Sometimes a thing gets broke can't be fixed.

Firefly is a wonderful Science Fiction Western, with an entertaining mix of high and low technology, a crew filled with memorable characters, and excellent writing and directing.  In one of the best episodes, "Out of Gas", the Serenity is damaged and adrift in space, without life support.  Captain Mal, who is both deeply cynical and even more deeply optimistic, tells his genius engineer Kaylee to fix the problem and get them moving again.  Kaylee's mournful response is the title of this post:

Sometimes a thing gets broke can't be fixed

One of the most wonderful and most disastrous aspects of the American zeitgeist is our often naive optimism, the belief that every problem can be solved if only people of good will sit down and talk.  An inverted version of the same naive optimism occurs in those who believe that if only we use our military power wisely to defeat the enemies of freedom, the people will find the time and space in which to embrace freedom and democracy.  Barack Obama may well be an example of the first type of naif while George W. Bush may well be an example of the second.  Both approaches will inevitably fail when the desire for the optimistic outcome overwhelms a brutally honest look at the realities involved.  This is nowhere more true than in the Middle East, a place where passion long ago replaced reason, yet where one American administration after another has attempted to use reason to defuse passions that are not amenable to reason.  It is very likely that either a President Obama or a President McCain will simply continue the dysfunctional pattern that has been established over the years.  Both, in their own ways, are optimists and, for the most American of reasons, incapable of admitting the sad truth:  Some problems just can't be solved.

This must be kept in mind when considering the contretemps between the Obama campaign and John McCain after President Bush's appeasement comments to the Israeli Knesset yesterday.  David Brooks has a well balanced and nuanced view of Obama's response:

Is Obama naïve enough to think that an extremist ideological organization like Hezbollah can be mollified with a less corrupt patronage system and some electoral reform? Does he really believe that Hezbollah is a normal social welfare agency seeking more government services for its followers? Does Obama believe that even the most intractable enemies can be pacified with diplomacy? What “Lebanese consensus” can Hezbollah possibly be a part of?

If Obama believes all this, he’s not just a Jimmy Carter-style liberal. He’s off in Noam Chomskyland.

That didn’t strike me as right, so I spoke with Obama Tuesday to ask him what he meant by all this.

Right off the bat he reaffirmed that Hezbollah is “not a legitimate political party.” Instead, “It’s a destabilizing organization by any common-sense standard. This wouldn’t happen without the support of Iran and Syria.”

I asked him what he meant with all this emphasis on electoral and patronage reform. He said the U.S. should help the Lebanese government deliver better services to the Shiites “to peel support away from Hezbollah” and encourage the local populace to “view them as an oppressive force.” The U.S. should “find a mechanism whereby the disaffected have an effective outlet for their grievances, which assures them they are getting social services.” [Emphasis mine-SW]

The U.S. needs a foreign policy that “looks at the root causes of problems and dangers.” Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that “they’re going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims.” He knows these movements aren’t going away anytime soon (“Those missiles aren’t going to dissolve”), but “if they decide to shift, we’re going to recognize that. That’s an evolution that should be recognized.”

Before I comment on what I see as the fatal flaws in Obama's argument, I would like to bring another voice into the discussion.  Abu Muqawama is an exceptional blogger.  He and his co-bloggers are extremely well versed in issues related to "contemporary insurgencies as well as counterinsurgency tactics and strategy."  I often find myself in disagreement with his conclusions but his posts have the great virtue of causing me to question my assumptions and sharpen my thinking.  His post this morning relates to David Brooks's column:

Obama and Hizbollah

The biggest problem Abu Muqawama -- along with many military officers, past and present -- has with neo-conservatives is their naive, childlike faith in the ability of military power to solve problems on its own. Abu Muqawama suspects Obama is right when he talks about there being a disconnect between the generals and the civilians. Abu Muqawama suspects some of the military leadership is horrified by the bluster and tough talk they hear from the civilian leadership. You can't talk yourself into a rhetorical corner to the point where direct military action is the only card you have left on the table. Force -- or the threat of force -- must be partnered with engagement. Where you strike the balance between the two is a key question.  [Emphasis mine-SW]

...

