This post by Kevin Drum reminds me, again, that Mr. Drum is one of the smarter cookies in the five-pound Big Lots’ Animal Cracker bag:
DEMS ON IRAN….Atrios is almost certainly right about this, but it still doesn’t answer the question. At some point it seems likely that the choice George Bush will offer the nation regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions is either (a) leaky and ineffective sanctions or (b) air strikes. I don’t like this choice, but that’s probably what we’re going to get anyway.
….
We can gripe and complain about the perfidy of Karl Rove all we like, but it’s idiocy not to think seriously about a subject that’s at least 50% likely to be a major campaign issue. And the sooner the better.
Better, of course, would be if the Demcratic leadership organically recognized that there are bad people in the world and that it’s not automatically GWB’s fault that they exist. (In other words, better it would be for the Democratic leadership to listen to Drum.) But, to indulge the Rumsfeldian turn-o-phrase, one doesn’t go to the polls with the opposition party one would like; one goes to the polls with the opposition party that one has.
Iran is the next great challenge, and it is (and should remain) a nonpartisan one. But there is an initial question to answer. Do we believe that we can deter a nuclear Iran? Because, if we do not so believe, then nuclear weapons Iran must not be allowed to have.
UPDATE: Jon Henke offers some none-too-comforting thoughts, and this observation on the Democratic "strategy" thus far:
Meanwhile, on the domestic front, our poor options are only made worse by the events of the past few years. On the one side, we have the base of the Democratic Party, still smarting from the Iraq war, preemptively mocking anybody who argues that maybe Iran really is a problem. Unfortunately, as trenchant as sarcasm may be, it’s not a foreign policy.
Amen.
UPDATE 2: Whoops, I forgot the link to Jon Henke at QandO. It’s fixed now.
UPDATE 3: It’s not my day. First, it’s Jon Henke, not "Jim" Henke, as I originally wrote. Second, I would encourage the readership to read Mr. Henke’s piece in full. Mr. Henke, as I best understand him, is not attempting to absolve the Bush Administration of its sins (real or imagined). Rather, he’s suggesting that attacking the Bush Administration for its sins is not much of a foreign policy. Long-time readers of this blog will recognize that such is a suggestion that I’ve echoed in the past.
My apologies, Jon, for misremembering your name.
UPDATE 4: Tim F., of Balloon Juice, writes:
Von at Obsidian Wings has noble and timely sentiments about Iran:
Iran is the next great challenge, and it is (and should remain) a nonpartisan one.
Then he links to a Q-and-O post which sniffs indignantly at lefty bloggers who’ve done some prognosticating about how the Iran imbroglio will pan out. In a classic example of rhetorical dishonesty Jim Henke identifies a single blogger as ‘the Democratic base’ and one Atrios post becomes ‘the Democratic strategy.’ Not that I want to single out Von personally, but this empty rhetorical gimmick is depressingly typical. Since when was Ward Churchill a ‘darling of the left,’ since never. Neither is the Democratic Party the ‘party of Cindy Sheehan.’ Is the GOP ‘the party of Pat Robertson?’ No, it’s not. People who concern themselves with precise language should pay attention to rhetorical flourishes that weaken their overall point.
I’m actually a bit baffled at Tim F.’s reaction, although perhaps it’s merely a sign of the partisan times. Tim F. seems to think that our policy on Iran should not be used as a political football. I agree, and I think it’s safe to say that Jon Henke also agrees. But Tim F. then blasts those who use the "empty rhetorical gimmick" of using a single Atrios post as a statement of Democratic strategy. Rhetorical gimmick it might very well be. But empty? Unfortunately, no.
What policy do the Democrats offer on Iran? Because I’m not seeing much from them but snarkettes in the mold of Atrios. I’m not suggesting that Democrats are incapable of offering a strategy: to the contrary, I thought I heard Chuck Schumer agree with Lindsey Graham on FNS today that one possible approach would be to strong-arm the Russians and Chinese to support a robust sanctions regime against Iran. (Such strong-arming might include threats of US sanctions against the Russians and Chinese themselves — sanctions that will be costly to the US economy if actually carried out.) But Schumer’s voice on this issue is new, and there’s no evidence it commands a majority among Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, are starting to divide between Graham’s "get tough with the commies approach" and William Kristol’s "we can be in and out in four days of military ops" approach.
If Democrats want to play the foreign policy game, they need to get in it. Sniping from the sidelines — no matter how trenchant that sniping may be — will get them nothing. And our nation will be poorer for it.
(Title by Henry Rollins, who would probably be embarrassed to be quoted by a warmongering fascist such as myself.)
Well, gee. Let’s consider whether we’ve ever faced a nuclear-armed enemy before, and whether we were able to contain them. If so, maybe we ought to go with that strategy. Even if it doesn’t yield neat-o catchphrases like, “Smoke’em out, dead or alive.”
Let’s see, the Redcoats invaded a country with no WMD programs, thereby limiting willingness, ability, and resolve to tackle real problems along those lines, and…it’s the Democrats problem!
Jesus H Christ what an insipid argument.
So the question is, can we tolerate a nation of nutty violent religious extremists with no respect for human rights, a history of warfare, and a willingness to torture and assassinate getting nuclear weapons. And the answer is, yes, we tolerated Israel doing so.
Cry wolf all you want, kid. There may be a wolf, there may not. But no one is going to believe you this time around. And that’s your fault, among others.
Just thought I’d point to that again, in case anyone missed it.
Since, within a “6 nines” standard, all of your contributions here consist of sarcasm, and little else, I am not sure what point you are trying to make here. In any case, you failed to make it.
That much is obvious, in retrospect.
Unfortunately, as trenchant as sarcasm may be, it’s not a foreign policy.
This is one of those words that I think I know what it means, but then someone uses it and I realize that I really don’t. I looked it up, and trenchant is searching or clear-cut. Assuming this is the meaning (and this is going thru three people and I make a fourth) the claim is that foreign policy is not clear cut. Though I hate to, I tend to agree with that, but it seems that the whole notion that politics stopped at the water’s edge is dead dead dead, and our foreign policy has suffered precisely because it has claimed to be so clear cut. This is not a thrown down gauntlet, so I’d ask that we avoid the dueling ‘well, you guys would support dictator X’, but I would wonder if both von and slarti, who quote this approvingly, think that our foreign policy should be more or less clear cut?
On preview, I see that FRM has weighed in. Though it may appear that I am supporting the position he takes, I’d ask that my question be taken as completely unrelated to his observation.
Containment actually was considered a policy, Slart. In my alternate universe, it worked out pretty well – no nuclear wars, the USSR buckling under the weight of it’s own insipid ideology. How did it work out in your world?
Also, it’s not just the Democrats who will be making sarcastic comments. Actual libertarians (instead of Republicans (rightly) embarrassed by the identification) will almost certainly join in, as well.
Don’t worry. If you quick-kick it before November, you’ll still get your war, despite our comments.
(as I am not a citizen of the USA I hope you won’t mind my weighing in)
The Democrats bother me greatly. As with the opposition here in Australia of late, they only seem able to critisize. It is essential that they come up with policies. Yes, the current admin stuffed up badly with the WMD issue and Iraq, that does not mean that this can be used as an excuse to iqnore what is going on in Iran. Surely there are people within the Democratic Party that are intelligent enough to see this as a security issue and as part of the government of the country that wants to police the world, come up with decent stratergies of their own.
Better, of course, would be if the Demcratic leadership organically recognized that there are bad people in the world and that it’s not automatically GWB’s fault that they exist.
Oh they did – to the point where Dubya had to call on Bill Richardson to got to North Korea last year because they would at least talk to Richardson.
I’ll see you the above comment Von, and raise you this: Democrats will support the administration if they get the facts, don’t go it largely alone and, since the president fancies himself to be Churchillian, accept the argument that it’s better to jaw-jaw than to war-war and realize that it’s not something you rush into.
“The Democrats bother me greatly. As with the opposition here in Australia of late, they only seem able to critisize. It is essential that they come up with policies.”
Sometimes, when a car is headed for a cliff, “Just hit the brakes already!” is a viable policy.
Opposition parties oppose, Debbie. This is not rocket science.
When the opposition party takes control (and it will) would you like to place bets on whether the complaint will be that the (now) ruling party has no policies?
Quite the opposite will be the case of course, as it was in the past. You will have the Redcoats pledging to oppose whatever policy is offered, even before they know what that policy may be. If your memory extends back to 1993, you of course know this already. I assume that you are 13 years old or younger.
Hey Democrats, this might just be an issue where, if we engage carefully and constructively with moderate Republicans, we might avert a complete bloodbath. I think that there is still room to manoeuver here; even RedState diarists acknowledge that most of the options are bad when it coming to confronting Iran. Yes, most public foreign policy debate in the US has already been poisoned, but if leftists simply sit this one out out of pique, we’ll really be in trouble. Make that, if you will: many people who don’t get to vote in the US will suffer and die for US foreign policy silliness.
One of the reasons the EU-3 negotiations failed was that the US stayed out of them. The US has, to my knowledge at least, never meaningfully negotiated with Iran. We could try that. Who knows what kinds of carrots they might take from a united international community–maybe enough to convince them to take the Russian enrichment deal? My point is that Democrats really can’t afford to walk away from this debate right now. We shouldn’t enter into the warmongering logic that Atrios (probably correctly) predicts, we should put pressure on our representatives not to sign over vague powers, but we should continue to put pressure on the administration to take constructive steps. And we need to think about what those might be.
von: if you could point out that member of the Democratic leadership who thinks that Bush is responsible for the Iranian theocracy and its interest in nuclear weapons, I’d be much obliged.
Debbie: I’m interested in formulating an interesting foreign policy, but it’s hard not to pretend that Bush has not vastly diminished our good options. Pace von, I do not believe that Bush is responsible for all the bad people in the world. I do believe the following: that his invasion of Iraq undid decades of work at containing Iran’s influence; that it also alienated a lot of people in Iran who seemed to be lurching, however slowly, in a generally democratic direction, and that by engaging our armed forces elsewhere he has left us very short of credible threats.
As SCMT said, containment is a decent policy, and got us through the cold war while keeping it cold. It’s also a good idea to have credible threats in one’s diplomatic arsenal. At the moment, we don’t, except for airstrikes, and we have no good answer to the question: suppose they don’t work? Also, we have put Iran in a position to harm us a lot by making even more trouble in Iraq: a vulnerability that we really do not need.
As in Iraq, I’m all for coming up with a decent set of options, but we’re starting in such a needlessly bad position that it’s hard to find them. I would suggest really engaging in negotiations, for a start, rather than leaving it to Europe.
And how are you going to do that in a way that doesn’t make the international community laugh you off the stage if you don’t also put pressure on Israel?
And how are you going to do that in a way that doesn’t make the international community laugh you off the stage if you don’t also put pressure on Israel?
Heh. Mordant chuckles, as some Internet crank would say. George W. Bush doesn’t put pressure on Israel, he gets pressure from Israel, or at least from the wild-eyed Likud part of it.
No, it’s going to be all jaw-jaw, but aimed at the Enemy Within The USA (aka, the Democrats). Until the day after elections, 2006.
Von:
I am not convinced. Iran is one more in a long list of countries with nuclear weapons. North Korea is worse. The USSR under Stalin was worse. It is unreasonable to believe that Iran is likelier to use the weapons than Stalin. (Or than JFK for that matter.) The mullahs may be crazy, but they surely understand the notion of balance of terror.
No. We know Iran’s address. What is far scarier is the possibility of nukes ending up in the hands of non-state actors who don’t have a return address.
The real reason to take preemptive attack on Iran is because we can’t afford to attack Iran after they have nukes. Personally, I don’t find that compelling. If that’s the case, then of course Iran is fully justified in wanting the nukes. This is the algebra that GWB and his geniuses have left us with.
“UPDATE: Jim Henke offers some none-too-comforting thoughts,”
I can’t tell if it’s a problem with the link, or the spelling, or my keyboard, or a possible computer virus I might be suffering, but: what, where?
Not Jon Henke? URL?
I plug in “Henke” here, and have no problem immediately making “find” work.
At the cited link at Kevin’s place, nada. Absolutely nada.
I am, however experience all sorts of bizarre keyboard type problems, so that may be it.
I also get no “henke” find at the Atrios link. So I’m, as often is the case, totally not following the conversation.
This is doubtless because I am being stupid, and not clicking where I should, or somesuch.
Jim Henke (whomever he might be) said what, where, URL?.
I promise I’ll try to follow the conversation, although since I can’t seem to find it, I probably have nothing to add.
Who is Jim Henke, again? (I suppose that doesn’t matter all that much, given that he said something, somewhere, that wasn’t comforting.)
Man, I feel stupid. Deservedly so, as ever, I’m sure. All I can say is that no matter how I look up and down the cited Drum post, I find no comment from any Henke, be it John, Joe, Jim, Jodie, Jane, or other.
I am baffled, and I am an idiot, and it is as it ever was. Doubtless the conversation should not be slowed down for the slow such as me.
There is no Democratic leadership. You have a few people with titles (Dean, Pelosi, Reid, etc.) who apparently have no real control over the caucus, a number of big names (Kennedy, Kerry, the Clintons, etc.) who only really look after themselves, and a few people with no position at all (Gore, for instance), but who nonetheless feel obligated to occasionally remind people they exist. It’s not really an organized party, just a smattering of relatively like-minded individuals. The fact that this set can’t come up with a coherent policy alternative shouldn’t be surprising.
That doesn’t make it any less frustrating, of course, unless you favor a one-party government.
Note that Atrios refutes Henke’s simple-minded attack in his next post.
Really – “he’s making fun of me, he must believe the issue is unserious” is the lamest argument I can imagine.
lj, “trenchant” comes from the French for “cutting”, and has that metaphorical meaning – so “incisive” is a good synonym. I believe it is more or less attached to “argument” or “remark”.
Gary, von no doubt dropped the link to prominent libertarian blogger (apparently armed with a butter knife in this case) Jon Henke. Link here.
It’s not “GWB’s fault” that bad people exist.
It is, however, his fault – and the fault of those who support and enable him – that we contemplate the possibility of a nuclear Iran with no good options.
The least bad option, and one I wish the Democratic Party would consider making, is one that essentially calls Iran’s bluff.
They say they want to develop nuclear energy? Excellent! Much of the world is searching for non-oil energy options, and nuclear energy is one of those options. Perhaps Iran’s claimed nuclear energy program is one the whole world can support: by offering an international consortium to help Iran develop a nuclear energy program that is safe, monitored, and addresses the problem of nuclear waste. Offer to make Iran’s nuclear energy development a model for everyone; put our (our = the international community) intellectual and design resources at Iran’s disposal to come up with a model for the best possible nuclear energy program anywhere.
Internationalizing it is important. One, internationalization avoids making the US the point-person, which is vital because we have no credibility. Two, it puts a lot of international monitors on the ground in Iran, able to call foul if Iran uses nuclear energy development as a blind behind which to develop nuclear weapons. Three, it offers the international community an opportunity to lay out, ahead of time, exactly what the allowable parameters of research and development are, and the penalties for going beyond those parameters. Penalties can range from the economic and political sanctions that did work to contain Saddam Hussein to threats of military force – again, though, as a matter of international agreement, rather than the US making the determination and decision unilaterally.
The problem -an inescapable one, and (again) the direct product of the Bush Admin’s bad faith, bad planning, cronyism, and sheer arrogance – is that our word is worthless. We cannot be trusted to judge Iran’s intentions; we cannot be trusted to respond appropriately if Iran’s stated intentions are other than the actual ones; and (above all) we cannot be trusted to carry out a military engagement that doesn’t make things worse than they already are.
The Right’s scenarios range from bombing only nuclear installations to using the nuclear issue as an excuse for regime change in Iran. All of these scenarios are whacked. Once again, the Right seems to think Iran will respond to a military attack either passively or ineffectually – as the Right thought would happen in Iraq, and was proved terribly wrong. Once again, the Right has no idea whether the idea of bombing “only” nuclear installations is even possible, or will entail huge civilian losses. Once again, the Right has a wholely unrealistic expectation of what the Islamic world’s response will be – and has given no thought whatsoever, AFAIK, to what the non-Islamic world’s reaction would be to yet another unilateral decision to use military force, inflame yet more hatred against the West, and make yet another country into “terrorist flypaper.”
It seems to me that the Right is concocting scenarios as if the war with Iraq never happened, or as if that war went so well that we can do it again, to Iran. I wonder if the Right is intent on ushering in Gotterdammerung for no better reason than to create a self-fulfilling prophecy to justify Bush’s policies retroactively.
Don’t fall for the “we can never let those crazies have the bomb” rhetoric.
Is a nuclear Iran a serious threat? Remember, Iran is situated in a neighborhood crowded with nuclear powers: Russia, Pakistan, China, India and Israel (Kazakhstan may also still maintain some of the old Soviet weapons). Does anyone really think that the Iranians will casually start flinging missiles once they have some nuclear capability? While I think it’s not particularly good policy on their part, frankly, a nuclear-equipped USA is a lot more dangerous to the world.
Don’t misunderstand: this is not a pro-Iran rant. But the use of nuclear materials by the present administration has been utterly irresponsible. If the U. S. were to draw down its own nuclear programs, we might have some moral traction, but right now we have none. Our best bet diplomatically would be to let the rest of the world work on this problem.
Of course, the neocons will never let someone else deal with a problem if they can meddle in it themselves.
“One of the reasons the EU-3 negotiations failed was that the US stayed out of them.”
ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH.
The EU-3 negotiatiors specifically didn’t want the US to be involved. On at least three separate instances (when Iran was stringing the negotiators along for time) we were told that the EU “successes” vindicated the soft power ideals of the EU.
How does this help. We already know it is a bluff, right? Is there anyone who doesn’t know that? Are there people who really believe that Iran wants only a non-military nuclear program? If so, who are they? Felixrayman perhaps? If not, why must we all pretend what is obviously not true?
And once the bluff is called, and it becomes clearer (?????) that Iran wants nuclear weapons, then what? You might as well try to figure it out now because that is exactly what is going to happen. And all “calling their bluff” will have done is given them more time to get further along in their nuclear program until they “surprisingly” announce that they have nuclear weapons.
The problem is that “internationalization” is far less credible than a US approach. Internationalization=paralysis unless something dramatically changes in Europe. The EU has wasted 3 years on what were transparently time buying pseudo-negotiations. During that entire time they have refused to refer the matter to the Security Council–even though they know that there is no chance anything is going to get through the Security Council anyway. And even presuming that sanctions get started (which I certainly would not presume) once the Iranian government shows a few pictures of starving civilians their will be clamouring to end the sanctions.
“Our best bet diplomatically would be to let the rest of the world work on this problem.
Of course, the neocons will never let someone else deal with a problem if they can meddle in it themselves.”
If the rest of the world were working on this problem, I would be happy not to meddle. But they aren’t.
The problem is that “internationalization” is far less credible than a US approach.
After five years of the Bush Administration, I’m afraid you’re sadly mistaken.
Also:
von: Iran is the next great challenge, and it is (and should remain) a nonpartisan one.
You got the initial question wrong, I’m afraid. The real question is, can the Bush Administration’s political wing keep its grubby little hands off the issue long enough for it to remain nonpartisan, or will it once again be used solely as a club to beat liberals and Democrats?
Sadly, the Magic 8-Ball isn’t offering very positive advice.
lj, “trenchant” comes from the French for “cutting”, and has that metaphorical meaning – so “incisive” is a good synonym. I believe it is more or less attached to “argument” or “remark”.
So, if we rephrase this, we can say ‘no matter how on target the sarcasm may be, it is no substitute for foreign policy’. But if the sarcasm is on target, it tells us something about the foreign policy direction of the current administration. Methinks someone whould have thought about this before screwing the pooch.
I should point out that JackMormon has a link filled post of posts of links at HoCB
What worries me is that any attempt to weigh in will be spun as an us against them, so in some ways, the Dems are better off just letting the car go off the cliff. A horrific thought, I know, but I’m not sure what effective pressure could be made on an administration that cannot seem to admit it is wrong about Iraq, North Korea, and its own domestic policy. What precisely could Dems do to put pressure on the administration?
“Gary, von no doubt dropped the link to prominent libertarian blogger (apparently armed with a butter knife in this case) Jon Henke. Link here.”
Thank you, God, in the name of rilkefan. I know, slightly, from Jon. Had absolutely no clue who Jim was. I place trust in Von, but now he will have to re-earn it, I’m afraid. Underminding my personal universe has small costs, if only in my personal galaxy.
I kinda don’t deal as well with stuff that makes absolutely no sense whatever to me, when other people are clearly nattering on as if it were all perfectly normal. It makes me feel all phildickian, and not at all in a good way. Somehow I’m in a universe where everyone else is speaking normally and I have no freaking idea why it’s suddenly gibberish to me.
That frightens me, although I suppose I should be used to it by now, and to being stupid that way.
Thank you immensely, rilkefan, for re-orienting, properly, my simple, simple — and fragile — universe.
I’d scold Von, but not this month, given his loss. I forgive. I’m pretty much constantly into the preference for the group hugs, of late, clearly. Well, despite the fact that I hate people, why not? Better to get over the hate, even the hating on Charles Bird, and make with the group hugs.
Except, of course, for you other people. You totally effing suck.
But you other gals and guys: group hug. Why the hell won’t Moe come back for one? Oh, yeah, darn, we suck. Still, I live for the future. (Look, I’m perfectly happy to hear more gaming talk, damnit. Miss him.)
Also, I just bit my tongue when sneezing, and it really hurt awfully. Still is hurting.
As ever, I digress.
liberal japonicus: What precisely could Dems do to put pressure on the administration?
Good question.
Whenever Republicans criticize the Democrats for not doing anything to oppose George W. Bush and his moronic ideas, it should be pointed out to them that it’s actually currently the Republicans who have the ability, the authority, and the responsibility to oppose George W. Bush. And they’re not doing it: instead, all they can find to do is criticize the Democrats.
So, Von: rather than kicking the Democrats because they’re not doing a good enough job of opposing George W. Bush, why aren’t you kicking the Republicans? What should the Republicans be doing? Why are you criticizing the party that’s completely out of power in the US for not reining-in the party that’s in power?
So, if we rephrase this, we can say ‘no matter how on target the sarcasm may be, it is no substitute for foreign policy’.
That’s what I understood Jim Henke to mean.
So, no matter how correct the points made may be, the Democrats need to clean up the mess?
If supporters of the President want domestic unity, they should act like it. If instead, they want to use foreign policy as a wedge issue, then they should act exactly as they are. Von, you should be embarrassed to be playing along.
So, no matter how correct the points made may be, the Democrats need to clean up the mess?
can’t you just see the Republican leadership on their knees, begging, “stop me before I kill again!”
Fact: Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Question: So what?
Answer: It depends. For us in America, it matters little or not at all. For those in the neighborhood it matters a lot.
Follow up question: Can we live with that, or should we meddle?
Answer: We can live with that.
Sebastian, I rather doubt you trust Seymour Hersh, but he called our current predicament pretty well in Jan. 2005. A couple of quotes:
I put it too strongly above, as, I think, you did.
Bush completely demolished US credibility with the Iraq war. Understandably, half of Americans now won’t believe a word the US government says about the danger of Iran, and the fraction of the rest of the world who will believe must be tiny indeed. It’s hard to imagine what we can do in that situation.
For now, all I have is more trenchance, which I prefer to assuming a fetal position.
Iran doesn’t have big enough missiles to get their nukes all the way to North America. So why is this a problem for us to solve instead of one for Iran’s neighbors to solve?
Well, as I read Kevin Drum’s post on “Dems and Iran”, he makes the point (or brings it to the fore) that whatever the actual options for the US/World are with regards to the Iran/nuclear issue (and all those options, as we all seem to agree, are pretty crappy) – the Bush Administration is almost certainly going to exploit them to the hilt as a campaign issue against their greatest nightmare scenario: loss of control of Congress to the Democrats. In Washington, every bit as much as in Tehran, “survival of the regime” is Job One; and all other priorities must be subordinated to that goal.
Pace CaseyL, the issue with Iran is NOT “nuclear energy”: it is nuclear weapons. Bombs. BIG bombs that the Iranian regime can threaten to use if they are attacked – or, conversely, to threaten to blow up Tel Aviv with to earn jihadi points with their radical “base”. And regardless of what “options” the US or anyone else has, or whatever policies have created those options; a nuclear Iran is a big enough potential threat (if not now, then in the very near future) that the issue is of vital importance – and NOW.
Unfortunately, given the nature of the Bush Adminstration, there are few issues which cannot and will not be spun for domestic political advantage; and, even more unfortunately, given that the Iran/nuclear problem is a matter of foreign policy, the Executive is in the driver’s seat.
One would expect (and hope) that a real “Opposition” would be able to come with some sort of alternative plan about what to do, or at least flog some ideas around to try to preempt/forestall/defuse the Adminstration’s policy intitiatives; but … oh, yeah, right: I said a real Opposition.
time to go read John Cole
Cleek, that’s actually Tim F., John Cole’s co-blogger.
…we have the base of the Democratic Party … preemptively mocking anybody who argues that maybe Iran really is a problem. Unfortunately, as trenchant as sarcasm may be, it’s not a foreign policy.
How are we, the “base of the Democratic Party” supposed to get our foreign policy enacted? Last time I checked, the *Republicans* were the party in power. What are we supposed to do, petition Rumsfeld to carry out our initiatives?
wow, Jackmorman, that’s a pretty solid quote you found there.
Sebastian, even the Israelis have expressed thanks that the EU3’s negotiations have delayed Iran’s nuclear program. So it’s not a total loss.
“”even the Israelis have expressed thanks that the EU3’s negotiations have delayed Iran’s nuclear program. So it’s not a total loss.”
Oh thank goodness Israel is pleased anyway! Does this mean we can stop sending them the lion’s share of our foreign aid? Does this mean they can start spying on us with their own money? Does this mean Wolf Blitzer will move back?
My concern, as I think is implicit in Kevin Drum’s post, is that I would hope that Democrats won’t allow the likelihood that policy towards Iran can be turned to Bush’s political advantage to discourage them from having a policy towards Iran. Democrats need to have one and its formulation can’t start soon enough.
As I’ve posted recently we’ve got to distinguish among the alternatives that are impossible, the alternatives that are unpalatable, and the alternatives that are futile.
