American Exceptionalism, "Leading from the Front" - and the "Gift" of Iraq's "Liberation"

 Both John McCain and Condi Rice at the GOP convention waxed on about "American exceptionalism" and how it is imperative that the US resume its always-and-forever role and responsibility of "leading from the front."  Stephen Walt (here) and Bruce Jentleson and Charles Kupchan (here) have torched the stupidity of that.  Walt's comments especially resonate with me:

the idea that the United States should always try to "lead" is completely bone-headed."Exerting leadership" is not the central objective of foreign policy; it is a means to an end but not an end in itself. The central purpose of foreign policy is to maximize the nation's security and well-being. If exerting "leadership" contributes to these ends, fine, but there will be many occasions when the smart strategy is to hold back and pass the buck to someone else. Blindly declaring that the United States must always go to enormous lengths to lead, and must constantly strive to reassure allies who need us far more than we need them, is mere jingoistic hubris. It's an applause line, but not a strategy. . . .

 

our overall approach to grand strategy should begin by recognizing that the United States is remarkably secure, with no great powers nearby, and most of our current adversaries are much, much weaker. This favorable geopolitical position is an enormous asset; it means that other states tend to worry more about each other than they do about us, and it means many countries will remain eager for U.S. support. Which in turn allows Washington to "play hard to get," and extract lots of concessions from others in exchange for our help. Those who pompously insist that America must always take the lead are throwing this diplomatic asset out the window, and guaranteeing that other states will take advantage of us instead of the other way around. And it should enable us to spend a lot less on national security, thereby easing our budget problems and allowing investments that will ensure our long-term productivity.

It is worth remembering that the United States rose to great-power status by staying out of trouble abroad and by concentrating on building a powerful economy here at home (which is what China is doing today). It also helped that the other great powers bankrupted themselves through several ruinous wars. The United States fought in two of those wars, but we got in late, suffered far fewer losses, and were in a better position to "win the peace" afterwards. The world has changed somewhat since then, and America's global role is and should be more substantial, but there is still a valuable lesson there. But don't expect Romney & Co. to absorb it.

In recent times, of course, George W. Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq (2003-2011) was the poster-child of the US's leading from the front.  John McCain chalked it up as an American "win" a few years ago, crediting the American Petraeus-led "Surge" with a "victory" that more credible observers ascribe to Sunni militias and the "success" of the Sunni vs. Shia sectarian cleansing and relocations of 2006-2008.   Many of the GOP rank-and-file bought into McCain's assessment: we freed the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein and bequeathed to them a constitution and a functioning democracy.  

Predictably, the American public have turned the page on Iraq - enough so that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and all of the GOP's headliner speakers in Tampa felt it safe (or prudent) to ignore both the Iraq war and the continuing debacle (or, perhaps more accurately, the slow-motion rout, as The Guardian's Simon Tisdall so aptly described it) in Afghanistan.  So  much for accountability; though in an election season when one campaign asserts for the record that it won't be held accountable to fact-checkers, what the hell?

Nonetheless, Haifa Zangana at The Guardian reminds us that in Iraq,  America's "leading from the front" is a "gift" that keeps on giving:

Three women were among the 21 people executed within one day in Iraq, last Monday. It was followed, two days later, by the reported execution of five more people. The number of people executed since the start of this year is now at least 96 and they are not the only ones. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, said: "I am appalled about the level of executions in Iraq. I deeply deplore the executions carried out this week, and am particularly alarmed about continuing reports of individuals who remain at risk of execution."

 

There is also news of another 196 people on death row. According to Iraqi officials, they have all been convicted on charges "related to terrorism," but there is little information about their names, what crimes they committed or whether they have access to lawyers or not. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have previously documented the prevalence of unfair trials and torture in detention in Iraq. Confessions under torture are often the only evidence against a person who has been arrested following a secret informant's report. Parading the accused with their tortured, empty looks on Al Iraqiya, the official TV channel, is the norm. It took a court in Baghdad only 15 minutes to sentence Ramze Shihab Ahmed, a dual Iraqi-UK national, to 15 years' imprisonment after being found guilty of "funding terrorist groups".

