Elliot Abrams Thinks Iranians Will Welcome Us As Liberators If We Launch Unprovoked Airstrikes on Their Country
Given that Elliot Abrams was a high-ranking Bush administration official and is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, I think we can conclude that neither substantive policy failure nor a record of illegally lying to congress is going to derail his career. He is all-but-certain to return to office more powerful than ever. Thus, I’m going to hope for the sake of the country that this argument he made during a debate on whether or not we should bomb Iran represents dishonesty rather than stupidity:
We are not talking about the Americans killing civilians, bombing cities, destroying mosques, hospitals, schools. No, no, no – weʹre talking about nuclear facilities which most Iranians know very little about, have not seen, will not see, some quite well hidden.
So they wake up in the morning and find out that the United States if attacking those facilities and, presumably with some good messaging about why weʹre doing it and why we are not against the people of Iran.
Itʹs not clear to me that the reaction letʹs go to war with the Americans, but rather, perhaps, how did we get into this mess? Why did those guys, the very unpopular ayatollahs in a country 70 percent of whose population is under the age of 30, why did those old guys get us into this mess.
Throughout the decades-long history of air power, arguments of this form have been made time and again by people who overestimate its strategic efficacy, and it’s never been true. Nor does it seem at all likely to me that it would be possible for the United States to engage in a thorough demolition of Iranian nuclear facilities without killing some civilians. But even if casualties were limited to Iranian military and intelligence personnel and to scientists and technicians working on the nuclear project, I don’t really see why we’d expect the Iranian population to regard that with equanimity. If Iranian agents were to blow up an American military base, I don’t think the American public would just say “well, fair enough”; we’d be pissed. And it’s in the United States—not Iran—where powerful elements of the national security establishment muse openly about launching unprovoked unilateral military attacks on other countries.
This all comes to me via Justin Logan who observes that it’s likely neither stupidity nor dishonesty but rather the toxic blend of the two known as self-deception, “If you’re interested in these type of arguments, I’d encourage you to pick up a copy of Jack Snyder’s Myths of Empire. These sorts of arguments are literally straight from the pages of Myths, a book where Snyder attempts to generalize the “myths” that empires endorse as they overexpand.”
50 Responses to “Elliot Abrams Thinks Iranians Will Welcome Us As Liberators If We Launch Unprovoked Airstrikes on Their Country”
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March 30th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Polling Data
Do you support the government’s determination to continue uranium enrichment, or do you support the suspension of uranium enrichment?
Continue uranium enrichment
77.7%
Suspend uranium enrichment
22.3%
Source: Fars News Agency
Methodology: Interviews to 8,000 Iranian adults in 60 Iranian cities, conducted in July 2007. No margin of error was provided.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:20 am
The cockroach analogy would be quite apt here, and would be approved even by the cockroach lover who slammed you last time you used it, and even if not, who cares? Cockroaches are cockroaches.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Just think, this is the same Elliot Abrams that brought us the Iran Contra scandal.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:25 am
That’s some of the nuttiest stuff I’ve read in a while. Truly an echo chamber wrapped in a bubble sort of enigma.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I don’t think types like Abrams much care whether or not they believe their own bullsh*t. They want to do what they want to do. They want to have happen what they want to have happen. Everything else is a means to an end.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Can other people read this whole post? For me the picture is covering the start of the writing.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Same here, peep. Here’s the first section of the text:
March 30th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Abrams–one of the great right wing scoundrels of cowboy postcolonial Republican foreign policy since the Reagan era when he was the architect of Death Squad training schools in Honduras. He continued to serve the Bush 2 admin as architect of our middle east policy–how this man has evaded war crimes trials is a question for future generations. May his place in history be widely presented for its infamy.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Now there’s someone who consults his lawyers before leaving the country.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Is that how Americans reacted on 9/11? NOT.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:05 am
If you polled the membership of the Baskin-Robbins Birthday Club on any topic you’d get better policy advice than CFR.
