It’s Easy: Just Kill the Bad Guys
Or, why having simpletons in charge is a bad idea.
A number of thoughts keep running through my head since the initial strikes on Iran this weekend. One of which is that this administration, and Trump in particular, seems to cleave to the notion that the key problem in a given country is simply the leader. Therefore, if you can take out the leader, the problem is solved!
This notion has been massively reinforced by Trump’s own words over the last day or so. As he said the other day (and has repeated versions of it since):
“Everybody’s kept their job except for two people,” Mr. Trump said of the outcome in Venezuela.
If the regime in Venezuela was the problem (and it is a problem for the Venezuelan people, at a minimum), removing Maduro and his wife solves very little. Sure, the extraction itself will cause a great deal of anxiety in the Venezuelan government and lead to greater compliance with the US, especially for a while, but all the core problems remain.
Along the same lines, the notion that the US was going to kill Khamenei and then just pick a new leader from within the existing regime was likewise bizarre, especially when Trump had to admit that, whoopsie!, we killed them all.
Note, too, that “Venezuela was so incredible because we did the attack and kept the government totally intact.”
So, assuming that someone down the list takes over (the hubris that the US will do the picking is its own problem), all of the things that Trump is upset about remain in place. The other people in the regime are also culpable for all the things that Khamenei was involved with. Yes, the US is currently massively degrading Iranian capabilities. That will make it harder to project power, yes, but there are questions of what we are trading to get that outcome (i.e., instability likely will mean more violence, not less) and there are going to be other regional effects that are hard to predict.
The whole thing reminds me of the ending of Return of the Jedi. For those who do not recall (spoilers!), Darth Vader turns good, and the Emperor is killed. The death of the big baddie is so powerful that somehow spontaneous celebrations break out across the galaxy (at least in the extended version).
The clip is here:
It is a wonderful fantasy that the decapitation of an evil regime leads to the immediate and utter collapse of said regime. But that only happens in works of fantasy.
Sure, Palpatine and Vader are dead and out of the picture, but there is still an Imperial Navy full of Star Destroyers full of Generals and Grand Moffs running around. No Death Star, sure, but still a lot of guns and vast, vast bureaucracy in place. Killing a few leaders does not dismantle all of that, unless we live in a magical world.
Spoiler alert: We. Do. Not. Live. In. A. Magical. World.
All of this, too, reminds me of teaching courses on revolutionary change, or just specific lectures on political violence. I would often start with what I called the POD theory and what was wrong with it.
Basically, there is a popular misconception that all it takes for a regime to be brought down by the population is a critical mass of pissed-off dudes (i.e., PODs). But, of course, history clearly tells us that that is not how it works. The reason is pretty simple: as long as the security apparatus of the state is loyal to the existing regime, PODs get shot. The people always have the numerical advantage, but organizing the masses ain’t easy, especially when the opponents have superior firepower.
Social science may well be unable to create replicated experiments in labs like the chemists, but understanding the world is hard, and there are people who study all this stuff. There are experts on Iran, the broader region, and things like the potential results of the violent disruption of regimes. They may not be able to predict outcomes the same way that a chemist can tell you what can happen when two chemicals are combined, but they can provide quite a lot of guidance. As such, it would be nice if, before massive policy decisions are made that will inevitably affect the lives of potentially millions of people (Iran’s population is over 92 million, by the way), then maybe talking to people who know something about political violence and the structures of governments beyond the kinds of lessons one thinks one learns from watching movies.
Meanwhile, Secretary Lethal McWarrior certainly sounds like a person who has a long-term vision of the situation.
All snark aside, his obsession with rules of engagement is troubling, as it would not shock me if the lack of seriousness in this realm and his adolescent obsession with lethality lead to war crimes being committed.
The tl;dr version of this post is this: military actions, and the violence, death, and destruction they bring, are a serious business that should be deployed by serious people, not by people who think that regimes are embodied by specific leaders or who think that blowing things up is a long-term strategy. Movies and the fantasies of small men are no guide in such affairs.
But, of course, we see another ongoing theme of this administration: destruction is easy, but dealing with the long-term consequences is for someone else to worry about.
This seems to be an undercurrent throughout the whole MAGA movement. Specifically, the two attempts by MAGAs to assassinate Trump, the Groyper who murdered Charlie Kirk, the MAGA guy who killed two Minnesota legislators, the group of MAGAs who tried to kidnap the governor of Michigan, and the crowd of MAGAs who wanted to hang Mike Pence.
Now that their military has been destroyed and Kaiser Wilhelm forced to abdicate, Germany will be a pacific nation.
This is what happens when your leadership only read the Cliff Notes version of the French revolution and even then, skipped to the juicy part, the guillotine.
