If they existed I hope they lead to hitherto unknown "interesting" places.
Any European w a little brain left should know that if "we" give in even a wee bit on 🇮🇱 we are toast as much if not more as we will be if we don't get our act together on 🇺🇦.
Very good Claire, as usual. However, as to George W. Bush being mistaken and not mendacious, in the law we have a concept known as willful ignorance: ignoring reality so that you can proceed on a predetermined path. Only W knows what he knew, but it was clear for months what he was going to decide, evidence or not.
I wrote the below essay a couple weeks ago. I'll share it here:
History Is Also Always Now: As Contemporary Parallel, Pure Irony, and/or Strange Opposite
A little shy of 2000 years ago, about 40 years after the Romans crucified Jesus of Nazareth (a middle-class Jewish carpenter who preached an apocalyptic, insurrectionist message about the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God on earth, along with gnostic concepts about the human body, spirit, and the temporal/holy meanings of human life), and about 10 years after the Jewish disciple Mark wrote his gospel of Jesus’s life, where he calls him Christ, the Son of God, the Romans set siege to Jerusalem within the context of the First Jewish-Roman War. Rome was the occupying power, and Judea was the dominated and oppressed state. During the Siege of Jerusalem tens of thousands of Jews were massacred, the city was razed to the ground, and Herod and Solomon’s Second Temple was destroyed.
In so many blinks of an eye, the State of Israel is massacring tens of thousands of Palestinians
and razing their territory to the ground to suppress and eradicate the deadly, objectively extreme, insurrectionist violence of the militant Hamas faction of the Palestinian polity- who are fighting against their actual oppressor.
About 550 years before the year 0, Cyrus the Great, the Persian (‘Iranian’) King, seized the region of Judah from the Babylonians. The Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar II, had previously conquered Judah, destroyed the Temple of Solomon, and exiled a substantial proportion of the Judean people (the Jews) to Babylon. Cyrus The Great, after conquering the Babylonians, issued and edict that repatriated the Jews to the land of Judah- in what became known as The Return to Zion. The territory under the auspices of the Persian State was self-governing. During the reign of the subsequent Persian (‘Iranian’) King, Darius the Great, the Second Temple was built at the direction of the Persian-appointed Jewish governor, Zerubbabel.
In so many blinks of an eye, that was then, and this is now. In so many blinks of an eye, nuclear weapons are part of the calculation of who your enemy is, and what they portend.
The 50-year-old, theocratic Iranian/Persian Regime is genocidally antisemitic. The Iranian/Persian people are not the same- a percentage are. The militant Hammas ruling faction of Gaza is genocidally antisemitic. The Palestinian people are not the same- a percentage are.
There is existential validity to Israel’s actions against Hamas/Gaza, Hezbollah, and Iran. There is validity up to a point- where after, existential necessity descends into uncommon virulence.
There would have been existential validity to a Hamas action that focused on the Israeli Military and/or targeted its leaders. But Hamas’s genocidal antisemitism is not valid from an existential-universal, humanistic perspective.
Things are where they are now based on a mosaic of historic elements. President Biden’s allowance of Israel’s extreme destruction set the ground for the neutralization of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s defense capabilities. There was a mosaic before October 7th that led up to that horrific day.
Even if Trump entering the conflict in Iran (flouting congress’s constitutional/legal mandate to authorize war) is substantially driven by being called TACO and being ‘teased’ about his ubiquitous, 2-week stall tactic, this may move history in a more secure direction by significantly expunging the genocidal factions of the Persian and Arab Polities.
This brings me to my point. Israel and America should now focus on ceasing aggression in Gaza and surging a rehabilitation (with aid from Saudi Arabia and the Arab states, and Europe), with an equal focus on facilitating regime change in Iran. The so-called ‘day after’ should start now.
And hopefully, in 1, 10, 50, 100 years we won’t have destroyed the ecological earth and ourselves.
