a proponent of a war with Iran. Otherwise my kids are going to be dealing with a lot more shit than a $10 trillion deficit.
1 response so far ↓
ProductionIntern // July 10, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Seymour Hersch is always, always fantastic (he’s the guy that broke the My Lai story during Vietnam). Lots of great articles in the New Yorker archives. I had a similar reaction to you when reading Jane Mayer’s article on all the secret torture prisons the US keeps around Iraq and Afghanistan.
Really, what’s happening in Iran is nothing that the US hasn’t done with their special forces before during the cold war. Why is this? Because Bush’s staff and ex-staff (Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.) are all Cold Warriors who haven’t learned anything. There has to be an ideological enemy to fight on some random battleground for them, somewhere. So replace Communism with Terrorism, and then try to find hotspots where we can make trouble, relying on hard power and hard power alone. Business as usual. Until then, we wait and hope for change