As much as Abu Muqawama admires Bob Gates and some of the adults who have been brought in during the later years of this presidency, he'll be happy to see the President go. Talking with people who have radically different ideologies, after all, should be part of the job description of any U.S. Secretary of State. Abu Muqawama understands you can't do it in such a way as to grant legitimacy to those who deserve none, but if you look at the people we spoke with to broker peace in Anbar -- or the people the British spoke with to broker peace in Northern Ireland -- we're talking about some pretty bad people.

Hell, despite what he says now, even John McCain would talk to Hamas...

The neocons, especially President Bush, were convinced that if only the jackboot of fascism were removed from their necks, the Iraqi people would eagerly adopt democracy and freedom.  Our painful experiences in Iraq have shown how naive such a hope was.   

On the other hand, a cogent argument can be made that regimes such as Iran, from which Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria derive their power, do not and cannot respond to diplomacy in the long run.  I have made the argument explicitly in a series of posts on The Singularity & the 12th Imam.  To summarize my points:

Once mobilized, advancing technology will shift the balance between insurgents and counter-insurgents toward the side with access to leading edge technology.  Such a balance is constantly shifting back and forth between offense and defense, but in the long run, the technological advantages accumulate exponentially and those who lag in their access to and ability to use technology will find the initiative slowly moving against them.

Iran, and its dependents, have dysfunctional systems that depends on extracting wealth, either from the ground, or via extortion from its neighbors, along with externalization of its conflicts.  Their ideology interferes with their ability to generate wealth in significant ways, and also now interferes with their ability to extract and develop their oil industries; within 5 years Iran will no longer be able to export oil as subsidized domestic demand will consume their entire output.  Rising prices and decreasing supply will engender greater instability, as was seen when gasoline was rationed last year.

The HISH alliance includes anti-Semitism as a core ideological underpinning.  Their entire raison d'etre involves redressing past humiliations and the ongoing humiliation of Israel.  Giving up their fundamental desire to destroy Israel is tantamount to giving up their version of Islam.  Israel's existence repudiates Islam's supremacy.  Barack Obama should take note of the fact that Hamas has made a point of worsening the situation in Gaza specifically to maintain the fiction that the plight of the Gazans is all the fault of Israel.  Their interest, and Hezbollah's interest, in "social services" is always in the service of their ideological need to demonize and attack Israel.  If Peace were ever to break out int he Middle East, there would be no need for Hamas or Hezbollah, and they are quite cognizant of that fact.

With Iran presenting an existential threat to Israel, an Iranian nuclear bomb becomes an unacceptable danger.

Only regime change can defuse the situation; the only alternative is to convince Iran to stop their momentum for a bomb yet Iran sees a bomb as an existential imperative.

There are two major problems attendant to my conception of the Middle East and its future: 

1)  Military action against Iran would be exceedingly difficult and would guarantee neither regime change nor the destruction of Iran's nuclear program.  Damage to the nuclear program that does neither means that within short order Iran will be even more dangerous than before such an attack.  Further, such an attack will almost certainly unleash the "A" team of terrorism (Hezbollah), which has shown the ability to strike around the world in the past.

2) Engagement would almost certainly be taken as a sign of enhanced prestige for the Iranians; any sanctions regime would crumble (note how sanctions were weakened after the NIE suggested that military action could not be justified) which would enhance Iran's ability to obtain nuclear weapons and destabilize much of the Middle East.

As far as I can see, the next President will have to deal with an impossible set of circumstances for which there is no real solution.  The question for the electorate then becomes, who is likely to do less damage in the Middle East, John McCain or Barack Obama.  I suspect Abu Muqawama would suggest Obama while I believe McCain is the safer bet not to make things immeasurably worse, all the while keeping in mind Kaylee's comment that "sometimes a thing gets broke can't be fixed."