 

Amnesty has obtained and examined court documents and said it believes the trial proceedings were "grossly unfair". Ahmed was held in a secret prison near Baghdad, during which time his whereabouts were completely unknown to his family. During this period Ahmed alleges he was tortured – with electric shocks to his genitals and suffocation by plastic bags – into making a false "confession" to terrorist offences.

 

So what kind of human rights are observed in the "new Iraq"? Hardly any. The list of abuses is long and the tip of the iceberg is waves of arbitrary arrests (over 1,000 monthly), torture and executions. All are barely noticed by the world media and the US and British official silence is rather convenient to cover up the crimes and chaos they created. From time to time, they break their silence but only to justify their act of aggression. Recently, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu pulled out of a seminar in protest over the presence of Tony Blair, a statement was issued by Blair's office to justify the morality of his decision to support the United States' military invasion of Iraq.

 

There you have it.  Bush's "leading from the front" brought the long-suffering, deserving people of Iraq the gift of a new Saddam, along with a dysfunctional, corruption-ridden government and political system that, despite being flush with oil revenues, remains unable to provide electricity, jobs, or security.  And according to a recent survey, Iraqis feel so beaten down that they would accept a quasi-dictatorship if it could ensure basic quality of life.

And now, McCain/Rice et al. want Obama to thrust the US again into leading from the front, in order to bestow similar liberation on the people of Syria?

Al-Qaeda's Best Recruiters? The US Military

As reported via CNN . . . more hearts and minds won, more vengeance sworn, more recruits for "al-Qaeda":

A U.S. drone strike targeting al Qaeda suspects in Yemen killed 13 civilians, including three women, three security officials in the restive Middle Eastern country said."This was one of the very few times when our target was completely missed. It was a mistake, but we hope it will not hurt our anti-terror efforts in the region," a senior Yemeni Defense Ministry official told CNN. The official asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. . . .

Families of the victims closed main roads and vowed to retaliate. Hundreds of angry armed gunmen joined them and gave the government a 48-hour deadline to explain the killings, which took place on Sunday.Eyewitnesses said that families attempted to carry the victims' corpses to the capital, Sanaa, to lay them in front of the residence of newly elected President Abdurabu Hadi, but were sent back by local security forces."You want us to stay quiet while our wives and brothers are being killed for no reason. This attack is the real terrorism," said Mansoor al-Maweri, who was near the scene of the strike. . . .  

Residents are not denying the existence of al Qaeda elements in their region but say that misdirected strikes work in favor of the militant group, helping them recruit new operatives.

"I would not be surprised if a hundred tribesmen joined the lines of al Qaeda as a result of the latest drone mistake," said Nasr Abdullah, an activist in the district of the attack. "This part of Yemen takes revenge very seriously."

Obama Threw Israel "under the Bus"?

I've been convalescing and rehabbing after having my hip replaced a couple of weeks ago, and what with just trying to keep up with news and analysis, my posting has been curtailed.

But I couldn't help hearing Romney's comment last night (during his acceptance speech at the Republican convention - about which I have much I'd like to say) that Obama has "thrown Israel under the bus."  Rachel Maddow and her MSNBC cohort sneered at that - and justifiably so, because Obama has done no such thing.  Trying to counsel caution and restraint to Israel's messianic, paranoid, drum-beating leadership is not to throw them under the bus.

But as Karl Vick has reported today at Time, Obama has just given Romney another log for that fire:

Seven months ago, Israel and the United States postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October, and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.

“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a senior Israeli military official tells TIME. . . .

You're damn right we don't trust you.

 

In the current political context, the U.S. logic is transparent, says Israeli analyst Efraim Inbar. “I think they don’t want to insinuate that they are preparing something together with the Israelis against Iran – that’s the message,” says Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. “Trust? We don’t trust them. They don’t trust us. All these liberal notions! Even a liberal president like Obama knows better. . . .   

