I was very pleased to see Joe Grable attempt to engage Pepperdine students in the foreign policy debate with his Oct. 29 article “Iranian people need military support from U.S.” However there are several points in the article that I feel cannot go unchallenged.
Grable incredibly cites the U.S. support for the mujahadeen under President Reagan during the 1980s as the policy he would seek to emulate now. Realistically there is simply no insurgent group comparable to the mujahadeen that could make use of American arms in Iran. Even if there were such a group however arming them as we armed the mujahadeen would be highly unwise given the historical lessons learned from the 1980s.
The weaponry and CIA training America provided during the 1980s went to future terrorists like Osama bin Laden who founded al-Qaeda as an organization to rally “freedom fighters” against the Soviet Union. He and other extremists would later use that very training against America throughout the 1990s and on Sept. 11 2001.
In a very real way the simple formula by which the United States viewed all communists as bad and all anti-communists as good allowed the rise of the terrorist groups that now confront us. Surely the lesson to learn from providing weaponry and infrastructure to extremist groups is that interfering in the affairs of countries halfway around the world in a projection of strength can have unintended and ironic consequences namely the lessening of American power and the endangering of American citizens.
Grable also makes the suggestion that the desire to engage in diplomatic relations is an “emotional” response created by fatigue and pessimism. A vast majority of Americans do favor diplomacy (82% according to a recent ABC poll) but it is wrong to suggest diplomacy is weak or unwise or even that the American people favor it simply because they are exhausted by current events.
First there is a rich bipartisan history of diplomatic success in U.S. foreign policy. It was for example Nixon’s diplomatic negotiations with Mao Zedong a figure who had more blood on his hands than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ever will that opened U.S.-Chinese relations and put the Soviet Union on the defensive for the remainder of the Cold War.
Secondly demagogues like Ahmadinejad are at their strongest when American action reinforces their claims. The more we engage in violence and military expansion the more Ahmadinejad’s anti-American rhetoric is strengthened and his political power among even moderate Muslims is reinforced. Thus diplomacy can serve to undercut the legitimacy of his extremist regime by disproving the stereotype held in the Muslim world that America is aggressive and imperialistic.
Diplomatic efforts can do the important work of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear arms and we should allow those diplomatic efforts to run their course before condemning them as failed. That kind of impatient instinct allowed President Bush to lead us hastily into the disastrous and misguided Iraq War six years ago; it would be tragic to let history repeat itself.
Thus I have several strong disagreements with Grable about the wisdom of his policy recommendation. Moreover however I disagree with the value system that is implied by his article.
Grable describes Ahmadinejad as “Islam’s most influential puppet implying that our fundamental problem is not with an extremist leader but with the entire Islamic world. It is important to remind ourselves to show genuine respect rather than fear or hostility towards worldviews that, while different, share a fundamental sameness with our own.
Though it is tempting to believe America has infinite power and can remake the world in its image, the past eight years proved the painful limitations of such thinking. It is often more emotional” to rush impulsively to condemn figures as evil and look for quick and violent alternatives than it is to rely on patience and reason.