I will re-read it in closer detail again later, but I find myself agreeing--as I often do--with pretty much all you said. I'm sorry (okay, not sorry)--for the Trump Redeemers out there who think we've now--NOW--finally stumbled upon his subtle genius, look at how he's handling Ukraine. Or handled North Korea the last time around. Explain those, please--take your time too. Hitler looked like a strategic genius for about three straight years, if memory serves. Some people still think Putin is. Now Bibi is too. Erdogan must be next. So much genius--the world must be looking up, surely.
I think the larger truth and path to possible wisdom here is as you described--circumspection. Especially since there is, objectively, a lot we do not know, even re: physical facts of what has already happened. I think it was Dan Drezner, years ago, who basically admitted that geopolitics was full of speculation often proven wrong, with very little accountability to match it; that it was great work if you can get it. History will likely shed some (or even a lot of) light on these events--and, as usual, people with views all over the spectrum will cherry-pick it to "prove" they were right. Almost as much humility as there is genius. I see some of that going right here already.
First, I read a review recently of Edward Luce's biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski. One thing that stuck out was Luce saying that Brzezinski understood that history never "ends." You overthrow Mohammad Mosaddeq to reinstate the Shah and think, "Case closed." Then, twenty some years later, it comes back and bites you in the ass when the Shah gets chased out. And here we are now, seventy some years later, still dealing with it. This latest flurry of military activity isn't the end of anything. History never ends . . .
Second, regarding the IC and its failures, when I find myself shaking my head about some intelligence failure here or there, I always find it instructive to recall Daniel Ellsberg's advice to Henry Kissinger in late 1968 when Kissinger was just entering government . . .
Claire’s friend, Adam Garfinkle wrote one of the smartest essays on foreign policy that you will ever read in a 2003 article published by the Hoover Institute. It’s short and pithy and well-worth a look. Adam was, by the way, a great admirer of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
In the essay, he criticizes what he labels as the immaculate conception theory of foreign policy. Adam suggests that criticizing policy makers for their failure to anticipate the impact of their decisions decades hence is ridiculous. Specifically he says,
“When a talented but untutored journalistic mind focuses on a foreign policy issue, particularly one that editors will pay to have written about, an amazing thing sometimes happens: All of a sudden, crystalline truth rises from the clear flame of an obvious logic that, for some unexplained reason, all of the experts and practitioners thinking and working on the problem for years never saw. This is the immaculate conception theory of U.S. foreign policy at work.”
Garfinkle sites two examples. He finds it absurd to blame Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter for failing to anticipate that arming the Mujahadeen might result in an Islamic takeover of Afghanistan decades later. More pertinent to Claire’s essay, he finds it ridiculous to blame the rise of the Islamic Republic on the CIA’s role, such as it was, in the overthrow of Mossadegh.
Elsewhere, Adam claims that the role played by the CIA in 1953 in Mossadegh’s overthrow was grossly exaggerated and in the Hoover Institute essay attached below he suggests the Shah was far less of a monster than he’s made out to be.
In any case, Adam Garfinkle’s essay is directly on point when it comes to your comment and it occurred to me that you might enjoy reading it. See,
This essay assumes destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities was the main reason for the Israeli attack and the American bombing of Fordow. Maybe it was, but I’m skeptical. There’s no doubt that hindering Iran’s nuclear capabilities was key but so were other factors that Claire neglected to mention.
The biggest threat to Israel was not an Iranian nuclear weapon that might or might not have ever been built. The main threat was Iranian ballistic missiles. Iran had a few thousand of those and when it launched them, a few got through and caused substantial damage. Depleting and destroying Iran’s stock of these missiles and its ability to build tens of thousands more was at least as important to Israel as taking down the Iranian nuclear program.
It was only a few years ago that Russia was supplying Iran with anti aircraft systems that would supposedly make Iran invulnerable to Israeli war planes. The concern about these systems was so acute that Netanyahu felt the need to negotiate with Putin to limit his willingness to supply Iran with these systems. Destroying Iran’s ability to deter an Israeli attack was a key factor in Israel’s decision to launch the attack.
