Last week Nick and I were talking about the latest assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, and surmising that it was probably Mossad that did it. Nick made a comment along the lines of, "At this point the Israelis have compromised any moral high ground they may have ever held." I had already been mulling this comment over for a few days when, in a totally unrelated conversation yesterday, Nick started a sentence with, "I know you're much more cynical than I am..."
Well, that's probably true. But I've been wondering whether any government can ever afford to be "moral" (whatever that means) if they think it compromises strategy. I don't think it can, and I guess that's one reason why Nick would say I'm cynical.
First, I have to say that I think morality is kind of a soft concept. Obviously our idea of what is moral can easily differ from someone else's for cultural or historic reasons. Also, if you try to dig down and explain what "moral" means to you, it may turn out to be harder than it seems at first. I feel like it's one of those words that you think sort of defines itself, but when you try to give it more meaning you realize that it's difficult.
I'm reminded of a scene in The Fog of War, the great documentary interview with Robert McNamara, where he talks about his time in the military during WWII, and the questionable morality of our tactics against Japan:
I think the issue is not so much incendiary bombs. I think the issue is: in order to win a war should you kill 100,000 people in one night, by firebombing or any other way? LeMay's answer would be clearly "Yes."
"McNamara, do you mean to say that instead of killing 100,000, burning to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in that one night, we should have burned to death a lesser number or none? And then had our soldiers cross the beaches in Tokyo and been slaughtered in the tens of thousands? Is that what you're proposing? Is that moral? Is that wise?"
...
LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
So back to Israel. I'm not a big pro-Israel hawk, nor am I a pro-Iran hawk. These days I feel like I'm not pro-any nation, really. The reason for that is that I feel like I've developed a dispassionate view of the things that motivate nations (I use the term "nation" instead of "government" because I think politics plays less of a role in the policies of nations than some people think). I think every nation's number one priority is simply the furtherance of its own existence and the growth of its power. I think this is a cold, hard, nasty, universal truth.
Nick said something like, "Well of course Iran hates you. You keep assassinating their citizens!" Well yes. The other way of saying that is, "Well of course Israel hates and fears you! You provide financial and military support to Hezbollah, whose avowed goal is the destruction of the state of Israel!" Each of these nations, just like all other nations, is struggling for power and position, because to do any less makes you something other than a nation. You can talk about who did what to whom, and when, but there are no easy solutions to these types of conflicts. If there were, presumably they would already have been applied. In the last century, the "easy" solution was near-global war. There was a clear winner and loser. If you don't want that, then the alternative seems to be an ongoing, but relatively low-level, conflict.
If you accept that Israel clearly sees itself as surrounded, literally, by nations whose policies toward it range from unsettled to hostile, then it follows that they are going to make moves against those nations when possible. It suits their interests to do so, and to do anything less would fit the definition of treason. As I said to Nick, the moral high ground may be cold comfort after the invasion/air strikes/massive terrorist attack. It bears noting that Bill Clinton is on record as having ordered attempts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden when he was President. Was that moral?
Don't confuse my application of logic and reason to the situation as supportive of Israel's foreign policy. I'm pretty neutral on it overall, and every nation is capable of brutally stupid strategic miscalculations (see: the second US/Iraq war). But if you're not one of those people that thinks we invaded Iraq because of oil or Halliburton (ideas that I view as deeply cynical), then you might get where I'm coming from.
I can just as easily argue the other side of it. I think Iran is motivated by many things, but one of the most significant is their memory of having fought a nearly eight year long war with Iraq, which cost them close to a million dead (compared to Iraq's 300,000). For perspective, imagine 6.6 million Americans being killed in a war today. So of course Iran is going to offer rosy intelligence and other encouragement to the US during its preparations for the invasion of Iraq. Of course Iran is going to arm and encourage a Shia insurgency there after the US invasion fails to bring about an automatic flowering of peaceful western-style democracy. Iran is seizing a historic opportunity to either subjugate or become allied with a nation that, quite recently, tried to subjugate it. Iran is interested in destabilizing its enemies and keeping them off balance. So they continue to work on their nuclear program (whether for civilian or military reasons is almost irrelevant), rattle their sabres about the Strait of Hormuz, and so on. They're like the North Korea of the Middle East (except that they have by far the largest and most idealogically committed military in the region).
I think it can be difficult for Americans to imagine how threatened people living anywhere in that region must feel. There are obviously varying degrees of it, but whether you're Israel or Turkey, there are dangers that must seem a lot more immediate to the everyday person than a guy on an airplane with a bomb in his Fruit of the Looms. Part of me would love to go to some of these places and talk to people, to try and get a better sense of that. Another part of me is too scared.
Every country is going to do what it has to do to ensure its survival and increase its power. Whether its actions are moral or not depends entirely on the perspective of the person making that judgment. Is it right for Israel to use assassination as a tool to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program? Maybe it just depends on whether Iran ends up getting the bomb or not.
