Losers

Louis Wohlheim in Sam Taylor's Tempest (1928). Via MoviesSilently.

Here's world-famous military historian David Brooks with his analysis of the agreement between Iran and the P5 + 1 powers, as a defeat for the allies on a par with the worst US defeats of the past half century:

The purpose of war, military or economic, is to get your enemy to do something it would rather not do. Over the past several years the United States and other Western powers have engaged in an economic, clandestine and political war against Iran to force it to give up its nuclear program....

There have now been three big U.S. strategic defeats over the past several decades: Vietnam, Iraq and now Iran.

Well, now, for starters, I think we can recognize that definition, as coming from Major-General von Clausewitz: war is "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will", and I think we need to note very clearly that this applies to the aggressor, not to those who oppose an aggressor. And I can assure Mr. Brooks that if the governments of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China had understood that they were supposed to be carrying on a Clausewitzian war against Iran they would have objected very strongly and let it be known, because it's, um, illegal, according to chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

Namely, the Permanent Members of the Security Council are not supposed to wage war to fulfill their will. They are supposed to use violence for one purpose only, and only as a very last resort, to prevent war, and I'm pretty sure that that's what the P5 + 1 hoped they were up to with the Iran sanctions:

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security....

The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations....

Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces....

The Council's permanent members and Germany determined that the possibility of Iran possessing nuclear weapons was a threat to the peace, and took economic measures to make it impossible, right or wrong (I think there was little real threat, certainly not commensurate to the punishment of the sanctions, and that, as always, the war they were afraid of would have been started by Israel). They could not legally have aimed at forcing Iran to give up its nuclear program, because every country signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has a right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

But what's this stuff about Vietnam and Iraq? Have the Iran nuclear negotiations taken thousands or tens of thousands of American lives? Have they led to universal disrespect for American power outside of Binyamin Netanyahu and the Republican Party? And indeed, if the Iraq war was meant "to get your enemy to do something he would rather not do" didn't Saddam Hussein do a lot of things he would rather not do, finishing up by getting himself beheaded by a rope? I'd say the Iraq was a total victory in Clausewitzian terms,

if a state wishes to defeat its enemy it must annihilate them

—though obviously a total failure in every other respect. What is Brooks talking about?

I'm not going to argue with the specific points he parrots from Netanyahu and from Tzvi Kahn (a former AIPAC henchman who has published in National Review, Weekly Standard, New York Post, American Thinker (!!!), and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and is now occupying a wingnut welfare post at the neocon Foreign Policy Initiative, because really, it's getting tiresome, and lots of people are doing it better than I can, including President Obama in what humble, gracious, respectful, non-angry David Brooks refers to as his "high-handed and counterproductive" speech at American University yesterday.

Come to think of it, Obama brought up Iraq, didn't he?

Between now and the congressional vote in September, you’re going to hear a lot of arguments against this deal, backed by tens of millions of dollars in advertising.  And if the rhetoric in these ads, and the accompanying commentary, sounds familiar, it should -- for many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal. 

Drawing the parallel between the neoconservatives of 2002 and 2003 boosting an insane plan to invade Iraq and the neoconservatives of 2015 crying for some undefined and undefinable aggression against Iran in the same kind of apocalyptic terms.

That, of course, is what Brooks is talking about: his own personal butthurt, he being very precisely one of those guys. He thinks it's rude of the president to remind people about that, "high-handed and counterproductive". "I resemble that remark," as we used to say. So he lashes out against it in a way that's a little bit Jonah Goldberg deconstructionist, by turning it upside down: "No, you're the one who's acting the way those neoconservatives did over Iraq; and Vietnam too!" It doesn't have to make any sense.

Goldberg and maybe a little bit Trump, of whom Brooks was writing just the other day,

In the Trump mind the world is not divided into right and left. Instead there are winners and losers. Society is led by losers, who scorn and disrespect the people who are actually the winners.

Like Trump, he doesn't bother making an argument, he only expresses his contempt. All the while continuing his crusade for civility and "deep politeness". "You're the loser, you loser!" What a turd.