The 'positive case' is to be made by having the UN carry out the United States every wish.

Yes, America will commit to the United Nations and multilateralism, all the UN and the other nations must do is love America, fear America and do everything that America tells it.

I see that Jentleson has quite an impressive bio.

The best reports suggest that Iran is at least a decade away from a nuclear weapon, assuming that it is actually pursuing one. There is no actual evidence that Iran is actually pursuing nuclear weapons, nor is there any evidence that Iran is in substantial violation of the non-proliferation treaty. The matter is a non-issue of importance only to the United States.

Gentleson also calls for a Lebanese UN force with a "mandate sufficiently robust and assertive to meet the more difficult task of enforcing not just keeping a peace"

Hmmm, what does that mean I wonder? What is the distinction between peacekeeping and 'robustly and assertively enforcing a peace.'

Could it be... disarming Hezbollah involuntarily? Good luck with that, LOL, the Iraeli's couldn't. Could it be becoming an army of occupation against a hostile Lebanese population? I dunno. If it comes to that, its game over. It won't succeed without the consent of those involved, and no country is going to send its youth to die as proxies for the IDF.

I am mystified by this post. Is Mr Jentleson suggesting the UN force can win Israel's war when Israel cannot by itself? The only way the Bush administration would call it a success (and even then I do not think they have any interest in calling anything the UN does a success) is if the UN force disarms Hezbollah. Ho, Ho, Ho. Peace treaties tend to follow the battles on the ground; there will clearly be NO disarming of Hezbollah by the Lebanese army or the UN or by Mr. Jentleson. That is a fact on the ground that cannot be imagined away. My guess is that Bush and Bolton are quite content with the inevitable failure of the UN BY THESE STANDARDS. Mr.Jentleson might have done us all a service by indicating what constitutes a UN success NOW rather than waiting for the Bush and Bolton gang to define and frame it later as part of their active campaign to destroy the UN; by leaving those standards out, Mr Jentleson presents an arid fatuous meaningless, academic tract. The essential content is omitted.

The US did it in less than half that time in the 1940's while having to invent everything and without computers. Iran's task is far simpler. Ten years sounds like wishful thinking.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Also, in the case of Lebanon, they really really really hate you people.

You weren't honest brokers in this war, you were partisans. The Lebanese people know that.

You but American boys in Hezbollah land, a lot of them won't be coming back. The ones that do will be coming back as girls.

Here's the interesting thing about George W. Bush.

He never loses.

Or more particularly, he refuses to lose.

Or to be really specific, he insists on winning, and if that means changing the game, so be it.

One recurring story from many who knew George W. Bush was his enduring competitiveness. He always had to win. Suppose you are playing tennis with him. You win. He demands best two out of three. Then best three out of five. Best five out of eight... Best 279 out of 558... Or he'll change the rules in the middle, or he'll cheat.

The point is that he just refuses to accept a situation where he doesn't get to be the winner.

The stories about this are endless. He goes bicycling with Lance Armstrong, and he turns it into a race where he has to win... He doesn't say ten words to Armstrong.

On the campaign plane, he plays aisle bowling with oranges... But he's the only one allowed to play.

At university, in soccer or basketball, he was well known for taking cheap shots and cheat tricks. There's actually a photo of him giving a rival player the elbow.

Now the point of all this is not that he is a macho supercompetitive guy. His obsession with always being the winner is the hyperpetulance of a small child, not the driven ambition of a competitive man. Being unwilling to ever lose means being unwilling to learn, to adapt, to truly become a better player. George W. Bush would never become truly competent at anything, because of his unwillingness to allow a fair game.

So, let's apply this to Bush in the middle east. He's losing in Iraq and everyone knows it. He refuses to admit defeat or to change his policies in any way. Changing or adapting is just another way of admitting defeat. He's just going to drag it out and let the next President deal with the mess. Thousand of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis will die for his ego.

But it may not be good enough. He crossed the line on Lebanon and made it his war. Now maybe he can distance himself emotionally, and blame it all on Israel.

Or maybe he can't. And here's the thing if he can't. He's losing in Iraq. He's losing in Lebanon. Best two out of three?

Iran?

The trouble is, he doesn't have that many cards to play in Iran. His ground military is all tied up and at risk. The fleet in the Persian Gulf might be at risk.

But he has to win. So, maybe its time to pull out the cheap shot, the cheat trick. Time to get nasty.

So, assuming he goes one more round to win in Iran... how far will he go, and what will he use?

Frankly, I think that the odds are against the Republicans losing the mid-term elections.

Remember that the Democrats need to lose nothing and win at least seven Senate seats. Assuming that the house has 100 seats, and that 1/3 of them go up every term, that means no more than 33 seats will be in play. Assume that they are evenly divided with an edge to the republicans, its possibly roughly 18 to 15. Most of these will be incumbents who have extensive war chests and strong advantages. The Lieberman situation is a wild card which might make it necessary for the Democrats to take 8. The Democrats will have to lose none of their own seats, and take away roughly a 40% of the Republicans Senate seats? I dunno. Sounds to me like their works is cut out for them. Under normal circumstances, the odds are against them.

