The Wisdom of Sun Bzoot*

by

by Eric Martin

More evidence that a McCain administration would be guided by neoconservative foreign policy principles (as discussed in a prior post):

A McCain administration would discourage Israeli-Syrian peace talks and refrain from actively engaging in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

That was the message delivered over the weekend by two McCain advisers — Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Richard Williamson, the Bush administration’s special envoy to Sudan — during a retreat hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy at the Lansdowne Resort in rural Virginia.

One of Barack Obama’s representatives — Richard Danzig, a Clinton administration Navy secretary — said the Democratic presidential candidate would take the opposite approach on both issues. […]

That Williamson was endorsing such views at all signified how closely the McCain campaign has allied itself with neo-conservatives. A veteran of the Reagan and first Bush administrations, Williamson in other circumstances would be more closely identified with Republican "realists" who have vociferously eschewed the grand claims of neo-conservatives to a new American empire.

Yet here he was echoing their talking points on several fronts.

McCain until the last year or so has kept feet in both the realist and neo-conservative camps. The session at Lansdowne appeared to suggest that the Republican presidential nominee has chosen sides, opting for policies backed by the outgoing Bush administration and its neo-conservative foreign policy architects.

Some realist.  I’ll reiterate: If you liked the last 8 years of Bush administration foreign policy, especially the first 4 years, you’ll love a McCain presidency. 

McCain’s position on the prospect of Syria/Israeli peace talks is particularly misguided.  Not only would McCain not assist the effort to make peace, or remain neutral in the face of such ongoing negotiations, but he would actively discourage the advancement of peace between two longtime rivals.  Consistent with Michael Ledeen’s "Cauldronize" doctrine, McCain seems quite intent on keeping the pot simmering.  As Ledeen himself put it:

[Brett Scowcroft] fears that if we attack Iraq "I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a cauldron…"

One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.

McCain’s unwillingness to tolerate the emergence of a mutually acceptable modus vivendi between Israel and Syria cuts against Israel’s long-term goals of establishing some form of peace and stability between it and its neighbors (not to mention the effort to peel Syria away from Iran).  But then, just as US lawmakers have to accommodate an active and assertive Israel lobby, so too do the Israelis have to deal with the "US lobby," so to speak.  Those "lobbies" often substitute a hubristic solipsism for their respective constituents’ best interests.  As I’ve said in the past, when these voices dominate, we bring out the worst in each other. 

This is especially so with respect to Syria policy.  At least, if McCain is able to continue the Bush administration’s failed approach. 

(*post title via The Editors)

[UPDATE: More on the wisdom of Sun Bzoot here (including the comments)]

[UPDATE II: More from Ackerman and Duss]

23 thoughts on “The Wisdom of Sun Bzoot*”

  2. Reminder: putting one’s name under the subject header is Useful.
    Meanwhile, back in Israel:

    Syrian President Basher Assad on Tuesday expressed his desire for indirect talks with Israel, saying that they called for “more time and effort”, adding that the talks had the potential to lead to direct negotiations between the two countries.
    Assad’s statements, which came during a meeting of the National Progressive Front, an umbrella group of parties that support the ruling Ba’ath Party, represent his first call for renewed talks since Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was elected the new leader of the Kadima party.
    Last Saturday, sources in Turkey told Haaretz that peace talks between Israel and Syria will continue as planned with Livni in charge of the Kadima Party.
    The sources said that they agree with recent assessment printed in a Turkish paper that predicted Israel will not try to freeze the talks despite the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

  5. Fixed Gary.
    Does the new and improved Farber model have a laser mounted on his head? I think that reading troll comments would be far more fun if I knew that shortly after the trolls wrote their swill, the Farbinator 2000 incinerated them with its laser vision.

  7. Concerning the Syria/Israel aspect of this. Obviously, Israel would not be involved in any talks with Syria if they didn’t want to be. Does this mean that McCain is contradicting Palin who stated not once but three times to Charles Gibson that “We should never second guess Israel”?

  8. I suppose I should point out that Randy Scheunemann told Reuters the opposite:

    Republican presidential nominee John McCain would not get in the way of communication between Israel and Syria, a top adviser said Tuesday.
    “A McCain administration’s not going to second guess Israel’s security decisions, whether they’re decisions about who they engage with diplomatically or whether they’re decisions about who to confront militarily,” Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s senior adviser on foreign policy, told Reuters.
    Scheunemann rejected as a “caricature” concerns by critics that a McCain
    administration would be “warmongering” and said Iran, whose president has predicted Israel’s demise, would face further sanctions before military force would be considered.
    “In connection with Iran he’s made clear there is much more that we can, must, and should do on the financial, economic, diplomatic, and political sanctions before any decision has to be made on military force,” Scheunemann said.
    The adviser also said McCain would rethink U.S. and transatlantic policy toward Russia if he wins the White House, making it a top priority in his first 100 days in office. He added that Russia’s invasion of Georgia illustrated McCain’s warnings that Moscow was a threat to its neighbors.
    In addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Scheunemann said top priorities in the opening months of a McCain administration would include talks with North Korea about its nuclear program, reviving the Doha Round of world trade negotiations and working on relations with Pakistan.

