Islamophobia or Islamoaccuracy? Part 3

A little while ago, a guy accosted me down in front of a local bar. He wasn't drunk. He made a demand. "Geek. What I care about is Iran. I don't want to see us in another war. Know what I mean?"

The Geek nodded, he hoped sagaciously with a hint of total agreement. He was wondering where the dude was going with this.

"See, I think things will get out of hand. Know what I mean?"

The Geek wasn't sure. He had suspicions. But, unlike the current Administration, he has never been given to acting on suspicions. He nodded again, hoping the gesture showed a bit of doubt.

"See, Geek, it's like this. It's not like I want those idiots to get the bomb. But, bidda-bing, bidda-bang, we go in with an air strike and Lord only knows what those zany morons might do. Know what I mean?"

The Geek nodded. It was back to sagacious.

"And, then, we might nuke the hell out of 'em."

"Sure might at that," the Geek agreed.

"But, man, I mean, governments--even the Tehran bunch--know that. They don't want to see their country get the schnitzel. Right?"

It was hot. The Geek had an hour and half drive off the road to get back home. He was not ready for a street corner debate. He copped out.

"I'll have to think about it."

Here's the answer the Geek would have given, if he hadn't been hot, tired and eager to get home.

In short form the answer is, "Not necessarily."

The long form response requires taking a firm grip on history. Pol Pot and his minions were not bothered by the killing fields of Cambodia.

Saddam Hussein didn't appear disturbed by using heavy artillery and poison gas on his own people. Next door, Assad lost no sleep over rolling the tanks over the bodies of fellow Syrians.

Going back a bit further, Mao stayed calm as his Great Leap Forward greased the slide to death for millions from starvation, disease and cannibalism. The Japanese High Command was untroubled by the reality that an American invasion would lead to millions of civilian deaths.

On the other side of the world, Adolph Hitler stated that the German people deserved to be destroyed because they had let him down.

Then there was Joe Stalin who famously quipped, "The death of one person may be a tragedy but the death of millions is a statistic." He ought to know. At least about the second part of his comment. No leader in the bloody history of the human race died with so much blood on his hands.

What this dreary historical record tells us is simply that it is never wise, never prudent, never even rational to depend upon the enlightened self-interest of another government-particularly when that government operates from a set of values vastly different from one's own.

Perhaps, particularly when the government in question believes that it has God on its side--or at least talks and acts as though it believes so. (Of course, the Geek notes with the typical historian's cynical smile on his face, that the German soldier went to war in 1914 and again in 1939 with the slogan "Got Mit Uns" on his belt buckle. We know how that belief worked out.)

Consider for a moment the war between Iran and Iraq in the early and mid-1980s. The Iranian government was both willing and able to send untrained masses of very young volunteers into combat. Most were unarmed. Many were used as human mine clearing forces. The body count was impressive, even if the military results were not.

In short, the government in Tehran has shown itself quite immune to considerations of casualties. It has even shown a bizarre ability to use body counts and funerals for domestic propaganda, to whip up continued war fever.

It is possible, even probable, that the Iranian mullahocracy views the prospect of war with Israel or the United States not only with equanimity, but a tinge of eagerness. Why not? They expect to win. One way or another. No matter how many Iranians are killed, the chance still remains that the attacker will be destroyed or at least so badly damaged that Teheran's Islamist goals would nonetheless be achieved.

What are the implications if this analysis is fundamentally correct?

There are two: Letting Iran achieve a nuclear capability is not prudent, to say the least; using force is an option that has to be considered like porcupines make love--very, very carefully.

After all, in war no one has God on its side.