Something like 90% of Iranians support the right of Iran to develop civilian nuclear power. The idea that a foreign power destroying Iranian enrichment facilities with air strikes would be met with indifference from the people of Iran is pure idiocy.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Why is it that the Council on Foreign Relations seems so gung-ho on bringing in people who get that whole “relations” thing? Abram’s argument is like saying Al Qaeda was only targeting carefully determined sites to disrupt American revenue sources and preempt dangerous military action, expecting to be greeted as liberators by a grateful people.
Also, for an ideology that sees nation-state sovereignty as sacrosanct, you would think that neocons would recognize that no one likes it when their sovereignty is militarily violated.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Cate – Heh. You are so right.
The Council on Foreign Invasions is more like it.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:25 am
I know I would welcome the Iranians if they were somehow able to bomb our nuclear facilities. I’d say, hey man, they aren’t attacking us, the people, they are attacking our nuclear facilities. What’s the big deal? It’s for our own good anyway.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:45 am
The idea that a careful explanation of why we’re bombing someone will somehow make them not mind that [b]we’re bombing them[/b] is either insane or stupid. That’s like thinking that if the Japanese had just managed to communicate better before and after Pearl Harbor, then the whole Pacific war could have been avoided. Hell, just ask Lebanon or Gaza about the relative importance of PR spin vs. cluster bombs or WP rounds.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Now if we only bomb the HAMAS terrorists . . . “
March 30th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Two unrelated comments;
“Throughout the decades-long history of air power, arguments of this form have been made time and again by people who overestimate its strategic efficacy, and it’s never been true.”
There has been a fundamental change in the strategic value of air power due to stealth and, especially, precision, as demonstrated in the Gulf war, the Balkans campaigns (Bosnia and then Kosovo) and even the first part of the Iraq war. Air power cannot occupy, pacify, and reconstruct a nation (as demonstrated by the second and ultimately more important part of the Iraq war). But it can quickly, efficiently, and with remarkably limited loss of life compared with all prior conflicts, disassemble an enemy’s capacity to wage war. I don’t think there’s much doubt that we could destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and while there would no doubt be unintended civilian deaths and injuries they would probably be fairly limited given the scope of the operation.
That said, Abrams is dreaming for two reasons. First, because it seems to me incredibly unlikely that ordinary Iranians would just shrug their shoulders in the face of a military attack by the United States. Second, because I don’t think that actually matters even if he were right. The issue is, what means does Iran have to retaliate if we attack them? And would it be possible to prevent or deter those means? It really doesn’t matter what the Iranian people think. If the Iranian government has the capacity to retaliate against us, then they’re going to do it unless we can stop them or dissuade them.
Any discussion of a possible attack that doesn’t address this issue is fundamentally unserious.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Just the kind of thinking that brought us Pearl Harbor:
We are not talking about the Japanese killing civilians, bombing cities, destroying churches, hospitals, schools. No, no, no – we’re talking about a naval facility which most Americans know very little about, have not seen, will not see, quite well hidden in Hawaii from the mainland.
So they wake up in the morning and find out that the Imperial Japanse Navy is attacking that naval base and, presumably with some good messaging about why we’e doing it and why we are not against the people of America.
It’s not clear to me that the reaction let’s go to war with the Japanese, but rather, perhaps, how did we get into this mess? Why did those guys, the Democratic administration in a country 60 percent of whose population is under the age of 30, why did those old guys get us into this mess.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Elliot Abrams is the David Duke of American Jews. He’s the guy promoting Jewish as a race and arguing for the superiority of the Jewish “race”
Not only Iraning wouldn’t welcome Americans, they would put a hole between Abram’s eyes, in case they are attacked.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
The odd thing is, the Japanese did think we wouldn’t fight if they destroyed our fleet. They were expecting to negotiate from a position of strength afterwards. It was a staggering misreading of the American people as a whole, and of Roosevelt specifically.
I think Abrahms believes full well that bombing those facilities would be met with reprisals that led to war.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I don’t think there’s much doubt that we could destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and while there would no doubt be unintended civilian deaths and injuries they would probably be fairly limited given the scope of the operation.