It’s simply a fact that Middle Eastern people and their nations respect the Strong Horse. Trump understood this; Biden and Obama didn’t. They believed Middle Eastern nations were motivated by the same impulses that motivate Western liberals. Kamala Harris surely believed this too. It’s obvious that Democratic politicians viewed all the problems in the Middle East as amenable to a solution if only Israel would acquiesce to the creation of a Palestinian State. Netanyahu understood that this was hogwash. Trump did too.
With Hezbollah destroyed, Hamas in extremis, Syria potentially on the mend and Iran neutered, things in the Middle East seem to be improving thanks to Netanyahu’s leadership and Trump’s support. Obama and Biden wanted to empower Iran to balance Israeli strength. Both of them detested the Gulf Arab nations and Saudi Arabia. Trump took the opposite approach. He offered to negotiate with Iran but wouldn’t cow-tow to it. Moreover Trump worked assiduously to court the Saudis and the Gulf Arabs. Trump’s approach was right; Obama’s and Biden’s approach was wrong. Claire neglects to mention any of this.
Claire is right about one thing; time will tell how things play out. There might still be unpleasant surprises. What is clear is that by rejecting the platitudes of deluded Western liberals, Netanyahu and Trump have created opportunities for peace in the Middle East that haven’t existed in a generation.
Obama couldn’t have done it; Biden couldn’t have done it and it is a certainty that Harris couldn’t have done it. They were all wrong just as the European leaders were all wrong.
Netanyahu and Trump were right. Is it any wonder that It upsets their detractors so severely that they’re loathe to admit it?
Thank you Claire - a lot of this is like a book written ages later - 👏💐💐💐👏
just what the armada of equipment rescue trucks was all about is missing and leaves me a wee bit unsatisfied 🙃😉🙃
Could have been many things. We don't know.
If they existed I hope they lead to hitherto unknown "interesting" places.
Any European w a little brain left should know that if "we" give in even a wee bit on 🇮🇱 we are toast as much if not more as we will be if we don't get our act together on 🇺🇦.
"Epistemic immodesty is often accompanied by a pathological inability to accept doubt or complexity."
Very good Claire, as usual. However, as to George W. Bush being mistaken and not mendacious, in the law we have a concept known as willful ignorance: ignoring reality so that you can proceed on a predetermined path. Only W knows what he knew, but it was clear for months what he was going to decide, evidence or not.
Brilliant piece!!! Thank you, Claire!
I wrote the below essay a couple weeks ago. I'll share it here:
History Is Also Always Now: As Contemporary Parallel, Pure Irony, and/or Strange Opposite
A little shy of 2000 years ago, about 40 years after the Romans crucified Jesus of Nazareth (a middle-class Jewish carpenter who preached an apocalyptic, insurrectionist message about the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God on earth, along with gnostic concepts about the human body, spirit, and the temporal/holy meanings of human life), and about 10 years after the Jewish disciple Mark wrote his gospel of Jesus’s life, where he calls him Christ, the Son of God, the Romans set siege to Jerusalem within the context of the First Jewish-Roman War. Rome was the occupying power, and Judea was the dominated and oppressed state. During the Siege of Jerusalem tens of thousands of Jews were massacred, the city was razed to the ground, and Herod and Solomon’s Second Temple was destroyed.
In so many blinks of an eye, the State of Israel is massacring tens of thousands of Palestinians
and razing their territory to the ground to suppress and eradicate the deadly, objectively extreme, insurrectionist violence of the militant Hamas faction of the Palestinian polity- who are fighting against their actual oppressor.
About 550 years before the year 0, Cyrus the Great, the Persian (‘Iranian’) King, seized the region of Judah from the Babylonians. The Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar II, had previously conquered Judah, destroyed the Temple of Solomon, and exiled a substantial proportion of the Judean people (the Jews) to Babylon. Cyrus The Great, after conquering the Babylonians, issued and edict that repatriated the Jews to the land of Judah- in what became known as The Return to Zion. The territory under the auspices of the Persian State was self-governing. During the reign of the subsequent Persian (‘Iranian’) King, Darius the Great, the Second Temple was built at the direction of the Persian-appointed Jewish governor, Zerubbabel.
