The Dish

David Lat has fun with a recent Washington Post headline.

They’d do well to listen more to John Tierney.

A reader suggests an alternative take on Karl Rove’s bank-rolling of Joe Lieberman:

What Rove presumably wanted was for Lieberman to lose the primary but  by a relatively small margin (which he did)–thereby insuring that he in fact activate his independent candidacy and that it be plausible. The GOP money achieved just that. At the same time, Rove undertook the seduction of Lieberman by supporting him as a Democrat before the primary defeat. As in: ‘We love you, Joe, whatever kind of banner you fly under.’ So the White House has now achieved its optimal situation. Joe‚Äôs beholden to it for the narrowness of his loss, and has been made to feel loved in a ‘nonpartisan’ way. And the more the Democrats distance themselves from him (as they must), the closer he feels to the Republicans. Niccol√≤ couldn‚Äôt have arranged it better.

Madison, Wisconsin, Capital of Lesbianism.

They’re the Iranian people. Here’s why.

Joe Gandelman cites this Washington Times item about funding for Joe Lieberman’s primary campaign:

The White House funneled millions of dollars through major Republican Party contributors to Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s primary campaign in a failed effort to ensure the support of the former Democrat for the Bush administration.

A senior GOP source said the money was part of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove’s strategy to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate in November. The source said Mr. Rove, together with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, directed leading pro-Bush contributors to donate millions of dollars to Mr. Lieberman’s campaign for re-election in Connecticut in an attempt that he would be a "Republican-leaning" senator.

"Joe [Lieberman] took the money but said he would not play ball," the source said. "That doesn’t mean that this was a wasted investment."

It’s not very Machiavellian in any case. Wouldn’t Rove want Lieberman to lose the Democratic primary? Doesn’t that help in the general fall campaign attempt to describe the Democrats as pro-terrorist?

(Photo: Bob Falcetti/Getty.)

We know how the right-wing blogosphere did their best to turn away from, deny, ignore or minimize the introduction of torture as an interrogation technique by president Bush. We also know that John Kerry focus-grouped the issue and decided not to challenge the president on it once during the campaign. But Eric Umansky shows how the press played its part too. His full report is here. One of the more gripping nuggets is the New York Times breaking the story of the premeditated military torture-murder of an Afghan detainee, by hanging him from a cell ceiling and beating his legs until, according to a military medical examiner, they had "basically been pulpified." The NYT had the Carlotta Gall story first. Foreign editor Roger Cohen lobbied frantically for it to be on Page One, but it ended up buried in the paper. This was long before Abu Ghraib and showed that the torture policy long predated that scandal – and caused it. Money quote:

Carlotta’s piece was ‘the real deal,’ he told me. ‘It referred to a homicide. Detainees had been killed in custody. I mean, you can‚Äôt get much clearer than that. I pitched it, I don’t know, four times at page-one meetings, with increasing urgency and frustration. I laid awake at night over this story. And I don’t fully understand to this day what happened. It was a really scarring thing. My single greatest frustration as foreign editor was my inability to get that story on page one.’

Fear and denial. It is indeed hard to believe that a president could have set in train a policy that would end in U.S. troops believing they could treat any captives like animals. But those were the limits they were operating under. And the man responsible is still president, his torture-implementer, Don Rumsfeld, is still secretary of defense, and the man who helped provide the legal cover is now attorney-general.

It’s good to see some of the contours of the argument between neocons and realists come into clearer focus. I’m more persuaded by the neocons on this one, precisely because I tend to believe what religious fanatics say about their own motives and aspirations. Iran’s leaders – especially the current president – have been quite clear about what they want. They want the destruction of Israel and the submission of all infidels to Islamic rule. Here are a few recent statements by the Iranian president:

"The anger of Muslims may reach an explosion point soon. If such a day comes, they [Western governments] should know that the waves of the blast will not remain within the boundaries of our region and will engulf the corrupt powers that support this fake regime too."

Here again:

"Open your eyes and see the fate of Pharaoh … Open your eyes and see what happened to the Portuguese Empire. See the final fate of the British Empire … I am telling you [major powers], if you do not abandon the path of falsehood and return to the path of justice, your doomed destiny will be annihilation, misfortune and abjectness."

Annihilation? The choice is between handing Iran a nuke or being annihilated? In 2005, Ahmadinejad was even clearer:

"Undoubtedly, I say that this slogan and goal is achievable, and with the support and power of God, we will soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism and will breathe in the brilliant time of Islamic sovereignty over today’s world."

Two key words here: "achievable" and "soon." Those who favor containment must argue either that Ahmadinejad does not hold ultimate power or that he does not mean what he says. I have no doubt that he means what he says. The question is whether Ahmadinejad holds real power, i.e. whether the president of Iran represents Iran’s true regime.

(Photo: Reuters.)

A reader spells out a realist case:

It goes something like this: the real leaders of Iran are wealthy, well-heeled men, not unlike the Saudi royals. These Ayatollahs are relying on Ahmadinejad to project a frightening and unpredictable image for Iran abroad, but it is not their prime intention to destroy Israel. Rather, Iran’s leaders seek to consolidate power in the Middle East in the wake of America’s disastrous Iraq policy. Ahmadinejad’s pronouncements are meant only to keep the world off balance until the current instability in the region is resolved. To the extent that Iran is fomenting chaos in Iraq, it is doing so only to assist those politicians and religious figures – such as Muqtada al-Sadr – it views as crucial allies in the region. Once these allies have assumed control in Iraq, Iran will, in fact, become an agent of stability in Iraq. Iran’s eventual goal is the formation of an alliance with Iraq that will amount to a Shiite superstate in the Middle East. (To the extent that Iran pursues nuclear weapons, it does so in support of this broad goal – rather than a specific goal to destroy Isreal.) 

The realist position holds that once Shiite control of Iraq has been realized – and Iraqi oil begins to flow – Iran will select from two possible courses of action: either work within established political/economic structures, such as OPEC and the U.N., to consolidate power on a global scale, or, begin allying itself with non-Western industrial powers, such as Russia and China, to challenge the West’s political and economic hegemony more radically. The worst case scenarios in the realist vision are too numerous to count: the breakdown of the world’s established economic and political systems, resource wars, unstable geopolitical alliances similar to those that led to WWI and WWII, etc.  Conversely, a realist may hope that all of this could also lead to a benign reshuffling of Middle East power – with the Shiite allies seizing some of the Saudis’ control over the region without any real impact on the existing global structure. Under the latter scenario, we would find an empowered Iran willing to "play ball" with the West, once power has been secured.

And so the question, it seems to me, comes down to 9/11. Did it reveal a genuinely new and apocalyptic element in global politics, something made more terrifying by the advance of destructive technology? Or was bin Laden a fluke or a marginal figure? Do he and Ahmadinejad represent the real power in the Middle East, or are they just showmen, creating spectacles to distract the frustrated masses, while other, more serious figures wait in the wings, prepared to deal? On the answer to that question a great deal depends.

For me, this week, five years later, I believe the threat is real and growing. And I believe we have to fight, rather than accommodate, it. It seems to me we can be shrewd and deft and guileful in fighting it on our terms. Fighting does not merely mean brute military force. It can mean more skillful global diplomacy with other great powers to isolate Iran’s regime, better counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan, covert military action, expanded intelligence, as well as subtle but real support for the people of Iran. I’m afraid that under this president none of this will happen, which is why the next two years of continued Western incompetence are so perilous. But no American president can or should tolerate the Iranian regime’s acquisition of nuclear weaponry. And negotiating with theo-fascists is a mug’s game. Their God does not negotiate. And they are nothing if not faithful to their God.