A couple of thoughts:
MAD, as terrifying as it is, worked between the USSR and the USA, and if it comes to it I daresay that it will suffice between Iran and Israel.
Airstrikes to destroy specific targets would be much more militarily effective than occupation, regime change and “spreading democracy and freedom”. We couldn’t guarantee 100% effectiveness, however, and it would be a diplomatic nightmare, putting yet another albatross around the US’s neck in a region of the world that is already tricksical to negotiate.
Iran is allowed, under the terms of the NNPT, to develop its own nuclear facilities for peaceful purposes. We are allowed to request stringent inspections under the terms of this agreement. Many of a “realistic” bent would argue that this would do little except “buy time.” They’d be right. What’s wrong with that?
While we’re buying time in Iran, we could also stand to do something about the fact that a few spare millions will buy you a nuke from a disenfranchised Russian.
here’s another blogger (Dean Baker, at MaxSpeak) who thinks the Dems are about to repeat 2002.
Something occurred to me last night as I was going to bed: von, I know that you regard yourself as a centrist and in better times I’d be impressed with you for that. It takes guts to try to carve out a legitimate position between the partisans of either side without falling into what I call the Libertarian Trap, letting the pride in one’s “distinctiveness” subsume actual political thought.*
Unfortunately, these aren’t better times and I’m not impressed. Not that you care about my opinion in this wise, I’m sure, but there’s something fundamental that I think you’re missing. We’re all aware of the line “The center cannot hold” from Yeats’ Second Coming; for contemporary American politics, however, a change of tense is needed:
The center did not hold.
Until you get that, von, you’re politically irrelevant. Worse, you’re a political enabler. The center did not hold. As long as “centrism” is defined by triangulation, interpolation or in some wise distinguishing yourself from both Democrats and Republicans, you’re helping contribute to this slow gradual slide into madness. The right-wing cabal in this country (specifically the nexus between PNAC and the neocons, the diehard social conservatives like Dobson, and the fiscal conservatives like our Heritage Foundation kids who thought they could play god in Iraq) has pushed us so far outside normal bounds that any attempt to treat this as politics as usual — regardless of the seriousness of your intent, regardless of the merits of your position under better times, both of which I do not dispute — is rank foolishness. You’re writing as if we haven’t had four years of this vacuous War On Terror being used to beat down Bush’s political opposition instead of being, well, waged. As if we haven’t had four years of rank incompetence from the present administration on anything but the domestic political front. As if maybe if the Democrats would just speak nicely and not make a mess, then maybe this time daddy will stop hurting her.
[Let’s not explore that analogy any further, shall we? It’s gruesome enough as it is.]
The center didn’t hold, von. And any attempt to upbraid liberals, progressives, or the Democrats on an even vaguely equal footing to the Republicans isn’t just wrong-headed, it’s culpable. It’s giving the evil men and women — and I do not use that word lightly — in positions of power extra rhetorical ammunition and extra rhetorical cover to continue their systematic dismantling of this country and its ideals, both of which I love dearly. Much though I loathe Bush’s Manicheanism, he has by his actions declared quite forthrightly that in the American political sphere that you’re either for him or agin’ him; and I shudder to think what will happen to this country if reasonable, moderate would-be centrists such as yourself do not set yourself in opposition to this unfolding catastrophe.
So, Bush wins. Let Manicheanism rule. In warmer times, by all means, upbraid liberals and Democrats for their intransigent foolishness. God knows we deserve it. For right now, though, you’re either for us… or against America.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Bush’s true legacy. God help us all.
* I’m aware that there are libertarians to whom this does not apply. IME, however, they’re a vanishingly small fraction of those who describe themselves as libertarian.
From jm‘s quote: “And that they also need to be whacked.”
Sorry, my grasp of the relevant lingo is likely weak, does that mean “assassinated”? I’m reading the context to mean the Iranians understand they need to be killed, which seems improbable.
I believe that most of this discussion, and everything I’ve heard on the Sunday shows this morning–indeed the entire mainstream discourse on Iran–fails to analyze the key issue: Why might Iran want nukes in the first place? It’s not hard to imagine threats to Iranian national security from the Iranian point of view. But first, let’s dispense with what is usually implicitly assumed–that there is a threat that Iran would use a nuke in a first strike or surprise sneak attack, or give one to terrorists to use against the US or Israel. It would be suicidal for them. Despite the provocative tones sounded by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they are probably just as concerned as anyone about terrorist use of nukes. No matter who would do it, the weight of the response would fall on Iran.
But from the Iranian point of view, deterrence must be quite another matter, right? Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons pointed squarely at Iran, just a few hundred kilometers away. And Lord knows how many nuclear tipped devices have been brought in by the Americans, right next door. America has demonstrated its propensity to use military action against an oil-rich neighbor on a ginned-up case. It should be hard to imagine how the Iranians might fear being in the bullseye at some time in the future–a future where relations between Iran’s developing allies in the newly-elected Iraqi government and the Americans could go very sour very fast.
I tried very briefly to research American nukes in Iraq. Maybe there has been something out there in the last couple years, but I found little. Has any reporter even asked the question, let alone gotten a denial or maybe “neither confirm nor deny” quote on this?
rilkefan:
“The neocons say negotiations are a bad deal,” a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) told me. “And the only thing the Iranians understand is pressure. And that they also need to be whacked.”
I’m reading this as saying that the Iranians don’t understand the niceties of diplomatic language; that the only things they understand are direct expressions of force (e.g. sanctions, military threats &c); and that given their current attitudes, someone should make those kinds of direct expressions of force in order to bring them in line. IOW, I think “whacked” and “smacked” are synonymous here — rather than “whacked” = “assassination” — both referring to actions the official is saying need to be taken, rather than actions the Iranians understand need to be done.
PS: In my previous post, the abuse metaphor was aimed at Democrats in Congress and the D[N/L]C, not Democrats at large. Sorry for any confusion.
“But first, let’s dispense with what is usually implicitly assumed–that there is a threat that Iran would use a nuke in a first strike or surprise sneak attack, or give one to terrorists to use against the US or Israel. It would be suicidal for them. Despite the provocative tones sounded by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they are probably just as concerned as anyone about terrorist use of nukes.”
I don’t think we can just “dispense with” that notion so easily.
First, it isn’t just Ahmadinejad. He is their highest current politically leader, so dismissing him out of hand seems bad, but it isn’t just him anyway.
It was also Rafsanjani who famously said:
“If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”
Earlier in that speech he also said: “Jews shall expect to be once again scattered and wandering around the globe the day when this appendix is extracted from the region and the Muslim world.”
Second, Iran right this very second (and for 20 years) has been the main supporter of the terrorist arm of Hezbollah, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
So it isn’t as if Iran is just talk.
Considering that we have two major leaders in a row talking about a nuclear strike, why can we just dispense with the idea that they are serious?
I swear to freakin’ God, the GOP has reached the height of jujuitsu government. They’ve gotten to the point where — through their own total control and subsequent mismanagment of both foreign AND domestic policy, they can STILL manage to convince otherwise sane people that the other party is responsible.
Why are Dems — at least the bloggers — being snarky about Iran? Because at this point — thanks to the enactment of policies we violently opposed — we don’t actually HAVE any real options. Our Army, if you haven’t noticed is both very busy and highly vulnerable. We’re broke. No one trusts us.
No credibility. No money. No army. And incompetent leadership.
So what, exactly, are serious Democrats supposed to do?
I thought that both kevin and Atrios were making a different point altogether than the ones discussed on this thread. I thought their point was that Bush was going to successfully use fear of the Evil Other to scare people into voting Republican in spite of the increasingly obvious nefarious nature of the Republican party and that Democrats therefore need to either counter the fear-mongering or beat the Republicans at their game. I didn’t think either kevin or Atrios actually attributed to Bush a coherent policy that had any goal other than mainupulating our election.
Unfortunately sarcasism isn’t an effective counter to fearmongering. Democrats do need a soundbite length policy that sounds tough to present to the voters in this election cycle.
“Containment first, war later” would probably work since we have already learned how badly the “war first, forget containment” policy went in Iraq. We don’t actually have to have the war later.
Atrios is right: after 06 Bush still won’t have a real policy about Iran. the
Republicans will forget about it until 08.
I forgot my last sentences: Democrats don’t have to have a real policy since we aren’t in the position to make policy and the Republicans don’t have any real policies. We just need something strong-sounding to say to counter the fear-mongering. I know I sound completely cynical but hey we’re fighhting an enemy that is completely cynical and I don’t mean Iran.
I see that a few misnomers need to be dispelled:
(1) It’s “Jon Henke”, not “Jim”.
(2) If you follow the link, you’ll note that I also criticized the Bush administration on this issue.
(3) I called Atrios’ sarcasm “trenchant”, because I think there’s a lot of room for criticism about the way the case for the Iraq war was presented and skepticism about the administration’s tendency to politicize these things. But preemptively framing the Iran problem as a re-run of the Iraq issue is a serious, serious error, and a disservice to the very real problem that Iran may pose.
If the approach to the Iran problem is going to simply be to remind people of parallels between Iraq and Iran, then you’re not dealing with the current problem. You’re trying to take a mulligan on the last war. That may be domestically useful, but it’s not geopolitically helpful.
(4) SomecallmeTim writes:
Yeah, well one of the implicit necessities of containment was that the US resist Soviet (and Communist) expansionism and ambition at every turn. Even in the periphery. Like, for example, Korea and Vietnam.
I think it worked out pretty well, but a lot of the path to success was pretty damned painful.
(5) Finally, read my whole post. It’s not an attack on the Republicans or Democrats; it’s an observation that the situation in Iran is incredibly complex — moreso, I think, that most demagogues realize — and that there are no easy solutions. (oh, and some observations about the utility of the UN Security Council or Israeli preemption, and possible Iranian strategy)
Jon, my sincere apologies. I’m updating the matter now.
Well of course we need a real policy and the policy needs to be thoughtful, informed. collaborative, and oriented to the future. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of anyone in the Bush adminnistration ing that way. Democratic leaders have a responisblility to think that way whether or not they are in the position to actually make policy, but Democrats also hhave to deal realistically and effectively with the real Bush policy on Iran which is to use it in the next election cycle. That means Democrats will need to counter Republicann fearmongering, Swiftboating, and lying which we know from experience they will do. So Democrats need an effect soundbite. That’s a separate need from the need we as a nation have for an actual policy. Unfortunately, you can’t fight paritisan demogogues with rational policy.
No problem. I’ve been called much worse. Today. 🙂
But preemptively framing the Iran problem as a re-run of the Iraq issue is a serious, serious error…
Not to be snide, but what do you plan on saying when the Bush Administration frames Iran as a re-run of Iraq?
[And I do mean “when”, not “if”.]
For all the trenchancy of Atrios’ sarcasm here, I think you’re overlooking its most important utility: preventing, or at least trying to prevent, the Bush Administration from doing precisely that. Put enough pressure on them, who knows? This time they might decide to be honest.
“But preemptively framing the Iran problem as a re-run of the Iraq issue is” not what Atrios did. It should be possible to comment on a facet of an issue without people assuming that’s all you care about. It should be possible to read a little of Atrios’s writing and learn what policy areas he discusses and which he doesn’t. Treating this as a policy issue independent of politics is naive or worse.
To each their own, of course, but I’m a big fan of evaluating the case on its merits. Should the administration propose we actually do something, I’ll let you know what I think then.
In the meantime, I’m pretty agnostic about what we ought to do. At the least, I believe we should be using the situations in Iraq and Israel as leverage with some backdoor diplomacy. (i.e., those sure are some unstable State you have nearby; be a real shame if the fighting were to spill over into your terrain. And, gosh, what if Israel does something? I just don’t know what we could do about that.)
The problem in Iran — and in debating our policy towards Iran — is that I’m not entirely sure how they perceive their national interests, and what their fundamental motivation is. Moreover, aside from possibly withdrawing to allow regional instability, I’m not sure what leverage we actually have.
…don’t think we can just “dispense with” that notion so easily…
Fine, let’s not. But let’s not dispense with the rest of the points in my post either, namely that the advanced nuclear powers in the ME are Israel and the US, and it’s not unreasonable to look at that situation from the Iranian point of view. They face in Israel what may well be a full-blown nuclear triad, plus whatever the US has nearby, which must be substantial. That’s all gotta seem to them to be far beyond what “deterrence” would require.
But, when there is a tiny international move to inject some “fairness” into negotiations, like the ElBaradei mission to Israel in the summer of 2004, a brick wall is struck.
Every bit of pressure is allowed to be placed upon Iran, but none on Israel. In July 2004, Sharon declared that Israel’s “no show, no tell” policy of nuclear ambiguity would not even be discussed.
“I don’t know what he [ElBaradei] is coming to see,” Mr. Sharon said. “Israel has to hold in its hand all the elements of power necessary to protect itself by itself.
“Our policy of ambiguity on nuclear arms has proved its worth, and it will continue.”
A sure way, then, to achieve progress in regional nuclear disarmament is therefore closed. I’m as troubled as anyone about proliferation and acquisition of nuclear capability by Iran. For this reason I believe it is a bad idea to leave concessions by the overwhelmingly most powerful nuclear actors off the table.
[W]ell one of the implicit necessities of containment was that the US resist Soviet (and Communist) expansionism and ambition at every turn.
Kennan disagreed, and thought his idea had been bastardized by wingnuts (broadly defined). But, then, IIRC, he was against the war in Iraq, so what did he know?
At the least, I believe we should be using the situations in Iraq and Israel as leverage with some backdoor diplomacy.
China and Russia have a substantially greater interest in keeping Iran nuke-free. Bribe or threaten those two. Get them to help us impose sanctions on Iran. And keep up the pressure for a long time. It’s not as if there aren’t societies that have given up on nukes or nuclear ambitions. But this means recognizing that nuclear nonprof. is a long-term problem that will be addressed over decades. And maybe no catchphrases and promises of easy, quick solutions, which, I realize, is a real minus for your side.
“Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches.”
–Ariel Sharon
“Masada was not an example to follow–it hurt the Romans not a whit, but Sampson in Gaza? With an H-bomb? What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens?”
–David Perlmutter in Los Angeles Times
More:
Samson & Delilah
To back up what someone said above, there’s a Friday article in the NYT by Steven Erlanger about Israel’s opinion on the Iran problem which contains the following sentence–
“The diplomatic process has already delayed Iran’s program by some two years, the Israelis believe.”
So the people with the biggest reason to fear an Iranian bomb seem to think diplomacy has done some good, though of course they want more done.
On the subject of Israel’s bomb, I’m generally not a big fan of Israel’s behavior, to put it mildly, but in this case I wouldn’t equate the danger of the Israeli bomb with the Iranian one, for the simple reason that the Iranian leaders, as Sebastian points out, keep making these wildly irresponsible (and also immoral) statements. The irresponsibility is the problem here–lots of immoral people have had their finger on the nuclear button (probably most such fingers have belonged to immoral people), but so far they’ve all seemed to know how stupid it would be to push that button, even Mao. Supposing Ahmadinejad makes stupid statements for domestic political consumption, it doesn’t make me feel better that there’s an Iranian constituency that laps this stuff up. If the most messianic wing of the settler movement took power in Israel, then I’d be equally worried about their bomb and I’ve have been scared stiff if Curtis LeMay or some political fan of his had ever been President of the US. (From what I’ve read, the Daisy Girl ad against Goldwater was perfectly justified.) Maybe not everyone can be trusted to be rational about nuclear weapons.
That said, it might help the cause of disarmament if the nuclear powers that already exist would move in that direction, and if the leading power didn’t so obviously think it has the right to invade any country it doesn’t like, so long as that country doesn’t have the bomb. And some in the Bush Administration have wanted to develop new nuclear weapons, which seems to imply they see a use for them. You can’t blame any government for wanting a deterrent.
Of course, Neodude’s examples don’t exactly strengthen my case.
The fact that we can sit here and mildly discuss attacking Iran and/or causing it to ferment into civil war, kind of proves the paranoid maniacs in Iran’s case.
We have already threatened the lives of thousands of Iranians, for geo-political ends, and you want to act as if we are the “sane calm rational ones”.
Because we have allowed the right-wing nationalists to dominate and articulate our nation’s priorities, we now have right-wing nationalists in the Middle East dominating and articulating policy.
The West has allowed its premier nation (the US) to invade and occupy another nation on lies, killing tens of thousands of Iraqis in the process. What ever protests our allies had, they sure were not going to stand in the way of right-wing nationalists with big guns.
The Iranians realize this. Most of the world realizes this.
The Mullahs are going to get their matches; pretending right-wing nationalists can deal with each other rationally is foolhardy.
Serious analysis of this post and thread would lead me to sustained, high-octane ad hominem profanity which I would like to avoid, so let me just say this:
1) Sebastian: just because Iran “isn’t just talk” doesn’t mean that there are any options besides talk available to the US. The time to address the (real) problem of a nuclear Iran was before the Boy Prince ran our army, our economy, and our credibility aground on the rocks of Mesopotamia. We had some leverage then.
2) Jon Henke: The fact that you are “not entirely sure how they perceive their national interests, and what their fundamental motivation is” either means that your opinion can be safely ignored because it’s just so much gibberish, or that you haven’t yet figured out how to read between the lines of what you see in the papers and on TV.
So lemme help you out here, bro. Ahemdinejad is the Iranian George W. Bush. Iranians feel that Dubya’s New Crusade poses an imminent and existential threat to their nation and their families. They are afraid, for exactly the same reasons that Americans are afraid, and in both cases that fear is being played upon by people who are convinced of their own infallibility and crave power.
See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Iranians are scared for their moms, dads, kids, uncles and aunts, grandparents and brothers and sisters and cousins. Just like you are. The difference is that they’re better informed about you than you are about them.
Finally, y’all need to get used to the idea of a nuclear Iran, because the only way to prevent it now is all-out war. Now that may happen and it may not, but if you think there’s some other way I suggest you go spend a few years in the Middle East observing Muslim culture first hand.
“To get back on topic for a little while, although whenever I go this direction Ezra calls me nutzoid:
There will be war. The left and Democrats (I am both, in case you are new to this blog) simply have to abandon their desire to avoid war. They can’t, and any attempt to do so will only lead to the loss of everything else. Like economic justice and choice. Duh.
And having lost everything, there will still be war. Matt Y said he would accept the Devil’s own domestic policy to avoid war. That option is not available. Whether you think the origins of these wars are foreign bad guys or domestic bad guys only determines where the war will be staged. But war it must be.
The preferable options that may be available are Democratic structured and controlled wars overseas or civil war at home. But liberals will never have any power that isn’t taken at gunpoint over the corpses of women and children. If you don’t like it, and wish to withdraw to a mountaintop, ok fine. I respect that. But that won’t stop the war.”
…crossposted from Ezra Klein’s blog, directed at liberals in this thread. Yes, if Democrats were in charge, there might a menu of options for Iran. But Democrats will not be in charge until Republicans gain no advantage from militarism.
As far as Iran goes, I will repeat what I said five years ago. 50 million men in the ME for ten years, 5 million for a generation. I believe such a strategy would be to the advantage of liberals. I believe it will eventually happen anyway, and total war is being postponed because these limited screwups advantage Republicans and because the leadership consists of cheap, greedy, cowards.
So cheap and greedy and partisan that I fully expect to see a nuclear exchange before anyone gets serious.
To each their own, of course, but I’m a big fan of evaluating the case on its merits. Should the administration propose we actually do something, I’ll let you know what I think then.
I’d normally agree, but we tried that the last time around and it rather copiously didn’t work — precisely because the Administration had been waging a campaign of mendacious dissimulation, at the very least, against people like you and I who were trying to evaluate the case on its (actual) merits. To that end, therefore, I’d say that battening down the hatches, filling sandbags and/or lobbing similar rhetorical grenades — however you wish to interpret Atrios’ post — is actually an action in the service of merit-based evaluation, precisely because it preempts (or at least seeks to preempt) the Bush Administration’s attempt to do the same.
Tim F. seems to think that our policy on Iran should not be used as a political football. I agree, and I think it’s safe to say that Jon Henke also agrees.
And safe to say that George W. Bush and his administration and his administration’s supporters disagree. So, why are you finger-pointing at Democrats?
But Tim F. then blasts those who use the “empty rhetorical gimmick” of using a single Atrios post as a statement of Democratic strategy. Rhetorical gimmick it might very well be. But empty? Unfortunately, no.
Empty, because while you stop to kick Atrios for using Iran as a political football, you ignore the fact that we can be certain George W. Bush will use Iran as a political football. That’s what Bush does.
BTW von, what the hell does “Defendants” mean in this context? Are Republicans the plaintiffs here or something? Is this a suit brought against Democrats because Republicans ran over and killed their own children in their own driveway and all the Democrats did was yell “Hey stop! Stop, dammit! There’s kids behind you!” instead of yanking the starter motor out of the car the day before?
Is this supposed to be another one of those Animal House “you trusted us” moments?
What makes anyone think that the right-wing nationalists of Iran and the United States can deal with each other within our historical context?:
——————————————-
MOHAMMAD REZA PAHLEVI
Shah of Iran
1953 was a busy year for Allen Dulles. Even as he readied the CIA for a coup in Guatemala, his agents were toppling the liberal left government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq and paving the way for the Shah of Iran. With Dulles’ encouragement, the Shah made the Iranian people an offer they couldn’t refuse — join his party or go to jail. Thousands who refused to yield were imprisoned or murdered. During regional elections in 1954, the Shah’s agents raided a religious school and hurled hundreds of students to their deaths from the roof. His regime received 100% of the vote that year, in an election which registered more votes than there were voters.
The Shah’s subsequent solidification of power led to an iron fisted rule enforced by fear and torture. His secret police agency, SAVAK, was created in 1957 and managed by the CIA at all levels of daily operation, including the choice and organization of personnel, selection and operation of equipment, and the running of agents. SAVAK’s torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails. Iran under the Shah became a devoted US ally and a base for spy operations on the border of the Soviet Union. But eventually, the Shah was overthrown in 1978 by an indigenous people’s revolution that held sway until fundamentalist religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile and reasserted his power during the 1979 US hostage crisis.
——————————————-
What follows is an accurate chronology of United States involvement in the arming of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war 1980-88. It is a powerful indictment of the president Bush administration attempt to sell war as a component of his war on terrorism. It reveals US ambitions in Iraq to be just another chapter in the attempt to regain a foothold in the Mideast following the fall of the Shah of Iran.
From
Arming Iraq: A Chronology of U.S. Involvement
——————————————-
Whatever his complexes, Khomeini had no qualms about sending his followers, including young boys, off to their deaths for his greater glory. This callous disregard for human life was no less characteristic of Saddam Hussein. And, for that matter, it was also no less characteristic of much of the world community, which not only couldn’t be bothered by a few hundred thousand Third World corpses, but tried to profit from the conflict.
From:
The United States and Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988
President Bush made bellicose statements about Iraq in 2002, and is doing it again for Iran in 2006, for domestic political consumption. This sure as hell doesn’t make me feel any better either that there’s an American constituency that laps this stuff up.
“What policy do the Democrats offer on Iran?”
Hmm, I wonder if Clark has an public opinion on the subject. Or HRC. Or anybody prominent on the left.
I wonder the same about those on the right, for that matter.
Given that the options, esp. given the Iraq debacle, suck.
Actually, Eric, I agree with you. With Bush and his followers in this country and rightwing nuts in Iran, there’s plenty of reason for alarm.
BTW von, what the hell does “Defendants” mean in this context?
Erm, Freudian slip? (It’s fixed now; thanks.)
To paraphrase Bender, “Bite my shiny metal behind.” I didn’t vote this clown car administratiion.
Like anyone else who criticises their bungling and arrogance, I guess I’m lumped in with Cindy Sheen. A woman who had the temerity to point out that George Bush’s foreign policies have been a disaster and continue to be so.
Gosh, how rude and silly of her.
A disaster is coming and somehow it’s our fault if we can’t find a way around the Swift-boating liars and cynical polical hacks like Karl Rove.
Screw that.
What mythical plan is it the Democarts should present that the Bushites would even look at, much less follow?
When the shooting starts I will say with a quite clear conscience: WE TOLD YOU SO.
To paraphrase Bender, “Bite my shiny metal behind.” I didn’t vote this clown car administratiion.
Like anyone else who criticises their bungling and arrogance, I guess I’m lumped in with Cindy Sheen. A woman who had the temerity to point out that George Bush’s foreign policies have been a disaster and continue to be so.
Gosh, how rude and silly of her.
A disaster is coming and somehow it’s our fault if we can’t find a way around the Swift-boating liars and cynical polical hacks like Karl Rove.
Screw that.
What mythical plan is it the Democarts should present that the Bushites would even look at, much less follow?
When the shooting starts I will say with a quite clear conscience: WE TOLD YOU SO.
There will not be shooting, the Mullahs will get their nukes.
Bush has to look “tough” while they do.
Yep, Donald. And I agree with the pessimistic view earlier in this thread concerning the ability of “right-wing nationalists” who “dominate and articulate our nation’s priorities”, to settle issues diplomatically with other kinds of right-wing nationalists in Iran and elsewhere.
Jon Henke: “To each their own, of course, but I’m a big fan of evaluating the case on its merits. Should the administration propose we actually do something, I’ll let you know what I think then.”
The case is that this administration lied through its teeth to wage aggressive war for partisan political gain. The case is that the administration lied to the American people about matters of war and national security. The case is that the administration and its supports accused honest, patriotic people of being traitors, all the while betraying the country themselves. The case is that the administration and its supporting propagandists profited politically from the lies. The case is that the administration seriously botched the war, from a combination of arrogance, incompetancy and corruption. The case is that they haven’t suffered much from botching the war. The case is that many of the supporters of the administration will, quite dishonestly, blame everybody else for the current situation. The case is that many of the supporters of the administration are now doing very similar things to what they did in 2002-03.
That’s the case.
I don’t think that Von’s use of ‘defendant’ to discuss Democrats was a Freudian slip, so much as a Republican slip.
Oh no! I was mind-reading! Quel horreur! Prosecution rests, yer honor.
And von, I guess I’ll go ahead and mention that while I have some respect for your intentions I no longer find little exchanges like this one particularly amusing. One way or another people are going to suffer and die over this issue, and I have no reason to believe that you plan to sincerely contemplate the subconscious logic that caused you to flash on Dems as “Defendants.”
