Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Iran

Bush’s Foreign Policy: The Perfect Storm

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President Bush continues to wallow in the consequences of his own arrogant miscalculations. The situation America finds itself in can be traced to his and Cheney’s so-called tough guy approach to the world, as evidenced in the insane war in Iraq. Among what “Shock and Awe” and “Mission Accomplished” missed were the ripple effect consequences that followed and that continue to arrive.

Turkey asked that the U.S. avoid invading Iraq for reasons of its own security and their recognition of the likely bloodbath to follow, but agreed to work with the U.S. in providing staging areas for U.S. troops. At the same time it warned of the potential difficulties with the Kurds, a warning of which the U.S. apparently took no note. So having considerable responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis AND the increased power and influence of Iran in the region (incl. Iraq) the U.S. now has the problem of a possible micro war between two of its allies – the Iraqi Kurds and the Turks. Bush is saying that he will help Turkey flush out the PKK (Kurdish rebels) but that is clearly an empty promise given our incompetence and unwillingness to put the thumbs to the Iraqi Kurds, who will at least passively support the PKK. It is a dog’s breakfast.

Pakistan has been presented as the bulwark of our “war on terrorism” which is beginning to sound a bit like the help that our friends in Saudi Arabia have given us leading up to and following 9/11. Pakistan is a nuclear power led by a dictator who views himself as the country’s savior while the majority of his citizens seek the democracy that Bush has presented as his foreign policy’s grandest wish. We continue to provide massive defense aid to Pakistan while it allows al Quada to operate more or less unfettered within its borders, the Taliban to operate out of its borders into Afghanistan and its peoples’ dream for democracy to wither and die. It is impossible to know what would happen in Pakistan without Musharraf but the best long-term hope is for a true democracy to develop while finding a way to ensure that Pakistan’s nuclear arms remain out of the hands of extremists. So, does the U.S. continue to support Musharaf or pull the plug and risk democracy? There are echoes of what the U.S. did in Iran by shoring up the Shah, providing massive military aid, turning our eyes from the Shah’s human rights abuses and getting pretty much what we deserved – a belligerent Iran with whom we continue to squander diplomatic possibilities to a point where it might be too late. Another dog’s breakfast cooked up by this administration.

Afghanistan is the place that might have been a success for the administration but that too is being pissed away largely because of our Iraq folly. Pakistan passively provides cover for the Taliban which continues to operate at considerable strength in the South and increased strength elsewhere in Afghanistan while most of the U.S.’s troops are spinning their wheels helping to build a stronger Iraq which will probably eventually ally politically with Iran. Were it not for the Canadians, the British and the Dutch, Afghanistan might very well be lost already (no thanks to the Germans, French, Spaniards and Italians who hide their troops in the relative safety of the North). Defense Secretary Gates commented on this as recently as 25 October speaking to a group of unimpressed European generals:

”A handful of allies are paying the price and bearing the burdens,” he said in remarks that were notably critical of European governments. He spoke hours after leaving a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Netherlands, where he pressed for more troops for Afghanistan. There were no promises. ”If an alliance of the world’s greatest democracies cannot summon the will to get the job done in a mission that we agree is morally just and vital to our security,” he told the European generals, ”then our citizens may begin to question both the worth of the mission and the utility of the 60-year-old trans-Atlantic security project itself,” meaning NATO, which was created in 1949. His remarks drew little reaction from the generals, who applauded politely when he finished.” – AP

Clearly the U.S. will need to step up its commitment to Afghanistan but cannot do so as long as it is mired in an endless war in Iraq – that is, as long as G. Bush is president and no one with Rudy Giuliani’s views is elected in his place.

That leaves every president’s greatest challenge – the Middle East. Bush has all but ignored the Middle East for seven years – barring the talk of a “roadmap to peace” (remember that one?), his refusal to accept that the democratic election in Palestine was valid because the people elected the wrong guys, and of course his support for Israel’s disastrous bombing of Lebanon. Secretary Rice is now spending more time in the Middle East than in Washington and according to David Brooks in the NY Times – not exactly an objective observer – she is putting together an anti-Iran alliance, which would include Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinians and the U.S. He goes on to say that:

“It’s slightly unfortunate that the peace process itself is hollow. …But that void can be filled in later. The main point is to organize the anti-Iranians around some vehicle and then reshape the strategic correlation of forces in the region.”

