Paleoprog  Sep 20 2007 - 2:19pm  Anti-Semitism  Democratic Party  Israel   

Yesterday in the Tapped discussion of Hillary Clinton's position paper calling for an undivided Jerusalem, Ezra Klein weighed in with this here:

THE COALITION OF PEOPLE AND GROUPS WHO MAKE CANDIDATES SAY STUPID THINGS ABOUT THAT STATE NEXT TO PALESTINE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. I urge folks to read Garance's post arguing that Hillary Clinton's crazily rightwing perspective on the Israel/Palestine conflict isn't the product of sincerely held beliefs, but rather a pander to a coalition of savvy activist groups and wealthy advocates who're singularly committed to guaranteeing continual American support for a Likudnik view of Israeli politics, and are particularly powerful in New York politics. I'd suggest, for linguistic convenience, that we call this "coalition of activist groups and advocates" a "lobby," and distinguish them from other lobbies by saying the name of their issue (Israel) before we say "lobby," but then I'd get called an anti-Semite.

Now, I don't think anyone on the pro-Israel side would have a problem acknowledging that Hillary's Jerusalem position paper was designed to placate the pro-Israel lobby. And just to add, the anti-anti-semites should know that it's a strawman to say that they will be attacked for criticizing said lobby or even Israel. The problem with the Walt/Mearsheimer paper was that they defined lobby to include senior government officials and journalists, which is a slimy indirect way of calling their adversaries foreign agents (something the Juan Birch society does more explicitly). Put another way, my problem with the Walt/Mersch crowd really isn't their anti-Semitism so much as their McCarthyism.

But leaving that aside, I don't think young Ezra realizes that the Hillary Jerusalem position undermines his team's overall thesis. Afterall, the lobby-busters aren't just pissed about an Israel lobby (a lobby they criticize exclusively with nothing to say about the Saudi lobby). No, Ezra is concerned about said lobby's strangulation of American foreign policy. It's the lobby's undue and immense influence. Well wouldn't the Jerusalem embassy issue prove the impotence, not the efficacy, of the Israel lobby. American presidents have been promising to move the embassy in campaigns since Ronald Reagan. And yet it has never moved. American presidential candidates have been promising to keep Jerusalem undivided, but the last two presidents have pursued policies that would end in Palestinians and Israelis sharing Jerusalem. I mean no one thinks the peace process failed because of a lobby in Washington. Right?

And here is what the anti-Aipacers don't get. The formal pro-Israel lobby is effective at lobbying Congress, but they often lose policy debates inside the executive branch. Indeed, I would say the influence of oil kingdoms like Saudi Arabia and UAE are more powerful inside the State Department and CIA because so many retired foreign service and intelligence officers work for those states and for oil companies that work directly with those states. The power of the Saudis with say the State Department is akin to the power of Monsanto with the FDA--after the FDA scientist retires, he can often quadruple his salary with a big food chemistry outfit. The other reason is because the professional class that comprises the national security bureaucracy is drawn from graduate schools that are uniformly hostile to Zionism.

Paleoprog  May 12 2007 - 11:41pm  Bush Administration  Democracy   

One of the credulosphere’s leaders, Matthew Yglesias, is just shocked that anyone would question the web neutralist orthodoxy that the Washington Post’s opinion page is just bad, bad, bad. His proof? How could they publish Richard Perle? I mean we all established long ago that Perle is scoundrel and a liar.

Yglesias asks, “Does the Post think Perle is a reliable source of information?” And then he begins to deconstruct the answers. Maybe they do. If that’s the case, they’re delusional. Maybe they don’t. One of his commentators suggests Perle be brought up on charges of treason. And so it goes for the alleged reality based community.

Yglesias’ post is amusing because Perle’s actual op-ed is about the fact that George Tenet claims on September 12, 2001 Perle insisted we had to invade Iraq to avenge 9-11. Perle, one would think, would be an expert on conversations in which he participated, and Perle says he was in France. In the piece, Perle persuasively makes the case that Tenet was lying about him.

Here is why all of this is interesting. Most of what the net-roots thinks it knows about the neocons comes from either the CIA or journalists granted access to CIA sources, see Ron Suskind. I don’t bring this up to suggest that either side in this bureaucratic turf battle is totally vindicated. Rather that some of the stuff you all swallowed whole in 2004 and 2005 was an extension of a bureaucratic political battle and should have been read that way. Thus, when I encounter the pre-teen hissy-fit of Eric’s last tirade against me, I can’t help but think it’s because this community of yours has been hoodwinked by professional hoodwinkers.