Since it’s painfully obvious from the outside of your head that this post lays blame in a context where one would expect you to, oh, I don’t know, accept responsibility, maybe, I’m very much afraid that your having copped to it will just be (from my POV) the latest in a long string of bitter ironies to file under “battered spouse,” “enabler,” and other less polite epithets.
I guess I’ll find out in your next post on the imminent Iranian threat…
“There will not be shooting, the Mullahs will get their nukes.
Bush has to look “tough” while they do.”
Nope. Iran will get their nukes, and Bush/Israel won’t be able to stop them, but will bomb them anyway just to look tough. And for a lot of other reasons having little to do with national security.
Of course it depends on how the midterms look as to whether it happens this year or in 2008.
Ya know, it isn’t as if we couldn’t see it coming.
“President Bush made bellicose statements about Iraq in 2002, and is doing it again for Iran in 2006, for domestic political consumption. This sure as hell doesn’t make me feel any better either that there’s an American constituency that laps this stuff up.”
Nice sarcasm, but the funniest thing is you don’t seem to realize how badly it hurts your case.
Bush invaded Iraq. By your analogy then, Ahmadinejad will use nuclear weapons to annihilate Israel when Iran obtains them.
By your analogy then
Was there an analogy there? I thought Eric was just making a statement. If you don’t think that Bush made bellicose statements about Iraq in 2002 and don’t think he’s making them now about Iran and you deny the existence of an American constituency that ‘laps up’ this kind of talk, you can certainly disagree with Eric, but disagreeing doesn’t make it an analogy.
What policy do the Democrats offer on Iran?
oh fer fnck’s sake.
how do you make a “policy” when the situation is less than a week old and still unfolding ? for all you know the entire thing could end up solved in a conference call tomorrow.
Sniping from the sidelines — no matter how trenchant that sniping may be — will get them nothing.
yawn.
there are probably under two dozen people in the entire US who have any effect at all on what happens between the US and Iran. everyone else, including you are simply sniping from the sidelines. Congressmen from either side have little say in the matter, Democrats even less than that. there input will be mocked, derided, scorned (and co-opted if reasonable) but there’s absolutely no way any Democrat is going to get credit for anything BushCo actually ends up implementing.
wake up. the Democrats are powerless when an administration that sees itself above negotiation with the opposition, let alone one that sees itself above negotiation with Congress in general.
the Democrats are powerless when an administration that sees itself above negotiation with the opposition, let alone one that sees itself above negotiation with Congress in general.
To respond to Cleek directly (and Radish by implication): The Democrats may be powerless to have final say on policy, but they are not powerless to enunciate policy. Indeed, in addition to opposing, proposing alternative policies is what the opposition party is supposed to do.
how do you make a “policy” when the situation is less than a week old and still unfolding ?
Huh? Maybe I’m just extraordinarily well informed, but I thought that this breaking point — mad mullah, press for nukes, ineffective negotiations — had been coming for months.
The Democratic party leaders need to have a policy because, as elected officials, it is their responisbility to think about important issues and develope solutions.
They also need a slogan for electioneering purposes.
All of the attacks on Bush, be they ever so valid, don’t amount to either a policy or a slogan.
I want Democrats to win in the 06 elelctions. Therefore I want them to develop an effective slogan. I would like them to have some actual power by 08. Therefore I would like them to develop a policy.
Given the habits of our fellow voters, the policy and the slogan don’t have to match.
Von, aren’t you supposed to be watching a footbal game?
Here’s how it will play out: We will talk tought. We might even drop a few bombs (I sincerly doubt it, but we might). In the end it will go back the negotiating table.
Why? Because there’s no other options. “There will be war”? With whose army, exactly. Not ours. Ours is busy — and if you don’t see the absolutely insanity in trying to invade Iran with Iraq at our backs (or, God forbid, irking Iran enough for them to come over the border — you realize most of our tanks came back home, right? Their riders are patrolling Iraq, but their rides. Irans tanks might be old, but Bradleys and Hummers aren’t going to stand up to them).
How hard is this to understand? The only military option is targetted aerial bombardment — which is almost certainly insufficient unless we’re dropping nukes. Ergo, no matter how many sabers you rattle, no matter how often you blame the Democrats, it WILL come down to the negotiating table where it will be ALL Bush — not a single Dem will have any input, sway, pull or influence over it.
And while a political mastermind might work a wonder at the table, this is Bush we’re talking about.. And Iran will get their nukes.
And some idiots will blame the Democrats, and we’ll call them idiots, and they’ll call us traitors and this stupid freakin’ cycle of idiocy will contine OVER AND FREAKING OVER UNTIL SOMEONE HOLDS THE GOP ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR OWN FREAKING ACTIONS.
Which will be sometime in 2020.
The Democrats may be powerless to have final say on policy, but they are not powerless to enunciate policy.
true. i haven’t heard any Democrats propose policy on Iran. and neither have i heard any Republicans propose any policy on Iran. is there an official Republican Iran policy ?
but, should a Democratic Congressperson propose policy publically, what will the Republican response be? that’s easy: the GOP base will shout how it’s not Congress’ job to conduct critical foreign policy in Time of War. and if it’s a good idea, the GOP will shout it down, brand it as their own and beat the Dems over the head for not thinking of it themselves.
Huh? Maybe I’m just extraordinarily well informed, but I thought that this breaking point — mad mullah, press for nukes, ineffective negotiations — had been coming for months.
the situation has been stable for months. this “breaking point” is new news.
von, I agree with you that the Democrats are a disappointment.
But, I have this feeling of déjà vu. In November, 2003, Thomas Friedman wrote an op-ed titled “the Chant Not Heard,” where he exhorted the left to “to get beyond its opposition to the war,” because building democracy in Iraq “is way too important to leave it to the Bush team alone.” In the same op-ed, he acknowledged the Democrats’ dilemma, admitting that “the Bush team is such a partisan, ideological, nonhealing administration.”
Can anyone believe that the administration will do anything but use this as another club to bludgeon the Democrats, painting them as weak on defense, regardless of whether the Democrats put forward useful recommendations?
The only rational course for the Democrats is to oppose the administration tooth and nail. This is not an ideal course, but it is the only course that has been left open. Alas, our national security suffers from this poisonous atmosphere (both domestic and international). In my view, George W. Bush encourages it, and bears a heavy burden of responsibility.
Here is another voice pointing out that they just don’t listen.
“how do you make a “policy” when the situation is less than a week old and still unfolding ?”
What? This situation has been an obvious problem for at least 3 years. Various authors on this very blog, for example, have said as much for more than a year. The idea that the “Iran wants nuclear weapons despite international ‘pressure’ that they don’t get them” is a new situation is completely wrong. The only thing that has changed at all is that some of the EU countries have finally woken up to reality.
Right at this particular moment I’m inclined to think that the Democrats shouldn’t formulate any policy of their own, but constantly press for Republicans to enunciate their principles and policies based on them, and hammer on the stupidities and inconsistencies, and remind the public of previous lies and deceit on the Republicans’ part, and very much play up Bush’s responses to people who tried to tell him and us about unwelcome truths. This is not the time for Democrats to save Republicans’ bacon, but to make Republicans look as bad as the truth will support and get them out of office.
Democrats have as much of a policy as a good campaign requires: honesty, competence on the part of authorities, international negotiations, rewards for cooperation and good behavior, review of past successes and failures to learn lessons. The sensible thing beyond that is simply to say “We’ll have to evaluate the situation once we get reliable information, which won’t happen as long as Bush and his crew see it as a tool of partisan advantage rather than a matter of national importance.”
Aha: a Republican on Iran:
How does this help. We already know it [offering support for iran’s nuclear energy program] is a bluff, right? Is there anyone who doesn’t know that? Are there people who really believe that Iran wants only a non-military nuclear program? If so, who are they? Felixrayman perhaps? If not, why must we all pretend what is obviously not true?
And once the bluff is called, and it becomes clearer (?????) that Iran wants nuclear weapons, then what? You might as well try to figure it out now because that is exactly what is going to happen. And all “calling their bluff” will have done is given them more time to get further along in their nuclear program…
and how these paragraphs would’ve looked if written in september 2002:
How does this help. We already know it [calling for UN inspections in iraq] is a bluff, right? Is there anyone who doesn’t know that? Are there people who really believe that Iraq doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction? If so, who are they? Felixrayman perhaps? If not, why must we all pretend what is obviously not true?
And once the bluff is called, and it becomes clearer (?????) that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, then what? You might as well try to figure it out now because that is exactly what is going to happen. And all “calling their bluff” will have done is given them more time to get further along in developing weapons of mass destruction…
it’s just too depressing to contemplate how little has been learnt.
the administration’s plan for iran is no more sophisticated, AFAIK, than “bomb the sandniggers, then, we win!” [which is not unlike their iraq plan of “invade the sandniggers, then, we win!”]. despite this, we’re supposed to get all indignant about the democrats’ lack of a plan, and somehow not notice (a) the adminstration also does not have a plan, and (b) the fact of (a) is the more important issue.
i can see no evidence of the white house having an actual plan for iran [or, not coincidentally, north korea]. also:
Better, of course, would be if the Demcratic leadership organically recognized that there are bad people in the world and that it’s not automatically GWB’s fault that they exist.
still waiting for the name of a democratic leader about whom this could be fairly said.
Just as there was no intrinsic reason to launch the Iraq war before the Afghanistan project was complete, so it is now premature to talk about doing anything serious with Iram before the Iraq project has moved a few more yards downfield.
Think, for a moment, how much better the world would look today if we’d spent an extra year with full court press on AQ before changing focus to Iraq. Now think what good could come of embracing stability, rather than madness, on the long eastern frontier of Iraq.
I get that people are shocked, shocked to find that the regime we’ve installed in Iraq is going to be friendlier to Iran than the one we replaced. Or even that Iran has real interests in helping to shape the regime there. (As if its interests were any less than ours, fer chrissakes!) But surely regime change in Iran, as a way to cure what ails the Iraq project, is madness of the first order.
Failing a linkage between Iran and Iraq, there’s no reason for anyone to be doing anything rash in 2006 or 2007. Iran’s far away from being dangerous, and likely to have regime change of its own, on a reasonable schedule, if only we’d stop legitimizing nationalism there.
You’d think the people who believed that democracy in Iraq would cause, or at lest inspire, democratic change in the region would at least be willing to give it a chance to work in the most democratic state (not saying much, of course) state in the ME. But no, it’s become clear enough that they don’t believe in the passive benefits of Iraqi democracy afterall, but it’s just another line of bullsh*t to sell the thing.
Nobody could give me a good reason in late 2002/2003 why we had to invade Iraq before having captured UBL, and I’m waiting for someone to give me a good reason to strike Iran before the Iraqi insurgencies have been mostly stamped out.
The elephant in the room is the American election cycle, and the need of one side to scream about security/treason to change the subject from its core polocies. Can one of you honest conservatives make a good faith effort at showing a best-interests-of-the-United-States reason to jump into this in 2006?
As for what Dems should do, I’m reminded that all last spring, pundits kept saying that Dems needed to propose an alternative to Bush’s SS revamp. Many of us responded by saying that doing so would only provide a target, a convenient way for Reps to change the subject from their own plan’s obvious flaws. There was time enough last year to wait either for divided government, or a centrist government, where a reasonable deal could be made. And so there is, even if the pundits didn’t get their wish.
If I was asked — and I won’t be — I’d offer similar advice with respect to policy towards Iran. There’s no upside for any Dem to propose anything at all with respect to Iran, and plenty of downside. Let the Admin show its cards, and even play a hand or two, first.
Are there people who really believe that Iran wants only a non-military nuclear program? If so, who are they? Felixrayman perhaps?
I’m wishing you a speedy recovery from whatever it is that is wrong with you, Sebastian.
This situation has been an obvious problem for at least 3 years
uh huh
Various authors on this very blog, for example, have said as much for more than a year.
a quick search shows that it hasn’t been a very hot topic here – there are no more than a handful of comments that directly address Iran’s weapons program. and, certainly the world’s sudden excitement over the ‘breaking of seals’ shows that what just happened is new, different and a change from what had been happening before.
you’ll have a hard time convincing me that the level of Iran-related rhetoric is the same today as it was two weeks, two months or two years ago.
The idea that the “Iran wants nuclear weapons despite international ‘pressure’ that they don’t get them” is a new situation is completely wrong.
i’ll let you battle your own strawmen.
Whores for war will do anything to kill.
Von: “Better, of course, would be if the Demcratic leadership organically recognized that there are bad people in the world and that it’s not automatically GWB’s fault that they exist. ”
Von, are you still claiming to have voted for Kerry?
Various authors on this very blog, for example, have said as much for more than a year.
we have always been at war with Iran
“we have always been at war with Iran”
Then explain why Iran helped the US in Afghanistan.
Then explain why Iran helped the US in Afghanistan
i recommend reading some of my other posts in the thread.
What I don’t get is this:
Many folks got all crazy when Edward made certain observations concerning Mao, healthcare and the lives of the “average” Chinese.
Yet, many of the same critics, on the right, embrace a banality of evil when it comes to the Middle East.
Advocating the death of hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners, because the latest right-wing paranoia concerning geo-strategic theories demands it, is not exactly the best way to represent “democratic values” and national security. Our existential safety is contingent on the lives of a few hundred thousand Third World corpses?
No wonder the Iranians are acting like Bush and Cheney!
And Bin Ladden gets away with mass murder.
It’s like we got Dale Gribble and Eric Cartman running foreign policy.
“a quick search shows that it hasn’t been a very hot topic here – there are no more than a handful of comments that directly address Iran’s weapons program. and, certainly the world’s sudden excitement over the ‘breaking of seals’ shows that what just happened is new, different and a change from what had been happening before.
you’ll have a hard time convincing me that the level of Iran-related rhetoric is the same today as it was two weeks, two months or two years ago.”
I’m not sure how much you want us to talk about a topic before it counts as a hot topic, but it was the main topic of conversation:
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
I think there are a bunch more if I look harder, and I know that the issue comes up in side-discussions in the comments to other posts all the time.
Pretty much the only thing new about the current situation is that some European countries are finally waking up to how bad the situation has been for the past five years. As far as new developments go it is welcome. But the Iranian part of it isn’t new.
Sebastian: Pretty much the only thing new about the current situation is that some European countries are finally waking up to how bad the situation has been for the past five years.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Pretty much the only thing new about the situation with Iran is that the whole world including Iran knows any threat of US invasion is futile: the US has no military options left, and George W. Bush has no credibility with anyone outside the US.
Most Republicans – at least, the Bush supporters – seem to have been pretending that Iraq was the big issue because that was the Middle Eastern country Bush wanted to invade, and it was impossible for them to say “Bush is wrong”, either then or now. So, lay blame for the escalating situation in Iran somewhere else. Anywhere else. Von lays blame on the Democrats; you lay blame on the Europeans: neither of you want to lay blame where it rightfully belongs, with Bush and with the Republicans who have blindly supported Bush and savaged his critics.
I’m not sure how much you want us to talk about a topic before it counts as a hot topic, but it was the main topic of conversation
ten posts over three years ? sounds pretty stable to me.
the US has no military options left, and George W. Bush has no credibility with anyone outside the US.
The latter is pretty accurate, but the former isn’t. I know that the Pentagon (specifically under Rumsfeld and, I think, Bolton’s (?) direction) were exploring the idea of tactical nuclear weapons with a specific eye for preemptive strikes against Iran. [I don’t have any cites off-hand, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to dig around for those; if memory serves, it was circa September 2002.] I haven’t heard anything about those programs in the interim, but it’s conceivable that progress on them has continued unabated for the past few years. Even without tacnukes, though, we’ve got the airpower to pretty much flatten Iran if we really really want to.
IOW, don’t confuse our inability to orchestrate a coherent invasion (let alone occupation) with an inability to pursue military options…
Anarch: but the former isn’t. I know that the Pentagon (specifically under Rumsfeld and, I think, Bolton’s (?) direction) were exploring the idea of tactical nuclear weapons with a specific eye for preemptive strikes against Iran.
When I wrote “the US has no military options left”, I did think of adding “aside from escalating the situation to nuclear war” and then cut it out because it seemed unnecessary doom-mongering.
Silly me.
IOW, don’t confuse our inability to orchestrate a coherent invasion (let alone occupation) with an inability to pursue military options…
Well, yes. The US could just decide to bomb the hell out of Iraq, with or without the use of nuclear weapons. And might, I suppose, if Bush thought it would help the Republicans in the 2006 elections.
to bomb the hell out of Iraq
*blushes*
“…to bomb the hell out of Iran.”
Your initial comment was “how do you make a “policy” when the situation is less than a week old and still unfolding?”
Then some people pointed out that it has been obvious for at least three years.
Then you suggested that if it was so obvious it didn’t make sense that there was very little talk about it.
Then I pointed out that, at least here, there was quite a bit of talk about it. And if you read any of the posts, which I doubt, you would notice that many of them mention the exact same things a year or more ago that are being talked about know. This suggests that the same issues were noticeable earlier than “less than a week” ago. This would presumably be especially true for Congressmen who specialize in foreign policy and military issues.
“ten posts over three years ? sounds pretty stable to me.”
The Iran situation sounds stable or the posting level is stable? If the latter, doesn’t that support the idea that people could have easily noticed the Iran nuclear problem before “less than a week” ago? If the former, the situation is stable only in the sense that Iran has been constantly pushing for a nuclear problem for decades and the major change will occur when they actually have them or when someone acts to stop the programs. I would tend to prefer the latter, especially since (unlike many on this thread) I actually think they may be serious with the threat to wipe Israel off the map with nuclear weapons. As I mentioned before, they could almost certainly kill or seriously injure more than 2/3 of the population of Israel by hitting only three targets (Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva).
As far as military responses, the US is pretty much in no worse a position than it was 5 years ago. An invasion of Iran isn’t likely now and it wasn’t likely then. In all cases a bombing strike or series of bombing strikes was much more likely. They are still very much possible. The question is whether or not we will be willing to do them, and whether or not much of the international community will support them. The answer to the second question appears to be no, in as much as the international community doesn’t even appear to be willing to try sanctions–much less more direct action.
Sebastian,
“As far as military responses, the US is pretty much in no worse a position than it was 5 years ago.”
May I have some of what you’re smoking? Do you serious mean to say that breaking the back of the army to the point that maintaining the level of forces we have in Iraq is becoming unsupportable leaves us in no worse a position as to military responses?
As far as military responses, the US is pretty much in no worse a position than it was 5 years ago.
Aside from (as Dan already pointed out) breaking the US army, and the Bush administration making an enemy of the CIA, and ensuring that the US has no credibility with other nations so long as any remnant of the Bush administration is in power…
…but if your first thought is just to kill Iranians, lots of them, and to hell with what anyone else in the world thinks about the US doing this, no, that’s not important.
Of course, you might ask yourself why, in 2006, mid-term elections coming up, Bush suddenly perceives a need to kill lots of Iranians in some spectacular manner.
Or you might not.
von, are you or are you not implying that it is more important for Dems to enunciate a policy on Iran than for Repubs to do so?
I honestly don’t know how else to interpret your post and your comments on this matter. And no, I don’t think the Repubs have enunciated a policy on Iran. Rhetoric yes. Policy? Show me some and we’ll talk.
Put differently, you say that “if Democrats want to play the foreign policy game…” as though it’s a given that they should want to do so. Why would they? To win elections? Well that doesn’t seem like a very good idea, because recent history suggests that Republicans are unconstrained by mere facts or merits. The safe bet is that the GOP will not only grossly misrepresent whatever Democrats say but ratchet up the flammability of the rhetoric without addressing the merits of any policy the Democrats might propose.
That leaves Democrats in an awkward position: They can attempt to insert some actual nuance into the conversation only to see it used against them yet again (think Lucy, Charlie Brown and football); they can abandon empiricism as a basis for policy (at which point it ceases to be recognizable as policy); or they can keep their mouths shut.
So why exactly do you think they are obligated to choose option one? It doesn’t do the nation any good, and it certainly doesn’t do them any good. As CharleyCarp points out, strategy #3 even has a recent track record.
Remember when the GOP was practically begging the Dems to propose a new SS policy, in a manner disturbingly similar to the pleading you are now doing w/r/t Iran. Not only did the Democratic refusal to offer an alternative SS plan deprive the GOP of talking points, but it actually worked out better for the nation. That decision effectively prevented SS from meeting the same fate that Medicare is meeting right now.
I will note at this point also that your description of foreign policy as a “game” is another word choice that I find rather unfortunate for what it suggests about your internal landscape.
Of the military responses likely–air strikes–no.
to the bomb-’em crowd:
assume that in the fall of ’06 the US launches a massive series of air raids against Iran,
what happens next?
a) the iranians dig in even deeper, and the next sign of their program is a nuke going off in a boat coming up the Potomac. (note, here, the ties between Pakistan and Iran and our apparent utter failure to have diagnosed the scope of the Pakistan Bomb program.)
b) nothing except a whole bunch of outraged commentary. (note, here, the Israeli strike on Osirak and US strikes on Libya.)
c) a massive increase by Iran in arms and funding to Hezbollah.
d) oil war? embargoes by OPEC nations?
e) real regional war? a significant attempt by Iran to destroy US forces in Iraq coupled with serious strikes against US naval assets in the Persian gulf?
can we for once in this administration think about the consequences of our actions?
The Iran situation sounds stable or the posting level is stable?
the Iran situation was stable – Iran hadn’t nuke anyone or do a test of a nuke or anything like that; and the CIA still says they’re basically a decade away from any kind of real nuclear capability. but, yes something small happened recently that might advance them ever-so-slightly towards aquiring nukes.
still, nobody, not even the Serious Hawks, knows if what happened is a tipping point that will inevitably lead to the doomsday scenario all y’all seem so concerned about. it could be just another small move in a long slow game.
but those of you who insist that Democrats need a policy NOW!!! because this is a CRISIS!!!! and if they don’t come up with one the party is DOOMED!!! seem to claiming to be able to predict the future. yet i can look to Atrios’ prediction and nod approvingly, having lived through nearly the exact same situation four years ago.
i didn’t fall for the WMD hype the last time around, and i’m not falling for it now. especially having seem how easily it is to make the smallest nothings seem like EARTH SHATTERING PORTENTS OF DOOM – over and over, for a month, two months, a year – until the mountain of “evidence” seems so huge that only America-hating traitors and Saddamites are left wondering if there might be a problem with all of it. but i expect 70% of the country will fall for it, again, for a time.
you know, back when the first talk of invading Iraq started up, i often asked “why not invade Iran? if going after countries with WMDs and al-Q ties is the goal, Iran country looks like a much better target. Pakistan, too.” now, i’m glad nobody listened to my advice: with the Republicans at the wheel, Iraq is a mess; Iran would have turned out much much worse.
finally, CharleyCarp is right, above: “There’s no upside for any Dem to propose anything at all with respect to Iran, and plenty of downside. Let the Admin show its cards, and even play a hand or two, first.”
In general, it’s hard to form a coherent and detailed foreign policy when the situation constantly changes for the worse because the party actually in power completely ignores what you say and f***s everything up. (I realize the world was and will be f***ed up anyway but these guys make it worse.)
The interim suggestions you make WILL be ingored and will very likely no longer make sense by the time when you get in a position to implement them (2009 at the earliest) or even seriously pressure Bush to implement them (2007 at the earliest). Now, you do need to know how you’re going to vote on the bills that do come before Congress, and be able to explain your vote, and remain engaged with the situation such that when you finally are in a position to influence policy, you’ll know what you’re talking about. But to be kvetching that Harry Reid doesn’t have a fully developed geostrategic vision on Iran when no one has any clue what the Bush administration plans to do about Iran is nonsensical.
Seriously–what’s the administration’s policy here? I wish I knew. I remember asking on inauguration day: “does this mean we’ll be bombing Iran in time for the midterms? I don’t think we can stop it but it’d be nice to know.”
If I had to guess I would give 30-40% odds that there’s a vote on a blank check use of force resolution before the midterms. Just too good a product to pass up, even if they have no intention of actually calling in airstrikes. So the Democrats need to figure out how they will react to that.
Sebastian, you think the large % of the U.S. army fighting an insurgency/trying to prevent a civil war in Iraq is irrelevant to the plausibility of airstrikes? You really think the the lack of a credible threat of ground troops is irrelevant? Okeydoke.
Do you think non-nuclear airstrikes would actually eliminate the nuclear program? If so I’ve got to wonder why it took a regime change to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear threat when it’s always been completely freaking obvious that Iraq’s capcacity was much less than Iran’s. You’re not buying into the harebrained theory Hersh alluded to last year about how people are going to rise up and overthrow the mullahs when they’re shown to be vulnerable, are you?
Believe me, I am NOT freaking happy with a nutty Holocaust denier with nukes that could reach Israel, but the president of Iran is not actually the one in charge of the country. Khatami wasn’t and I see no reason to believe this guy is. I think they’re deterrable. And I don’t see any other options. I mean, I’d support sanctions but I don’t honestly think they will work. Maybe this could have been stopped if we had an administration interested in stopping nuclear weapons proliferation, but instead we had one that was interested in dishonestly using hyping a nuclear threat as a pretext for an invasion that had other motives.
sorry for the meandering comment above. i prefer one liners.
the Iran situation was stable – Iran hadn’t nuke anyone or do a test of a nuke or anything like that
that sentence would’ve made a lot more sense if i didn’t decide to go back and mess with the verb tense for no reason, after finishing the rest of the post.
try it like this:
the Iran situation was stable – Iran didn’t nuke anyone or do a test of a nuke or anything like that.
Those Who Do Not Learn From The Past. . .
Von has an entry up which is emblematic of the pattern which is yet again playing out in the American body politic. According to Von’s Worldtm, the whole problem is with the Democrats. You see, because they’re such wimps and…
Those Who Do Not Learn From The Past. . .
Von has an entry up which is emblematic of the pattern which is yet again playing out in the American body politic. According to Von’s Worldtm, the whole problem is with the Democrats. You see, because they’re such wimps and…
If Israel armed with nuclear weapons doesn’t deter them, I’m not sure what would. IIRC Israel just purchased another lot of bunker buster conventional bombs, so it’s well within the realm of possibility that they’re engineering a raid on either the leadership (the crazies actually in charge, I mean), the facilities or both. And with airbases in Iraq under US control, it’s not out of the question that we’d either let them land and refuel or give them tanker support because we own the airspace. They’d have Jordan or Syria to contend with in an air raid, and whether that’s a stopper or not, I just don’t know.
