I am sorry;I stare at the hypothetical in your last paragraph and my imagination becomes overloaded, as in steam shooting out my ears and my eyes doing that whirlpool thing.
Maybe Cheney is going for "Big Stick" diplomacy. Take the military option off the table, and you have all the diplomatic clout of Sweden.
Simple: his plan is to attack Iran, because he still believes all the PNAC geostrategic stuff and think the US can ride out any short-term negative consequences.
I'm not sure *I* see this as rational or not completely malevolent, but the only explanation I can come up with is the whole "we won the election" argument--he really does believe that power's there to be used, and that if you're ruthless enough people will fall in line.
all the PNAC geostrategic stuff
And what is that? What's the plan that follows from that?
And what is that? What's the plan that follows from that?
Reorganize the Middle East. We're the Big Swinging Dick at the moment, and there isn't anyone who can really stop us from doing it if we commit.
Did you see the Hirsh piece on the likely length of our stay in Iraq? Lovely.
But I'm looking for something a little more specific--the plan, in addition to the goal. How is this supposed to play out?
Re. the link in six: exactly. If we were going to do it right, we'd have had to commit from the beginning to a long, slow, nation-building process. Now, there's no way we're going to be willing to stick that out.
And wasn't part of the rationale for the war in the first place that sticking around forever to keep Saddam in check was just too onerous? God.
5: And what is that?
Secure key resources (like oil) to prevent rival powers from challenging the US. Compel the world (and domestic opinion) to fall in line with a version of the Pax Americana based on unilateral American power. Use the threat of Islamic extremism as a justification for these goals.
What's the plan that follows from that?
Continue reaping the financial rewards of being top dog in the world order. Keep American military spending up as overseas bases and commitments expand. That sort of thing.
You know who's good on this stuff is Gwynne Dyer. (His books are framed more as populist op/ed pieces than scholarly work, but as an analyst he's more consistently perceptive than most.)
I was recently wondering if perhaps the real goal isn't to actually just "let" Iraq split into three separate regions or nations or whatever and then (for instance) develop a sweet deal with Kurdistan.
How we're supposed to handle Turkey in that story line, I do not know.
Well, ya know, if the Saudi Oil wells are running dry, maybe things might become a little clearer. The Kingdom won't survive it, control of Holy Sites comes up for grabs. Whatever.
Here is Newsweek saying we are not only never leaving Iraq, but that the big bases will be emptied, and Petraeus plans on setting up a few hundred neighborhood Alamo's and Khartoums...oops.
With Andrew Olmsted on his way to Iraq, besides Prince Harry, I don't really want to say how I think the war with Iran will start. But the fact that not a single of Sadr's punks have shot at Americans recently seems to have instilled the Officers with confidence that they just clean out the Shiite baddies, when it should have scared the shit out of them.
Oh fuck it. At some point, Sadr will get on his cell phone, and 20 thousand Americans will die in a week, and we will be off to the end of the world as we know it.
I tried to come up with an honest answer to your question, but it's hard to imagine any line of reasoning that survives the debacle in Iraq.
What Bob said.
The neocon theory of government (earlier also argued in a different form by Walter Lippmann) is that a President, once elected, need not should not pay any attention to the opinions of the voters. Over the last several decades, (actually much longer than that) the executive has increasingly claimed to be able to ignore Congress and the courts, and the courts have often supported that claim; the Scalia clique certainly does.
The neocons also, through Strauss, accept the Muslim doctrine of taqqiyah or dissimulation, which Strauss endorsed in the form given by Al Farabi. (I am not kidding. Strauss read Arabic). This doctrine holds that someone who knows the Truth need not admit it in the presence of hostile unbelievers; instead he should try slyly to put the Truth into effect surreptitiously.
And of course, it would be wrog, wrong, wrong! to say that Strauss was a disciple of the Nazi Schmitt, who believed that the executive power was absolute and higher than the law, and in fact only really showed itself as what it was when it suspended the law in order to preserve the law. So I won't say it.
In short, Cheney believes that he can do anything he wants to, and he may run the government now. Bush is a weak sister who doesn't know what he thinks about much of anything, and he's always seemed to be asking himself "What the fuck am I doing here?" All he ever really aspired to be was Commissioner of Baseball, but he got drafted.
The people who are most acutely alert to the dangers of mob rule and direct democracy are oblivious to the danger involved in giving absolute power to the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The non-insane people in that pack have to be looking at what they've done with real horror.
With Andrew Olmsted on his way to Iraq,
Seriously? Fuck. My very best wishes to him.
