Op-Ed Page as Farce

Had I been eating or drinking something when I ran across this Washington Times op-ed by Oliver North, I'm sure I would have very comically spit it out. As it was, I just stared agape at the computer screen for a minute until my retinas hurt and I had to blink.

In brief, North argues that, in trying to engage the Iranian regime, the Obama Administration is repeating the mistakes of Jimmy Carter, failing to recognize Tehran's implacable and slightly psychotic hatred of the West. He implies some truly bizarre things. He argues, for example, that the United States could have stopped the consolidation of the Iranian Revolution had the Carter Administration not "dithered" while Khomeini was consolidating power. How we could have done this isn't made clear (invasion? engineering a coup?), but many conservatives take Carter's "weakness" as prima facie obvious (allowing, as it does, for the Great Redeemer Reagan to come save the day), so the historical liberties probably won't matter much to his audience.

He also implies that, in the context of an immensely fluid political situation in an area of prime strategic importance, it would have been somehow unwise for the U.S. to try to develop an understanding with those coming to power in Tehran. That's just dumb. Iran was a key element of America's "twin pillars" strategy in the Persian Gulf, and losing one of those pillars (Saudi Arabia being the other) did indeed throw our whole Middle East policy out of whack. The fact that, largely for domestic reasons, the factions that won out in Iran had much more to gain by antagonizing the U.S. than they did by reaching an accomodation made such gestures futile, but that doesn't mean they weren't worth trying.

Finally, North argues that the Iranian regime today is basically identical to its original incarnation of thirty years ago. Also dumb. Iran sees itself as a rising power with genuine political conflicts with the regional status quo, but to argue that nothing has changed ignores large shifts (back and forth) in policy and rhetoric over the past few decades, as well as the structural damage done to the regime by its naked repression of those it purports to represent. Now, that's not to say that "engagement" right now is necessarily the right strategy. Reports indicate that (again likely for domestic reasons) the current political balance within Iran will make successful engagement extremely difficult, and it may indeed be time to change tacks, but the U.S. shouldn't do so based on essentialist logic and poor history.

More than anything, though, the fact that Oliver North, Oliver North is arguing about how dispicable this regime is and how useless diplomacy will be in dealing with it is so absurd as to border on art. Oliver North, you may remember, was at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal during the 1980s, where he masterminded the sale of missiles to Iran through Israeli middlemen in order to covertly fund right wing rebels in South America.

Why in the name of God would a newspaper, even one with the impeccable editorial standards of the Washington Times, give this man a voice on this particular subject?