Back in June, Michael Hirsch wrote some articles from Iran persuasively arguing for diplomatic engagement. He also argued that the extent of domestic repression in Iran has been dramatically overstated. George Packer convincingly responds that Hirsch is substantially understating the degree of repression:

Why did a journalist as experienced as Michael Hirsh not notice? Because, justifiably arguing for dialogue and against fantasies of easy regime change, he wants to be able to say that things are not as bad as you think in Iran. The truth is, things are worse than you think for any Iranian who tries to exercise minimal political rights. Just as the neoconservatives concocted a simple case on Iraq and, now, Iran—claiming that the locals would welcome regime change from outside—people like Hirsh want to make a simple case, too. It’s a great temptation to say that, because X is true, Y, which seems to point in a different direction from X, must be false. We all want total vindication. But in politics there is no total vindication, on Iran or anything else. The regime there is brutal, and we should talk to it.

This seems mostly right, but it’s worth examining the idea of “worse than you think” in this regard. It sort of depends on who “you” are. For example, Iran is often characterized in the American press as a “totalitarian” regime, by both conservative and liberal hawks. Leading Democratic Party political operatives like Ken Baer will call you an apologist for the Iranian regime if you dispute this “totalitarian” concept. Thus “you” may well think that Iran is, in fact, a totalitarian society.

Which it isn’t. The Iranian regime, though harsh on political dissidents, isn’t Stalin’s Russia or China during the Cultural Revolution. Crucially, it’s not more repressive in any clear way than lots of countries — China, Saudi Arabia, etc. — we have perfectly normal diplomatic relations with. One of the reasons Hirsch probably overstated the case somewhat is that so many people — powerful people — seem invested in overstating things on the other side.

Photo by Flickr user Farshad Ebrahimi used under a Creative Commons license

David Broder, in the course of a much-better-than-usual column, nonetheless feels the need to praise Saint John McCain as “the most stubbornly principled person in the Republican field. He is being punished now for saying what he believes about Iraq and immigration, among other things.” Note that more principles than Mitt Romney is a low bar to pass, so it’s entirely plausible that McCain is, in fact, more principled than the other major GOP contenders. That said, the fact that the most principled contender’s principledness doesn’t extent to such minor matters as taxes & the federal budget should indicate that there are some limits here.

But perhaps to the point, though John McCain’s views on national security (bombs away!) certainly are principled, they’re also disastrously wrong. Like Bill Kristol, who backed him in 2000 for just this reason, McCain has spent the past 10 or so years being really enthusiastic about war — there’s no foreign policy problem he won’t address by starting a war. He’s totally principled about it, and he’s even right sometimes, but it’s in a stopped clock is right twice a day kind of way.

One thing our continued presence in Iraq does, of course, is dissuade other regional actors from direct military intervention in Iraq. Except, of course, on days when (as Eric Martin points out), the Iraqi government says “Turkish artillery and warplanes bombarded areas of northern Iraq on Wednesday.”

There are at least two shoes that haven’t quite dropped yet in Iraq. One is the Kurd-Turk situation, involving both Turkish military action in northern Iraq, and Kurdish guerillas moving back-and-forth across the Turkey-Iraq border. The other is that Iraq’s constitution schedules a plebiscite to determine the status of the Kirkuk region (i.e., in Kurdistan or out) and there’s little reason to think the losing side will accept the outcome of the vote peacefully.

Photo courtesy of Kurdistan4All.

I stole this graphic from Brian Beutler. It serves as a reminder of how far things have slipped in Iraq. In April 2005, people generally thought we were having a difficult time of it in Iraq. And if you’d suggested then that the daily number of attacks in Iraq would get to around 100, people would have understood you as predicting a dramatic worsening of the situation. From today’s vantage point, however, 100 would be major progress. But progress toward what? Toward a return to the unacceptably horrible conditions of early 2006, I guess.

But you can see it all on the chart or any other years-long metric of the war — if there ever was a time when the situation was amenable to “fixing” it was a long, long time ago before things metastasized and anything resembling the current dynamic took hold.