"eek! a monster!"

I haven't read much from Arthur Silber lately but I'm glad that I read this one. He makes the point which I have long held -- that we mustn't just accept the notion that Iran presents "the largest threat" facing the world, any more than we should have accepted the notion that Iraq posed a grave threat to America's security. We should ask: where is the evidence? and how does it compare with the evidence of other threats? I don't even believe that Bush and his cronies really believe what they claim and Arthur has a theory for what lies behind what they say and do. Go read the whole thing...

It is of even greater concern when we remember that we are only discussing a potential. But note how a central part of the propaganda campaign works: several months ago, the usual estimate for the time Iran would need to develop nuclear weapons was about ten years. Then it got reduced to five years. Now, people speak as if Iran will have nuclear weapons in the next few months. The unavoidable implication of this tactic is the obvious one, the one that Bush used so disastrously with Iraq: we need to act now. We have to do something now. There is only one word to describe this approach: it is not reasoned discourse -- it is hysteria, pure and simple...

[...]

The key lies in these two sentences from Taibbi's piece: "Permanent war isn't a policy imposed from above; it's an emotional imperative that rises from the bottom." And: "These people will swallow anything you feed them, so long as it leaves them with a demon to wrestle with in their dreams." What I want to emphasize is that, although it is certainly true that the most zealous of Bush's followers exhibit this approach in a dangerously extreme form, the underlying perspective is one that influences Western thought generally: the idea that we represent Absolute Good, in the form of "universal" values that everyone ought to live by, and that our enemies represent Absolute Evil, bent on destroying all of those "universal" values, without exception.

This is a perspective that, by necessary implication and at its most dangerous, must have opponents and enemies, and that requires "permanent war" to ensure its own continuing survival. It is a perspective that all too frequently courts Armageddon -- because it must have "a demon to wrestle with," and an enemy to vanquish.

As Atrios says:

Indeed. The point is not that Iran with nukes is a good thing, or that it's not a current foreign policy issue of importance, it's just ludicrous to think it's "the biggest threat to the Republic." A few years back the frightened bedwetter crowd was freaking out about scary Iraq and now they're freaking out about scary Iran.

Anyway, this is all so ridiculously familiar. Falling into the trap by even bothering to talk about it I suppose. Shrieking "eek! a monster!" seems to be about all the Right is capable of anymore.

In a slightly different context, but in a similar vein, Digby says:

They [Republicans] have appropriated certain master narratives about heroism and courage to define Republican leadership which they sell as necessary when the country is under threat --- a threat which they also insist upon defining as existential (communism and terrorism) and which always requires brute force rather than strategic cunning or intelligent maneuvering.