astralis

in addition to this, would like to add yet again that there has been no indication thus far that iran, either in the past or even today, has acted in a way that cannot be explained by rational realist theory. a-jad is playing a dangerous game with the united states, but unlike saddam hussein, he knows when the bluff goes too far...and unlike saddam, he is a mere puppet with two masters.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14644284/site/newsweek/

The Year of Living Fearfully
He has gone from being an obscure and not-so-powerful politician to a central player in the Mideast, simply by goading the United States.

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

Sept. 11, 2006 issue - It's 1938, says the liberal columnist Richard Cohen, evoking images of Hitler's armies massing in the face of an appeasing West. No, no, says Newt Gingrich, the Third World War has already begun. Neoconservatives, who can be counted on to escalate, argue that we're actually in the thick of the Fourth World War. The historian Bernard Lewis warned a few weeks ago that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could be planning to annihilate Israel (and perhaps even the United States) on Aug. 22 because it was a significant day for Muslims.

Can everyone please take a deep breath?

To review a bit of history: in 1938, Adolf Hitler launched what became a world war not merely because he was evil but because he was in complete control of the strongest country on the planet. At the time, Germany had the world's second largest industrial base and its mightiest army. (The American economy was bigger, but in 1938 its army was smaller than that of Finland.) This is not remotely comparable with the situation today.

Iran does not even rank among the top 20 economies in the world. The Pentagon's budget this year is more than double Iran's total gross domestic product ($181 billion, in official exchange-rate terms). America's annual defense outlay is more than 100 times Iran's. Tehran's nuclear ambitions are real and dangerous, but its program is not nearly as advanced as is often implied. Most serious estimates suggest that Iran would need between five and 10 years to achieve even a modest, North Korea-type, nuclear capacity.

Washington has a long habit of painting its enemies 10 feet tall—and crazy. During the cold war, many hawks argued that the Soviet Union could not be deterred because the Kremlin was evil and irrational. The great debate in the 1970s was between the CIA's wimpy estimate of Soviet military power and the neoconservatives' more nightmarish scenario. The reality turned out to be that even the CIA's lowest estimates of Soviet power were a gross exaggeration. During the 1990s, influential commentators and politicians—most prominently the Cox Commission—doubled the estimates of China's military spending, using largely bogus calculations. And then there was the case of Saddam Hussein's capabilities. Saddam, we were assured in 2003, had nuclear weapons—and because he was a madman, he would use them.

One man who is greatly enjoying being the subject of this outsize portraiture is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has gone from being an obscure and not-so-powerful politician—Iran is a theocracy, remember, so the mullahs are ultimately in control—to a central player in the Middle East simply by goading the United States and watching Washington take the bait. By turning him into enemy No. 1, by reacting to every outlandish statement he makes, the Bush administration has given him far more attention than he deserves. And so now he writes letters to Bush, offers to debate him and prances about in the global spotlight provided by American attention.

Ahmadinejad strikes me as less a messianic madman and more a radical populist, an Iranian Huey Long. He has outflanked the mullahs on the right on nuclear policy, pushing for a more confrontationist approach toward Washington. He has outflanked them on the left on women's rights, arguing against some of the prohibitions women face. (He wants them to be able to attend soccer matches.) Almost every week he announces a new program to "help the poor." He uses the nuclear issue because it gives him a great nationalist symbol. For a regime with little to show after a quarter century in power—Iranian standards of living have actually declined since the revolution—nuclear power is a national accomplishment.

Even Ahmadinejad's most grotesque statement, implying the annihilation of Israel, is likely part of this pattern. Iran is seeking leadership in the Middle East, and what better way to do so than by appropriating the core grievance of the Sunni Arabs: Israel. By making his dramatic statements, he is taunting the regimes of the Arab world, using rhetoric they dare not, for fear of Washington. His rhetoric is not so new; the Iranian "moderate" Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani said similar things. The real shift that has taken place in the Middle East is that 30 years ago most Arab regimes would have made statements like Ahmadinejad's. Today his "rejectionism" stands alone.