Meanwhile, the House is 435 seats. Democrats control 201, the Republicans control 231. The Democrats would have to take a net 18 seats away from the Republicans in order to gain control of the House. Incumbents have a serious advantage, and Gerrymandering has ensured that something like 90% of your House seats are stable and not in play. So the contest is not really over 18 seats out of 435, but 18 seats out of perhaps 50 or so that might represent competitve races. Not all of the competitive seats are held by Republicans. Say roughly 30 to 35 of the competitive seats are held by Republicans, then the Democrats need to take 50% of those seats, without any losses to themselves. Beyond that baseline, each democrat loss has to be made up by a win against the Republicans. So if the Republicans win 12 against the Democrats, then the Democrats have to take 30 or better from the Republicans. If the Republicans take 20 then the Democrats have to capture more Republican seats than are actually in play. Nevertheless, it looks like the advantages are all to the Democrats.

But even with advantages, they still have to take 8 out of 18 Republican Senate Seats, and/or 18 out of 30 competitive Republican House seats. That's the bottom line. 5 new Senate seats and 15 new house seats leave the Democrats in the Wilderness.

What this means is that although Republicans go in with enormously bad polls, they also have enormous strategic defensive capacity.

The Democrats need a minimum of 7 or 8 in the Senate, if the Republicans can win two or three of those races, they keep the Senate. Thus, they can preserve their strategic position by concentrating their monies. Same with the house, the Democrats have to win at least 18, the Republicans only need to deny them two or three of those.

The Republicans bring immense amounts of money, a substantial organization, and control of the media to the party.

Of course, your electoral system is rife with fraud, voter suppression, legal and illegal disenfranchisement and computer manipulation, so it might be that all of this is academic. Fraud is fraud after all.

But in another sense, the proliferation of hundreds of small races, rather than a big presidential race, will make fraud easier and more likely. Scrutiny of a presidential race is much more intense, and considering the height of the stakes, concerns will be greater.

On the other hand, an isolated case of fraud in one or two ridings in obscure house races... this will be very hard to find, hard to prove and the level of concern over it is likely to be minimal. More along the lines of a shoulder shrug. Americans are very used to corruption of their electoral politics.

They don't need to defraud the whole thing, just manipulate enough votes in enough key districts to keep certain Senate and House seats and preserve a majority. They could even give up a few house and senate seats if they needed to.

The most likely outcome is some reduction of republican advantage to Senate or House seats, but their retention of majorities and control.

I would also look for strategic exchanges. Unsatisfactory Republicans may be sacrificed as part of a quiet purge, in excange for eliminating aggressive or controversial Democrats, guys like Murtha. Dinosaurs and institutions, like Kennedy, will remain... they're too big and too ineffectual to touch. But we may see some careful repositioning of the board in the event of fraud. It all depends on how much control the Republicans have obtained over the Electoral system and how willing they are to risk discovery or exposure.

Finally, we cannot rule out net gains of Republican advantage in Senate and House. In particular, the Senate is only four seats away from a Republican super-majority which would eliminate any possibility of filibusters and which would substantially enhance Republican leverage.

Ah well, guess we'll know in a few months...

So what is France doing? Here’s an opportunity for leadership, to show it can do what the Bush administration won’t (not can’t), and it’s resorting to its own spin rhetoric. A success in Lebanon could both help the Middle East and provide a high profile “see, it can work” case for those who want the UN to play a central role.

This is not a quibble, but I'm curious about what is behind can't vs. won't? Thanks.

I am not quibbling either, but neither will I respond politely to your implications. You seem to be implying that France, because of their opposition to the Bush Admin's Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war, and opposition to the subsequent implementation of this doctrine as a casus belli for War Upon Iraq has not engaged in acts of world leadership; and that this was not a response to the known circumstances existing in Pre-War Iraq that was forthright and honest. This offends me greatly.

I am also embarassed that my country would use the Groundskeeper Willie Character from the Simpsons Cartoon as an authoritative source on France. The slanderous spin upon America's longest historical ally by Administration Mouthpieces, talking head pundits, and yes, especially the Wonks, needs to be depicted for the deceit that it is.

President Chirac offered a realistic assessment about the ripple effects of Mr. Bush's 'Pre-Emptive War' justification in a September 8, 2002, interview with the NY Times:

"As I've already told President Bush, I have great reservations about this doctrine. As soon as one nation claims the right to take preventive action, other countries will naturally do the same.

And what would you say in the entirely hypothetical event that China wanted to take preemptive action against Taiwan, saying that Taiwan was a threat? How would the Americans, the Europeans and others react? Or what if India decided to take preventive action against Pakistan, or vice versa? Or Russia against Chechnya or somewhere else? What would we say? I think this is an extraordinarily dangerous doctrine that could have tragic consequences. Preventive action can be undertaken if it appears necessary, but it must be taken by the international community, which today is represented by the United Nations Security Council. "

Interview of President Jacques Chirac by the New York Times at Elysee Palace - September 8, 2002

President Chirac gave a televised interview to the French Republic on March 10, 2003, in which he questioned the Pre Iraq War motives of the Bush Administration and called for a multilateral response:

Q: Some people are arguing: rather than disarm Saddam, couldn't his regime simply be toppled, because after all he's a dictator who has been cruel to his country, we've seen that?

