The Foreign Policy Obstacle Course

From the beginning, my enthusiasm for an Obama Administration was in the field of foreign policy, where it seemed he was bringing a new mindset of progressive internationalism that is a fitting break with the neoconservative policies of the past. The intervening weeks of the transition gave me some pause that he was falling back on Clinton retreads and moving in a more hawkish direction. And I still feel that his speech had a little too much bravado about "we will defeat you" that seemed shoved in there to appeal to Republicans. But overall, there was a refashioning of US foreign policy that is commendable, and Marc Lynch notes that his remarks to the Muslim world were spot-on.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

I do hope he follows this up, because the counsel he is likely to get from the team he has assembled is not likely to express their beliefs in quite this way. I was pleased to hear that Obama met with several foreign policy progressives in secret before the inauguration, and that Samantha Power still apparently has a role as a counselor, but like Matt Yglesias I'm not sure why the meeting had to be in secret:

And then there’s the matter of this national security team featuring Denis McDonough, Ben Rhodes, Daniel Shapiro, and Samantha Power with Lee Hamilton in the background as an eminence grise. That sounds to be an awful lot like the Obama national security team I remember from the campaign. What ever happened to those guys? Or to non-Hamilton folks like Scott Gration and Richard Danzig? Obama feels like he’s already “in the bubble” but it appears to be a bubble overwhelmingly of his own devising. The names we’ve got for the most senior positions—Gates, Lynn, Flournoy, Clinton, Steinberg, Slaughter, Jones, Donilon—are all well-qualified people, but it’s really striking that none of them are Obama’s people. It’s not surprising to me that he might start to feel uncomfortable with that situation, but I don’t really see why he created the situation in the first place.

It could be that he's comfortable enough with his vision of foreign policy that he wants it tested against those who don't share exactly the same views, but that certainly makes it harder on Obama for no discernible reason. There is an outpouring from the country and the world on which a wise leader can capitalize, but that requires good information and a wise course. Why did Obama turn that into an obstacle course?

(by the way, definitely click on the above link to see the front pages from over 700 newspapers around the world)

More Bullshit Spread on Iran

Well, here we go again. I guess the first time around, when the Bush Administration claimed that Iran was constructing EFPs for Iraq (even though most of the EFPs have come from Sunni insurgents, not the Shia with whom Iran is in close concert), fell appart upon scrutiny. So it was time to make a new claim, now that the Iranian government has been arming the Taliban. It sounded ridiculous, the two are mortal enemies; Iran even helped the US rescue downed pilots during the Afghanistan invasion in late 2001. And now the bullshit peddling has been confirmed (h/t The Left Coaster).

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Afghanistan's defense minister on Thursday dismissed claims by a top U.S. State Department official that there was "irrefutable evidence" that the Iranian government was providing arms to Taliban rebels.

"Actually, throughout, we have had good relations with Iran and we believe that the security and stability of Afghanistan are also in the interests of Iran," Abdul Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press.

On Wednesday, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said in Paris that Tehran was directly supplying weapons to the Taliban. He told CNN there was "irrefutable evidence" that arms shipments were coming from Iran's government.

The State Department later appeared to step back from Burns' assertion, but stressed that the United States has proof that weapons from Iran were reaching Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

This is how it's always gone, a bold assertion followed by hedging and denials. Common sense dictates that there was no way the Iranians would undermine their own interests and try to put an enemy back in power. We know who's arming the Taliban: Pakistan. This obvious fact is rarely uttered by State Department flacks like Nick Burns or warmongers like Joe Lieberman, who's using fake stories like this to push for attacks on Tehran. Wes Clark smacked him down on this one.

On CBS's Face the Nation, Lieberman said, "If [the Iranians] don't play by the rules, we've got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they're doing." [...]

Senator Lieberman's saber rattling does nothing to help dissuade Iran from aiding Shia militias in Iraq, or trying to obtain nuclear capabilities. In fact, it's highly irresponsible and counter-productive, and I urge him to stop.

This kind of rhetoric is irresponsible and only plays into the hands of President Ahmadinejad, and those who seek an excuse for military action. What we need now is full-fledged engagement with Iran. We should be striving to bridge the gulf of almost 30 years of hostility and only when all else fails should there be any consideration of other options. The Iranians are very much aware of US military capabilities. They don't need Joe Lieberman to remind them that we are the militarily dominant power in the world today.

Only someone who never wore the uniform or thought seriously about national security would make threats at this point. What our soldiers need is responsible strategy, not a further escalation of tensions in the region. Senator Lieberman must act more responsibly and tone down his threat machine.

The conventional wisdom among those predisposed to view any global situation in a military context, the so-called "liberal hawks," is that we have to "do something" about Iran. It's never suggested WHAT; you know, what facilities should we specifically target, what ground troops should we deploy, etc. This is what Ezra Klein explores in a story for The American Prospect.

The new approach is not to refight the battle over the Iraq war, but to argue that those who got it right, or who got it wrong but eventually came to the right answer, are now in danger of overlearning the lessons of the war -- and missing the danger posed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. An elegant entry into this burgeoning genre comes from Ken Baer in the latest issue of Democracy. "[A] president's past mistakes," writes Baer, "can so preoccupy political leaders that they lose sight of the dangers ahead or the principles they hold dear." In the conclusion of his piece, he warns that progressives must "not use anger at one war as an excuse to blink when confronting a future threat head on." [...]

The remarkable thing about the growing liberal hawk literature on Iran is its evasiveness -- the unwillingness to speak in concrete terms of both the threat and proposed remedies. The liberal hawks realize they were too eager in counseling war last time, and their explicit statements in support of invasion have caused them no end of trouble since. This time, they will advocate no such thing. But nor will they eschew it. They will simply criticize those who do take a position [...]

Baer's dodge is not rare. A while back, The New Republic demanded that "the West finally get ruthlessly serious about Iran." Unless "ruthlessly serious" describes some subset of containment theory that I'm unfamiliar with, this seems like mercilessly frivolous advice. But such is the sorry state of discourse on Iran: lots of hyperventilating, but relatively little in the way of actual diagnosis or prescription.

This, of course, plays into the hands of those who will articulate a strategy involving bombs and guns and indiscriminate murder against the citizens of a country that does not represent a threat. If anybody who actually stakes out a position against war with Iran is seen as irresponsible, it stands to reason that those on the opposite side are then completely responsible, despite the fact that they have no idea what they're talking about. There's a lot of deliberate lying designed to push us into yet another tragic mistake of a war. The useful idiots in places like the Brookings Institution that greased the wheels for the last mistake seem to make a fetish of "sounding tough" and disassociating themselves from the dirty fucking hippies than acting in the best foreign policy interests of the country. Here's hoping they wake up and understand that their enabling of a renegade President will be yet another disaster.