What's "credibility" got to do with it?

It's one of those empty shibboleths hard-power believers constantly fall back on when their arguments fall short.

For three years now we've heard that the UN had lost all credibility, was irrelevant, etc. If so, then why is the US government begging the UNSC to come up with real sanctions? Condi Rice is the whiner-in-chief. And whining is pretty much all the US can do right now. Trouble is, you can't beg X and diss X at the same time.

The US has failed at every single foreign policy initiative in the last 3 years and has lost its superpower status through its own sheer stupidity. And you worry about the credibility of the... UN.

Straight out of a Borat skit.

Let's play a game. It's called: think like a neocon. The point of the game is to figure out how to make the neocon dream become a reality.

Let's start with the neocon dream: "regime change in Iran", as described yesterday by our very own Josh Marshall:

So here's basically how the theory went and, I don't doubt, still goes ... We hate the Saudis and the Egyptians and all the rest of the standing Arab governments. But the Iraqi Shi'a were oppressed by Saddam. So they'll like us. So we'll set them up in control of Iraq. You might think that would empower the Iranians. But not really. The mullahs aren't very powerful. And once the Iraqi Shi'a have a good thing going with us. The Iranians are going to want to get in on that too. So you'll see a new government in Tehran.

How do we make this neocon dream a reality?  Well, it's not as simple as installing a Shiite regime in Bahgdad.  The neocons think they need to...apply some force to Iran to trigger the regime change they seek.  How can they possibly justify such an attack?  Answer: focus on the Iranian nuclear program.  Seymour Hersh's article from April of this year:

The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing perception that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney believe a bombing campaign will be needed, and that their real goal is regime change. "Everyone is on the same page about the Iranian bomb, but the United States wants regime change," a European diplomatic adviser told me. He added, "The Europeans have a role to play as long as they don't have to choose between going along with the Russians and the Chinese or going along with Washington on something they don't want. Their policy is to keep the Americans engaged in something the Europeans can live with. It may be untenable."

Everyone agrees that bombing Iran as an exension of the Iraq war is "crazy," right?  So bombing Iran as the reasonable and necessary antidote to Tehran's nuclear ambitions is, what?  Less crazy?  Even if the outcome is exactly the same?

I'm going to say this as politely as possible.  The problem with serious "foreign policy experts" like Mr. Jentleson is their pre-Iraq mindset.  They fail to recongize that the Bush Administration views the Security Counsel as an essential tool in building its case for war.  The Administration used the Security Counsel to build legitimacy for the Iraq war, and by pushing for sanctions against Iran, they seek to do so again.  When sanctions fail, they will bomb Iran. 

By "pushing" for UN sanctions, people like Mr. Jentleson empower the Bush Administration directly.  The Bush Administration needs people like Mr. Jentleson to call for sanctions, so that in case the Security Counsel fails to impose sanctions, the Administration can accuse the Security Counsel of not doing its job.  This is an essential part of selling the war.  The louder the call for sanctions from folks like Mr. Jentleson, the more reasonable it seems when the Bush Administration takes matters into its own hands in the face of Securety Counsel inaction.

The only reasonable, logical approach for left of center foreign policy experts to take is this: resist any attempt by the Bush Administration to engage in regime change in Iran.  Regime change in Iran must be viewed in context with the War in Iraq, which takes precedence over concerns with Iran's nuclear ambitions.  By pushing for regime change now, the Bush Administration is attempting to fundamentally change the Iraq War - to widen the war, appease our Sunni and Israeli allies, and destroy the Iranian leadership all at once.  This is an insane course of action, which no doubt led to the Saudi Ambassador's abrupt retirement this week.

The calls for UN "credibility" ring hollow.  Under a Democratic president, we all hope the Security Counsel will once again provide a mechanism for managing international conflicts.  Under the Bush Administration, however, the Security Counsel is nothing more than a tool - a veil of legitimacy that cloaks the Administration's neoconservative plans.  Those who care about the Security Counsel's legitimacy should not be arguing for it to give in to the White House's demands.  Rather, the Security Counsel's legitimacy rests on its ability to resist the Bush White House...

