Not every crisis equals World War II

In the age of mass media, political propaganda imitates TV melodrama. Particularly in the United States, the discussion of foreign affairs -- crucial questions involving the lives of millions -- follows the conventions of the action/adventure film: an idealistic American hero, a villain with his wicked henchmen, a dramatic "crisis," redemptive violence, and, after an imagined resolution, order and tranquility restored.

Americans have been sold the identical scenario many times, most recently in Iraq. A "madman" materializes somewhere in the third world. Even when, like Saddam Hussein, the villain may have been a U.S. client, he's depicted as motiveless and malign, an "evildoer" who "hates freedom." His deluded followers are always panted as robot-like drones. There's no time for critical thinking. We must destroy the brute before he attacks.

That's not to say that the evildoer may not, in reality, be a thoroughly nasty piece of work, like Saddam. Nor that, everything else being equal, the world wouldn't be better off without him. The propagandists who concoct these melodramatic scenarios are invariably sincere.

Indeed, it's their dreadful solemnity that's the problem. To the typical pro-war pundit, Glenn Greenwald points out on his Weblog "Unclaimed Territory," "the world is forever stuck in the 1930s. Every leader we don't like is Adolph Hitler, a crazed and irrational lunatic who wants to dominate the world. Every country opposed to our interests is Nazi Germany."

Hence, every warmonger pictures himself, if not President Bush, as Winston Churchill, and everybody who opposes war as the vacillating leaders of England and France who appeased Hitler at Munich in 1938. "You have chosen dishonor over war," Churchill thundered. "You shall have both."

It's a dangerously seductive emotion. Many of the same propagandists who drove the United States to war over Iraq's mythical WMDs, who wrongly predicted that Iraqis would welcome American troops as liberators, and who foolishly denied that sectarian strife would impede democracy's march, now clamor for an attack on neighboring Iran. (Persia.)

So what if the main strategic effect of the Iraq war has been to weaken Persia's traditional Sunni Arab enemies? The same word processor warriors at the Weekly Standard are once again dragging the Nazis into it. "It is not 'moral progress,'" William Kristol warns, "to put off serious planning for military action to a later date, probably in less favorable circumstances, when the Iranian regime has been further emboldened ..."

Have they no shame? None, whatsoever. "Political or military commentators, like astrologers," George Orwell noted acidly, "can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts, but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties."

Thus stimulated, some readers urge a skeptic like me to ponder apocalyptic Bible verses. It's all foretold in scripture, you see. Another warns that "the day will soon come, when, for the safety of America, we will have to cleanse this country of traitors like yourself and allow you to see a bullet coming straight for your face." (It's my policy to warn such persons that "terroristic threatening" is a felony.)

Once again, President Bush has denied hostile intent, just as he did for many months after secretly ordering the Pentagon to draft detailed war plans against Iraq. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh suggests that all systems are go at the White House, including possible use of tactical nuclear weapons against targets on Iranian soil. He hints that the neoconservative ideologues around Dick Cheney have deluded themselves that bombing Iran would lead to internal rebellion and the overthrow of the nation's Islamic regime.

Yeah, sure it would. Ever notice how much the neocons' ignorance of basic human psychology rivals only Osama bin Laden's?

So how is Iran like Nazi Germany? Well, President Ahmadinejad makes screwy anti-Semitic pronouncements. But he's no dictator. Iran's elected president serves at the pleasure of the ayatollahs, who also command the nation's armed forces.

Otherwise, the comparison is ludicrous. Iran has expressed no territorial ambitions; history records that the Persians haven't launched an aggressive war since the 16th century. While both sides hype Iran's modest nuclear experiments, the best intelligence suggests that the capacity to make a nuclear weapon is five to 10 years off. Military strategists doubt a bombing campaign could do anything but delay them a bit.

Meanwhile, we've got them surrounded. There are U.S. bases in every country bordering Iran: Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia. More than twice the size of Texas (and five times larger than Iraq), Persia would be difficult to invade and impossible to occupy.

Meanwhile, here's what a "pre-emptive" tactical nuclear attack against a purely hypothetical threat would do: According to the National Academy of Sciences, it would incinerate more than a million Iranian men, women and children, and spread cancer-causing fallout across the region.

And on the day it happened, America, as we have known it, would cease to exist.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.