Posted on 11/16/2005 3:43:56 PM PST by humint
************* Iran and the Long War Against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam
...Because this war is at its core an ideological war, it is more accurate to think of and identify this war as the “Long War”. It is stunningly hard to win a war of ideology where the enemy is religiously motivated to kill us.
To put this into perspective, if the people of the United States were to suddenly decide that a particular concept was inherently wrong in our educational system, it could easily take 20 to 30 years to change that concept, rewrite all the text books, and retrain all the educators. That example is one completely within our culture. If one includes intercultural communication difficulties, the problem grows exponentially harder. If we use every tool at the disposal of the American people in support of a coherent theory of victory, the Long War might only last 50 – 70 years. Yet, it will probably last much longer...
...This is a societal war of identity so there are no holds barred, no rules, and no real accommodations (only tactical maneuvers) or potential for compromise solutions on their part that would be culturally acceptable to us, or to them.
The Long War is 90% intellectual, communications, political, economic, diplomacy, and intelligence focused. It is at most 10% military. We have not yet developed the doctrine or structure capable of thinking through and implementing a Long War (30 to 70 years if we are lucky) on a societal scale. This challenge is compounded because it is fundamentally different from waging the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The Cold War was essentially a grand siege in which a defensive alliance could contain the Soviet Union until it collapsed.
This is an inherently offensive war in which we have to actively defeat our opponents. Furthermore this war resembles the Reformation-era wars of religion in which fellow nationals may be traitors serving the other side (examine Elizabethan England and the origins of the English secret service as an example).
Analyzing this societal reality, designing strategies that first avoid defeat and then achieve victory, communicating these strategies to the Congress and the American people so they understand and support them, and then communicating them to our allies and neutrals around the world in terms which they can support is a challenge dramatically more complex and difficult than the development of the containment strategy from 1947 to 1950. It is also central to our survival and to our ability to lead the world. As is set forth in more detail below, persuading Russia of the nature of this threat and the danger that it poses to Russia should be a key part of our efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In summary, the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam is the enemy we face in the Long War. And this enemy is not confined to one country or geographic area, although the current Iran regime is at the heart of this Irreconcilable Wing of Islam, and through the Iranian state apparatus--and oil wealth--is one of its central bankers. The Long War has a particular focus in the Middle East where Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are all potentially flash points of great danger. Within the Middle Eastern focus there are currently campaigns underway in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The following are a set of additional thoughts on how to bring about regime change in Iran:
Regime Change is the only Moral and Practical Foreign Policy Objective of the United States Government Toward Iran
Lastly, if regime change is achieved in Iran through a democratic revolution, the question of Iranian nuclear weapons is automatically lessened because everything we know about the Iranians' attitudes suggests that they will be pro-western and peaceful.
Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI and the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.It is not possible to adequately understand the threat posed by Iran unless the current Iranian regime and its ideological underpinnings are understood within the larger struggle in which the civilized nations of the world are--in varying degrees--unavoidably engaged. In the United States we currently refer to this struggle as the “Global War on Terror”. Yet, this label fails to capture the nature of the threat faced by civilization...
While the United States should actively work bilaterally with Russia and multilaterally through international institutions to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, let us keep our eye on what should be our overall objective – regime change in Iran. We must actively work toward the day when Iranians can have free elections and a government that is accountable to the people. As a moral matter, regime change should be our objective as the current Iranian regime’s internal repression and external support of terror is so beyond the norms of civilization as to not be tolerated by the world community. As a practical matter, regime change should be our objective because the current Iranian regime is by its own definition a non-status quo power which is dedicated to exporting revolution and destroying the United States and Israel. There is no compromising with a regime that puts the choice like that. And if that is the choice that is put to us by the current Iranian regime, then our strategy for dealing with it should be crystal clear: we win, they lose. There is no détente with a regime committed to killing you.
Newt is a very intelligent man, and a person who can put complicated thought processes in layman's terms.
"The Long War is 90% intellectual, communications, political, economic, diplomacy, and intelligence focused. It is at most 10% military."
I agree with Newt here, but only so far as one is not willing to stare the most horrible solution in the face.
Nukes. Abdul and Ayotollahs, say hello to MERV.
I'm not kidding. You want the "Long War", Newt, you see how well we sustain it - we're already so PC we're poised to lose it. We can take reckoning to the enemy in a way that won't be popular, but it would be final.
Then again, as the proxy states for bigger and craftier enemies, placing a ceramic glaze on the Middle East invites more of the same on our own soil.
I'm still reading Newt's submission...
read later bump
I'll see your bump and ping ya back.
"Victory in Iraq. We have no other choice but to see our efforts in Iraq through to victory."
Check.
