Before I go any further, let me be clear that this diary can serve no better purpose that alert you to the fact that this premise is plausible enough to occur to me independently, and to give you this much pause.
I'm just an average Joe, no expert. In challenging what I see as stupid assumptions, doubtless I'm retaining or even generating some more. But these are kinks we've all got to work out if we hope to be any part of intelligent policy discussion. Which, for better or worse, all kinds of people are taking a crack at these days....
Therefore you might possibly expect it to become part of the unfolding middle-eastern nightmare narrative. If only to figure out how to counter such a suggestion, consider this....
Don't Assume Leaders Of Nations Are Completely Nuts
They didn't achieve that role without being "high functioning" after all.
There is one prejudice Americans in general are prone to: "Those people are a little crazy," in reference to muslim governments such as Iran. Face it, we experience this collectively. Why is Iran being so strident? Let's not get into the idea that sovereignty allows for that, and the geopolitics of it all. We think that the excessive tone of provocation is simple craziness. Time to challenge that assumption.
Meanwhile, there is another prejudice to which progressives (and increasingly all Americans) are prone: "Those people are a little crazy," in reference to the Bush White House. But that should not go unexamined. We can be pretty sure that the stage whispers of a bombing campaign exist, and those are indisputably crazy. But Bush's denials: Are they just disengenuity comparable to his public dismissals of intent to attack Iraq beforehand? Maybe. But let's consider. Let's not go around assuming that people who get to be in charge of nations are crazy. We know they can be machievellian, though.
At the same time as we shouldn't assume the Iranian rulership is simply crazy, we shouldn't assume they aren't crazy in a similar way to our own leaders, or crazier by a substantial degree.
And Don't Assume They Aren't Nuts To A Degree
It is a crazy world, demonstrably, after all.
Remember the Iran-Iraq War? It was a big, bad war. Wikipedia summarizes it as "the longest conventional warfare of the 20th century" costing nearly a million lives and over a trillion dollars. It occurred a full generation ago. Sometimes nations come out a big war like that wanting more (Germany) or wanting no more (France). How about Iran? How prepared is Iran to lose a half a million or more lives again?
Probably, the Iranian people are a little cool to that idea. What would motivate them, and quash internal sentiments against a large scale conflict? Nothing, I bet, would achieve that better than a first strike by the United States. Most of us might look to the potential to kill tens of thousands of troops on the ground in a day and say that would be sufficient deterrent for continuing conflict or major resistance beyond that point. But that is not based on much evidence. Such a strike might be exactly what the Iranian rulership would need....
To do what?
Why, to invade Iraq... Maybe.
Iran's advancing back on Iraq was a very messy, slow, and protracted affair during the Iran-Iraq War. Repeating that against coalition forces seems very unattractive. But things have changed.
The Persian-Mesopotamian Mash
The coalition and the Iraqi government do not have the kind of iron grip on the populace that Hussein enjoyed. There always were many Iraqis inclined to be sympathetic to the Iranian side, but prevented from that. So the real danger of an Iranian invasion of Iraq would be a wildly unpredictable front line. While we can track, and discourage, troop movements with great accuracy, the human heart remains a mystery.
In sum, it could get ugly. That Iran may be deliberately provoking the United States for a reason should be considered. That they have nuclear material, although not in warhead form, should be considered, because as we have been reminded time and again, significant weapons can be created with such material. The initial front lines of any conflict may already be deep within Iraq, if you catch my drift. I don't want to theorize to much about this because I'm confident the Pentagon is on top of wargaming it, and actively preventing any such activity they can track. I don't think my inexpert scenarios would help; I think it is enough to say that there could be a mess over there.
Bush: Not Entirely Unreasonable
Bush's denials of intent to strike Iran might, perhaps, be taken at face value as reasonable. Doubtlessly, there is some seemingly irrational talk from the White House. Nukes? Yikes. I happen to think as I'm sure you do to that the use of nukes, or threats of such, are by nature irrational but that's a philosophical determination and not, strictly speaking, a rational one. What rational reason would the White House have for allowing nuke talk to percolate? Well, obviously, deterrence. So suppose we take that stuff at face value.