This alliance will then face off against the alliance that will include Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, and – in all probability – Iraq. This is a hope and a wish but certainly not a foreign policy based on reality.

1/20/09 – that is the key date – the time when sophisticated, intelligent people can begin to dig us out of Bush’s Perfect Storm created from a rare combination of American incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, and naiveté.

Desperate Acts of a Desperate Man? Bush and Iran

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The visit to New York of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has highlighted America’s paranoid fear of a third-rate clown from a second-tier power. Having placed Iran within his Axis of Evil, President Bush now must deal with the fact that his invasion of Iraq handed Iran the strategic gift of unparalleled influence in the likely Iraq of the future (for a detailed analysis of why this is so, see Peter Galbraith’s The Victor in the October 11 issue of the New York Review of Books).

While the United States begins the long and painful process of coming to grips with the Iraq reality of – at best – stalemate and at worst – defeat, it has proven all too tempting to lay the blame as far away from the White House as possible. And what better place than Tehran? Ergo, the ongoing stories of weapons being smuggled into Iraq from Iran, ignoring the unpleasant fact that the U.S. has basically armed both sides of a civil war in which its own soldiers and marines are caught in the middle. The American press dutifully reports every account of Iranian weapons found in Iraq, joins in the jingoistic threats of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities and ignores the unpleasant reality that the vast majority of deaths in Iraq can be traced to Sunnis and Shiites killing each other and even some of their own – frequently with American weaponry.

The recent Israeli flyover of Syria led to hints of North Korean-Syrian cooperation on nuclear weapons development; hints  given the same credibility the press gave Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At the same time the Cheney wing of the administration sees an opportunity to scuttle the talks with North Korea, something they have tried to do from the beginning of those negotiations. All of which begs the question: what is Bush planning for his swan song?

One possibility is for Bush to continue to pressure for more sanctions on Iran; another would be open direct negotiations with Iran and yet another would be to initiate bombing attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities. At this point it seems the first of these options has been chosen, the second is almost surely not going to happen but the third option remains viable. President Bush is not known for his subtlety of mind – indeed his behavior suggests an impatience with those who disagree with him and a schoolyard bully’s tendency to use others to fight his battles for him – in this case it could be his own Air Force and/or the Israeli Air Force. A bombing attack on Iran would feed some of his more vocal neo-con supporters and leave one more mess for his successor to clean up.

An analyst friend theorized this week that perhaps the best solution to the perceived nuclear threat from Iran would be to do what was done to the Soviet Union in the Cold War: serve notice that a nuclear attack on any country by Iran would be met with subsequent annihilation of the Iranian nation and its people. Détente was never a perfect solution – but it worked for 50 years against a foe a whole lot tougher than Iran and it could possibly put an end to foolish posturing by American politicians and media editorialists.

Arms to the Poor: REDUX

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It is possible to believe that the U.S. is no longer selling arms to Iran, but it turns out that would be a belief and not a fact. The AP reports in the Boston Globe today that the General Accounting Office has announced that the Pentagon has sold over 1400 parts for F-14 fighter jets to the public since announcing that they would no longer be sold. Turns out that Iran is the only country still flying that plane and has been desperate for parts to keep them in the air. The fact Iran’s F-14s planes originally came from the U.S. only enriches the irony.

Arms to the Poor: From Krupp to Bush

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The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned against is alive and well – even if their products are sometimes shoddy and ineffective. The arms business has become one of America’s great exports as it arms countries like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. These days it is reminiscent of the Krupp family business which discovered that it was possible to sell arms to just about anyone in the 19th century, leading to their selling arms and defenses to both sides during World War I. And of course the company was instrumental in arming the German armies during WW II, making huge amounts of profit and paying little in labor since the government kindly supplied them with slave labor. I suppose it is something of a come down for the family now to be selling coffee grinders and espresso machines.

