Thanks for putting me in the loop on this. I was interested to read Geoff's comments and your responses, and to make my way at least skimming through Zinni's speech. A couple of stray throughts:

If you perform a "thought experiment" and imagine what would have happened if we'd found either substantial evidence of WMDs or some clear linkage between Saddam and al-Qaeda, I think that one can imagine a very much more positive spin on everything that we are going through now ... even with the same loss of personnel, the same sinkhole financially, and the same insurgency. I suspect we'd be willing to be in there for the duration, not just that we'd feel better as a nation than we do about venturing into Iraq in the first place.

That may all seem painfully obvious, but I think it needs to be said, because for me the lesson that comes out of Iraq is primarily that we should not invade by means of occupying ground forces a nation which is ultimately not going to be able to re-form itself in some way that is going to be reasonably to our liking thereafter. (The obvious question becomes about Japan in WWII, but the invasion there didn't happen - what you had was an inevitable occupation to stop a war that wouldn't stop otherwise). In a very crude nutshell, I don't think that there is any combination of governing entities, U.S. or non-U.S., that is going to be able to turn Iraq into what the West would consider a "reasonable" domestic situation.

In other words, in my view the country (considering the three parts as one country) was never going to be able to be run with anything other than a simulacrum of tolerance and "democracy"; and our problem isn't that there were no WMDs, but that, having found none, there is no internal structure that would be roughly acceptable to let us pull out and really give the government back to the Iraqis. I know about the interim council and all of that, but that's just a fig leaf to get us out of there, and it's hard to think that the country won't fractionate shortly in any event (which is part of why I think a fractionating based on our national interest -- a tripartite system) is better than one which the insurgents develop on their own.

I don't think the mass of the Iraqi people governable, in the way that we like to talk about governable, and if they ever were, in the past, the fundamentalists are going to make it much harder. I don't see the situation being much different than Haiti -- we can do what we want as often as we want, but the basic structure of brutality is going to stay there no matter who is in charge, because that's, somehow, the "history" of the Haitian people. Maybe it didn't have to be, but it is. We can, however, largely ignore Haiti, but we can't ignore Iraq.

So, it seems to me the fundamental exercise in the future, before we undertake occupying military action, is to make some sober assessment about whether, once we've occupied a country, the remnants of it can reconstitute themselves in a way that would allow us to pull out. If we think there's not enough tradition of self-governance -- I deliberately avoid the use of the word "democracy" -- then we don't invade unless we are willing to stay there well into the future. This means that we actually have to be willling to work more frequently in a covert way in those countries, and more frequently through client states and "enemies of our enemies", not less.

Again, in terms of getting out of Iraq, I disagree with part of Zinni's analysis. He seems to think that the forces that drive young people to be terrorists are forces that we can counter, a kind of "social work" theory of response. I don't, which I am sure doesn't surprise you about me. I continue to believe that, now that we're there, we should be masters of our fate to some degree and go ahead with a tripartite plan. I believe that after we leave, the country is likely to fracture on some lines anyway,and those lines might as well be partially ours. Whether or not the UN or NATO want a part in Iraq, or what would be left of it, I would turn it over to them, and let them walk out if they wanted. I think that part of the refusal of the UN, and part of NATO, to take a role is a desire to see us "bleed" economically and personally, and to nullify American power through another Vietnam. I wouldn't oblige our competitors, and our enemies. It may seem a drastic step, but staying with the status quo is just as drastic, and actually more drastic for us.

Finally, a word on Bush. As you know, I haven't voted for a Democrat in over twenty years (except for our current mayor). [Which mayor is that?] I went into this four years saying about Bush, "He's a dope, but he's our dope." Where I feel most that Bush has failed is in his inability to size up situations internationally other than in very simple, "trust" or "distrust" terms. Although it's always dangerous to leap to conclusions from bits of language, I can't help believing that Bush really believes that when he "looks into Putin's eyes" that he really thinks he's making an evaluation of someone.

It's not that he's dumb (or that's not the issue, at least), and not that he's inexperienced, but that his tendency is to want to propitiate people (or, in the alternative, reject them). It's not quite a lack of sophistication, since I think sophistication sometimes creates needless problems when you are a leader who has to lead, but "something else" which seems to me based on personaility limitations. Ron Reagan Jr., who obviously doesn't like Bush, said something very significant for me at the internment. He said that his father, after the assasination attempt, became convinced that God had spared him for a purpose. He then went on to say that although his father believed this to be the case, he didn't think that it was "a mandate from God". This was clearly directed at Bush, you couldn't miss it.