The Hirsh piece Tim links above matches what a lot of people say has always been our real goal in Iraq: occupation of Iraq, permanent bases in Iraq, and hegemony in the Gulf. Many of the loudest hawks believe something like this, even though that has never been oe of the Iraq War goals which we've been told about.
8:"Now, there's no way we're going to be willing to stick that out."
It is going to take a disastrous loss, an actual defeat, enbarassment, tragedy. Maybe a carrier with all hands. At that point I am myself not even sure I would try to flee Iraq wilth my tail between my legs. I don't know that I could tell the ObsWi crew that Olmsted...never mind.
Hell, folks Sadr is nearly in control of Basra, I don't know that we can get out. Jesus. I think Olmsted's expertise is withdrawal under fire, and he told us the getaway plans include a lot of fire.
Like many of the people who have already commented, I have trouble imagining Cheney as "not completely malevolent", so I have nothing to say.
Add me to the chorus of voices saying that Cheney can't be described as rational in the sense of receiving true information about the world and reasoning in a valid way about it. He doesn't learn from experience, and he's built up a fantastic wall of denial about any inconvenient data.
As Mom likes to quote, "Ignorance is a condition, stupidity is a strategy."
OTOH, he's a really powerful guy, and he's gotten there presumably because he knows how to please or bully the people who matter, and ignore everyone who doesn't. So maybe his idea is that the Middle East can work the same way: just form the right relationships, make it clear who's in charge, and who gives a shit about what's happening on the ground.
Let's assume that Cheney is both rational and not completely malevolent
Why would anyone assume that?
I'm not certain this is precisely the neocon dream--I think a lot of them actually believe in "democracy flowers" or something like it--but there's a way to make a certain brutal sense of it all. We are, for the moment, an unparalleled power. We do not know how long that lasts. If the Middle East needs restructuring to guarantee our ability to get oil, protect Israel, prevent our enemies from being regional powers, prevent rising powers from gaining superior rights of access to the oil, etc., now is the time to do it. Selling it that way would have made it more appealing to me; I'd still have rejected it, but maybe not as quickly. OTOH, if they'd presented it that way, the populace would have rejected it out of hand, because it promises drafts and dying, I think.
Everything after 1 is pretty much unnecessary. When you can't get to any answer that fits your assumptions, the assumptions may need work.
Look guys, this is Econ 101. You build a model assuming a 100% rational Cheney, and then you have to tweak it until it fits the 100% irrational Cheney. In some cases you can just put the word "not" before every adjective, but often more tweaks are needed.
Serious question here.
Is Cheney-in-his-current-position-of-power a new beastie in American politics?
I mean, I'm well aware of all the arguments (and facts) regarding the U.S. gov't as a whole doing evil things, but I've never quite had the sense that any individual within that system has been as fully and purposefully malevolent as Dick Cheney.
Naieve?
23 is probably the motivation originally. Iraq blew up that vision, and so now we're onto some version of 2. I would have said something like the expectations game or good cop, bad cop, but I can't figure out why Cheney would be the only bad cop.
Of course it's about securing oil reserves and military bases. And water
The problem in this assumption is the word "both."
Maybe it's just me, but my 1st assumption with all Republican madnesses is that it's supposed to help them win the next election.
So I can see the calculus going like this for 2008:
Don't attack Iran - war in Iraq continues to suck, all Bush's fault, people wise up, Repubs lose.
Attack Iran - dumbfucks rally around flag, Dems hopelessly confused (Support Da Troops), who knows it might work ... Repubs MAYBE don't lose.
You got a handful of nothing & a handful of shit ... you probably can't buy anything w/ the shit, but you definitely can't buy anything w/ the nothing.
---Of course the real reason is that Cheney thinks the little brown people Only Understand Force, but we were being asked to assume ratio and non-total malevolence.
Anderson's point deserves consideration. I have asked myself whether the Bush-Cheney team hasn't figured out that doing the right thing can't possibly save them at this point, but that fucking things up even more might make the "don't change horses" meme kick back in. The Hail Mary desperation pass.
27: Right, I think. "Good cop, bad cop" is always part of diplomacy. Cheney isn't the only bad cop, and even if he is, the Iranians can't assume he is. There also are those carrier groups and the Israelis out there. That's real capability, and if I remember correctly, the phrase is something like "Base your plans on the enemy's capabilities, don't try to guess their intentions.
I imagine regarding Iran the idea is that we blow up some stuff in Iran and the people magically rise up and install a democracy friendly to the US. Something like that. I think Ledeen and that type used to shovel that idea. The neocons are magical thinkers and utopians. I dunno if Dick is really a neocon or what.
