Iran, the US, and China

Some interesting reporting from the NYT today on China's strong relations with Iran, and how China sees Iran as a useful counter-balance to US would-be hegemony over Middle Eastern oil, as well as a source of the oil China needs for its own development.  Therefore, China has no interest in backing the US in any move to impose sanctions on Iran, much less attack it militarily.

“Their threat perception on this issue is different from ours,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, who as the American ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush helped persuade China to approve limited sanctions against Iran. “They don’t see Iran in the same way as we do.”

François Godement, a prominent China scholar and the president of the Paris-based Asia Center, put it more bluntly. “Basically,” he said, “the rise of Iran is not bad news for China.”

And China and Iran (formerly Persia) have a long and distinguished history of trade and cultural relations, and are drawing upon that now to sustain their modern ties. 

Funny.  Anybody else remember when the US and Iran had a history of good relations?  We did, of course, although it was with a repressive regimer.  That lasted right up to 1979's Revolution and the hostage crisis, which the US's previous policies helped catalyze, and which people in our foreign-policy establishment seem never to have gotten over and still seem to feel entitled to some payback.  Yet as recently as 2002, the "mad Mullahs" of the Iranian leadership were reaching out to the US, especially in the hunt for al-Qaeda and the Taliban right after the 9-11 attacks.  Iran also actually proposed around that time a deal with the US to give up its support for Hamas and Hezbollah and become more transparent about its nuclear program, in exchange for a security agreement with the US that would also recognize Iran's legitimate status in the region.

What happened?  Mr. Bush's 2002 "axis of evil" speech, for one, which smacked down Iran's outreach and helped bring to power the provocative Mr. Ahmadinejad.  That in turn unleashed the "new Hitler and Holocaust" trope among the Likudnik leadership in Israel.  AIPAC and the evangelicals took it from there in the halls of Congress.

So here we are, still demonizing Iran, an emerging power that has a young, mostly well-educated, computer-savvy population; burgeoning ties with another emerging military and economic power (China); strong ties with two other re-emerging nations (Russia and Turkey), as well as a nation in which the US is heavily invested (Iraq); and some of the planet's largest resources in oil and natural gas.

Maybe it's time for our leaders to consider partnership, rather than paranoia?

more fear-mongering on Iran in the NYT op-eds

The NYT publishes today an op-ed by Gary Milhollin and Valerie Lincy (the latter is the editor of something called Iranwatch.org; gee, I wonder what their slant is?) that warns that, in light of the recent disclosure about the Qom site,  the devious Iranians must truly have an "archipelago" of underground secret nuclear installations all over their country.  With talks with Tehran slated to begin tomorrow, they insist that the US hold Iran's feet to the fire to get them to 'fess up.

Haven't we heard this stuff before?  Like, in 2002-2003, with Tenet's slam-dunk case about all of Iraq's WMD installations, and the NYT's own Judith Miller writing about the same, as Ahmad Chalabi was spoon-feeding her stuff from operatives of zero credibility?

Read this piece.  It's built on a scaffolding of "if's" - If Iran has done this, then they can do this.  And if they can do this, then maybe they can do this.  This is the same sort of nonsense that helped launch Boy George's not-so-excellent adventure in Iraq.

On bombing Iran: the usual suspects are weighing in

I'm up against a deadline for my book, so blogging time is limited.  But I highly recommend Glenn Greenwald's latest Salon pieces on the "new" disclosures about Iran's nuclear facility in Qom (still, by the way, under construction).  He makes a ton of excellent points, but take special note that

• - So many of those now screaming for a strike on Iran are the same war-hawks who screamed for invading Iraq in 2002.  These guys seem never to learn, or to go away.
• - Many of those boosting an attack on Iran are well loved by AIPAC and the Likudnik element in Israeli politics.
• - Many of those reporters and pundits covering the issue for the MSM are all too prone to acting as stenographers for government sources, rather than as critical analysts who need to exercise a healthy skepticism when it comes to said sources.

Gideon Levy on Netanyahu's UN speech

As usual, on target. 

David Brooks using Obama's words against him to stay the course in Afghanistan

I'll betcha that if there's any recent statement Mr. Obama would like to retract, or at least rephrase, it would be the one in his LA speech to the VFW where he called the Afghanistan expedition a "war of necessity." Brooks calls him on it, ostensibly in an encouraging way, but I think he's trying to box in Obama nonetheless.