Israel also has sub-launched nukes, but their range isn’t enough (AFAIK) to give them the reach even from the North end of the Persian Gulf.
Josh Marshall sums it up pretty well.
Sebastian,
If “Of the military responses likely–air strikes–no.” was directed in response to my comment, do you believe:
a. that Iran has learned nothing in the quarter century since the Israelis stopped the Iraqi program about how to make their program less vulnerable to air strikes;
b. that air strikes alone will end the matter, in that the Iranians being so chastened by our actions, will not attempt to rebuild their program; and
c. that the air strikes will support our long term goal of supporting and encouraging peaceful democratic relations in the Middle East?
It seems you need all 3 of these to be answered in the affirmative for air strikes to be effective, and I can’t see any are likely.
Not only did the Democratic refusal to offer an alternative SS plan deprive the GOP of talking points, but it actually worked out better for the nation. That decision effectively prevented SS from meeting the same fate that Medicare is meeting right now.
Another related point that doesn’t get made enough is that the GOP doesn’t actually produce meaningful policies. It produces rhetoric with the appearance of policy but to end the story there is to miss the point completely. These policy-esque proclamations are primarily a goad to spur Democratic responses which, regardless of their merits, are then used as fodder for Democrat-bashing and repositioning on the issues (often extending into outright co-opting of Democratic ideas, cf the Department of Homeland Security). Those talking points you’re talking about aren’t symptomatic of the Republican reactionism, they’re the hardcoded second level of the Republican strategy for political dominance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a brilliant strategy given an uncritical/compliant/complicit media, since it gives the appearance of a debate to the uncritical eye, while sparing Republicans of ever actually doing the hard work of government: coming up with real-world, pragmatic policies that will improve the lives of its citizens (and the world at large) and then implementing those policies effectively.
IOW, Charles Bird was right in that we do have a Party of No: the Republican Party. No ideas, no policies, no substance beyond the eternal struggle for political supremacy. There’s no there there. Given this, Democratic temporizing is precisely the right strategy, I’m sorry to say; deprived of its only source of legitimate policies, the GOP might actually have to stand for something, instead of standing against liberals/Democrats at one remove.
NB: I’m referring here only to upper-echelon GOP members, not the wider Republican “penumbra” nor to rank-and-file Republicans, many of whom do have actual policy suggestions. [Most of which suck, of course, but that’s neither here nor there 😉 ] There’s a small caveat in this observation to do with religious issues, but I’ve neither the time nor the energy to analyze those on these terms.
Cleek:
“the Iran situation was stable – Iran didn’t nuke anyone or do a test of a nuke or anything like that.”
Statements like this make me absolutely nuts. After Iran has nuked Tel Aviv it is a little bit late to worry about nuclear proliferation. After Iran has conducted a successful nuclear test (and we won’t know about the unsuccessful ones) it is too late. It sounds to me like non-proliferation isn’t that important to you if that is your threshold of worry. That is a coherent position for opposing action against Iran and not seeing a need for Democrats or Republicans to find a policy for stopping proliferation. But if that is indeed your position, just say so. I’ll marshall different arguments against that postion. If that isn’t your position, your comments aren’t comprehensible to me.
Katherine:
“Believe me, I am NOT freaking happy with a nutty Holocaust denier with nukes that could reach Israel, but the president of Iran is not actually the one in charge of the country. Khatami wasn’t and I see no reason to believe this guy is. I think they’re deterrable.”
What about Rafsanjani’s “If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists’ strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality”?
He is one of the most prominent clerics. He is still the Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council (which “negotiates” [read dictates] conflicts between the legislature and the Council of Guardians [more commonly known as the mullahs]). The only person with clearly more power is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (at least as far as formal power goes, I can’t speak to who may or may not be in charge behind the scenes if the Ayatollah isn’t really the person in charge of the clerics).
That puts one of the highest level clerics (and former president) and the current president both on record at different times suggesting that the Muslim world should be willing to risk nuclear counterstrike in order to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons.
“I mean, I’d support sanctions but I don’t honestly think they will work.”
Well they certainly won’t work if Europe isn’t on board, and it appears from today’s news that they probably aren’t willing to employ sanctions.
“Do you think non-nuclear airstrikes would actually eliminate the nuclear program? If so I’ve got to wonder why it took a regime change to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear threat when it’s always been completely freaking obvious that Iraq’s capcacity was much less than Iran’s. You’re not buying into the harebrained theory Hersh alluded to last year about how people are going to rise up and overthrow the mullahs when they’re shown to be vulnerable, are you?”
No I don’t particularly buy that theory. It would be nice I suppose, but counting on anything even remotely in that zone would be deeply stupid. I fully expect temporary retrenchment.
As far as the efficiency of airstrikes, I suspect they would be largely effective, especially in destroying the most dangerous piece–reactors. I can’t vouch for totally effective, that certainty isn’t ever available in such things.
Beautifully nailed on the Party of No, Anarch. There are, of course, quite a few Republicans up to fairly high in the party who do have ideas, often ones founded in principles I respect and may even agree with, who are genuinely concerned with competence, legality, honesty, and efficiency, among other good things.
And their thoughts influence policy just as much as mine do.
Katherine, I forgot to reply to this part of your comment: “If so I’ve got to wonder why it took a regime change to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear threat when it’s always been completely freaking obvious that Iraq’s capcacity was much less than Iran’s.”
We tried to deal with Iraq first because it had a confluence of factors which made it more dangerous and it had a history with the international community. It had previously invaded Iran and Kuwait. It had previously used banned weapons. It had previously had an advanced and undetected by the international community nuclear program (found only after it was defeated in Kuwait). It had previously not allowed inspections for almost four years. It was under sanctions at the time. It hadn’t accounted for that calutron–interestingly it still hasn’t been found. It was easier to deal with than Iran. It was thought that international support would be easier to obtain for dealing with Iraq. There were a large variety of reasons why dealing with Iraq made more sense.
“I suspect they would be largely effective, especially in destroying the most dangerous piece–reactors. I can’t vouch for totally effective, that certainty isn’t ever available in such things.”
unless, of course, you put soldiers on the ground.
i suspect that the occupation argument will follow once the air strike argument has had a chance to marinate for a while.
[btw, didn’t SH at one point complain bitterly about operation desert fox, on the grounds that air strikes alone are never enough because you never really know how effective they’ve been?]
another way to be sure about the destruction of iranian assets is to use nukes. the irony of using nukes on iran to prevent iran from using nukes elsewhere would not, i hope, be lost on the posters here.
Sebastian: We tried to deal with Iraq first because it had a confluence of factors which made it more dangerous
Only in Bush’s fantasies. Or, if you’re still of the opinion that Bush is honest but dumb, only in the bad intel spoonfed to the honest-but-dumb Bush administration by the evil CIA.
Interesting to see you repeat the list of invented reasons used to justify invading Iraq in 2003, as if you’d learned nothing in the past two years.
It was easier to deal with than Iran.
This was, I think, the one honest reason. And look at the catastrophic results of invading that “easy mark”, Iraq.
Ah yes, we wouldn’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud, now would we? Maybe you should have thought of that before Condi decided to use “The Little Girl Who Cried Wolf” as an instruction manual…
In all seriousness Sebastian, step back and look at what you’re saying here. You still think Iraq posed a threat? A threat that justified the opportunity cost? Now Iran will get nukes sooner or later, one way or another. Even if you bore no responsibility for encouraging that the milk be spilt in the first place (which you do, whether you see it or not — and there were plenty of warnings that invading Iraq would make Iran less deterrable if not undeterrable) you cannot unspill this milk. Getting all pissy about how somebody else isn’t cleaning it up is just, well, childish.
I believe Anarch has stumbled upon half of the man behind the curtain. The other half’s got to be around here; I thought I saw a quarter of a man in the market. If we can bring them all together, maybe change will result.
“Getting all pissy about how somebody else isn’t cleaning it up is just, well, childish.”
Posting rules, probably.
After Iran has nuked Tel Aviv it is a little bit late to worry about nuclear proliferation
more of that future-predicting. is that like the smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud ?
but again, i repeat, the CIA thinks Iran is years (prhaps a decade) from having any weapon at all, let alone one that can be mounted on a missile, let alone in a quantity large enough to serve as a deterrent of any kind.
for your Condoleezish scaremongering to have any effect, you have to convince me that you know the form and attitude of Iran’s government a decade from now, the state of their weapon’s program, the state of their relations with Israel and the state of their relations with the US (and Europe, Russia and China).
stopping proliferation is not something that needs to be addressed today with military action by the same gang who’ve proven time and again that they are incompetent when it comes to making predictions about WMD. there are other approaches and there are years to spare.
the Serious Hawks are simply batty.
“In all seriousness Sebastian, step back and look at what you’re saying here. You still think Iraq posed a threat? A threat that justified the opportunity cost? Now Iran will get nukes sooner or later, one way or another.”
Yes I still think Iraq posed a threat. The international community was abandoning sanctions. Saddam had a long history of playing the heartstrings of the international community by starving his own people while building palaces. So long as Saddam was in power, sanctions and inspections were going to have to be kept up indefinitely. That wasn’t going to happen. In fact, the international community was only interested in inspections so long as Bush had Marines on the doorstep while the will to enforce sanctions had vanished long before.
“Now Iran will get nukes sooner or later, one way or another.”
What do you mean by ‘now’? Would France have allowed the UN to authorize an invasion of Iran over nuclear proliferation concerns if there had been no Iraq invasion? Hardly. Invasion isn’t the question. Hell, couldn’t we at least try sanctions?
Sebastian wrote:
I think you are pretty far off here. Reactors are only necessary to produce plutonium (produced in a nuclear reactor). Once you have produced plutonium, you have to separate it out. This is fairly non-technical (simple chemistry, as I understand it), and doesn’t require the sort of physical infrastructure that a reactor does. Moreover, there are two routes to a nuclear bomb: plutonium and enriched uranium. The plutonium route requires a reactor, but the enriched uranium route doesn’t. As I understand it, the Iranians are enriching uranium (they claim for civilian reactor/power generation needs; no one believes them), not generating plutonium. Thus, the target of the airstrikes needs to be the centrifuges necessary for enriching uranium. These are harder to find than reactors, and (once Iran aquires the technology to make centrifuges on their own; did they get this from North Korea or Khan in Pakistan?), any embargo wouldn’t stop them. For that matter, once they’ve enriched enough uranium to a high enough degree, they don’t even need the centrifuges to make a bomb (though they would need them to make more bombs).
Thus, airstrikes are problematic. What do you bomb? How do you know you’ve gotten all the centrifuge plants (they can be hidden)? In order to be entirely sure of removing the nuclear option from Iran, you have to put boots on the ground. This is only possible through two methods: (1)Invasion (very problematic when we’re tied down in Iraq), or (2)IAEA inspectors (can be fooled, can be denied access, needs diplomacy, etc.).
There is no simple military solution to the problem.
Sebastian: Yes I still think Iraq posed a threat.
To whom? And why?
Hell, couldn’t we at least try sanctions?
And kill a million Iranian children like sanctions killed a million Iraqi children? You’re awfully insouciant about killing children of other nations, Sebastian.
“Invasion isn’t the question.”
Not anymore. When the army wasn’t broken, it was.
“Hell, couldn’t we at least try sanctions?”
Sure. Of course, getting “Old Europe’s” necessary cooperation in implementing them may have been easier before we spent the last few years denigrating them.
cleek wrote:
The argument about military intervention isn’t that it is (necessarily) the only option, but that it is (perhaps) the option that affords us the best chance of success, and (if done early enough) at the lowest cost. A crude analogy is: it’s better to shoot someone while their loading their gun, than wait until they’ve already got a few bullets in it.
It is possible that bombing Iran now might be cheaper than bombing Iran later (or failing to do anything later, or any number of other policy options).
I won’t however, attempt to argue that this administration has shown much competance. That doesn’t, however, remove any military (or diplomatic) effort from the table.
Those Who Do Not Learn From The Past. . .
Von has an entry up which is emblematic of the pattern which is yet again playing out in the American body politic. According to Von’s Worldtm, the whole problem is with the Democrats. You see, because they’re such wimps and…
A crude analogy is: it’s better to shoot someone while their loading their gun, than wait until they’ve already got a few bullets in it.
sorry, you can’t scare me in believing we can predict the future enough to know Iran is going to shoot anyone.
Whores for war, like it hard!
KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!
“the CIA thinks Iran is years (prhaps a decade) from having any weapon at all”
The CIA’s track record in predicting when countries will get nuclear weapons (in either direction) has been notoriously crappy. Remember India. Right up until India actually tried to detonate a thermonuclear bomb in 1998, they were thought to have pretty much abandoned their nuclear program and have at most a small uranium warhead. (There is still some controversy about whether or not India detonated a low yield thermonuclear bomb or a super-high yield bomb of another type). Then everyone was concerned this would destabilize the region because Pakistan didn’t have the bomb, and wouldn’t for many years. 15 days later, Pakistan detonated its nuclear test weapons. The CIA was convinced that Iraq was 5-7 years off of a nuclear device in 1989. After the first Gulf War (one year later) the extent of the actual Iraq program was discovered, and Iraq was found to be little more than a year away from having nuclear capability (some UN estimates put it at less than nine months).
The first mushroom cloud doesn’t have to be over Tel Aviv. It probably would be over the desert in Iran for a test. It is the location of the second mushroom cloud that worries me.
RE: “Not anymore. When the army wasn’t broken, it was.”
Don’t be silly. Except as a totally unilateral move, an invasion of Iran is politically impossible. We couldn’t even maintain international sanctions against Iraq, which had invaded two of its neighbors. We couldn’t even maintain inspectors without shipping half the army into the Gulf. Barring a nuclear explosion over Tel Aviv, and perhaps not even then, the international community wasn’t going to get behind an invasion of Iran. When people speak of “force” to stop or slow nuclear development in Iran, they are talking about air strikes.
RE: sanctions see Jesurgislac’s comment to for an explanation of why not even sanctions are likely from the international community. Europe’s idea of enforcing a treaty is glaring at people. They are increasingly finding that their diplomatic efforts are hampered more by the perception of complete lack of will or force behind them than US efforts are hampered by the perception of a not-finely-discriminate use of force. If you want to see the European force which backs up its diplomacy, look at the Sudan or the Balkan disaster before the US got involved. If you think that the US has a diminished credibility because it is stretched in Iraq, I don’t see how it is possible to believe that the EU has a credible threat (or will to use any threat they have) of force at all.
cleek wrote:
Actually, I wasn’t trying to scare you. I was only arguing (through a poor analogy) that there is a logic to why military action sooner is preferable to military/diplomatic action later. It is possible that Iran is run by crazed mullahs who will nuke Israel at the earliest opportunity: in that case, military action soonest is likely best.
My overall points was: there are times when military action is correct; is that the case in Iran?
I’m not convinced it is, but I’m also open to the idea that military action might be necessary, and possibly sooner rather than later.
“stopping proliferation is not something that needs to be addressed today with military action by the same gang who’ve proven time and again that they are incompetent when it comes to making predictions about WMD.”
I don’t think the incompetence of the Bush administration lets anyone off the hook. If another nation wanted to take the diplomatic lead for bombing I’m fairly sure the US would go along. But that isn’t what is happening.
speaking of Iranian response, approximately 15 million barrels per day of oil transit the Straits of Hormuz. A Canadian commenter at Yglesias’s website argues that Iran could close the Straits and pretty quickly imperil the entire world-wide economy. While I don’t buy all his arguments, some seem pretty compelling.
[too tired for links today. you guys are smart; find it yourselves.]
“Don’t be silly. Except as a totally unilateral move, an invasion of Iran is politically impossible.”
And defense doctrines indicated that we would be able to fight a regional war and a holding action in another one based solely on the strength of our army. Since we are still fighting the Iraq War, we cannot invade Iran ourselves anymore. That’s what radish meant by opportunity costs.
“sanctions see Jesurgislac’s comment to for an explanation of why not even sanctions are likely from the international community.”
And yet sanctions were, to a greater, if not perfect, extent, maintained against Iraq for more than a decade, without Iraq having defied the IAEA by openly working on a nuclear weapon. Even now, I think we could get a sanctions regime in place. However, needlessly insulting our putative allies in the sanctions is not the way to get a forceful one in place, unless we give up something our allies want to get them to save face in domestic politics. It’s yet another opportunity cost of the way the Bush Administration handled Iraq.
Yeah, it’s the Europeans that have problems with sanctions.
——————————————-
Firm’s Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said
Washington Post
June 23, 2001
During last year’s presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a “firm policy” against trading with Iraq.
“Iraq’s different,” he said.
According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.
Halliburton, Dick Cheney, and Wartime Spoils
By Lee Drutman and Charlie Cray,
Access to Evil — business dealings in Iraq, Iran, and Libya: News reports suggest that Pentagon is currently using the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) to draw up a blacklist of non-US companies that have done business in Iran. Yet, Halliburton has conducted Business in Iran through subsidiaries. When Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he inquired about an ILSA waiver to pursue oil field developments in Iran. In 1997, Halliburton subsidiary Halliburton Energy Services paid $15,000 to settle Department of Commerce allegations that the company had broken anti-boycott provisions of the U.S. Export Administration Act for an Iran-related transaction. Halliburton recently agreed to evaluate its operations in Iran, after the Securities and Exchange Commission rebuffed the company’s request to dismiss a New York City police and fire pension funds shareholder proposal for the company to examine its role in Iran.
Cheney & Halliburton: Go Where the Oil Is
by Kenny Bruno and Jim Valette
Multinational Monitor magazine, May 2001
Probably the most entertaining exchange in the vice-presidential debate last year occurred when Joe Lieberman, referring to the millions of dollars Dick Cheney had made as CEO of Halliburton Co., noted that Cheney was considerably “better off” than he had been eight years earlier.
Cheney, refusing to give the Clinton administration any credit for his own prosperity, or the nation’s, replied that his new wealth “had nothing to do with the government.”
The assertion was disingenuous, as in fact Halliburton’s growth and Dick Cheney’s own $37 million stock and option windfall were directly related to profits made with the help of foreign aid packages and military contracts. Cheney’s own connections from a long career in government clearly played a role in the company’s success. Moreover, the chuckling after this understated paean to private sector superiority helped to obscure the fact that Dick Cheney’s Halliburton has succeeded by partnering or engaging with governments around the world-including some of the most repressive regimes in the world-and its complicity with egregious human rights violations.
More:
Cheney & Middle Eastern Sanctions
If you think that the US has a diminished credibility because it is stretched in Iraq, I don’t see how it is possible to believe that the EU has a credible threat (or will to use any threat they have) of force at all. [Emph added]
If another nation wanted to take the diplomatic lead for bombing I’m fairly sure the US would go along. [Emph added]
Talk about framing the issue…
Sebastian: Europe’s idea of enforcing a treaty is glaring at people. They are increasingly finding that their diplomatic efforts are hampered more by the perception of complete lack of will or force behind them
Heh.
than US efforts are hampered by the perception of a not-finely-discriminate use of force.
Over a hundred thousand civilians dead is your idea of “a not-finely-discriminate use of force”? This is meiosis.
US efforts are hampered primarily by the conviction in the international community that if it is possible for the Bush administration to do something incompetently, it will; by the sure knowledge that the Bush administration will not stand by the US’s historic allies – not even those who go along with what the Bush administration wants (Blair has got nothing from Bush for being Bush’s most loyal ally in the war on Iraq); and by the simple fact that no one can trust the current administration or its representatives to give an honest assessment of a perceived threat.
In C.J.Cherryh’s Alliance/Union novels, more than once a merchanter captain makes the point to a crew member/family member: that being born to a ship gives each family member one judgement call. The right to cry havoc in an emergency and bring their entire crew and the authority of their ship to their defense. And each time they make the right judgement call, they earn the right to make another judgement call – just one more.
The US had the right to make just one judgement call. Bush made it: he claimed Iraq was an international threat and the US had to invade. (He also claimed he intended to rebuild Iraq and foster it as a free democracy – but made no plans for the occupation of Iraq, demonstrating that he was either stupid, or lying.) If the US had found significant stockpiles of WMD, or any evidence at all that Iraq posed a threat to any other country, the US would have won one more judgement call. But too bad: Bush lost.
Even if this were an honest lapse of judgement – and who believes it was, except the Bush loyalists? – it would be such a gross lapse in judgement, killing so many, causing such chaos and destruction, that the Bush administration (and therefore the US) would have lost any right to make another judgement call.
Given that to anyone except a Bush loyalist, it’s evident that Bush & Co never believed there were WMD in Iraq, never believed Iraq was a real threat, any claim now that the US sees no alternative but military action on Iran is not going to be greeted with skepticism, but with simple disbelief.
You wanted this administration, Sebastian: you apparently even voted them back in in 2004. Well, this is the result: if the US wants to attack Iran, it will do so with no world support at all. Bush blew it.
“And yet sanctions were, to a greater, if not perfect, extent, maintained against Iraq for more than a decade, without Iraq having defied the IAEA by openly working on a nuclear weapon. Even now, I think we could get a sanctions regime in place.”
They were falling apart by January 2002 with four major countries pushing for a removal of sanctions (France, Germany, Russia and China), despite the fact that Saddam had kept out inspectors for four years. They had already almost fallen apart twice, once leading to the atrocious Food-for-Oil disaster-area. There are already diplomatic rumblings (only a week later) that the UN has no stomach for sanctions against Iraq.
Saddam had a long history of playing the heartstrings of the international community by starving his own people while building palaces. So long as Saddam was in power, sanctions and inspections were going to have to be kept up indefinitely.
Sorry to be rehashing old arguments, but this doesn’t fit (to me) with what we found once we invaded – namely, an Iraq with no remaining WMD. His weapons programs were completely dismantled; he had not redeveloped them in the absence of inspectors. If Saddam was as keen as you say on reconstituting his nuclear development program, I would have expected him to still be hiding something of value. Some physical evidence that he was both interested and capable in reviving these programs. Perhaps I missed such evidence.
For talk about bombing to make any sense, you must assume that the US has good enough intelligence to pick out worthwhile targets. Does anyone really believe that? Since I don’t, it seems to me that the best policy is to negotiate for a good inspections regime. If nothing else it might give the CIA better opportunities to spy.
But since negotiating means offering something to Iran, which would enrage America’s hawks, that policy is unlikely to be tried.
Sebastian,
Yes, and 2002 is how many years from the end of Gulf War 1 in 1991? I stand by saying sanctions were to a greater extent in place for more than a decade.
US efforts are hampered primarily by the conviction in the international community that if it is possible for the Bush administration to do something incompetently, it will…
Uh, no. They’re hampered primarily by the fact that if it’s possible for the Bush Administration to do something incompetently, for whatever reason, they will. [Domestic political jujitsu being the primary exception to this.] International conviction of this fact doesn’t really feature.
I don’t think the incompetence of the Bush administration lets anyone off the hook.
since they are the people impelementing whatever “solution” they come up with, their incompetence means nobody should give them any encouragement.
They’re hampered primarily by the fact that if it’s possible for the Bush Administration to do something incompetently, for whatever reason, they will.
That supposes that the chaos in Iraq wasn’t intentional. Jeanne at Body and Soul points out that it begins to look as if causing chaos was at least a secondary purpose of invading Iraq.
Uh-huh, so? You say that like it’s a bad thing. The humanitarian consequences of the sanctions were admittedly high, but I’d sorta assumed you were okay with them because they were certainly less than the humanitarian consequences of invasion, and you don’t seem to have been opposed to that. Look, the bombing that Clinton did was not strictly legal any more than the invading that Dubya did. But me personally I’d take the former over the latter.
Hm. Again, I don’t see how this qualifies as a hellish nightmare full of flying demons rather than an irritating and complicated diplomatic problem. Are you saying the level of sanctions which the UN was falling back towards would have proven inadequate in light of the condition of Saddam’s military capability as it was in the period 2001-2003? Are you saying that once the original sanctions were withdrawn all international leverage with respect to Saddam’s military capabilities would suddenly be null and void?(*) Are you suggesting that Iraq was actually closer to having major nuclear/biological weapons in 2003 than Iran was at the same time? Are you suggesting that the “we’ll be greeted with flowers and create a foothold for democracy” scenario was the most likely one? What was the risk or benefit that outweighed the opportunity cost?
In particular, I am now perplexed about your view of the relationship between force projection and diplomatic leverage: is it inmportant to have spare Marines available with which to project force or is it tangential? Because one thing we definitely don’t have now — which we did have then — is spare Marines.
Uh, wait a minute. That begs the question of whether Iran would be equally belligerent if we had not invaded Iraq. I’m not at all convinced that that’s the case, but arguendo I am also not convinced that the French are quite the idiots you make them out to be here. Corrupt, yes. Venal, sure. Idiots, no. If Iran posed a real threat, even if it was only a threat to Israel, then yes, I reckon they would support sanctions and if necessary an invasion. We would of course have to persuade them that they would be allowed to share in the spoils. Now China and Russia I don’t know about. They might have had some concerns about the reintroduction of US/British hegemony in Iran that wouldn’t be as easy to assuage…
(*) Ah, I see that you are indeed saying almost exactly that in your 9:38 comment. Duly noted.
Since the flavor of the day is to criticize Dems because they allegedly lack an Iran policy, I suggest that someone who supports Republicans articulate the strategy of the Bush administration over the last five years to prevent a nuclear Iran (or for that matter, the Iran policy in general).
Right. The Party of Ideas hasn’t had one. But somehow its more important to fly-speck the party out of power for their alleged lack of a plan.
Better, of course, would be if the Demcratic leadership organically recognized that there are bad people in the world and that it’s not automatically GWB’s fault that they exist.
Better, of course, would be that Republican supporters recognize that it is GWB’s fault that we have such crappy choices in dealing with Iran, and also recognize that GWB will continue to articulate crappy choices. Then perhaps we can think about what to do in view of the deceitful incompetence of those in charge, instead of make-believe scenarios about what this crew might do to protect the USA.
Iran is the next great challenge, and it is (and should remain) a nonpartisan one.
* * *
What policy do the Democrats offer on Iran? Because I’m not seeing much from them but snarkettes in the mold of Atrios.
