From the Imagination of John Bolton

In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, John Bolton criticizes America's handling of North Korea. At the end of the article, almost as an afterthought, he muses:

Finally, we need to learn the details of North Korean nuclear cooperation with other countries. We know that both Iran and Syria have long cooperated with North Korea on ballistic missile programs, and the prospect of cooperation on nuclear matters is not far-fetched. Whether and to what extent Iran, Syria or others might be “safe havens” for North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, or may have already participated with or benefited from it, must be made clear.

To summarize: at the end of an article about North Korea, Bolton considers the possibility that, hey, maybe Iran and Syria might be helping out North Korea. Not that he has any evidence of this; he simply imagines that it could be so, and says the US should look into it. Fair enough.

Then Jay Nordlinger at NRO's The Corner reads Bolton's editorial and writes a post entitled "The Axis in Action":

Are North Korea, Iran, and Syria helping one another with nuclear weapons — not weaponry in general, but nuclear weapons? If so, this is a stunning new development, or revelation. This could be unutterably dangerous for the world. Security-minded people in Congress may want to inquire about this. And we are reminded, once more, of the complete validity of the much-mocked phrase “axis of evil.”

The Right-Wing Echo Chamber at work! Let's break this down line by line, shall we?

Are North Korea, Iran, and Syria helping one another with nuclear weapons — not weaponry in general, but nuclear weapons?

It sure is easy to make up something scary in the form of a question. For example: "Where was Jay Nordinger on the night that Owen Wilson tragically attempted to take his own life?"

If so, this is a stunning new development, or revelation.

If so, this would be a stunning new development, or revelation. Of course, there's no evidence that it is so.

This could be unutterably dangerous for the world.

If there were any evidence that it was so.

Security-minded people in Congress may want to inquire about this. And we are reminded, once more, of the complete validity of the much-mocked phrase “axis of evil.”

What?? In related news, John Doe told his friend Bob Smith that, theoretically, his wife might be cheating on him. This hypothetical situation reminds us of the the validity of the phrase "you can't trust women."

Nordlinger is apparently unaware that the hypothetical musings of John Bolton in an editorial have absolutely no effect on the validity of the phrase "Axis of Evil."

The worst part of the whole post, though, is the title: "The Axis in Action." A more appropriate title would be: "The Axis in Action... in John Bolton's head."

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Look, I don't mean to suggest that two or three dictatorial countries could never work together on nuclear technology. But the world is full of scary possibilities. Let's see some evidence that they are before we panic, ok? The imagination of John Bolton doesn't count.

Why did Bush and Putin stand together against Iran?

From the New York Times:

President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin projected a united front Monday against Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.

''When Russia and the United States speak along the same lines, it tends to have an effect and therefore I appreciate the Russians' attitude in the United Nations,'' Bush said. ''We're close on recognizing that we got to work together to send a common message.''

Putin predicted that ''we will continue to be successful'' as they work through the U.N. Security Council.

What can we credit for this sunny development?

Earlier, Bush and the Russian leader piled into a powerful speedboat navigated by Bush's father -- former President George H.W. Bush. Under a bright morning sunshine, Putin and the Bushes roamed close to the shoreline around the Bush family's oceanfront estate for about an hour and a half.

Ah, male bonding.

To bomb or not to bomb: the administration debates starting a war with Iran

An article in the New York Times makes clear that the debate over whether to start a war with Iran is alive and well in the White House:

A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran’s nuclear program, according to senior administration officials.

The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

...

But conservatives inside the administration have continued in private to press for a tougher line, making arguments that their allies outside government are voicing publicly. “Regime change or the use of force are the only available options to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability, if they want it,” said John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations.

Only a few weeks ago, one of Mr. Cheney’s top aides, David Wurmser, told conservative research groups and consulting firms in Washington that Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice’s diplomatic strategy was failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether to take military action.

It's good to know that Condoleezza appears to be winning this debate right now. But the fact that Cheney & Co. are just itching to pull the trigger on another war is downright disturbing. Glenn Greenwald points out that we've been down this road before:

The narrative is identical, of course, to the pre-Iraq-war "debate" which the media so vocally dramatized, with Secretary Rice in the role of reluctant warrior formerly played by Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney reprising his role of unabashed warmonger. It is true that there have been some personnel changes since then (most notably, Robert Gates in the place of Donald Rumsfeld), but George W. Bush is still the Decider, and he has not exactly been ambiguous about his views on the proper resolution of such "debates." As he told a group of right-wing pundits in October 2006: "I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions."