But I'm especially disturbed by Brooks' scatter-shot application of "facts" - as in:

" the enemy is wildly hated. Only 6 percent of Afghans want a Taliban return, while NATO is viewed with surprising favor. This is not Vietnam or even Iraq."

I'm curious as to from whose think-tank he got those facts - and how the hell does one even do such a poll in Afghanistan these days?

Brooks also asserts:

"while many Afghan institutions are now dysfunctional, there is a base on which to build. The Afghan Army is a successful institution. Local villages have their own centuries-old civic institutions. The National Solidarity Program was able to build development councils in 23,000 villages precisely because the remnants of civil society still exist."

The Afghan army is a successful institution? Great! Then the US can go home. Actually, several reports suggest that the Afghan army seems hardly to exist, at least from the standpoint of the US forces who've been finding them in very short supply when US forces go out on missions.

Brooks also notes that the Taliban are a "transnational Pashtun movement active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is part of a complex insurgency trying to topple the Pakistani regime." Indeed. That Pashtun movement is also trying to drive invaders out of their homeland - as Pashtuns have been doing for centuries. (Of course, Brooks pooh-poohs all those historians who have written about Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires. They "know little," says he. Truly well-informed experts know better, says he. Actually, the truly well-informed experts do know better, than Brooks . . .

or, for that matter, I would suggest, than Brooks' new military icon, Gen, McChrystal. I'm truly disturbed by what seems an almost worshipful respect for the Petraeus-McChrystal doctrine of counter-insurgency as the silver bullet that supposedly turned Iraq around. We have brilliant generals, says Brooks; they'll save the situation. But Brooks (and so many other of the "the-Surge-worked" crowd) seem to forget that the Surge in Iraq (1) did not fix Iraq (not that any of our pundits seem to care about Iraq anymore. "Our work is done there, no?"), and (2) was but one of several factors that brought down the violence there (such as Muqtada al-Sadr's decision to have his militia stand down, and especially, the Sunni Awakening/Sons of Iraq movement, by which the US essentially paid off Sunni Arab tribes to get them to take on the al-Qaeda jihadist element of the anti-US resistance).

I'm glad that Brooks advises Obama to weigh his decision carefully, but I'd caution Mr. Obama against Brooks' kind of reasoning.

in reference to:

"transnational Pashtun movement active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is part of a complex insurgency trying to topple the Pakistani regime."
- Op-Ed Columnist - The Afghan Imperative - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

More pressure on Iran - and more scare-mongering

Lots of breathless reporting today (both here and elsewhere) of the revelation about the previously undisclosed enrichment facility at Qom in Iran. This revelation seems to have been well coordinated with the G-20 meeting opening in Pittsburgh. And it also dovetails nicely with Netanyahu's fiery speech at the UM, in which he once again raised the issue of Ahmadinejad as Hitler, the impending new Holocaust, etc.

My understanding, though, is that Iran is entitled under international law to pursue nuclear enrichment. That Iran has been concealing that is worrisome, and disturbing, but given the West's consistent demonization of the Islamic Republic ever since 1979, it's also understandable.

Numerous experts have weighed in to the effect that a nuclear Iran is (1) inevitable, (2) containable, and (3) not likely to try to use a nuclear attack to eradicate Israel, or any other country. And launching a military "option" in some misguided attempt to stop Iran from making any progress will only (1) fail to do so over the long term, and (2) result in a destabilization of the Middle East - including attacks on Israel - that would likely bring us closer to catastrophe, rather than avert it.

in reference to: Iran Said to Have Covert Nuclear Facility - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Can the Taliban be defeated militarily?

This new piece from the Times of London confirms the conclusion that's been taking an ever stronger hold in my thinking.  To answer the question I posed in the header: No - at least, short of nuking or carpet-bombing most of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and I trust we all agree that that's simply not an option.  Every model of effective counter-insurgency I've ever seen recommends tens of thousands more US forces than are already in Afghanistan, and they simply aren't available, nor could they be without resorting to the draft back here at home.  There's no way that Obama, or anyone else, can sell that to the American public.  The Iraq disaster has already cost the US too much in blood and treasure, which has made us sick of war-fighting; and on top of that, too many Americans are already burdened with doubt that more losses in Afghanistan are worth it . . . .