Iran is run by a nasty regime that destabilizes an important part of the world, frustrates American and Western interests, and causes problems for allies like Israel. But let's get some perspective. The United States is far more powerful than Iran. And, on the issue of Tehran's nuclear program, Washington is supported by most of the world's other major powers. As long as the alliance is patient, united and smart—and keeps the focus on Tehran's actions not Washington's bellicosity—the odds favor America. Ahmadinejad presides over a country where more than 40 percent of the population lives under the poverty line; his authority is contested, and Iran's neighbors are increasingly worried and have begun acting to counter its influence. If we could contain the Soviet Union, we can contain Iran. Look at your calendar: it's 2006, not 1938.

Bluesman

What utter crap. Embarrassing. I want to fisk this properly; I think I'll blow off homework this weekend (I'm taking 'US Intelligence Community and Policy'; should be an easy 'A' ) to shred this is detail.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Kansas Bear

For one Iran is a theocracy, Nazi Germany was a dictatorship.

Need a definition???

Theocracy, def; a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...les/790877.stm



Dictatorship, def; a country, government, or the form of government in which absolute power is exercised by a dictator; absolute, imperious, or overbearing power or control.


Although, that doesn't mean a theocracy isn't capable of acting like a dictatorship!

Parihaka

Funny, I can see the similarities.

__________________
In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

astralis

bluesman,

in all sincerity, please do! as always, interested in your opinion, sgt.

gunnut

I was just about to post those pictures.

__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

lwarmonger

While I agree with his overall conclusions, his methodology seems sloppy and some of his history outright wrong.

I would also point out that Iran would be willing and capable of waging asymetric warfare on a worldwide scale, which would considerably complicate things beyond a simple "engage and smash" the enemy style of warfare that we have faced before.

Parihaka

Author fiction. Iran is an insigificant country who may be trying to get nuclear weapons which if it does happen will be years away and they'll only be insignificant nuclear weapons anyway. No harm, move along.

Reality. Iran is an ideologically driven country who's autocracy advocates the destruction of Israel, the erradication of Jews and a global Islamic hedgemony.
They will obtain a nuclear weapon sometime between six months and ten years. There is no such thing as an insignificant nuclear weapon and as has been pointed out time and time again it is Irans stated aim to, as a first objective, destroy Israel.

This constant harping on about how if we just ignore the threat it will go away is starting to wear a little thin, the lies are there for those with eyes to see, and the propoganda masquerading as opinion is just trying to buy time.

p.s. I won't even bother with the other obvious lies in the text except to extract this piece of garbage and let it shrivel in the sun Do you want to try backing up that assertion astralis?

BIKEMAN

Iran, of course is far closer to Somalia or Grenada in which America won smashing victories (well, nearly, you know) than it is to Nazi Germany. Germany had a powerful army, highly educated citizens, top universities, sympathetic Germans in many parts of the world, a position in the heart of Europe, and much supoport in the West for its strident anti-communism. Iran is 7,000 miles from the US and quite a distance from W Europe.

As the article says, Americans (and most aggressors) must demonize their victims - just ask Jews or Gypsies or Parsis or Mormons.

lwarmonger

And how close is Iran to Western Europe and Asia's oil supplies?

gunnut

Like how you demonize the corporations and conservatives and rednecks and hillbillies and the American government?

TopHatter

This author must be blind or something...

Why does that sound familiar?

astralis

parihaka,

i didn't author the article, fareed zakaria did. however, if you insist, find out who said this:

"We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq’s concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don’t have any reason to believe they’re any more valid this time than they’ve been in the past."

March 16, 2003.

but let us remember, both him, and myself, were and remain pro-intervention when it came to the iraq war. now we're talking about iran.

to begin with, to use another example, presently north korea is suspected to have nuclear weapons. right now we've been stuck in the six-party talks, and there seems to be no direction to it- certainly not the way iran seems to be headed.

but we use the much the same words against kim jong-il that we do against a-jad. in fact, a case can be made that kim jong-il's actions- while still by and large explainable via rational actor theory- have been more irrational than that of a-jad. (and even then, this is not a good comparison: in the end, the mullahs in iran are THE power in iran, and not a-jad; whereas kim jong-il is the big daddy over in korea.)

in kim's case, he has been talking about not just the destruction of an US ally (south korea, where re-unification is HIS first objective), not just vague "america is the great satan", but threatening war on the US.