I don't think Bush is willing to sacrifice Iraq to strike Iran, which starting another war would essentially entail. (It's hard to imagine the chaos that would ensure if Iran got its Iraqi Shiite allies to fight an all-out war against our troops.) But no one can deny that the similarities of the Iraq debate to the Iran debate certainly are striking, right down to Joe Lieberman falling all over himself to endorse another preemptive war:

“I think we have to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. Host Bob Schieffer followed-up: “Let’s just stop right there. Because I think you probably made some news here, Senator Lieberman. You’re saying that if the Iranians don’t let up, that the United States should take military action?” “I am,” Lieberman responded.

Now, how much does Cheney want a war with Iran? Well, check out this Washington Note article from May 27:

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

...

The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.

According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.

At least this supports the notion that President Bush is leaning towards the diplomatic option (aka the "not insane" option). But the rest of it is chilling to say the least. I think the lesson from all this is that it's not enough to just concentrate on the election in 2008. It's clear that the Republican administration has more than enough time left in office to make a gigantic mistake, like start another war.

Joshua Marshall on talking to Iran

The much-anticipated meeting between the United States and Iran, their "first high profile, face-to-face talks in nearly three decades," seems to have gone off smoothly in Baghdad today (though it certainly didn't produce any breakthroughs):

The meeting between Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker of the United States and Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qumi of Iran — held in the offices of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad — produced no agreements nor a promise of a follow-up meeting between the two nations, officials said.

But Mr. Crocker told a news conference that the talks “proceeded positively.”

As you may recall, I'm of the opinion that this meeting between the United States and Iran was long overdue:

I wholeheartedly approve this belated move. That isn't to say that I have much faith in the Iranian government; odds are that nothing much will come of this. It's just that if there is any possibility that the Iranians could be convinced/bribed to tone down their activities in Iraq, we should find out. Maybe the price would be too high; maybe they really are totally committed to creating chaos in Iraq. But the only way to know for sure is to talk to them.

So I will give grudging some praise to the administration for finally coming to their senses. Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo isn't in such a forgiving mood:

I don't disagree with the diplomatic decision, but it's worth noting that after years of saying talks with Iran would be reckless and irresponsible, the Bush gang is grudgingly accepting the reality that Dems have been pushing for quite a while.

Would it be rude to point out how often this has happened of late? Dems said Bush should talk directly to Syria; Bush said Dems were weak to even suggest it; and Bush eventually came around. Dems said Bush should talk to North Korea and use Clinton's Agreed Framework as a model for negotiations; Bush said this was out of the question; and Bush eventually came around. Dems said Bush should increase the size of the U.S. military; Bush said this was unnecessary; and Bush eventually came around.

And Dems said Bush should engage Iran in direct talks, particularly on Iraq. It took a while, but the president came around on this, too.

For years, all we've heard from the right is that Bush is a bold visionary when it comes to foreign policy, and Dems are weak and clueless. And yet, here we are, watching the White House embrace the Dems' approach on most of the nation's major foreign policy challenges.

Now, if Bush could just bring himself to accept the Democratic line on Iraq, too, we'd really see some progress.

Bush may not be adopting the Democratic line on Iraq, but he is making noises about finally accepting the recommendations of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group. Given the President's track record of failures and reversals, it's simply astonishing how eagerly the Republican candidates for 2008 have embraced his foreign policy.

Bombing Iran: A Truly Bad Idea

In this article in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz does his best to make the truly bad idea of bombing Iran sound like America's only option. Diplomacy, he says, is useless:

... for three-and-a-half years, even pre-dating the accession of Ahmadinejad to the presidency, the diplomatic gavotte has been danced with Iran, in negotiations whose carrot-and-stick details no one can remember—not even, I suspect, the parties involved. But since, to say it again, Ahmadinejad is a revolutionary with unlimited aims and not a statesman with whom we can “do business,” all this negotiating has had the same result as Munich had with Hitler. That is, it has bought the Iranians more time in which they have moved closer and closer to developing nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler, says Podhoretz:

Like Hitler, he is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism. Like Hitler, too, he is entirely open about his intentions, although—again like Hitler—he sometimes pretends that he wants nothing more than his country’s just due. In the case of Hitler in 1938, this pretense took the form of claiming that no further demands would be made if sovereignty over the Sudetenland were transferred from Czechoslovakia to Germany. In the case of Ahmadinejad, the pretense takes the form of claiming that Iran is building nuclear facilities only for peaceful purposes and not for the production of bombs.

If no action is taken, he predicts, the result will be a West cowed by Iran, helpless in the face of the Islamization of Europe, and, possibly, the obliteration of Israel. The runaway train of Islamofascism is bearing down on Israel, Europe, and America, and only some very large bombs can stop it. Don't look for help from the Europeans; they are unwilling to lift a finger to stop the Iranian president. Unlike, perhaps, a certain heroic president:

George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this President, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel.