"Recognize the Weakness of the Iranian Regime and Let it Be Known Far and Wide."
Check.
"Have Confidence in the Power of American Values and the Words of the American President to Change History."
Pending. MSM Domestically and Internationally needs to quit thinking of the President as "the Chimp". Otherwise, the message is stopped dead cold.
"Support Iranian Democracy Movements."
Check.
"We Must Think Creatively on How To Make It Easier for Russia and China to Opt Out of their Support for the Iranian Government."
Pending to Moribund. Russian stances on Iran, Iraq, and other factors don't point to a friendship there. China has signed an axis treaty with Russia and continually attempts to steal every tech the can from us.
"Avoid Broad Economic Sanctions, Especially Avoid Oil Sanctions."
Nope. This is war, not Marquis de Queensbury rules. Give 'em the sucker punch, holding back on the Mullahs is NOT working.
"Announce Formation of Special Tribunals for Members of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps and the Basij."
Wow. That'll show 'em! (?)
"Develop and frequently revisit a ballistic missile and EMP Intelligence Military Plan for Iran."
Check. And then some. Back to their proxy state status, we need to be bristling wit countermeasures on all borders and territories if relations with Iran go south.
"Develop Contingency Plans In Case Iranian Government Collapses or Civil War Breaks Out."
Check.
Newt's not all wet, and he's done a fair job of characterizing the enemy, but he's trying a nuanced approach. Head-Chopping Mullahs don't respond to nuance. Sorry Newt, more hawk, less chicken, please.
Thank you Jimmy Carter, your legacy grows.
I considered posting his entire testimony. It's great in its entirety however... a bit long. After reading it, I think using nukes, in Newt's mind is "on the table" but that we can win this “Long War” without them, just as we won the “Cold War” without them. Or should I say, without using them...
"Lastly, if regime change is achieved in Iran through a democratic revolution, the question of Iranian nuclear weapons is automatically lessened because everything we know about the Iranians' attitudes suggests that they will be pro-western and peaceful."
Newt is one of my favs on our side, but he underestimates the enemy a bit here. There would likely be another 'insurgency' band of terrorists causing problems for years in Iran and crossing over from other 'Jihadi' areas in the Middle East. This crap will never end until the whole world wakes up and joins the fight.
I like Newt, and he's no dummy. It's just like I said, though:
1. Our current will to go into a multi-decades war is dodgy at best.
2. The nuanced approach of "nudging" the Mullahs out isn't working now.
And as for the winning of the "Cold War", well, we still share reciprocal nuke targeting status with Russians. We do have to be careful with all of this...
Proxy-State Pingage
Thanks for Posting this humint. Very good read and it puts the threat of radical Islam into perspective.
Now if the liberals could just get out of the way.. we might be able to make some progress.
bump
The President, Vice-President and Talk Radio are not "right wing radical warmongers." I am. IMHO we should have rolled right on into Iran and Syria before the dust settled in Iraq. Politically speaking, it's probably too late and will never happen.
Now I guess we get to wait until New York City and Tel Aviv are smoking, radioactive ruins before we address these particular threats.
I'm d**n tired of our enemies sitting safe and snug behind a couple of stupid lines on the map (the Syrian and Iranian borders.) That's the same stupidity that let the VC and NVA operate unchecked in Laos, Cambodia, and China (as has been told to me by guys who were there.)
I have this fantasy, where an archetypal liberal, in this scenario let's call him "Professor Aljazeera", is surfing the internet in search of right wing conspiracies he can foil and up pops a piece like this one. Professor Aljazeera reads Newt's words and thinks to himself, "Newt makes sense to me! Newt really put this into a perspective that all Americans can support."
Later, Professor Aljazeera goes to sleep that night and dreams of all of the hospitals, schools, water treatment facilities and power plants being built in Iraq now... and then he dreams of future lives of a couple Iraqi children, 8 year old girls today but he dreams of them 20 years from now, having coffee and talking politics in a Bazaar in Basra.
Are you with me on this so far?...
And the next morning he wakes up, goes to his university and stops teaching his class to hate themselves and their country. And later that month, after retargeting his internet searches to focus on how to make our nation stronger and freer, gives his class a lecture about "Moral Clarity" and how freedom and responsible self-governance are the wellspring of applying American ideology.
Now I know this fantasy is as unlikely as they come but it is not completely outside the realm of possibility... What do you think Coffee_drinker?
Some nastiness in Lebanon, to be sure, and the destabilization and overthrow of a coalition government there. The establishment of Hezbollah as power brokers in that country. Beyond that?