I think that there's zero chance that this is a bad cop feint. Cheney wants a war if he can get one. I'm hoping that he gets resistance from the military; my reading of the tea leaves is that Bush and Cheney have burned the militar enough to motivate serious resistance (e.g., going to the press and to Congress).
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or fascist dictatorship, or parliament, or communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
---Hermann Goering
Hot damn, knew that quote might come in handy.
34: I don't think it's a feint, I also think he wants a war. The effect is the same tho'. No one pays attention to the good cop unless there's a bad one around.
My paranoid speculation (as I blogged about here) is that his plan is to keep the price of oil high by keeping the threat of war live, thus keeping his buddies in the oil business insanely rich. They'll pay him back with a very cushy sinecure when he retires in 2009.
His goals are obvious
1 - start a war before the Dems take the WH and the option dissapears.
2- then hand said war over to the next Dem president like a gift-wrapped turd.
Yes, he is that petty.
Ok, I might buy that make a mess for the Dem president in 2008 to have to fix theory. It's like, they've wrecked the place, but it needs a final crap on the kitchen table to make the scene complete.
I don't know how accurate this report is on internal administration views, but I'll take it.It's not very accurate. Those are British government sources and they got taken out of the loop sometime in 2004-2005, along with Lord Black. That said, Gates may be totally opposed to attacking Iran; if he's ordered to do it, he'll still do it. Bush is not going to pick someone that won't follow orders.
Although he has dispatched a second US aircraft carrier to the Gulf,Oy. Enterprise was on station in the Arabian sea, off the coast of Pakistan in September. They were at the end of their year-long tour, but Enterprise was resupplied and that tour got extended. In addition, they sent the Ike to the PG, and then they sent the Stennis. That's three carriers (three carrier strike groups!) operating in the Arabian Sea. They may (will!) send a fourth carrier. Teh journos keep repeating 'two carriers to the PG' as if Iran only bordered the PG. Dorks.
He is also pressing the Pentagon to examine specific war plans -- including, it is rumoured, covert action.They've been engaged in covert action for two years. What are they gonna do, sneak a nuke into Iran?
Can we try an exercise? Let's assume that Cheney is both rational and not completely malevolent; what's his plan?Over-emphasizes Cheney at Bush's expense. Yes, Bush is mainly the political front man for the op, but he's still got an ego. Bush, apparently, is the one who needs to believe in hearts & flowers & spreading democracy, which is how we wind up with speechwriters setting policy.
I'm sorta confused as to what you're asking. They told you the plan already: invade Iraq, Syria and Iran. From their point of view, Osama bin Laden is not the problem. Osama couldn't exist without a state supporting him, as far as these guys are concerned, those states are Iraq, Iran and Syria. Yer liberal-types say (said) Osama is operating entirely on his own, and he's just a criminal (well, he is a criminal) and no state is supporting him. *I* say they're correct inasmuch as he needs state support to exist. (That stuff people like Friedman were peddling a coupla about how Osama just magically vanished into the ether is a lot of crap used to rationalize 'spreading democracy'.) It just so happens that that state supporting him is Pakistan, not Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Cheney and the like don't believe that (because it's inconvenient to do so); they've continued to fixate on Saddam as the Source of All Evil, closely followed by the Ayatollahs. I don't think Saddam was uniquely bad, and I don't see why anyone would; he was pretty much a second-rate member of the League of Evil Dictators. That doesn't mean he wasn't an asshole, it means he wasn't uniquely evil, and instead, just run-of-the-mill evil. One wouldn't expect Iranians to see it that way; they have excellent historical reasons for demonizing him as Hitler2, as do the Israelis. People like Cheney, on the other hand, simply spend too much time listening to nuts like Laurie Mylencoe (sp) and the Michael Ledeen and the like. So they read, over and over and over, thinly-sourced, paper-thin theories about Saddam being behind the OKC bombing and other crap like that. Read that sort of thing often enough and people start to think, 'well, there must be something to it.'
If you believed that Saddam Hussein, Assad, and the Mullahs have demonic powers of terrorism, provided by Oil Power, effectively putting them at war with you, what do you do you? You invade, kick their asses and deal with the consequences of what was forced on you. And then you deal with the consequences. Simple, straightforward, and what they've been telling you they've wanted to do since ever. That's it; that's the plan. Nothin' complicated about it. Any ornate theories about how they've evil masterminds (hint: they ain't that smart) is 1> overthinking the issue and 2> doing the same thing to them that they've been doing to Saddam and the like. Attributing to them pure malevolent evil and demonic powers to carry out their intensely evil acts.
