Clearing Brush
Ivo’s initial post prompted a fair amount of discussion. Thanks to all who posted. We will be expanding on the themes of America Unbound in the days to come. Here I want to respond to respond to some to the ideas floated in the initial posts.
Bmastiff channels Karl Marx and argues that foreign policy is all about material interests and not ideology. I have heard this argument more times than I care to count. The only problem is that it flies in the face of all the evidence. If oil drove U.S. decision makers, our foreign policy toward the Middle East would look very different. Support for Israel hardly seems to be the most effective way to endear ourselves to Arab oil producers.
Cville Dem wonders how a man “who NEVER even took a vacation in Europe or any other country for that matter; who doesn't read newspapers (keep in mind, he never said he informs himself in other ways, like reading books for example); and who has never articulated a world view, have a WORLD VIEW?” Since when did people have to tour Tuscany or earn a Ph.D. to have views on how the world works? If you doubt the truth of the proposition that people can have deep-seated worldviews without being terribly well-informed, listen to talk radio. Or read a few blogs.
American Dreamer asks: “Was there an aggressive attack on the supposed multilateralism of the Clinton administration and a promise to make radical departures from it?” and “Was there an aggressive attack on arms control measures during the 2000 campaign?” Well, yes. Bush and his advisers openly and repeatedly criticized the Clinton administration for a range of sins, including among others, its embrace of the ABM Treaty and its support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Bush certainly never endorsed the Kyoto Protocol. Condoleezza Rice wrote scathingly in the pages of Foreign Affairs about an “illusory” international community. Charles Krauthammer and other conservative pundits didn’t miss what Governor Bush was offering. I don’t know why American Dreamer did.
Tristero writes with respect to neoconservatives that Ivo and I “are discounting their influence” because “they had the next target ripe and ready.” I’d find this argument convincing if (a) at least some senior members of the Bush administration were neoconservatives and (b) Iraq wasn’t an obvious target of attack. But neither a nor b is true. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice are not neoconservatives—assuming the label has a meaning other than an epithet for “hardline conservative.” To buy Tristero’s argument you have to believe that not just Bush but also three of his top advisers were so ill-informed and gullible that they were hoodwinked by their subordinates. Sorry, I’m not buying. And let’s not kid ourselves. You did not have to be a neoconservative to recognize that Iraq was the easiest rogue state to attack. North Korea had nuclear weapons and sufficient conventional capability to kill tens of thousands of South Koreans and American troops. Iran had three times Iraq’s population and more support in foreign capitals. Iraq, by contrast, was low lying fruit waiting to be picked. You did not need to be a Weekly Standard subscriber to know that.
Mhpine says that Cheney and Rumseld represent the Jacksonian tradition in American foreign policy, borrowing a term introduced by Walter Russell Mead. (Full Disclosure: Walter is a senior fellow in the Studies Program I oversee at the Council on Foreign Relations.) This is an important point that has been lost in all the debate about realists versus neoconservatives. There are more than two schools of thought in Republican circles. Besides realists and neoconservatives, you can add isolationists—they were the dominant voice in House Republican circles in the 1990s—and assertive nationalists (the term Ivo and I use for what Walter calls Jacksonians). The assertive nationalists made common cause with the neoconservatives in GWB’s administration because they shared a disdain for international institutions and willingness (if not an eagerness) to flex American military might.
Finally, Davis X Machina argues that the postulates of the Bush Revolution “would have been gladly embraced by anyone from the Taft-Goldwater branch of the 1950-1965 GOP.” Exactly. Ivo and I would push the point even further. In fact, we do just that in Chapter 1 of America Unbound. The themes of the Bush Revolution—or counterrevolution, if you prefer, because it fundamentally repudiates the Wilsonian faith in international law and institutions—draw on ideas that go back to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and even earlier in American history. That’s one of the reasons they have so much political appeal in the United States.
