{"id":1060,"date":"2006-04-10T21:01:21","date_gmt":"2006-04-10T21:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:41","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:41","slug":"bush_hirsch_ira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1060","title":{"rendered":"Bush, Hersh & Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum takes me to task<\/a> for diminishing the import of the leaked Iran plans.<\/p>\n

But what’s important isn’t the existence of the contingency plans. Rather, it’s the fairly obvious fact that the Bush administration is publicizing them as part of a very public PR campaign in favor of a strike against Iran. The problem is that even if this is a bluff, it’s one that has a profound effect on both Iran and the American public. As James Fallows says:<\/p>\n

\nBy giving public warnings, the United States and Israel \u201ccreate \u2018excess demand\u2019 for military action,\u201d as our war-game leader Sam Gardiner recently put it, and constrain their own negotiating choices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, if the PR campaign is too successful, then Bush will have boxed himself in. Eventually he’ll feel obligated to bomb Iran solely because he’s now under pressure to make good on his threats and doesn’t want to look like he’s backing down. World Wars have started over less.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So Seymour Hersh is now the favored go-to leak of the Bush Administration?<\/p>\n

It’s not like Bush doesn’t have problems but blaming him for the actions of someone who’s vehemently opposed to him seems just silly. And yes, I do think that that too much bluster (Hi, Trent<\/a>! Hi, Tom<\/a>!) is exactly the wrong approach to be taking right now<\/b>. I think that it weakens us internally, stirs our opponents and sends an air of unseriousness. This is a case where we should be speaking very softly, and testing the heft of our biggest sticks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum takes me to task for diminishing the import of the leaked Iran plans. But what’s important isn’t the existence of the contingency plans. Rather, it’s the fairly obvious fact that the Bush administration is publicizing them as part of a very public PR campaign in favor of a strike against Iran. The problem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}