I can see you missed Atrios’ point, and well as the essential truth of his “snark.” He linked to this post by Marshall to make his substantive point. You should read it.
There is no chance in hell that GWB and Republican leadership will allow the Iran policy to be nonpartisan. Also, there is every reason to expect that policy to be laced with large doses of dishonesty and incompetence.
Therefore, an essential aspect of dealing with Iran includes how to deal with the bitingly partisan, deceitful and incompetent plan that will be advanced by GWB and crew. And that is Atrios’ point, which is not “snark” but the sad truth.
Please deal with it realistically.
I have to press on this point: what will happen if we do strike? We launched one major military operation without adequate planning for possible responses; we cannot afford to do so again.
Keep in mind, please, that we have 130,000 troops who are a lot closer to Iran than they are to home (targets? occupying force? both?), and that the world really needs the strait of hormuz to stay open.
A couple of points on the Iraq sanctions.
First, they were originally meant to hurt the civil population. I can go hunt up that Barton Gellman June 23 1991 Washington Post article if I have to, the one about how the Gulf War bombing of civilian infrastructure was meant to work with sanctions in hurting Iraqis, but people can google for it themselves.
In light of that, it’s a little tiresome to hear Sebastian tell us how Saddam starved his people with sanctions we imposed with the original intent of causing harm. Saddam was partly responsible for the suffering and so were we. The US relented to some extent and supported the Oil for Food program because it turns out that pesky Arabs and Eurowimps were getting upset over the dead babies. At any rate, it’d be nice if Americans could get into the habit of acknowledging some responsibility for the deaths we inflict. If we did, maybe God would give us all ponies.
Now because of the civilian suffering, the Bush Administration was moving towards smart sanctions in early 2001. You can google that too. It was thought that smart sanctions would enable us to keep the lid on Saddam while ending most of the civilian suffering. Some anti-sanctions activists (David Cortright or Cortwright?) were for this and others suspected smart sanctions would have been just as indiscriminate in practice as the ones already in place, because the US would choose to make it so. But in principle that doesn’t have to be the case. If we ever were capable of having a serious policy discussion in this country, one that took ethical considerations into account , then maybe Democratic policy wonks could suggest some version of targeted sanctions which would slow down Iran’s nuclear program, or even hurt the economy in limited ways, rather than bringing the entire economy crashing to the ground as the Iraqi sanctions did.
But we don’t do serious policy debates in this country, not on any level that matters–the runup to the Iraq war demonstrated that.
On second thought, strike the “hurt their economy” notion. I don’t see that we have the right to do that. Slowing down their acquistion of nuclear weapons–sure. I wish someone would have slowed us down.
Much of the move toward ‘smart sanctions’ was to try to salvage some small bit of European support for the sanctions regime which they were intent on getting rid of. It pretty much didn’t work, and sanctions were well on their way to the dustbin by the time Bush started moving troops into the Gulf.
“At any rate, it’d be nice if Americans could get into the habit of acknowledging some responsibility for the deaths we inflict.”
As far as sanctions go, it would be nice if critics of American policy could get in the habit of acknowleging the nonexistance of cost-free diplomatic options. All-talk diplomacy doesn’t work anywhere and it never has. If you can’t wage war, and you can’t implement sanctions, there isn’t much left to threaten with. Maybe that is ok with you, but personally I doubt that the all-carrot approach works for all (or even nearly all) situations. Saddam could have ended sanctions under Bush I or certainly the first term of Clinton by fully cooperating with inspectors for a couple of years in a row. He never did that. He wanted to outwait the international community, and other than the US he succeeded completely.
Jonathan Schwartz found this helpful little comment from a Canadian responding to Matt Y–
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000749.html#more
Donald Johnson: Holy mackerel, that’s some mighty fine rantage. I wish I’d written that. Word on the street is that Gore’s speech blew the roof off the hall as well.
I’m glad we taught those radical crazy Iraqis a lesson, concerning diplomacy.
Who cares that the Islamofascist dictator Hussein was more truthful than Bush!
9-11 changed everything!
Only the children of the Saudi aristocracy can kill our people!
The CIA’s track record in predicting when countries will get nuclear weapons (in either direction) has been notoriously crappy.
which part of the US government predicted that india and pakistan were close to testing nuclear weapons in early 1998? which part of the US government knew saddam was in 1990 merely months away from getting nuclear weapons? the answer, of course, is that all US intelligence agencies failed here, and not just the CIA.
the lesson one might draw from these failures [not to mention what happened most recently in iraq] is to treat with extreme scepticism all claims made by all branches of US intelligence on the issue of iran’s nuclear capabilities, whether these claims tend toward apparent fearmongering or complacency. i mean, if you favour airstrikes, is it not problematic that the CIA and other agencies with “notoriously crappy” records on proliferation issues would likely be involved in selecting targets?
Please clarify if I’m wrong but isn’t Sebastian’s position basically that, since sanctions don’t work erfectly, we should use airstrikes?
Shouldn’t we consider the longterm consequences of airstrikes in the contect of the war on terror and the spreading of democracy throughtout the Middle East?
Quite a large percentage of Americans have made a huge fetish out of the tragedy and shock of the 911 attack. We need to consider how much of a tragic shock it would be to Iranians if thousands of their civilians were killed in what the rest of the planet would certainly regard as a terrorist attack if we used airstrikes. They’d hate us for two generations. That’s not good if we are trying to get them to be, in the long run, a pro-American democracy (remember all the dreams of destabilizig their govenment and freeing the pro-American masses there?) Also the shock would reverberate around the Middle East, indeed the whole Islamic world, and the message to all would be that the US will kill Moslems to protect Isreal and to get our own way. AlQuaida couldn’t pay us to do a better publicity stunt for them. No one, no one outside the US would believe our long term intention for the Middle Eastern countries was to help them shake off their dictatorships and become democracies–after all democracies are self-determing entities and the blasting of Iranian civilians would make it clear that self-determination is the last thing the US wants for an Islamic country.
Sanctions aren’t perfect but they are better than the alternative.
I think the Iranians have deliberately placed their nuclear production activity centers in urban areas, by the way. Maybe someone has some iformation about this.
lily: No one, no one outside the US would believe our long term intention for the Middle Eastern countries was to help them shake off their dictatorships and become democracies–after all democracies are self-determing
I don’t think many people outside the US believe that the US plans such a complete reversal of its usual foreign policy of supporting dictators and attacking democracies now, Lily. What such a terrorist attack on the US might well do is convince even more Americans that their government prefers dictators to democracies.
I don’t think we are promoting democracy either, but democracy promotion is the rationale put forward by many Bush supporters. My point was that an airstrike would be a mistake in terms of their stated goals. Also I was unclear but by “terrorist strike” I meant that an airstrike by us against Iran would be widely perceived by others as a terrorist act or the equivalent thereof.
But one should always be suspicious when military powers claim to be doing weaker states favours by occupying them.
I mean, can we really trust the warmongering right-wing nationalists?
Cheney’s Path: From Gulf War to Mideast Oil
In Business, He Benefited From His Pentagon Days
Mr. Cheney called in June for the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iran. He called relations between Iran and the United States a ”tragedy,” adding that one of the best ways to improve ties would be ”to allow American firms to do the same thing that most other firms around the world are able to do now, and that is to be active in Iran.”
He added, ”We’re kept out of there primarily by our own government, which has made a decision that U.S. firms should not be allowed to invest significantly in Iran, and I think that’s a mistake.”
Under Mr. Cheney, Halliburton has become a leading member of USA Engage, a lobbying group that seeks to lift sanctions. Halliburton is also a member of the board of the National Foreign Trade Council, a lobbying group that recently won a victory in the Supreme Court, which struck down a Massachusetts state law imposing state sanctions on companies doing business in Burma.
Mr. Cheney’s company has already done business in countries still facing U.S. sanctions, including Libya and Iraq, the enemy Mr. Cheney helped vanquish in the Gulf War.
Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump Co., joint ventures that Halliburton has sold within the past year, have done work in Iraq on contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq’s oil industry, under the United Nation’s Oil for Food program.
From:
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3981d4da7d19.htm
I’m not particularly calling anyone out here, but it is a remarkable link free discussion here, not that links automatically provide truthful information, but it seems that the discussion is much more about domestic politics rather than any ‘facts on the ground’.
At HoCB, there are a number of links in the comments if people are interested. I myself twigged onto von’s last update (I always am late on these because I go straight to the bottom of the page rather than check the post again, so I would suggest that if you do update, just drop a one line comment as this might avoid food fights. Just a suggestion)
Anyhow, von wrote:
Such strong-arming might include threats of US sanctions against the Russians and Chinese themselves — sanctions that will be costly to the US economy if actually carried out.
I don:t know if this was before or after Francis pointed out this
approximately 15 million barrels per day of oil transit the Straits of Hormuz. A Canadian commenter at Yglesias’s website argues that Iran could close the Straits and pretty quickly imperil the entire world-wide economy. that I think is what Donald linked to here
I would link this to two things pointed out the HoCB thread, that Japanese officials have expressed concern about the possibility of a worldwide oil shortage, which Chinese have cut down on their refining capacity, apparently concerned about over capacity. Couple that with the reports about China’s massive foreign currency reserves. Couple that with the fact that China has to be concerned with the possibility of muslim fundamentalism within its own borders (which is why the US won’t send back those Uighurs, right?) and there doesn’t seem to be the slightest possibility of strong arming China, which is not too terribly concerned about nation states having nukes. I think this suggests that the continued US stance of ‘we should have them, you shouldn’t, so there’, regardless how you view it historically, is simply a non-starter. Of course, as with the Nixon to China thing, there is absolutely no way a Democrat could propose a jiu-jitsu approach such as this.
“Please clarify if I’m wrong but isn’t Sebastian’s position basically that, since sanctions don’t work erfectly, we should use airstrikes?”
I don’t need them to work perfectly (in the sense of stopping all trade) But if they are to have any effect they must at least be fairly broad. My point is that they don’t work politically through the UN very well. They aren’t a serious alternative to airstrikes because they won’t make it through the UN. Whether or not they would work if implemented is a tough question which is unlikely to be answered because the countries involved aren’t likely to try it. In an ideal world I would love to try sanctions first and resort to air strikes only if they failed.
LJ,
Damn, that Canadian got down.
Sebastian, ccare to comment on the longterm consequences of airstrikes?
Democracy Arsenal has an alternative proposal–too long for me to boil down to a sentence and I’m too tired to do a link. Hint: it doesn’t involve sanctions or airstrikes.
If China and Russia can be convinced to join the Euros and the US in economic sanctions, locking down Iran’s oil exports shouldn’t too much trouble (blockade the terminals around Shatt al Arab and close the Strait of Hormuz). We’d feel the lack of oil, for sure. The Iranians would feel the lack of revenue much, much more intensely.
Those moves might be available to the Euros and the US regardless of what Russia and China think.
Damn, that Canadian got down
and, to echo what the comments he got at
tinyrevolution: that post should end the discussion of Iran there, here, and everywhere in the blogoshpere, for good.
it won’t. but it should.
I think lily is referring to the Grand Bargain post, so here, for as a service to the ObWi world, here is the link Interesting stuff.
Opposition parties oppose, Debbie. This is not rocket science.
It would more accurate to say that minority parties oppose, because that’s where they’ll stay if they’re too afraid to present their own solutions. It certainly is not rocket science.
Take it the next logical step. If Democrats acquire enough power succeed in opposing, then what? Without articulating a vision, then it’s just power for power’s sake, and that’s why the people aren’t satisfied with promoting the oppositionists to power when they don’t have viable alternatives of their own. The lessons of 1994 are still there.
Switching gears, Iran is going to come down to several fundamental decision points, which I think I’ll address in a separate post.
Take it the next logical step. If Democrats acquire enough power succeed in opposing, then what? Without articulating a vision, then it’s just power for power’s sake, and that’s why the people aren’t satisfied with promoting the oppositionists to power when they don’t have viable alternatives of their own.
Untrue, as witnessed by the present Republican Party.
The lessons of 1994 are still there.
Yes, they are. Pity so few are learning from them.
When I suggest that Dems stay silent now, that doesn’t mean I think they should/can stay silent when running for election. However, I didn’t think the calls last spring for Dem positions on SS was so that voters could make an informed choice in an upcoming election, nor do I think von’s suggestion now is such.
There will be time enough for candidates to take positions. In the fall, when it matters. And when the context is such that a voter can make a reasonable judgment.
Calling for positions now else is just misdirection.
I would welcome an explanation of how a clear, moral, obtainable vision expressed by Democratic leaders would make the Bush administration one bit more competent, attentive, honest, or humble. Where are the precedents for such a thing on the Democrats’ part affecting Republican policy at all? That is, why do we have any reason to believe it would help? Republicans and sympathizers, please indicate instances of Bush’s adopting Democratic proposals.
There’s the Department of Homeland Security. After that?
There’s the Department of Homeland Security.
And only then with that anti-union poison pill.
BTW, I completely missed this somehow but…
Whores for war, like it hard! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!
NeoDude, knock it off, ok? That kind of sh** isn’t just not helping, it’s actively counterproductive. Save it for Atrios or wherever; stick with actually citing articles and making concrete points here.
Not to mention that it was an anti-conservative, anti-practical proposal in the first place.
The “Canadian ranter” is Den Valdron, and his comment was originally posted at TPMCafe, in response to an Yglesias article.
It is indeed a fine rant, and raises some issues I’d appreciate those who’re in favor of a war, or airstrikes, addressing.
One, he says the CIA says Iran is five years away from building a nuke. Now, if the pro-war/pro-airstrike folks here don’t believe that, fine. The CIA has certainly been wrong before.
But I would like to know what source of information those in favor of a war, or airstrikes, are relying on when they say 5 years is too long, we gotta take out the installations “now!”
Den Valdron also has some interesting things to say about the differences between Iran and Iraq, and the Strait of Hormuz:
” Iran is 70 million people, an area five times the size of Iraq, not disembowelled by 12 years of sanctions and air raids. On the other side of the coin, America’s ground army is busted and tied down in Iraq. There’s no troops to throw at a major Iranian military force, so you have to hope that bombing will do the trick. The occupation forces in Iraq are in occupation and not territorial defense mode. And Iraq is 65% Shiites who are probably not going to be happy that you’re blowing up their brother Shiites.
Meanwhile, the straight of Hormuz is so narrow that sinking one supertanker will block it indefinitely, and Iran borders the straight on three sides. Block Hormuz and any naval groups inside the Persian Gulf are trapped there. Any naval groups outside the Persian Gulf are trapped outside. Forget about any oil coming out of the Persian Gulf from Iraq, Kuwait, Quatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia or the UAE. Think about what that does to the price of oil, and to the world economy. Think about what that does to dependent countries like Japan, India, China and Europe.”
I’d be very interested to hear the pro-military folks’ comments on this. Because it seems to me the idea that airstrikes alone will be effective depend on Iran reacting to them with, at most, impotent fury. Is that the scenario you’ve got in mind? It’s OK to bomb Iran, because they can’t retaliate in any important way?
The democracy arsenal proposal is odd to say the least.
Step one: “We should drastically reduce our stockpile of nuclear weapons and take them all off alert. We should ratify the test ban treaty and commit to serious negotiations for a treaty which bans the production of fissionable material for weapons purposes with effective inspection procedures. We can then move to stigmatize nuclear weapons and insist that no state has the right to deploy or threaten to use them.”
Presume for the sake of argument sentence 1. What will be the enforcement mechanism of sentence 2? Unless it involves an international agreement to make war to enforce the inspections it will almost certainly be ineffective as to states like North Korea or Iran. Furthermore, a lack of US nuclear weapons will do nothing to deal with one of the major reasons states like North Korea or Iran want nuclear weapons (ignoring for now the desire to nuke Israel)–to trump conventional force difference. If the US doesn’t have nuclear weapons the incentive to have nuclear weapons INCREASES because now you not only have a trump against stronger conventional forces, you also don’t have to worry about nuclear retaliation.
In short I find it highly unlikely that such a proposal would actually help in such cases both because there is almost no chance of an enforcement mechanism and because it wouldn’t improve the situation without one. No one other than the US seems to even try to enforce the NPT in any case, much less all cases. With weak or even medium level enforcement (probably anything less than serious international commitment to invade countries that break the treaty) the incentive for rouge states to pursue nuclear weapons would increase under the proposal rather than decrease because the benefit of having nuclear weapons would be even greater than it is now.
“But I would like to know what source of information those in favor of a war, or airstrikes, are relying on when they say 5 years is too long, we gotta take out the installations “now!”
We can probably wait a year or so. Sure. But we have to start gearing up now. We have to start showing international resolve now. If there is to be any chance of a diplomatic resolution, Iran has to believe that there is some miniscule chance that there might be slightly bad results from pursuing nuclear weapons. Until very recently the Europeans have signaled that there is no chance of problems for Iran. Unsurprisingly, the diplomatic initiative has been a complete bust.
This may be a good time for Iranian military top brass to die in mysterious plane accidents, and for other terrible accidents to happen to various members of the Iranian leadership, with a restive population mostly under 30 that wants to be free of the religious police state. And I suppose that would be illegal, but is it more ethical to wait for the mullahs to bomb Tel Aviv?
DaveC: And your evidence that this would do anything other than unite Iranians in opposition to the American assassins is what, again?
On second thought…
No, don’t bother, the answer would only make me feel even more helpless in an age of crazies.
No one other than the US seems to even try to enforce the NPT in any case, much less all cases.
really?
Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states – including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight NATO members – voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made [to reduce stockpiles]. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution.
also, pursuant to the NPT, each of the nuclear states, including the US, has given assurances to the UN security council that they will not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. many of the proposals on dealing with iran [pretty much any containing the phrase “tactical nuclear weapons”] seem to envisage that the US break this assurance, which would seem, um, odd, if the US’s goal was all about enforcing the NPT.
I believe I used the word “enforce”.
Not that this will make any difference, but I do think that the Demo Arsenal deserves more than being brushed off like that. Why? Because (and if you disagree with these points, feel free to back up and discuss them) we are currently in a rather dangerous stalemate about Iranian nuclear activity and we need something to unbalance the status quo. I don’t think there is any way we can convince Russia and China to influence the situation (I mean, Japan is still planning on developing the Azeghdan oil fields, largely on the feeling that if they don’t, the Chinese will), so there are only two directions, one which is to be harder and more ruthless than the mullahs and the other is to take a step back and unbalance them. Of course, imagining this admin doing something like this is impossible, but a new admin might be able to do something.
You may cite North Korean nuclear capacity, but when you have the South Koreans relocating to 6 miles from the DMZ, it is clear that the threat of the nuclear djini is not what it used to be.
This says nothing about the fact that Iran is Shiite and the root of our current problems are supposedly with Sunni extremists, but regardless of who it is, it would be in our interests to try and remove the option to use certain weapons rather than go the route of getting bigger and better versions of those weapons.
I know this is not going to convince some, but the value of this attempt is in capturing the moral high ground, which I think we have lost. If you want to argue that we remain the shining beacon on the hill, you are welcome to, but I don’t see a lot of non Americans buying that line.
Sebastian: Until very recently the Europeans have signaled that there is no chance of problems for Iran.
Once again, why do you keep blaming “the Europeans” for what’s plainly and obviously George W. Bush’s fault?
Also: We can probably wait a year or so. Sure.
Sure. The important thing is to be gearing up for war before the 2006 midterms: actually going to war, which will be catastrophic, had better wait till afterwards.
“but I do think that the Demo Arsenal deserves more than being brushed off like that. Why? Because (and if you disagree with these points, feel free to back up and discuss them) we are currently in a rather dangerous stalemate about Iranian nuclear activity and we need something to unbalance the status quo. I don’t think there is any way we can convince Russia and China to influence the situation (I mean, Japan is still planning on developing the Azeghdan oil fields, largely on the feeling that if they don’t, the Chinese will), so there are only two directions, one which is to be harder and more ruthless than the mullahs and the other is to take a step back and unbalance them.”
I responded with what I thought. Do you disagree with my assessment? If so where? You can’t complain about a lack of discussion if I respond to the cite you raise and then you won’t address the points I raise.
“Once again, why do you keep blaming “the Europeans” for what’s plainly and obviously George W. Bush’s fault?”
It is Bush’s fault that the French don’t want to enforce the NPT? Really? He is so much more powerful than I realized.
Lily: My point was that an airstrike would be a mistake in terms of their stated goals.
Yes. But invading Iraq without either having a plan for the occupation, or a plan and personnel to secure/destroy stockpiled WMD, were also mistakes in terms of their stated goals.
The latter mistake made it clear that Bush & Co were either lying when they claimed to believe there were stockpiled WMD in Iraq, or are so incompetent they couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery. I gather Charles Bird prefers to believe they’re incompetent but honest: I don’t know where the other Republican ObWingers stand on this point.
Sebastian: It is Bush’s fault that the French don’t want to enforce the NPT? Really? He is so much more powerful than I realized.
Now that’s a switch. You claimed “Until very recently the Europeans have signaled that there is no chance of problems for Iran.” But in fact, it’s George W. Bush who has been signaling that – he invaded Iraq and broke the US army. So, why are you blaming the Europeans for Bush’s signals to Iran – and any other country that’s doing stuff the US in theory doesn’t approve of – that there is no chance of problems because the US has neither the military force to intervene, and is not competent enough to do so if it wanted to?
Saddam could have ended sanctions under Bush I or certainly the first term of Clinton by fully cooperating with inspectors for a couple of years in a row. He never did that. He wanted to outwait the international community, and other than the US he succeeded completely.
Again, sorry to be re-hashing this, but I would have thought for Saddam to “outwait” the international community, he would have had to have kept some weapons, or some solid program for developing weapons once the sanctions were eased. We now know he had neither. He did not outwait the international community – the sanctions and inspections did their job.
Shinobi: Again, sorry to be re-hashing this
Er, it’s Sebastian who’s re-hashing this – bringing up the old lies and forcing the rest of us to point out to him that these were proven untrue years ago now. Why Sebastian is bothering with this, I don’t know: memory lapse? He knows we know what he’s saying isn’t true.
sebastian: “Saddam could have ended sanctions under Bush I or certainly the first term of Clinton by fully cooperating with inspectors for a couple of years in a row. He never did that. He wanted to outwait the international community, and other than the US he succeeded completely.”
Sebastian, will you please stop making stuff up? The US policy from very shortly after the first Gulf War was that the sanctions stayed on until Saddam was gone. This was continuous through 2003.
But Bush looks so tough and sexy when he does all his war talk.
All this talk of bombing heathens and darkies makes him and his crew look soooo tough.
Their like middle-class white people’s gangsta rap.
What would be the longterm effects of airstrikes on the ‘war on terror” and the promotion of democracy in the Middle East? Isn’t this an important question? How come no one who is inclined toward using airstrikes has offered an answer?
lily, because the thoughts “don’t care”, “Scared! Must bomb *now*!”, “All hail King George!” and “Kill! Kill! Kill! Then Jesus comes!” pretty much fill their heads.
After four years of this sh*t, I’ve come to the conclusion that even the rational-sounding ones still think this way.
I responded with what I thought. Do you disagree with my assessment? If so where? You can’t complain about a lack of discussion if I respond to the cite you raise and then you won’t address the points I raise.
Yes, I disagree, but I’m trying to develop a discussion and avoid getting personal by calling you out (and letting von et al jump in).
To restate, do you agree that we are in a dangerous stalemate, regardless of whose fault it is? If you do agree (and I presume you do since you’ve been posting a lot on this and noting that it has been a constant concern of this blog) then do you agree that there are two directions to go, either harder on the mullahs or trying to undercut them in the court of world public opinion? Or do you, like von, suggest that we can strong arm Russia and China to put pressure on Iran? I don’t think we can, certainly not China, so your argument seems to reduce to we can’t do sanctions, so airstrikes are the thing, yet you won’t address the people who have suggested that airstrikes may cause a lot more problems than they will solve.
Responding to the cite by claiming that you accept for the sake of argument sentence one, but enforcement isn’t possible so sentence two isn’t possible is simplistic at best. We were not able to enforce a lot of things during the Cold War, but the fact that we hewed to a higher moral ground meant that even if the treaties were unenforceable and were broken, we still came out on top. Plus, an attempt at reducing nuclear armaments would make it easier to track nuclear materials because there would be less out there.
Also, I didn’t write the second quote, so I’d ask you to take a little more care about running things together.
This just in from the WaPo
Ouch. Look who comes out of this smelling like a rose. Plus the fact that every $1 dollar a barrel increase means that Russian oil revenues increase by $1.4 billion.
Note the order there, which I suppose is the new world order. Of course, being a liberal, I’m sure someone is going to accuse me of wanting it to be like that…
Well, unless Bush and his people are totally insane, there goes his chance to bomb Iran, nuclear or otherwise.
“So, why are you blaming the Europeans for Bush’s signals to Iran – and any other country that’s doing stuff the US in theory doesn’t approve of – that there is no chance of problems because the US has neither the military force to intervene, and is not competent enough to do so if it wanted to?”
Perhaps you have missed the discussion of airstrikes? The US has plenty of military force to use airstrikes.
“Responding to the cite by claiming that you accept for the sake of argument sentence one, but enforcement isn’t possible so sentence two isn’t possible is simplistic at best.”
Not hardly. Without addressing how enforcement would work in light of most countries’ manisfest disinterest in enforcing even the current NPT (which is dramatically less stringent than what Democracy Arsenal proposes) reduces their argument to: we reduce our weapons, magical things happens which work against the actual operation of human nature and our historical experience, and then authoritarian governments will stop trying to get nuclear weapons.
I wish it were true. But until you can describe for me how that second step actually works (which neither you nor they even remotely attempt to do) I’m certainly not going to be convinced. You asked for a discussion of their proposal. I pointed out where it wasn’t convincing and why it wasn’t convincing. You respond by asserting saying that we have taken the moral high ground in the past and won. That doesn’t address my point at all because you seem to be invoking a “the moral high ground always wins argument” which is just wrong–see for example Cambodia, or the Sudan. Furthermore we won the Cold War without noticeable following the advice of Democracy Arsenal. I have every reason to believe the unilateral disarmament wouldn’t have worked well against the USSR.
