An Ambassador Quits

Michael Guest was an openly gay ambassador to Romania for the Bush administration, and his appointment was seen as a sign that the Bushies would not let the anti-gay base determine hiring decisions. Guest is now leaving the State Department:

“Most departing ambassadors use these events to talk about their successes . . . But I want to talk about my signal failure, the failure that in fact is causing me to leave the career that I love,” said Mr. Guest, 50, whose most recent assignment was dean of the leadership and management school at the Foreign Service Institute, the government’s school for diplomats.

“For the past three years, I’ve urged the Secretary and her senior management team to redress policies that discriminate against gay and lesbian employees. Absolutely nothing has resulted from this. And so I’ve felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner — who is my family — and service to my country. That anyone should have to make that choice is a stain on the Secretary’s leadership and a shame for this institution and our country,” he said.

As gay people adjust to a stronger, deeper sense of their own equality, the formal discrimination against them supported by the GOP will rankle more and more. Losing the votes and support of gay people and their families may not torpedo the current Republican party. But it weakens it.

Huckabee Shifts On Torture

An important move:

After the meeting, Huckabee joined Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in declaring his opposition to the interrogation procedure known as "waterboarding," and said he would support closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a contrast with the other leading Republicans.

Pro-torture Powerline calls him too "moralistic" for this position. I think the word they were searching for was "moral".

Ron Paul Or John McCain?

Some Republicans, deciding on the issue of character and integrity, as well as revulsion at the recent evolution of the GOP, have come to see the choice as McCain or Paul. I’m not a Republican, but in thinking through the GOP candidates, I’m down to those two as well. Brad Porter wrestles with the issue here. His conclusion:

Would Ron Paul make the best President? How likely is he to ever actually be a factor? I don’t know. I don’t care.

I do know that I have very little voice left in this party. I have no more worries about electability or partisan concerns, not with how much ideology has already been thrown under the bus for those ends, to the point where what’s left is hardly recognizable. So when I speak, I want to make sure that I’m voting for a real change, that I’m voting to register in a clear voice my disgust and my desire for a new, old direction. To that end, though I like John McCain a lot, I’ll vote for Ron Paul. And my conscience, believe you me, will be totally clean.

Bush: Nothing’s Changed

The fundamentalist psyche strikes again:

"To me, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community—to continue to rally the community—to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," the president said. "What’s to say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program."

He also asserted that the report means "nothing’s changed," focusing on the previous existence of a weapons program and not addressing the discrepancy between his rhetoric and the disclosure that weapons program has been frozen for four years.

"I still feel strongly that Iran is a danger," he said. "I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace. My opinion hasn’t changed."

No question Iran is still a danger. But you have here a classic example of Bush’s foreign policy thinking: his position is that Iran is a threat and must be countered by all necessary means. This applies whether Iran is cooperating or not cooperating. It applies if Iran is accelerating work toward a nuke or if it has suspended its work. Like other idees fixes, i.e. tax cuts, the data are less important than the assertion of doctrine. The empirical reality doesn’t matter when dealing with the regime like Tehran. Bush believes that it’s the nature of that regime to be a source of destruction. And so policy will always be the same.

The empirical question is simply whether Iran can be appealed to and dealt with as a rational actor on the world stage rather than as an existential enemy. I don’t think this is an easy call, and my suspicion of some neocon statements about Iran doesn’t mean they don’t have a critical point about a country headed by a religious fanatic like Ahmadinejad. But as a prudential matter, the news that the Iranians may well have responded rationally to international threats by suspending their program in 2003 suggests to me that they are open to sticks and carrots; and that diplomacy with them requires more nuance. This can therefore be seen as an opportunity for more engagement, not less.

That is the difference between conservatism and neoconservatism; the former is empirically based, skeptical and flexible. The latter is ideological, faith-based and rigid. With Gates and Rice ascendant, conservatism may be having a come-back.

NPod’s Dark Suspicions

Sucker-punched, he careens forward:

I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

A Caveat On The NIE

A reader writes:

As a Republican, it is good to wake up and see Condi Rice and Robert Gates vindicated, especially Condi. She has been vilified by the Go To War Crowd at the NRO and the American Spectator for at least the past two years. Now, her path appears to have been the wisest choice.

However, bear something in mind. The data for the NIE comes from CIA Assessments, among other things. It would be interesting to hear what the Mossad and IDF Aman Intelligence has to say.

Why, you ask? CIA won’t tell you this, but we have NOTHING in Iran. Our assets were rolled up years ago by the Revolutionary Guards. What is the factual basis for the reporting that went into the NIE? Is it any more valid than the stuff that animated the war scare and made Dick Cheney walk the Earth by Night?

In other words, as you breath a sigh of relief, how much of this report is politically motivated by a CIA eager to head off a war with Iran, and how much of it is based on actual intelligence? My skepticism arises from the decades of risible incompetence displayed by that agency across decades and Continents. These were the guys who gave us the Mossadegh Coup, the Missile Gap, and Curveball, remember?

Or, as another reader notes more succinctly:

PHEW. The CIA say Iran’s not building a bomb. They’re just enriching uranium. I feel SO much better.