Israel/Muslim Nations Apocalyptic Confrontation setting up

[Herb Schaffler]

Where’s the Beef, Mr. Murdoch?
by [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. , January 07, 2010

Regarding policy towards Iran, the American national interest would be best served by avoiding any involvement, if only because comments from the White House will be seen as outside interference, strengthening the hands of the conservatives. But there are many in the United States who do not see it quite that way, hoping to tighten the screws on the rulers in Tehran. They have been exploiting the so-called deadline of the year’s end for Iran and the US to enter into meaningful negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program. To be sure, many of those who are pushing hardest for sanctions are really only interested in war and regime change with sanctions as a first step establishing an irreversible course of action based on conflict rather than diplomacy.
Parallel with developments in the political arena, attempts to demonize Iran in the media appear to constitute a growth industry. False articles about Iran poison the foreign policy discourse because they create a dangerous narrative, that Tehran’s rulers are irredeemably evil and completely unwilling to compromise. In intelligence circles this is called disinformation. Nowhere is this barrage of disinformation more evident than in the media empire controlled by Rupert Murdoch, which includes the Wall Street Journal, the Times newspapers in Britain, and Fox television. Murdoch’s media marched in lockstep as a virtual propaganda mill in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Murdoch himself is much esteemed by Israel and by Jewish organizations and he has been outspoken in his approval of Israeli policies, including the devastation of Gaza one year ago. He has received numerous awards in Israel and the US for his support of Israel, most recently in November when he was given the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Laureate Award. In March 2009 he received the National Human Relations award from the American Jewish Committee. Murdoch is generally believed to be extremely close to Tel Aviv’s intelligence service Mossad and some of the stories featured in the media he controls would appear to be disinformation supporting Israeli government positions.
Over the past month there has been a spate of stories demonizing Iran, often based on evidence that most would regard as dubious. A December 14th [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. in the Times of London called "Secret document exposes Iran’s nuclear trigger" detailed how "confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb." The article was attacked by Gareth Porter and myself based on informed sources suggesting that the document the article relied on was a forgery. The document in question, alleged to be "from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project," was of unknown provenance and US intelligence agencies do not believe it to be genuine. Times leader writer and columnist Oliver Kamm in turn [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. on Porter and me as "Lindberghians," sleazily insinuating in my case that I was an anti-Semite, while failing to address our legitimate suspicions about the document. In passing he also trashed [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. , inaccurately calling it isolationist, and described Ron Paul somewhat bizarrely as "Republican presidential nominee of insanitary political lineage and, ahem, highly imaginative schemes for monetary policy." Kamm is a former merchant banker whose understanding of foreign policy apparently derives from his ability to make money in the bizarre financial services world that prevailed prior to the 2008 meltdown. His neoconish credentials and somewhat bizarre worldview have been [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. by Justin Raimondo.
Other stories relating to the alleged threat posed by Iran have appeared recently in the Times. On December 21st appeared "North Korea weapons aircraft ‘was heading to Iran.’" The Times conceded that the destination of the flight was a mystery but relied on its sister paper the Wall Street Journal as the source for the story. The Times then adds its own analysis, "From Iran the weapons could have been passed on to militants in Lebanon or Gaza." So the story about a plane that turned out to be registered in Georgia and carrying North Korean weapons becomes a story about Iran with no real hard evidence of Tehran’s involvement. Since the account of the arms shipment first surfaced it has vanished without a trace, suggesting that many other media outlets did not find it credible. But some readers were convinced by it. The story attracted a comment by one Daniel Evans who wrote "North Korea and Iran are targeting Israeli civilians to be killed by Hamas and Hezbollah. All in order to facilitate Iran’s nuclear annihilation of Israel and USA. Full scale war is the appropriate response."