 

 

 

 

Inside Israel, reports persist that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense chief Ehud Barak are determined to launch a strike, and American officials continue to urge restraint.  Israeli analysts say Netanyahu wants Obama to send a letter committing to U.S. military action by a specific date if Iran has not acceded to concessions, but the U.S. administration does not appear to be complying.  U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told reporters in London this week  that a military strike could damage but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capability, and added, “I don’t want to be complicit if they choose to do it.”

 

 

All I can say is Bravo, Mr. Obama, for this course of action.  Unfortunately though, he just put another arrow into Mitt's quiver for his attack on Obama's allegedly anti-Israel stance.  Romney soft-pedaled that last night, devoting only one line to it, which likely was all he needed to say in order to keep on-side the millions of Christian Zionist evangelicals and Likudist American Jews who regard the defense of Israel as the US's appropriate chief foreign policy goal.   But Obama's decision may push into Romney's column some independents who question Obama's commitment to Israel.

Of course, any US president truly committed to "American values" would be backing away from an Israel that is rapidly abandoning its secular-socialist roots in favor of a chauvinistic, messianic hyper-religiosity that entails racist-religious hatred of the local Arab population (as recent NYT and JTA pieces highlight) and (in the person of Shas party leader - and Netanyahu coalition member - Rabbi Ovadia Yosef) calls for the annihilation of the Iranian people.

Instead, in his upcoming speech next week in Charlotte, expect Obama to proclaim the one-mindedness of the US and Israel.

UN Invasion of Texas - and a Coming American Civil War?

No, this piece is not from The Onion.  

 

Referring to unexplained "executive orders" and other documents that Obama and "his minions have filed," [Tom] Head [an elected judge from Lubbock County, Texas] said, "regardless of whether the Republicans take over the Senate, which I hope they do, he is going to make the United States Congress and he's going to make the Constitution irrelevant. He's got his czars in place that don't answer to anybody."

 

Obama, Head said, will "try to give the sovereignty of the United States away to the United Nations. What do you think the public's going to do when that happens? We are talking civil unrest, civil disobedience, possibly, possibly civil war. ... I'm not talking just talking riots here and there. I'm talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms, get rid of the dictator. OK, what do you think he is going to do when that happens? He is going to call in the U.N. troops, personnel carriers, tanks and whatever."

 

Head vowed to personally stand "in front of their personnel carriers and say, 'You're not coming in here.' And I've asked the sheriff. I said, 'Are you going to back me on this?' And he said, 'Yeah, I'm going to back you.' Well, I don't want a bunch of rookies back there who have no training and little equipment. I want seasoned veteran people who are trained that have got equipment. And even then, you know we may have two or three hundred deputies facing maybe a thousand U.N. troops. We may have to call out the militia."

 

Some of the scariest take-aways from this?

• These accusations come from the mouth of a judge (albeit an elected one, and from Texas, at that).
• His views most surely reflect those of millions of other Americans, the vast majority of whom possess at least high-school educations.  (Indeed, even though he's a Texas judge, I'm going to assume that Mr. Head has a college degree.)
• This man (and his ilk) who fears and hates Obama and a possible UN take-over of the US will undoubtedly cast his vote in November for a Republican presidential candidate whose on-the-record declaration of the US's appropriate relationship with Israel boils down to "If Israel says 'jump,' the US should say 'How high?'.   (Along these lines, note this recent essay from Mondoweiss.  Mitt Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu - whom Mitt first knew as Ben Nitai, at Harvard - go back a long way.)
• Such views are surely entrenched, among millions of Texans and other Red-Staters, and will remain so because of the constant reinforcement they receive from the Usual Suspects (Limbaugh/Hannity/FoxNews and their ilk) as well as oh-so-many of the Tea Party elite (who, I'm sure, would recoil at being called that).