Especially, with no possible end in sight, with the goals of stabilizing the country virtually impossible to attain with the current corrupt, illegitimate, ineffectual Karzai government in power (and as things now stand, Karzai's going nowhere.).

Especially, with poverty and illiteracy worse now than ever, with destruction seemingly waiting all around.  One of the villagers interviewed for the Times piece put it plainly:

“We are starving, no one is helping us.  If the Government does not help us, we’ll go back and join the Taleban.” As his neighbours angrily denounced President Karzai’s rule, [the villager] admitted that he did not like the Taleban. But he added: “We just want anyone who can bring security.”

Bringing security to Afghanistan is not something that the US can do.  We don't have the resources, we don't understand the culture, we're mostly clueless about the ethnic and tribal structure, and we've already killed too many innocent Afghans over the years  - by air strikes on fuel trucks, or air strikes on wedding parties, or air strikes on villages that just happened to be targeted because someone thought we could catch some "bad guys" there, or air strikes on the people who went to the funeral of the killed "bad guys" --  for us to even begin to have justifiable hope that Afghans would accept US forces as anything more than occupiers or - at best - intruders from whom locals can connive some money or good stuff.  (Like, for example, the enterprising young men who show up for training as Afghan security forces, then depart with some money and a gun, then show up again for a do-over, with US trainers oblivious to what's going on.)

Obama, blessedly, seems to be re-thinking his options, and maybe - just maybe - he'll be wise enough to find a way to disengage.  As Dan Froomkin notes in the Huffington Post, Mr. Obama - in sharp contrast to his predecessor - seems able to admit a mistake and change course.  If he does do that, he'll catch hell from McCain, Graham, and all the "victory or dishonor" types.  But to not be "victorious" in Afghanistan (and again, will someone tell me what that was supposed to look like?) is not the end of America.  Maybe no ticker-tape parades in the Big Apple, maybe no deck-of-the-USS-Missouri moment . . . but disengaging from Afghanistan might just let us take some first baby-steps toward a major national reassessment of who we really are, and what we can really do.

Obama leap-frogs the settlement freeze

As the NYT reports this morning, Mr. Obama is trying to press on, leap-frogging the settlement freeze issue to get Netanyahu to start talking about final settlement of the big issues separating Israel and the Palestinians.  The Palestinians are oh-so-ready to go there - and in sort of back-handed fashion, Obama is making Mahmud Abbas look better, because it truly is on Netanyahu's shoulders now.

But it won't be easy.  Netanyahu can count on the AIPAC-supported bunch (Republicans and Democrats alike) to lay into the president for pressuring Israel "unfairly."  And this "pivot" - as the NYT calls it - will take Obama nowhere unless he's ready to play some real hard-ball with Netanyahu - as in reducing US support to Israel, both diplomatic (in the UN) and economic (by which I also include the billions of dollars worth of military hardware the US provides).  But that, again, will likely cost him support in Congress, unless the American public can somehow reassure the president that they support him on this issue.  Can he somehow  make his case to the public, without leaving their local Congressional reps feeling threatened, caught in the middle between their constituencies and the well-funded (and fund-dispensing) "lobby"?

More tough-guy nonsense from Thomas Friedman

I do wish the man would stick to global warming and renewable energy, where he's got something useful to say.  His latest screed about playing tough with Iran, on the other hand, is not useful, at all.

TF claims that the nuclear-enrichment program is being used as leverage by a fanatic, "anti-Semitic" regime that cares not at all that its public is being brutalized  UN sanctions, and that the public would likely crack - or rise up - under new sanctions, not to mention an Israeli attack.  TF's advice to Robert Gates: keep that idea that Israel might "do something crazy" foremost in the minds of the Iranian leadership.

TF forgets (or ignores) the following:

• the Iranian public hugely support their nuclear program as a right to which international law entitles them, and as something that an advanced, first-tier nation (a status to which, Iranians believe, history entitles them) ought to possess, without outside interference.

• No amount of bullying or scare-tactics is likely to get the regime to back down.  TF knows nothing of Iranian cultural values or psychology.
• The regime is not "anti-Semitic."  Its president idiotically rejects the Holocaust, but many members of the Iranian leadership feel that he's an idiot for doing so, and know that he's only hurting their country's international image by spouting off the way he does.  Moreover, if TF were to take the time to read the recent columns of his op-ed colleague Roger Cohen, who visited Iran - and some of its Jewish community - only a few months ago, he'd know that the regime is not anti-Semitic.  It is, however, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel, as are a majority of people throughout the Middle East.