The CIA also had a role in the pre-war intelligence failures. The CIA also has a role in the failures to predict the terror-war that has engulfed Iraq. The CIA also shares some blame, as does the State Department. There were numerous other Iraqi opposition leaders besides Ahmad Chalabi that provided pre-war intelligence to the United States. I could go on. But for the credulosphere in particular, we only hear about the neocons.

The world is more complicated than all of this. But today the web-left for the most part are the adjudicators of dietary laws. This one is kosher, this one is not. How do we know what we know? The CIA told us.

Paleoprog  Feb 12 2007 - 1:13pm  Iraq  Liberalism  White House   

You should read this piffle for yourselves here http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070212&s=chait021207.

But here is the gist of Chait’s argument. By sending some 17,000 troops to Baghdad to help garrison and protect neighborhood blocks now at the mercies of confessional death squads, Bush is furthering ethnic cleansing. His argument, if that’s what you’d call it, goes like this:

“If we stop cooperating with one party to a civil war, we can't make things much worse. We might possibly make them better: If we're no longer doing the Shiites' fighting for them, perhaps they'll have to bargain with the Sunnis.”

It’s pretty clear that Chait does not understand what the surge is, or the “reality” he claims to represent for Baghdad. Right now, mainly Sunni civilians are being slaughtered at random, house by house, by the Mahdi Army and assorted spin off militias. We plan to send troops, to embed with the Iraqi army, to protect those houses. Does he think that the continued or accelerated slaughter of Baghdad’s Sunnis, made possible by our retreat, will yield a better chance at reconciliation? And what would this reconciliation be worth considering it rests on new facts on the ground made possible by power drill torture.

Chait quotes Tom Lassiter criticizing the last strategy of training the Iraqi national army, to the effect that many of the units have already been infiltrated by the death squads. “We’re equipping and training the bad guys,” he writes. But that does not mean all of those units have been infiltrated, nor does it mean that units with embedded marines will be capable of ignoring or joining in on the killing. Furthermore, this is a criticism of the old strategy that relied on the infiltrated units alone to secure Baghdad and says nothing about the new one that proposes a heavy American presence inside those units to protect defenseless families.

A responsible argument is to concede that we should abandon Baghdad because the surge has no chance of success. But note that the anti-surge position is to accept that we do nothing about this awful fratricide. Anti-surge advocates must own that at least. But Chait pretends the protection of these neighborhoods will exacerbate the already intolerable cleansing. Would we expect anything more from the guy who joked about bringing back Saddam?

Paleoprog  Aug 27 2006 - 4:57pm  Bush Administration  Intelligence   

First of all, left blogistan, read it and weep.

Well as a zionist, supporter of the current Iraq war/fiasco, and John Bolton fanboy, I have waited a long time for some Schadenfreude. And here it is. Joe Wilson is a paranoid liar. He assured us that there was a clique, nay a cabal, working at the highest levels of government outed his wife, hurting our counterproliferation efforts irreperably.

Not so, says Issikof and Corn in their new book.

"Armitage himself was aggressively investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, but was never charged. Fitzgerald found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame's covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward. The decision to go to the FBI that panicky October afternoon also may have helped Armitage. Powell, Armitage and Taft were aware of the perils of a cover-up—all three had lived through the Iran-contra scandal at the Defense Department in the late 1980s."

And in case anyone will say that Armitage was really a neocon, which is crazy, here is a nice graf from the same article.

"Indeed, Armitage was a member of the administration's small moderate wing. Along with his boss and good friend, Powell, he had deep misgivings about President George W. Bush's march to war. A barrel-chested Vietnam vet who had volunteered for combat, Armitage at times expressed disdain for Dick Cheney and other administration war hawks who had never served in the military. Armitage routinely returned from White House meetings shaking his head at the armchair warriors. "One day," says Powell's former chief of staff Larry Wilkerson, "we were walking into his office and Rich turned to me and said, 'Larry, these guys never heard a bullet go by their ears in anger ... None of them ever served. They're a bunch of jerks'."

So what to say? First of all, Steve Clemons, you owe us all a very long blog post about why Armitage should go to jail and all the reporters who talk to him should hand over their notes. After all he was leaking classified information! And what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Josh Marshall, I think we deserve a snarky, well crafted blog-essay on this too. Ariana, you too? The credulosphere deserves nothing less.