 

One of the huge ironies here is that these self-declared "patriots" are in fact driving the wedge ever deeper into an American political-cultural divide (indeed, schism may be a more appropriate term) from which I frankly can envision no path to recovery as long as the Usual Suspects retain a free hand to spew hatred and ignorance.  

We have sometimes chortled at Rick Perry's reference to the possibility of Texas seceding from the Union.  But note the judge's comments above about calling out militia against UN troops.  This guy also rants about Obama, the "socialist" "Dictator."  In such a mind, how wide a gap is there really between "UN troops" and Federal authorities, be they the FBI, ATF - or the Department of Education ("thought police" who would have Texans and other Red Staters embrace un-Biblical concepts such as the theory of evolution, or global warming, or a reason-based assessment of "traditional values")?  In the wake of an Obama victory in November, how much more will such people (in their view) be "willing to take"?

Mr. Limbaugh may already have given us a clue. As reported at Huffington Post, on his radio show two days ago Limbaugh noted

 "I don't believe the country can survive in a country full of people that would re-elect him." Limbaugh described this as "the great fear" as he does not know "what we can do about a majority of people who would re-elect the guy."

Maybe a toss-off comment from Limbaugh, but this is nonetheless pretty spooky stuff.  For me, at least, it plucks a couple of historical strings:

• The famous comment of the English king Henry II about his troublesome archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket: "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"  Whereupon, several of his retinue did just that.  In a similar vein, Limbaugh implies that the realm would be better off without Mr. Obama.  His comments will take root in the fertile soil (or earwax buildup) of millions of listeners, too many of whom already seem well disposed to militias and "Second Amendment" solutions to what they perceive as a mortal threat to USA, USA.
• Adolf Hitler's pinning of Germany's post-World War I decline on the Communists, and the Jews.  Again, Limbaugh's question about "what we can do about a majority of people who would re-elect the guy" will readily be heard as a call to arms (and I don't mean that metaphorically) to an already wound-up audience that embraces a self-concept of Tea Party patriots ready to take up arms against a "dictatorial" King George III  United Nations  Barack Hussein Obama and his God-hating, Bible-bashing, baby-killing, Israel-trashing socialist-Communist-atheist liberal army of Satan.

As much as I dread a Romney victory in November, I worry about the repercussions of the Obama victory for which I so desperately hope.

Robin Wright on "Fearing" the "Salafi Crescent"

Robin Wright has exhibited a disturbing tendency over the years to essentialize - as in her recent coining of the term "Salafi Crescent," as if salafis are a unified mass movement now poised (as in some big game of Risk) to carve a path across the Middle East.  

I vividly remember her appearance at the University of Michigan in 1984 as part of a panel on current Middle Eastern issues.  That appearance was around the same time as the publication of her first major book, Sacred Rage: the Wrath of Militant Islam, and her comments reflected the kind of essentializing of "militant Islam" that the title reflects.  I was especially struck by how she was challenged repeatedly from the audience, by people who seemed to have a much better nuanced appreciation of current developments among militant Islamists.  By the end of her time on stage, she was reeling - and I had formed an opinion of her that led to my continuing decision to enjoy her reportage, but avoid relying on her as in any way a go-to authority on the Middle East.

Nonetheless, a lot of what she says in her new NY Times essay  here is spot-on, especially about the US's consistent choice to align itself with the Wahhabi salafi monarchy of Saudi Arabia.  As she concludes:

The Salafis represent a painful long-term conundrum for the West. Their goals are the most anti-Western of any Islamist parties. They are trying to push both secularists and other Islamists into the not-always-virtuous past.

American policy recently had its own awakening after 60 years of support for autocratic rulers. The United States opted to embrace people power and electoral change in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Yemen. Yet Washington still embraces authoritarian Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia, tolerating their vague promises of reform and even pledging the United States’ might to protect them.