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Comments (22)
Great challenging retorts, thanks for writing them up; I really enjoyed reading them. As a user of the site, and in keeping with the coffee house metaphor (rather than lecture hall,) I wish more of the contributors here would address commenters directly in this manner instead of just each other or bloggers or commenters elsewhere. I realize the time constraints, but still appreciate it when people do it.
October 25, 2005 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Likewise, I appreciate the direct responses.
My comment was in response to Ivo's assertion that Bush "governs as he said he would on the campaign trail."
Bush did say that we needed a "humbler" foreign policy. Do you dismiss that as insincere campaign rhetoric? How does that statement square with a view that the US does not need allies to achieve its objectives? Do you see it as consistent with his pre-9/11 actions dissing in quite public, in-your-face ways several international agreements and treaty initiatives?
October 25, 2005 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks James. I really appreciate that you took the time to respond to specific reader's comments.
Your book is one I have been aware for a while, but have not been bothered to get around to it. Seems like its moving up on my list . . .
Ben P
October 25, 2005 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
That being said, I grinned when Mr Lindsay took my arguments and made them into something else -- a strawman. I did not say that oil alone drove our foreign policy -- I said that wealthy campaign donors drove our foreign policy.
Obviously, the Republicans have long been clients of such patrons as Big Oil and the defense contractors. Bin Laden's complaint about US weapons sales to Israel were sure to be dismissed. The June 2001 sale of 52 F16s to Sharon brought in over $2 Billion to Lockheed Martin. The fact that the $2 Billion was an indirect subsidy to Lockheed from the US taxpayers --via the $3 billion in foreign aid the US gives to Israel each year -- was a feature not a bug.
Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne Cheney, was on the Board of Directors of Lockheed Martin from 1994 until Jan 2001, Lockheed gives $Millions to the Republicans, and I'm sure the Bush Administration did not give a hairy rodent's posterior how many
Palestinians were exterminated by Sharon. However, the unexpected blowback -- 3000 dead and $1 Trillion damage to the US economy -- was an unexpected "externality" which had to be covered up pronto. Hence the need for the "they hate our freedom" meme as well as the anxious speech "we did nothing to deserve this".
Of course, the Israeli lobby was equally nervous -- hence, the rush by the NY Times to tell us that there was not link between the Israel-Palestinian fight and 911. Hilarious given that the leader of the 911 attack had repeatedly cited Israel as cause for jihad.
All of which made for a convenient shotgun wedding. The genius of Karl Rove laid in recognizing the big disconnect between the values of rank and file Democrats and the primary Democratic financiers -- billionaire supporters of Israel. Bringing Haim Saban over to the Dark Side not only potentially brought $14 Millions to the Republicans but it also took $14 Million from the Democrats. Repeating that with a few other men --like S Daniel Abraham or Walter Shorenstein -- would leave the Democratic Party with all the effective power of the Silver Spring MD PTA.
And that is the REAL issue which overrides all else. By 2008, the federal debt will be around $9.9 Trillion (see back of Bush's Feb 2005 budget document) --just as the baby boomers begin retiring and all of those Reagan/Bush1/Bush 2 IOUs start having to be paid off.
The big issue is who pays those IOUS. The superrich via higher income taxes? The middle class via very high taxes (60%+) on their life savings trapped in "before tax" IRA/401K ?? Or maybe the elderly blue collar poor -- via eating dog food and having the grace to go off and die because the Social Security/Medicare accounts they paid into for 45 years have been looted?
Ideologies --"Realism", "Neo-conservativism",etc are just stories powerful men make up to distract the ignorant and to justify actions which benefit them. They are con games.
The most hilarious concept I've heard here is the reference to
the "Jacksonian Tradition". Andrew Jackson exterminated the Creeks because grabbing land and selling it off in tracts to blue collar farmers was how politicians got rich in those days. He fought like mad to defend New Orleans because whoever controlled New Orleans controlled the Mississippi River -- and hence the trade, economies, and political life of the land between the Appalachian and Rockie Mountains.
