Dealing With Iran

The tragedy of Iran is twofold.  First, there is the fact that its people are quite open-minded and moderate compared to the rest of the Middle East, and even took to democracy without America having to impose it on them - it is only its revolutionary Islamist regime that makes the country an enemy of freedom.  Second is the fact that Iran would still be a parliamentary system if the United States hadn't once again decided that as part of its global struggle to protect democracy from communism it should set up an authoritarian puppet regime, whose collapse set the stage for the aforementioned revolutionary Islamist regime to take over.

But there's no use bemoaning America's past mistakes (save for hoping that we'll learn from them at some point), so we have to look at the situation we have now, and figure out where to go from here.

Iran is not a friendly country.  Its leadership hates us for backing the Shah decades ago, hates us for backing its rivals in the Middle East now, and hates us for being a country where women can wear a bikini and men can skip church to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  Iran supports Bashar al-Assad, the tyrant who led Syria into civil war, and terrorist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.  Its regime rejects notions of human rights in favor of religious fundamentalism, and when Iranians attempt to protest election results they’re suppressed by security forces and Islamic militias.  And its nuclear program has had ambitions to build a weapon in the past, and a history of ignoring international treaties and hiding things from nuclear inspectors

Almost as worringly, Iran is also a schizophrenic country.  It has an elected national government that at every level is checked by a fanatical religious regime, so even while Iran's negotiators try to work out a deal with us, the Ayatollah is posting taunts and threats on social media while his priests lead the "Death to America" refrain they've been singing for nearly forty years now.  It has a conventional military, as well as an Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and its auxiliary Basij militias, which act on their own initiative when it comes to brutalizing or imprisoning citizens who dare to speak out against the religious regime.  This is not the sort of system that you'd want to have access to nuclear power, in other words.  Even if Iran doesn't build a conventional bomb with it, there's all sorts of mischief its glassy-eyed fanatics could get up to with a radioactive sample.

America's response to all this has been to try to isolate Iran diplomatically and, along with other countries, impose economic sanctions in an effort to punish and limit its misbehavior.  They haven't worked.  Even after the UN Security Council sanctioned the country for continuing its nuclear program, Iran was able to build a functioning reactor, step up production, even start a second underground facility.  As we've also seen in places like Iraq and Cuba, if a regime is willing to brutalize its own people to stay in power, imposing additional hardships on that population probably isn't going to get it to do what we want.

So the status quo isn't working, and the Obama Administration has done something pragmatic.  Rather than sticking to our current strategy and watching as Iran develops its nuclear program despite the sanctions, the president has attempted to give us some control over what the country does next, lifting some ineffective economic disincentives if Iran behaves itself and follows some instructions.

Naturally, the Republicans are outraged.  Iran will surely use the money it makes from lifted sanctions to back terrorist groups.  Israel, our 51st state, will be placed in mortal peril.  All our valuable allies in the region (whoever they are) will lose faith in America's resolve to stand with them, assuming they had any left after we watched our dictator in Egypt be replaced by another dictator, or ISIS run all over Iraq.  Even the American public doesn't have a whole lot of support for this triumph of years of patient diplomacy - it simply feels wrong to lift sanctions on a hostile, undemocratic regime that hasn't changed its tune.

But we don't have many alternatives.  If we stick to our principles, fold our arms, and refuse to deal with Iran, we miss out on Iran's agreement to let nuclear inspectors in, reduce its low-yield uranium stockpile by 98%, cut down on centrifuge production, and so forth.  It's an unhappy compromise, and dropping some of the sanctions against Iran means that a troublesome regime will have more money to spend on other projects we don't like, but at least it will have some restrictions on a program that has us very worried.  How else are we going to control Iran's nuclear aspirations?  Is anyone seriously proposing yet another American military operation in the Middle East, at a time that we're already reluctantly working with Iran against ISIS?

Optimistically, this deal could lead to further negotiations on those other things about Iran we find so objectionable.  And if nothing else, lifting some sanctions could help bolster Iran's middle class, that important ingredient for democracy.  So not only would we be helping out some people that already have enough problems just living under the Iranian government, we might be causing problems for that Iranian government when those people question why they're required to chant "death to America" every day.

This is not a deal that America would normally be proud of, but right now it might be the best option we have.

Terrorism, or Something

Nearly a year between posts?  Pathetic.

If you want to see the difference between CNN and Fox News' approach to journalism, look no further than their 5:00 headline news hours last evening, when they responded to the attacks in Chattanooga.

