In today's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer proposes a strategy for containing Iran which is as meaningless as it is ignorant. His bold idea: to declare that if Iran attacks Israel with nuclear weapons, then we will respond in kind. That is his stated purpose anyway. The real agenda is to recite history-as-narrative, casting America as the unsullied hero and Iran as the irredeemable villain.
The first unstated assumption (of this piece and so many others) is that Iran is the wild-eyed aggressor. The mullahs, or at least some of them, are "apocalyptic and messianic." Unlike our former enemies the Soviets they are not rational actors. Ahmadinejad is a jihadist. The second assumption, which is so ubiquitous that it is barely stated, is that America is merely the defender of peace in the Middle East. Our motives are selfless, and our actions are righteous by definition. Unless you accept these assumptions, the piece is laughable at face value.
Krauthammer states that a nuclear Iran will "deeply destabilize" the Middle East. The idea that a pro-U.S. commentator is accusing another country of destabilizing the region is downright absurd. And one of his reasons is that it will leave Israel's nukes on hair-trigger alert. So Iran's theoretical nukes are dangerous because they increase the chance that the actual nukes that we gave to Israel will be used.
In order to make his "contribution to nuclear peace," Krauthammer would like Bush to use John Kennedy as his role-model. His reference to the Cuban missile crisis is more accurate than he realizes. Following the America-as-hero model, Kennedy was merely the victim of unprovoked Soviet aggression. The idea that the United States provoked the Soviet Union by basing nuclear missiles in nearby Turkey is not admissible as evidence because it runs counter to the prevailing narrative. Similarly, it would be unthinkable to mention that the United States' past aggression against Iran might in any way have led to the current state of affairs.
As a side-note, I think it's cute when advocates of unchecked American power cite the U.N. as justification for anything, as Krauthammer does here. For reference, here are forty-some UN Resolutions critical of Israel which the US vetoed.
All this talk of deterrence is amusing, because it comes so close to acknowledging the real use of Iranian nukes: to deter the U.S. from attacking Iran. Instead of admitting that there might be some rational reason that Iran wants nuclear weapons, Krauthammer plays the Holocaust card:
"As a beacon of tolerance and as leader of the free world, the United States will not permit a second Holocaust to be perpetrated upon the Jewish people."
No matter that the
U.S. knowingly permitted the first Holocaust against the Jewish people. This should in no way infringe upon our status as "the nation that has liberated more peoples than any other." Krauthammer paints his opponents as "those who see no moral principle underlying American foreign policy."
It should be obvious that this is propaganda--uncritical, jingoistic, pro-U.S. propaganda. There is no moral principle underlying foreign policy, ours or any other country's. Whenever someone says that there is, we're being lied to and sold something we don't want (see: Operation Iraqi Freedom.) The fact that people like Krauthammer,
William Kristol, and David Brooks have any credibility, and are regularly published in our most respected newspapers should tell us something about our level of awareness as a society.
