The jerking knee almost caught me in the chin

Speaking with a colleague today about the situation between Iran and Britain I had to hold my tongue a bit (actually, a lot) in order to avoid getting into a heated argument about how much fault to lay in either direction. In truth, enough time, rhetoric and information has flowed in so many directions that the truth has already passed into the realm of unknowability. My colleague spoke of the unshakable evidence that Britain has put forth in the form of their GPS readouts and lamented about how he's got two children who will be of eligible age for the draft in eight or nine years that he doesn't want to see potentially sucked into the maelstrom when they reach that age. I believe his exact words were, "I don't want to be worrying about this kind of crap in nine years..."*

I restrained myself since engaging him in a debate about the fluidity of the actual line of demarcation and the question of justification of both thee British and the Iranians would have taken all afternoon, or at least a good chunk of time that we didn't really have available to us. I also recognized, even though I have known this particular individual for less than a month and our relationship has been on a strictly professional level, the tone of one who has come to a conclusion and only looks to media coverage of the GPS declarations to bolster his viewpoint about how the British "have the Iranians dead to rights with the GPS readings", and "will have them in a pretty tight corner if they're not careful".

Pointing him in the direction of coverage and commentary like Pepe Escobar's here would most likely elicit head shaking and eyebrow raising at this non Western media source.

I'm sure commentary like this would be received with skepticism:

Tactically, as a backgammon or, better yet, chess move - in which Iranians excel - the Shatt-al-Arab incident may be much more clever than it appears. Oil is establishing itself well above US$60 a barrel as a result of the incident, and that's good for Iran. It's true that from London's point of view, the incident could have been arranged as a provocation, part of a mischievous plan to escalate the conflict with Iran and turn Western and possibly world public opinion against the regime.

But from Tehran's point of view, for all purposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a soft target. The episode has the potential to paralyze both President George W Bush and Blair. Neither can use the incident to start a war with Iran, although Blair has warned that his government is prepared to move to "a different phase" if Iran does not quickly release the sailors.

If the Tehran leadership decides to drag out the proceedings, the Shi'ites in southern Iraq, already exasperated by the British (as they were in the 1920s), may take the hint and accelerate a confrontation. Strands of the Shi'ite resistance may start merging with strands of the Sunni resistance (that's what Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has wanted all along). And this would prove once again that you don't need nuclear weapons when you excel at playing chess.

And this splash of cold water would most likely be towelled off quickly with dismissive comments about aspiring superpowers who have no business meddling in a clear cut case of aggression:

Simultaneously, the combined US maneuvers and London's fiery rhetoric against Iran have made Moscow and Beijing realize the explosive nature of the situation, inducing them to draw a red line on their support for the United States' designs against Iran.

Thus, in their joint statement in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao warned the US against making any military moves on Iran. The United States' painstakingly assembled international coalition against Iran at the United Nations has now been put to severe new tests. It is far from clear that, by the time the Security Council meets again some two months from now to consider the Iran nuclear crisis, the coalition will even be intact.

I fully realize that I am not exactly giving him a fair chance to react to this material, but I've been engaged in enough conversations about international affairs with fellow countrymen to recognize certain stances fairly quickly. I'm not trying to paint him as a warmonger or subjugator of Middle Eastern people, but when the main thrust of an individual's argument is the assumption that "the only language that these people understand is violence" I have a fairly good handle on where the conversation would go if I tried to pursue it. I'm also not as confident in my skills of face to face debate as opposed to my writing abilities. Some of it may also be to do with the fact that this forum is a one way street to some extent and what dialogue there is available is choppy at best via the initial entry and subsequent comments...

In the past, when I've run into a situation like this all I've done is mulled over it and replayed it in my head, coming up with clever ripostes and counterpoints after the fact. Now at least I can externalize it here and move on with trying to maintain my sanity while the last seconds tick away on the Doomsday Clock: Five minutes and counting...

*UPDATE 3/30/07:

It was never my intention to discount or call into question my colleague's concern for his children's future. As a non-parent, I have absolutely no frame of reference to what a parent goes through thinking about the potential for their children to be placed in harm's way at the whim of a nameless, faceless government in order to enforce policy that they may or may not agree with.

It concerned and annoyed me to see him using his concern about a draft that doesn't exist, and has been shown to be extremely unpopular when put to public opinion (so much so that not one of the malcontents currently in Congress will even touch it with a long pole) to help frame an argument about who was at fault in an international dispute over borders, and in a larger sense, the role of a sovereign nation in a remote region in relation to its fellow nations.

It's highly unlikely that a draft will ever be instituted in this country again, with the possible exception of the case of an actual physical invasion by another country. None of this "fight the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here" crap, or the mantra of helping to maintain stability and train native forces so that they can protect themselves. The American public recognizes the corporate imperialistic nature of the majority of the wars the administration embarks on and wants no part of them, particularly when their children are asked to fight them on a compulsory basis.