Pete Hegseth is seriously damage merchandise. I wonder whether he experienced some kind of difficulties with rules of engagement while in the Army, or whether he carries some sort of juvenile opposition/defiance from his youth, which I would guess did not go well.
I think his father was a complete failure, for instance. Though you couldn’t tell it from Pete’s bio. Dude was a basketball coach in Minneapolis. Something went very, very wrong there. But it’s impossible to challenge because both parents are so well established with their middle-class respectability.
All evidence points to him being smart. He was the editor of a (right wing) publication while at Princeton, for (ahem) Pete’s sake. So maybe this is his attempt at political rhetoric that he thinks will work with MAGA?
There is a scene in the 1994 movie Clerks where one of the main characters makes some points about Star Wars that (and I’m not joking about this) were later expressed by Timothy McVeigh in justifying the Oklahoma City bombing. Basically, he said the good guys cheered the destruction of the Death Star at the end of Return of the Jedi, even though there were almost certainly innocent people on board given that it was incompletely built so there had to be independent contractors and workers involved in its construction still around.
Now, let’s put aside the obvious fact that there’s a fairly big difference between an unarmed government building and a moon-sized battle station capable of instantaneously vaporizing an entire planet. There’s something deeply weird about invoking Star Wars to justify any sort of defense of recognizing moral shades of gray. The series has always been about as black-and-white in its moral outlook as you can get. One of the pivotal scenes in the original film establishing just how evil the Empire was, was the scene where they blow up Alderaan. Likewise, despite how unrealistic it is when it comes to any insurgency group in the real world, the rebels are never seen doing anything to put civilians in harm’s way, and the Clerks argument is nothing but pure speculation with no canonical support in anything from the movies.
The Dark Knight trilogy deals with some of the morally complicated issues underlying vigilantism. Star Wars is just a fairy tale, and, quite frankly, has never aspired to be anything else.
That’s why when I first saw Revenge of the Sith, I had to laugh at that line about Sith Lords dealing in absolutes. A lot of people like that line because they agree with it in real life, but within the plot of the Star Wars films, it’s patently unearned.
Even Robot Chicken knew better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAOX_CHU0JY
@Kylopod:
My favorite part of the line “Only Siths deal in absolutes” is that the statement is an absolute.
@Assad K: Good stuff.
@Steven L. Taylor: Not to mention that “Do. Or do not. There is no try,” is an absolute.
The late Ali Kamanei’s 56-year-old son will be his successor, per multiple sources.
It’s hard not to cite movies, TV shows, or fiction books, as that is what people know best. You may recall the CSI effect early this century. Juries expected tons of very exact forensic evidence at every trial. All based on a show that wasn’t just fictional, but that exaggerated 1) what forensics can accomplish and 2) what crime scene investigators actually do (they don’t carry out the whole investigation, and they certainly don’t interrogate suspects).
It was a great show. I liked watching it. But I never assumed real life was like that, or like any TV show.
Beside, there are two things one should always keep in mind when dealing with fiction:
1) A lot of what happens is highly simplified, as setting down every relevant detail would make all books as big as a phone book, and get in the way of the story.
2) The author is omnipotent within the story.
@Kathy:
Yes, and I confess I’m guilty of this as much as anyone else. I’ve even looked at favorite childhood movies as a source of personal inspiration in a way that might seem silly to outside observers. For example, that moment toward the end of Back to the Future III where Marty finally acquires the willpower to refuse the duel against Buford Tannen, by suddenly exclaiming, “He’s an asshole!”–going back to my teens, any time I’ve felt myself feeling overly concerned at what other people think of me, I play that line back in my head, and it gives me a boost of confidence.
I find this interesting in retrospect because Reagan, given his Hollywood background, often cited movies during his presidency: he helped popularize Clint Eastwood’s “Go ahead, make my day,” and of course there was the so-called Star Wars program. And he was the president mentioned in that iconic line from Back to the Future, and considered a cameo in the third film.
The problem of course wasn’t the fact that he made these references but that he used them to bolster a simplistic good guys vs. bad guys mentality, which is a terrible approach to geopolitics (though he wasn’t anywhere near as guilty of this in practice as Trump).
Decapitation can work, for an arbitrary value of “work”
The problem in this case, is the assumption by the US (I suspect the Israli goverrment cares rather less) is that a popular revolt will sweep away the regime. Overlooking the problem of the unorganised, litlle-armed protstors going up against a dispersed commnad system of the Pasdaran/IRGC/Basiji who are organised, heavily armed, often ideologically committed, and with a lot to lose if defeated.
If an uprising is massacred (again), what then?
A revolt might have better prospects if there were plans for directed close air support by insurgency support teams
There appear to be no such plans.
It’s all just wishcasting.