Andrew Jackson's crony , General William Carroll, later Governor of Tennessee , best expressed the "Jacksonian Tradition" when he replied to Jackson's call for help from the Tennessee militia by noting that his men were as eager for plunder as the old Romans.
October 25, 2005 10:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since when did people have to tour Tuscany or earn a Ph.D. to have views on how the world works? If you doubt the truth of the proposition that people can have deep-seated worldviews without being terribly well-informed, listen to talk radio.
Sure, "people" can have views. But are they accurate? And, remember, we're not talking about "people." We're talking about the most powerful person in the world. The guy with his finger on the button.
To CVille's point, there's no way to compare the knowledge you get from immersing your self in another culture from what you can get from books.
Just reading about Tuscany misses the smells, the tastes, the random interaction with people. Not to mention REALLY good gelato.
There are many intangibles gained from actually leaving the U.S. that do more to inform us than books or blogs can ever do.
October 26, 2005 4:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
James
What do you say about Lawrence Wilkerson's point that the Administration was largely the product of a cabal of Cheney and Rumsfeld? Judging from Wilkerson's criticism of Condi Rice Bush was receiving homogenized information not a robust debate.
October 26, 2005 5:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
CSCS
Would you clarify your meaning? Bush was particularly insulated from the world unlike either his father or even Clinton. However, we can't expect to have presidents who know about all parts of the world.
One thing that I think is necessary, or should be in the future, that no matter how narrow the reasoning behind any foreign policy the government should be informed about the history, culture and the like of the region or regions we are going to war in.
October 26, 2005 5:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
when our Secretary of State had a Chevron oil tanker named after her: http://aztlan.net/oiltanker.htm
Given the importance of ideology, I would have thought the oil tanker would have been named after widely known foreign policy academicians -- the
"Hans Morganthau" or "Thomas Schelling". hee hee hee
2) Or maybe the theorists can explain why Dick Cheney -- a lifelone bureaucrat , politican, and congressional staffer
with no experience in the oil industry or corporate management -- was hired to be CEO of oil services
giant Halliburton. What kind of "service" were the oil companies wanting from Halliburton?
Back in 1998, a Business Week article quoted Halliburton's President David J. Lesar: ''Dick gives us a level of access that I doubt anyone else in the oil sector can duplicate.'' "Access" for what -- to promote the spread of neo-conservatism? To promote the spread of democracy in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? ha ha ha
The 1998 Business Week article is here: http://www.businessweek.com/1998/09/b3567127.htm
Note the mention of Cheney's move into the Caspian Sea oil basin. Anyone think Chevron,etc are going to invest $20 billion overseas to grab oil out from under the noses of the Russians, Chinese,and Iranians without strong assurances that Washington will send in the Marines to knock heads if some foreign leader reneges of a contract?
3) But you guys go on and divert the voters with obtuse metaphysical theories and intricate debates about the academic discipline of "foreign policy". I prefer to watch where the money goes.
October 26, 2005 6:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
However, we can't expect to have presidents who know about all parts of the world.
I agree with this statement. What I'm trying to say is that most people I know that have been overseas have a deeper appreciation and empathy for people that are different than Americans. There is a broadening of the mind that we get from walking through the streets or London or Rome or Paris, a realization that America is not the center of the world.
I don't expect our Presidents to know everything about everywhere. But I do expect them to realize that we are not the only people on this Earth. It's hard to really appreciate that without ever leaving our borders.
It's like the difference between being book smart and street smart.
October 26, 2005 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
In previous discussions, some pundits and posters took the Lego Toy approach to foreign policy -- since Al Qaeda leaders are Sunni and the Iraq insurgents are Sunni, the US should simply hook up with the Shites.
Unfortunately, the Shites are a small minority in the Muslim world -- I hear everything from 10 to 20 percent of the Muslim population. My understanding is that they are a small minority in almost every Islamic country except Iran and Iraq -- and they are only a small majority in Iraq.