The Afghan graveyard: America's turn?

The NYT's Robert Mackey lays it out, as have quite a few other over recent years: foreign invaders tend to leave Afghanistan defeated, and diminished.  Nota bene:

In February 1989, when the Soviets finally withdrew from the country a report in The Times by Bill Keller noted:

Today’s final departure is the end of a steady process of withdrawal since last spring, when Moscow says, there were 100,300 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. At the height of the Soviet commitment, according to Western intelligence estimates, there were 115,000 troops deployed.

On Monday, my colleagues Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker reported that the largest troop increase currently under consideration would bring the total number of American troops there to 113,000 — almost exactly the same size as the Soviet force:

Pentagon and military officials involved in Afghanistan policy say General McChrystal is expected to propose a range of options for additional troops beyond the 68,000 American forces already approved, from 10,000 more troops to as many as 45,000.

As The Lede noted in March, when Mullah Omar issued a call for help from Pakistani militants, there are an estimated 15,000 Taliban fighters on each side of the exceedingly porous border. On the day the Soviets departed in 1989, the BBC reported that “Kabul is surrounded by a mujahedeen force of around 30,000.”

Mackey also asks his readers to look at it another way:

Instead of looking just at failed occupations of Afghanistan, it might be worth looking at what how many troops were deployed during the successful occupation of postwar Germany in the 1940s. According to a Rand corporation study called “America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq,” the U.S. peacekeeping force in the one-quarter of postwar Germany it controlled in 1945 (an area that then had a population of about 17 million people and no active insurgency) included more than 290,000 soldiers and “a constabulary or police-type occupation force” of 38,000.

Looking closer to home, consider that there are nearly 38,000 police officers in New York City, patrolling an area of just 300 square miles, with a population of 8.3 million. Given that, it is no wonder that Gen. McChrystal thinks it might be tough to provide security to 30 million Afghans and police 250,000 square miles of mostly mountainous terrain with even 100,000 troops.

Then again, it is also possible that too large a force, rather than subduing Afghanistan, could serve to provoke the Afghan people.

One man who has suggested that more American troops are not the answer is Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, who was a K.G.B. agent in Kabul during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Last October Mr. Kabulov told my colleague John Burns that the U.S. had “already repeated all of our mistakes,” and moved on to “making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright.” One of the biggest mistakes the Soviets made, Mr. Kabulov said, was letting the force grow too large. “The more foreign troops you have roaming the country,” he said, “the more the irritative allergy toward them is going to be provoked.”

Of course, the Kagan clan and other of the usual suspects (john McCain) will perhaps respond, "Well, yes, but . . . we're Americans!  We're better than all those others!  And anyway, we can't lose.  Otherwise, civilization as we know it will come to an end."

That's the kind of John-Wayne stuff I too was raised on, and fervently clung to, until Vietnam happened, and then over the years, so much else. 

Israel "Vindicated" in Gaza?!

That Jackson Diehl could pen this in the wake of the Goldstone report bespeaks a cluelessness that for an ordinary sentient being is remarkable, but for an editor of the WaPo's editorial section, beggars belief (unless he's trying to say that the hard-ass Israeli leadership seem not to care a whit about the suffering of non-Israelis, so they likely have no problem bombing Iranians - so, for the rest of us, watch out!)

Seven Days in May Redux? Or, Truman v. MacArthur?

Interesting take here on the timing of the "Woodward leak" via which McChrystal's report got into the Washington Post. 

For any of you who don't understand the Seven Days in May reference, that was a  1962 novel that was made into a 1964 movie (featuring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas) about how a charismatic general tries to launch a military coup to topple the president.  No, I don't think we've reached that point, but a number of factors are starting to work against our president:

• support for a messiah-like general (David Petraeus)
• Republican Senatorial leadership who believe the aforementioned general walks on water
• right-wing shout media who are out to topple Obama at any cost
• an ignorant American public (many of them white racists) who fear Barack "Hussein" Obama; who fear that he's taking away their health care, and their country; and who think he's a closet communist/socialist
• Republican legislators who are only too happy to play upon and manipulate that public in order to restore their party to power.