Via Gregory Djerjian at The Belgravia Dispatch, I see that David Frum is still kicking, if not precisely alive. This is deep, reptile-brain stuff, heart-beats and legs kicking, mouth producing autonomous bullshit even as the higher functions go gray in the CAT scan.
Djerjian hits the high points, by which I mean the low points (a nuclear Japan as a deterrent to a nuke-seaking Iran!). He also tell an unintentional truth:
Countries like North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons because they imagine that those weapons will enhance their security and power.Also, people put locks on their doors in order to lock them. The entropy of an isolated system not at equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. That which does not kill you makes you stronger. Live long and prosper. Veni, vedi, vici.
The word to note in that sentence of Frum's peroration is "imagine." Remove it and its attendants and you arrive at:
Countries like North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons because those weapons will enhance their security and power.And that's clearly true. What's more, Frum never makes the case, because he can't, that these so-called rogue states have any extraterritorial ambitions, though he, like the rest of the American establishment, insists on labelling them "aggressive," in a manner more or less reminiscent of his party's insistence on labelling Terri Schiavo "alive." It's fairly clear that they do not, in fact, harbor such ambitions, or if they do, they recognize the logistical, financial, and military impediments thereto. We should certainly take the pronouncements of the Iranian president with the requisite handful of salt, but it is true, as he's claimed, that it's been a very long time since a Persian has initiated a war of conquest or otherwise. It's likely also true, as he's claimed, that if Iran really wanted to make trouble in Iraq, they'd really be making trouble in Iraq. Meanwhile, who, precisely, is North Korea aggressing against, other than itself? One can hardly accuse a bulimic of assault and battery for the act of self-emaciation. There is, at present, only one nation on earth proposing that its now-manifested destiny must be infinitely reapplied by every other people in the world, and that nation is ours. Accusing the nation you're about to invade of provocation even as you put your own tanks on their borders is nothing new, of course, but let us at least choose a better Goebbels than the milquetoast David Frum, whose best polemical effort so far--the Axis of Evil bit--merely plagiarised the title of a past enemy alliance and sexed it up with off-assonated alliteration of the sort that works if you are Emily Dickinson but if not, not.
To be fair, you must admire the blowsy off-handedness with which Frum advocates a policy of deliberately provoking a crisis of millions of Korean refugees flooding into China. Perhaps we ought to aid them in their timetables. Run the trains. The "transport" if you will. I'm sure there is a solution. Final or no.
5 comments:
I agree that North Korea has no extra-territorial ambitions, but I'm not so sure about Iran.
First I'd have to ask what you mean by "extra-territorial." If you mean an actual annexation of neighboring countries, then no, Iran doesn't have agressive ambitions. But if you mean the intimidation and subjugation of neighboring nations through the use of military force, intelligence operatives, and cultural hegemony, then I think Iran's bankrolling of Hezbollah, their (alleged) involvement in the Iraqi insurgency, and their aggressive exportation of militant Islam all indicate extra-territorial ambitions that are remarkably similar to those held by the U.S.
Yates
"Step up the development and deployment of existing missile defense systems . . . As we well know, they are not perfect — but they are something."
In other news, the President has urged all Americans to run in circles with their arms raised above their heads screaming "fuck me, fuck me, fuck me." It's not perfect, but its something.
I sure do wish people like Frum would study some psychology before mouthing off that the solution to "aggression" is more aggression. When you believe someone to be aggressive, you tend to judge ambiguous stances as aggressive. If you expect them to be aggressive, your defensive posture (or back-at-ya aggression) comes with the self-fulfilling prophecy of inciting them to be aggressive. Aggression and and weaponry only beget more aggression, not less. These are all proven and accepted psychological concepts, yet no one pays them any heed.
Bah.
Yates, your point is a good one, but I'd be careful with the "exportation of militant Islam" insofar as that prong is miniscule and unsupported by the population writ large, relative to a dozen other muslim countries, most of which are our "strategic allies."
I think the idea of "exporting" something called militant Islam is as absurd as the idea of "exporting" something called democracy. Even if there were an agreed-on definition of either, which there isn't, these are not commodities; they do not cross borders in shipping containers. Beliefs, faiths, ideologies: they hold appeal or they do not; they attract adherents, or they do not. But to speak of them as if it is a deliberate activity on the order of selling someone a car or a bottle of olive oil strikes me as precisely the sort of category error the bedevils American thinking at every turn. I say this as a dedicated capitalist: not every choice is a transaction; not every exchange is a purchase. All is not commercial.
I agree that Iranian use of Hezbollah as a proxy is markedly similar to American proxy efforts around the world, but (and it's a big one) I think it's clear that wherever their funding comes from, Hezbollah functions first and foremost as an indigenous Lebanese political movement, which is, if you read outside of the Times and other such rags, quite clearly broad-based, non-sectarian, and Lebanese-nationalistic.
In any case, I think the point is relatively indisputible: Iran may well be seeking to influence the politics of its own region of the globe, but to claim, as Frum and others are doing, that this represents an "aggressive" state, or a "rogue," whatever that is, is sophistry.
Hold on, are you drawing a distinction between America trying to influence Iraq's autonomy and Iran trying to influence Iraq's autonomy? How could it possibly matter whether your extra-territorial ambitions cross borders, or cross oceans?
And i don't see why "exporting" can't be used psuedo-synonymously with "proselytizing."
Speaking of Iraq's "autonomy" as if it exists in the abstract eternal--a sort of Kantian Categorial Imperative--is your fallacy. The distinction is self-evident. There is no autonomous Iraq for Iran to try to influence; there is American-occupied Iraq. Everything the Iranians do, or refrain from doing, in Iraq is predicated on and enabled by the American presence. What that bodes for the future is, of course, a different question.
But if your implication is that, well, both countries are there now, ergo both countries are engaged in commensurate activities, then I suggest you ask yourself if you're not eliding significant differences in order to mitigate American culpability and/or exaggerate Iranian perfidy.
As for prosyletizing/exporting--you can use them interchangeably, but you shouldn't, because they aren't interchangeable. The implication of the language of exportation is that Iran is an entity wherein extremism, a known quantity, a commodity if you will, is produced, and Iraq (or elsewhere) is the place where they send it to be consumed, perhaps helping along the process with some slick marketing. That's evidently not the case. The delicate web of interactions that gives rise to religio-political ideologies is not a straightforward, transactional process. To speak as if Iran is sending "jihadism", or whatever, like bombs to Iraq, wherein they'll explode, is to engage in precisely the sort of abuse of language that makes our national policies so insane. Like H.D. said: if you don't know what words mean, how can you appreciate what they have the power to conceal?
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