...And second-guess some other stuff. What is the US out to deter? A nuclear Iran? Proliferation is terrible inarguably, and undermines US suzerainty. (Pardon me but I happen to like US suzerainty to the extent it does exist.) Sure that is one thing that BushCo want to deter, and I'm with them on that, although I certainly take exception to threatening nuke strikes as a deterrent. But maybe they do too. Maybe they wouldn't stoop that low if the only reason to do so were proliferation. Maybe there is more to it than that.
Maybe they are seriously worried about Iran aiding the Iraqi insurgency. Maybe this is actually happening as alleged, or maybe its just a huge potential problem. But maybe the real concern is Iran, either in the relatively short term or at some future point, invading Iraq.
Why would Iran invade Iraq? Frankly, I don't know why anyone would invade Iraq, but apparently others feel differently. Were Iran interested in invading Iraq, Iraq might never be a softer target than it is now, coalition aside.
Bush: Far From Flawlessly Foresighted
Suppose the Bush White House feels that there is a distinct possibility any subsequent administration, whether Republican or Democratic, would withdraw from Iraq substantially, then step aside in the face of an Iranian invasion. I think that this concern may be keeping them in Iraq more than fighting an insurgency which they have already been told by the military will not end until they leave. Civil War in Iraq along Sunni/Shiite, and possibly Kurdish lines, may be one real concern. A greater concern may well be a wider conflict.
It is in the best interests of all who value peace, progress, and prosperity, that the Iraqi government stand on it's own two legs strongly enough to dissuade Al Qaeda-style anti-Western terrorists from existing there. Also to protect Kurds in the North from the neighbors there. But also, finally, to prevent the appearance of weakness on the eastern border.
It is not in the best interest of peace to participate in the "Hitlerization" of the Iranian leadership, or to ludicrously imply that they are out to conquer country after country. I don't believe they are. However the people in power in Iran now are the same people as demonstrated their willingness to fight for chunks of Iraq in the past, albeit provoked by Hussein's attack. Iran being a large, oil-rich country, with a religious foundation in no conflict with the majority of Iraqis, they probably harbor little ill will toward Iraq per se. The government that has arisen under the coalition has theocratic leanings, is dominated by Shiites, and therefore is unlikely ever to view Iran as a target for aggression the way Hussein did.
The Iraq that Iran has much cause to fear and hate, is a secular Iraq that, like the US-backed Hussein regime of the 1980s, fears Iran.
(Without being nasty, I think it needs saying that Iraq should look less like Hussein's Iraq once the US leaves. Yes, it will probably also look a little more like Iran, and not Carmel, California. Sorry Charlie, that's not in the offing whether conservative or liberal Americans are guiding US policy. Such an Iraq might look a lot more like Istanbul, however, in time.)
A Democratic Plan: Withdrawal
Therefore, my determination is that the best thing to do:
OO To encourage a strong Iraqi government,
OO To prevent insurgent elements from causing civil war,
OO To end any slim chance of Iranian aggression....
...Is to withdraw from Iraq.
As long as there is ongoing US military presence, none of those three goals can be fully met.
Supposing the most important thing the United States could do in the next few years is prevent a nuclear-warhead-wielding Iran, stabilize Iraq, and keep the oil economy on an even keel, withdrawal from Iraq, and an end to saber rattling or slashing at Iran, is the way to achieve those goals. Belligerence toward Iran steels their populace for conflict.
This is based on the determination that US forces in Iraq are a vulnerability for us. The whole "fight them over there" meme is obviously part of the problem in getting to this realization. The last time we were hearing about Iran getting nuked was Cheney's statement that this would be a response to any terrorist attack on US soil.
The problem with continuing to draw equivalence between nations, insurgents, and terrorists, is not only that your own people start thinking that way and therefore become stupider... But that the people you are saying it of, may start believing it too. Part of the Democratic plan in the Middle East has got to be ceasing the rhetorical simplifications.
