When I read this on Glenn Reynold’s blog this morning, I could hardly believe it. In response to an Ed Morrissey piece on Austrian weapons sold to Iran ending up with the insurgents in Iraq, the Professor drops his normally mild mannered personae and advocates hitting the Iranians with targeted assassinations:
I don’t understand why the Bush Administration has been so slow to respond. Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy, or an invasion, is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs’ expat business interests out of business, etc. Basically, stepping on the Iranians’ toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq. And we should have been doing this since the summer 2003. But as far as I can tell, we’ve done nothing along these lines.
The outrage from all the usual suspects had to have been anticipated by Reynolds. He’s too experienced in the ways of the blogosphere not to have realized the second he wrote those words about assassinating “radical mullahs” and atomic scientists that a full blown blogswarm wasn’t in the offing. Sure enough, leading the pack of finger waggers and tsk-tskers is the number one hysteric in the blogosphere:
Just think about how extremist and deranged that is. We are not even at war with Iran. Congress has not declared war or authorized military force against that country. Yet Reynolds thinks that the Bush administration, unilaterally, should send people to murder Iranian scientists and religious leaders—just pick out whichever ones we don’t like and slaughter them. No charges. No trial. No accountability. Just roving death squads deployed and commanded by our Leader, slaughtering whomever he wants dead.
How Lambchop managed to wangle a column at Salon is a mystery. They obviously haven’t been reading his shallow, calumnious, hate filled rants toward conservatives and Bush supporters. His generalized assaults on people who disagree with him are wildly beyond the pale of decency and common sense – coarse, exaggerated, full of laughably simplistic analysis coupled with nauseating, moralistic lecturing. Lambchop is a Calvinist without the redeeming belief in God’s mercy.
“Cartoonish,” Goldstein correctly avers:
What I do find repugnant, however, is people like Greenwald(s) who hide their immense contempt for “the values of this country†behind pieties and outrage offered in bad faith, a rhetorical position intended to keep those who are trying to puzzle through difficult issues on the defensive, making them endlessly “prove†they aren’t “rogue†elements in the war against Islamism. And for all of Greenwald’s(’s) constant carping about how Bush supporters “routinely†label the loyal opposition “traitors,†he is fairly quick to insist that those who float the idea of covert warfare tactics are somehow hostile to individual liberty, freedom, representative government, and rule of law.
Lambchop’s absolutist, unyielding, unbending logic when it comes to anything the United States might do to protect itself does not carry over into criticizing the barbarians who violate every known international codicil that relates to establishing comity between nations. Nor does his resolute moral compass allow him to take the enemies of civilization to task for trying to achieve their goal of, if not destroying us, most certainly grievously injuring our interests and killing our citizens.
And we have no acknowledgement from Lambchop about Iran’s declaration of war against the United States on November 4, 1979 when they violated his precious international law, international tradition, and the rules of civilized behavior by attacking United States soil, capturing our diplomats, torturing them, and holding them hostage for more than a year. That, my dear sock puppet, is an act of war as surely as anything that has occurred in the international arena since the end of World War II. The fact that you choose not to recognize it as such is immaterial. For someone who pretends to be “reality based,” Lambchop’s concept of what is real seems to depend entirely on what he believes – which puts him in the same league as the holy rollers, the evangelicals, and other conservative Christians he takes such delight in savaging on a regular basis.
Leaving aside Lambchop’s bloviations, is it ever morally permissible to act like a barbarian to defeat a barbarian?
Conventional wisdom says no, that once started down that road we lose our identity as a nation and become exactly what we are fighting. I don’t know about that. We did some pretty horrific things in World War II to defeat Japan and Germany and managed to maintain our democracy while retaining a certain moral authority in the world left over from the Wilsonian era. The fact that we appear to have lost some of that authority today says more about the rest of the world’s refusal to acknowledge the threat of radical Islamism than it does about any actions we’ve taken to fight that menace.
By its nature, war is barbaric. I find it curious that absolutists like Lambchop somehow believe there is a “civilized” way to fight and win. We don’t target civilians. We don’t bomb cultural or religious symbols. We don’t behead our captives. Torture is a stain on our honor but it is apparently not a widespread problem. How much more “civilized” should we be? Idiots like Lamchop won’t be happy until we start warning the jihadis we’re coming because surprise attacks are barbarous.