Plus, todays news report the following statement from the Shite leader of Iran:
---------
" TEHRAN, Iran - <span class="yqlink"> Iran's</span> hard-line president called for <span class="yqlink"> Israel </span>to be "wiped off the map" and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state, state-run media reported Wednesday.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced attempts to recognize Israel or normalize relations with it.
"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad told students Wednesday during a Tehran conference called "The World without Zionism."
"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury, any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad said.
Ahmadinejad also repeated the words of the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who called for the destruction of Israel.
"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, who came to power in August."
Ref: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051026/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_israel
------------------
I'm just an amateur at this, but offhand I have trouble seeing this guy as our ally in the drive for world peace. Maybe you sophisticated theorists can show me where I'm wrong.
PS Italy had deep trade ties with Iran. I hope Ahmadinejad was not the source of the "Hussein is trying to buy uranium from Niger" documents that Italian intelligence reportedly fed to the White House neocons via the backdoor. See Josh's Talkingpointsmemo.com main page.
PPS Given how Iran has been playing for time while they develop their nuclear capabilities, the above speech seems EXTREMELY odd. Isn't it the same as saying "Bomb my nuclear facilities--please"?
October 26, 2005 7:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
James, Thanks for taking the time to respond to my criticism. You make two good points, but I still don't think it's that simple.
Let's start with your point two. Iraq may have been the weakest along many criteria in the "Axis of Evil" Bush identified. So? The "Axis of Evil" was a Bush administration construct which made Iraq the obvious target. Other equally evil regimes included - and I'm not going to name evil right wing ones that the US has ignored, like some of the Stans - Zimbabwe, Libya, and Syria. These, too, are run by ghastly dictators and were strategically, in your phrase, low hanging fruit. And two of them have been involved with terrorists that have been in direct conflict with US interests.
But Iraq was the most salient of the bunch. And that is partly because the neocons have made Iraq a priority for years. One needn't postulate naive superiors to understand that Iraq was constantly promoted by the neocons (although the naivete and ignorance of George W. Bush cannot be underestimated, even though I agree with you he has something very akin to a worldview).
No, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice are not neocons by my definition, but we both know that they were fed an enormous amount of intelligence and ideas - bogus stuff, to be sure - from subordinates. Feith, Shulsky, Wolfowitz, Perle, Mylroie - those are just a few of the authentic neocon names that come to mind. Add to that "intelligence" and persuasive arguing the amen chorus of men like Kristol in the media, the support of former high officials who endorsed Mylroie's crackpot theories, pressure from Israel's supportive right wing which has many links to the neocons and you have a situation in which superiors were swamped with information that had been specifically tailored by neocons to convince those who didn't sign on for the neocon agenda but were willing to listen to them.
As anyone who has been subordinate to a savvy but isolated superior will tell you, subordinates who control information have enormous influence. The neocons controlled a significant amount of the flow of information; they also kept a tight rein on the kind of ideas that could be discussed as "reasonable" - eg Iraqi sponsorship of al qaeda's terrorism.
And so, while your points are good ones and point to how complex the situation was, I think you discount neocon influence and how much power men like Wolfowitz and Perle actually had, regardless of their titles. Chalabi was a neocon buddy of Perle's. Neither Rumsfeld or Cheney (and again, Rice was a nobody) would have pushed terribly hard for him save for his relentless promotion by the neocons as the designated savior of Iraq. As you recall, Chalabi was even seated next to Laura Bush during a SOTU.
October 26, 2005 8:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
CSCS
Thank you. I agree with you I was just not sure that was what you meant.
October 26, 2005 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
So presumably the Great White Father is very angry at being deceived and Chalabi is down in GITMO getting the shit beat out of him by rubber hoses? Right?