It is idconceivable (idiot-conceivable) that we will succeed in killing or imprisoning every person who has ever participated in the Iraqi Insurgency by the time we pull out, even if it is decades hence. Thus, we want to avoid two things:
OO Making them feel as though our withdrawal is a response to their attacks,
OO Making them think that the conflict continues, now, by our own definition, on our own soil.
Therefore the US calling them terrorists even if their tactics include anti-Iraqi terror is a mistake. It's a mistake because it implies we feel any terror of them. And it implies that their actions can thereby have a greater impact then the actual casualties and material damage the cause to the US.
As regards making Iran responsible for terror that they don't initiate or support, I can see some wisdom in that. It could be intended to force Iran to actively prevent terrorism against the US, or US forces in Iraq, or any activity in Iraq. That's belligerent of Cheney to draw equivalence there but not necessarily without utility. However I think the downside is worse than the theoretical upside.
The downside of insisting that Iran is equivalent to or at least responsible for terrorism is that:
OO It's either totally untrue, or at least believed to be untrue by most people, most of all the majority of Iranians. Therefore it's good propaganda for Iranian opposition to the United States. And bad for all of us because of that.
OO It could conceivably become true. It could be willed into existence. We don't want any governments to ever consider themselves to have common cause with terrorists. Toss some nuclear material and know-how into the mix and it's an uglier scenario but that ugliness obscures the central point, which is that to openly fear such things of a nation is an expression of hate for them, and hate begets hate. Hate begets fear and... Therefore, conceivably, fear begets terror.
I hope that what I have written here would never add to the public Democratic "discussion" of the "Iranian Problem," but would only be part of low-volume considerations. The problem is not lack of yammering about Iran or the Iraqi insurgency. The problem is lack of clarity in stating that withdrawal from Iraq strengthens the United States in every conceivable way, including stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation. Noting that an Iranian invasion of Iraq could be a consequence of attacking them preemptively should not be said apart from the fact that withdrawal is the solution to the problem anyway you slice it.
The Democratic line on the case for Iraqi withdrawal might include:
OO It is critical that we withdraw from Iraq at the time of our own choosing. There must be no perception of victory in it for those who oppose us.
OO At present we are not faced with a full-scale civil war in Iraq. We are not faced with nuclear warheads in Iran. The strongest position we can adopt versus either threat is to remove our troops from the field now. This would increase our options while reducing our liabilities.
OO We don't want to engage 120,000 US troops in combat, so we shouldn't have 120,000 US combat troops on the board. There isn't a clear war for them to fight at this time, and we don't want them to have an unnecessary war to fight there in the future.
OO Our troops are currently in a position where their skills are not showcased appropriately. The ongoing occupation is not a good advertisement for American military strength as a force for liberty, untouchable in battle. For our national security, and for the honor of our military, we should withdraw. To do so now is to fight at the time and place of our own choosing, and to be victorious.
OO The victory of Operation: Iraqi Freedom was never in doubt. Those of us who did not consider it worth the prices we have paid for it, do not consider it worthless. Indeed we cherish it more than those who freely spent American lives, debt, and credibility in acquiring it. Unlike them, we know full well what this victory is worth. And that's why we don't want to squander it now as if it were a cheap thing.
OO The potential of an Iran with nuclear arms is, is better to mediate from halfway around the world, than it is next door. Our current leadership has declared defeat in the war for hearts and minds in the muslim world. The Democratic Party will never do that, recognizing that it is critical to the future of America in the world. Showing that we do what we say we will do is critical for respect. We said we would liberate Iraq and leave it to its liberty. That's the strongest face we can show to Iran.
And for those on both sides of the aisles who still want to stick around for the Iraqi afterparty... Be careful the caterers aren't Iranian unless you've made friendly partioning pre-arrangements.
And to all, good luck dissuading nuclear proliferation. Try listening to Jeff Latas as to how to intelligently prevent it, though. Note: Belligerence can be counterproductive especially when it may actually be invited for the internal purposes of unfriendly countires.