No, it’s not cool

Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan are largely untroubled by the fact that we’ve been carrying out covert operations in Iran in order to figure out the best targets for a US attack. I’m not surprised at Sullivan, but I’m fairly troubled by Drum’s tolerance:

First, that the Defense Department is conducting special ops reconnaissance inside Iran and developing plans to destroy Iran’s nuclear bomb program. This is undoubtedly true. But that’s what militaries do: they create plans. Frankly, they’d be derelict if they weren’t trying to figure out where Iran’s nuclear sites were and developing contingencies for taking them out.

Such activity would be reasonable if a sane person could explain why the likelihood of an unprovoked Iranian attack on the United States exceeded zero. This isn’t just a plan, like we have for invading Canada or toppling Vincente Fox; Hersh suggests that the analysis of Iranian weapon sites has moved into the covert ops stage. This kind of behavior increases the likelihood of a military confrontation between Iran and the United States. Let’s be frank; does anyone doubt that the Iranian government currently has the legal and moral justification to launch a pre-emptive war against the United States, even by criteria more stringent than the “whatever; we’ll do what we want” Bush Doctrine? Or that fucking around with them makes it more, not less, likely that the Iranians will do something incredibly stupid? Surveilling Iranian weapon sites has one purpose and one purpose only; preparation for a US attack on those locations. To the extent that you agree this is a good policy, you should support the surveillance. If you’re sensible and you think that such an option is, in the current context, insane, then it should frighten the hell out of you, because it increases the chances that something awful will happen.

Redbeard captures the mood:

You know, recently I met an eighteen-year-old who signed up for the military, completed basic training, and is waiting for them to decide what to do with him. An old liberal in the room thanked him for his service to his country and his willingness to sacrifice for his country. It was a polite thing to do. I joked about how a soldier’s duty was to “look busy” when the officers walked by, and the kid laughed and told me additional rules he’s learned to “get by” in the army. Since the kid’s mom was in the room, I didn’t have the gumption to say: “Look, you just signed up to be a pawn in a delusional man’s plans for a utopian world. Try not to get yourself killed.”