September 30, 2009--A Friend's Pique

My latest email exchange with a good friend who disagrees with me about almost everything political began with his sending me an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal (linked below) which alleges that Barack Obama is being less forceful about confronting Iran than either his British and even French counterparts. My friend, traditionally not much of a fan about anything French—except their wines—must be really worked up about how wimpy Obama in his view is acting if he is feeling better about Sarkozy than our president.

To offer a flavor of the WSJ piece here are the opening and closing paragraphs:

President Obama wants a unified front against Iran, and to that end he stood together with Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown in Pittsburgh on Friday morning to reveal the news about Tehran's secret facility to build bomb-grade fuel. But now we hear that the French and British leaders were quietly seething on stage, annoyed by America's handling of the announcement . . .

We thought we'd never see the day when the President of France shows more resolve than America's Commander in Chief for confronting one of the gravest challenges to global security. But here we are.

With the Journal link, my friend wrote:

How many times do we have to learn that thugs only understand one thing, force? It appears that appearances are more important than substance on this issue for this administration.

A bit hotly, I responded:

If you want to actually know what is going on between us and the Brits and French, rather than reading opinion pieces in Rupert Murdock's WSJ, check out this piece from the NY Times of real reporting and you will see that what has been going on is far from just about appearances. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/world/middleeast/26intel.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=iran%20nuclear%20program&st=cse)

Also, what evidence do you have that thugs (who here are you referring to?) only understand force? In some cases this is true and in others not at all. So to claim that "only" force works is ahistorical. And in some cases using force against so-called thugs doesn't get the job done--let's start with Vietnam and then jump to Iraq. I could make a longer list but you get my point: as in the past it's not to be so guided by a hot temper and ideology. Half the time it gets things wrong. Even produces the opposite of what we would like to achieve. And don't mishear me--I very much believe in the use of force when all else has failed and we are in real, as opposed to imagined or made-up danger. We may at some point have to use force against Iran but we are or at least I hope we are quite a ways away from that. It is still thankfully some years before they have actual deliverable nuclear weapons. At the moment I'm more worried about what might happen with Pakistan. Iran makes our blood boil but great powers are at their greatest when they do not let that determine policy. I could give you many examples from recent history about how ruinous that can be.

Even hotter, he wrote:

I'm not going to waste my time explaining why thugs only understand force. Thugs like Stalin, Hitler, Hussein, Mugabe have a demonstrated record of only understanding force and using diplomacy as a weapon for themselves or to mock others who value diplomacy. A thug is by definition someone who's values don't include diplomacy or fair dealing. I thought you understood that but I guess not.

Regarding great powers being at their greatest when they don't let emotions rule their actions, that's fine but if Iran is not an issue, then why is Obama wasting my time making them an issue? I personally don't give a damn about Iran and I think if they end up creating a mess, I'm glad to let others clean it up. I do know Israel is upset and I do know Obama is upping the rhetoric which is why this conversation started in the first place. Maybe you should write the president and tell him he's wasting his time and that there are other priorities to which he should attend such as flying to Copenhagen to personally intercede in the process to select Chicago as an Olympic city.

Though I tend to agree with him about the Olympics, I in turn said:

Sorry to see you so riled up and not wanting to engage in a discussion about the many ways to deal with threats or the meaning of history. I will leave you, then, hot and bothered, feeling that all “thugs” are the same and that since that to you appears to be true there is only one way to deal with them. I know this makes things clear for you but unfortunately this way of looking at things is neither historically true (sorry again to be mentioning history) or true to human nature. Sometimes, to give you just one example, deterrence works even better with thugs than force. One of your heroes, Ronald Reagan understood that and guess what--he was right and it worked! We didn't have to use force directly against the Soviet thugs but merely to scare them to death.

And so there things sit. I am waiting to hear back. But as you can see from this between actually very good friends, disputes can escalate very quickly. Over very little. Are there then lessons from his and my behavior that require attention?