On December 31st, the Times featured an article "Peter Moore freed after US hands over Iraqi insurgent." The story was about a British contractor who had been held by an Iraqi group for 31 months. So what does it have to do with Iran? According to the Times the extremist Shia group that allegedly held Moore is "allied to Iran," adding "there were unconfirmed reports that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was involved in the kidnapping operation and that the hostages were smuggled into Iran…held in two prisons run by al-Quds, which specializes in foreign operations." But both the British Foreign office and no less than General David Petraeus have both said that the alleged Iranian involvement is only speculation. Unfortunately, true or false the story resonates, convincing some that Iran is outside the pale. In a comment on the article posted on Times Online, one Daniel Case wrote "I think it is time to go into Iran and change the regime. I would love to see the religious nutters at The Hague charged with crimes against humanity. Let them all rot in jail."
Also on New Year’s Eve, another Murdoch paper, the New York Post, featured an editorial by Ralph Peters, "O’s day of reckoning," calling on President Obama to take action against Iran over the expiry of the end-of-year negotiating deadline. He cites, inter alia, the Iranian "…attempt to import more than 1,300 tons of make-a-nuke uranium ore from Kazakhstan" and refers to the government in Tehran as "turbaned tyrants" and "authentic fanatics." The uranium ore story had surfaced the day before based on an intelligence report that was prepared by a country that "could not be identified because of the confidential nature of the information." Both Iran and Kazakhstan have denied that any sale was being discussed and the media outrage is again derived from one anonymous report of unknown reliability. Is it a coincidence that the story should surface at a time when there are increasing demands for Obama to do something about Iran?
Bogus stories about Iran have a long history in the Murdoch media empire, most particularly in the Times. In April 2009, the newspaper reported that Israel was planning a massive attack on Iran’s nuclear sites "within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government." The article, light on content and heavy on innuendo, undoubtedly was intended to alarm new president Obama to force him to panic and take action against Iran to forestall an Israeli strike. A month earlier, the Times reported that Iran was supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan with surface to air missiles that could destroy helicopters. The story was denied by the US and British defense departments and turned out to be untrue, but it left behind the impression that Iran was assisting attacks on allied forces in Afghanistan. Such a highly emotional story line, which might be reduced to "they are killing our soldiers," was used subsequently by Senator Joseph Lieberman and others in the US Congress to justify harsh sanctions against Iran.
In July 2008, the Times claimed that Iran might be developing germ warfare agents because of the reported purchase of 215 wild monkeys from a Tanzanian dealer for drug testing at the Razi Vaccine and Serum Institute in Tehran. It is unfortunately true that many countries continue to test drugs on primates but testing drugs does not necessarily equate to germ warfare. The story was never corroborated.
A September 2007 story on the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor included a somewhat implausible account of how Israeli commandoes had seized nuclear material from the site before it was bombed. The story was unique to the Times and appears to be untrue, almost certainly coming from an Israeli government source. If Israel had actually seized any compromising material, it would have show it to the world’s media to bolster its case against Damascus. The story also provided the opportunity to throw punches at Iran, claiming that Iran, Syria, and North Korea constitute a new "axis of evil" and quoting a source at the neocon Washington Institute of Near East Policy who described Syria as a "client" of Iran.
In April 2007, the Times featured a shocking article claiming that Iran was assisting al-Qaeda in Iraq to enable it to stage a "Nagasaki or Hiroshima size attack" against a western target, possibly using a dirty bomb. Most intelligence sources considered the story to be highly implausible, bordering on ridiculous. A month earlier the Times described the defection of Iranian former Revolutionary Guard General Ali Reza Asgari. Per the Times, Azgari was the "father of Hezbollah" and was carrying documents proving Iran’s links to terrorists. In reality, Azgari was a 43-year-old businessman snatched off an Istanbul street in a joint CIA Turkish operation. He had been out of the Iranian government for several years, had no documents, and had not been in Lebanon since 1989.
Two Times articles in August and September 2006 described how Iran was seeking to buy uranium from the Congo and also attempting to obtain ballistic missiles from criminal members of the security services in the Ukraine that would be capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Neither article was ever independently corroborated. The original source of the uranium story appears to have been a memo leaked from the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary for Defense Policy headed by Eric Edelman, who succeeded Doug Feith.
I am not suggesting for a moment that the Times and other Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers don’t do some good reporting, and I would note in particular their exemplary coverage of the Sibel Edmonds story. But I would warn that the conjunction of Middle East issues, most particularly the "Iranian threat," and the newspaper’s editorial slant in favor of Israel and interventionism invite caution. If a breaking story relates to Iran and appears first in the Times it is probably not completely true and might be completely false, a shaky foundation for building a case for war.

