Let them Stew in their own juices

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Feb 14, 2010 at 09:08

Iran's alternatives all seem to be people who boast of their assault on the "Nest of Spies" back in 1979. Hence, the USA should stand back and let Iran stew in its own juices. It worked with Mao's Chinese Communist regime that, like Iran, wanted nothing to do with us, and which was a potentially much more dangerous power.

If the USA was to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, it would involve an escalating war of terror. If the USA were to invade Iran, it would probably galvanize the population to unite behind its regime, and involve the pacification and occupation of a wide range of inhospitable terrains. Victory could be achieved, as the campaigns of Huleku Khan and Temur Lenk proved centuries ago, but only by using methods that are probably repugnant to the American people.

A parallel to Nazi Germany will not work. Both German secularism and German Christianity had numerous strands that were very compatible with the general Western liberal (in the sense of having liberty as the highest political good--not the spending of others' money) tradition, and, indeed, were great contributors to that tradition. To embrace the federalism of Johannes Althusius, the rationalism of Immanuel Kant, and the pacifism of the radical Reformation was, for post-War Germany, an embrace of German as well as wider Western traditions. Would a defeated Iran have anything comparable?

Further, the United States has proven time and time again that it ilacks the fundamental ruthlessness, contempt for international law, disregard for its own and other liberties, self-righteousness, and other features that might suit it to imperial ventures. Nor has any nation in history been very successful at saving foolish nations from their follies--although the USA tried manfully after World War II. The persistence of a kind of nihilistic socialist radicalism in the European so-called intelligentsia ought to be proof enough. The credibility our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have given to Islamicist radicalism also ought to be proof enough.

Conversely, the people of Iran are not fundamentally stupid or mindless. Their capacity for dissent is showing itself now. Let that capacity mature and learn to organize. If we are patient and let an increasingly disillusioned and frustrated Iranian people find its own course, the ultimate casualty won't be some American city or a host of Iranian ones, but Ithna'ashariyya Shi'ite Islam. We ought to be able to live with that.

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