and from another angle, as i've said before, what about domestic restrictions? if a-jad is so nutty crazy about religion, to the point where he will do a highly irrational act (aka give nuclear weapons away to terrorists to strike at the US), then why is he opposing the mullahs on something as non-extremist-islamic as actually allowing women to view soccer games?

the latter demonstrates that a-jad panders to the public. why pander to the public if you're the head honcho in a totalitarian system? kim does precious little of that, for example. and also, why pander if, being the religious nut that he is, he is merely trying to get weapons to somehow cleanse the world of the US and the jews? since when does popularity have anything to do with what is "right", as pres bush reminds us?

and a-jad before has given out the historical example of america using nuclear weapons on japan, i believe. in that case, he is also well aware that the japanese are still alive. he would then also know that it would take more than a few nuclear weapons to somehow obliterate either america or israel, yet he knows that america's capacity to inflict damage on iran, nuclear or otherwise, far exceeds what iran could do to the US (or why bother to negotiate via the EU, US, UN?).

in short, what iran has demonstrated thus far is:

- the people below are part of the iranian political calculus when the people below make political decisions;
- the iranian political leadership has shown a remarkable "flexibility" when it comes to religion and politics, with presumably "unislamic" political acts by the leadership being explained away;
- a-jad, as well as the mullahs, have not made any concrete moves in their stated foreign policy aim at obliterating israel, and in fact, the mullahs have forced a-jad to explain himself and pull back.

this, to me, does not seem to be the actions of someone who has been portrayed as a people-be-damned-apocalypse-now-in-the-name-of-allah guy. given his socialist domestic agenda and given his loudmouth foreign policy talking, huey long does seem to be a good fit.

astralis

tophatter,

we somehow lived with the soviet union, which had more WMDs than iran will ever even imagine of. which committed mass murder on a scale that iran also could not contemplate. which challenged US policy at every angle, and not only threatened war, sometimes even came damn close to starting one. which had the resources, the empire, and the will, neither of which iran has shown (would the USSR have negotiated with the EU, US, and UN about unilaterally giving up nukes?), which had an ideology that directly contrasted to that of the US, an ideology i would remind you had a FAR greater attraction than that of radical islam (not to mention iran's decided specialty, radical shia islam).

anyway, here's a brief biographical sketch of the author in question. and as a foreign policy professional, i can assure you that his works and articles have a reach beyond mere popular reading: they are often used as textbooks in the foreign policy field. to show his ideological bent, he identifies as a neo-reaganite; his works were especially popular among administration officials circa 2002-2003, as he was one of the most eloquent proponents of the Iraq War.

----


Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International, overseeing all Newsweek's editions abroad. He writes a regular column for Newsweek, which also appears in Newsweek International and often The Washington Post. He is a member of the roundtable of ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanapoulos" as well as an analyst for ABC News. And he is the host of a new weekly PBS show, "Foreign Exchange" which focuses on international affairs.

His most recent book, "The Future of Freedom," was published in the spring of 2003 and was a New York Times bestseller and is being translated into eighteen languages. He is also the author of "From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role" (Princeton University Press), and co-editor of "The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World" (Basic Books).

Zakaria has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the webzine Slate. He has won several awards for his columns and essays, in particular for his October 2001 Newsweek cover story, "Why They Hate Us." In 1999, he was named "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century" by Esquire Magazine.


Prior to being at Newsweek, Zakaria was managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the leading journal of international politics and economics. He has also taught international relations and political philosophy, in various capacities, at Harvard, Columbia, and Case Western universities. He currently serves on the boards of Yale University, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council of Foreign Relations among others.

He received a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard. He lives in New York City with his wife, son and daughter.

Last updated: May 2006

Amled

Astralis you once replied to me in another thread, that you had faith in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and to give him time, it appears that you still hold that viewpoint.
I wonder why?
Have not his words and deeds since given you pause for thought?
His declaration that Israel be expunged from the map of the world, his blatant anti-Semitism and denial of the Holocaust alone would be thought provoking. But taken together with, (admittedly as yet unproven) Iranian attempt to produce nuclear weapons should have produced some kind of doubt.
But there is also his wholehearted support of the recent crackdown on the dissent and reform within Iran.
All in all, not behaviour inductive to produce a great deal of trust.

__________________
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. - Anais Nin