Foreign policy should be nuanced, whether because of oil needs or to counter threats from Iran. But there is something dreadfully wrong with tying America’s future position in the region to the birthplace and bastion of Salafism and its warped vision of a new order.

Todd Akin as Symptom of Deeper American Sickness

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker skewers the moron that is Todd Akin.  

She also makes plain something many have been noting for quite awhile: that the Republican Party can push forward such demagogic, ignorant mediocrities as candidates for national office should tell us that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong with the GOP.  And, that Americans cast their votes for them speaks volumes about the moral and intellectual nadir to which the US has descended.

Egypt President Morsi Going to Iran

As reported by Reuters: 

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Mursi will visit Iran to attend the Non-Aligned Movement meetings on August 30, Egyptian state news agency MENA said, the first such visit by an Egyptian head of state to Tehran since the Islamic revolution.

MENA quoted sources at the Egyptian presidency saying on Saturday that Mursi "will participate in the summit" on his way back from China.

A spokesman for Mursi was not immediately available for comment. Egyptian media reports have suggested Mursi might send his newly appointed deputy, Mahmoud Mekki, instead.

Since Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was toppled in a popular uprising last year, Egypt and Iran have signaled interest in renewing ties severed more than 30 years ago after Iran's Islamic Revolution and Egypt's recognition of Israel.

However, with the West pushing Iran to halt its disputed nuclear program and the United States being a major donor to Egypt's military, any improvement in ties could become a tricky path to tread.

Mursi said in June he would sue an Iranian news agency after it quoted him as saying he was interested in restoring relations with Tehran. Mursi aides said the interview was a fabrication.

Iran hailed the victory of Mursi, who resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood when he was elected in June, as an "Islamic Awakening". Mursi, however, is striving to reassure Egypt's Western allies wary at the prospect of Islamist rule, and Gulf states that are deeply suspicious of Iranian influence.

Egypt is the current head of the Non Aligned Movement, founded during the Cold War to advocate the causes of the developing world, is set to hand over to Iran in the Tehran meeting.

Egypt's formal recognition of Israel and Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution led in 1980 to the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries, among the biggest and most influential in the Middle East. They currently have reciprocal interest sections, but not at ambassadorial level.

Egypt's former president Anwar Sadat received Iran's late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi who fled Iran following the revolution in 1979 while one of Tehran's streets is named after the man who assassinated Sadat during a military parade in 1981.

I imagine that the lines between Tel Aviv and Cairo, Washington and Cairo, and Tel Aviv and Washington will be heating up over this development.  And of course, it adds fuel to the fear-mongering of those such as the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick, whose recent essay on "Who Lost Egypt?" conjures up memories of the "Who Lost China?" debate in the 1950s US.  

Except that she sees the real question as "Who lost the Middle East?"  In Glick's world, it's all on the feckless Mr. Obama and his crew, who let Hosni Mubarak, the cornerstone of the US's stabilty system in the region, slip beneath the waters of the Arab Spring. (How's that for shifting a metaphor?)  Never a mention, makes she, of how Israel's policies helped produce Israel's isolation.

US Military as a New Praetorian Guard

At World Politics Review (subscription), Andrew Exum (who posts there weekly under the moniker Abu Muqawama) posts an extremely thoughtful, cogent essay about the disturbing state of civil-military relations in the US.  In brief, he bemoans how hero-worshiping American citizens have established the US soldier as a kind of uber-citizen upon whom some politicians would now see fit to heap extra portions of legal and economic benefits even as "ordinary" citizens are forced to deal with increasing economic austerity.

On the one hand, it is good and right that a society lifts up those who put themselves in harm’s way to serve a greater good. But when it comes to the U.S. and its military, things have truly gotten out of hand. Able-bodied U.S. soldiers in prime physical condition now board airplanes in the United States before mothers with small children. Perhaps even worse, it seems that only veterans notice how ridiculous this is. The new G.I. Bill, passed by the Congress in 2009, makes the U.S. taxpayer responsible for the education of the sons and daughters of highly paid general officers, yet most citizens living in a new age of austerity do not ask why. And a member of the U.S. House of Representatives has even gone so far as to argue that military servicemen might deserve the right to vote more than the average citizen. 

