{"id":8544,"date":"2015-07-17T00:54:52","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T07:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8544"},"modified":"2015-07-17T01:06:48","modified_gmt":"2015-07-17T08:06:48","slug":"the-iran-failure-has-many-fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-iran-failure-has-many-fathers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Iran Failure Has Many Fathers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h3>\n

The dangerous belief that words alone can transcend an eternal truth of human nature.<\/em><\/h3>\n

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo via FrontPage Magazine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Everybody knows the deal with Iran is a disaster. Why is equally obvious: Iran will get $150 billion to spend on weapons and its terrorist proxies, will keep its enrichment facilities, will continue to develop missiles, will easily avoid the laughably pusillanimous inspections regime, and will end up a nuclear power with malign consequences for the stability of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We also know who bears the responsibility for this fiasco\u2013\u2013Barack Obama. Historically ignorant and terminally narcissistic, Obama has all the superstitions and delusions of the progressive elite. And one of the most persistent and hoary of those beliefs is the fetish of diplomacy as a means to resolve disputes without force.<\/p>\n

We must remember that Obama pointedly ran on the promise to \u201creinvigorate\u201d American diplomacy. This trope was in fact a way to run against George Bush, whom the Dems and the media had caricatured as a \u201ccowboy\u201d with an itchy trigger finger, a gunslinger scornful of diplomacy and multilateralism. That charge was a lie\u2013\u2013Bush wasted several months on diplomacy in an unsuccessful attempt to get the U.N.\u2019s sanction for the war, even though the U.S. Congress had approved it, Hussein was in gross violation of the first Gulf War cease-fire agreement, and the U.N. already has passed 17 Security Council resolutions, all of which Hussein had violated.<\/p>\n

Yet the narrative that Bush had \u201cfailed so miserably at diplomacy that we are now forced to war,\u201d as then Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle put it, lived on. For the progressives committed to crypto-pacifism and to the belief that America is a guilty aggressor, the story was too politically useful. Obama, one of the most programmatic progressives in the Senate, embodied all those superstitions. As senator he continually criticized the war in Iraq, scorned the ultimately successful \u201csurge\u201d of troops in 2007 as a \u201creckless escalation\u201d and a \u201cmistake,\u201d and introduced legislation to remove all troops from Iraq by March 2008.<\/p>\n

As a presidential candidate, his whole foreign policy was predicated on his being the \u201canti-Bush\u201d who would \u201creinvigorate diplomacy\u201d and initiate \u201cengagement\u201d with all our enemies in order to defuse conflict and create peace. As president, Obama has been true to his word. He has apologized, groveled, bowed to potentates, \u201creset\u201d relations with our rivals, shaken hands with thugs, and now talked Iran into being a nuclear power. As for \u201cpeace,\u201d it is nowhere to be found as violence and atrocities multiply from Ukraine to Yemen, Tunisia to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

But as much as Obama is personally to blame for what will turn out to be a disastrous foreign policy mistake, the larger problem is the very notion that rational discussion, negotiation, and dickering with our enemies and rivals can replace force, rather than being an adjunct to a credible threat of force. It is based on the arrogant assumption that the enemy is a \u201crational actor,\u201d as Obama\u2019s flacks have been asserting about the mullahs, and respects life, coexistence, and peace as much as we. That this administration can believe this delusion\u2013\u2013when the Iranians regularly chant \u201cDeath to America\u201d and have practiced what they preach by killing Americans for 36 years\u2013\u2013is as mystifyingly blind as the British were to Hitler\u2019s threatening rants at the Nuremburg Party Rally a few weeks before the Munich conference, when the Fuhrer called Czechoslovakia an \u201cirreconcilable\u201d enemy.<\/p>\n

Plato, of course, expressed the truth of interstate relations 24 centuries earlier, when he said, \u201cIn reality, every state is in a natural state of war with every other,\u201d and \u201cpeace is only a name.\u201d Charles de Gaulle in 1934 made the same point in terms relevant for the just completed farce with Iran:<\/p>\n