On a more serious note. This is a fitting end to this tragic comedy. A year ago, many of the netroots had forsaken a principled defense of the first amendment to get Judith Miller. As Hitchens says, you were fashioning a rod for your own backs, as we look at the poisonous atmosphere for journalists a year later. Well not really. Because at least in the blog world, there aren't that many actual journalists, who rely on anonymous sources. Instead, there is this willingness to accept an appropriate story line, no matter how unrooted it may be in, what's the word, oh yeah, reality.

PS: FREE SCOOTER LIBBY!

Paleoprog  Jul 24 2006 - 7:10am  Israel   

Before I get started, I should say it’s fair at this point to ask whether the sheer quantity of targets Israel has bombed in Lebanon are meant as a demonstration of overwhelming response or part of a plan to dismantle the militia. And if so, how could Israel think a deterrent effect against Lebanese civilians persuade a nihilist like Sheikh Nasrallah?

That said, many in the netroots tend to view Juan Cole as a truth teller when he is just a propagandist. On Sunday, Juan Cole read a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle about how IDF generals had briefed Washington think tank types and some journalists about a three week war against Hezbollah and concluded that the current bombardment of Lebanon was planned for at least a year. You can find all this stuff at www.juancole.com.

He writes:

“The Israelis tend to launch their wars of choice in the summer, in part because they know that European and American universities will be the primary nodes of popular opposition, and the universities are out in the summer. This war has nothing to do with captured Israeli soldiers. It is a long-planned war to increase Israel's ascendancy over Hizbullah and its patrons.”

Of course Israel had a military plan against a militia encamped on its border, launching rockets into its territory, boasting of its desire to destroy the Jewish state. America has a plan of war against Iran, the Russians probably have a war plan against China. A military plan is not the same as planning to attack, as Nasrallah told Robert Fisk he had planned the raid into Israel for a month. Juan Cole would have us believe that the current war started because universities were not in session. This is crazy. The effect of this entry is to absolve Hezbollah, who killed eight soldiers and abducted two more in a cross border raid on July 12, of any responsibility for committing an act of war against Israel that prompted a response.

As he continues with the blather, there is more admonishment.

“But since Hizbullah's short-range katyushas can only hit targets 3-4 miles away, and were mainly being fired at the occupied Shebaa Farms, why worry about it so much?

1. If Hezbullah forced Israel out of the Shebaa Farms, it might increase pressure for it to give back the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and all of the West Bank-- the other territories stolen by Israel in 1967. The Israelis have their own Domino Theory, which haunts them the way the original haunted Lyndon Johnson-- and just as foolishly.

2. Some of Hizbullah's missiles might have been able to hit sensitive Israeli chemical or nuclear sites, or just cause panic by hitting Israeli cities. There was zero likelihood of Hezbollah launching such a strike unprovoked. But this capacity formed at least a slight drag on the Israeli ability to strike Iran and the Palestinians with impunity. The destruction of the Hizbullah arsenal may be the precursor of even more drastic action against the Palestinians and perhaps a bombing raid on Iran's nuclear research facilities near Isfahan.”

Here we have more lies mixed with truths. Cole just asserts that most of Hezbollah’s rockets were launched at Shebaa farms. I have been to the northern border and can tell you plenty of Hezbollah rockets were fired at pre-1967 Israel. Furthermore, Israel has either given back or entered negotiations to give back most of the territory it won in 1967. And the domino theory Cole posits makes no sense in the context of the state’s recent decision to unilaterally de-occupy Gaza.

And how does Cole reason that there was “zero likelihood” Hezbollah would launch a strike deeper into Israeli territory “unprovoked.” Was the cross border raid provoked?

Later on Cole writes:

“ The Right in Israel is determined to permanently subjugate the Palestinians and forestall the emergence of a Palestinian state. This course of action requires the constant exercise of main force against the Palestinians, who resist it, as well as threats against Arab or Muslim neighbors who might be tempted to help the Palestinians. Thus, Iraq and Iran both had to be punished and weakened. Likewise, the Israeli Right has never given up an expansionist ideology. For instance, the Israelis have a big interest in the Litani River in south Lebanon. If and when the Israeli military and political elite felt they needed to add territory by taking it from neighbors, they wished to retain that capability.”