Yet we look to see who is the current Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq-- and the Guy whose in total control of Iraq's oil exports. The guy the Houston oil boys go to for long term sweet heart contracts that will let them loot Iraq oil reserves while the Iraq people get squat. The guy who stands to become a billionaire from kickbacks. So who is that masked man??
(Drumroll)
Chalabi.
Ref: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=worldNews& ;storyid=2005-10-09T223456Z_01_KRA981241_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENERGY-IRAQ .xml
, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051023/wl_nm/iraq_usa_chalabi_dc_1
ha ha ha ha ha
You guys are so naive.
For extra points, try to guess how much money Porter Goss has had the CIA spreading around Iraq in the recent elections. Think he got any help from Karl Rove?
October 26, 2005 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
October 26, 2005 10:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Support for Israel hardly seems to be the most effective way to endear ourselves to Arab oil producers."
This statement is a crock. One of the chief benefits of the Israeli state has been to have a foothold in the Middle East from which to wage proxy wars and keep our eyes on the people who had the gall to be born on top of all our oil.
October 26, 2005 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you are on to something bmastiff, indeed, with the "wealthy donors" pull Dubya's foreign policy strings. I believe this could indeed be one man behind the curtain anyways.
But it seems to me Israel merely responds to terrorism tit for tat. I don't see a problem there. They are more controlled than we are. We go out of control and overthrow countries (Iraq) that had nothing to do with our terror attacks. While Israel just does the eye for an eye thing, which I believe is the appropriate response. And I don't think there is anything wrong with buying 51 F16s if you feel your military needs them. And since Israel has not annexed anyone, I don't see why we can't sell them to Israel. (yes the disputed lands, but they did withdraw somewhat at least recently. i don't know what a fair border is, I don't study the issue enough. but the palestine suicide bombers caused the fences to go up.)
You seem to buy into bin laden's propaganda just as much as the dummy voters buy into Bush's propaganda.
Yet overall I do thank you for pushing the curtain aside for my eyes anyways on the wealthy donor pulling the strings point.
October 26, 2005 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
zionista - perhaps it's just b.s. no one can annex a country such as israel that has nuke bombs. it just won't happen. so i think this is rhetoric. bigoted rhetoric, i'm not agreeing with it. but just b.s.
the idea is to get palestine it's nation state status, and try to improve relationships then with america-iran at least and ultimately israel-iran.
peace can't happen unless we respond to facts and not fiction. what the iranian president said was fiction. iran hasn't attacked israel.
October 26, 2005 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
bmastiff - i just replied to zionista's post and it is the same answer to yours, above. i won't copy/paste, it's just a few posts upwards...
Plus, Bush says things that a lot of us don't agree with. I am sure there are a lot of Iranians who saw that comment as an over the top sabre rattling of some sort. attacking israel would be singularly assured destruction now, and if iran gets nukes, mutually assured destruction. so i see it as fiction, not fact.
the point is, as i mention above, there is no progress unless relationships are improved. transform the relationships, not the region. and over time if you are lucky, the region will transform itself. perhaps Iran will mellow out on this sort of fiction in the future, this rhetoric. or they could morph into a democracy of their own doing. or back into a kingdom which i think a lot of iranians were happier with the shah. they may not publicly state that fact but i would think this is the case. my wife having emmigrated from Iran for one, of course she was a religious minority, christian, being armenian from iran. but i have met some muslim iranian immigrants here as well who wear tight levis and no veil.
we need to do friendship building, not nation building. we should start with the worst cases, the ones on the "axis of evil" list.
no one's going to attack israel.
October 26, 2005 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Big Defense is happy. Lockheed Martin sells F16s to the UAE as well as to Israel. Saudi Arabia hands a lot of oil revenue back to US defense contractors as well.
