OCCOM BILL wrote:A ground assault in Iran (which I'm NOT advocating at this time) to remove it's leadership and threat potential would likely prove no more difficult to achieve and make no mistake; the U.S. has the ability. As an aside, as nimh so eloquently points out, the Iranian culture is much further evolved and would likely prove to be an easier peace to win should any superior force put forth the effort to try.
(bolded by me)
I'll certainly agree that there is a big difference between Iraq in 2003 and Iran now.
Saddam-era Iraq had no domestic opposition whatsoever, all and any of its vestiges having been wiped out by Saddam, so there was no alternative power structure at hand, even in embryonal form. Removing Saddam thus unavoidably created chaos and mayhem.
All that is different in Iran: though divided between various strands of cautious reformers, radical democrats, and those fighting the system from the outside, there are, in any case, many democrats, dissidents, politicians, newspaper editors, etc at hand to take on the job of reinventing Iran, if the conservatives were ever thrown out of power. They've been thinking up the concepts, they've had their hand at trying themselves out as parliamentarians, the civil society structure is there.
So in that respect, yes, a new Iran would be easier - and perhaps more peacefully - to get to than a new Iraq.
However...
O'Bill and I differ very, very sharply on one rather crucial thing. He thinks, apparently, that all this holds true too should the US launch a ground attack on Iran to bring the conservatives down. I say that in case of such an invasion by foreign troops, all bets are off. The troops would be as unlikely to be greeted with flowers by the citizenry as they were in Iraq,
at the least.
- An external invasion might serve to rally the Iranians behind their oppressive regime after all. The country does have a strong tradition of national pride after all, and has reacted to foreign interferences aggressively before.
- Ahmadinejad's election victory showed that conservative, authoritarian, religious nationalism
does have an appeal to at least a third of the electorate (62% of the vote at a 60% turnout, minus some percentagepoints for possible fraud), and an appeal that especially attracted working class males -- thats a lot of soldiers to face.
- An external invasion might discredit any democrat who could be associated with it. The reformist camp would almost certainly splinter and dissolve in chaos, as some would join the regime against the Americans (first the foreigners out, then we'll deal with our own bad guys); some would take a middle position critical against both and soon become irrelevant in the us-against-them of war; and others yet would join the Americans but at the cost of being seen as a kind of Quislings by many (compare Allawi, not to mention homeboy - whatshisname - the Pentagon's favourite Iraqi).
- War would bring a state of anarchy to the country, destroying infrastructure, bringing the middle classes to ruin, unleashing crime - as wars just
do, by definition. The resulting collapse of the (moderate, liberal) middle class would further devastate the chances of a swiftly established reasonable new regime.
- War as a means of regime change brings risks to the country's territorial integrity that internal reform does not bring, to the same extent. In the case of internal regime change (whether by palace coup or popular insurrection), Kurds, Azeris and other minorities might demonstratively proclaim autonomy or something of the sort, but it would probably remain in the realm of politics. In the case of foreign troops entering Iranian soil however, they might well just take the opportunity to go for a local, military power grab, simply establishing their own fiefdom in the midst of the fighting. (The one thing Iraq has over Iran is that at least the Kurds had already, for years, been more or less co-opted by the internationals, with well-established, familiar political leaders.)
Think I'm being too pessimistic, apocalyptic even? Then remember one's own predictions about how Iraq would go, once Saddam was out, and how more sombre predictions were brushed aside as defeatism, back in 2002/03... and think again about even thinking of sending in ground troops.