I also offer a further critique of the proposal. I suggest that unilateral disarmament (even with a hypothetical enforcement mechanism which has not been discussed) will increase the incentives for rogue states when obtaining nuclear weapons. If the US doesn’t have nuclear weapons the incentive to have nuclear weapons INCREASES because now you not only have a trump against stronger conventional forces, you also don’t have to worry about nuclear retaliation.
You don’t address that point either.
You requested discussion of the proposal. I have offered my critiques. You haven’t responded and have suggested that you won’t. I don’t think I can do anymore to “promote discussion” from my side of the disagreement.
Sebastian: Perhaps you have missed the discussion of airstrikes?
I didn’t miss the discussion of airstrikes, but I hadn’t realized you were reading it, since you’ve resolutely ignored all the cogent points made that for the US to bomb Iran would cause more problems than it would solve.
The US has plenty of military force to use airstrikes.
That settles it: you haven’t read the discussion of airstrikes. Would you like to do so and respond to it, rather than repeating airstrikes airstrikes airstrikes as if that in itself resolved anything?
Hussein was doing MOST of what was demanded…look where it got him.
The United States/Bush just didn’t like him….so any cooperation with “agreements” was moot.
The United States/Bush just don’t like the Mullahs…but if they get their bombs, the US can’t just kill them.
The Saudis actually killed thousands of Americans and their boy goes free.
What is hard to understand here?
By the way, notice how quick we acquiesced to Bin Ladden’s demand that we get out of Saudi Arabia.
It was Iraq 24/7 after the Saudi’s b!tched slapped us.
A couple of problems I see with airstrikes without the boots on the ground that we no longer have available are as follows:
(1) How good is our intelligence for targeting purposes? In Iraq, it sucked — we thought all sorts of stuff existed that didn’t at all, and that was with inspections going on. What’s your basis for thinking we have the intelligence capability to take out Iran’s nuclear programs? (Note on the politics: While the intelligence problem is an argument against relying on airstrikes to actually make us safer, it doesn’t hamper the use of airstrikes for political advantage. If the administration orders airstrikes on some random set of buildings, and then Iran doesn’t nuke anyone, either because they never had weapons or because they choose not to use the weapons they have, the administration gets to claim that the airstrikes were successful and effective, and no one will have the information necessary to contradict them.)
(2) Civilian casualties: If we’re trying to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program through airstrikes alone, odds are we’re going to kill an awful lot of people. Don’t you think this is likely to have a negative effect on the battle for hearts and minds in the GWOT?
I have every reason to believe the unilateral disarmament wouldn’t have worked well against the USSR.
Here’s what the DA post said
Our current approach to nonproliferation is untenable. We must enunciate neutral principles and create a new bargain.
The first step is to acknowledge and deal with the real security issues which other states face. The United States needs to be willing to give up its right to threaten the use of nuclear weapons and work with the P-5 to give effective positive and negative security assurances to states which adhere faithfully to the NPT. We should drastically reduce our stockpile of nuclear weapons and take them all off alert.
Whatever you might think, ‘drastically reducing stockpiles’ and ‘giving up the right to threaten other countries with nuclear arms’ is not quite the same as ‘unilateral disarmament’ and certainly doesn’t mean the US reaches a point where it doesn’t have nukes. Which makes your whole line of argument about not having nuclear weapons devoid of content. And the line about not winning the Cold War without the advice of the Democracy Arsenal is pretty much all snark and nothing but the snark. Assuming the Cold War was won (go team, yay!), it was done without your advice, so I guess we can draw our own conclusions from that.
Until you treat proposals honestly instead of stuffing them into Manichean categories, there isn’t much chance of discussion. Which is why I prefaced my first comment with “Not that this will make any difference”. Sad to be proven right, though.
Query for the kitten (or anyone else who understands the system): Is there a reason why the early comments are disappearing? Currently, I am showing the first comment is radish’s, dated January 16, 2006 at 6:25 PM, and I know I made comments prior to that time.
Google “Operation Southern Watch” for just how well Saddam was cooperating. Lots of interesting stuff on the Global Security page.
No WMDs…no Nuclear Weapons program…no connections to Al-Queda…Bush and his warmongering right-wing nationalists lied. Go figure, warmongering right-wing nationalists lie about war!
Seems Bush and the Saudis pray Bin Ladden attacks again, then Syria and Iran are done for?
Slart: “Google “Operation Southern Watch” for just how well Saddam was cooperating. Lots of interesting stuff on the Global Security page.”
Which amounted to what, in the end? WMD’s?
And related…
OSW had nothing at all to do with WMDs, and everything to do with Saddam’s level of cooperation. There has been in fact a great deal more than WMDs going on in the decade or so since Saddam decided Kuwait might make a nice hood ornament. Just go read, already.
I’m more worried about the Saudi’s WMD, Al-Queda…which seems to have done more damage to Americans than any Ba’athist’s weapon, could do.
(But I will read…but think you are easily distracted)
Sebastian: If the US doesn’t have nuclear weapons the incentive to have nuclear weapons INCREASES because now you not only have a trump against stronger conventional forces, you also don’t have to worry about nuclear retaliation.
Let me point out that the right to use nuclear weapons to defend against conventional attack is precisely what the United States insisted upon during the cold war. The U.S. policy was (and still is) adamant opposition to “no first use” of nuclear weapons.
We insist on our right to have and use nuclear weapons as well as to deny them to Iran. Oddly enough some people consider this to be a one-sided argument.
To me the question is, what policy will genuinely have the effect of reducing the chance of nuclear war? The arguments put forward by the Bush administration and some supporters here boil down to “we’re the good guys and we’re going to enforce our will with whatever means necessary.”
I believe that in the long run this is increasing, rather than decreasing, the danger of nuclear weapons.
That’s hysterical neodude, may I use that?
Barry, I think Sebastian’s point was that the US policy of “maximal sanctions forever as a matter of dick-swinging principle” (cf. Cuba/Castro) couldn’t have been enforced unilaterally. In that respect at least he’s probably right.
If I’m reading correctly Sebastian believes that such a failure would have resulted in Saddam having free reign to quickly develop the nukes he’d always wanted but never managed to acquire, and possibly also that it would have led to a complete collapse of the international nonproliferation mechanisms that arose out of the UN after WWII. That’s a hypothesis I have some trouble crediting, but I believe that’s where he was going with it.
On an unrelated discussion on Tim Lambert’s blog, I notice this comment by Eli Rabett:
That’s a very apt response to the idea that you can solve the Iran Problem with airstrikes. Equipment related to a covert weapons programme is unlikely to be sitting in the obvious places. Anybody who proposes airstrikes without addressing that aspect of the problem is simply being frivolous.
NeoDude, it may well be that I’ve been distracted, and that you meant that Hussein complied WRT WMDs, but that wasn’t at all obvious from your comment.
Dantheman: “Currently, I am showing the first comment is radish’s, dated January 16, 2006 at 6:25 PM, and I know I made comments prior to that time.”
Neodude, 9:53 PM, is now first.
would someone, anyone, who is pro-military-action-against-iran please discuss what he believes the iranian response will be and how the US will counter that response.
also, would the pro-strike group please tell us whether there is any limit on the number of iranian civilian casualties that are acceptable (ie, beyond which a target becomes off-limits).
as Aretha once sang: You better THINK what you’re trying to do to me.
WTF’s going on with typepad? the same thing’s happening on other threads, too…
Kevin,
Thanks for confirming that it is not just me. It seems that typepad is only keeping a set number of comments in the comment folder here. Again, I invoke the awesome powers of the kitten to get to the bottom of this.
I’ll put in a trouble ticket tonight, if I can remember to do so. It’s been a busy day, and I have to bail and get the kids.
Slarti,
We know for a fact, that Al-Queda attacked the United States on 9-11.
We know that Al-Queda’s physical base of operations was in Afghanistan and its financial and theocratic base is in Saudi Arabia.
We know that most of the ruling –class (as well as Ali-six-pack) of Saudi Arabia supported, in some form or another, Al-Queda. That is, they openly discuss support IN ALL FORMS to Al-Queda. Prince Nayef, the interior minister, openly supports the organization that killed 3000 Americans. The Iraqis, Syrians and Iranians don’t have anyone close to this in their governments.
We know that many of the ruling–class of Saudi Arabia, may “like” the United States and Americans, but felt 9-11 was the “Collateral Damage” of our own sins. Much like we claim to “like” Iraqis, even though we bomb the hell out of them.
Given all this, it seems the America’s right-wing nationalists decided to go after everybody in the Middle-East, except those who attacked us. I am not arguing for war against Saudi Arabia, but that seemed to be the source of our trouble.
You Slarti, fell for the distraction. Why won’t Bush deal with the Saudis and Al-Queda?
The relationship between the Saudi Aristocracy and the Bush family is troubling. Instead of dealing with that, they have us all over the ME chasing ghosts.
—————————————
THE DUAL MONARCHY
When an attack on a residential compound in Riyadh killed 17 people and wounded 122 in early November 2003, U.S. officials downplayed the significance of the incident for Saudi Arabian politics. “We have the utmost faith that the direction chosen for this nation by Crown Prince Abdullah, the political and economic reforms, will not be swayed by these horrible terrorists,” said Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Richard Armitage, in Riyadh for a visit.
But if any such faith existed, it was quite misplaced. Abdullah’s reforms were already being curtailed, the retrenchment having begun in the wake of a similar attack six months earlier. And despite what was reported in the American press, an end to the reforms was exactly what the bombers and their ideological supporters hoped to accomplish. To understand why this is the case — and why one of Washington’s staunchest allies has been incubating a murderous anti-Americanism — one must delve into the murky depths of Saudi Arabia’s domestic politics.
The Saudi state is a fragmented entity, divided between the fiefdoms of the royal family. Among the four or five most powerful princes, two stand out: Crown Prince Abdullah and his half-brother Prince Nayef, the interior minister. Relations between these two leaders are visibly tense. In the United States, Abdullah cuts a higher profile. But at home in Saudi Arabia, Nayef, who controls the secret police, casts a longer and darker shadow. Ever since King Fahd’s stroke in 1995, the question of succession has been hanging over the entire system, but neither prince has enough clout to capture the throne.
More:
The Saudi Paradox
“I have to bail and get the kids.”
What were they arrested for?
About Typepad causing early comments to vanish: on a hunch, I republished some of the threads that this was happening on. It accomplished nothing. So much for hunches.
rilkefan,
And here I thought Slarti in danger of being flooded out.
It seems as if Bush’s loyalty lies more with certain Saudis than with the American people.
….I’d appreciate those who’re in favor of a war,…
Posted by: CaseyL | January 17, 2006 at 12:17 AM
Cute.
Neodude:
Speaking of distraction, let’s handle one subject at a time: do you still think Saddam was being compliant?
Sorry…misspelled bale.
He was being more compliant than the Saudis.
What did Hussein’s respect for international law have to do with the Saudi’s role in killing 3000 Americans on 9-11?
Bush and many American right-wingers don’t respect international law. The Israelis sure don’t like international law…it seems a lot of people are having a hard time with international law.
How many people were involved with 9-11?
And how many of them were working for the Saudi government?
I forget which UN resolutions and various cease-fire conditions applied to the Saudis; can you refresh my memory?
Probably not much, but you’re getting distracted again. Compliance, remember?
Bush and many American right-wingers don’t respect international law. The Israelis sure don’t like international law…it seems a lot of people are having a hard time with international law.
How many people were involved with 9-11?
And how many of them were working for the Saudi government?
And how many are part of the Saudi aristocracy?
And when will our “allies” turn them over to justice?
Hussein was compliant enough to make Bush look like a liar.
Excuse me; Hussein was compliant enough to make President and Commander-and-Chief George W. Bush look like a liar.
This isn’t a discussion, it’s free-association. Let me know when you’ve settled on a topic, ok? The topic we were discussing might be a decent start.
As for your questions, let me introduce you to my little friend.
No, you know you supported a liar and its better to keep killing, than stop and take responsibilty for being duped and a moral accomplice.
Oh, how noble you are.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.
I don’t know who this dude is but he sure talks gloomy.
[This is a feeble attempt at humor.]
Asking NeoDude to point out which UN resolutions Saudi Arabia ignored, in order to point out that it was Saddam Hussein who was the object of such resolutions and sanctions, is a bit of a non sequitor – since, it turns out, Saddam Hussein obeyed the resolutions by destroying his WMDs.
Saying that he wanted sanctions to end so he could start the programs up again is possibly accurate but beside the point: the original cassis belli wasn’t what Saddam might do if sanctions were ever lifted, or even if sanctions ever would be lifted; but that he already had WMD, had refused to destroy them, and presented a clear and present danger that had to addressed by an imediate invasion – regardless of what our allies said, regardless of what weapons inspectors found, and regardless of any other considerations.
The US invaded Iraq because Bush insisted Iraq presented an immediate threat. That turned out not to be true, and the intel on which Bush based his case was a flawed, untrue product of deliberately distorted analysis. That might have been forgiven if the war went well, or if the occupation went well, or if US conduct of the war and its treatment of Iraqi citizens went well; or if Bush Admin had started to play straight with anyone about its goals and plans, or if the Bush Admin had dealt in good faith with anyone outside its own circles, or if the Bush Admin had been honest or candid about any aspect of the Iraq war at all.
It wasn’t. The Bush Admin never failed to fail; it never failed to lie, to obfuscate, to attack, to deny and deflect. To this day, nobody (other than, presumably, the Bush Admin) knows just why we went to war in Iraq. To this day, nobody knows what we can actually expect to accomplish in Iraq, or how long it will take to accomplish whatever that is.
What we do know is that Bush is now talking up the prospects for a confrontation with Iran, using the same alarmist rhetoric, the same threats of military action, and with the same Secretary of Defense as brought us the Iraq Disaster.
Sebastian wants to know why we put any trust or faith in the international community. I want to know why he’s putting any trust or faith in our own leadership.
That’s what it comes down to. Actions have consequences, and the consequences of the Bush Admin’s words and actions regarding Iraq mean it cannot be trusted regarding Iran. The Bush Admin can’t be trusted to assess Iran’s nuclear capabilities or threat. It can’t be trusted to come up with a workable strategy to contain the threat. It can’t be trusted to come up with a non-FUBAR military response to the threat.
The Bush Admin can’t be trusted to deal in good faith with members of Congress, or the opposition, or the American people. The Bush Admin can’t be trusted to debate our options in Iran, because it won’t debate our options in Iran: it will simply announce its intentions, and attack anyone who disagrees. It will not address any downside to whatever plans it puts forth, because it will refuse to believe any downside exists.
The Bush Admin can’t be trusted because we’ve seen this movie before, and nothing coming out of the White House indicates that the rerun will be any different, any better, any more honest, any more well-thought out, or any less likely to make a bad situation worse, or any less likely to be used as a partisan bludgeon.
When you have a record of woodenheaded folly like the one the Bush Admin has racked up so far, the onus is on you to explain why the next time will be different. The onus is not on the people who tried to warn you the first time around, were roundly vilified for it, and who turned out to be right.
So, for the love of all that is holy, would someone who wants military action against Iran please take a stab at explaining why they think Bush will get this one right?
No, not a non sequitur at all, since he brought all of that up. I was just sort of wondering where he was going with all of that, and it turns out that he was going to the usual place. I ought to have known better.
This isn’t a discussion, it’s free-association. Let me know when you’ve settled on a topic, ok?
Mirror, kettle, etc. This thread is just par for the course from the BTKWB crowd.
Or, as Harper’s puts it:
Until people like Slartibartfast and Sebastian are willing to deal with the fact that their dear leader is a liar, that the nation was lied into war, that the war was utterly unnecessary, and that they themselves are responsible for helping that to happen, what is the point in engaging them in a discussion? It’s as useless as arguing the shape of the planet with a Flat Earther or arguing evolution with an Intelligent Design believer.
It’s useless. They are ideologues and no matter how bad things get or how obvious the lies become, they will still claim the emperor is wearing clothes.
Give up people. Stop feeding the trolls.
Slarti and Sebastian are not trolls. Sheesh, it’s their blog!
I do think that those who support the idea of airstrikes should respond to our polite requests that they explain what they see as the longterm consequences of such a action.
dunno what happened to my comment above. well, here’s the rest of it:
…pursuant to the NPT, each of the nuclear states, including the US, have given assurances to the UN security council that they will not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. many of the proposals on dealing with iran [pretty much any containing the phrase “tactical nuclear weapons”] seem to involve an odd “we need to breach the NPT in order to enforce it” type mentality.
We respond to you all the time felixrayman. It is a bit odd for you to ask us to stop feeding you.
To more rational members of the discussion:
What do I think will happen after airstrikes?
I suspect that Iran will continue supporting terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Israel. I don’t believe that will be much worse than now since they are already committed to destroying Israel and ending any US influence in Iraq. I believe they are already doing so to the extent that they can without engaging in undisguised war.
I suspect that Iran will threaten to shut off oil, and might do so for a very short time. I suspect they won’t do so for a long period of time because it would mean the end of their modern society long before it did serious damage to ours. And if they are willing to do that, they are exactly the type of people who would be willing to risk a nuclear strike and counter-strike. Better to let them kill themselves without setting off a nuclear exchange.
I fully suspect that we will be unable to keep them from nuclear bombs forever, but I expect to delay the issue for at least 10-15 years. By that point, we can hope/work for a better regime in Iran. If by then it is as safe as India, I will worry but not freak out.
In response to the democracy arsenal proposal, no one has explained how enforcement would work or why the proposal to “be willing to give up its right to threaten the use of nuclear weapons” would not cause the incentives to rush to nuclear weapons that I mentioned unless it means “give up the right to use a first strike with nuclear weapons” which to my knowledge we have already done. And not to belabor the point, but if there is no enforcement, there is no useful treaty. The utter lack of attention to enforcement is a fatal flaw which has been proven again and again with respect to the NPT. Continuing to ingore the issue isn’t making it go away.
I fully suspect that we will be unable to keep them from nuclear bombs forever, but I expect to delay the issue for at least 10-15 years.
Wow, that’s a big task you’ve taken on :^)
But seriously, just to make sure we are in the same volume if not on the same page, do you acknowledge that the DA proposal does not require getting rid of all nuclear weapons? I often wonder if there are different definitions floating around for ‘disarmament’. I don’t take it as giving up everything. I’m not sure if it even means to me giving up the majority of the weapons.
I have argued that ‘enforcement’ does not have to work perfectly. Taking the nuclear option off the table could provide a differing dynamic, especially with the two particular problems cases, Iran and North Korea. It may also force India, and Pakistan to do so. One ‘downside’ is that it would put a lot of pressure on Israel to do the same. (downside is in scare quotes, because I think the discussion would run off the rails on that point.)
What precisely was the enforcement mechanism of the ABM treaty? Or the SALT agreement, the START, the CBT, the NPT? Or even of the BWC or CWC? (in fact, the Bush administration withdrew from discussions of a verification mechanism for the BWC in 2001, but rejoined in 2003)
All of these treaties seem to be lacking in the enforcement mechanisms you claim are absolutely required. I disagree that that the NPT has floundered simply because of the lack of enforcement mechanism, it floundered because of the loophole of the right to develop nuclear power.
btw, the author is Morton Halperin and his bio is here
Sebastian argues that the Iranians must be attacked because they are too crazy to be allowed have nuclear weapons; they won’t respond to airstrikes in any very drastic way because that would be crazy; and even if they do respond in a drastic way that will only go to show they were crazy and therefore they really had to be attacked.
Well, anyone who can’t follow the logic is clearly crazy. Mind you, a thoughtful critic might suggest a possible flaw in this otherwise very lucid argument: it is just possible that people go a bit more crazy after being bombed than they were before. Some say that happened in Cambodia. It is even arguable that Japanese bombs drove Americans a little bit crazy, or at any rate changed their attitude to war.
Back in the real world, the response to airstrikes is likely to depend on what gets struck. The verb “to bomb” is transitive. To say you favour bombing without saying whether you have in mind infrastructure or merely symbolic targets like government offices is hopelessly vague.
In order to get away with ignoring this issue, just accuse other people of ignoring the issue. Since you don’t have a policy, tell them they don’t have a policy.
“All of these treaties seem to be lacking in the enforcement mechanisms you claim are absolutely required.”
The successful treaties you mention tended to be bilateral. The multilateral ones have tended to be much less successful.
“I disagree that that the NPT has floundered simply because of the lack of enforcement mechanism, it floundered because of the loophole of the right to develop nuclear power.”
The two issues are related. The ‘loophole’ is exploitable because there is no enforcement mechanism. I don’t understand how you can be so indifferent to enforcement. If there is no or little enforcement, what good is the treaty? Iran just does what it wants, violates the treaty and nothing particularly bad happens to Iran. You seem to have a very different idea of a successful treaty than I do. For me a treaty is not successful just because it gets people to sign it. It is successful if it actually changes behaviour. The treaty you are outlining seems to do almost nothing to stop rogue states like North Korea or Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. The proposal would make a “different dynamic” I’m sure. Unfortunately the different dynamic would involve increased proliferation.
You provide no mechanism by which this would work to change things. The proposal goes from unilateral arms reduction to reduced proliferation with no explanatory steps as if it were obvious. You decry the need for enforcement mechanisms, which leaves us with what exactly? When a country cheats on the treaty, what happens to them? Or for some reason is the idea so intrinsically powerful that I’m not allowed to hypothesize a country cheating on the treaty?
“But seriously, just to make sure we are in the same volume if not on the same page, do you acknowledge that the DA proposal does not require getting rid of all nuclear weapons? I often wonder if there are different definitions floating around for ‘disarmament’.”
Sure. But it requires that the US disclaim nuclear attacks. This increases the incentive of other countries to get nuclear weapons. They can threaten to use them, but it is ‘illegal’ to attack them back. In reality, ‘illegal’ isn’t going to stop anything if we get nuked and anyone in his right mind knows that. So the proposal relies on either everyone being too stupid to realize that, or if amazingly we wouldn’t retaliate it relies on the good will of dictators not to exploit that fact. That is asking way too much of human nature–it works all of the incentives in all the wrong ways. And if it allows only for counterstrikes, we get to the position we are in now–no change needed.
“they won’t respond to airstrikes in any very drastic way because that would be crazy; and even if they do respond in a drastic way that will only go to show they were crazy and therefore they really had to be attacked.”
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. It is possible that Iran would be willing to self-immolate over the destruction of their nuclear program. But if they do, it is far more likely that they would be willing to self-immolate over the nuclear destruction of Israel than most people here seem to believe. If they are indeed that level of crazy, it is worth the oil shock pain to ensure that their self-immolation doesn’t involve killing 4 million Jews in Israel.
Sebastian,
I don’t know why you take my points out of order. It seems worthwhile to establish where we agree, and we now agree that ‘disarmament’ does _not_ mean giving up all nuclear weapons. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a useful place to start.
As for treaties being bilateral, I believe that 4 of the 7 I mentioned are multilateral, (CBT, NPT, BWC and CWC) Perhaps you feel that these are the ones that have been unsuccessful, but it would be nice if you were explicit and explained why they were/are less than successful. The number of biological and chemical acts we have had is?
The big hangup seems to be your notion of enforcement. Galluci (yes, I’ve quoted before, but I requote here), who was the main negotiator in the Agreed Framework talks with North Korea, said this
I think you have to assume that they’re committed to nuclear weapons, and you have to do deals that make sense, even if that’s true. There’s no trust here. It’s not just a line, “Trust, but verify.” It’s “No, you don’t trust and you get as much verification [as possible].”
Those who criticize the deal because they cheated on it, I think, are not understanding the nature of international politics. We have done deals with people who we expected might well cheat. Indeed, the Soviet Union cheated on all kinds of deals — massively, in the biological weapons convention. That’s probably the most famous. So, you look at the deal and say, “OK. What can you monitor? What can you watch? What can you verify? If they cheat, will you catch them? And if you don’t catch them, are you still better off with the deal than without it?” link
To apply this to Iran, we would be better ratcheting down the tensions (especially given the confusion that Israeli politics is in) than try to play chicken with the mullahs. Given the greater ability of airstrikes on Iran to inflame other Muslims as well as the fact that it, unlike North Korea, is tied into the global scene (a fact that you seem to acknowledge when you write I suspect that Iran will threaten to shut off oil, and might do so for a very short time. I suspect they won’t do so for a long period of time because it would mean the end of their modern society long before it did serious damage to ours. And if they are willing to do that, they are exactly the type of people who would be willing to risk a nuclear strike and counter-strike.) the Halperin proposal seems to make sense, especially since an oil shock would strengthen any of the oil producing countries, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, and (horror of horrors), Venezuela.
As Kevin points out, your whole strategy seems to argue that well, they probably aren’t crazy and so we should demand them, by constant bullying and ultimately military action, to prove it. Yet if you are wrong and they are crazy, and airstrikes bring on a retaliation that initiates a conflict, somehow, your position will be vindicated. I’m giving up trying to generate an interpersonal analogy, because every attempt basically casts the US as some sort of psycho killer.
I don’t know if you looked at Halperin’s bio, but this stood out.
Dr. Halperin served in the federal government in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations, most recently from December 1998 to January 2001 as Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State. In the Clinton administration, he was also Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy at the National Security Council, a consultant to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and was nominated by the President for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping. In 1969, he was a Senior Staff member of the National Security Council responsible for National Security Planning. From July 1966 to January 1969, he worked in the Department of Defense where he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, responsible for political-military planning and arms control.
I’m not a fan of credentialism, but I don’t think he’s a Ramsey Clarke. You disagree, that’s your prerogative, but I think you are wrong.
SH: I believe they are already doing so to the extent that they can without engaging in undisguised war.
Upon what is this belief based? Because, you understand, if you’re wrong about this, the whole edifice collapses.
SH: I believe they are already doing so to the extent that they can without engaging in undisguised war.
Upon what is this belief based? Because, you understand, if you’re wrong about this, the whole edifice collapses.
OT: So do we need to start calling bob mcmanus King Robert?
Sebastian,
“I suspect that Iran will continue supporting terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Israel. I don’t believe that will be much worse than now since they are already committed to destroying Israel and ending any US influence in Iraq. I believe they are already doing so to the extent that they can without engaging in undisguised war.”
First, if we bomb them, I think it is a good bet that the disguise on the war will fall off. Second, right now my understanding is that their attempts to end US influence in Iraq are primarily in the political arena, rather than, for example, bringing Hezbollah agents into Iraq to begin a terrorism campaign against US soldiers there. Third, there are lots of things Iran can do other than support terrorism against Israel, including supporting attacks on US soil, which they may not have been willing to do if they still wanted to disguise the war.
