Fabulous War! David Broder Says Obama should stage Iran showdown

The face of senility

From David Broder’s latest column in the Washington Post:

Can Obama harness the forces that might spur new growth? This is the key question for the next two years.

What are those forces? Essentially, there are two. One is the power of the business cycle, the tidal force that throughout history has dictated when the economy expands and when it contracts.

Economists struggle to analyze this, but they almost inevitably conclude that it cannot be rushed and almost resists political command. As the saying goes, the market will go where it is going to go.

In this regard, Obama has no advantage over any other pol. Even in analyzing the tidal force correctly, he cannot control it.

What else might affect the economy? The answer is obvious, but its implications are frightening. War and peace influence the economy.

Look back at FDR and the Great Depression. What finally resolved that economic crisis? World War II.

Here is where Obama is likely to prevail. With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve.

I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.

Not that a guy like David Broder paid it much attention, but I find it absolutely hilarious that this column comes less than 48 hours after Jon Stewart’s and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. The thing is, Broder is not some rabid Hannity-esque warmonger. Rather, his is the pen of the beltway establishment and therefore conventional political wisdom. And here he is making the case for war with Iran. Keep that fear alive, David. Sanity is overrated anyway.

According to Broder and his conventional wisdom, the Great Depression was resolved by the prosecution of World War II. It’s the standard canard about WWII economics that requires more explanation than Broder gives it. The assumption that war yields economic prosperity is a pernicious and often incorrect one. No one would say that the French or British economies were strengthened by World War II. Germany, though it experienced robust growth when waging its wars of choice, paid heavily for them during the last few years of the Reich and beyond. In fact, all of the major players in that war endured great hardships because each had experienced the war first hand within their own borders with the exception of the United States. The US was in the unique position of being a major combatant without having to worry about the immediate safety of its own civilian population.

When hacks like Broder say WWII lifted the American economy out of the doldrums, what they are really saying is that massive amounts of spending and heavy state intervention in the market saved the US economy. Military spending, price controls, wage controls, and rationing were in vogue as the federal government assumed de facto control over the country’s defense, energy, and commodity sectors. World War II was essentially a gargantuan public works project geared toward the maximal production of military hardware. The nation’s manufacturing sector became a well-oiled machine of production previously unseen in world history, banging out not only the tools of war at a rapid rate, but goods for civilian use as well. With an increased need for production came an increase in employment, which resulted in more disposable income, which resulted in more demand, and so on. It was not that WWII cured America’s economic ills, it was the way in which it was conducted on the home front.

Whether his senile mind knows it or not, Broder is advocating military Keynesianism. Even though he assures us that he isn’t suggesting Obama start a war, the president “can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve.”

First of all, from a moral standpoint, no person anywhere should ever be “orchestrating a showdown” with anyone—not at home or work, and certainly not in international relations. To purposely take measures that would escalate tensions and hostilities is downright psychopathic.

Second, from a pragmatic standpoint, Broder is stuck in 1940. He seems to be assuming that American preparations for war with Iran would mirror our preparations for war with Germany and Japan when they will not. The reason they won’t is because it’s a pretty safe bet that the US already possesses the necessary military hardware to conduct a full-scale invasion of Iran. There would be little if any additional war matériel to produce, and therefore no effect on the economy on this front. Sure there might be a need for additional war production if the conflict went on long enough, but no one—except for maybe al Qaeda—wants that. Plus, Iran is far more militarily capable than Iraq.

Another fundamental difference between WWII and the wars of today is that the government doesn’t ask American civilians to sacrifice anything. Indeed, the wars themselves are essentially unfunded, with the costs just piled onto the national debt. Aside from the hell we put our volunteer soldiers and their families through, Americans have carried on as usual during wartime. To their credit though, Americans do put “Support the Troops” stickers on their cars, which can look awfully ugly on the back of a Hummer.

Perhaps the most amusing part of Broder’s column is when after he’s laid out his piss-poor economic argument for war, he tosses in the obligatory, “Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century” as a mere afterthought. But the truth is, Iran has more reasons to fear the US than vice versa, and Broder’s column itself is a case in point because it’s advocating a hostile confrontation for god’s sake. More importantly, the US has a long history of meddling in Iran’s internal affairs, including the 1954 American-orchestrated overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government. Not to mention the fact that the US presently has hundreds of thousands of soldiers occupying Iran’s western and eastern neighbors. Ask yourself, who is a greater threat to whom?

Thankfully, the current economic climate in the US makes more war unpalatable for the American people. Of course, that could very well change with another 9/11-style attack or even just a really good propaganda campaign launched by the government with help from its media sidekicks. Who knows, maybe Broder’s gotten the ball rolling and we don’t even know it yet.

- Max