The Iraq invasion not only took out Hussein as a threat to the Likud -- and to the House of Saud, it also put Chalabi in a position to hand over Iraq's 100 billion barrels of oil to Houston. It seems to me that the mouthpieces for Big Oil and the Israeli lobby have a mutual benefit in sticking to the same story as they hand the bloody bill to the American people. Meanwhile, Big Defense is wetting its pants at the potential sales it will make to "build up Iraq's defenses" in the coming decade.
I'm glad Zionista noticed today's remarks from Iran's President
Ahmadinejad -- I posted them below 3 hours before Zionista cited them. But Iran is Persian --not Arabian and Shite --not Sunni. I have never seen the House of Saud or Emir of Kuwait taking the lead in Islamic attacks on Israel.
To be sure, anger at the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians roils the general Arab populations from time to time. But that helps Big Oil. It reminds the oil dictators that their crowns rest upon very fragile foundations and makes them treasure the military protection provided by their American friends.
To be sure, there was some slight turbulence after 911. While in New York, the Saudi Prince, hoping to divert Americans voters away from noticing that most of the Al Qaeda hijackers were Saudi citizens, did mention to New York Mayor Giuliani that US support for Israel was a factor in the attack. But even then, the Saudi Prince felt it necessary to grease his message with a $10 Million check.
Rudi Giuliani , however, felt it was in his political interest to drop the check like it was a rattlesnake and disassociate himself from the Prince. Plus, the Saudis quickly shut up when the New York Times --the paper of AM Rosenthal and Bill Safire -- suddenly discovered that --gasp! -- Saudi Arabia is run by a kleptocracy.
Which was comically hypocritical given the very public Israeli-Saudi matchmaking NY Times Columnist Tom Friedman subsequently attempted in the pages of the paper.
October 26, 2005 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
<span>1) I think the American public has been lied to and deceived --in part by being told only one side of the story. Hence, I've tried to show the other side in my posts. Because of that, my posts, if taken just by themselves -- are also unbalanced.
I think deep down Bin Laden himself is more motivated by the treatment his mother received in the royal familiy and by his second place status than he is by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He probably mainly hates the royal family for that, not because Arabia is not a democracy or because of Israel.
2) But his personal motivations do not matter --just as Hitler's demons did not matter. What matters is that Bin Laden can motivate larges numbers of Arabs by tapping into the hatred spawned by very real injustices commited by wealthy interests.
Just as the German people were motivated to support the Nazis because of the great hardships inflicted by the Versailles Treaty -- a Treaty written not for the benefit of the citizens of France, Germany or the USA but a Treaty written to let wealthy men recoup their loans by looting Germany. The five million Jews killed in the Nazi camps did not write that Treaty nor did they benefit from it -- but they paid for it.
3) I personally think Israel should be protected as an American ally -- although I'm not sure I have moral standing to ask an American soldier to give his life for my beliefs. But my sympathies lie with well-meaning Israelis -- e.g., the readers of Haaretz ==not with the Likud.
Recall that Sharon deliberately sabotaged peace talks in the fall of 2000 by going into the Al Aqsa mosque area with hundreds of armed men. He then became Prime Minister by exploiting the infildata that he touched off. Did we see Arafat going through Jewish synagogues with a hundred Hamas fighters waving AK 47s?
4) Israel would not exist if not for the US help -- past support of $91 Billion in aid, a yearly aid of $3 + Billion, protection under the umbrella of US military might, and massive arms transfers which have made Israel the most powerful power in the Middle East. In return we have received nothing -- we don't even have a major military base there.
The US created Israel -- and the Islamic world holds us directly responsible for Israel's actions.
After 911, no Israeli Minister has the right to drag his feet in resolving the Palestinian issue. If he tries, we should slap him hard with sanctions -- and strongly punish any American campaign donor who tries to intervene.
5) We should punish Al Qaeda for 911 -- but some of our hatred and anger should be for those people who provoked it by putting their personal business and political interests above the loyalty they owed to America. I'm not just speaking of the Israeli lobby -- I'm speaking of Big Oil and Big Defense as well.