In so many blinks of an eye, that was then, and this is now. In so many blinks of an eye, nuclear weapons are part of the calculation of who your enemy is, and what they portend.
The 50-year-old, theocratic Iranian/Persian Regime is genocidally antisemitic. The Iranian/Persian people are not the same- a percentage are. The militant Hammas ruling faction of Gaza is genocidally antisemitic. The Palestinian people are not the same- a percentage are.
There is existential validity to Israel’s actions against Hamas/Gaza, Hezbollah, and Iran. There is validity up to a point- where after, existential necessity descends into uncommon virulence.
There would have been existential validity to a Hamas action that focused on the Israeli Military and/or targeted its leaders. But Hamas’s genocidal antisemitism is not valid from an existential-universal, humanistic perspective.
Things are where they are now based on a mosaic of historic elements. President Biden’s allowance of Israel’s extreme destruction set the ground for the neutralization of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s defense capabilities. There was a mosaic before October 7th that led up to that horrific day.
Even if Trump entering the conflict in Iran (flouting congress’s constitutional/legal mandate to authorize war) is substantially driven by being called TACO and being ‘teased’ about his ubiquitous, 2-week stall tactic, this may move history in a more secure direction by significantly expunging the genocidal factions of the Persian and Arab Polities.
This brings me to my point. Israel and America should now focus on ceasing aggression in Gaza and surging a rehabilitation (with aid from Saudi Arabia and the Arab states, and Europe), with an equal focus on facilitating regime change in Iran. The so-called ‘day after’ should start now.
And hopefully, in 1, 10, 50, 100 years we won’t have destroyed the ecological earth and ourselves.
So glad you thought it was helpful. Thank you.
This is the March testimony by Gabbard on current threats to America, including the paragraph on Iran.
https://www.odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/congressional-testimonies/congressional-testimonies-2025/4061-ata-hpsci-opening-statement-as-delivered
Thanks, I should have linked to that.
Claire,
I will re-read it in closer detail again later, but I find myself agreeing--as I often do--with pretty much all you said. I'm sorry (okay, not sorry)--for the Trump Redeemers out there who think we've now--NOW--finally stumbled upon his subtle genius, look at how he's handling Ukraine. Or handled North Korea the last time around. Explain those, please--take your time too. Hitler looked like a strategic genius for about three straight years, if memory serves. Some people still think Putin is. Now Bibi is too. Erdogan must be next. So much genius--the world must be looking up, surely.
I think the larger truth and path to possible wisdom here is as you described--circumspection. Especially since there is, objectively, a lot we do not know, even re: physical facts of what has already happened. I think it was Dan Drezner, years ago, who basically admitted that geopolitics was full of speculation often proven wrong, with very little accountability to match it; that it was great work if you can get it. History will likely shed some (or even a lot of) light on these events--and, as usual, people with views all over the spectrum will cherry-pick it to "prove" they were right. Almost as much humility as there is genius. I see some of that going right here already.
Glad you understand what I was getting at.
Two things . . .
First, I read a review recently of Edward Luce's biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski. One thing that stuck out was Luce saying that Brzezinski understood that history never "ends." You overthrow Mohammad Mosaddeq to reinstate the Shah and think, "Case closed." Then, twenty some years later, it comes back and bites you in the ass when the Shah gets chased out. And here we are now, seventy some years later, still dealing with it. This latest flurry of military activity isn't the end of anything. History never ends . . .
Second, regarding the IC and its failures, when I find myself shaking my head about some intelligence failure here or there, I always find it instructive to recall Daniel Ellsberg's advice to Henry Kissinger in late 1968 when Kissinger was just entering government . . .
