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THE PASDARAN PARTY: IRAN’S REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS AS A NEW POLITICAL MACHINE ?

This is a lot like if the KGB had been allowed to openly run candidates for office during the late Glasnost years when Gorbachev introduced multiple candidate elections ( actually they did, just not openly because the only popular KGB men at the time were dissidents like General Oleg Kalugin).

This is a very interesting development. A taciit admission that Khomeini’s ” rule of the jurisprudent ” has efectively come to the end of it’s political legitimacy. As the shrinking number of ultra-hardliners gathered around Khameini and Rafsanjani cede political authority to an elite but non-clerical organization of thugs,intellectuals, terrorists and spies the end result is an open question. Will we see an Iran drifting toward technocracy and market economic reform as China once mellowed from Maoist totalitarianism ? Or will the drift be toward a menacing Islamist Fascist state that melds religious zeal with an aggressive militarization of all aspects of Iranian society ?

Hard to say. In the 1980’s the KGB was a repository of hard-line attitudes but it was also the organization most acutely aware of the USSR’s economic shortcomings, the need for real reform and the unrealism of party ideologues on the Central Committee. The Pasdaran sponsored Hezbollah and prior to the rise of the Sunni-Wahabbist terrorism of al Qaida, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were the foremost terror organization on earth but they are now at the center of the regime. Are the Pasdaran chieftains aware of Iran’s weaknesses or only it’s ambitions to regional greatness and religious revolution ?

AN INSIDER’S COMMENTS ON ABU GHRAIB

The following comments were sent to me by an individual with extensive military experience, currently working with the CPA in Baghdad. He deplored the actions of those he termed ” the fools ” running Abu Ghraib but he added some important caveats that bear repeating to keep the scandal in perspective. I have emphasized a few of his points:

“MI folks are pretty danged good about sticking to the Geneva Convention, it’s a pride thing; most interrogators like to think of themselves as MASTERS of interrogation and they don’t need extra abuse stuff. So although the MP folks claim that they were directed to abuse soliders, I highly doubt it…if they were directed to abuse soliders, that’s not a defense [that line of argument] didn’t work for the Nazis either…The US Army is horrible understaffed,there are 33% of the interrogators in the military as there were 10 years ago and there weren’t enough then. The army is short in nearly every manning position so if a commander happens to have an interrogator there is not guarantee that they will be working in that capacity, they may well be a mail clerk because the unit doesn’t have enough of them either.

Bottom line, these fools were understaffed, shot at on a daily basis, put under incredible pressue to find out things to keep people alive or support interrogations and obviuosly not well led. There is a vehicle for dealing with bad troops, it’s called a court martial…we certainly don’t need any multiple star generals briefing congress….who’s treating teh Iraqis worse…the 10 people who are making ass pyramids or the 100’s that are lobbing bombs and shooting at the prison? ….like for example how about the 40 “BAD PEOPLE” that were released today to help quiet things ? Yep we just released 40 KNOWN criminals [ because]that’s what you have to do to fix things…Crazy…and when some tradgedy happens you know who will get the blame? The Intellingence Community ! Despite the fact that they don’t allow us any of the tools that we need to help them and when we do find stuff out action is not taken. “

I had not realized, as it was not in any of the news accounts, that Abu Ghraib had to regularly take hostile fire. That doesn’t excuse the abuse but it does add a dimension that helps explain the creation of the reckless mindset that carried it out. I had assumed that Abu Ghraib was a ” safe ” rear echelon position because historically with field armies, some of the worst behavior takes place among those ” in the rear, with the gear ” ( what the Germans referred to in past wars as ” etappe ” – a nifty word combining a number of unsavory aspects comparable to Sherman’s ” Bummers ” in the March to the Sea. ).

I was wrong in that assumption and realize now that there are probably a large number of American personnel who served honorably at Abu Ghraib and will now have their reputations tarnished. It’s a shame.

THE PENTAGON ISSUES A FLAT DENIAL OF THE HERSH STORY

The Department of Defense categorically and officially denies the charges made by Seymour Hersh regarding Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approving the expansion of coercive measures to Abu Ghraib.

I had concluded that Rumsfeld was too much an old hand to personally sign off on something so politically explosive and potentially illegal and this gives some weight to my hypothesis. A flat denial indicates that having checked the records, the DoD is confident that the claim will withstand Congressional scrutiny if documents and testimony are subpeoned.

(Hat tip to Milt’s File.)

THE ECONOMIST FORSEES CHAVEZ DICTATORSHIP

According to The Economist, Hugo Chavez has outmanuvered his domestic opposition and is poised to legally construct at a minimum a leftist authoritarian state and possibly a personal dictatorship modeled on that of Chavez’s idol, Fidel Castro.

TERROR, ASYMMETRY AND ETHICS

Foreign Policy has a short post about a new Journal of Military Ethics that contains an article that examines the shifting moral obligations and legal obligations of soldiers engaged in asymmetric wars and ill-defined humanitarian missions that involve force projection.

The United States is going to be positioned to face primarily asymmetric threats for a long time to come. Many states will either sponsor such non-state actor threats indirectly or in the case Russia, China and the EU core- exert diplomatic pressure to try to force the US to accept the asymmetric conflict under the most disadvantageous international law restrictions possible. Sort of a reverse Containment enacted via lawyers, diplomats, journalists and NGO activists.

The United States needs to raise the costs of asymmetric warfare for its supporters even as it counters the strategy of the International Law expansionists.