Now here is a recurring meme for the Michigan propagandist. He doesn’t quite want to say that Israel is expansionist and wants to subjugate Palestinians etc… So he invents things about Likud and the Israeli right. This foil of Likud allows Cole to accuse for example Michael Rubin and Doug Feith of being foreign agents, without quite calling them spies. They are devotees to Likud, he says, and therefore seek the permanent occupation of Palestine etc… But the Israeli right was never and is today clearly not what Juan Cole says it is. For example, some Oslo critics in Israel opposed the peace process because they did not trust Arafat and questioned the view that empowering a dictator would create the peace promised by the process. This view is most associated with Natan Sharansky. But Sharansky is quite clear that he favors a two state solution. Others on the right in Israel made speeches promising to never surrender an inch of land to the Palestinians, but ended up endorsing a policy of reciprocity. This view is most associated with Bibi, who signed the Wye River Accords. The most irrendist Israeli politician on the right was Ariel Sharon. And we all know what he did before his stroke. So who exactly are these Israeli right wingers who seek permanent occupation? And are they really as influential as Cole says and so interchangeable with American neoconservatives. Wolfowitz for example always favored Oslo, as did Bernard Lewis.

Of course, Juan Cole does not answer that. But with all his good work in absolving Hezbollah for any responsibility in the current conflict, we might ask exactly who benefits from this “informed comment?” The answer is Hezbollah. In Cole’s world Hezbollah does not mean what it says, indeed it’s not even worth noting what they say. They would never have launched an unprovoked attack. The current war is not their fault because Israel was planning this all along. They seem to have a legitimate gripe about Shebaa Farms, even though the UN determined it is not Lebanese territory. And there is no mention of the fact that they have been re-arming since signing an agreement promising to disarm.

Cole is using half truths, misstatements and abstractions to forward a lie on behalf of eliminationists.

Paleoprog  Jul 20 2006 - 5:15am  Anti-Semitism  Bush Administration   

Commentators are blathering on both sides with regard to the latest Arab-Israeli war. But since the noises of the left are not covered as critically here as some of the hyperventilation on the right, I thought I would share what I think is the loopiest nonsense from the progressive side. Robert Dreyfuss, a hero for many who still think that 25 neocons and Ahmad Chalabi tricked the entire US intelligence community into the Iraq war, has asked a piercing question.

Is the Israeli offensive designed as a calculated effort to catapult the hard-right, neoconservative ideologues back to power in Washington?

Dreyfuss reasons (if that’s what you could call it) that yes, the Israelis launched the offensive to help out their buddies in Washington. Dani Pletka has been eyeing that undersecretary spot at Defense, Amir Peretz might have said. We must invade Lebanon to increase her chances with Rummy. Joe Lieberman's polls don't look too good, let's bomb Beirut.

I can imagine the editors of jihadi websites rejecting this piece on the grounds that it's too implausible. This reminds me of some of the zanier stuff I have read on Juan Cole's site, such as his assertion that Dan Senor ordered a three star general to arrest Muqtada Sadr; or when Justin Raimondo reminds us of his book charging that Israel had prior knowledge of 9-11. Anything for the cause against the neocons.

The former editor for Larouche's Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Dreyfuss has suggested recently that American peace groups reach out directly to Ba'athists to persuade them NOT to accept an American offer. He has also written that Kanan Makiya's human rights work on Iraq was part of a neocon intelligence campaign.

Paleoprog  Apr 6 2006 - 10:34am  Bush Administration  Intelligence   

I’ve been following the hysterics on the left over the revelation that Bush was informed that the Department of Energy and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. had their doubts about the aluminum tubes. According to Greg Sargent, this proves there “existed a smoking-gun that proved Bush had been told that some intelligence officials thought the tubes were for conventional weapons, not nukes.”

I don’t get it. The fact that two out of at least twelve intelligence agencies thought the tubes were for conventional weapons would disprove so much of the left’s intelligence thesis to date. This means that the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, all of the military’s intelligence bureaus, the agencies in charge of satellite mapping—not to mention the National Intelligence Council all thought that the tubes were for centrifuges. Maybe Sargent and Laura Rozen would prefer that the DoE and State Department assessments were stove piped.

Now according to Waas, this was so embarrassing that Karl Rove himself wrote a memo to the effect that it should not get out. But if this was the case, then why do we now have evidence that the administration sought among other things to give reporters the entire National Intelligence Estimate for Iraq once the opportunistic and shady Joe Wilson started leaking his half truths about Niger? See Josh Gerstein’s story today in the New York Sun.