But not to worry, there are plenty of companies willing and able to take on the challenge of arming the world. And while it can be argued that everyone does it, the United States remains in first place in maintaining its post WW-II leadership in finding ways to arm countries or selected rebels around the world. The rationale for doing this is not always clear and is usually done for transitory reasons, and not infrequently with mixed consequences.

The U.S. government and arms manufacturers armed Iran under the Shah and of course saw those armaments fall into the hands of the revolution. Adding insult to injury, the Reagan administration provided arms to Iran as part of its Iran-Contra policy/scandal. (The income from these sales of weapons to Iran under Reagan were then used to provide arms to the Contras in Nicaragua). At around the same time the U.S. provided arms to Saddam Hussein in an effort to support its war against Iran. More recently the U.S. provided arms support to the forces of Osama bin Laden to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. The list goes on and the positive consequences have mostly fallen to the American companies that are heirs to the Krupp value system – and the politicians whose campaigns are funded by the arms manufacturers. In any case the arms provided to Iran, Saddam Hussein, and bin Laden have all been used against our national interest at one time or another.

Now we have the latest proposed handout to the arms companies. Having totally screwed up Iraq and most of the Gulf region with Bush’s fiasco, we are searching for ways to cut our losses and one way is to bribe Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain with upwards of $20 billion in sales to this group of gulf states and some $30B of new sales to Israel. All of this is in addition to whatever arms remain in Iraq after a war that is now estimated to cost over a trillion dollars. The hope and the wish seem to be that all these new weapons in the region will keep our Iraq adventure from becoming the beginning of a monstrous disaster in the region. Also that these countries will all work to keep Iran at bay.

One of the clever strategies of the family Krupp was to sell defensive armor to one side and then stronger weapons to the other and then the first side would need even stronger defensive armor, and the cycle would continue. With all of the new weapons around the world it is clear that the U.S. will need to improve its weaponry and defenses and so the Krupp strategy is alive and well and the cycle can continue.

Rice’s Bungled Attempt to Bring Democracy to Iran

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A few years ago, after reporting on the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, Seymour Hersh commented that he viewed Condoleezza Rice as the most incompetent of all National Security Advisors in the history of that position. Obviously there was competition for that title (e.g. H. Kissinger) but new evidence indicates that Ms. Rice has taken her incompetence to new levels as Secretary of State.

The United States has been funding efforts to support a movement toward democratization in Iran for many years. Radio Azadi was started by Radio Free Europe in that late 90s and it became a successful broadcaster of solid news, analysis and culture into Iran with a significant audience among the elites in the reform movement. This effort was emasculated shortly after the Bush election when it was changed to Radio Farda, and turned into a broadcaster of American rock and roll. This was representative of the dumbing down of American culture and was based on the belief that a larger audience of teenagers listening to music was somehow more important than an audience of mature members of the reform movement listening to serious and credible news.

Add to that the recent report that the U.S. has committed $75 million to promote democracy in Iran and that Secretary Rice has announced this to some fanfare in the U.S. and considerable angst in Iran. The problem is not that the money is being spent – it is that Ms. Rice was not smart enough to understand that by announcing it – in the context of Bush’s “axis of evil” and “regime change” blathering – she would put all possible recipients of support from the U.S. in jeopardy. It is the kind of program that you play close to the chest with the hope that your support can facilitate reformers in their pro-democracy efforts. Rice’s play for publicity has had the opposite effect with Iranian intellectuals, writers, journalists, human rights activists, etc. in increased jeopardy.