I think Bush is too much taken with a need to be liked, and not to be disliked, at least with authority figures, and that too much of his "decision making" is based on either wanting to please people in authority, or to oppose them in a way which is too obvious and thus self-destructive (remember how we looked so foolish with the French and Germans ... another President taking the same positions would not have looked so foolish). I don't know if I can vote against Bush by voting for Kerry, who I think is a different kind of loser, but I doubt as of today that I will vote at all.

11:17:21 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

I'm in the process of putting together a review of Kevin Phillips' book American Dynasty. It may be a few days yet before that's done, but in the meantime one large digression is already written, and since it threatens to overwhelm the "review", I've cut it out to present it separately here.

American Dynasty went on my to-read list back in January when, in the course of the Iran discussion which launched this blog, Orcinus cited it as offering proof of the "October Surprise" theory -- that is, the idea that in order to secure the 1980 presidential election, a group of Republicans including George H.W. Bush arranged to delay the return of the U.S. hostages in Iran until after the election. I don't recall exactly what standard of proof Orcinus claimed, but I was left with the impression that Phillips' book might change my thinking on the matter.

It didn't.

I should note that although I think the sensationalist notion of "October Surprise" is greatly overblown, on the general question of cooperation between the U.S. Republican Party and its Islamic namesake in Iran, I start out far more convinced than most Americans. I do believe that Reagan's foreign policy recognized a common interest with the conservative faction that eventually took control of Iran and formed the theocratic government that rules the country, more or less, to this day. This uneasy alliance began before the 1980 election and continued throughout the Reagan and Bush presidencies. I don't consider this to be a scandal nor a shocking secret to be revealed, and if it comes as any surprise to most Americans it's only because the general public pays little attention to foreign affairs generally and chooses to remain willfully ignorant of evidence which is plain to see in any newspaper that goes beyond a simple headline news concept like "Reagan good, Khomeini bad".

I've discussed this before, but to recapitulate for those who missed it: After the revolution which deposed the Shah, the government in Iran remained disorganized for several years. A new constitution was being written, government services were being reorganized, and so forth. For the first two years it was relatively peaceful and cooperative; even so, it was hard to identify exactly who was in charge. There were several leaders and several factions, with differing views of what the new Iranian state should look like. Ultimately, these differences would become violent, but in 1980 it was a complicated tangle of competing political factions. (This, incidentally, is also in contradiction to the typical American view of Iran which, both then and now, preferred to imagine a unified Iran led by Khomeini.)

In 1980, the two leading factions in Iran were the Islamic Republic Party, which had a majority in the Majles (parliament), and the followers of Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the elected president who controlled the executive branch and the army. Bani-Sadr officially ran as an independent, not associated with any party, but he built up a power base among those who shared his political views. This was a center-left group, secular-minded and technocratic, but with a tendency toward populist nationalism. Its support came mostly from the urban middle-class (which was just as important to the original revolution as Khomeini's religious opposition).

Bani Sadr was opposed by the Islamic Republican Party, which favored an authoritarian state built around religious law (but not anti-modern, as some more extreme religious groups were). IRP members were dominant in the revolutionary courts and in the Majles. The speaker of the Majles was Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a founding member of the IRP, who later became the Reagan administration's favorite "moderate" Iranian. (As usual, the definition of "moderate" was willingness to do business with the United States, regardless of other political views.)

Today, we associate Khomeini with the theocratic faction, which he ultimately came to support, but in 1980 both parties had strong ties to Khomeini. All parties wanted to claim the support of Khomeini, who was immensely popular, but for the first two years of the Revolution he remained aloof from petty politics and did not side with any particular faction.

The reason I always harp on the political parties is that it is simply meaningless to discuss the "October surprise" without that context. Most writers are eager to tell us that Reagan or Bush did business with "the Iranians", but that is no more meaningful than contemporary discussion about handing over the Iraqi government to "the Iraqis". It begs the question: which ones?

The October Surprise thesis says that Reagan/Bush conspired with "the Iranians" to delay the release of the U.S. hostages. The hostages were not under the control of "the Iranians"; they were controlled by one small group of Iranians, the Students of the Imam's Line. The Students were a minor faction, whose only real political significance is that they were the ones who stormed the U.S. Embassy and took the hostages. Any of the larger factions might have leaned on them to let the hostages go, but to do so would be a tricky political move with major domestic ramifications. To American public, the fate of the hostages was pretty much the entirety of the Iranian situation; to the Iranians, it was one piece -- a large one, true -- in the chess game of gaining political control over the country.