Furthermore Waas seems to suggest that Powell was among the senior officials who doubted the tubes were for uranium. But he neglects to say that it was Powell himself who argued twice at the UN National Security Council before the war that the tubes were for centrifuges. Was Cheney holding Alma hostage for the speech?

And when going over this very old territory over the aluminum tubes it would be good for Waas to at least mention that DoE thought Saddam’s import of specialized magnets were for a clandestine nuclear program.

Paleoprog  Mar 13 2006 - 9:35pm  Iran   

Someone please explain the Nir Rosen phenomenon to me. I realize he is very brave for embedding with jihadis in Iraq. And clearly the terrorists knew what they were doing because it's rare to find a westerner, let alone a Jew, who will so cravenly flack for their 8th century agenda. Here he is talking about Iran in an interview with Foreign Policy.

FP: Christopher Hitchens has proposed a “Nixon goes to China” approach to Iran. What do you think of this idea?
NR: I think that’s probably the first intelligent thing I’ve heard Hitchens say in the past five years. I think that’s very important. Had this happened earlier, perhaps Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have not won the elections. The Iranians have been speaking about a dialogue of civilizations for a long time, and Washington has responded only with threats and enmity, really. I think increased business ties would certainly strengthen the U.S.-Iranian relations. I don’t think there’s any reason for the United States and Iran to be enemies, apart from the Iranian-Israeli hostility. I think they are natural allies. It’s about time Washington made an overture to Iran. We certainly don’t want to miss the boat and let the Europeans make inroads economically in Iran, a market the United States needs. The Iranian people have no inherent hostility toward the United States. I think such a move would work.

First of all, why does Rosen say an entente with Iran would have prevented the ascendancy of Ahmadinejad? Three of his three hand picked challengers accused Ahmadinejad of massive voter fraud. When their letters were published in newspapers, those newspapers were closed. Does he think the Mullahs would not have stolen the election had Bush only been nice to them? Is it possible that sovereign nations may have their own dynamics immune to the hidden hand of American hegemony? And at this very moment, when the president of Iran has gone on an absolutely batty campaign at home and abroad denying the holocaust, banning Kenny G music, arresting dissidents, sending thugs to break up international women's day celebrations, he and Hitchens thinks we should offer full diplomatic relations. I happen to think a functioning US embassy would likely give us more of an opportunity to help the nonviolent opposition. But all of this assumes that the regime would agree to restore ties with the great satan. And how many American generals have to go on the record about Iran's export of IEDs into Iraq for the Nir Rosen's to understand that the regime is at war with us. This might clue Rosen in to why the "united States and Iran are enemies" apart from the Islamic Republic's hostility to Israel.

Then there is this dishonesty. "The Iranians have been speaking about a dialogue of civilizations for a long time, and Washington has responded only with threats and enmity, really." To start, the dialogue of civilizations offer was met by Clinton and Bush with back channel diplomacy in the Hague, not to mention track 2 meetings of academics and such. A funny thing happened. The people who participated in this dialogue of civlizations like Abbas Abdi were arrested for treason. Then ofcourse in 2004 the council of guardians essentially humiliated the great civilization dialoguer himself, Khatami, by telling everyone in the reform party that they could not run for the parliament anymore. This prompted most Iranians to boycott the elections that year and subsequent municipal elections.

Then there is this piffle. "We certainly don’t want to miss the boat and let the Europeans make inroads economically in Iran, a market the United States needs." Guess what genius, the Europeans have already made those inroads and have been doing so well before President Bush was elected. Who is developing the South Pars gas fields?

Rosen presents himself as some sort of brave truth teller, breaking shibboleths about American policy towards Israel. But his grasp of foreign affairs has the depth and nuance of a Pink Floyd high school year book quote. Engaging the Iranian regime at this moment without at least acknowledging how your plan would impact people like Akbar Ganji does not make you liberal. It makes you a scowcroftian-Kissingerian oil industry shill. Welcome to the machine, Mr. Rosen.

Paleoprog  Dec 28 2005 - 2:57pm  Al Qaeda  Arab League  Bush Administration  Civil Liberties   

The Standard this week devotes three articles to the proposition that the NSA program is justified because it works perfectly. The three editorials EVADE the critics by assuming that everyone the NSA surveils without a warrant is connected to al-Qaeda. Afterall, Mike Hayden said it has been succesful. I think this is a strange proposition for a publication that in my view was correct in questioning budget increases for the intelligence community after 9-11, and has had no problem in skewering the best judgments of America's intelligence barons on Iraq and Iran.