Which is silly. Saddam Hussein wasn't Hitler (nor Stalin nor Mao, but Idi Amin I could go with), the Iranians are not going to immediately going to launch a Halocaust-repeating first strike on Israel as soon as they build five nuclear weapons (gonna take a lot more than five nukes to do the job), and Bush and Cheney did not trade their souls to Satan in return for some oil (the price isn't right).
They're just overly excitable and not real clueful. And a little greedy and ambitious.
m, just enough to screw everything up
I think there's a lot to 23. I also think they're acting like they're trying to start a war. Most of the players in Iran actively don't want a confrontation with the US. So, the MO is to keep stirring the pot until there's a Fox-newsable casus belli. Something like send in covert troops. THen if they were actually caught or their mission revelead, the Iranian government would react. Call that reaction a provocation and invade.
However, I don't actually think the Administration does want a war. I just think they want to control domestic headlines. Talking tough and swinging Big Texas Dicks makes for better headlines than Democratic Congressmen passing minimum wage laws.
Forgot to note that a big part of why I don't think the Administration actually wants a war is that this saber-rattling has been going on so long. If they actually wanted to invade, we'd have done it by now.
If you believed that Saddam Hussein, Assad, and the Mullahs have demonic powers of terrorism, provided by Oil Power, effectively putting them at war with you, what do you do you? You invade, kick their asses and deal with the consequences of what was forced on you. And then you deal with the consequences.
Now this makes a lot of sense to me.
42: Staging the first two Gulf wars took a lot longer than I thought it would.
44. They've been talking about Iran for almost a year now.
I just don't think that that's eveidence that they're not serious. Some of them have been talking about this stuff for 15 years. Sometimes an option is floated for quite awhile before the decision is made to actually take it, and then it still takes awhile to make it real.
I was absolutely sure that the Second Gulf War would happen around eight months before it actually did.
Ok Ogged, I'll bite. Assuming that Cheney is both rational and not completely malevolent; what's his plan?
Well, first you gotta suss out the goal. There are several possible ones, but it all boils down to dis-empowerment of Iran as it exists today, hostile to the US, Israel, and the West in general. But I don't think Cheney wants war, I think he wants military action that would be significant and somehow decisive without a war, that is, without Iran fighting back in any significant way.
The most basic and least extensive version of this would be to retard or temporarily destroy uranium enrichment facilities and other facilities which may be useful in Iran's efforts to advance their nuclear capabilities, military or otherwise. The next level up would include attacking and destroying Iranian long range weapons of various sorts, especially those that could significantly harm Israel, US forces in the region, or oil shipments from the gulf. A third option would be to militarily try to defeat and occupy Iran and enforce regime change as was intended in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If Cheney is rational, then all out war, the third option, is not an option. The problem is, you don't have take the US Army into Iran to have an all out war erupt instantly if you try either of the lesser option, because, the US military is already there across most Iranian borders or seacoasts. The surgical-strike options are much easier to consider in the absence of US vital interests being easy targets within Iranians' arms reach.
So instead of rational, we'll likely see rationale. A surgical strike done by special ops, and/or missiles, and/or aircraft will be justified by some claimed violation of UN antinuclear stipulations. Then when Iran strikes back at us or Israel, that will be termed escalation. And then the escalation will begin in earnest.
I see only two ways it might be done without war resulting: a mission impossible super sneeky sabotage effort where there really is no way to prove that massive and possibly rather violent catastrophes at one or more key nuclear facilities weren't accidents, and, some kind of non-letal disruption, like shorting out power grids and similar soft take-down of various infrastructures connected to and potentially necessary for operation of nuclear facilities.
I guess what I mean is is that the rift is likely definable as being between people who think there is any chance of using effective force in action against Iran without it becoming war and people who are not Cheney.
The plan is to stir shit up, get the various religious and ethnic groups fighting each other so as to realign the borders. I'm not sure this is a reasonable or worthwhile goal, but I've come to think it might be the plan. If so, it's working.
How we're supposed to handle Turkey in that story line, I do not know.
Turkey will be stuffed and roasted if the alternative is losing control of Iraqi oil.
If they actually wanted to invade, we'd have done it by now.
What/who with?
Mr B is almost certainly right on all points.
I've always thought of the upcoming war in Iran as part of some attempt to bring on a state of emergency during which anti-war sentiment would eveporate. I think that everything Bush has done in foreign and military policy has had an electoral angle (to say nothing of the graft angle). The war with Iran might consist entirely of bombing and missiles and not have a clear military objective.