 

This is obscene. And the absurdity of it all is thrown into stark relief when we compare things with the way we treat other public servants. Consider, for a moment, Ragaei Abdelfattah, an Egyptian emigrant to the United States who was killed last week in Afghanistan while working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Abdelfattah will not be remembered in the way we remember fallen uniformed servicemen, and his family will likely struggle to receive even a fraction of the benefits that would be given to the family of a fallen soldier. 

 

All too often, in fact, USAID workers in Afghanistan are left to buy their own life insurance and worry about whether or not they are killed on “duty hours” so that their family receives it. The families of these fallen civilians will not have veterans service organizations fighting on their behalf on Capitol Hill to secure their benefits.

 

Contrary to popular perceptions, diplomats, aid workers and civilian contractors on the battlefield arguably expose themselves to more danger on a daily basis than most members of the military serving in combat support assignments. But they receive none of the credit and few of the benefits that the latter do.

 

Exum concludes:

If veterans of a professional all-volunteer force have simply provided services to the public in exchange for compensation, then we veterans deserve the same benefits provided to other public servants -- no more, no less. If the military, by contrast, is a truly selfless service, than veterans should be among the first in these times of austerity to lead by example and accept fewer public benefits. At the very least, we should be helping that mother with kids onto the airplane ahead of us.

 

Rather than choose between these two visions of military service, however, we Americans have opted for a middle option whereby we have a professional military in which men and women provide a public service -- like police officers or emergency medical technicians -- but are elevated to the highest echelons of publicly bestowed honor. This ambiguity hinders our ability to make even basic reforms to the military pay and benefits that will soon cripple the defense budget. And it contributes to the creation of a praetorian guard that threatens rather than protects the fabric of our society. 

For those of you unaware, during the Roman empire the praetorian guard began as an elite imperial bodyguard who eventually morphed into emperor-makers and -breakers themselves, to the point of overthrowing and executing Caesars and replacing them with someone of their own choice.

Never in America, you say?  Well, in the early 1960s a highly popular novel, Seven Days in May, (soon made into a gripping movie  - I've seen it several times; it never fails to set me thinking) described an attempted overthrow of the US president by a plot led by well-organized generals.  As the Wikipedia entry notes, 

The story is said to have been influenced by the right-wing anti-Communist political activities of General Edwin A. Walker after he resigned from the military. An additional inspiration was provided by the 1961 interview by [the novel's author, Fletcher] Knebel, who was also a political journalist and columnist, conducted with the newly-appointed Air Force Chief of Staff, Curtis LeMay, an advocate of preventive first-strike nuclear option. [Lemay - now there was a piece of work.]

President John F. Kennedy had read the novel and believed the scenario as described could actually occur in the United States. According to Frankenheimer in his director's commentary, production of the film received encouragement and assistance from Kennedy through White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, who conveyed to Frankenheimer Kennedy's wish that the film be produced and that, although the Pentagon did not want the film made, the President would conveniently arrange to visit Hyannis Port for a weekend when the film needed to shoot outside the White House.

The US military today rides a wave of adulation that began to swell with the Desert Storm "war" of 1991 and crested in 2003, perhaps with W's infamous "Mission Accomplished" moment on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.  Today we can't hold a major athletic event in this country without some over-the-top celebration of American military might, be it an All-Forces color guard, a USAF fly-bay over a stadium, or - now, and despicably - a "reality" TV show that challenges fading actors desperate for camera time celebrities to boot-camp drills.

Combine that with a Congress controlled by the powerful lobbies of weapons makers like General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop.  Those corporations ensure the predominance of America's "heroes" (and Israel's as well; let's not go there just now). They can pour millions into the campaign coffers of political candidates, as well as brandish the carrot/stick of new plants (= jobs).

