Niall Ferguson: Stupid, or Blind?

Via Kevin Drum, we see that Niall Feguson continues probing the darkness of his own mind, pretending to write future history:

Americans did not want to increase their military commitments overseas; they wanted to reduce them. Europeans did not want to hear that Iran was about to build its own WMD. Even if Ahmad-inejad had broadcast a nuclear test live on CNN, liberals would have said it was a CIA con-trick.

Just like we all said it was a trick when India and Pakistan demonstrated their nuclear bombs, right? No, wait, that never happened.

What we in the reality-based community (accurately) described as "tricks" were the lies used to lead the US in to a war in Iraq. The same war which makes the following lament ridiculous and impossible:

The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq's Shi'ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran.

Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration's original principle of pre-emption. For, if that principle had been adhered to in 2006, Iran's nuclear bid might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great Gulf War might never have happened.

This obviously ignores a simple fact: The US can't preempt Iran because they've already "preempted" Iraq, and aren't done there yet. The US has no realistic means to stop the Iranian weapons programme. Forget airstrikes - there will be no replay of the Osirak raid this time.

But according to Feguson, the problem is that we doubt the efficacy of "preemption." "Just wait, it'll work this time," say Ferguson and others of his ilk. The problem isn't that the principle couldn't work - it's that we don't have the means. Just like we never - ever - had the means to make a better Iraq at the tip of the bayonet. Iran is a large, increasingly wealthy, technically literate society. Men like Ferguson, and Ignatieff for that matter, have been blinded by the real power of the US military, and have therefore lost any sense of perspective over what it can and cannot do. Defeat an army in the field? Absolutely. Pacify a hostile country? Not so much. Destroy a dispersed nuclear program with some facilities as much as 150 ft below the ground? Not on your life.

Not that they'll ever admit it. No, somehow the failure of US strategy in the Middle East, combined with a far less secure Israel, will be blamed on those who were right all along. The people who advocated a disastrously wrong policy will be remembered as being "weakened" or "betrayed" at home, while those who were clear-headed will be blamed for the crisis they had no part in creating.

Basically, status quo.