    Make of it what you will.

  9. Meanwhile, while Ahmadinejad is still denouncing Zionists, and contributing to antisemitic stereotypes, and being crude, he’s also clearly not calling for genocide:

    “The Zionist regime is on a slope to decline,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a speech at the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, adding there is no Israel can “get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters.”
    Ahamdinejad also accused “a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists” for dominating financial and political centers in Europe and the U.S. in “a deceitful, complex and furtive manner.”
    Ahmadinejad said Iran supports a referendum in Israel and the Palestinian territories that would determine the nature of government in one state that would encompass Jews and Arabs.
    The Iranian President also lashed out at “bullying powers” that are trying to interfere with the country’s nuclear program, saying “Iran is for dialogue but won`t accept illegal demands on nukes.”
    Ahmadinejad also issued a harsh rebuke of what he called American attempts at ‘hegemony’, blaming U.S. military interventions around the world in part for the collapse of global financial markets, saying “the American empire is reaching the end of its road”.
    […]
    “Problems do not arise suddenly,” Ahmadinejad told the Los Angeles Times. “The U.S. government has made a series of mistakes in the past few decades. The imposition on the U.S. economy of years of heavy military engagement and involvement around the world? the war in Iraq, for example. These are heavy costs imposed on the U.S. economy.”
    “The world economy can no longer tolerate the budgetary deficit and the financial pressures occurring from markets here in the United States, and by the U.S. government,” The Iranian president added.
    In a separate interview with National Public Radio, Ahmadinejad said he does not want a confrontation with the United States. He said he wants diplomatic relations to develop between the two countries and that he was willing to cooperate on upholding security in Iraq.
    “We do not have confrontations with anyone,” he said. “The U.S. administration interferes, and we defend ourselves.”

    I think it’s clear that “there is no Israel can” is intended to read “there is no way Israel can….”

  12. I just like saying ‘Bzoot’. It has the sort of whistling, empty sound I associate with the value of neocon thinking.

  13. Speaking of ‘Bzoot,’any word yet on what Sarah Palin will be serving with the mooseburgers when she meets the global nobles?

  15. Back in 2000, a lot of neocons (William Kristol was one, I think) supported McCain over Bush.
    Evidence that McCain is influenced by neocons? This is new? What kind of moron would think that McCain is not a neocon?
    McCain is worse than Bush.

  17. Back in 2000, a lot of neocons (William Kristol was one, I think) supported McCain over Bush.
    Evidence that McCain is influenced by neocons? This is new? What kind of moron would think that McCain is not a neocon?
    McCain is worse than Bush.
    I don’t see anything in Scheunemann that challenges Eric’s fascinating point implying that in McCain’s rhetoric he is positioning himself as even more hawkish on Isreal than Isreal.
    as for Moronic, I guess you’ll have to count me in, because I’ve never known John McCain to be anything but a gunboat realist.
    I’ll bet that behind the scenes he utters nothing but a soft-spoken contempt for the intellectuals inventing neocon arguments.

  20. while Ahmadinejad is still denouncing Zionists, and contributing to antisemitic stereotypes, and being crude, he’s also clearly not calling for genocide
    Perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes and being crude is certainly despicable, denouncing Zionism not necessarily so, though for Ahmadinejad and others it all blurs together.

  21. Evidence that McCain is influenced by neocons? This is new?
    Well, I didn’t say it was new now did I?
    However, since McCain is attempting to be all things to all people (with one foot in the realist camp and one in the neocon camp), I thought it worthwhile to point out how his actual policies are being enunciated by some of his top advisors.

  22. I thought it worthwhile to point out how his actual policies are being enunciated by some of his top advisors.
    yea, that’s what I think is going on: McCain has abdicated the whole thinking thing over to his advisors, who are neocons.
    as long as their ideology gives him permission to press the red button when he feels like it, he’s happy.

  23. Speaking of Iraq, Kirkuk has been kicked down the road again.

    […] The new law, calling for elections to be held everywhere but Kirkuk by the end of January, was passed by a majority of the Parliament’s 275 members. In Kirkuk, the current provincial council will remain in place until a separate election law for the province can be passed. How long that will take is not clear.
    The law passed Wednesday provides for a committee made up of representatives of the major groups who have made claims there — Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians — to present recommendations for resolving the dispute to Parliament by March 31.
    The law delegates to another committee the thorny issue of how to achieve representation for Christians and other minorities on the provincial councils. That committee is to work with the United Nations to reach a solution.

    So there will — maybe, if the Presidential triumvirate agrees — be provincial elections, but not in Kirkuk, the most problematic area.
    I suppose you could call it progress of a sort. It’s a new and different kind of delay a regards Kirkuk, and it doesn’t involve more current killing.

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