[Herb Schaffler]

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[Herb Schaffler]

Review of "Engaging the Muslim World".

An Informed Voice of Reason, July 11, 2009
By Loves the View "Louise" (Hawaii) - [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link.


While the title is about "engaging" the Muslim world, the book is actually an issue by issue and country by country report on the news making parts of the Muslim world. It has a concluding chapter on the importance of engagement. Ideas on how this engagement can take place are suggested throughout the book.

Refreshingly, the issue of oil is discussed. If you follow the US news reports, you might reasonably conclude that oil is a side issue. Cole is up front with it and begins his book with the facts of oil availability, dependence and depletion.

While I had accepted it, I was not surprised to learn that Ahmadinejad's quote (actually from Khomeini) "Israel must be wiped off the face of the map" was actually "This Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time". This quote, like so much else in relation to the Middle East, has been broadcast and rebroadcast and quoted in print such that it is accepted as fact in the US.

Another area where Cole gives perspective (where the news media does not) is the actual size of the extremist Islamic population. Like extremists everywhere, these people are a noisy confrontational minority. Cole puts numbers behind this with polling and election results. He also reminds that not long ago concerns about the region focused on the communism and Soviet Union influence, not religion.

Books like this one by Cole are a needed antidote to the sloppy and casual system of journalism in the US. I can only hope that this material is too elementary for policy makers who should know this as background. I highly recommend this book for the general reader and those policy makers who get their understanding of the Muslim world from the US media.

[Herb Schaffler]

The Terrorism Conundrum
by [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. , January 21, 2010

