Month: September 2009

This Bret Stephens op-ed is fascinating less for what it says than the assumptions it makes:

The conclusion among Israelis is that the Obama administration won't lift a finger to stop Iran, much less will the "international community." So Israel has pursued a different strategy, in effect seeking to goad the U.S. into stopping, or at least delaying, an Israeli attack by imposing stiff sanctions and perhaps even launching military strikes of its own … The problem, however, is that the administration isn't taking the bait, and one has to wonder why.

Really? It baffles Stephens why the US doesn't simply do what Israel tells it to do? Well, here's one possible response: maybe the US doesn't actually like being forced to calibrate its entire foreign policy to the interests of one foreign country alone, however close and unbreakable the alliance. There are distinctions and nuances between Israel's national interests and the United States' national interests – a fact that has been largely erased from the neocon psyche, but which any American president is bound to consider in the current delicate moment. Those distinctions make a difference.

Here are arguments that do not seem to have occurred to Stephens. It may be in the long-term interests of the US not to confront Tehran over the one policy the Iranian people strongly support it on right now: the nuclear question. Given the strength of the internal resistance to the regime, it might be better to accept some nuclear development while trying to exploit internal divisions with economic carrots. Containment, in other words: a policy that was once quite acceptable on the mainstream right.

And what's so awful about a nuclear stand-off between Iran and Israel in the Middle East? It is not necessarily a stable situation in a region when one country – and one country alone – has nuclear weapons in a region like the Middle East. In fact, it might encourage that country to act militarily with impunity, to over-reach and generate excessive hostility. Nuclear deterrence worked very well for much of the world for a long time in preventing conflict rather than exacerbating it. It may be the one thing preventing an India-Pakistan war. Why is it unthinkable in the Middle East?

Of course, we'd all rather Iran did not have the bomb.

But is there any way to prevent that without a brutal and constant war against its regime, a regime that may well be shored up at home as a result? And is it really in American interests to launch another war on Muslims (which is how it would be portrayed by al Qaeda) and at the same time side totally with the Sunni autocracies in their own anti-Shiite paranoia and bigotry? How will that impact Iraq's independence from its giant Shiite neighbor? How will it impact US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? How much international terrorism will it spawn that could kill Americans and Europeans?

These are tricky questions and while I respect the argument that attempting to disarm Ahmadinejad's coup-led government (even in the last resort by military force) should be on the table, I don't share the notion that this is inevitable or that America's support for Israel should be reflexive in this situation. Sure, some kind of deal whereby Iran is used as a common enemy to resolve the Israel-Palestinian question is tempting. But such an anti-Shiite Sunni-Israeli alliance of convenience could destabilize Iraq and force it further into Iran's hands. It might also be prudent to hang back, and see how events within Iran proceed, and also, by keeping an open hand, remove from Tehran any claim that it is being bullied by the Great Satan.

But what I really worry about in Stephens' op-ed is the attempt to blame the US for Israel's predicament. The truth is the opposite of Stephens' claim: the US is not secretly pushing Israel to strike Iran; Israel is openly pushing the US to strike on its behalf. Why on earth would any US president take that bait on Israel's terms and on Israel's time-table?

The real question we need to consider is what to do if Israel acts unilaterally, and sets the region ablaze, bringing the rest of the West into the cross-fire. Do we sanction Israel? Dare we not sanction Israel if it starts a fourth world war in the region that ends up killing Americans in the blowback?

I've actually come to enjoy reading it this summer. Its contents are much more diverse than they once were, its foreign coverage seems much improved … but then I read a Palin-style op-ed like this one and wonder what on earth possessed them to run it. Tom Ricks has an explanation:

Having toiled at the low pay but high morale WSJ for 17 years in my well-spent youth, I can say that the view we held on the news-gathering side of the organization was that the newspaper's business formula was brilliant — the news side told American business what it needed to hear, while the edit page told American business what it wanted to hear.

And how it reverberates in the sometimes fact-free right-wing blogosphere.

Waterbury, Vermont, 10.41 am

More excerpts courtesy of Raw Story (Update: Full GQ article here). Bombshell:

“I’m trying to remember if I’ve met [Sarah Palin] before. I’m sure I must have.”  [Bush's] eyes twinkled, then he asked, “What is she, the governor of Guam?”

Everyone in the room seemed to look at him in horror, their mouths agape. When Ed told him that conservatives were greeting the choice enthusiastically, he replied, “Look, I’m a team player, I’m on board.” He thought about it for a minute. “She’s interesting,” he said again. “You know, just wait a few days until the bloom is off the rose.” Then he made a very smart assessment.

“This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,” he said. “She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.” It was a rare dose of reality in a White House that liked to believe every decision was great, every Republican was a genius, and McCain was the hope of the world because, well, because he chose to be a member of our party.

When the history of the Bush administration is written, Bush may emerge as the sanest of them all. Remember his alleged first reaction to the WMD data: "This all we got?" Or his alleged response to torture: "Do these harsh interrogations actually work?" It doesn't spare him responsibility, but at least he was smart enough to realize the Palin train-wreck in advance.

Philip K. Howard made a list.

Mark Lynch dissects the latest from bin Laden:

Overall, this tape struck me as something significant.  Al-Qaeda has been on the retreat for some time.  Its response thus far to the Obama administration has been confused and distorted.  Ayman al-Zawahiri has floundered with several clumsy efforts to challenge Obama's credibility or to mock his outreach.  But bin Laden's intervention here seems far more skillful and likely to resonate with mainstream Arab publics.   It suggests that he at least has learned from the organization's recent struggles and is getting back to the basics in AQ Central's "mainstream Muslim" strategy of highlighting political grievances rather than ideological purity and putting the spotlight back on unpopular American policies.

We're taking reader submissions here. TNC will be asking them. I won't see them before he asks them.

As Max Blumenthal takes an AK47 to some minnows in a barrel, Rick Hertzberg takes on last weekend’s activists:

The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful — they all routinely liken the President and the “Democrat Party” to murderous totalitarians — but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism — the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed the foul nonsense.

Dreher’s analysis from last week was also dead on:

Despite what Sam Tanenhaus says, conservatism is not dead. Rather, it’s undead. The conservative movement is herking and jerking like a zombie, dedicated to little more than frenetic gestures execrating Obama, and to regaining power. To what end? Given that they’re birthing a conservative party whose instincts are dictated by loudmouths, reactionaries and crackpots, and overseen by cynics, it’s dispiriting to contemplate.

Where can those who wish to think and debate clearly about a serious politics of the right go? The degenerate form of populism now dominant on the right loves to praise “freedom” – but it has no use for freedom of thought, or thinking much at all. In turn, increasing numbers of thoughtful conservatives have no use for it.

This is a truly weird story. One of the top honchos at Human Rights Watch, which has, of course, been critical of some Israeli policies and actions, collects Nazi war memorabilia in his spare time. Netanyahu believes it proves that Human Rights Watch is a neo-Nazi front; Garlasco insists it's just a hobby. But a 400 page book? Oy. Context:

Mr. Garlasco, who worked at the Pentagon helping to target bombs in the second Persian Gulf war, has since traveled the world for Human Rights Watch, investigating and writing reports of the alleged use of white phosphorus munitions in Gaza, cluster munitions in Russia and Georgia, and other military practices in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

HRW is right to investigate, and to suspend Garlasco pending a full inquiry into his motives for this odd past-time. People's hobbies should not usually be relevant to their jobs – except when your job is, in part, public communication. One more thing: a blog broke this news – again.