Geek Demands a New Historical Analogy

A few years ago a couple of Harvard type academics did something unusual. They wrote a useful book about how to think. Their subject was reasoning by historical analogy. Their conclusion was that Washington decision makers do a very poor job of it.

The Geek (who admits a certain propensity to point out historical parallels, lessons and, with some trepidation, vague analogies) is in agreement with these two scholars. My agreement has grown since the Commander Guy fired his shotgun load of analogies (most incomplete, misleading, irrelevant or flatly wrong) at the VFW convention. Since then the slash and burn of competing bad analogies about Vietnam and Iraq has been impressive--and impressively teleologically didactic.

Of course, the Geek notes, the poor use of analogies runs in the Bush blood. Back in the run-up to the Gulf War back in 1990, H.W Bush compared Saddam Hussein with Adolph Hitler, a comparison that doesn't do either dictator justice.

The time has come for a new analogy. Perhaps an analogy which suits a country other than Iraq. How about Iran?

That's a good choice. Iran has been receiving a great deal of diplomatic, political, and media play recently. The Iranian government is well in the running for the title of Most Unpleasant Regime in the World Today. The US is annoyed at the mullahocracy--with good reason.

So, country one in the new analogy will be Iran!

How about country number two?

Here the Geek chooses a state with whom the US has had bad to very, very bad relations over a long time. A country where pathetic to absolutely stupid US policy choices were made on the basis of pique, annoyance, emotionalism, and similar well-rooted rational bases.

In short, country number two's relations with the US were (and are) driven by American policy choices of such an asinine and counterproductive nature that the Geek sometimes thinks they had to have been the product of that sublime statesman, Dick Cheney. Then I remember Cheney looks older than he is. He couldn't have been the big brain behind the plans.

Country number two is Cuba.

The new analogy: Iran and Cuba.

Let's get a grip on Cuba first.

While waging offensive insurgency against the rotten, corrupt Cuban government headed by Juan Battista, the 26th of July Movement headed by the young lawyer (and once-upon-a-time wannabe major league baseball player), Fidel Castro, was seen in heroic terms by many in the US. Even the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, which was scarcely known to be accommodating of communism, saw the guerrillas as an improvement on the Battista dictatorship. Ike and company cut off aid to the incumbent regime and the guerrillas took over.

The next chapter was not so pleasant. The Castroites expropriated US owned businesses and lands (including casinos owned by the American mob) without "proper compensation" OOH! The horror of it all still sends shivers up the Geekmo's spine.

But, the story got worse from the emotional perspective of the American media and, as a consequence, We the People. In an expectable fit of revolutionary boisterousness, the Fidelistas proceeded with a series of show trials held in a soccer arena before the most blood thirsty crowd since the Terror of the French Revolution. The victims were by and large minions, flunkies, and myrmidons of the ancien regime and were lead to the firing squads as the crowd shouted, "Parado!"

From the reaction of We the People you might think that the bearded barbarians of the 26th of July Movement were collectively squashing Lassie or some other iconic American puppy.

The Eisenhower response?

Diplomatic isolation, economic embargo, and the cranking up of a pseudo-revolutionary guerrilla force which would land in Cuba and throw the rascals out. Our own form of shouting, "Parado!"

Ike's response to Castro's provocation was so wrong as to make a soup sandwich look like the ideal Blue Plate Special.

Why?

That's obvious to anyone oriented in time and place. The problem of expropriation and compensation is one that is handled best through normal diplomatic engagement. Sure, some US companies (and the mob) wouldn't have been thrilled with either the inevitable delay or the probable final dollar figure. So what? All business (as the mobsters could attest) involves risk.

The revolutionary excesses of the soccer arena mob? It would have run its course as it did regardless of any frissons of horrified disgust felt by We the People. Anyway, the record shows clearly that most of those adobe walled deserved what they received.

The pseudo-insurgent invasion (manned by Cuban exiles, expats, and refugees) launched from "secret" CIA bases in Central America and controlled by the Miami located CIA station, JM/WAVE (which was so "secret" that taxi drivers picking up fares at Maimi International asked, "You want to go to the CIA place?") became the debacle known to history as The Bay of Pigs. Was that brilliant, or what?

The result of all our efforts including the April 1961 Kennedy approved and Kennedy weakened Bay of Pigs was the May 1st declaration by Castro that Cuba was now a "socialist state."

Great!

The brilliant American response to the bite of the flea had given Communism an entrepot in the Western Hemisphere. Now, things would really, really get serious. Deadly serious.

The combination of domestic political anxiety and personal anger within the Kennedy White House drove policy. The new policy was to overthrow the Cuban regime preferably with the assassination of Fidel, his brother, Raul, and others such as Che Guevara. The documented records released a week or so back by CIA show the seamy underside of this policy.