At the risk of gross oversimplification, President Bani Sadr wanted the hostages freed and the IRP wanted them kept. The Carter administration was in negotiations with Bani Sadr, whom it perceived to be the "legitimate government" of Iran, to have the hostages released. These negotiations were frustrated largely because Bani Sadr lacked the political authority to make it happen. For whatever reason, the Carter administration chose not to engage in talks with any other groups, which it perceived as "dissidents", even though they were the ones who controlled the hostages (not to mention the parliament and the courts).

The Republicans were not burdened with the same narrow vision of political legitimacy in Iran. We know that on multiple occasions Republican leaders met with representatives of the IRP, presumably to discuss common interests. These interests no doubt included the fate of the hostages, but the October Surprise theorists insist that the timing of the release of the hostages must have been the sole focus of the meetings. I think that's a parochial and unrealistic view of the situation. The larger issues at stake here were who would take control of the Iranian government, what would happen to that government's frozen economic assets, to whom that government would sell oil and for how much, and what sort of relationship that government would have with the Soviet Union. Certainly the IRP cared more about these things than about the hostages, and I think the Americans did, too. I don't doubt that both parties were well aware that a pre-election release of the hostages would diminish Reagan's chance of winning the election, but the real point of the meetings was to find common interests whereby IRP would prefer the Republicans in power in the United States, and the Republicans would prefer the IRP in power in the United States.

That Reagan and Bush did ally themselves with the IRP is beyond doubt. To me, the more interesting political issue here is that America chose to support an authoritarian and theocratic faction rather than one that was secular and democratic. The logic seems to have been -- just as it so often is in southern Asia and in Latin America -- that an authoritarian government is a better ally for America's interests overseas than a democratic government is.

I should note that it's not at all obvious to me that Reagan's policy was wrong. On the whole, it looks like a success. The Shah's Iran was America's staunchest ally in the Middle East, both against the Soviet Union and in the setting of oil prices. All of a sudden this ally evaporates, and a major oil-producing nation with 60 million people and a thousand-mile border with the not-yet-defeated Soviet Union is up for grabs. Then, if that's not already bad enough, President Carter makes a colossal diplomatic blunder which unleashes in that country a huge anti-American sentiment.

The potential damage to American interests is huge. Reagan comes along, identifies a stable faction which can bring the country under control, and quietly comes to terms with that faction -- even as the populace in each country is allowed the leisure of expressing its hatred of the other. In due time, the chosen party takes control in Iran. America sees to it that the new Iranian government gets the arms and economic cooperation that it needs; the IRP sees to it that all pro-Soviet parties are squashed and Iranian oil continues to flow to the West at a reasonable price. A Cold War crisis is averted. An oil crisis is averted. Considering what might have happened instead, it's hard to argue with that.

I used to maintain that by allying with the IRP, the Reagan administration caused it to come into power, and thus America is responsible for the anti-democratic Iranian regime which we now profess to hate. My thinking has evolved since then, and I now believe that the IRP was probably on its way to power anyway, and America's assistance was little or no net help in making that happen. I do still believe that arms sales from American and Israeli sources were instrumental in keeping the regime in power throughout the 1980s. True, we were simultaneously arming Iraq, rather like we armed both Israel and Egypt when they were enemies (or for that matter, Germany and Russia in the leadups to both world wars), but the real political significance of the arms was not to help Iran against Iraq but to help the IRP against its domestic rivals. A war, even when fought wastefully to a draw, can help to keep a regime in power.

So what does Kevin Phillips add to this picture? Not much. He musters up an array of evidence that the October meeting in Paris where Bush, Casey and McFarlane met with representatives from the IRP (Phillips erroneously calls them emissaries for Khomeini...) really did take place. Among this array are several European witnesses, which are new to me, but I was already satisfied that the meeting took place, based on evidence of various Iranians attesting to it, so for me it adds nothing to the argument. There's still no clue about what was discussed in Paris, nor any evidence of an illegal quid pro quo.

In case anyone is wondering, my project of reading up on the Iranian Revolution, which figures so prominently in those links from February, has long since been pushed to the backburner and beyond. I had both of Gary Sick's books from the library for a while. I got about halfway through one of them and never even started the other. I start a lot of books which I never finish. (Also in that category were those two Tolkien posthumous collections I mentioned a while back. One was a collection of non-Middle Earth essays, and the other is a collection of unfinished Silmarillion-like manuscripts. I poked around in each book, but didn't read either in its entirety. A lot of it was pretty sloggish.)

For anyone interested in reading a summary history of the Iranian Revolution, here's an online reference I like. It's part of a larger encyclopedia that includes a complete history of Iran; I've linked to a page in the middle which is as good a place as any to start.

9:52:53 PM  [permalink]  comment []