Fear Itself: Americans Believe Iran Threat On Par With 1980s Soviet Union

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/fear-itself-americans-believe-iran-threat-on-par-with-1980s-soviet-union/256135/


Left, Russian troops move an intercontinental SS-19 missile. Right, parading a mid-range Shahab-3 missile in Tehran. AP

In November 1985, CNN commissioned a poll asking Americans to gauge the Soviet Union's threat to the U.S. It's hard to overstate how serious, how existential and immediate, that threat was, and Americans seemed to know it.

At the time, 39,000 Soviet nuclear warheads were pointed at the rest of the world, enough of them ready on push-button alert to destroy the United States near-instantaneously and many times over. Mikhail Gorbachev had recently taken power after two short-lived and tumultuous predecessors; nobody was sure how he would act. Within the White House, CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence Robert M. Gates insisted that Gorbachev was another hard-liner to be confronted, something that was reflected in President Reagan's decision to increase military spending and to publicly denounce the Soviet threat, especially as part of his 1984 reelection campaign. Two years earlier, he had called the Soviet Union the "evil empire," Soviet jets had shot down a Korean airliner carrying a U.S. congressman, the U.S. had invaded Grenada, and the Soviet Union had nearly launched thermonuclear war against the U.S. after misconstruing a NATO missile test as preparations for a preemptive strike. It was, as Council on Foreign Relations fellow Micah Zenko put it, "the least safe time to live on earth."

According to the November 1985 poll, 76 percent of Americans viewed the Soviet Union as a "very serious" or "moderately serious" threat. Only 32 percent of respondents classified the Evil Empire as a "very serious" threat. This week, CNN released a poll asking the same question, this time about Iran and other hostile nations. It estimates that 81 percent of Americans believe Iran is a "very serious" or "moderately serious" threat, with 48 percent calling it "very serious." While fear of Iran isn't yet on par with the absolute height of the Reagan-era Cold War (CNN fielded three polls during conflict-rife 1983, returning 90 percent, 87 percent, and 88 percent), it's up from June 2009, and has surpassed fear of the Soviet Union during one of the Cold War's most dangerous years.

Iran's dangers to the U.S. are real: it's been directly involved in anti-U.S. violence in Iraq and probably Afghanistan, threatened to cripple the global economy by closing the naval channel through which much of the world's oil passes, makes no secret of its hostility to America, and may have even tried to kill a Saudi ambassador staying in the U.S. If Iran weaponized its nuclear program, probably its greatest contributor to Western anxiety, an already unstable Middle East would get that much closer to conflict, and the list of national nuclear proliferators would grow, making the risks of unwanted nuclear war or loose nuclear materials that much higher.

[Scuba]

1. Big round of high-fives at Fox News.

[leveymg]

2. Push-polling at its finest. A leading indicator of the sort of hysteria the neocons want to create

The last paragraph is almost entirely unfounded in proven facts.

[pampango]

19. USSR, Iraq, al-Queda, China, Iran.The more the neocon boogey men change the more they stay the same.

The neocons have to keep us afraid of someone - now matter who the latest "them" is.

[leveymg]

23. It's all about competition for money and markets. The US has less advantage than before, so we're

becoming increasingly aggressive in energy-rich regions where previously we had reliable proxies, which are now becoming competitors. Israel and the Saudis exert enormous political and economic influence, and are the primary pressure groups pushing us toward another war. Lots of wag the dog at this point.

[gratuitous]

3. Conclusion: Advertising works

Keep pushing this "ZOMG, we're all gonna die!" bullshit, and you can do anything you want.

[DCKit]

4. Let's not hold our breath waiting for the MIC, NeoCons, Chickenhawks...

or far too many of our own in Congress to dispel this myth. There's just too damn much money to be made from war and suffering.

[Cirque du So-What]

5. I served in the armed forces

during a period of time that could arguably represent 'peak years' of the so-called 'Cold War.' I was privy to intelligence that wasn't 'sexed-up' in any way, and it showed an adversary many orders of magnitude more dangerous than any threat that Iran currently represents. The foreign policy that the US observed during all those 'Cold War' years - containment - worked quite effectively. This latest effort on the part of the corporate media to gin-up support for a preemptive strike upon Iran is incredibly reprehensible - on a par with those power brokers who are hellbent on getting their war on.

[Odin2005]

6. We are a bunch of morans!

[get the red out]

7. The stupidity is killing us

I wonder if everyone's TV's, phones, internet, and radios went off for a week if anyone would come out of their coma?

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. 17% even said Syria is a 'very serious threat', and another 40% 'moderately serious'

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/04/18/rel4h.pdf

Syria, which doesn't have a missile program, whose tiny nuclear program was bombed out of existence by one Israeli attack a few years ago, which is a very small oil producer, which cannot threaten oil exports from other countries, and which is in a form of civil war and can hardly threaten Lebanon these days. But over half think it's a moderate or very serious threat to the USA. I think they mistake 'likely to feature on network news' with 'threat to the USA'.

[Blue_Tires]

9. Too bad Iran doesn't have an powerhouse Olympic hockey team...

[hifiguy]

10. This kind of stupidity beggars the imagination.

We are done as a society.

[LeftinOH]

11. And the Soviet threat was itself rather overhyped. n/t

[The Magistrate]

12. This Level Of Cowardice, Sir, is Disgusting

[xiamiam]

13. bs ...americans know the number one threat is corruption in our own country

and we're sick of war..dinosaur logic, unfortunately they own all the media and the think tanks..ask occupy anywhere ..

[Uncle Joe]

14. In related news, GOP propaganda promoting, corporate media elephants are afraid of mice.

Thanks for the thread, xchrom.

[newrocker]

15. I agree. Iran is worse than the USSR.

The one thing that we could count on by the USSR was self-preservation.

I remember reading the story that Sec'y of Defense Robert MacNamara in the 1960's told the Russians that defensive weapons against nukes were the only thing to worry about. Mutual assured destruction (knowing that any attack would lead to the wipe-out of the offending country) would keep the bilateral nuclear world safe, unless one side thought it had a defensive system to ward off the other's nukes. It took a while before the Russians agreed - but they came aboard.

At least part of the Iranian government, IMO, doesn't care as much about the destruction of their own country as they do about the destruction of Israel. Iran is on a mission (part religious hatred, part ego, part political) to wipe out Israel, and there is a risk that they will act when they have nuclear power whether it means the destruction of their country or not.

[Uncle Joe]

16. How would Iran destroy Israel?

Would they use nuclear weapons if they had any?

[Luminous Animal]

18. So, you were on the phone with part of Iran when it said they don't mind detroying themselves?

[hifiguy]

21. The Iranians are not nuts.

The leaders may occasionally say nutty things, but so did the leaders of the USSR. They know very well that if they ever used a nuke on anyone that the whole of Iran would be turned into a glass parking lot and they have no desire to be incinerated.

[joeybee12]

17. Propoganda works..knr

[Egalitarian Thug]

20. Even our expectations for Evil Empires have fallen to embarrassing levels these days. n/t

K&R

[NoGOPZone]

22. Give it a few months. There'll be a poll

showing most Americans think Iran was behind 9/11.

[Initech]

24. War with Iran would be suicide for the US.

The MIC are salivating over the thought of another endless war - we can't fund any of our social safety nets because the money is all going to the fucking war machine. We cannot allow this to happen - a Romney presidency would allow for this to happen. We need to end all wars now.