From a purely practical standpoint though, Reynold’s proposal won’t work. Mathew Yglesias gets it about right:
I mean, how is this going to work? We’re talking, presumably, about the clandestine branches of the same intelligence agencies who can’t decide what the state of the Iranian nuclear program is, don’t know where Iran’s nuclear facilities are, and are unsure who, if anyone, in the Iranian government is responsible for Iranian weapons winding up in Iraq. Nevertheless, Reynolds believes they have an off-the-shelf plan for placing assassins in close proximity to key Iranian nuclear scientists. But not only for doing this, but for doing it quietly! American agents are infiltrating Iran killing Iranian scientists and religious leaders and none of them get caught. How? Are there really dozens of Farsi-speaking ninjas working for the CIA? I was going to compare this to a fun-but-stupid movie like The Bourne Identity but the point of that movie (and its sequal) is actually that if you somehow did build a hyper-competent utterly secret government agency it would likely become a cesspool of corruption and abuses of power.
Actually, I’m pretty sure our Special Forces boys, if tasked with specific targets, would probably have the capability to carry out a couple of missions. After that, I daresay the Iranians would increase security to the point that the question of assassinations would be moot.
And, at the risk of agreeing with Lambchop, how do you define “radical” mullah? You don’t get to be a mullah in Iran without possessing some fairly radical views like opposing the existence of Israel. How radical is too radical? What factors or beliefs do your base your targeting criteria?
Lamchop highlights the Executive Order outlawing assassination, something every President since Ford has followed. And if you lift that stricture, why target some obscure mullah? Why not go for the gold and kill Khamenei or Ahmadinejad? For the same reason no President has lifted the Executive Order on assassinations; what goes around, comes around. We kill one of theirs, don’t you think they’d do their damndest to kill one of ours?
And I’m not sure targeting atomic scientists is such a good idea either. The Iranians have had help from a number of countries including North Korea, Pakistan, and there is some evidence that former Russian scientists have also worked on the Iranian nuclear program. Besides, would it really do any good? Would it really cause the program any damage? Would it really make the mullahs think twice about helping the insurgents in Iraq? I doubt it.
I understand Reynold’s frustration with our inaction regarding Iran. We’ve dithered for 28 years about working to establish a genuine democratic movement there. It’s not like we haven’t done it before. One need only look at Poland or the former Czechoslovakia where we clandestinely set up a democratic facade for potential reformers that allowed for an indigenous movement to sweep those countries when the time was right. Of course, that type of operation takes patience and a lot of spade work.
The problem has always been that anything we do to Iran will result in counter measures that have the potential of hurting us even more. And anything we do to Iran will enormously complicate if not totally doom our efforts in Iraq. Fighting a Shia insurgency against our occupation along with war against the Sunnis and al-Qaeda would be a disaster. If Professor Reynolds believes that assassinations of the kind he is suggesting won’t set off the Shias in Iraq, he should read some recent speeches from al-Sadr where he warns against any American actions against Iran. And of course, the political situation – already tenuous – would go to hell in a handbasket. Forget about the Shias sharing power with the Sunnis or Kurds at all. In fact, that turn of events would make staying in Iraq a complete exercise in futility.
I too wish to avoid a generalized conflict with the Iranians. But assassination isn’t the way. And I believe that despite the sabre rattling by the Administration in sending 3 carrier battle groups to the Gulf, they too wish to avoid military action because of the consequences domestically and in the Middle East. In fact, it appears to me that the Administration may be willing to allow the Iranians their enrichment program, hoping that the technical problems they have been experiencing will continue while working to undermine the regime from the inside.
Short of war, that’s the best we can do.
UPDATE
Hugh Hewitt applauds Reynold’s idea while drawing a conclusion about Hizbullah:
Note that Hezbollah hasn’t kidnapped any Israeli soldiers lately. There’s a reason.
Nasrallah has his own reasons for not tweaking Israel’s tail at the moment, not the least of which is that he needs his militia to assist him in his efforts to overthrow the Siniora government and not trying to fight off Israel’s retaliation for such an act. For the last several months, Hizbullah has been trying to show that they are good Lebanese citizens who only want what they believe they deserve; increased representation in the Lebanese cabinet. Of course, that’s a crock. But that, plus the UNIFIL force have kept Hizbullah from any confrontations with Israel recently.
10:16 pm
Maybe there’s another solution:
Given that Iran’s terrorism, its military buildup and its WMD programs are funded by its oil exports – to the point that there are recent reports of domestic gasoline shortages inside Iran – and that most of Iran’s oil infrastructure is in pretty bad shape, then wouldn’t Iran’s oil industry be a better target for Special Forces strikes than Iran’s widely dispersed nuclear facilities and researchers?