Combine that with the increasing militarization of US intelligence services and special-operations (including drone strikes).  Don't forget that the current US Secretary of Defense is a long-time political hack (whose 2009 appointment as CIA head was highly criticized), whereas the current director of the CIA is the 4-star general military "hero" to whom (in John McCain's eyes, at least) we owe our "victory" in Iraq.

Can you see where this is headed?

Iran's Earthquakes and Common Humanity

Anyone paying attention knows that northwestern Iran (around the old capital city Tabriz) was hit yesterday with two devastating earthquakes.  As many as 250 people are dead, thousands injured, more thousands homeless.  Both the NY Times and the WaPo provide relatively brief coverage, but the photo arrays are compelling, and heart-rending.  (The Guardian provides a video here., and rather more extensive and humane coverage here; even more extensive coverage at al-Jazeera English here.)  They  reveal scenes of massive devastation, with ordinary people dead, hurt, traumatized, simply trying to cope.

None of the accounts notes any reach-out or expression of sympathy from the US - or Israel.  

That's a pity.

US Drones over the Sinai?

The NYT reports on burgeoning conversation between Egypt and the US about the security situation in the Sinai.  The US evidently is prepared to offer Egypt security assistance to dampen down the security threat there from militants in the wake of the attack that left some 16 Egyptian soldiers dead when militants tried to cross the Israeli border.

Among the security measures on offer may be Mr. Obama's weapon of choice: drones, undoubtedly to be "piloted" by Americans.  If the Egyptians sign on to this, it seems safe to say that at some point the US would want to be authorized to expand the drones' role from surveillance to "taking out" suspected bad guys . . . who would likely include, if not members of Hamas, then members of other Palestinian militant resistance groups.

And I can imagine nothing that would inflame anti-US feeling in the region more than the US military being directly responsible for killing Palestinians "resisting" Israel.  

Nor would that reflect well on the Egyptian political leaders who green-lighted the US actions.

I hope Mr. Morsi is wary of this slippery slope.

A Realistic and Reasonable Take on the Syria Crisis: Leon Hadar

I highly recommend this you-tube of Leon Hadar's recent presentation at the Middle East Policy Council about the crisis in Syria, the proposals for US intervention there (which he advises against, for sound reasons well presented here), and the American propensity for wishful thinking about democratic crusades in the Middle East.

By the end of his presentation, Mr. Hadar reaches a conclusion that I wish the American public at-large would accept and come to terms with: The US's unipolar moment in the Middle East is over, and the sooner we embrace that reality, the better prepared the US can be to embrace and engage with emerging realities.  Hadar notes especially the rise of China, and the ongoing US "pivot" toward East Asia.  

We might also include the emergence of popular Islamist politics in the Middle East and beyond.  Across the region, we are beginning to see the ascendancy of new socio-political models that reject the previous template: autocracies whose power relied on repression that was acquiesced in, or even required, by a United States that wanted oil and regional stability more than popular self-determination.

Are Obama and the US AWOL in Syria?

Gotta say I'm a huge fan of the NYT's Nicholas Kristof, mostly because his most deeply held tenet when it comes to how the US should relate to the world seems to be "Killing people is bad; helping people is good."  Would that some of the denizens of DoS and DoD (not to mention Bush's DoJ) had taken note.

But fresh from a seminar at the Aspen Institute, Kristof has decided (see today's NYT essay) that it's time for the US to get into the fight in Syria.  His reasons jive well with the tenet noted above: (1) the Syrian civil war threatens to kill more people by expanding beyond Syria, (2) Syria's WMDs are a threat; (3) people are dying, at a rate that surpasses that in Libya (which NK seems to chalk up as a US success. The jury, of course, is still out.)