In the wake of 9/11, almost anything the US government did was accepted uncritically by the public. The Patriot Act was quickly passed, abridging the freedoms that Americans had enjoyed for more than two hundred years with barely a whimper from Congress and the media. George W. Bush declared war on the world, defining his security doctrine as the right of the United States to act preemptively anywhere and at any time against any nation that the White House perceived to be a threat. Bush also declared his global war on terror, committing his administration to intervene using military and intelligence resources wherever his definition of terrorists was to be found. It was a devil’s bargain, reassuring the American people that the government was doing something to make them more secure while at the same time stripping them of many fundamental rights and turning topsy-turvy the international order where acts of war had hitherto been condemned as the gravest of crimes.
Right from the beginning, some voices even in Congress and the mainstream media urged calm, but they were overwhelmed by those who were crying out for revenge. Revenge soon morphed into a number of ill-advised policies leading to the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Looking back on those years from the perspective of 2010 it is possible to see that it was fear that drove the nation at that time. Fear enabled the process that turned America down a dark path and was itself fed by the shapeless threat of terrorism, which was regularly invoked by those in the government.
Unfortunately little has changed since 9/11 and it would be easy to close one’s eyes in Barack Obama’s America and imagine that it is 2001 and that George Bush is still president. American soldiers are ensconced in Iraq, surging in Afghanistan, and poised to intervene in places like Yemen and Somalia. Hellfire missiles fired from pilotless drones rain down on Pakistani tribesmen more frequently now than under George W. Bush. Guantánamo Prison is still open and Bagram Prison promises to become the new Abu Ghraib. And there is still fearmongering to drive the entire process, solemn words from the White House warning the American people about the continuing global terrorist threat.
From the start many Americans were skeptical of George Bush’s global war on terror, recognizing it for the sloganeering that it was, security policy by bumper sticker. Terror is not a nation nor is it a group. It is a tactic. It has existed since men first picked up rocks to strike each other but in its modern form it was developed in Palestine in the 1940s when the Haganah and Stern Gangs struck against civilian targets like the King David Hotel to drive the British out. It was then used by the nascent state of Israel against Palestinian Arabs to force them to leave their homes. Terrorism consists of attacking civilian targets to demoralize the local population and weaken its ability to resist.
So a terrorist must be someone who uses terror, right? Well, by some definitions yes, but not really and the word terrorist is ultimately no more enlightening than references to terror. It is much more useful to regard the groups that employ terror as political entities, using the tactic in support of what is almost invariably a broader agenda. Recognizing that reality, it has become cliché that today’s terrorist can become tomorrow’s statesman as the political winds shift. One might profitably look at some examples from groups currently or at one time considered to be "terrorist" by the world community, like Hezbollah. Hezbollah became prominent because it resisted the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. To be sure, it used the terror tactic to attack Israeli civilians in the settlements in the northern part of the country, but its principal objective was to drive out the Israeli occupiers. It finally did so in 2006, using conventional military tactics, not terror, while burnishing its reputation by providing goods and services to many of the poor in the area where it holds sway. It has become a partner in government in Lebanon, morphing into a largely conventional political party. It still skirmishes with Israel along the border between the two countries but its ability to threaten the rest of the world and, more particularly the United States, is zero.
And then there were the Viet Cong in Vietnam. Did they use terror? Certainly. But they did so to establish political control over a large part of the countryside and also to spread fear in Vietnam’s cities. When they felt themselves strong enough they also engaged in stand up fights with US forces and the South Vietnamese Army. And they were overwhelmingly a political group with a political objective, i.e to replace the US puppet Vietnamese government. Did the Viet Cong ever threaten the United States through its ability to employ the terror tactic? Not in the least.
Finally there is the example of the Taliban. The Taliban is referred to by the US government as a terrorist organization and it has indeed killed civilians to establish control over parts of Afghanistan. But it also fights against US and NATO forces in a conventional fashion, has worked to defeat the warlords and root out corrupt government officials, and has promised equal justice under Islamic Sharia law for the Afghan people. In many areas it is more popular than the government of President Hamid Karzai. When it previously ruled Afghanistan, it introduced strict religious rule but also eliminated drug production and warlordism. So calling it a terrorist group and indicating that you will not deal with it, except by imprisoning or killing its adherents, means that you are missing something. The group is essentially political and sees itself as a potential party of government only using terrorism as a tactic when it considers it to be necessary.
The US government has essentially adopted an Israeli paradigm in refusing to deal with political opponents who employ terror. Its dismissal of groups like the Taliban as terrorists means that opportunities to engage them in terms of their true interests are being wasted. And it also makes for convenient political shorthand, rendering it unnecessary to consider the possibility that the groups involved have either legitimate grievances or positive motives. And it shapes the entire argument so as to avoid conclusions that might be considered unpleasant. It is frequently argued that the US is fighting in Afghanistan because it is better to fight "them" over there than over here. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Taliban has absolutely no interest in the United States except insofar as the US is occupying Afghanistan. As Ron Paul puts it, correctly, when there is a terrorist incident they are only over here because we are over there. When we leave "there" the "they" will not be coming over here because they have no reason to do so.
So the problem is that the language we use shapes how we think about an issue. Once you get rid of the buzz words terror and terrorist, meant to create fear and uncertainty, it is possible to come to grips with a reality that is quite different. The groups that the White House and State Department calls terrorist are really political organizations that seek change that will favor their own assumption of power. There have always been such groups and always will be. Most want US forces to leave their countries, many want Washington to stop supporting corrupt and autocratic Arab governments, and nearly all want the US-tolerated Israeli humiliation of the Palestinians to cease. Looking at them in that light, it is not difficult to discern what their motives are in opposing the United States. And it is also possible to see the various groups as individual cases that have to be dealt with selectively, not as part of a nonexistent worldwide conspiracy.
The truth is that the US government prefers to have an enemy that can be defined simply, in Manichean terms. It seeks to create fear among the American people by presenting terrorism as some sort of monolith while it is in reality little more than a hodge podge of diverse political groupings that have varying motivations and objectives. The only thing that they have in common is that they sometimes use terror as a tactic. And the terror tactic is itself losing appeal. The only reason that groups that espouse terror appear to be increasing in numbers is because the countries the US is occupying or attacking are also growing in number, but nevertheless the numbers are unimpressive. There are certainly fewer than a couple of thousand adherents to groups that use terror worldwide. Young Muslim men are increasingly reluctant to be drawn into the fray and there are signs that the allure of jihad as a religious duty has waned. And those who use terrorism are themselves becoming more marginal and amateurish, as was evident in the Nigerian underwear bomber, a plot that could hardly succeed even with the best of luck. If there had not been errors made in the security process and exchange of information, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would have been detained before boarding the plane in Amsterdam.
Americans should no longer talk of terrorism or fear it because it is largely an empty threat. One is more likely to be eaten by a shark than killed in a terrorist attack. The effectiveness of the US government in sustaining fear through its combating of terror guarantees continuous war, makes for big government, and blinds America’s policymakers to reality. There are many groups out in the world vying for power. Some are unscrupulous in how they would achieve control, including willingness to employ terror. But most could care less about Washington as long as the United States leaves them alone. Leaving them alone might well be the best foreign and security policy that the United States could embrace.

[Herb Schaffler]

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[Herb Schaffler]

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link.

[Herb Schaffler]

Mr. Antiwar Republican
The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft, Russell Kirk and James McClellan, Transaction, 243 pages
By [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link.

