There's no education in the second kick of a mule

On Monday, I happened to be present for a question and answer session with my congressman, a Democrat, and some high school students.

I was happy to see the congressman take a stand against the Iraq war, but found his reasoning disturbing. One of his biggest objections seemed to be that the war was restricting the U.S. military's ability to "respond" elsewhere should the need arise. He mentioned that Iran was much more of a "problem" and went on about the scary prospect of a fundamentalist regime acquiring nuclear weapons.

He of course did not mention that Iran, as a signatory to the Non-proliferation treaty (NPT), has a right develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, or that, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,"[a]lthough the U.S. government and Israel have stated for years that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, they have not provided the IAEA or the public with the location of any nuclear weaponization sites or any direct evidence of such activities." Or that three U.S. allies in Iran's neighborhood, India, Pakistan and Israel, are known nuclear states who have never signed the NPT. Israel, with an arsenal of several hundred nukes, has never acknowledged (or denied) its arsenal. Just yesterday, Bush cut a deal on nuclear power with India. No NPT? No problem for "strategic allies."

I feel I've become a little obsessed with Iran and should explain. I am not Iranian, have never been there, nor do I have Iranian relatives. I realize that it's governed by a repressive regime, but I don't see it as standing out in those terms among its neighbors. I really don't have any special interest in the country other than understanding it's a much more diverse, complicated place than it's being made out to be these days. That, and not wanting another goddamn war.

In spite of the fact that Iran has recently been getting on very well with its neighbors (see here and here), the Bush administration is trying very hard to keep Iran on the front burner in case they come up with the wherewithal to start another war. It's been widely reported that Scott Ritter says we've already started a war with Iran, and Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece last January makes the disturbing point that we probably won't know about it even when it starts! In transferring many covert operations from the CIA, which has to report its activities to Congress, to the Pentagon, which doesn't, Rumsfeld, that paragon of good judgment, now has free reign to do whatever the hell he wants.

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A,” ... the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’ ” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”

Another former high-level intelligence official used the colorful phrase "There’s no education in the second kick of a mule” in reference to the Bush administration's desire to avoid WMD intelligence mistakes. Leaving aside the question of whether they were actually mistakes in the case of Iraq, I think the phrase could be expanded to a wider context. When will the U.S. government realize how counterproductive its interference in the Middle East has been, is, and will be—as long as we rely on (overt and covert) force?

Take as arbitrary starting point the declaration of "the Carter Doctrine" in 1980. Look what a quarter century of demonizing, threatening, sanctioning, targeted assassinating, invading and bombing (using napalm, bunker-busters, DU, and cluster munitions) has done. Can anyone imagine a less stable, U.S.-friendly Middle East that the one we've (largely) created?

Sometimes I wonder if that isn't the idea after all, if the desired end point is to make the Middle East so unstable that our tanks will have to roll across the Saudi desert to "safeguard" all that precious oil.

I do believe certain characters should be suspected of wanting just that. In general, however, I want to give most of U.S. officialdom the benefit of the doubt, including my congressman, and accept that they really want a stable, peaceful Middle East (that gives the U.S. preferred client status vis a vis oil sales.) Is the current state of affairs what was intended? If not, why are military options always the first ones considered?

Ignoring (only for the sake of argument) questions of morality and international law and looking at the situation from a purely self-interested U.S. point of view, one can make three broad conclusions about our Middle Eastern meddling:

• DOESN'T WORK
• COSTS A SHITLOAD OF MONEY
• MAKES EVERYONE HATE THE U.S.

Let's see, a guess on the cost of our efforts to "control" the sovereign states of the Middle East since 1980 would be in the range of, oh, a couple trillion dollars. How many schools and hospitals would that pay for? Do we count the Global War on Terrorism against our former employees in that total? Ring up another couple trillion.

All for a cheap, continous supply of oil?

Wouldn't it be cheaper (and safer) to just pay retail?