So I think the freedom community should face up to some important doubts.

1) No bureaucracy left to its own devices, particularly in secret, will ever solve a problem that justifies its budget. This is basic Hayek and Kristol and company ought to know better. Thus if we want to get to the point where America is certified sleeper cell free, we best get some serious oversight from outsiders.

2) The NSA program is an example of playing defense. It's an emergency measure, and if it becomes permanent is apace with more port security, shoe checks at airports and the silly color warning system from DHS. Nothing wrong with defense per se, but the point of transforming the middle east (hopefully through nonviolent revolution at least by my lights) is to eliminate the terror threat so these measures will not be necessary.

For the left:

1) Any sound analysis of the president's decisions on the NSA program should account for the fact that its secrecy is the key to its efficacy. When I read that al-Qaeda operatives assume the NSA listens to their phone calls, it misses the point. The fact remains that 17 of the 19 9-11 hijackers were not on a watch list, were not known to be threats, were operating as if they were not surveilled. Hence the problem that sleepers pose to civil liberties.

2) If you are going to say the program was illegal, please read Cass Sunstein and address his points, then get back to us.

3) Oh and drop any of that mob like zeal to get as many reporters to hand over their notes to Patrick Fitzgerald. The next year will bring some of the most important leaking cases since Elsberg, starting with the bizarre prosecution of the two aipac lobbyists.

Paleoprog  Dec 19 2005 - 2:47pm  Bush Administration  Foreign Affairs  United States   

As any reader of the Washington Note knows, much has been made of Powell chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson's contention that a right wing cabal was really running the government in the first Bush administration. That's a very serious charge. It implies the president, who won an election, was kept in the dark while the secret government did its work. It implies this clandestine cell subverted the constitution through intrigue.

Now Steve Clemons has posted an interview with Wilkerson's boss, Colin Powell, where he says, "Often maybe Mr Rumsfeld and Vice-President Cheney would take decisions into the president that the rest of us weren't aware of. That did happen, on a number of occasions." Clemons says this validates the comments about the Rumsfeld Cheney cabal.

But does it? Seriously. The president made some decisions after being presented with ideas from his vice president and secretary of defense. Does Clemons believe there were never any times that Powell sought the president's authorization for policies without first consulting Rummy and Cheney. When neocons talk about how the State Department and CIA subverted the president's policy through leaks and what not, Clemons praises the leakers as patriots. But when it's the other way around it's a cabal.

Paleoprog  Dec 18 2005 - 11:58am  Foreign Affairs  United Nations   

I've just read the Mark Leon Goldberg piece. UGGH. But one UN official said, "John Bolton really does have horns. I smell sulphur everytime he passes me in the hallway." While it could not be confirmed if Mr. Bolton was actually Lucifer, Christian Westermann confirmed that his sir name had six letters and that other neocons would say his name thrice upon entering his Satanic dungeon in the basement of the Waldorf Astoria.

I tease. So let's examine this allegation about Bolton leaking the alleged back channel discussions. To start, if you look at the October 15 story from Times of London, it sources the back channel story to senior US officials and Arab diplomats. So in order for this to be an example of Bolton sabotage, we have to assume that not only was he one of the senior officials, but he was the first one to drop the dime on this before the Arab diplomat. But I find this hard to believe because I doubt a Libya deal was in the works.

To start, the Bush Administration had tried until the fall of 2004 to bring Syria in from the cold. In a front channel, Secretary Powell himself went to Damascus after the war, despite reports from his ambassador in Damascus that Hezbollah terrorists were being sent by the busloads to Iraq to join the "resistance." In a back channel, the Brits had promised border monitoring equipment to the Syrians in exchange for better cooperation on the exfiltration of terrorists. Assad had already spurned offers made.

By October, the Bush administration had sworn off these efforts at rapprochement. They were considering a range of not so-serious regime change options and further military and diplomatic pressure on Syria. Our ambassador was already recalled; Rice was riding high on Saudi cooperation regarding the UN Security Council resolution. Liz Cheney was meeting with Faridh Ghadry and Arab spies were making promises they could not deliver to Rifaat Assad on behalf of the US. When Qadafi was brought in from the cold, he had already agreed to compensate families from the Pan Am bombing and UN sanctions had already been lifted. My reporting at the time, not from neocons, but from their bureaucratic enemies, was that back channels to Syria were not so much an attempt to negotiate a bargain with them, but to feel out who would be in a position to defect in case of a palace coup. The far hotter rumor, leaked again not by neocons, was that American counterterrorist contractors were now operating on Syrian territory.

