A road accident can kill a dozen people or so; a plane
accident a hundred people or more; a ship accident a few thousand people, but
an accidental failure of the human character is the one that kills people by
the millions. We call the latter a war; an occurrence that has been with us for
a long time. And yet, wars keep getting worse, propelled by two factors. One
factor is the fact that we learn little or nothing from our past behavior; the
other is that we learn a great deal about the technology which makes a weapon
of war evermore lethal.
The general observation is that in the case of a road, air
or maritime accident, the first responders and the teams that take care of the
wounded after them, as well as the teams that handle the dead if any, do their
work quietly and methodically while keeping a cool head, and thinking
rationally at every moment. This attitude is called professionalism; one that
applies equally to the teams that man the field hospitals in a war theater, and
applies to such international organizations as the Red Cross.
Where the problem manifests itself and makes war a lethal
undertaking is that the people who conduct it are generally highly trained
professionals who operate the killing machines at their disposal in a
methodical and efficient way while keeping a cool head at all time. Meanwhile,
the people who are far removed from the killing fields are the ones that get
worked up about the subject, and the ones that whip up the hysteria – which they
say “lifts the morale” and keeps the war going. But if there is not an ongoing
war, they take on the task of whipping up the hysteria and calling for a war to
happen.
You can see how such situations are created in “Iran and the Syria Model,” an article written by
Victor Davis Hanson that also has the subtitle: “From the Syria debacle, Iran has learned that our threats
are empty and posturing as a 'moderate' works.” It was published on October 3,
2013 in National review Online. When reading the article you get the sense that
Hanson is a talented person, but you also wonder how close he would be to what
you might consider to be insane.
The elements of Hanson's talent come to the fore when you
realize he is constructing a philosophical structure by telling a story in a
manner that is not too different from the way a stage play normally unfolds.
When dramatists tell a story, they introduce the characters of the play while
developing the plot line. Thus, Victor Hanson has Barack Obama as the leading
character who “on two occasions has warned the Iranians that the development of
nuclear weapons would be a game-changing situation.” But you already know that
the essence of the conflict is this: “When – not if – is the mystery about an
Iranian nuclear bomb.” This makes of the Iranians leading characters too, and
they are clearly the bad guys here. But is Obama the good guy in this drama?
You may or may not be told by the end of the play which is, after all, an
intriguing mystery.
To have an elaborate play that is bordering on the melodrama
such as those produced during the Elizabethan era; out of which came a certain
William Shakespeare, you must have at least one subplot – preferably more –
that will run parallel to the main plot. And to have that, you must create a
character or characters that will play minor or supporting roles. Who would
those be in this play? For one thing, there will have to be the Syrian leader
Bashar Assad. And what connects the subplot to the main plot is the fact that
the lead character, Barack Obama, has warned the Syrian leader along with the
Iranians not to do something that will be construed as a game changer. And this
makes of Assad no less a bad guy than the Iranians.
So then, what is the plot about? Well, it's about the bad
guys pretending to be good guys, and dazzling Obama so profoundly that he is
taken in by the charade. It's about the Iranian and Syrian game changers
changing the game yet looking like good guys by playing the role of “phantom
moderates.” And this is where the need appears for a second subplot that will
be driven by a new supporting character.
That will be the Russian President Vladimir Putin who will
use “sugar-coated half truths, charming fantasies, and distortions to portray Russia and Syria as voices of moderation.”
More than that, Putin will manage to argue that Russia
and Syria
as being subjected to unfair Western bullying. He does all that and more in a
letter to the American people that was published in the New York Times, no
less. What a triumph for a bad guy pleading his case and that of other bad
guys!
And this closes the loop of classical story telling by the
fact that it ties the end of the story to its beginning. It happens in the
scene where the Iranian President Rouhani learns a lesson from the Russian
President Putin, and emulates him by writing his own op-ed, and have it
published in the Washington Post. It is a piece of writing about which Victor
Hanson says “hit every American therapeutic chord imaginable.” And this is a
denouement that rivals the best of Greek tragedies and the best of Elizabethan
melodramas.
But what will be the result of all that to real life? It
will be this: “Iran
can finally have its WMD and woo us, too.” So what? you say. So for Iran , the
“nuclear Sword of Damocles will make life miserable for the Israelis and the
Arab Sunnis.”
Again please: How did all this happen? It happened because
of the Syrian model that excited the Iranians. It is that posturing as a
moderate, and writing sugary op-eds for American newspapers yield results.
If this is what Hanson believes was accomplished with one
op-ed piece by each of Putin and Rouhani, will he now write another play
showing how much Netanyahu was able to accomplish with thousands upon thousands
of similar writings and audio visual commentaries delivered by him and his
surrogates?