Dumb and Dumber: Nazi Germany and the Mullahs of Iran

One of the fun things about history is pointing out just how stupid critical decisions were in the cold light of many mornings later.

If Adolph Hitler had not been so lacking in imagination that he failed to use his greatest personal ability--a sound intuitive understanding of the European mindset of the late Thirties, it is far from implausible that he could have achieved political victory. He ignored his strength and played to a disastrous personal weakness--his conviction that he was a military genius.

If Hitler had used the instruments at his disposal--the political soldiers of the SS and the unprincipled spooks of the Sicherheitsdeinst (SD) and focused on subversion, fostering of insurgency, and the destabilizing effects of terrorism on already fractionated regimes and publics, he could have achieved his short- and mid-term goals in Central and Western Europe.

Subversion, sponsored pseudo-insurgency, terrorism, and propaganda are powerful weapons when accurately directed at the fault lines in a society, a polity. Exploitation of domestic sympathisers, of which there were many throughout Europe, coupled with the chronic uncertainty, fear, and demands for order resulting from the termite gnawing of subversion and bomb blasts in the night had a great possibility for success, greater in the long term than conventional cross-border invasions.

Best of all, subversion, propaganda, playing up domestic sympathizers with the propaganda of shared ideology present a low level threat almost guaranteed not to mobilize effective resistence from preoccupied and irresolute or distant governments and their citizens. Any who warned of the Attack of the Termites would be shrugged off and scoffed at as doom mongers or self-serving.

Hitler ignored his actual strength and dealt from a long-term position of weakness. Against the wartime coalition including the world's greatest industrial power and fighting a war which depended less on courage and determination than it did assembly lines and technology, the Nazis finally didn't have a chance.

The Soviets from Lenin on had a better grip of reality than did the Nazis. The weapon of choice was always that of the termite boring from within, or the flea sucking a little blood with each bite. When the boys in the Kremlin suffered from brain flatulence and used straight forward invasion outside of the Warsaw Pact satellites as they did in Afghanistan, they bet the ranch--and lost it.

For a long time during the Nineties it appeared that the mullahocracy in Tehran was smart enough to follow the Soviet model. The Iranians sponsored terrorism and subversion with at least a passing attempt at plausible deniability. They didn't run at the mouth making threats beyond the pro forma ones directed at Israel. They sought to expand and make more effective their propaganda instruments, particularly those which focused on exploiting sympathetic groups in the Mideast, Central Asia, and Europe.

In recent years this has all changed. Now the mullahocracy seems bent upon outdoing Hitler in pure stupidity.

Recently, the bearded wiseguys in Iran appear to be bound and determined to goad the US into war. While the new boisterousness of the mullahocracy finds its most obnoxious expression in the rants of the Iranian president, that should not be taken as the most important feature of the new orientation.

Far more important, since it is a pillar of other components of the new Iranian posture, is the current standoff over the nuclear ambitions held by Tehran. In a real sense, it is almost irrelevant whether or not Iran wants a bomb of its own. More importantly for home consumption as well as Iranian status in the region is its willingness to defy the US, the UN, and much of the West as well.

(This type of defiance plays well in the Islamic world. It does require the most careful, careful calculations if this effort to singe Uncle Sam's beard is not to see the flame blow back.)

The robust diplomatic offensive launched by Iran is another indicator. The alliance with Syria including the recent Iran-Syria summit is one facet of the offensive. The Iranian-Turkish pipeline negotiations is another as is the Iranian-Pakistani-Indian pipeline. Certainly, the remarks by the Iranian president at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit show a new determination for Iran to be a--perhaps the--Regional Power.

The reaction of the Iranians to the possibility of the US placing all or a portion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the terrorist organisation roster is another, perhaps more alarming sign.

It is also remarkably stupid.

While the comments the other day by a senior Iranian cleric can be overlooked, those of the IRGC commander cannot.

This doofus has issued a threat. Specifically, he "warned" the US that declaring the IRGC or its foreign operations component, the al-Quds Force, could result in the US being "punched."

The threat has to be taken seriously. The al-Quds Force has been involved in supporting insurgents in Iraq and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Al-Quds agents have been beard deep facilitating and guiding terrorist groups throughout the Mideast.

The al-Quds assets are competent, very highly motivated, experienced, and reasonably well trained and equipped. Overall, the al-Quds Force is as fine an instrument as the SS and SD were for the Nazis.

Al-Quds is a threat to our forces in Iraq. It is a threat to US installations and citizens globally including here in the US. The Geek ranks it as being at least equivalent to al-Qaeda at its highpoint.

Now. Wait one. Let's get a grip on one more important aspect of reality.

Subversion, terrorism, sponsored pseudo-insurgency work best (often only) when the government behind them can maintain deniability. There has to be a curtain, no matter how thin and ragged, behind which the government can hide. This is the only way in which a deeply fractionated, pluralistic polity can be prevented from mobilizing its political will and material resources.

The US is a deeply fractionated, pluralistic polity and society already deep in presidential election horse race type activities.

If the Iranians had kept their mouths shut, they might have been able to land a "punch." At least a punch of the sucker variety.

It's too late now. They run off at the mouth now. They have announced that the US is right. The IRGC is a terrorist organization. They've let us know that we should expect a punch.

Hitler and the Nazis were dumb.

The mullahs are dumber.