The reader of a conservative disposition who chances upon Russell Kirk’s 1967 The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft, now reissued by Transaction Publishers and in paperback for the first time, is bound to experience that odd tingling sensation we call déjà vu. Arguing that the New Deal had pretty much expired—having been proved a failure—before Taft had entered the national political scene and taken his place in the U.S. Senate, Kirk and his co-author James McClellan write, “And yet for the following thirteen years, Taft found it necessary to argue incessantly with leading members of his own party as to whether the Republicans should come to terms with the allegedly triumphant New Deal. Many Republicans continued in a political trauma, shocked by their defeats of 1932 and 1936, and could think only of making concessions to the new order.”
A giant leap into government control of the economy, a nation on the brink of the economic abyss, and a popular liberal Democratic president whose programs have a revolutionary air—we have been here before. Then, too, there were those on the Right who counseled retreat, accommodation, and defeatism —the David Frums of their time, who argued that labeling FDR’s panoply of government programs “socialism” was too extreme and who only served to marginalize the Republican opposition.
Taft, though not temperamentally a radical, made no bones about his opinion of the New Dealers. Many of them, he declared in a radio debate, “have no concern whatever for individual freedom. They are collectivists, like Marx and Lenin and Mussolini. They believe in planned economy; that the government should regulate every detail of industrial and commercial and agricultural life.” The New Deal represented a “policy which inevitably leads to bankruptcy and inflation of the currency” and “will not only make the poor people poorer, but it is likely to force a socialism which will utterly deprive them of individual freedom.”
Those were fighting words that very few in the cowed Republican opposition were willing to speak, although they may have believed them—or feared them—in their hearts. Taft rallied the GOP remnants and the beleaguered American Right under the banner of liberty and responsibility at a time when the headwinds of collectivism were blowing mightily from every direction. Around him he gathered a movement, which today is known as the Old Right—as distinguished from the “New” Right of William F. Buckley Jr. and National Review, which inherited from Taft and his confrères the mantle of opposition but did little to honor it. That movement is now virtually unknown or chiefly remembered by its enemies, who continue to smear it with the ignorant epithets coined by the New Dealers and their propaganda machine.
Conservatives without historical memory would seem to be a contradiction in terms, yet that is the situation in which we find ourselves some 70 years after Taft’s heyday. Conservatives seem to have forgotten their past, which is a pity because the history of their movement is rich with lessons for today, as illustrated by this modest little book.
As Kirk shows in detailing Taft’s career as leader of the party’s conservative wing, RINO’s have always been with us: “The ‘liberal,’ or anti-Taft, element of the Republican party … acted upon the assumption that the New Deal was irrevocable.” While the party rank-and-file might find That Man in the White House detestable and his policies execrable, they insisted that a more accommodating public face was the key to victory at the polls. They lost consistently and miserably. Landon, Willkie, and Dewey—they were all defeated betting that principled opposition to Roosevelt’s revolution was incompatible with electoral success. Three times the party’s Eastern Establishment blocked Taft from getting the GOP’s presidential nomination. It wasn’t until Eisenhower that the moderates scored a victory, but it was the triumph of a popular military commander rather than the party. As Kirk points out, the GOP “steadily declined while Eisenhower held office—declined in Congress, and in state and local elections” and was reduced to a minority in the 1954 congressional contest. The decline continued into the 1958 elections, when the party’s congressional caucus shrank to what it had been during the Roosevelt years.
When Taft died in 1953, one newspaper obituary gave voice to the despair that gripped the Old Right as it faced the smug complacency of the Eisenhower years: “Yes, Bob is gone, and there is no one to take his place,” wrote the publisher of the New Bedford Standard-Times. “This alone is a tragedy comparable to the passing of Lincoln. But with Bob Taft goes the Republican Party. In its place is a faceless, slinking thing, bearing only the name Republican, a name indeed which President Eisenhower hardly has mentioned since he was elected under its label.”
Certainly it was “a faceless, slinking thing” that in 2009 nominated Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd congressional district—a candidate who positioned herself to the left of the Democrat and earned a well-deserved defeat after a third-party conservative entered the race.