God willing, in two years, we will return to the pre-Iraq minset in which the White House and Security Counsel work together.  At that point, we can return to the issue of the effectiveness of sanctions and weigh the benefits of the collective use of force through the Security Counsel. 

In the meantime, take a look at Hersh's latest, from November 20, 2006:

But many in the White House and the Pentagon insist that getting tough with Iran is the only way to salvage Iraq. "It's a classic case of 'failure forward,'" a Pentagon consultant said. "They believe that by tipping over Iran they would recover their losses in Iraq - like doubling your bet. It would be an attempt to revive the concept of spreading democracy in the Middle East by creating one new model state."

    The view that there is a nexus between Iran and Iraq has been endorsed by Condoleezza Rice, who said last month that Iran "does need to understand that it is not going to improve its own situation by stirring instability in Iraq," and by the President, who said, in August, that "Iran is backing armed groups in the hope of stopping democracy from taking hold" in Iraq. The government consultant told me, "More and more people see the weakening of Iran as the only way to save Iraq."

    The consultant added that, for some advocates of military action, "the goal in Iran is not regime change but a strike that will send a signal that America still can accomplish its goals. Even if it does not destroy Iran's nuclear network, there are many who think that thirty-six hours of bombing is the only way to remind the Iranians of the very high cost of going forward with the bomb - and of supporting Moqtada al-Sadr and his pro-Iran element in Iraq." (Sadr, who commands a Shiite militia, has religious ties to Iran.)

    In the current issue of Foreign Policy, Joshua Muravchik, a prominent neoconservative, argued that the Administration had little choice. "Make no mistake: President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office," he wrote. The President would be bitterly criticized for a preëmptive attack on Iran, Muravchik said, and so neoconservatives "need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes."

 The main Middle East expert on the Vice-President's staff is David Wurmser, a neoconservative who was a strident advocate for the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Like many in Washington, Wurmser "believes that, so far, there's been no price tag on Iran for its nuclear efforts and for its continuing agitation and intervention inside Iraq," the consultant said. But, unlike those in the Administration who are calling for limited strikes, Wurmser and others in Cheney's office "want to end the regime," the consultant said. "They argue that there can be no settlement of the Iraq war without regime change in Iran."

Also, I'm curious.  Does this matter?

The Administration's planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House's assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to comment on this story.)

    The C.I.A.'s analysis, which has been circulated to other agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources told me, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity-detection devices that clandestine American and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear-weapons facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of radioactivity were found.

    A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the C.I.A. analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it. The White House's dismissal of the C.I.A. findings on Iran is widely known in the intelligence community. Cheney and his aides discounted the assessment, the former senior intelligence official said. "They're not looking for a smoking gun," the official added, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning. "They're looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission." The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency also challenged the C.I.A.'s analysis. "The D.I.A. is fighting the agency's conclusions, and disputing its approach," the former senior intelligence official said. Bush and Cheney, he added, can try to prevent the C.I.A. assessment from being incorporated into a forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nuclear capabilities, "but they can't stop the agency from putting it out for comment inside the intelligence community." The C.I.A. assessment warned the White House that it would be a mistake to conclude that the failure to find a secret nuclear-weapons program in Iran merely meant that the Iranians had done a good job of hiding it. The former senior intelligence official noted that at the height of the Cold War the Soviets were equally skilled at deception and misdirection, yet the American intelligence community was readily able to unravel the details of their long-range-missile and nuclear-weapons programs. But some in the White House, including in Cheney's office, had made just such an assumption - that "the lack of evidence means they must have it," the former official said.

Send a strong signal to the Iranians that .... the US and EU want to steal Iran's "inalienable right" to indepedent nuclear power? Yeah, that'll fly. Surely, the Iranians will just fall in line with that. I can just imagine Ahmadinejad going on TV to say "Dear Iranian people - we've been threatened with a travel ban, so we've decided to give up on the energy source of the future, and you lot can go eat grass for all we care."

Sure, that'll send a real strong message.