blogger interrupted

The Iranian missile tests are certainly a provocative act.  Whoever decided to shoot off a few rockets in the middle of a US presidential campaign had that intention, certainly.  What the tests are almost certainly not is “alarming”, or a harbinger of a “second Holocaust”, as John McCain claims.  

First of all, what the hell is so scary about a missile test of technology that has existed for 65 years?  It took Iran 65 years to get missiles that have been around in one way or another since the Nazis aimed the V-1 and V-2 at London.  Big deal.  And they couldn’t even get them all to fire off.  

This reminds me of an episode when I was in Russia working for NDI.  

American intelligence failures didn’t begin with Iraq - before Iraq, the biggest American intelligence failure was the total misunderstanding of how pathetic the Soviet military actually was.  It became clear very quickly after the Berlin Wall fell that the Soviet military was a house of cards.  Since the end of the Cold War, the Russians have been desperate to erase the embarrassment of their empire’s and their military’s collapse.  So desperate, that often it becomes comical.

In 1999, the Russian media rolled out an incredible extravaganza.  If you’ll recall, at that time, the Kosovo war was proving the total technological superiority of the American military, and specifically, stealth fighter and bomber technology.  In this context, the Russian military made an amazing announcement.  They, too, had a stealth fighter.  Everybody went, whoa!

The front page of the International Herald Tribune carried the picture, and the story.  There indeed was a fighter.  But it sure didn’t look like a stealth fighter.  Looked like a typical MiG fighter jet.  Reporters wondered….what gives?  No stealthy angles, no stealthy material, no stealthy engines….. the fighter was wheeled out by a tow truck.  

After a few days of reporting, the obvious became clearer…there was no stealth fighter.  There was a stealth fighter program, but this plane trotted out before the cameras certainly wasn’t the result of that program, and in fact, the plane itself hadn’t flown in years.  It was as if your neighbor tells you he’s got a great new car, and ties a chain to the back of his lawn tractor to pull out the 1971 Mercury Cougar that’s been sitting on blocks in his garage for 10 years.  TADA!

The point being this.  The only reason for such a patently absurd sideshow to even be contemplated, let alone executed, is to create the impression of strength.  The Russian military knew the western press wouldn’t buy it.  But they also knew that their targeted audience, the Russian people, would.  The same goes for the Iranian missile test.  Shooting off a few bottle rockets is for domestic Iranian consumption.  If it gets a little more attention because of a US presidential race in which Iran is a big issue, great!  Who cares if the rockets actually work!

Only difference there is that the western media on Iran is kinda buyin’ it.  They’re buying this notion of a big bad scary Iran with missile tests and whatnot.  Until, that is, the doctored photo of the botched launch came out.  Western media is still well-trained by the spoon feeding of scariness from the Bush administration, so this narrative is unlikely to change much.  But the truth of the matter is clear.  

Which brings us to the lesson.  From the Soviet military, to the Iraqi WMD, to Iran, the rule of thumb now established by history and the US intelligence community’s own performance is that whatever “threat” an American president, or John McCain now, tells us exists, the actual threat is at most 50% of what they say it is, and probably more like 10%.  

And all of this erosion in American credibility has been created by Republican administrations.  

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