Taft’s entry onto the national scene came too late to stop the collectivist tide on the home front but just in time to oppose FDR’s rush to war. Here is where the contemporary “conservative” reader will be shocked to discover that his intellectual and political ancestors held foreign-policy views so far removed from the Bismarckian nationalism of Fox News and the Weekly Standard crowd that the distance can only be measured in light years. These views are routinely derided as isolationist, but Taft’s position, as Kirk shows, could today be fairly described as realist: “In international affairs, Taft declared, the New Dealers forever tilted, like so many Quixotes, against windmills. Their objects never well defined even in their own minds, they talked of perpetual peace and the ‘Four Freedoms’; they dreamed of a universal democratic order on the American model; they conjured up stereotypes of nations, and sought to make alliances with—or wars upon—those deceptive simulacra.”
In describing the past, Kirk seems to have predicted our dreary future. Only this time, it is Republicans who are carrying the banner of a “universal democratic order on the American model.” And as for conjuring up stereotypes, what else helped motivate the neoconservative crusade to “transform” the Middle East?
Kirk continues, “Meanwhile, the principle of America’s national interest went glimmering. And while utopian fantasies occupied the imagination of the men responsible for American foreign policy, the other powers of the world … continued to act, to their advantage and to America’s loss, upon the ineluctable principle of their national interests. … [O]nly American political leaders sincerely entertained the fallacy that foreign policy is a facile instrument of ‘moral righteousness,’ or that it somehow may open the doors to the Terrestrial Paradise.”
For Taft—and Kirk, who waxes particularly eloquent when describing Taft’s disdain for crusading “democratism”—the foundational principle of a truly conservative foreign policy is a respect for the natural limits not only of American power but of human capabilities. If, as Taft averred, “socialism will not work” because “there is no man and no group of men intelligent enough to coordinate and control the infinitely numerous and complex problems involved in the production, consumption, and daily lives of one hundred and twenty million individualistic and educated people,” then the task of coordinating and controlling a global empire would be a fool’s errand. Yet it is precisely that errand on which the fools who now call themselves conservatives—or, more precisely, neoconservatives—would have us embark.
Kirk, in his later years, had a memorable run-in with that movement in a famous lecture delivered at the Heritage Foundation. As prominent neocons sat horrified in the audience, Kirk described the members of this “political sect” as “often clever, but seldom wise.” He went on in this vein, citing a letter from a prominent Pennsylvania historian of conservative sentiments who described the then newcomers from Manhattan’s Upper West Side as “selfish and uninstructed radicals and progressives, wishing to pour cement all over the country and make the world safe for democracy, well beyond the dreams of Wilson. … A feeling for the land, for its conservation, and for the strong modesty of a traditional patriotism (as distinct from nationalism) none of them has.”
Certainly the author of The Conservative Mind would have been aghast at the sight of the neoconservatives at the helm of the United States, rampaging through the Middle East. He rightly avowed, again in that famous Heritage lecture, that while the neocons had been alert to the dangers posed by international communism, “they have been rash in their schemes of action, pursuing a fanciful democratic globalism rather than the national interest of the United States; on such occasions I have tended to side with those moderate Libertarians who set their faces against foreign entanglements. And not seldom it has seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.”
That crack earned him unremitting enmity in certain quarters: the truth hurts. Kirk had the neocons’ number, back when they were just a minor carbuncle on the general body of the conservative movement. Of them, he predicted “within a very few years we will hear no more.” If only that had come to pass—we would have been spared two ruinous wars and a third on the way. Instead of becoming “merged with the main current of America’s conservative movement,” the neocons have become the main current. One can imagine the mischievous glimmer in his eyes as the Sage of Mecosta mocked the neocons’ vainglorious pretensions: “There was published in a recent number of Commentary a charmingly naïve essay in which it was argued that the children and grandchildren of extant Neoconservatives would come to form a Sacred Band, calling themselves Neoconservatives life long, and ruling the American roost. This dream ignores the fact that things initially new do not long remain new: everything ages; yesteryear’s novelty ceases to charm.”
