There is an interesting new book by Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA analyst and Brookings scholar, entitled, "Unthinkable." The book is about the ever-louder drums of war beating for an attack on Iran. It is reviewed in the Sunday NYT Book Review by Leslie Gelb, an old Timesman who seems to me to have been around forever.
Pollack's previous book was gung-ho in making the case to invade Iraq; and one of the possible shortcomings of this book (haven't read it, yet) is that he can't admit he was wrong, there.
Pollack apparently makes the case that ever since the United States became the first and only country ever to use nuclear weapons, its policy has been containment of nuclear-armed states. It did this throughout the Cold War with the most vicious and dangerous dictatorship that ever existed--the Soviet Union. It has done it with Communist China. It has done it with North Korea. If you think perhaps the leaders of Iran are "unstable" or "fanatic," then how about the "Dear Leaders..." of North Korea? Containment of nuclear-armed states has worked consistently because the situation is the ideal of law enforcement: if you commit the crime (use a nuclear weapon), you will cease to exist (as an organized state). Because one nuclear-armed U.S. aircraft carrier has enough fire power to reduce Iran to the ideal (to some) state of pure anarchy.
Containment has worked consistently, 100 percent, against nuclear-armed states. Why is Mr. Obama contemplating attack on Iran? Well, the first time he promised to do so was before the 2012 election in a speech to the fanatically pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee--the most powerful, influential, and single-minded lobbying group in America. And usually reliable Democratic.
One Iranian political leader, given to rabble rousing to retain power--the unlamented former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government--was given to anti-Israel remarks--as are ALL dictatorial Middle Eastern leaders. But Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria actually have ATTACKED Israel; Iran never has. Now, in the recent Iran election, we have a new president, Hassan Rouhani, widely perceived as "moderate," who, on September 4, just before sundown, sent out a message wishing all Jews a happy Rosh Hashanah--just in time for my own holiday. I am not Jewish, but I have married two Jewish women (one at a time) and have a Jewish son.
I am not, I hope, a useful idiot of Iranian fanatics. Mr. Rouhani's heart-warming gesture could be pure politics, pure negotiation. But if you take his words as meaning nothing, then you cannot take Mr. Ahmadinejad's anti-Zionist rhetoric as sufficient reason to bomb Iran into oblivion. You can't have it both ways.
The review of the book by Pollack had an interesting paragraph or two that I would like to quote:
"For the Iran that exists just beneath the surface of the nasty clerics' rule is a potential natural ally of the United States [Allah knows why, after what we have inflicted on them!] It once was. It helped the United States fight the Taliban in the early days of the Afghanistan War. It shares America's concerns about Sunni fanaticism and jihadism [e.g., the Saudi hijackers, the murderous opposition in Iraq, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc.]. For all the shortcomings of its elections, they have been more free and open than those in most Muslim countries. And not to be forgotten, Iranians poured into the streets in great numbers to sympathize with Americans after the 9/11 attacks in contrast to the response of many Arab countries [again, Persians are not Arabs], where huge crowds thronged squares to cheer."
I recall the catchy title of a book I never read: "The Terrors of Ideological Warfare." Objectivism is an ideology. Wonderful: that means a system of ideas. They are true ideas and, as a system, the creed to which I have devoted my life. But when ideology sweeps aside history, experience, and reality--when it is applied without regard to the extreme difficulty of acting on complex principles in a complex situation--then I begin to become a bit terrified. Terrified, as we talk of wiping out the "Muslim monsters," talk of "starting by bombing Mecca and Medina," talk of bombing the schools where they indoctrinate the little monsters, hit-em, hit-em...
To launch a war on Iran--and make no mistake, bombing raids on their scientific and technical facilities for producing enriched uranium is war--and punish its people, yet again, for a situation America has brought about, and to turn this great, historic civilization into our sworn enemy, so that all the grotesque faults of its leadership are lost in the fervor of war, would be a tragedy many multiples of Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
The goal, as always, should be to contain a potentially nuclear armed state, to isolate it, sanction it--as we did with Iraq, which moved Saddam Hussein to cease from seeking nuclear weapons, as we discovered only when we had invaded and found no weapons of mass destruction. The goal should be to identify its leaders as our enemies, and its people as our friends--as they are.
If Israel attacks, let us hope it will not be preventive war, but will be based on solid, publicly verifiable evidence that Iran is able to launch a nuclear attack and is actually preparing to do so. If not, then the United States should let Israel go it alone and take the consequences. Remember, as painful as it is: Israel's government and foreign policy are either in the hands of, or strongly shaped by, the same kind of religious fanatics as we find in other Middle Eastern countries. The difference, with Israel, is that it also has powerful European, Enlightenment roots--albeit mostly leftish--that so far have saved it from the full penalty of religious fanaticism.
Let us be 100 percent consistent in our Objectivist ideology, but recall how long it took each of us to learn, understand, and make it our own. The same amount of effort, perhaps more, is required to apply that ideology to a world of truly daunting complexity. It has taken me years to see the contradictions and historical ignorance in what used to be my position on Israel and more recently my view of how we should deal with Iran.
To throw around Objectivist ideas carelessly, as though to know them guaranteed the truth of how we apply them, is the ultimate disrespect for Ayn Rand, whose applications of her ideas never failed to surprise her most devoted fans...