The raids, the attempted hits, the continued hostility diplomatically and economically demonstrated by Washington led over time to the Cuban Missile Crises in October 1962, which saw the world come closer to the pushing of launch buttons in Moscow and Washington than any other time before or since. It may even have brought about the killing of JFK in Dallas thirteen months later, aborting the well developed operational planning for a genuine US invasion of Cuba scheduled to take place before the 1964 presidential election.

Great policy, wouldn't you agree?

Over forty years have passed since Dallas. The US still is pretending that Cuba is the ultimate leper. Senator Obama was chastised for suggesting that it was past time for the US to take the first small step toward normalizing economic relations with Cuba.

Old, bad policies die hard--particularly when Cuban expats and their descendants are a significant bloc of votes in states such as Florida and New Jersey. Oy veh!

Now, let's get a grip on Iran.

Except for threats, and the occasional diplomatic meeting in a third country or in the delegates' lounge at the UN, the US has pretended Iran doesn't exist as a state with a legitimate government. Washington has used all the diplomatic and economic leverage at its disposal for nearly thirty years to isolate the mullahocracy in Tehran, damage the Iranian economy, and seek the overthrow of the Iranian government.

The reason?

Self-evident. The mullahocracy was behind the kidnapping and holding hostage of US diplomatic personnel, a more than four hundred day siege on the emotions of We the People. Since then the mullahs have shown a repeated, excessive desire to kill people, both in Iran, and, more importantly, elsewhere in the Mideast. Tehran was behind the truck bombings of US barracks in Lebanon a quarter century ago. It is the shadowy presence behind the rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel.

Thoroughly obnoxious bunch, there is no doubt about that.

Making the mullahocracy all the more irritating is its pursuit of nuclear capacities, including at least, as a real possibility, the atomic bomb. Then, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps or its al-Quds foreign operations component has been involved in the destabilizing of Iraq and the killing of US personnel in that country.

Even the Fidelistas weren't quite that over the edge.

The question is simple. What are we going to do about it?

So far, our Cuban type policy of diplomatic non-recognition, economic sanctions, and world opinion pressure have not brought any positive results. Adding on Congressional notions about working "secretly" to destabilize the mullahocracy has not improved the prospects for success.

That leaves war.

A fair amount of quacking and bloviating about the presumed necessity for war has been circulating among the Wallahs in Congress and the chattering classes generally within the past few weeks. War with Iran is equally easy to be for or against.

It depends on which analogy is used, and how it is employed.

The pro-war faction argues correctly that Iran is a clear danger to US interests. It argues that the US possesses the military capacities to destroy the Iranian nuclear plants, the logistics bases of al-Quds Force, and any number of other infrastructure targets. There can be little, if any doubt, but that the US Air Force and Navy have the stand-off munitions capabilities to bounce a lot of rubble quite high.. It could even be done without a very large number of collateral civilian casualties.

The anti-war group correctly maintains that any air attack would further alienate global opinion and consolidate Iranians behind their embattled government. The problem of what comes after the air attack also bothers the anti-war group for good reason. We do not have the ground forces necessary to occupy and pacify Iran. It's a damn big chunk of real estate.

The Cuban analogy shows a few guide posts. The first is that isolation of an obnoxious regime is counterproductive. Certainly, the record of the past twenty-five years indicates that is correct. The second guidepost is a little more complex as it involves the basis of intelligence used by Commander Guys and those in the decision making circle.

One major (the Geek would argue it was the major) mistake behind the policy blunders of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations was an undue reliance upon the information provided by exiles, expats, and refugees from the former elites. Such people, whether Cuban, Iraqi, or Iranian, have a vested interest in both removing the new regime and portraying just how rotten and miserable things are back home and how unhappy and ready to revolt the people are.

The Cubans misled Ike and JFK. Iraqi exiles and expats misled the current administration back in 2002 and 2003. Deposed members of the old Iranian elite have been doing the same in recent months.

The lesson of Cuba (and Iraq for those with short memories) is clear. Do not trust former elites. They have too much at stake and too much personal involvement to provide reliable information and assessments.

A third guide post from the Cuban analogy is also apparent. Invasions must be up front and for real. There must be no attempt to hide behind pseudo-insurgents. There is and never has been any such thing as "plausible deniability" in an invasion.

A final guide post from the Cuban analogy is perhaps the most important. Questions of foreign policy can be entirely too important to the nation to allow decisions to be made from emotion, anger, personal or political considerations, or the ephemeral twists of public opinion.

The Cuban lessons distill to this: Is the regime so obnoxious, so intransigent that the only realistic recourse, the least-worst recourse, is war?