They don’t quite rule the American roost, yet that Sacred Band has indeed founded an ideological dynasty, one that, having driven the conservative movement and, with it, the Republican Party into the ground, now presides over the mutant remnants of what had once been the party of Taft. Kirk would have been horrified, to say nothing of Taft—and the feeling of antipathy would no doubt be mutual. What appalls the neocons about Taft and his friends is that the Old Right steadfastly opposed U.S. entry into World War II. To the neocons, for whom it is always 1939, this is an impermissible heresy. Yet in the conservative movement of the 1960s, when Kirk’s study of Taft first came out, it was uncontroversial that a leading conservative scholar would casually and approvingly describe Taft’s opposition to the war as being rooted in “two prejudices (using that word in its neutral sense): his prejudice in favor of peace, and his prejudice against empire—that is, against American aspirations of hegemony over much of the world.”
Modern “conservatives” who come upon this quotation sans attribution would doubtless hear some “America-hating” leftist talking. Learning that these are the words of a founding father of their movement should cause a few heads to explode.
These views were unremarkable to the conservatives of not so long ago for the simple reason that they followed logically from the worldview of those who wanted to limit the power and size of government and preserve the centrality of what Kirk called “the permanent things.” For Kirk and for Taft, war “was the enemy of constitution, liberty, economic security, and the cake of custom.” It had to be the very last resort, not only because it “would make the American President a virtual dictator, diminish the constitutional powers of Congress, contract civil liberties, injure the habitual self-reliance and self-government of the American people, distort the economy,” and “sink the federal government in debt” but also because it would “break in upon private and public morality,” destroying the very basis of our Christian civilization. The damage it would inflict “might require generations for the nation to recover”—like a brief but near-lethal encounter with pneumonia or cancer marks one for years—even if it was “a war of a few years’ duration.”
After eight years of constant warfare—occasioned by deception, a regime of torture, and a wholesale assault on the Constitution and what remains of our civil liberties—it is difficult to see how we can hope to come out of it (if we ever come out of it) with our sense of humanity intact, let alone our old Republic. The damage could well be permanent, and, in any case, it may be a horse race between the healing process and the time we have left before we’re driven into bankruptcy.
Taft opposed U.S. entry into World War II for all of the reasons given above and for his belief that the Soviet Union posed a far greater threat—an internal one, as well as an external military one—than Nazi Germany. In spite of the Roosevelt administration’s smear campaign against war opponents, which tied them to a pro-Nazi “fifth column,” the reality was that the German ideology had little or no appeal inside the United States. That, as the Red Decade of the 1930s showed, did not apply to the Soviets, who had plenty of friends here, including some in high places. Taft believed we had to deal first and foremost with the Soviets.
After the war, however, he did not, like many conservatives, jump on the Cold War bandwagon. He retained his principled anti-interventionist stance, albeit not always consistently, opposing the formation of NATO, questioning the concept of collective security, opposing the “victor’s justice” of the Nuremberg trials, and criticizing Truman’s decision to send troops to Korea without congressional approval—although he supported the effort once the troops were in the field. He attacked the growing power of the president to send troops anywhere, at any time, without consulting Congress—a precedent Truman set, which has had unfortunate consequences visited upon us to this day. It didn’t matter that Truman had the sanction of the United Nations Security Council; what he really needed was the consent of Congress, which he never sought until the troops had already arrived. If this were allowed, Taft maintained, then “on the same theory he could send troops to Tibet to resist Communist aggression or to Indo-China or to anywhere else in the world.” A few years later, the first American “advisers” would be sent to Indo-China to help the French secure their colonies—naturally without Congress’s consent—and a disastrous chapter in the history of U.S. interventionism started.
In an era when radio-shouters, vulgar hucksters, and out-and-out charlatans have taken the spotlight on the American Right, conservatives need to remember their past—to get back in touch with their roots. While the conservative movement is cut adrift, looking for an anchor, what could be better than the principled prudence of these two nearly forgotten giants, Kirk and Taft?
__________________________________________
Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com.

