Spiral of Doom

Via Billmon (and thank you for coming back to regular blogging, we need you now more than ever), this is exactly what evey Democrat needs to understand about the Iran talk:

Indeed, the danger in this situation could be dismissed if there were other leaders in power. However, in both nations the leadership needs this conflict. President Bush and the Republican party face defeat in November without an issue to galvanize the voting public behind their assertion that they are best able to protect the United States from attack — the only point on which they have outscored Democrats in recent polls. President Ahmadinejad also needs public support for his domestic political agenda — an agenda that is paradoxically opposed by a large number of the ruling clerics in Iran. Every time he makes a defiant assertion against the United States, the public rallies behind him.

This creates what political scientist Richard Cottam termed a "spiral conflict" in which both parties escalate each other's extreme positions to new heights. It is entirely possible that Iran could goad President Bush into a disastrous military action, and that action would result in an equally disastrous Iranian reaction.

In other words, any attack may not be a security decision, but a political one. And both sides are turning up the rhetoric for nothing more than political reasons. In Ahmadinejad's case, he's doing get the people behind him since the mullahs pretty much aren't. Bush is just trying to get his base back.

Billmon, for his part, doesn't totally believe this. He thinks maybe it's more about messianism. Or a variety of factors.

Maybe the most accurate thing to say is that there seem to be a lot of riders in this particular war chariot, and plenty of horses pulling it: Bush's megalomania and his desire to salvage his presidential legacy, the religious right and its love affair with Israel, the Israelis and their fear of losing their nuclear primacy in the Middle East, the neocons and their desperate search for a way out of the quagmire in Iraq. And of course, all those mundane domestic pressures.

Religion, much less personal religious obsession, may not be the hand lashing the whip — or the one holding the reins. But it's pretty clear it isn't just along for the ride, either. Whether the same holds true on the Iranian side I don't know. But right now, the two chariots look uncomfortably like mirror images racing towards each other, trailing clouds (or delusions) of glory. It could be a hell of a crash.

In this day and age, at this time in the 21st century, I don't know that there's very much difference between political power and religious fervor. And that scares the living shit out of me.