According to a Washington Post piece on April 28:

“…The money is a persistent focus during interrogations, say Iranians who have been questioned or detained. “If you look at the crackdown on non-government organizations and human rights defenders over the past six months, one common facet is that they were all suspected of receiving foreign funds,” said Zahir Janmohamed, Amnesty International USA’s advocacy director for the Middle East. “It’s not just the funding but the rhetoric around the funding about ‘regime change’ and the ‘axis of evil.’ ”

The National Iranian American Council said it had warned the State Department “that the mere idea of sending money with this language would make the work of pro-democracy activists in Iran all the more difficult. It has turned out to be worse than what many people feared. The mere fact that the United States has been talking about using NGOs has made Iran’s thriving civil society a main suspect of trying to do change inside Iran,” said the council president, Trita Parsi….”

The Surge: Good Money After Bad

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The press and politicians are currently focused on the tactic of Bush’s “surge” of 21,000 added troops into Iraq while the overall situation is worse than most of the press admits or even considers. Typical is today’s Boston Globe op ed by a veteran of the Iraq conflict and now law school student at Harvard who continues the myth of the importance of giving the surge a chance to succeed while ignoring the larger, more significant consequences of the war.

Certainly even Bush must realize that he has committed the country to an enormous folly; ergo the re-definition of victory has become making Iraq’s capital city nearly as safe as it used to be before the Fiasco. Weapons of mass destruction disappeared as a rationale weeks after Shock and Awe; a true democracy in Iraq is now recognized to be fantasy; peace in the Middle East as a result is simply nutty, as is the concept of Iraq as a grateful nation.

A list of current and emerging consequences of Bush’s Fiasco is depressing:

• Destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure
• Millions of Iraqi refugees, both within Iraq and in neighboring countries;
• Over 3000 American lives; between 65,000 and 600,000 Iraqi lives lost
• Thousands of Americans seriously wounded
• A U.S. military pushed beyond its limits and no longer capable of responding to additional conflicts that could arise
• Provision of a training ground for terrorists
• Provision of a recruitment program for Jihadists
• Billions of U.S. dollars spent and not available for social programs such as health insurance, education, etc.
• Contribution to a budget deficit that will punish the young and the unborn
• Huge future need to support wounded and mentally-damaged veterans
• Inability to focus on other issues properly – e.g. Afghanistan, Russia, Africa
• Enormous amounts of international ill will

But perhaps the most significant consequence is the increased instability in the region. The Bush policy has made Iran a stronger force in the region, has reduced Iraq’s independence from Shiite domination, has changed a secular country into a fundamentalist country, and has produced a situation in which neighboring countries with Sunni populations (e.g. Saudi Arabia) will inevitably become involved with supporting Iraqi Sunnis with finances and weapons.

A poll of Iraqis taken this week indicates that a large majority believes their country was better off under Saddam than after the U.S. invasion. And there is no evidence that Bush has a clue on how to end it without it being a total disaster for U.S. foreign policy and the Iraqi people.

Bush’s Last Chance??

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Graham Allison has written an op ed about diplomacy and power in the Kennedy era for today’s Boston Globe. Reading the piece suggests that the Bush administration – after six years – may be beginning to look for a philosophical center for its foreign policy. The piece compares the recent negotiations with North Korea and the planned multilateral discussions with Iran, to the approaches taken by Kennedy with the Soviet Union. The article quotes former Bush advisor and UN ambassador John Bolton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the merits – or lack thereof – of negotiating with the likes of Iran and N. Korea. The money quotes are:

From Gates in 2004:

“Iran is not on the verge of another revolution . . . The durability of the Islamic Republic and the urgency of the concerns surrounding its policies mandate that the United States deal with the current regime rather than wait for it to fall.”

From Bolton in 2007 re: the agreement with N. Korea:

“[The N. Korea agreement] contradicts the fundamental premises of the president’s policy he’s been following for the past six years.” (Vice President Cheney is quoted: “We don’t negotiate with evil, we defeat it.”)

Bolton’s and Cheney’s comments represent the Bush-Cheney approach of power without diplomacy that has given us the Iraq “thing”, N. Korean nuclear weapons, and a stronger Iran headed for nuclear self-sufficiency. While it is late in the game for the Bush presidency, he actually has an opportunity to leave a legacy that will not be the raving insult that he currently courts with history.