On the Limits of Knowledge:
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge/
Claire’s friend, Adam Garfinkle wrote one of the smartest essays on foreign policy that you will ever read in a 2003 article published by the Hoover Institute. It’s short and pithy and well-worth a look. Adam was, by the way, a great admirer of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
In the essay, he criticizes what he labels as the immaculate conception theory of foreign policy. Adam suggests that criticizing policy makers for their failure to anticipate the impact of their decisions decades hence is ridiculous. Specifically he says,
“When a talented but untutored journalistic mind focuses on a foreign policy issue, particularly one that editors will pay to have written about, an amazing thing sometimes happens: All of a sudden, crystalline truth rises from the clear flame of an obvious logic that, for some unexplained reason, all of the experts and practitioners thinking and working on the problem for years never saw. This is the immaculate conception theory of U.S. foreign policy at work.”
Garfinkle sites two examples. He finds it absurd to blame Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter for failing to anticipate that arming the Mujahadeen might result in an Islamic takeover of Afghanistan decades later. More pertinent to Claire’s essay, he finds it ridiculous to blame the rise of the Islamic Republic on the CIA’s role, such as it was, in the overthrow of Mossadegh.
Elsewhere, Adam claims that the role played by the CIA in 1953 in Mossadegh’s overthrow was grossly exaggerated and in the Hoover Institute essay attached below he suggests the Shah was far less of a monster than he’s made out to be.
In any case, Adam Garfinkle’s essay is directly on point when it comes to your comment and it occurred to me that you might enjoy reading it. See,
https://www.hoover.org/research/foreign-policy-immaculately-conceived
This essay assumes destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities was the main reason for the Israeli attack and the American bombing of Fordow. Maybe it was, but I’m skeptical. There’s no doubt that hindering Iran’s nuclear capabilities was key but so were other factors that Claire neglected to mention.
The biggest threat to Israel was not an Iranian nuclear weapon that might or might not have ever been built. The main threat was Iranian ballistic missiles. Iran had a few thousand of those and when it launched them, a few got through and caused substantial damage. Depleting and destroying Iran’s stock of these missiles and its ability to build tens of thousands more was at least as important to Israel as taking down the Iranian nuclear program.
It was only a few years ago that Russia was supplying Iran with anti aircraft systems that would supposedly make Iran invulnerable to Israeli war planes. The concern about these systems was so acute that Netanyahu felt the need to negotiate with Putin to limit his willingness to supply Iran with these systems. Destroying Iran’s ability to deter an Israeli attack was a key factor in Israel’s decision to launch the attack.
It’s simply a fact that Middle Eastern people and their nations respect the Strong Horse. Trump understood this; Biden and Obama didn’t. They believed Middle Eastern nations were motivated by the same impulses that motivate Western liberals. Kamala Harris surely believed this too. It’s obvious that Democratic politicians viewed all the problems in the Middle East as amenable to a solution if only Israel would acquiesce to the creation of a Palestinian State. Netanyahu understood that this was hogwash. Trump did too.
With Hezbollah destroyed, Hamas in extremis, Syria potentially on the mend and Iran neutered, things in the Middle East seem to be improving thanks to Netanyahu’s leadership and Trump’s support. Obama and Biden wanted to empower Iran to balance Israeli strength. Both of them detested the Gulf Arab nations and Saudi Arabia. Trump took the opposite approach. He offered to negotiate with Iran but wouldn’t cow-tow to it. Moreover Trump worked assiduously to court the Saudis and the Gulf Arabs. Trump’s approach was right; Obama’s and Biden’s approach was wrong. Claire neglects to mention any of this.
Claire is right about one thing; time will tell how things play out. There might still be unpleasant surprises. What is clear is that by rejecting the platitudes of deluded Western liberals, Netanyahu and Trump have created opportunities for peace in the Middle East that haven’t existed in a generation.
Obama couldn’t have done it; Biden couldn’t have done it and it is a certainty that Harris couldn’t have done it. They were all wrong just as the European leaders were all wrong.
Netanyahu and Trump were right. Is it any wonder that It upsets their detractors so severely that they’re loathe to admit it?
From your mouth to God's ears about how this will all work out.