It’s a problem that this is considered rational discourse. Those pesky civilian deaths are minimal so why bother with worrying about them? Thank the lord for our awesome technologies, eh? There are far more important matters to fuss over.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Humorously enough, the center of Iranian nuclear research is Isfahan, which IIRC is the third-largest metropolitan area in Iran. It’s also a city where it’s hard to swing a cat without hitting a fancy medieval mosque. So apparently Abrams has just spilled the beans about our supersecret extradimensional bombs that don’t do any collateral damage when targeting facilities in a major city chock full of mosques, hospitals, schools, and civilians. Nice going, Elliot.
Alternatively, he could be referring to the facilities that no one knows about, but which we would be able to target perfectly with bombing campaigns. Let me guess: they’re “east, west, south and north somewhat.”
March 30th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I object to post #8 that disparages “cowboy foreign policy.”
Cowboys are brave, loyal, hardworking, and love horses. They love their horses and justice, respect women, and shoot bad men. Cowboys are the icon of all that is good and decent about America. Jesus was a cowboy, FDR was a cowboy, and Wyatt Earp was a cowboy.
We need more cowboy foreign policy, not less.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
The fence to the Natanz enrichment facility is literally down the street from a housing complex. There’s nothing like watching a plume of uranium dust rise from a bombing run and fall all over a heavily populated city…is there? Can’t imagine the entire moslem world won’t be glued to their TVs watching children choking on radioactive dust.
Elliot Abrams is a lying sack of shit who doesn’t have the balls to level with the American people about what the real costs of such an operation would be.
These are sick, sick, people that care more about themselves than they do about the Republic. The real problem is that thanks to the President, we’ve got a whole bunch of folks at State that don’t really differ too much when it comes to this issue in particular.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
In addition. How is it that the leadership of Iran is so evil…yet they wouldn’t be diabolical enough to build these facilities within close proximity to civilian infrastructure?
The FACTS speak otherwise. This guy opening his mouth is a fucking joke.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Jesus H, either you believe that military action is sometimes justified, or you don’t. If you do then you enter the horrific calculus of civilian casualties and the ethical imperative to devise military means that minimize those casualties. If you don’t, then you’re a pacifist, which I take it you are. I’m not. Since most people aren’t, it isn’t generally considered irrational discourse to talk about the issues that necessarily arise for non-pacifists in confronting problems like this. But perhaps you are saying it’s irrational not to be a pacifist. You may be right about that, but again it isn’t what most people believe.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
It isn’t possible to consider military action justified but conclude the cost is too high?
What an odd thing to claim.
Decent leaders, including military leaders throughout history, have stayed their hands in wars they fervently believed in, because a particular operation would kill too many innocents.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Larry, Matt is no pacifist; look through this blog a bit and you can find Matt agreeing with Obama’s actions in Afghanistan (look further back and he endorsed the invasion of Iraq, which he has since repudiated). I’m not a pacifist either. If you want to argue for the regrettable necessity of military action in Iran, let’s have that argument. If you think there are ways of actually minimizing the actual casualties and blowback, let’s talk about them.
What Abrams is doing is rhetorically minimizing casualties and blowback with obviously specious reasoning. He is attempting to efface “the horrific calculus of civilian casualties” in order to win support for military action. How you could ever defend that as somehow realistic and rational is beyond me.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
One thing I never really get is that, even if only military personnel are killed, don’t military personnel have, you know, civilian families and friends and whatnot? It’s not like Iran is growing clone soldiers in hermetically sealed pods. They’re people and they know people in the general population.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
How can one even make a decision that military action is “justified” without taking into consideration its costs?
Here, let me try: “You either believe that military action is sometimes justified, or you don’t. If you do, then you enter the horrific calculation of your own side’s military and civilian deaths, and the possibility of defeat, and take action to minimize those possibilities.”
Or, you decide that the possibility that your forces will be massacred on the battlefield and your civilians in their homes is too great, and you don’t launch military action.