On CNN you could see Wolf Blitzer talking to journalists on the scene, basing the discussion on witnesses, authorities and other experts.  He focused on what was known and could be verified, and took care to describe Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez as "the alleged gunman" or "suspected gunman," even if everyone was pretty certain he did it.

Meanwhile on Fox News you had Bret Baier introducing the story, then turning to a panel of conservative pundits so they could give us their opinions on it.  This was mainly an opportunity for the perpetually-scowling Charles Krauthammer to complain that President Obama is once again describing the incident as a "lone gunman" situation because the president is too limp-wristed to immediately interpret the shooting as another battle in our eternal war against radical Islam.

One network deals with facts, the other opinions.  One is out to report on reality, the other to create a specific reality for its viewers to live in.

Was it an act of terror?  Hard to say at this point, we're still working out why someone who lived in a quiet neighborhood, got a degree as an electrical engineer, and brought up some kids would suddenly pick up a rifle and shoot up a recruiting center and Navy facility.  But the authorities are treating it as a potential terrorist attack, and it's not an unreasonable assumption to make.  The suspected shooter was a Muslim, if I heard the news right he hadn't been employed since 2012, and he made several trips to the Middle East over the past few years.  This would fit the pattern of "normal Muslim disaffected by life in America and radicalized into a murderer" that's going on these days.  But again, we haven't confirmed that yet, so for all we know he was radicalized by the Westboro Baptist Church and set off by the Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage.

But back to the question - was it terror?  I've taken classes on the subject and can only rub my temple wearily.

Terrorism is supposed to be a dialogue.   There's a strong Group A, a country or government or something, and a weak Group B, a revolutionary movement or insurgency or the like.  Group B cannot get Group A to change policy on its own, but instead they target something else, like Group A's civilian population, or Group A's ally Group C.  "Do what we want," Group B says, "or more people will die."  The idea is that between Group A's desire to protect what Group B is attack and that population's outrage that Group A can't protect them, it will have no choice but to bow to their demands.

Now, this Abdulazeez fellow - a Muslim, yes, might have been radicalized by ISIS or whoever, yes.  But what was he saying?  What was his purpose behind shooting up these places?  We haven't found a video he made explaining his actions yet, or any social media posts warning of it.  I think I heard that ISIS' twitter account tried to take credit for it, but that hasn't been verified yet either.

If he was another ordinary citizen convinced to murder on behalf of ISIS, I guess he's a terrorist, since they're a terrorist organization trying to change the United States' behavior.  But if he was then he didn't do a very good job of advertizing it, and was annoyingly vague on what he wanted us to do.  Perhaps stop the airstrikes against ISIS targets?  Cease our support of the regimes ISIS is fighting against?  Cover up our bikini-clad supermodels? 

Another possibility is that Abdulazeez bought into ISIS' (and Krauthammer's) belief that America and Islam exist in natural conflict, that our respective values are incompatible and inevitably lead to violence.  In this case he would be killing Americans for the sake of killing Americans, because what, are we all supposed to renounce our citizenship and Western liberal values in favor of the extreme fundamentalist Islam ISIS espouses?

But if that's the case, why did he choose a recruitment center and Navy facility, as opposed to randomly opening fire in some public area?  Why these two military targets?

See, a uniform makes the question of whether a given act of violence was terrorism or not a bit more complicated.  Let's say Group B blows up a bunch of vehicles with a roadside bomb.  If they were buses belonging to Group A's civilian population as part of a campaign to get Group A to alter it's behavior, it's clearly an act of terror.  If they were tanks and humvees belonging to Group A's military that's occupying Group B's country, then it's an example of asymmetrical warfare - the point of a uniform is to announce that you're a valid target in the game of "War" you're playing. 

But in this case these military victims (condolences to the families of Thomas Sullivan, Squire Wells, David Wyatt, and Carson Holmquist) were in America, not currently fighting anyone or oppressing anybody.  They were arguably the instruments of American policy, but weren't executing it at the moment, so that puts them in a strange place - they're not quite like a civilian population terrorists attack to put pressure on a government, but they aren't active combatants in a war zone.  If Abdulazeez was at "war with America" or "punishing America for its crimes" or anything, he was unusually specific in how he expressed that.

All this to say, it's unclear if this was an act of conventional terrorism or not, but as we've seen in cases like the Fort Hood shooting, it's close to the sort of terrorism we get these days.  Really, we need to wait and get the whole story before making a judgment.

Hear that, Fox News?