I’ve heard that most of Iran’s oil exports go through a place called Kharg Island in the Gulf. So, for instance, suppose that an LNG tanker were to suddenly and mysteriously go boom at one of Kharg’s loading docks…
Since you’re only going to get one or two successful strikes in before the Iranians presumably manage to tighten up their security, it makes sense to kill as many birds with one stone as you can…which, I think, a successful strike at a couple of vital economic targets like Kharg would do. Doing something to cripple Iran’s ability to produce and export oil would both curtail the regime’s ability to fund terrorism and its military buildup…while the shock to Iran’s economy would further destabilize them from the civilian side, as well. And, perhaps, put the mullahs on notice that we’re running out of patience with their provocations…
That assumes, of course, that we could get away with it, at least while achieving “plausible deniablility. Yes, that’s a big if, given the political climate in Washington.
10:46 am
“How Lambchop managed to wangle a column at Salon is a mystery. They obviously haven’t been reading his shallow, calumnious, hate filled rants toward conservatives and Bush supporters.”
This is Salon. I suspect they have been reading them.
3:24 pm
This is an interesting topic, and although I agree that a policy of targeted assassinations has its own set of problems, let’s not forget that the Israeli’s have – and continue – to do this with SUCCESSFUL OUTCOMES. I actually like the idea of a clandestine, “all-Muslim†super-elite MOSAD-type unit, who believed (and rightly so) that the work that they were doing was for the benefit of Islam throughout the world.
This post also brought to mind your earlier post of 1/31/2007: “What Do We Do About Iran?â€, on which some interesting propositions were put forth in the comments section by piscivorous and others; i.e. somehow provoking Iran (via their actions in Iraq) into some overt action against us and then retaliating (in defense of our soldiers in Iraq, of course), by going after their oil platforms or something similar. Personally, I am long past worrying about hurting the feelings of the Iranian people – or any other peoples for that matter. The reality is that we have FEW OR NO REAL ALLIES in the world anyway, as you have correctly pointed out in other posts. CHIRAC is a clueless moron, PUTIN is the biggest weasel on the planet (sells anti-tank weapons to Hezbollah, sells anti-missile defense systems to Iran and proposes to “manage†Iran’s nuclear program), and CHINA is only interested that 99.9% of all of the products that American’s buy are “Made in Chinaâ€. And we can wait until doomsday before a revolution overthrows the Mullahs in Iran.
Frankly, I really cannot believe that Osama Bin Laden is still alive and walking around this planet somewhere.
While our intelligence community may be inept, no one can tell me that we couldn’t have found and killed this guy a long time ago if we really wanted to. The point to be made here is clear and simple. I remember watching Bibi Netanyahu on CNN just weeks after we went into Iraq. Wolf Blitzer was asking him about how Israel deals with terrorists and somehow brought up the question of “respectâ€. Netanyahu kind of smirked and simple stated; “THE ONLY WAY THEY WILL RESPECT YOU IS WHEN THEY FEAR YOU†. This is our problem with IRAN, AL-QUEDA, HEZBOLLAH, etc.
We are not giving them any reason to fear us……….
6:40 pm
[...] A timely subject given the heat InstaGlenn’s been taking from the nutroots generally and Rick “Mad Dog” Ellensburg in particular for advocating assassinations of the Iranian leadership and their nuclear brigades. Moran’s got a long post about it and is worried about tit-for-tat reprisals against America’s own leaders, but that’s not something that should deter us with the stakes as high as they are. If killing person X would stop terrorists from building a nuclear weapon but lead them to threaten Bush, then you kill person X and take the consequences. [...]
10:43 pm
What goes around comes around?
Then we should rescend the executive order against assassination for about four years every time an attempt is made by a world power against a president or former president? That would have been 1993 and 2004, right?
10:47 pm
Jealous much?
Glenn Greenwald has had his statements engraved on the door of the Senate, has twelve law degrees, and is author of the New York Times Best Selling Book “How Would A Patriot Feign Outrage At The Idea Of Fighting Back?” His offhand comments to his dog often become front-page stories on most major newspapers in the country. And he has the most-read blogs on the Interent, or indeed the history of civilization, after just 9 days of blogging. I love how all you super-important rightwing bloggers attack me, I mean him, just to get traffic.
I bid you GOOD DAY, sir.
11:01 pm
“We did some pretty horrific things in World War II to defeat Japan and Germany and managed to maintain our democracy while retaining a certain moral authority in the world left over from the Wilsonian era.”
Well yes. But how many atomic bombs have we dropped since then?