Domestically, a stated goal of the hard right is to produce a much more authoritarian and militarized America with a draft, much more military spending, a "unity of purpose" causing antiwar people to STFU for the duration, willingly or not, and a more stratified society within which the lower classes are humble, quiet, and grateful for what they get.
Domination of the oil-producing countries is part of that scheme, but only part of it. If we achieved domination peacefully, it would be harder to bring about the domestic transformation.
In the Bush administration the wonks (anyone who knows anything) are always subordinate to the ideologues, and the sincere ideologues (free traders, little government conservatives, actual Christians) are always subordinated to the Realpolitik ideologues and grafters.
That's a negative view, but there's lots of evidence for it. I think that the core people of the administration realize that things haven't gone quite right and that their program is at risk, but their response to that will be to give it another hard shot. They do not believe that they have been not in any way discredited.
Since WWII actual war has been somewhat discredited in most liberal democracies, least of all the US. Blatant aggression, civilian deaths, and calls for enormous sacrifice are looked down on. The hard right does not really think of this as a good development. It's a common argument of theirs that 3,000 Americans dead (and 10,000?? crippled for life) is not a high price at all.
Agreed, Mr. B may be right on Cheney's motives and options, but there are other "rational" approaches that are not on Cheney's radar screen, nor in his playbook. Apparantly, the U.S. lost an opportunity 3 years ago, before Almandine-Jihad became president, to negociate with the real power center, the clergy. It was Iran who made the overture, and Bush/Cheney, in there infinite arrogance, who countered with the snub.
The U.S. had angered the Iranians in the 1950s with the CIA-lead overthrow of Mosedegh, their duly elected president. The Iranians still resent the imposition of the Shah, and his secret police, Savak. Almost no family in Iran remained untouched with the oppression and brutality of Savak. It was the simmering resentment of Mosedegh's overthrow that lead to the embassy hostage crisis of 1979. Today, the population of Iran is young (50% under 35 years) and West-leaning. They do not support Almandine-Jihad but would certainly rally behind him in the event of a U.S. provocation. Furthermore, the younger generation of Iranians do not have the same antipathy towards the U.S. as their forebearers. It is hard to fathom why the U.S. would want to alienate this generation, who probably hold the keys to normalized diplomatic relations in the not-too-distant furture.
Obviously, Iran came out the winner, in part, of U.S. actions in Iraq and Afganistan. Two traditional enemies were removed, the Taliban and Saddam, complements of the U.S. On this basis, plus our self-induced quagmire in Iraq, there are stronger reasons to consider diplomatic options over military ones. It is regretable and potentially tragic that the fools in Washington don't see it this way.
"Least of all the US" --> "even the US".
Taking the moral and stratigic horror of this for granted, a part of me is curious about how a country like Iran would rationally prepare for the airstrikes which have to have been part of their staff planning for a generation. Mr. B. may not feel comfortable discussing that, but I'd be interested in his opinion.
I'm supposing dispersion, hardening, shell-games, and most of all prioritization, the deciding what really needs protection and what is unltimately dispensible. Likely targets designed from the outset with the possibility of strikes, as were launched against the Iraqi reactor in, what was it, '79, '80?
They've had so long to prepare, and are not idiots; I'm curious about what they'd be likely to do.
I think I most agree with max's version of things. I think the Bush people (Cheney people?) really do believe this whole deal that history will be the judge, etc, in a way. They see the near- and medium-term future as a forked path. Down one lane the US slowly slides with the rest of the Western industrial world into a stance of diplomacy and hesitation, an inevitable acquiescence as over the course of a generation or two globalisation of industry and alliances of economic interdependence tie the US to the ground by lilliputian deals and arrangements. Rather than accept this they choose the other path: a roll of the dice on a bet that if they can create enough chaos in the Middle East they can give us/themselves a shot at creating a situation in which we extend our reign.
Rather than the implementation of a grand design it's a craps shoot. They hope that they can create a situation in which we assert and extend our dominance and, failing total dominance, that at least we shed some of what they see as the leaches, the troubling flies, so that even if we are doomed to gently drift downwards we're still relatively on top. I doubt they have a plan so much as a hope - twisted as it might be - that if they can just blow up enough shit and secure enough oil fields that our short- and medium-term goals are met and in a couple of generations historians will laud them for seeing something like a big picture and acting to secure America's dominance in that context.
I am reminded again of that saying someone (here?) attributed to Rumsfeld: "if you can't solve a problem, make it bigger."