Mister Pterodactyl

Friday, May 25, 2007

A couple days ago Instapundit linked this, from Bill Quick: "What’s most interesting - and disgusting, and depressing, and disheartening - about reports like these is they demonstrate that the US government at the highest levels . . . knows that Iran is killing our soldiers, publicly admits it, and yet has done nothing effective to stop them from doing it."

The big guy comments: “The Bush Administration's passivity with regard to Iran has puzzled me for some time. And disappointed me.”

I have to agree. The administration seems unwilling to so much as acknowledge new threats, even rhetorical ones. It’s like they’re so focused on the stuff we’re dealing with now that they’d rather just ignore everything else, to say nothing of actually doing anything about it.
It’s a fair criticism. There’s only one problem: you say you want the government to do something about Iran? Okay, any idea what?

Let’s talk about that. As I see it, our options boil down to two. Diplomatic pressure (i.e. sanctions), or military force.
We can’t pressure them by ourselves and hope to be effective, even assuming the help of our more reliable allies. We need the help of the ‘international community,’ embodied, no doubt, by the UN. And will the last person with any faith in the UN kindly hit the lights on your way out the door?
'Nuff said. Unfortunately, that leaves force as our only real option. But given our current commitment level that seems a little less than feasible right now. Putting on my military-expert hat, sure, we could bomb the crap out of them for as long as we want. But unless we have the stomach to go WWII old-school on them, I doubt it’ll do much good in the end. And let’s face it, we don’t have the stomach.

So if we can’t count on diplomacy, and we can’t count on force, what’s left? Nada, unless maybe there’s some under-the-table action going on, some super secret CIA type black-ops special forces stuff which, by definition, the government wouldn’t be able to tell us about, which in turn may cause frustrated reactions in bloggers like us. [And I’m using ‘us’ in a very loose sense here.]

But wait!
“The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert ‘black’ operation to destabilize the Iranian government, Attention ‘current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.” Again via Instapundit.
I scrolled down through the first dozen or so comments at the link. Interestingly, they almost all blast ABC for running the story, often calling them traitors. [Or, as the first commenter put it, 'traders.' Way to beat that spellchecker!]

I think their anger is misplaced. My immediate reaction was a little different: attention, ‘current and former officials in the intelligence community,:’ THAT’S NOT HELPING.
On the other hand, is it really hurting us to talk about this in public? Think about it; if the Iranians believe that we’re not planning something, they’re even dumber than they look.

Also from the article: “A CIA spokesperson said, ‘As a matter of course, we do not comment on allegations of covert activity.’” I wish he’d added, “We also do not comment on allegations that North Korea might be next.” I have not forgotten about the poofy-haired roundboy.
- posted by Dactyl @ 6:42 PM