But, hope though we may, what reason have we for thinking that passion and self-interest, the root cause of armed conflict in men and in nations, will cease to operate; that anyone will willingly surrender what he has or not try to get what he wants; in short that human nature will ever become something other than it is? \u2026 \u2018Laws unsupported by force soon fall into contempt,\u2019 said Cardinal de Retz. International agreements will be of little value unless there are troops to prevent their infringement. In whatever direction the world may move, it will never be able to do without the final arbitration of arms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The belief that words alone can transcend this eternal truth of human nature\u2013\u2013a belief deeply engrained in the mentality of our leaders and foreign policy establishment\u2013\u2013 led to the disaster of World War II, and will despite this lesson of history lead to a lesser, but still dangerous, disaster.<\/p>\n

But there is yet another factor in this debacle that must be acknowledged: the tendency of democracies to privilege short-term comfort over long-term threats. In democracies the use of force must have the assent of the voters, who in the U.S. every 2 years hold leaders accountable at the ballot box. Setbacks, mistakes, atrocities, casualties, and all the other unfortunately eternal contingencies of mass violence try the patience of voters, and citizen control of the military gives them a means of expressing their impatience or anger. As de Tocqueville recognized more than 150 years ago, \u201cThe people are more apt to feel than to reason; and if their present sufferings are great, it is to be feared that the still greater sufferings attendant upon defeat will be forgotten.\u201d That pretty much sums up America\u2019s response so far to Obama\u2019s agreement.<\/p>\n

We know that no diplomatic \u201cdeal\u201d with Iran will keep the world\u2019s worst state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining nuclear weapons. As puny North Korea demonstrated, a determined regime can lie, obfuscate, and cheat its way around any parchment defenses. We also know that the U.S. possesses the military means to degrade Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure and military assets enough to end that threat. It is not a question of ability, but will. But does anybody think that a critical mass of American citizens today has the will to support serious military action? Are there enough outraged moderate Democrats to hold their Democratic Representatives\u2019 and Senators\u2019 feet to the fire and convince them to pass with a veto-proof majority legislation stopping this train-wreck? When that vote comes, we will know the answer to the first question.<\/p>\n

It is a clich\u00e9 that free democracies are formidable warriors. But first they must be roused, as Tocqueville put it, to \u201ca sudden effort of remarkable vigor.\u201d So far it\u2019s hard to see such vigor among the people, and one shudders to think what it will take to restore it. But one thing\u2019s for sure\u2013\u2013 it will take more than merely putting a Republican in the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dangerous belief that words alone can transcend an eternal truth of human nature. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Everybody knows the deal with Iran is a disaster. Why is equally obvious: Iran will get $150 billion to spend on weapons and its terrorist proxies, will keep its enrichment facilities, will continue to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[28,124,59,842,22,262,393],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2dO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8001,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-midwifes-a-nuclear-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":8544,"position":0},"title":"Obama Midwifes a Nuclear Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The news that President Obama has sent a secret letter to Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei\u2013\u2013apparently promising concessions on Iran\u2019s nuclear program in exchange for help in defeating ISIS\u2013\u2013 is a depressing reminder of how after nearly 40 years our leaders have not understood\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8163,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-dangers-of-obamas-cognitive-dissonance\/","url_meta":{"origin":8544,"position":1},"title":"The Dangers of Obama\u2019s Cognitive Dissonance","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. 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Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine President Obama\u2019s proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS comes at a time when Iran and ISIS are fomenting disorder and destruction throughout the Middle East. 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Thornton FrontPage Magazine Iran announced Sunday that it was cutting off crude oil sales to France and England, a mostly symbolic act given that Iran provides England less than 1% of its crude, and France claims that it \u201cpractically stopped importing Iranian oil,\u201d according to the head\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":984,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-final-countdown-israel-vs-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":8544,"position":5},"title":"The Final Countdown: Israel vs. Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The 33-year farce of Western appeasement of Iran may be reaching its denouement. 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