11:04 pm
The strategy you advocate is doomed to fail because it will inflame anti-American passions among the general Iranian population. Your strategy would fail for the same reasons Bush’s policies have failed: we are allowing our enemies to “frame” our battles. We can easily overwhelm an enemy in a total and complete confrontation. If the US takes on Iran, it must do so without hesitation and use all methods at its disposal to annihilate not only the country, but completely decimate the general population. Anything less is doomed to failure.
11:20 pm
I disagree with your last sentence. UNFIL shields Hizbollah from Israeli retaliation and lets the terrorists act with impunity.
As for your larger points, Lambchop is an ass (duh). Iran has been at war with the US pretty much since 1979. And as nice as the thought of Ahmendidjad getting a 50 Cal lobotomy, he is the manifestation of the larger disease.
11:25 pm
One can wage war in the traditional manner, and kill hundreds of thousands of the opposition’s young men, and demolish a nation’s infrastructure… of just take out the people who are problems.
But big names are unlikely to initiate a form of warfare in which they are the first rather than the last targets.
11:27 pm
[...] UPDATE: Jesus Christ. Why did I have to read Dan Riehl. Why in God’s name did I have to read Dan Riehl: Seeing the reaction to a post by Instapundit We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs’ expat business interests out of business, etc. [...]
1:07 am
Beats having to kill innocent civilians. There, I’ve said it.
2:06 am
“Well yes. But how many atomic bombs have we dropped since then?”
That is EXACTLY the point. How many Bombs have we needed to?
The Japanese were as fanatical in their day as the jihadists are today, and they were even more brutal. They had beheading of captured Americans down to an art, and because of their brutality towards captured Marines on the battlefield the war in the Pacific was no-holds-barred.
How did we beat the fanatical Japanese, who were using suicide bombers before it was cool? We killed enough of them to make the rest realize that they couldn’t win.
We haven’t killed enough of the jihadists yet. Unfortunately, we need to kill more. Bush was right to move into Iraq, to try to “drain the swamp”, but Iran is really the alligator nest over there, the pus-filled boil on the Earth’s posterior, and until it’s lanced and drained Iran will be a PITA that, like an infection, threatens us all.
4:53 am
I don’t think attacking loud-mouthed Mullahs well help much, except reduce the hot air production in Iran. I would suggest that bunker-busting bombs targeted at a nuclear weapon development facilities might be very effective in reducing Iraq’s nuclear capability, referring to both intellectual capacity as well as materiel, while avoiding the onerous title of “assassination”.
Naturally such bombs should be delivered at a time when there is a high expectancy of maximum occupancy by Iran’s intellectual capability. Such a bomb would in no way be viewed an assassination since it targets no one person, but rather a projection of US military power to eliminate a veiled threat from an enemy. Two or three such bombs in a six week interval, and you’re talking about destroying Iran’s capacity to engage in bomb development materially, in manpower, as well as in the morale of the remaining scientists and technicians initially engaged in that activity.
5:12 am
It would not be as difficult as you say to wreak some havoc in Iran via clandestine methods.
1. Lack of Farsi speaking assasin problem? Ahem….how about MEK - while we disarmed, I hope we collected some cell phone numbers or e-mail addies. Who do you think blew up the Quds bus last week? Plus we have access to Afghanistan…they speak something close to Farsi there.
2. Assasinate a few scientists and no matter how much security you put on them, they’ll be under pressure. The other guy was right – Israel does this successfully. They should be the model.
3. Multiple targets…hit the gas infrastructure first, then the scientists and finally the mullahs. You’re looking to throw some sand in their gears not to blow up their entire country. Note to CIA idiots…use third party weapons…hey about using Austrian sniper rifles…that would be ironic,no?
12:35 pm
“We kill one of theirs, don’t you think they’d do their damndest to kill one of ours?”
Like, for example, hijacking airliners and aiming them at the pentagon and White House, suicide bombing our ships, blowing up airplanes, blowing up our embassies? You’re right. By all means, lets not provoke them into doing their damndest to kill one of ours!
7:01 pm
The point that escapes Instahack and you too is that you are the barbarians.
11:53 pm
Let them get into full production knock out thier heavy water supply and the thier cooling tower. This is critical to the process. Without cooling there will be a major meltdown like Chernobyl in the 80’s. This will probably get us more death to America rally’s and terrorist attacks but, It would force a relocation of the entire city of Tehran. They will have 10,000 years to think on building a new one. The Iranian people would lose all faith in the present goverment due to its inability to defend thier own skies. All the effort and military test that put their faith in the leaders to defend againts the west will be quetioned…