But NK's argument seems lacking and/or flawed in some places.  Perhaps I ought not go here, but that might include his quoting, in support of his opinion, of fellow seminar-goers Madeleine Albright (she of "it was worth it" infamy - referring of course to her 60 Minutes interview where she opined that the sanctions-caused deaths of half a million Iraqi kids was worth it) and William Perry, the former Clinton SecDef on whose watch the US launched illegal air-strikes against Iraq (see Operation Desert Fox) and generally ramped up Iraqis misery.  

But NK also claims that the failure to secure a Security Council resolution against Assad ought not stop the US; after all, it didn't stop the US in Bosnia in 1999.  Yes, but the US military of 1999 was the so-called "hyperpower" of what Francis Fukuyama was celebrating as the era of the "end of history."  And the Russia that opposed US intervention in 1999 had barely crawled out from under the debacle of the Soviet Union's break-up and its aftermath.  The Russia that opposes the US in re Syria in 2012 is a resurgent, assertive, highly nationalistic power led by a skilled and entrenched quasi-dictator in Mr. Putin.  Moreover, the Russia of 2012 has its heavy hand on the spigot of much of the natural-gas supply upon which many of the US's allies in Europe depend.  No minor consideration, that, when one ponders the repercussions of the US challenging Russia's interests.  I'm not saying that Obama ought automatically to back away - but Kristof needs to acknowledge all of the helpings on Obama's plate.

And what about China?  China likewise is opposed to US/UN intervention in Syria.  In 1999 China was surely an up-and-comer.  In 2012, China has emerged as the US's most significant military and economic rival. China also holds trillions of dollars of US debt in the wake of Mr. Bush's no-tax military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Some would call that leverage.  The point here is that intervening in Syria without China signing on would pose complications and repercussions that it would likewise behoove Kristof to at least acknowledge.

Kristof also claims:

One step would be for the United States to move naval forces off the Syrian coast, while Turkey and Israel moved more troops close to their borders with Syria. This would pin down Syrian troops so that Assad would have fewer forces available to murder his people.

Russia, of course, already has naval forces in the area.  Inserting an increased US naval presence surely risks creating an incident that might touch off something more serious.  For Turkey to move troops closer to the Syrian border raises the prospect of conflict with the region's Kurds, who have felt put upon by Turkey for decades.  For Israel to do so might motivate many in the Arab world to rally to Assad's side against a putative Israeli threat.  In particular, such an Israeli move might force Mr. al-Maliki's hand in Iraq, in a direction that the US would likely find very troubling.

NK also claims:

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton scholar who previously served as a senior Obama administration official, has offered sensible proposals for action. She suggests that the United States and other countries provide antitank and antiaircraft weapons and perhaps air cover to commanders who protect civilians and eschew sectarian or revenge killings. Some Free Syrian Army commanders have signed such a code of conduct. With our allies, we can also advise Syrian commanders that if they abandon Assad they may have a role in Syria’s future. If they go down with Assad, they won’t.

With all due respect to Prof. Slaughter (whose work I generally admire), can the US really separate out that effectively the white-hat rebels from the black-hat rebels - especially if there are no US boots on the Syrian ground?  Given the mishmash that is the Syrian resistance forces, how can the US effectively ensure that the weapons it supplies will not fall into the hands of "al-Qaeda" jihadists or Sunni-sectarian militias who might turn them soon thereafter against Alawi villagers?  It ought to be clear by now, based on the US experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the US does not "do" tribal/sectarian/local nuance all that well - and that was with US forces actually on scene in those countries.  And where/how, in Kristof's world, does the US get off in believing that it can pick and choose who gets to make the new Syria, and who doesn't?  Some might term this hubris.  I wouldn't argue.

To be frank, much of NK's reasoning - and the reasoning of those whose ideas and support he cites - seems to emanate from an earlier American-exceptionalist reality that never may have been as real as we'd thought: that the US always has the requisite military and economic power, and the unquestioned moral authority, to fix things - and to fix things in a way that won't impose potentially catastrophic costs on the US itself.

1945, after all, was almost 70 years ago.