“I suspect that Iran will threaten to shut off oil, and might do so for a very short time. I suspect they won’t do so for a long period of time because it would mean the end of their modern society long before it did serious damage to ours.”
I suspect that you are wrong about this, both because maintaining a modern Iranian society may no longer be a high goal of Iran’s leaders after such an attack and because I think you underestimate the adverse effect $100+ barrels of oil will do to our economy.
“As for treaties being bilateral, I believe that 4 of the 7 I mentioned are multilateral, (CBT, NPT, BWC and CWC) Perhaps you feel that these are the ones that have been unsuccessful, but it would be nice if you were explicit and explained why they were/are less than successful. The number of biological and chemical acts we have had is?”
The lack of success of the nuclear treaties is the whole issue. So there goes the first two. Chemical and biological weapons are very dangerous to use–they often turn against your own. That provides a very good reason why they tend to be more observed. But even then–there have been a number of uses of chemical weapons since the implementation of the treaty. As we are constantly reminded on this site, Iraq’s use of chemical weapons on multiple occasions isn’t enough for war.
“I don’t know why you take my points out of order. It seems worthwhile to establish where we agree, and we now agree that ‘disarmament’ does _not_ mean giving up all nuclear weapons. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a useful place to start.”
Not particularly useful since the proposal has at least two other fatal flaws.
“I think you have to assume that they’re committed to nuclear weapons, and you have to do deals that make sense, even if that’s true. There’s no trust here. It’s not just a line, “Trust, but verify.” It’s “No, you don’t trust and you get as much verification [as possible].”
Yes. This is correct. Unfortunately both in this discussion and in fact the North Korean case, the verification level is minimal to non-existant. And that is the whole problem. And then when the verification process breaks down, what do you do to enforce it. The general international community answer appears to be: “pretend that it hasn’t broken down and engage in interminable ‘negotiations’ while the building of nuclear weapons continues”.
No recitation of credentials is going to get me to forget that problem. It has been demonstrated again and again and again that the main thing necessary to successfully flout anti-proliferation treaties is the mere desire to do so.
“To apply this to Iran, we would be better ratcheting down the tensions (especially given the confusion that Israeli politics is in) than try to play chicken with the mullahs.”
And how precisely is that likely to decrease their chances of getting nuclear weapons? Do you honestly believe they will abandon their nuclear ambitions if we follow your prescription? Honestly?
Thank you for responding, Sebastian. I still think airstrikes, will interfere more thatn assit the long rainge goals you have articulated. For example, the long range goal of a different more friendly government in Iran–airstrikes are going to make people mad, more nationalistic, more anti-American, not less, thus postponing or even distroying the possiblity of a more friendly regime in the future. Also aren’t airstrikes more likely to make the Iraqi Shiites closer to Iran, than farther? It seems to me that you are leaving the human factor out.
“As we are constantly reminded on this site, Iraq’s use of chemical weapons on multiple occasions isn’t enough for war.”
Just for the record: my view (and I suspect that of others, but I’m only speaking for myself) is that Iraq’s use of chemical weapons over a decade previously, after which we had had intrusive inspections that had destroyed at least most of his chemical weapons (and I think we can now say ‘all’, though that wasn’t known before the war, was not enough to justify military action in 2003.
I don’t think anyone here has pronounced, one way or the other, on the merits of military action in Iraq during the Anfal campaign. And for what it’s worth, I would probably have been a lot closer to supporting it than the GHW Bush administration was. My concerns would have been geopolitical and strategic, not based on the idea that gassing your own people doesn’t merit a response.
Sebastian-
Do you have any thoughts on the intelligence/targeting issue I raised? That is, when you say airstrikes, do you expect those airstrikes to successfully be able to destroy Iraq’s nuclear capability? If so, what is your basis for thinking that our intelligence is good enough to identify the necessary targets? (To make my reasoning explicit, I can’t imagine how anyone who, as I understand you do, believes that our government’s mistaken beliefs about the location and existence of Iraq’s nuclear program were sincere, can have any faith at all in our government’s ability to locate the material components of Iran’s nuclear program with sufficient accuracy to destroy it from the air.)
If you don’t believe that we have accurate and reliable knowledge of the location of all material parts of Iran’s nuclear program, then are you thinking that bombing Iran is going to have some other kind of good effect, and if so, what?
Thank you, Seabstian, for responding to questions regarding Iran’s likely post-airstrike response.
As should surprise no one, Charles Krauthammer is already on board with bombing Iran, is already vilifying anyone who do esn’t think Iran should be bombed – and also has a take on the post-bomb scenario.
He, too, acknowledges that Iran is likely to shut off oil and block the Strait of Hormuz. Unlike Sebastian, though, Krauthammer seems to think it will more than an ephemeral shutoff:
“The problem that mortifies the Europeans is what Iran might do after such an attack — not just cut off its oil exports but shut down the Strait of Hormuz by firing missiles at tankers or scuttling its vessels to make the strait impassable. It would require an international armada led by the United States to break such a blockade.
Such consequences — serious economic disruption and possible naval action — are something a cocooned, aging, post-historic Europe cannot even contemplate. Which is why the Europeans have had their heads in the sand for two years. And why they will spend the little time remaining — before a group of apocalyptic madmen go nuclear — putting their heads back in the sand. And congratulating themselves on allied solidarity as they do so in unison.”
Krauthammer’s take is interesting for a couple of reasons, quite apart from his obdurate woodenheaded lunatic bloodthirst:
1. Krauthammer doesn’t think an oil embargo by Iran would be of short duration, or easily countered. He envisions needing US naval action to break it.
2. Krauthammer is apparently quite confident that the economic fallout from an oil embargo will be limited to Europe – which, pace Krauthammer (and most of the Right) deserves to be ruined anyway, for being less alarmist and bellicose than the US. Krauthammer seems not to think the US economy will affected in any material way. I wonder what he bases that belief on.
3. Krauthammer, by not mentioning Asia, and particularly China, at all, seems to be implying that they, too, will not care enough about an oil shutoff to do anything about it. Upon what hopeful assessment does he base this belief, I wonder?
Lily makes a good point about the human element.
Iran, although not totally monolithic from an ethnic viewpoint, has a much stronger sense of nation than many of the countries in the Middle East, including Iraq.
One of the difficulties in Iraq is getting a large portion of the population to think of themselves as Iraqis ahead of whatever their specific tribal or ethnic or religious identity is.
In Iran, many of the differences lie underneath a proud heritage as a nation and would be put aside if any form of attack is made.
There have been some postualtions that the very sense of being “attacked” as an Axis of Evil member may have helped swing the elections. I am not going to pretend to some sort of specialized knowledge as to how true that may be.
Additionally, it does not look like we would be thinking in terms of “regime change” in Iran, at least not through force, so those looking to reform Iran from the inside would not necessarily be happy with an aggressive move by the US.
I disagree that with those that say we should do nothing simply because those currently in charge are incompetent. Granted, IMHO, they are extremely so, as well as short-sighted. But we can push for some sort of solution that even they may be able to handle. Again, I am not a specialist here, so I am not going to pretend to have the answer.
Finally, in terms of what the original post is about, having the Democrats come up with a plan. There are two assumptions in this request.
The first is that coming up with a plan would have any meaning. Without a doubt, the plan would be either ridiculed and seen as an attempt to supplant the authority of our beloved leader who can do no wrong or it would be copied by those in power and then promoted as coming from them originally.
The second assumption, which can be understood coming from the current Republican point of view, is that somehow the Democratic Party is some form of monolithic structure which presents a totally unified viewpoint on every subject.
One of the strengths, and at the same time weakness, of the Dems is that this is not the case. One of the prime features of the current Republican Party is the expectation of complete agreement with the top, with, except for rare instances, some form of punishment being giving for any form of apostasy.
To put it another way, Republicans are a party of policy, Democrats are a policy of principles. And no, I am not saying Republicans don’t have any principles or that Democrats don’t have policies. It is a question of which is the priority.
eek! That’s what I get for running off to get coffee and not previewing!
See if that works…
Nope. OK, one more try, and then I’ll leave it to the moderators, who I think can access the code directly:
Italics off?
Honestly, Sebastian, I don’t think we can stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Perhaps there is the nub of disagreement. You seem to think we can.
Iran has nuclear ambition, and short of inflicting such a cost on them that they would scream uncle and cross their hearts to never ever covet a nuke again, that’s not going to change unless there is a chance of hell freezing over.
I think I got the italics off, but I stupidly put the close tags at the end rather than the beginning. Someone used an emp tag, I think (and am posting this to see if they did, just to satisfy my own curiousity)
LizardBreath: If you don’t believe that we have accurate and reliable knowledge of the location of all material parts of Iran’s nuclear program, then are you thinking that bombing Iran is going to have some other kind of good effect, and if so, what?
So let’s assume we can’t be sure of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities via air strikes. What will it take to ensure that Iran doesn’t develop nuclear weapons?
Take the example of North Korea, a country with very limited resources, almost totally isolated economically, with a small population (23 million), where people have been known to eat grass due to famine. Yet they still seem to have managed to develop nuclear weapons.
Contrast this with Iran, a country in a strategic position in the oil industry (due both to its physical location and its resources), population 70 million, relatively wealthy.
How can we believe that air strikes will dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons? Is there some reason to think that the people of Iran are less willing to bear hardships than the people of North Korea?
I think that for unilateral military force applied by the U.S. to be effective in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons it will require an all out war against Iran. This is probably impractical, never mind its immorality.
Sebastian, in the long run an effective enforcement mechanism to prevent nuclear proliferation will probably require the agreement and combined force of at least the U.S., Russia and China. Perhaps you disagree, but if not, do you think unilateral action by the U.S. will make this more or less likely?
This highlights exactly what I am talking about. There was no useful enforcement mechanism invoked at the time either. These treaties are not enforced. The proposal by democracy arsenal seems to involve substantial disarmament for the US with the only ‘gain’ being a treaty of the exact same type that is already not enforced. That isn’t a gain at all as far as I’m concerened. We would be trading for something of no real value.
L_J: “Honestly, Sebastian, I don’t think we can stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Perhaps there is the nub of disagreement.”
Stop them from ever getting them? Probably not. Stop them from getting them in the near future, and for so long as they have the Rafsanjani or Ahmadinejad types at the helm? I think we should certainly try.
Ral, “Is there some reason to think that the people of Iran are less willing to bear hardships than the people of North Korea?”
Yes. I think there is some reason to think that almost any people are less willing to bear hardships than the people of North Korea. They are particularly isolated from information compared to almost any nation in the world. Also the government of North Korea is much more oppressive than the government of Iran. (Boy is that a relative concept though). Iran rarely starves huge sections of its population to keep them under control for example.
“Sebastian, in the long run an effective enforcement mechanism to prevent nuclear proliferation will probably require the agreement and combined force of at least the U.S., Russia and China. Perhaps you disagree, but if not, do you think unilateral action by the U.S. will make this more or less likely?”
Both Russia and China are far less committed to international law as an idea than the US (and certainly much less than say Germany or Belguim). You seem to be positing a strategy of international law that is effective against proliferation. I find it very unlikely, especially since no one ever seems to bother with enforcement other than the US (and even us infrequently). They are likely to be convinced or not convinced on a case by case basis.
So, the people of Iran are soft because they are less oppressed by their government? And this renders them more likely to capitulate after an attack by the U.S.?
I suppose it is possible but I think the opposite result is at least equally likely.
You seem to be positing a strategy of international law that is effective against proliferation.
Yes, and I mean a regime with real enforcement. We don’t have that today and don’t seem to be on the path to achieve it. I merely say that this is what is really needed. I don’t have a road map to get there but one idea is to stop going in the opposite direction.
Stop them from ever getting them? Probably not. Stop them from getting them in the near future, and for so long as they have the Rafsanjani or Ahmadinejad types at the helm? I think we should certainly try.
I note that your answer to the second question is of a different form than your answer to the first question. Unless and until you actually make an argument that we can in fact stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons in the short term, I suspect you’re not going to convince a lot of people who don’t already agree with you.
I don’t think I can match Kevin’s summary for sheer eloquence of, and in any event I am having a little trouble absorbing the possibility that this is really the entirety of what Sebastian thinks would happen.
A bit of a spike in oil prices (at worst a “shock” but certainly not an actual depression). No diplomatic blowback from the commies (Russia/China) or the socialists (ole Europe). No impact in Iraq. Only a minor impact on the domestic economy. An unexamined presumption of success in terms of actually setting back Iran’s nuclear program. An unexamined presumption of minimal civilian casualties.
Meanwhile, Sebastian’s worst case scenario is to sweep everything else under the metaphorical rug of a complete sociopolitical, military, and economic meltdown in Iran (self-immolation, Sebastian calls it). But only in Iran, honest. And that’s okay, because it wouldn’t destabilize the region, wouldn’t kill 4 million jews (talk about a fallacy of the excluded middle), China and Russia won’t do anything about it, and the world economy would pull through just fine.
Well that really makes me want to take your view of ME politics seriously Sebastian. I don’t understand why they haven’t tapped you to write for Foreign Affairs…
so SH wants to do in Iran precisely what he condemns Clinton for doing in NK: kicking the issue down the road a few years.
now i’m well and truly baffled. we plan to spread radioactivity across a chunk of iran, give the radicals in iran and across the muslim world a recruiting tool usuable for a generation and eliminate the possibility of a velvet revolution in iran for a lousy decade of peace and quiet?
this is nuts. and to hear it coming from someone who has been vituperative toward Clinton for his policy toward NK is simply irrational.
as to the argument of who is hurt more by oil war, which society is better suited to enduring hardship: a theocratic radicalized one dealing with the repercussions of being bombed or a country which cannot even muster a tax hike to pay for war. hmmm.
one more point: lots of people argue that oil is a fungible commodity traded on the world market. true enough, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. For example, Venezuala is selling oil to Massachusetts directly at below-market prices, in order to make a point. If the US launches a military strike against iran, I could easily see Venezuala choose to refuse to sell to the US and instead to sell only directly to other nations.
Since, as Kevin Drum has pointed out a number of times, there is virtually no surplus capacity in the world market, the loss of iranian oil will mean an immediate shortfall in supply. In theory, we should then see just how inelastic the price of oil is. And since the US is the world’s richest nation, we should be able to outbid everyone else.
but what happens if the oil producers launch a secondary boycott against the US?
“You wanna know why?”
Why the Bush administration may be gearing up to attack Iran regardless?
The Iranian Oil Brouse.
(Both these quotes are from the same article on energybulletin.net – “The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse”)
See also Revisited – The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq – to prevent Iraq, and possibly the rest of OPEC, from moving from dollar to euro as the standard currency with which to buy oil.
This [non-response to the Anfal campaign] highlights exactly what I am talking about. There was no useful enforcement mechanism invoked at the time either. These treaties are not enforced.
You’re aware that the primary reason no international action was taken during or after the Anfal campaign was the US’ threat to veto any attempts to even censure Iraq and/or Saddam Hussein in the UN Security Council, right?
“You’re aware that the primary reason no international action was taken during or after the Anfal campaign was the US’ threat to veto any attempts to even censure Iraq and/or Saddam Hussein in the UN Security Council, right?”
And your point about an effective enforcement mechanism would be? And please, was France going to invade over it? Was Germany going to impose sanctions? No and no.
The US acted dishonorably there. Absolutley. But surely we aren’t pretending that anything more than censure would have happened in any event. Am I wrong about that? Verbal acts of censure aren’t even close to what I am talking about when I talk about enforcement. They are pretty much all that the UN is talking about when the UN talks about enforcement, and that is precisely the problem I have.
Oh, Anarch, that’s just liberal sleight of hand. Just ask Charles.
Sebastian, the proposed “Prevention of Genocide Act” (passed by the U.S. Senate) included harsh sanctions.
For a perfect example of this, look at the genocide still going on in the Sudan. We are at least three years in, and no-one is doing much of anything. The US has made mild proposals (which I freely admit are would not be sufficient even if carried out) which were resisted the first three times by the French, then Russia, then China. The genocide keeps going and we had trouble even getting any of the countries in Europe to admit that it was genocide the first two years. Enforcement of these types of treaties ends up falling largely to the US. We try to enforce sporadically at best, and pretty much no one else tries much at all.
As such, the difference between ‘unilateral’ enforcement and ‘international’ enforcement shrinks to almost nothing. And when we aren’t doing it, it isn’t happening at all.
That isn’t acceptable enforcement.
And your point about an effective enforcement mechanism would be?
My point was that “effective enforcement mechanism” is a completely meaningless term in the abstract; it’s like saying that “the Constitution forbids it!” without recognizing that that only acquires meaning in the presence of people willing to abide by the strictures therein. It’s the flip-side of your argument, which (correctly) points out that treaties aren’t particularly useful in the absence of an enforcement mechanism; the point is that how do you enforce the enforcement mechanism?
Specifically, suppose arguendo there had been a nominal “effective enforcement mechanism” that mandated a coordinated sanctions program. The US would presumably have thumbed its nose at that mechanism — since they damn well did the same at the time — and then… what? Iraq would have continued to trade with the US, the sanctions would have failed, and we’d be forced to ask (again) quis custodes custodiet?
And this, ultimately, is my problem with all these pie-in-the-sky discussions about “Democracy Arsenals”: they all seem to be written by starry-eyed neocon dreamers operating under the assumption that the DA will always agree with us. Well, fact is, if we had such a DA — if it were distinct and autonomous from American interests — almost by definition it will act against us at some point.* And then what? Who will enforce the enforcement mechanism? Who will shake their tiny fists at the rogue hyperpower and force it to knuckle under?
The answer is simple: no-one. Or at least, no-one that can make a difference. So we’re back to the beginning once more.
Ultimately, such ventures as the DA are, under present circumstances, nothing but an attempt to disguise American power and American interest-seeking under a veneer of international legality (and ideally using international force for our aims). Any such venture will be until either we’ve lost our hyperpower status, or until we’re willing to accept an autonomous, non-American organization that gets to dictate our responses… which, bluntly, isn’t going to happen any time soon. And even more bluntly, despite the good that might come of it, I don’t trust our foreign policy interests as a nation — much less the ludicrous, ill-founded, poorly-thought-out and generally self-destructive foreign policy instincts of the Bush Administration or its likely GOP successors — to produce a DA that won’t swiftly degenerate into a vehicle for American/American-sponsored hegemony. We’re just too damn gullible about “democracy”, and too damn solipsistic as a nation, for any other outcome.
* Unless you’re starry-eyed enough to somehow believe that “American interests” and “liberty” are somehow inextricably linked, in which case a) more fool you, b) you’ve never studied history and c) you have no business making foreign policy suggestions in the first place. And yes, that’s a generic “you” there, not you as an individual Sebastian.
Slartibartfast: “Speaking of distraction, let’s handle one subject at a time: do you still think Saddam was being compliant?”
Compare the results of inspections to what was found afterwards.
About UN resolutions: I find it very telling whenever right-wingers use them as an excuse for war; it’s equivalent to Ian Paisley using disobedience to a Papal Bull as an excuse for war.
“Ultimately, such ventures as the DA are, under present circumstances, nothing but an attempt to disguise American power and American interest-seeking under a veneer of international legality (and ideally using international force for our aims).”
Exactly, and as such I don’t see the point in lying about what they are right now. It makes us look silly when we feel we have to act against the ‘rules’ and it lets other nations who aren’t doing anything at all pretend that they are doing something about an issue. The result in cases like genocide or proliferation tend to involve either the US acting almost unilaterally or nothing gets done.
Sebastian: I don’t see the point in lying about what they are right now.
*blinks* Wait… your ambition is to have the Bush administration tell the truth about why they want to attack Iran?
Actually, that’s quite a noble ambition, especially as – if realized – it would doubtless read something like my comment here.
But as Bush has never yet told the truth about why he wanted to attack Iraq, I don’t think you have a hope of getting the truth out of him about why he wants to attack Iran.
My point about treaties that no one wants to enforce has absolutely nothing to do with Bush. My critique is the same no matter who is president.
I still don’t understand what good you think airstrikes are going to do. Do you think we can accurately destroy the Iranian nuclear program and know that we have done so without confirmation from ground forces? And if you think that, in heavens name, why?
“Sebastian, the proposed “Prevention of Genocide Act” (passed by the U.S. Senate) included harsh sanctions.”
Yes, and that is the most we were willing to do (which by the way I think is a sad fact). My point is that for the most part US action represents the outer limit of action on genocide or . Whatever we are doing or willing to do is the most that can be done. If we aren’t doing it, no one is doing it.
Sebastian Holsclaw: My point about treaties that no one wants to enforce has absolutely nothing to do with Bush. My critique is the same no matter who is president.
Unfortunately, from now until 2009, everyone in the world has to take into account that Bush is President, especially with regard to the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude to treaties and agreements they don’t happen to like, and their proven record of lying about at least one war.
Exactly, and as such I don’t see the point in lying about what they are right now.
I don’t actually know to what you’re referring here. Who or what is the “they” and what’s the lying?
Sebastian: “As such, the difference between ‘unilateral’ enforcement and ‘international’ enforcement shrinks to almost nothing. And when we aren’t doing it, it isn’t happening at all.
That isn’t acceptable enforcement. ”
In that case, Sebastian, why doesn’t President ‘Unilateral Executive above the Law’ Bush bring his horse to full rampancy, and charge into Africa?
Could it be that there’s not enough oil in the Sudan to make it worth his Texas/GOP while?
“In that case, Sebastian, why doesn’t President ‘Unilateral Executive above the Law’ Bush bring his horse to full rampancy, and charge into Africa?”
He should do something in the Sudan. That he doesn’t is a black mark on the US. That fact lessens not one iota the culpability of other nations in blocking what the US tried to do. Nor does it let them off the hook for failing to act on their own.
Which ones are you referring to, Jesurgislac?
Which ones are you referring to, Jesurgislac?
Oh, just off the top of my head: the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War; the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; the treaty designed to reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the Mine Ban Treaty: and there may be more, but those are the ones I was certainly thinking of.
Ah, well you should know that we extracted ourselves from the ABM treaty by provisions laid out in that treaty, so characterizing it as “cavalier” is inapt.
“especially with regard to the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude to treaties and agreements they don’t happen to like”
Is it our cavalier attitude about them not wearing uniforms and hence not falling under the Geneva Convention?
Perhaps you think we are lacking since we are not generous enough to provide them with uniforms in which they can wear on the way to kill us.
“the Mine Ban Treaty”
From your own article,
How cavalier of us?
And
Seems the article forgot to mention that our enemies haven’t signed up either. This article only shows the impotence of our European/NATO allies.
If only people like you would hold Al Qaeda to such standards. I guess all those IED’s they are planting don’t really matter to you because they only kill Americans.
also, would the pro-strike group please tell us whether there is any limit on the number of iranian civilian casualties that are acceptable (ie, beyond which a target becomes off-limits).
That’s easy – you don’t count them ergo they are what you make them…
Sorry, I missed where this comment came from:
Was this made in reference to the pro-strike unilateral cowboy Chirac?
Tim T: i posed that question, and i was not aware of Chirac’s comment, so the answer to your question is No.
I was curious as to whether SH had any limits on his willingness to kill civilians who happen to be in the way.
This, btw, is an interesting post on the same issue.
Sure, we shouldn’t be leveling cities or neighborhoods. We should be targetting the structures. I would be saddened but unsurprised if some civilian maintainence workers or the like were killed.
“also, would the pro-strike group please tell us whether there is any limit on the number of iranian civilian casualties that are acceptable (ie, beyond which a target becomes off-limits).”
I certainly wouldn’t say I am in the pro-strike group. It was probably too late for that by 2002. I think our only recourse is to work actively to overthrow the government. The Iraqi’s couldn’t do this on their own so things get tricky on how to accomplish it.
To quote George Washington, “perseverance and commitment is required”. We could start this process by occupying a country close to Iran. (Check)
Now we have to build up our base and extend our influence across the border. Engage the people, not necessarily the government.
As far as a limit on the number of Iranian civilian casualties I follow the lead of Arafat. There is no such thing as an Israeli civilian. I would redefine that to say if you work or live near a suspected nuclear site then you might have to pay the ultimate price. During the cold war I lived near the number 4 target on the Soviet list. I thought about it everyday.
TimT: Is it our cavalier attitude about them not wearing uniforms and hence not falling under the Geneva Convention?
You need to read the Geneva Convention, Tim. Article 4 indeed provides that “Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy” – and those categories are more inclusive that your comment about uniforms suggests you are aware of.
But, Article 5 says:
In short, anyone captured by the US military “having committed a belligerent act” (which by no means applies to all of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay) whom the US thinks may not be included under Article 4, nevertheless must be treated as if they were prisoners of war until their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.
That part of the Geneva Convention is what the present administration cavalierly disregarded. They did not ask a competent tribunal to determine the status of the prisoners sent to Guantanamo Bay (or indeed prisoners beaten to death in Bagram Airbase) before removing them from the status of PoWs. They justified this by claiming they didn’t have to have a competent tribunal because they had no doubt.
This is precisely as legal as it would be were someone to be sent to prison for life, no appeal, no trial, no nothing, who had been picked up by the NYPD because a cop on the beat had been told by an informer that this person was guilty of murder: and the NYPD justified skipping the trial because the cop on the beat had no doubt that the man was guilty.
Slarti: Ah, well you should know that we extracted ourselves from the ABM treaty by provisions laid out in that treaty, so characterizing it as “cavalier” is inapt.
*shrug* You may feel that for Bush to decide to unilaterally abandon a treaty that was 29 years in use after he had been less than 11 months in office, was clearly a sensible, wise, and measured decision, not in the least “cavalier”. But if so, I feel your judgement of Bush’s decisionmaking is inapt, not my word choice.
TimT There really isn’t the slightest possiblity that the mostly Shiite government of Iraq will help us overthrow the goverment of Iran.
As far as a limit on the number of Iranian civilian casualties I follow the lead of Arafat. There is no such thing as an Israeli civilian.
This might be an appropriate time for you to clarify your stance on the Global War On Terror.
Jesurgislac,
Maybe you should read what you quote.
Terrorists don’t fall under Article 4. So they aren’t protected by it. So Aricle 5 isn’t applicable either.