The N. Korea agreement, while only a beginning, is after all, better than we had come to expect from this administration.  Similarly, the movement towards talking with Iran hints at possible advances. The question is whether the Cheney gang will come back into dominance or whether diplomacy can proceed. Cheney is unlikely to watch the latter happen without a fight. We shall see.

North Korea: Another Intelligence Failure?

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We may need to come up with a new term to replace “Intelligence Community” when referring to what we are told about countries’ nuclear capabilities. Maybe “Idle Speculation Community” as in:  “Sources in the Idle Speculation Community (ISC) told this reporter yesterday that weapons of mass destruction might be being stockpiled by Saddam Hussein.”

The record of the ISC is not good. In the 1980’s it missed the coming dissolution of the Soviet Union, in 2001 it missed the rather strong warning signals on 9/11, and in 2002-3 it guessed wildly off the mark on WMD in Iraq.  Now, according to administration officials cited in today’s NY Times, it appears the ISC speculated incorrectly on North Korea’s nuclear program and that, in a strange irony, it seems that the Bush administration’s cutting off of oil deliveries in 2002 may actually have pushed the North Koreans to proceed with developing a plutonium-based nuclear arsenal which they did not previously have.

But the problem is less one of inadequate intelligence than of inappropriate use of intelligence in politicians’ decision-making processes.  Certainly that was the case with Iraq and now we see the possibility that the basis of the Bush policy toward North Korea from 2002 on was largely based on questionable intelligence on its nuclear program that fulfilled political desires. And we are left to idly speculate about Iran. Skepticism might be the right approach.

Déjà vu, Iran

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It is not at all clear about the administration and its plans for Iran, but it seems that an attack of some kind is still on the Bush-Cheney agenda. Among the troubling signs:

*The briefing by unidentified officials held in Baghdad about Iran-produced armor penetrating bombs;

*Secretary Rice either forgetting or lying about a May 2003 offer to negotiate delivered to Washington by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran (the Swiss represent U.S. interests in Iran);

*The report by Michael Gordon in the NY Times last week taking unnamed administration sources at face value in a way very much like what the Times’ Judith Miller did in sexing up the weapons of mass destruction stories in the run-up to Iraq;

*The U.S.’s sending a second aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf;

*The fact of Bush’s lame duck status, along with his unwillingness to recognize the incredible folly of his Iraq fiasco and his visions of himself morphing into some mix of Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt and George Washington.

While Bush seems to be flirting with one last blast, so to speak, the Iraq Study Group urged diplomacy with Iran and that idea has developed increased resonance since the administration finally negotiated directly with N. Korea in Berlin with some positive possibilities emerging. And while the U.S. military can apparently mount a more or less surgical air strike against Iran, anything beyond that involving ground troops would push the limits of current capabilities.

25% of the Bush Presidency is Still to Come.

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Reality hasn’t changed just because the TV camera is now focused on the 2008 Presidential election. Bush is still in charge and Congress is still ineffectual.

When the Democrats won their Congressional majority a perception took root. Somehow folk started thinking that things had changed. In fact the only change was one of possibilities.

It became possible that one branch of government might restrain another. Possibilities don’t become realities by virtue of perception. Regardless of where the TV camera points.

Bush is unrestrained. One completely unchained –though perceptively lame– duck. Everyday he waddles toward a strike on Iran. With every quack he makes his intention clear.

He is not playing out the clock. He’s not idly watching “Congressional maneuvering.” He’s not reacting to events. He isn’t dishing dirt in Hollywood with fag hag columnists. Not scoring points or “positioning his candidate” for an election that is twenty-one months away.

Bush is acting. He’s creating the future in which that election will be held. He’s telling anybody who will listen that he’s not gonna tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb.

He’s as serious as death.

Either he’s not the guy who has been President for the past six years or he is going to strike Iran. He’s not going to retire and hope his successor acts.

He’s going to push ’til he draws a foul or he’s going to do it without provocation.

But what he’s not going to do is go quietly.

He’s not going to blow off a quarter of his Presidency. He’s going to create the reality with which the next Presidency will have to contend.