Jeebus, imagine if every country that decided it had a case for war against a more powerful country thought like Larry Birnbaum: that once you concluded that military action was justified, you were committed to starting a war, and the downside (ie, losing) was something you could only try to minimize operationally, and couldn’t be looked at as a reason not to start the war.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Reminds me of how Iraq had an active nuclear program w/ lots of WMD, how we’d be greeted as liberators and how the oil money would pay for the occupation. They’ll say anything to get what they want. Means to an end is exactly right.
What’s mystifying to me is how guys like Abrams can’t see that lies come back to haunt you. The lack of more unified national support for the Iraq War can be traced directly to the lies pitched to get the war in the first place.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
That’s because the lies don’t come back to haunt Abrams. They come back to haunt you and me, but not Abrams, because people like that keep doing whatever they want forever. If the powerful find them useful, there is no record of deceit, there’s only utility.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
That, and the deliberate use of the war as a partisan political wedge. Then they complained about a lack of national unity.
I don’t think they’ll learn that lesson, either.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Fortunately, Mccain lost the last election and the guys in the current administration would look upon such claims with laughter and derision. But, who knows who might sweep to power in the future and give these nuts the reins again.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
The photo is covering the top of the post. Can’t read it.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Will you please fix the post so we can read it (picture blocking almost all of the first paragraph)? I’m used to Matt’s typos, but this is ridiculous.
March 30th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I cannot read most of this entry because the picture of Abrams and Cheney covers the text.
March 30th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Hey, where’s old Don Williams today; he should be here calling for Elliot Abrams to be burned at the stake.
March 30th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Dusty: “One thing I never really get is that, even if only military personnel are killed, don’t military personnel have, you know, civilian families and friends and whatnot?”
Actually, it is the other way around. Attacks at civilian targets of Israel can be met with “disproportional response” or not, it varies. But attack soldiers and the hell gets loose. You see, if military personel gets killed they have their friends who are “armed and dangerous” and can do something about it.
In case of Iran, they may a number of “proxy options”, like smuggling short range missiles to a location from which they can wipe out some of our aircraft, say, near Baghdad or Bagram. Which we would duly decry as a cowardly terrorist action, but we would have reason to think — escalate or not. If Israel would be doing the bombing, something similar can be done too, and most probably, would be done. What would come next, it is a good guess, but we have no idea what kind of weapons are pre-positioned in Hezbollah tunnels, only that some stuff is far superior to what Hezbollah used last time.
Another option of Iran would be to declare nautical exclusion zone, say, 50 miles from their shores, and forbid all nautical traffic, including commercial. And hit recalcitrant ships with missiles.
March 30th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Let’s focus on the reality rather than some moron neocon’s notions of the psychology of other countries.
There IS NO justification for ANY attack on Iran whatsoever.
There IS NO nuclear weapons program.
Therefore ANY assault on Iran is a war crime justifying the arrest, imprisonment, trial and probably life sentence for the President of the United States who orders such an assault, and all of the officers of the US military who complied with that illegal order.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
joe & tomemos, I think you didn’t get the context of my comment. Read Jesus H’s comment, to which I am responding, and maybe my earlier comment preceding that. I’m not arguing what either of you seem to think I’m arguing.
March 31st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
When you actually read the whole transcript of the debate, you see that to one’s chagrin, it was déjà vu: re Iraq, a terrible misunderstanding of IR theory, and a total misunderstanding of the Islamic Republic and its people.
Why is Elliot Abrams still influential?
http://commera.wordpress.com
March 31st, 2009 at 4:34 pm
This is the most interesting bit to me:
Right now, there is one country in the world that is openly and proudly talking about attacking other nations. And some actually wonder why many see the US as a threat to world peace?
March 31st, 2009 at 4:36 pm
And #41, yes, if an attack on Iran happens, I sincerely hope that the rest of the world has the balls to throw Obama’s ass in jail, along with the rest of our government of war criminals. It seems to be the only way to stop them.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:20 pm
If Mr. Abrams actually thinks it’s likely that Iranians will show that little nationalist sentiment, he doesn’t know much about Iran.
April 8th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
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April 8th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
FANTASTIC!
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