Lily,
Never claimed they would. Btw, which side of the Iraq/Iran war did the Iraqi Shiites fight on?
TimT: Terrorists don’t fall under Article 4. So they aren’t protected by it. So Aricle 5 isn’t applicable either.
As I explained to you in some detail already, the Geneva Convention requires that when someone is taken prisoner by the enemy, “having committed a belligerant act”, in order to decide that Article 4 does not apply, Article 5 requires a competent tribunal to determine that a prisoner does not fall into any category included under Article 4. The US did not do so: the US is in breach of the Geneva Convention.
This was illegal when it was supposed that all the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were, as the Bush administration claimed, dangerous terrorists, the worst of the worst: now that it is known that, thanks to their cavalier disregard of the procedures required by the Geneva Convention, many innocent kidnap victims have been imprisoned there – some freed, some not – it goes beyond illegal into criminal folly.
Trying to defend this with ignorant comments like “Terrorists don’t fall under Article 4” does not help your argument.
“Article 5 requires a competent tribunal to determine that a prisoner does not fall into any category included under Article 4.”
Actually it requires a competent tribunal if there is any doubt.
“Actually it requires a competent tribunal if there is any doubt.”
And since they were captured in Afghanistan during fighting there wasn’t doubt, except for people that want to lend more credence to terrorists than they do the U.S.
Article 4 doesn’t apply.
Let’s make this simple for Jesurgislac. Does the Geneva Convention apply to terrorists? A Yes or No answer would be nice.
Maybe Jesurgislac can also point to a time line that we must also follow in the Geneva Conventions that equally isn’t applicable.
I’ve read your posts Jesurgislac. I wouldn’t be calling anyone ignorant if I were you.
If extraction from a treaty according to the terms of the treaty itself constitutes “cavalier” to you, know that this isn’t a compelling point argument. It’s not an argument at all, it’s simply opinion.
If you’ve taken the trouble to peruse the treaty itself and have paid attention to the change in geopolitics since the treaty was first signed, I don’t see how you can honestly hold that the treaty had not outlived its usefulness.
“And since they were captured in Afghanistan during fighting there wasn’t doubt”
So there were nearly 30 million terrorists when we invaded in 2001. Who knew recruitment was that successful for bin Laden?
TimT I understood you to be saying that at some time in the future Iraq would let itself be used as base of American operations for overthrowing the goverment of Iran and I don’t think there is much expectation of that any more because the government of Iraq is fairly friendly to the government of Iran.
My guess is that soldiers of any religion obeyed orders during the war. However, Saddam is gone and the Shiites are in charge now so there is no reason to assume they will follow Saddam’s example in their relations to Iran.
I don’t see how you can honestly hold that the treaty had not outlived its usefulness
I was hoping for Slart to weigh in, but more to throw some cold water on this rather than gas. Don’t you think “honestly hold” is a bit, er, much, especially if some can argue that the possibility of ballistic missiles is something that could be, with advances in electronic intelligence gathering, not require that the US withdraw from the treaty? I think the are arguable points, and turning up the temperature is not altogether helpful.
I mean honestly not as an implication that anyone was being dishonest, lj. Figure of speech.
But to go a bit further: first, the fact that the other nation involved no longer exists. This is probably the least important point, but it’s still there. Second, the ABM treaty is designed to support MAD, which I think is no longer policy. It’s designed so as NOT to deter an attack, but rather to ensure that ONLY a missile complex OR the capitols can be defended. I worked on such a system once upon a time, and when I discovered its intent was not to defend people but rather to defend ICBMs…I’ll let you imagine how that was.
And: given that the treaty was designed so as to limit arms buildup, and given that both parties of the treaty have been standing down in terms of number of nuclear arms for the last couple of decades, I’m thinking there’s many reasons to get rid of it. The former Soviet Union is not a threat in terms of proliferation anymore, it’s a threat because it may have left weapons scattered about for others to make use of. Those others haven’t cosigned the ABM treaty with us and aren’t, in any event, in a position to build themselves some ridiculous defense complex whose sole purpose is to protect their politicians.
Or, one could think of the ABM Treaty as a nuclear-arms version of “starve the beast”, and decide accordingly. Just a thought.
Fair enough, but I think that figures of speech are the things to be most careful about, especially when things get hot.
As for the ABM treaty (wow, any more off post, and we’ll be back on it), my very cursory understanding is that we went off it not because of the disappearance of the Soviet Union, but because it was argued that we needed to protect ourselves against rogue nations. This plugs back into the food fight here. If a rogue nation reaches a point where it can develop and then toss a ballistic missile in our direction, it implies a certain cavalier-ness about trying to stop things sooner (as well as a cavalier-ness in trying to clean up the mess left by the Soviet Union). I’d have to do more reading, and this thread is about to drop off the page, plus the term has just finished here, so there’s not going to be much time outside of grading and getting things ready for next term (big, big, big plans there) so I’m not asking for a tete a tete about the ABM treaty, just suggesting that there is something on the other side of the argument for that.
If only people like you would hold Al Qaeda to such standards. I guess all those IED’s they are planting don’t really matter to you because they only kill Americans.
A cite, please, for any of this egregious nonsense?
To quote George Washington, “perseverance and commitment is required”. We could start this process by occupying a country close to Iran. (Check)
We could also start this process by not occupying a country close to Iran, thereby preserving our military and diplomatic capabilities, not to mention the potential for a non-war-footing economy. (Cross)
“As for the ABM treaty (wow, any more off post, and we’ll be back on it), my very cursory understanding is that we went off it not because of the disappearance of the Soviet Union, but because it was argued that we needed to protect ourselves against rogue nations. This plugs back into the food fight here. If a rogue nation reaches a point where it can develop and then toss a ballistic missile in our direction, it implies a certain cavalier-ness about trying to stop things sooner”
I don’t think I’m understanding you. We withdrew from the ABM treaty because it made research into stopping other people’s ballistic missiles illegal. We were worried about rogue nations having ballistic missiles (probably the largest worry at the time was North Korea). Your last sentence makes very little sense to me in the context of this discussion. “it implies a certain cavalier-ness about trying to stop things sooner….” Do you mean like letting Iran get nuclear weapons?
Sebastian, I think you are just trying to score process points. Are you implying that we withdrew from the ABM treaty because we needed to deal with Iran? Just for the record, I find proposing airstrikes to be subsumed in the definition of cavalier, so strictly speaking, just because you are doing something to deal with Iran does not exclude the possibility of being cavalier. In fact, the admin’s dealings with North Korea strike me as complete undergirded by disregard of the opinions of others. which I think is the definition of cavalier.
You can say we withdrew from it because it made the “research” we wanted to do illegal, but the word ‘research’ is a bit of smoke and mirrors there, as the National Missile Defense was a bit more than guys tinkering in the lab. It also marked the first time the US had withdrawn from an arms treaty.
This article has a few fun moments from those halcyon days
The vision of a United States unfettered by international agreements and acting unilaterally in its own best interests has recently been put forward in Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control, a study published by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), a conservative think tank, and signed by 27 senior officials from past and current administrations. They include the current deputy national security advisor (Stephen Hadley), the special assistant to the secretary of defense (Stephen Cambone), and the National Security Council official responsible for counterproliferation and national missile defense (Robert Joseph).
The NIPP study argues that arms control is a vestige of the Cold War, has tended to codify mutual assured destruction, “contributes to U.S.-Russian political enmity, and is incompatible with the basic U.S. strategic requirement for adaptability in a dynamic post-Cold War environment.” Codifying deep reductions now, along the lines of the traditional Cold War approach to arms control, “would preclude the U.S. de jure prerogative and de facto capability to adjust forces as necessary to fit a changing strategic environment.”
Another theme in the recent debate is whether foreign and security policy should be based on “realism.” Believing that nations should act only when and where it is in the national interest and not for ideological or humanitarian reasons, President Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and Secretary of State Colin Powell have all criticized the Clinton administration’s foreign policy as having drifted into areas unrelated to maintaining the nation’s security, dominance, or prosperity.
Rice and other realist members of the new administration, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, support a robust national missile defense system and are reluctant to intervene militarily for humanitarian reasons. They would rely less on international organizations and are inclined to take a tougher line with China, Russia, and perhaps North Korea. Rice and others have criticized the Clinton administration for aiding China through trade agreements and transfers of sensitive technology as well as for underestimating the potential for scientific espionage by exchange scientists at U.S. national laboratories.
Sebastian: Actually it requires a competent tribunal if there is any doubt.
Oh, Sebastian, not you as well? Yes. If there is any doubt that they do not fall into Article 4: that is not a free pass for any government that holds prisoners to blandly declare that since they have no doubt these prisoners are not included, they’re not including them. If there is no doubt that they are included under Article 4, no tribunal is needed: Article 5 describes the process to remove a prisoner from the protection of the Geneva Convention, for which a competent tribunal is needed.
You’re an intelligent, well-informed person, Sebastian: while you might have felt willing to trust the Bush administration’s judgement in January 2002 that the only people who were being sent to Guantanamo Bay were people who deserved to go there, given that you know now that – thanks to the cavalier disregard of sensible provisions in the Geneva Convention – large numbers of innocent people were sent there, why are you defending this? You can see for yourself that it wasn’t only criminal to decide they didn’t need competent tribunals: it was criminal folly.
Liberal_Japonicus, don’t you think part of the desire to figure out a working missile defense is based on the fact that the international non-proliferation agreements are so obviously breaking down? When you ask “Are you implying that we withdrew from the ABM treaty because we needed to deal with Iran?” the answer is obviously “Yes, we wanted to develop missile defense precisely because of countries like North Korea and Iran.”
The ABM treaty was designed to make mutual assured destruction more assured and its success was marked by the reduction of missiles. The reduction of missiles has gone along quite nicely, and the ABM’s only current (at the time we pulled out of it) function was to prevent defense from being experimented with and implemented. Since the demise of the USSR, the MAD function of the ABM treaty was gone. Its function in enforcing that was gone. The missile reduction was continuing, it wasn’t neccessary for that. So withdrawing from it made perfect sense. We withdrew according to the design of the treaty. It had outlived its usefulness and its only current function was harmful to security interests. It was implemented to increase overall security by decreasing the chance of all-out nuclear war. That threat is greatly diminished, and it was now interfering with other security interests without giving a positive tradeoff in any other area. What was the security interest gained by continuing it? None. Therefore we didn’t continue it. It is the same reason France and Germany abandoned many of the economic strictures of the EU in the past two years–it was hurting them more than it was helping them.
Since the demise of the USSR, the MAD function of the ABM treaty was gone. Its function in enforcing that was gone.
In short, Bush decided that the treaty had been a treaty between equals, and it wasn’t any more, so the US had a perfect right to cavalierly depart from the treaty.
You can list all the benefits you think the US got by deciding to ditch the treaty, but what that amounts to is a defense of Bush’s position that he will only have the US adhere to treaties so long as he perceives a clear and overwhelming benefit to the US in doing so: when he thinks there’s no benefit to the US in standing by a treaty, he’ll ditch the treaty.
His “allies” – or subject nations – are thus assured that the one thing they can count on under Bush is that the US will cavalierly disregard any treaties as soon as Bush thinks they no longer provide an overwhelming benefit to the US. That there might be considered to be a long-term benefit to the US in being perceived as a nation that stands by its agreements, rather than one that can’t be trusted, is plainly something that’s never occurred to Bush.
Sebastian Holsclaw,
Look, I’m sympathetic to the fact that you are getting it from a lot of people in this thread and that may account for your snappishness. But you really need to take a break from your keyboard if you feel the urge to jump in on other conversations in order to try and prove you are right and everyone else is wrong, wrong, wrong. I backed out and simply made a point to Slarti that viewing the ABM treaty as an ‘obvious’ example might not be so, well, obvious, especially in light of the suggestion that Jes wasn’t being honest. That you seem to suggest that the ABM treaty withdrawal was piece of the admin’s grand plan to deal with Iran (and that it is effectively the same thing as France and Germany recasting EU governance) tells me that there’s not any place we are going to find agreement on this.
I think this is rather too much mind-reading to be acceptable at face value; do you expect us to believe that Bush felt that we not only were we justified in exiting from the treaty, but were justified (perhaps obligated?) in doing so cavalierly? And you’ve got some sort of basis for that belief?
And ok, LJ, certainly I don’t expect everyone to agree, but I do expect everyone who’s not hooked by talking points put out by either side to consider that perhaps there were good reasons to perform an exit. An exit that was at least a decade overdue, IMO.
Sebastian, the ABM Treaty didn’t so much as thwart R&D (I spent at least a decade working on systems that, if implemented, would require major surgery or outright euthanasia of the treaty) as thwart testing. As a matter of policy and as a matter of spending, I’d suggest that folks who gripe about us having spent billions on missile defense without much to show for it examine the reason why: the ABM Treaty. I also think that discussions of Iran and discussions of the ABM Treaty withdrawal are disjoint: Iran has no capability to hit us with even a hand grenade on a missile, never mind a nuclear warhead. This may change, but it’s the case at present. The ABM Treaty was scrapped, I believe (at least in part), in recognition that the USSR is no longer the sole threat to this country. Things have changed; time for a new paradigm.
Finally, the ABM Treaty didn’t directly affect proliferation, which was the intent. It also clearly didn’t prevent either side from having a first-strike capability. All it did was ensure that the combat would be entirely offensive, which to me is, well, offensive. And President Clinton’s commitment to NMD back in the late 1990s is utterly baffling, given that the treaty would have to be scrapped or transmogrified into something almost (but not quite) entirely unlike the ABM Treaty to even allow the beginning of testing under anything resembling operational conditions.
I guess my entire point is, there’s been at least a dozen years of spirited debate on whether the ABM Treaty is still meaningful and useful, and to pretend that half of that debate simply never took place and/or never had any points worth considering is to indulge in revisionism.
Finally, LJ, your comments about my turn of phrase upthread: point taken, but any heat in this discussion lies somewhere other than on this side of the screen.
I interrupt my self-imposed exile from Obsidian Wings to make the following announcement–according to the NYT today, the Bush Administration is opposed to harsh economic sanctions against Iran because they would cause suffering among ordinary Iranians and turn them against the US. The Bushies are leaning towards “smart sanctions”, such as travel bans and asset freezes for high-ranking members of the Iranian government and their supporters in the private sector. As an example to be avoided, an aide to Richard Lugar points to the sanctions on Iraq, which–who’d have guessed it?–caused great suffering among ordinary Iraqis and not to Saddam and members of his ruling clique. Mrs. Merkel, once of East Germany, said that ordinary East Germans would have favored policies aimed at their commie overlords,but didn’t like policies that hurt ordinary people like them. This statement may have influenced Bush. Trying to outflank the Bushies on the right, you have Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, who favors a ban on gasoline sales to Iran and other economic punishments. (Iran needs gasoline? I guess they don’t have refineries, maybe?)
Kinda interesting to me, anyway. In light of this, I’m surprised Bush didn’t castigate that disgusting person Madelaine Albright for her famous lapse of decorum when she admitted on Sixty Minutes that she thought the mass deaths of Iraqi children were a price worth paying to keep Saddam in his box. But I guess on the subject of dead Iraqi children neither one would be in a position to cast stones.
Okay, back to exile. The story, btw, is by Steven Weisman, on page A8 of the NYT today, if you happen to have a dead tree edition on hand.
Finally, LJ, your comments about my turn of phrase upthread: point taken, but any heat in this discussion lies somewhere other than on this side of the screen
Understood, and apologies that by carrying on the discussion with Sebastian, it made it seem that I was holding you responsible for the direction of thread, I wasn’t and don’t. It’s just that I think we rely on you to keep things civil around here, something for which we don’t thank you enough.
That’s really good news about the smart sanctions. I’m glad someone in the Bush administration has the brains to realize that it matters whether or not the Iranian citizens hate us. That’s exactly way airstrikes would be a very, very bad idea.
Hey, it’s just about the only purpose I do serve around here. The apology is appreciated but completely unnecessary; I just wanted to correct what I thought was a misunderstanding. I take very little of what’s said here personally anymore, which from here is a much healthier place to be than the Angry Slart.
There’s an excellent article on psychological bullying, by the way, over on Scribal Terror (which I really need to visit more often, but is mysteriously password-protected just now), and I think that although it’s probably not anything new, it’s nonetheless dead on. I’d like to keep as much of that sort of thing away from here as possible, because I don’t think it has a place in debate.
“That you seem to suggest that the ABM treaty withdrawal was piece of the admin’s grand plan to deal with Iran (and that it is effectively the same thing as France and Germany recasting EU governance) tells me that there’s not any place we are going to find agreement on this.”
Umm, ok. If you won’t do anything but treat my points with public disdain (and this is the third set of points in three different areas of discussion where you have done so) we aren’t only going to fail to find agreement, we are going to fail to have a discussion at all.
Jesurgislac,
One would think that you would praise the U.S. for helping out the Brits.
You comments are enough to make one think you are ungrateful that US actions might help save British lives.
“large numbers of innocent people were sent there”
It’s this kind of exaggeration that I’m talking about. Large numbers of prisoners have never even existed there. Maybe around 500 to 600.
Please tell me how many you think are innocent? Let’s see what a large number looks like.
“large numbers of innocent people were sent there, why are you defending this?”
Why do you so staunchly defend terrorists? The worst of the worst are there. The ones that would kill you and your friends in a heart beat. Why are you so willing to risk other peoples lives?
If you want to castigate the Bush administration for anything it should be for releasing some from Guantanamo that have gone on to murder innnocent people. Where’s your outrage about that? Are there lives worth nothing in your opinion?
http://www.washintonpost.com
Read that article well. You are arguing in support of terrorists and murders. I guess you find guys running around Afghanistan and subjugating women more trustworthy than the Americans protecting you from them. I guess we all have different value systems.
Sleep well.
Are there any lefties out there honest enough to admit that with the release of a new tape from Bin Laden you guys seem to use the same talking points?
Who is reading from whose script?
One would think that you would praise the U.S. for helping out the Brits.
Nine British citizens were held illegally in Guantanamo Bay. Why should I “praise” the US for kidnapping British citizens and holding them illegally for years at a time? There are also at least six (perhaps more) legal British residents still held in Guantanamo Bay, kidnapped and illegally imprisoned by the US. These are crimes, Tom, or Tim, or whatever you’re calling yourself. The US has neither apologized for committing these crimes against its ally, nor offered any compensation to its victims.
Umm, ok. If you won’t do anything but treat my points with public disdain (and this is the third set of points in three different areas of discussion where you have done so)
Huh? Three sets? What comments are you referring to? Was it the analogy remark here? Was it this comment that I specifically said was “not particularly calling anyone out here? Was it suggesting that “I do think that the Demo Arsenal deserves more than being brushed off like that” Or was this comment or this comment? Or was it taking issue with you misstating the DA proposal? Or this one or this one? Or was there something on another thread that you’ve totted up, vowing that you will have your revenge? I realize that actually re-citing the comments might feel to you like public disdain, but for the real deal, try this on for size. Please note the difference between the comments above and this one below.
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I realize that acting the hurt conservative is your shtick around here, but this kind of comment, (‘You have insulted me 7 times! I’ve been keeping track!’) bereft of content, makes you look petty and petulant and only encourages the kind of treatment you complain about. Grow up.
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Hope that helps you recalibrate your public disdain monitor. I leave the thread to you.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough in my analogy to France and Germany in the EU.
France and Germany pushed the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) as a series of interlocking treaties designed to restrict government spending deficits and public debt to maintain the value of the euro. It began in 1997 during the run-up to the euro, and was fully implemented by 1999. It had a number of punitive measures which could be used against members who violated the pact, and the threat of these was used against a number of the smaller countries in the EU.
When the bigger countries began to creep past the pact’s allowed limits, they decided that it wasn’t in their (country’s) best interests to continue. Crippling the French and German economies by allowing them to fall into recession or depression wouldn’t have been good for the euro.
That is how treaties work. They are entered into when they are thought to beneficial, they are exited or gutted when they have outlived their usefulness. The SGP was useful to France and Germany when it could be used as a club to threaten smaller members with. It wasn’t useful to France and Germany when it hampered their prefered economic policies, so they had its provisions gutted.
That is how treaties tend to work in the real world.
The reason the US is the only one withdrawing from now-useless treaties like the ABM treaty is because it is one of the only actors left in non-proliferation and international nuclear affairs. Other countries talk a lot, but are not particularly effected by the treaties nor do they particularly intend to take action for enforcement. But as we have seen from France and Germany on treaties where they actually are impacted by the treaty–they are adopted so long as they are in the countries’ interest and casually discarded when not.
The ABM treaty wasn’t serving its intended purpose for anyone. Ballistic missiles had been reduced already and the threat of sparking a new arms race with Russia was non-existant. Its main purpose was done. Its only surviving effect was to make it illegal to test anti-missile defenses and illegal to implement the naval system to shoot down missiles in mid-flight. The negatives were hurting the US and the positives were non-existant. When it is all minus and no plus, withdrawing made perfect sense–and shouldn’t be considered a big deal.
Perhaps you are unaware of your verbal bullying. I’ll be happy to go over it with you.
I give specific objections to the Democracy Arsenal proposal. They focus on a lack of enforcement and a worry about perverse incentives which will make proliferation by cheating states worse than it currently is. Your response:
Rather than engage my points, you label them a brush-off.
Then when called on that you write:
Here you state that you won’t address my points and continue to ignore all of my practical concerns while merely asserting that non-enforcement still leads to a win.
Then you write another post where you continue to ignore my enforcement concerns and you say:
This dismisses without comment my concern that the lack of threat of a counter-strike leads to incentives which will increase proliferation by encouraging rogue states to believe that they are not subject to a counterstrike. You also continue your tradition of not only failing to address the concerns raised, but you also dismiss my concerns as dishonest and due to a flawed Manichean view. At that point you still haven’t responded to me on the enforcement or the incentives issue and you have transformed the proposal on “nuclear threat” into something which is almost no change at all from current policy (which raises the question of why it is a point at all).
Not having learned my lesson, I respond substantively to you in my 4:12 post with
Your response on the enforcement issue is to quote a negotiator on “trust but verify”. This response ignores that the problem I have constantly stated is what enforcement is available to allow real verification, and what do we intend to do if the verification turns up a program that is disallowed under the treaty.
You also say:
Frankly I found this somewhat surprising since the failure of the CBT and NPT is exactly why we are having this conversation, but foolishly I pressed on by pointing out that biological weapons tend to not be used because they can too easily spread back to your own population (practical and legalistic concerns) and that chemical weapons have indeed been used to no noticeable enforcement consequence.
After having suggested that I don’t “honestly” respond to the Democratic Arsenal request, you turn around and worry Slarti about his use of “honestly hold” saying: “I think the are arguable points, and turning up the temperature is not altogether helpful.”
Then on the ABM treaty, you refuse to engage either Slarti or myself when we repeatedly talk about why the US withdrew from it.
[This of course ignores the fact that the key complaint about North Korean diplomacy for almost three years was that the US didn’t want to engage in exclusively bilateral negotiations with North Korea. But by this point it should have been clear that you weren’t discussing substance anway]
You also say:
This is a silly response, since research involves testing. And the second sentence is even sillier if you can’t (and you don’t) defend the usefulness of the ABM treaty.
Which led to my European analogy. Your response:
This reiterates your complaint about ratcheting up rhetoric over “honesty” when you (as quoted above) did the same thing. And if you didn’t understand the European analogy and why I used it, you could have asked. Instead you continue your thread-long game of failing to engage substantive points while dripping with disdain.
You end with: “Hope that helps you recalibrate your public disdain monitor.”
Rather ironic considering…
I am sorry, Sebastian, that you feel so put upon. To explain, “honestly” and “Manichian” refers to you implying that the Demo Arsenal proposal required that the US unilaterally disarm. I asked you if that is what you meant and you ‘brushed it off’, to use your term. I meant to focus on your inability to admit that you misstated the proposal. Sorry if that was misunderstood.
“Process points” referred to the fact that you jumped in between Slarti and I over something that was not related to the any discussion you had even touched on, despite tortured attempts to make it so.
I also thank you for the detailed discussion about the links between the ABM treaty and EU governance. I’m not precisely sure how the changing of debt targets and such equates to one side completely pulling out of a 30 year treaty, but please don’t go into further detail for my benefit, as my point about the ABM treaty was simply that there are two sides to everything, just as it is probably not an unalloyed good that France and Germany rewrite the rules to suit themselves.
Since those were apparently the three instances, I hope that sets your mind at ease. While I appreciate you paying such close attention to what I wrote, I will again suggest that you need to take a break as you seem rather brittle getting upset about basically two sentences. O daiji ni.
No, I got upset about the fact that you refused to engage my points (you still have not even tried to deal with the enforcement issue) while repeatedly complaining that I was avoiding the discussion. I don’t care if you refuse to substantively engage my points. People write on whatever they choose to write on, I understand that.
But I do get annoyed when you refuse to engage the substance, instead call them dishonest, and then complain that I am not taking things seriously while making repeated suggestions that I’m not being fair to the conversation.
No, I got upset about the fact that you refused to engage my points (you still have not even tried to deal with the enforcement issue) while repeatedly complaining that I was avoiding the discussion.
I, OTOH, have, and I’m still waiting for a clarification of your position.
you still have not even tried to deal with the enforcement issue
Morning Sebastian
One doesn’t enter treaties because they are perfectly enforceable, and one doesn’t even enter in them because they are enforceable thru the treaties themselves. For some treaties, the fact that they are unenforceable allows them to be enacted and, hopefully, in the future, a coalition would develop to enable enforcement, or a desire to be plugged in to the rest of the world would force the countries themselves to reconsider (as well as provide the other countries with further leverage). This is why stateless groups are such a problem, because they have no geographic nexus on which focus pressure. Treaties exist not simply as articles to be enforced, but as statements that allow an international norm to coalesce around. As such, treaties exist to set up moral high ground, and have done so for at least the time after WWII if not longer. Thus, I view your discussion of the enforcement issue as unrelated to the points that Halperin was making.
Lastly, I would point out that I only engaged you specifically when you started calling me out by name. I scrupulously avoiding specifically invoking your name or any specific points that you made. If you felt anything that I said constituted a personal insult (I’ve explained the three instances that you noted, so I hope you can see that those comments were in regard to specific aspects of the conversation, not accusing you of always being dishonest, or Manichean or always trying to score process points), I apologize unreservedly.