6) Re the sale of 52 F16s to Israel, here is how Sharon used those American F16s one day after the leader of Hamas proposed a cease fire:
<http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/07/23/mideast/index.
html>
An excerpt:
"</span>Tens of thousands of Palestinian protesters filled Gaza City's streets vowing revenge. The outcry was triggered by the early Tuesday morning attack by F-16s in the heart of the city that killed Salah Shehade, leader of Izzedine al Qassam, military wing of the militant Islamic group Hamas. His death was confirmed by Hamas. Among those killed were Shehade's wife and three of his children and several other children. "
I particularly like this quote:
----------
"Senior Israeli military sources said they were unaware civilians would be in the house.
"Apparently some civilians were killed and we are very sorry about that. We did not expect such results and if we had known ... we might would have aborted the mission," said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the Israeli army's chief of operations."
--------
For those who don't know, Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet--akin to Hong Kong. The idea a house would be empty of civilians at midnight is ridiculous. Note only were 9 children killed immediately by this attack, at least 150 people were wounded. How do you negotiate peace in the face of such bland deceit?
7) See also http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/07/23/hamas.assassinatio
n/index.html .
See also http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/07/24/world/main516226.shtml&
nbsp; -- the money quote: " The Israeli air raid was carried out a day after Hamas' spiritual leader, wheelchair-bound Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said the group would consider halting suicide attacks if Israel withdrew from occupied West Bank cities. "
October 26, 2005 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Iraq was the lowest-hanging fruit of the three rogue nations believed to be furthest along in pursuing WMD. Iran and North Korea were much harder targets, and Hussein's regime had the least international legitimacy.
It is true that the neocons believed that Iraq was the ideal launch pad from whcih to "liberate" the Arab and Islamic world from secular and Islamic tyranny. But for Jacksonians looking to "send a message" to the Arab and Islamic world after 9/11 and flex America's military might, Iraq was the perfect target.
When it came to getting the war they wanted in Iraq, neocons were on the same page as their Jacksonian superiors. When it came to using misinformation to get others on board, neocons were happy to folly the dictates of their Jacksonian superiors. Similarly, neocons happily followed their Jacksonian superiors directives to keep the multilateralists in the State department out of the loop for post-war planning.
Yes, the prominence of Ahmed Chalabi is a testament to neocon influence. But his fall from grace is also a testament to the Jacksonians willingness to abandon the neocon's agenda where it was inconvenient.
The more interesting question is to the extent that Bush himself believes any of the neocon rhetoric he espouses. Clearly the neocon impulse would be to double-down and do "whatever it takes" to secure a democratic Iraq, while the Jacksonian impulse would be to get to declare victory and go home (if it is possible to do so without appearing weak). The question remains as to what is driving Bush to "stay the course" when it no longer appears to be politically prudent?
October 26, 2005 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The consensus that problems in Iraq needed to be addressed is a far cry from the neocon position that nothing less than invasion was warranted.
Sure, when Iraq didn't work out (as was obvious to everyone from the getgo except the neocons and the people they snookered), the non-neocons distanced themselves from Chalabi, and his American dupes. That argues for considerable neocon influence in the administration before Iraq totally tanked, not against it.
Two final points. In Goldberg's New Yorker article about Scowcroft this week, he talks about a book by Sharansky who, he says, is aligned with the neocons. Bush raved about the book and said that anyone who wants to understand his foreign policy should read it. Goldberg makes it clear that it is quite friendly to neocon attitudes.
Furthermore, today we learn in the New York Times that American intelligence has three goals: to prevent terrorism, prevent the spread of wmd, and "bolster the growth of democracy." The latter, obviously, is a neoconservative pillar of belief.
Of course, the admin claims this was always a priority for US intelligence. Of course it was. No doubt. Now, about that bridge I've been trying to sell, I can let you have it cheap if you decide today.
October 27, 2005 8:21 AM | Reply | Permalink