Our strange combination of seriousness and delusion in the Mideast

According to a story apparently leaked to The Times of London by the Israeli government, Prime Minister Sharon has ordered the IDF to prepare an air strike against Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities as early as March. It’s remarkable that such a story would appear in the media. James Lewis writing at The American Thinker says that if anything is afoot there are many countries besides Israel involved in it, since Israel does not have the means to carry out such a large enterprise on its own. He says that in addition to the U.S. many countries in Europe and the Middle East, though normally hostile to Israel, fear a nuclear-armed Iran and are helping Israel from behind the scenes.

This is a grave situation. Given the nature of Iran’s regime, I can’t see how the Iranian nuclear threat can be eliminated, except through military force.

But then Lewis ends his article with a non-sequitur that is somehow very revealing of the mentality of the pro-Bush people:

What Israel and the United States may be doing with this deliberate leak is to put everyone on notice. If there is no face-saving retreat by Tehran by March of 2006, we can expected concerted action.

If anyone is still wondering why we are in Iraq, here is your answer.

What could he mean by that last sentence about Iraq, which seems to have nothing to do with what preceded it? How does our occupation of Iraq, based on our belief that “everyone in the world deserves democracy even if the people we’re trying to help declare that our soldiers are legitimate targets of armed resistance,” and in which most of our soldiers are being killed not in fighting the enemy, but by being blown up by mines while driving along roads in a country that we still do not control after two and a half years, help us meet the Iranian nuclear threat? Lewis doesn’t say, so he apparently assumes that his readers know what he means. I, however, have no idea what he means and I’m forced to guess. I think he’s revealing the same mechanical reasoning process that has governed and justified our Iraq involvement almost from the start: “We have to do something … Occupying Iraq advances the war on terror … Defeating the Iraq insurgency is the crux of our entire ability to defend ourselves from the jihadists…” The thought that the particular policy we’ve pursued in Iraq, far from making us stronger, has hung us up in an unwinnable, vulnerable position, doesn’t occur to Lewis. No. Being in Iraq, by definition, makes us stronger against our Muslim enemies. Therefore it makes us stronger against Iran. That’s what Lewis means.

A reader writes:

On VFR you reply to this note by James Lewis:

“If anyone is still wondering why we are in Iraq, here is your answer.”

You write: “What could he mean by that last sentence about Iraq, which seems to have nothing to do with what preceded it?”

Do you recall the 1979 raid to rescue the hostages that failed rather badly? It was carried out at the very far end of a logistical tail. The bases in Iraq provide us with immense benefits operationally and strategically in dealing with Iran… If we were limited to the aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, B-52’s from Diego Garcia and token support from the UAE bases the task for Iranian air defense would be much easier; with US forces all but surrounding Iran (Iraq, the ‘stans especially Afghanistan, Arabian Sea) the Iranian air defense task is much, much, much harder and the Americans’ ability to plan multiple strikes and recover lost pilots easier.

Do you ever read Belmont Club? It is useful in aiding understanding of such issues.

My reply:

As you know, I FAVOR the idea of a permanent U.S. base in the region, for precisely the reason you suggest, to give us the ability to strike at dangerous regimes. But that did not require the permanent occupation and “democratization” of Iraq, with all the attendant lies and insanity including dealing with an endless terror war. We don’t need to be inside central Iraq at all; we could and should maintain a base in an isolated region where we have complete security control, and where the people are favorably disposed; many people think Kurdistan would be perfect for this. Also, Bush has never said that the reason we invaded and are democratizing Iraq was to establish a permanent base there. If that’s the reason, he ought to say so.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 11, 2005 08:34 PM | Send