Chirac: Yes, that's another problem. There are other regimes to which that could also apply.

Q: You mean the list is too long?

Chirac: I'm not today going to draw up a list but, anyway, the North Korean regime naturally comes to mind, it's in no way better than Iraq's and has weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear ones which aren't hypothetical, but, regrettably, definitely exist.

Q: Some people are saying (...) "why not start with Iraq?"

Chirac: (...) We have to say what we want. We could have said: "we want first and above all to change the Iraqi regime". That would have been a different argument, a different problem, one which would nevertheless have needed, as you will recognize, consultation, particularly at United Nations level.

We have said: "we want to disarm Iraq". (...) We unanimously chose the path of disarming him. Today, nothing tells us that this path is a dead end and, consequently, it must be pursued since war is always a final resort, always an acknowledgement of failure, always the worst solution, because it brings death and misery. And we don't consider we are at that point. That's why we are refusing to embark on a path automatically leading to war so long as the inspectors haven't told us: "we can't do any more". And they are telling us the opposite.

"Iraq Interview Given by M. Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic, to 'TF1' and 'FRANCE 2'", Le magazine de l'actualité présidentielle (Roughly: Current News Magazine of the President), Paris, 10 March 2003

(Note: the original URL for this transcript was removed from France's Official Presidential website somewhere between late 2004 and early 2005. I have not found it in the site's archives, but my French language capabilities probably couldn't get a coffee on the left-bank of the Seine. The Internet Archive claims to have it archived, but has been unwilling to profer it. I have a text scrape of the excerpted interview in English, as it appeared on the aforementioned URL in Spring, 2004. If anyone wants to view it, message me, and I'll post it on a publicly accessible web URI.)

In an interview by Christiane Amanpour for CBS News on March 16, 2003, President Chirac stated his doubts about Iraq's possession of WMDs:

Amanpour: Do you believe that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction; for instance, chemical or biological weapons?

Chirac: Well, I don’t know. I have no evidence to support that… It seems that there are no nuclear weapons - no nuclear weapons program. That is something that the inspectors seem to be sure of.

As for weapons of mass destruction, bacteriological, biological, chemical, we don’t know. And that is precisely what the inspectors’ mandate is all about. But rushing into war, rushing into battle today is clearly a disproportionate response.

Amanpour: Here, many commentators, many newspapers have been hailing you as a hero. They have even said your position should make you qualify for a Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, in America, in Britain, they call you an appeaser, that you are appeasing this terrible dictator who may have weapons of mass destruction.

Chirac: I feel the same way about Saddam Hussein as George Bush or Tony Blair. There is a rather long list of countries where there are dictatorships, and if we were going to wage war to get rid of all of them without pursuing all other options, we are going to be very busy

Amanpour: You have said that inspections were working in great part because of the massive US and British force that is arrayed outside Saddam Hussein’s doorstep. Wouldn’t it be even more effective if France had sent troops also to double and triple the threat?

Chirac: I have said that it is indeed thanks to the pressure of British and American troops that the Iraqi authorities and Saddam Hussein have changed their position and have agreed to cooperate with the inspectors.

So I would say that the Americans have already won, and they haven’t fired a single bullet.

"Chirac Makes His Case On Iraq", CBS News, Paris, March 16, 2003

France has no need to show their leadership to the world. Chirac issued a message of support for America on September 11, 2001, he was the first foreign Head of State to visit America after the WTC and Pentagon attacks. France has been active thoughout this miserable War Upon Iraq, attempting to mitigate and act as intermediaries. Mr. Bush owes President Chirac an apology.

The Dreamtime America writhes in agony, wounded by Unconstitutional Presidential Overreach, and the American Citizenry's failure to comprehend the brutal irony inherent in The Two Georges; one a former King of England, the other the current President of the USA:

Nor has Mr. Bush been wanting in attention from our French brethren. They warned from time to time of attempts by our legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over the world. They reminded of the circumstances of MidEast emigration and settlement. They appealed to America's native justice and magnanimity, and conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. The Bush Administration has been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, and denounce our Executive.

There should be a public accounting with France though; an honest appraisal of Perle's NeoConnivances with Sarkozy, just as their should be a public accounting of Ledeen's ties to his former employer, the Italian Intelligence Services, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and the Niger Yellowcake Bellyache. Persons without portfolio engaging in covert actions as government representatives, obfuscated by politicised classification schemes of the Executive is antithetical to a free society.

"Yes, the Bush administration gets a large chunk of the blame for each of these problems (Darfur perhaps less, but we still have yet to see strong commitment and follow-through there)."

Darfur, much less. Bush tried as early as 2004 to impose sanctions, and France and Russia have taken turns stopping that ever since.