It seems odd that President Obama is
willing to apologize for American actions in so many instances, but not for the
actual violation of an internationally-recognized border by the United States
in the conduct of an espionage operation. An American drone touched down 140
miles inside Iranian territory, and the White House is refusing to apologize
for our aerial invasion.
The drone crash is an open and shut
case: there is nothing the RQ-170 could have been doing other than collecting
intelligence. We have lots of good reasons to be collecting intelligence inside
Iran; but our government committed an act of espionage, intruding clandestinely
into another country, something that is illegal although widely practiced.
The president looks foolish calling
for Iran to return the drone while petulantly refusing to explain our actions
that resulted in being caught en flagrante delicto committing
espionage. Especially given our outrage a few months ago when the U.S. traced
to Iran's Qu'uds force a bungled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in
Washington.
After China shot down an American
spy plane near Hainan Island in 2001, the Bush Administration apologized,
saying we were very sorry both for causing the death of a Chinese military
pilot that had intercepted our plane, and for entering Chinese airspace. Technically,
the letter was "an expression of regret," while claiming we did
nothing wrong, but for all practical purposes, we apologized to China.
By not apologizing for what is a
clear infraction of an (often compromised) norm of international behavior,
President Obama both justifies Iran's attempts to conduct espionage inside the
U.S., and makes us look like a brutish superpower that flaunts the rules. So
much for a new era of respect for international law and cooperation under
President Obama. Senator Obama would surely have cited such behavior by the
previous administration as one more demonstration of the arrogance making the
U.S. so unpopular in the world.
It may be the drone just wandered
off course from Afghanistan or elsewhere and was not intended to be over
Iranian airspace. It may be we were plotting grid coordinates to target Iran's
nuclear program, which it continues in violation of its commitment in the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty not to pursue weapons and despite numerous
United Nations Security Council Resolutions condemning its actions. It may be
the drone was collecting radiation emissions from recent activity at know
Iranian centrifuge or testing sites in support of the International Atomic and
Energy Agency.
The Iranians claim to have used
cyberwarfare to down the drone, a claim that is unlikely and that our
explanation should also put to rest. Iran ought to be very worried that we can
operate with impunity in their airspace; fueling that concern is a useful
deterrent given Iranian nuclear and missile programs.
Whatever the explanation is, the president or a senior figure in the administration should actually give the
explanation, both to the American people and to the world. Thomas Jefferson was
right that "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them."
The president should apologize. He
should also use the explanation as an opportunity to review all the reasons we
feel the need to collect intelligence inside Iran:
- Iran's unrelenting march to build nuclear
weapons;
- that Iran is the world's most enthusiastic state
sponsor of terrorism, including a recent effort to conduct political
killings in America;
- support to Hezbollah destabilizing the government of
Lebanon;
- funding and recruiting Shi'ia militia in Iraq;
- assistance to Hamas derailing progress toward peace in
Palestine;
- the erratic international behavior of Iran's
leadership;
- degrading repression of its own people;
- widespread fraud in the 2009 elections -- protests by
Iranians were the first flowering of the so-called Arab Spring.
Why the president would be hesitant
to do so in this instance, where we are clearly in the wrong, is mysterious. Perhaps
the president doesn't want to be seen apologizing to one of the world's worst
governments. Nor might he want to remind voters of his commitment to negotiate
with that government, or his awkward tendency to blame both aggressor and
victim by urging restraint on both sides during the election protests. Still,
he should apologize... and continue conducting intelligence overflights of Iran.
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