All of this to me suggests that Goldberg and the Times of London were doing a bit of projection with regard to the Syria deal. I don't think one existed. If Flynt Leverrit were still at the National Security Council, I'm sure such olive branches would be offered. But he's at the Brookings Institution now.

Paleoprog  Dec 15 2005 - 1:25pm  Democracy  Iraq   

They kept the polls open for an extra hour in some provinces. Turnout in Tikrit was over 80 percent. And all of this is despite threats from the al-Qaeda wing of the insurgents to assasinate voters. Now elections alone a democracy does not make. There is stil massive corruption in Iraq, the prospect of a dirty war led by Shiite militias, not to mention the succesful campaign the caliphists and baathists have waged against Iraq's infrastructure.

But these elections are also reason for hope. To start, they prove that the terror war of the nostalgic fascists has failed to derail the political process. It is now possible to imagine a large swath of the insurgency choosing to abandon the war at least against the elected government and the Iraqi people. The elections may be a sign that the Sunni nationalists are turning on the baathists and al-Qaeda.

A stable democratic Iraq is by no means guaranteed. I maintain that it is worth fighting for, but that's for another post. But it looks possible now in a way that it did not before. So indulge the hypothetical. What if the Iraqi government defeats this insurgency? What if the seeds of politics planted in Iraq take root? What if Iraq emerges from this war for the better?

What will the legacy of today's progressives be in that light? How will future students of history judge the alliance between progressives who supported the unilateral intervention in Kosovo with the Bush I officials who ignored the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia? What will they make of so many Democrats who insist the war is unwinnable now? What will they say about those who brayed on about the malnutrition and starvation of Iraqis in the 1990s who have said nothing in 2005 about those responsible despite investigations and paper trails? And what will future Iraqi leaders say about those who demand that the war that liberated their country was waged on lies about WMD, and failed to grasp the larger stakes when it mattered?

Paleoprog  Dec 12 2005 - 7:55pm  Bush Administration  Democracy  Israel   

Now we can safely say that the war for Iraq is in fact a nefarious plot to make Israel safer.

Here is President Bush today in Philadelphia:

"If you're a supporter of Israel, I would strongly urge you to help other countries become democracies. Israel's long-term survival depends upon the spread of democracy in the Middle East."

Does this not prove that America's leader is under the noxious influence of Likudnik neocons? I mean his brain might as well be in a vat at AEI. Let the antiwar.com web commentaries commence. I am expecting 6,000 words by this time tomorrow from Robert Dreyfuss. Personally, I have been looking for a good progressive reason to oppose the White House democracy agenda, and by God I've found it. Let us fight to preserve the sovereign families of Arabia. Our solidarity with the Palestinians calls for nothing less.

No, in all seriousness. You had me at freedom, potus. The irony here is that almost no one in Israel, with the exception of Sharansky, actually believes this. The Israelis, as a certain University of Chicago international relations professor likes to say, are the ultimate realists. Most Israeli strategists believe their long term survival depends on Dimona. They have shown no interest in the Iranian opposition; spurned pleas in the late 1990s to help Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi opposition and have been warning the Americans about the impossibility of the Iraq project since 2003.

Paleoprog  Dec 11 2005 - 11:43am  Announcements  Civil Liberties   

I am the newest contributor to American footprints. I am a writer living in the Middle East. For the record, I am a liberal against terrorism. And while we’re at it, let me come out and say that I’m against counterfeiting, preventable diseases, malnutrition, blaming the victim and the European Union.

(Some of you may think that my alias is an inversion of neocon. Well you would be wrong. Paleoprog refers to early 1970s wizard rock, rhythmic symphonies celebrating pre-Christian tree worship. Think Jethro Tull, not Irving Kristol).

Alright, so now that we’ve got that out of the way, a question for the room. Has anyone rethought their enthusiasm for Patrick Fitzgerald’s prosecution in light of the likely prosecution against the leakers behind the Washington Post secret prison story? I mean many of you cheered when Fitzgerald demanded the notes and anonymous sources of journalists in the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame? Should Dana Priest be forced to testify before a grand jury? The same reading of the Espionage Statute would apply in both cases. Geese, ganders, you get where I'm going.