Mixed Messages

Writing for Newsweek, Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey have a column trying to explain why the White House message on Iran seems to be so confusing:

For weeks now, Iran has eclipsed Iraq as the subject of the biggest parlor game in Washington. Is the president heading to war or committed to peace? It turns out the answer is something in between. The practice of sending mixed messages—about whether the government of Iran is involved or not, whether the proper response should be military or not, whether the intel on the country is good or not—seems to be an intentional policy.

There are two goals, both intended to roll back Iran’s ambition in the region. Call it aggressive containment—or, as they prefer to call it inside the White House, “pushback.”

The first goal is to reduce and deter Iranian meddling—both political and military—in Iraq. The second is to assert American power in the region as a way of defending Sunni allies. “We’re not going to war,” says one senior Bush aide. “Some of this is common sense. If someone is doing something to kill your own troops, you have to push back on the ground. There have to be some consequences on the ground. The carrier ships are signals to the partners, the gulf states. We are in there for the long run.”

You know, one thing that a lot of people learn early, like when dating in high school, is that playing the 'mixed messages' game is both a pain in the butt and likely to go awry. The other side never understands what the hell you're doing, and you usually find yourself worked into a situation where you've eliminated any possiblity of actually getting what you want. Also, third parties tend to blame you for being a jerk.

We want that hottie Ahmadinejad to ask us out, but for a long time we've been saying bad things about him, and when he calls we say we don't want to talk to him.

Then we yell at that Swiss kid when he passes us a message from him that says Ahmi's willing to talk about whatever we want.

Then in the halls, we make a big show of how mad we are that he messes with our stuff when we're over at Nouri's house, (which did actually tick us off because, well, why couldn't he just be nice to us the way we want, and besides, who does he think he is trying to be Nouri's best friend when we are already Nouri's best friend forever, but mainly, we were being loud about it in the hall because Abdullah and Bandar were there, and we know they don't like Ahmi at all, because they told Dickie all about it when he was over at their house a while ago, and we do want them to be our friends too, so we didn't want them to think we weren't really mad at Ahmi, like, y'know?)

Which is why we couldn't really respond when Ahmi offered us some stuff he'd found that he knew we were looking for. So we keep driving by his house, hoping he'll notice, but we want Abdullah and Bandar to think we're scoping it out for a TP raid, OK?

Bush foreign policy as adolescent psycho-drama: suddenly things start making sense.