A form of Kennan's Containment Doctrine was put in place upon the accession to office of Ronald Reagan, and a nasty little sub-threshold war was fought in the Gulf, many of the details of which are relatively unknown to the American public. Covert support of Saddam Hussein during his own campaign against the mullahs (for oil resources principally, notably control of Gulf lines of communication) was part of that, and constituted a deal with the devil that was not altogether a bad one given the distribution of strategic oil resources at the time.
Since then the advent of North Sea oil and many other secondary sources have broken the grip of OPEC upon the economies of the West. Just as in the Cold War we were buying time.
The rise of Wahhabi/Salafi radicalism happened during this period and, I suspect, was motivated at least in part by the success of their Shi'a rivals in Iran. This constituted an end run on the containment policies both geopolitically and strategically, and the accession of the Taliban to government in Afghanistan made the containment strategy untenable.
None of this happened in a vacuum - in the meantime there was the little business of the end of the Cold War, a rather larger geopolitical project than this putative War of Civilizations, in my opinion. But that put certain constraints that were unfortunately - it has to be said - made concrete by weak and vacillating foreign policies of the inward-looking Clinton administration. Into that vacuum it was the Wahhabi/Salafi surge that poured, with the results that we see before us today. The defeat of Saddam and the Taliban was not an act of containment, it was a counterattack. The meddling of Iran in Iraq constitutes a testing of the old containment, a probing that so far has had mild but disturbing success.
I think that breaking that containment is the primary strategic aim of the Iranian push for nuclear weapons, constituting a theoretical defense against direct U.S. military attack and a constant threat to Israel that is designed more for prestige in the Islamic world than it is actual employment. The Israelis have their half of a very effective MAD doctrine already in place.
It would be a very disturbing development should the Sunni side of things also desire nuclear weapons to be on a par with their Shi'a rivals. In that vein it the succession of Abdullah to the Saudi throne is a vital development and one reason the Bush administration keeps its sometimes infuriating support of that government up and its nearly always infuriating "Religion Of Peace" sobriquet toward the nominal leaders of a religion that is, at the moment, anything but.
All IMHO and subject to debate, of course.
You make some great observations but I hope you don't mind me saying so, I think they’re from a regionalist's perspective. It appears to me that we have two types of allies among Muslim leaders; economic and ideological. The two types are in some cases combined in the same host and in other cases, diametrically opposed. Without getting into hair splitting detail, the Saudis are our allies and it is in all of our interests that they stay our allies.
To the broader point, we do have ideological allies who subscribe to Islam, and to them Islam is a religion of peace. To them Islam is fully compatible with the progressive ideas of liberal democracy. We should seek to partner with them and I think President Bush implicitly rewards them when he subjectively identifies them. The region may be ready for President Bush to objectively identify them, in other words point out who truly believes Islam is a neighborly religion of peace, but I’m of the belief that it’s too early to do so universally.
Newt points out that this is an ideological war, and by default, ideological wars are global wars. Ideology is not a containable entity particularly with the advent of globalization. In the information age, we will fight our enemies with our intellect and winning or losing will depend on our participation and comprehension of the debate.
At the outset of your comment, you asked 'what have they done?' and many will answer in terms of numerics; number of terror attacks, number of civilians murdered… and while these numbers are important we should also measure ideological damage. The Iranian regime molests the electoral process by pre-approving candidates and never electing the highest authority in Iran. How many journalists have called Iran a democracy because they witnessed Iranian voters at the polls? Each time they’ve done that, they’ve obfuscated our ideology! And let’s be clear about this, our ideology holds freedoms, all freedoms in the highest regard.
It is precisely this freedom that makes Americans so Ideologically strong. Because a man’s relation with his God is solely a personal experience I can say with confidence, an American can be more Muslim than any Iranian could ever hope to be today. The Islam of the Islamic Republic of Iran is essentially the legislated version of one man’s, Ayatollah Khomeini’s relationship with God, applied to all Iranians. He’s no longer able to appreciate his mortal experience because he died many years ago but Iranians are left to suffer underneath it.
Now, there are Iranians who believe Islam is a religion of peace and it is they, in concert with other Iranian forces, who can correct their state and make it a democracy. By supporting them, we are supporting our own ideology. By supporting them we will protect future generations of Americans. And by supporting them, we will know ourselves better. The fact is, our very existence passively supports democratic dissidents around the globe and that is precisely why the likes of President Mahmood Ahmadinejad seek a world without us in it. But passive support isn’t enough. We need to make a commitment to our own principals and that demands an active commitment to democracy dissidents around the world. It is my humble opinion that we should aggressively encourage those who seek to champion Islam as a religion of peace because without their leadership the war won’t just be long, it may last forever.
BUMP
I've never heard American foreign diplomacy and policy described so well... Thanks for making this part of your FR home page.
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