Read the whole article. I disagree completely with it, of course. Podhoretz's comparison of Ahmadinejad to Hitler is absurd. Yes, Ahmadinejad is a nasty piece of work too, but Hitler was an absolute dictator who led a rising, powerful Germany. Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, is the president but not the supreme leader of Iran, and he is constrained by many other political actors. The Iranian economy is slowly collapsing as a result of his failed economic policies, he's increasingly unpopular, and his party suffered big losses in the last round of elections. About the only he has going for him right now is the nuclear issue, which the Iranians see as a matter of national pride. From his viewpoint, what could be better than an American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities? Not only would it rally people to the flag, but it probably couldn't do more than set back production a few years anyway.

Compared to the constant threat of complete nuclear annihilation the US faced during the Cold War, the possibility of Ahmadinejad developing a few nukes down the road is quite a bit less frightening. Obviously we must do whatever we can to prevent it, but there's simply no excuse for a great power like America to panic and make the wrong move in this situation. A preventive strike against Iran would cause Iraq to explode into chaos, destroy our image in the word, shoot the price of oil through the roof, and lose us the greatest allies we have against the mullahs, the people of Iran, some of the most pro-American on earth. Let time, sanctions, and Ahmadinejad's poor economic policies do their work.

US, Iran to talk about Iraq

From the Boston Globe:

The White House announced yesterday that the US ambassador in Baghdad would meet with Iranian officials about stabilizing Iraq, probably in the next several weeks, as the administration embraced a tactic outsiders have long recommended as essential to reducing sectarian violence in Iraq.

This is a huge shift in policy for the administration. It looks like desperation is forcing Bush to do what he despises: negotiate with an unpleasant regime. Note the inevitable neoconservative complaint:

A prominent supporter of the Iraq war, however, blasted the Bush administration's decision to hold talks with Iran, saying it will be seen in the Mideast as a sign of US weakness. "I think it's foolish to believe that Iran sees its interests as compatible with American interests in Iraq," said Richard Perle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-oriented think tank. "I don't think they are interested in stability. Iran has been contributing to instability. That is a deliberate policy and I don't expect it to change. So it's not clear what we hope to achieve."

You know what else is seen as a sign of American weakness? Losing the war in Iraq. I wholeheartedly approve this belated move. That isn't to say that I have much faith in the Iranian government; odds are that nothing much will come of this. It's just that if there is any possibility that the Iranians could be convinced/bribed to tone down their activities in Iraq, we should find out. Maybe the price would be too high; maybe they really are totally committed to creating chaos in Iraq. But the only way to know for sure is to talk to them.

An alternate take on the Middle East

Given the centrality of the Middle East in the recent debates, from the war in Iraq to what to do about Iran to protecting Israel, it's worth taking a glance at an alternate take on American foreign policy. This article by Edward Luttwak in the American Prospect has made a big splash. In it, Luttwak argues that the Middle East should essentially be irrelevant, that the threat of terrorism is overblown, that the fear of the armed forces of regimes like Iran is ridiculous ("Mussolini syndrome"), that the Arab-Israeli conflict is neither solvable or likely to explode in the near future, that our oil supply is safer than we think, and that we it is a pipe dream to believe that we can easily change these ancient societies. Therefore, the best course is to leave the region alone.

Thanks to finals I don't have the time to give this article the long review it deserves. But I will say that I agree with Luttwak's central thesis that the Middle East should be less central to American foreign policy. America would be better served in the long run by leaving the region to its own devices. However, I am unconvinced by his argument that Middle Eastern oil is of declining importance, and I don't believe that a disengagement from the Middle East is possible unless we make a serious effort to reduce our oil consumption. By serious I mean a steep carbon tax, not sideshow distractions like subsidizing ethanol or tax handouts for oil companies. If we don't make a serious effort to reduce the carbon intensity of our economy, we may as well resign ourselves to getting involved in all sorts of sticky situations in the Middle East, and the rest of the world, over the next few decades.

I think the only real winner in this situation is the unibrow

First they came for the immodestly dressed women. Now they've come for the eyebrow-pluckers.

Iranian headscarf crackdown: not so popular

The Iranian police force is cracking down on women who push up against the country's Islamic dress code. The drive has apparently provoked a backlash:

Critics in the media also complained that the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had more important issues to deal with, citing the country's soaring inflation and high unemployment rates.

"Mr. President, I wonder if what the police, supervised by your interior ministry, are doing to women stems from a misunderstanding?" asked Masih Alinejad, a columnist in the Etemad Melli daily.

"Or are people's major problems of injustice and poverty have been resolved?" he asked.

Two very different views of Iran

First read this New York Times article about the exoneration of six Iranian militiamen who killed in the name of Islam. Then read this Daily Mail article by Peter Hitchens on his visit to the country.