[Herb Schaffler]

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link.

Journalist and foreign affairs analyst
Posted: February 2, 2010 12:32 PM

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I've been following with great interest the many heated exchanges online and elsewhere over Council on Foreign Relation (CFR) President [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. call in a Newsweek [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. for "promoting regime change" in Iran. Haass is a self-described "card-carrying realist" and a former official in the administrations of Bush I and Bush II (he was director of policy planning for the Department of State under Secretary Colin Powell) who, after retiring from government, has been expressing strong criticism of the neoconservative-driven policy in the Middle East under Bush II, including in his book, [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link.
In fact, in his Newsweek article, Haass compared President Barack Obama to George W. H. Bush, suggesting that the current White House occupant, unlike Bush 43 and very much like Bush 41, "whose emissaries met with Chinese leaders soon after Tiananmen Square [and] is cut more from the realist cloth." (Interestingly enough, a leading CFR scholar, [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. Obama to the more Wilsonian President Jimmy Carter.) Haass, who for a long time seemed to be in agreement with Obama's pursuit of diplomatic engagement with Iran, explained in Newsweek that against the backdrop of the stalled nuclear talks and the rise of the Green Movement in Iran, he "changed in mind" and he was supporting now of a policy "promoting regime change" in Tehran. His position is also shared now by many neoconservative intellectuals, as well as by some of the fans of Iran's pro-democracy opposition on the left and among Iranian-Americans who, like Haass, tended to back U.S. engagement with Iran until recently.
That a "card-carrying realist" seemed to be calling for the launching of a U.S.-led Democratic Crusade against Iran helped cheer-up Iran watchers like author [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. who used to be an advocate of engagement with Iran but who has written that (in a post quoted on [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. ) that when "an arch realist like Richard Haass says the time has come to change U.S. policy toward Iran from engagement to supporting regime change, the Obama administration should take notice." At the same time, it was not surprising that Harvard University professor and blogger Stephen Walt, who prides himself as being "a realist in an ideological age," has argued - in [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. titled, "Nothing More Dangerous than a Recovering 'realist?'" -- that Haass's policy prescriptions are not very, well, realist. Reflecting the extent to which Haass's policy metamorphosis has ignited a somewhat nasty debate among foreign policy wonks, the Washington Post's [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. that Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, two of Haass's former State Department colleagues and long-time realist proponents of engagement with Iran, "blasted Haass for his new position, skewering him for his central involvement in Powell's 'now-infamous' February 5, 2003, U.N. speech, which helped garner support for the invasion of Iraq, 'one of the biggest debacles in post-World War II American foreign policy.'"
As a member of the Realpolitik "Machiavelli Club" I can understand why a foreign policy realist who believes that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons could pose a direct threat to U.S. national security interests would support [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. taken by the Obama Administration to increase the anti-missile capabilities by the United States in the Gulf and consider them more of defensive than an aggressive maneuvers (there are now Patriot batteries in four Gulf states -- Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar and U.S. anti-missile ships are also being stationed in the Gulf. I understand but disagree with that view and agree with the [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. that President Obama has failed to devise a coherent strategy for engagement with Iran similar to the one that created the conditions for Nixon Going to China. In fact, I had made the same arguments in a long article published in [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. From that perspective, the Obama Administration's military moves in the Gulf could help ignite tensions between Tehran in Washington instead of achieving the goal of pressing Iran to make a diplomatic deal with the West.
But as someone who is "card-carrying realist" I find Haass's recommendation to "promote" -- he does not actually call for "doing" -- regime change in Tehran as running contrary to any sensible realist viewpoint. As Machiavelli (or your dad) cautioned you, never start a fight -- especially with a bully -- you are not sure you could finish and win. There are so many "what ifs" involved in any scenario under which the U.S. pursues a policy of regime change in Iran: What happens if Iran retaliates by destabilizing Iraq? What happens if tensions between the U.S. and Iran degenerate into full-scale war? And what happens if the political upheaval in Iran evolves into a bloody civil war?
Indeed, the third scenario should raise doubts about the morality of trying to intervene in a complex foreign internal political conflict. As demonstrated by the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. and the uprising by the Shiites and the Kurds in Iraq in 1991 (after Desert Storm) -- in both cases officials in Washington expressed support and even encouraged the opponents of the regime to take action against it -- unless Americans are willing to use the full force of their military power to do regime change, promoting it could end-up destroying the opposition and strengthening the power of the current regime. In that case, Washington is perceived - and rightly so -- as sharing moral responsibility for that outcomes.
And after the failed U.S.-backed Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and even more significant, the victory of Hamas in the 2006 parliamentary election in the Palestinian territories -- which the Bush Administration had promoted in the name of democratizing the Middle East -- how is it that Haass and the other advocates of regime change in Tehran so, so confident that the Ayatollahs would be replaced by a regime whose interests and values will be more in line with those of Washington? How about some sense of humility when it comes to predicting foreign policy outcomes?
I am aware that after a realist makes these and similar arguments, critics counter with the accusation that for all practical purposes, he or she is providing support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the other despicable characters that control Iran. Wrong! Those of us who oppose the notion that promoting regime change in Tehran is in the core national interest of the U.S. recognize that such a policy could risk a war with Iran that under the current diplomatic, economic and military conditions could have devastating effects on American interests -- which the U.S. President and Congress are obligated to protect -- as well as on Iran and the entire Middle East.
From a Realpolitik perspective, Washington and Tehran need to resolve their policy differences, which include Iran's alleged nuclear military program, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine. Washington should strive for some sort of a "grand bargain" under which Iran would put a freeze on the Iranian development of nuclear military capability as part of a diplomatic deal that will also respond to some of Iran's concerns. If such an effort to reach a deal fails, Washington should work together with other regional and global powers in pursuing a policy of containment vis-à-vis Iran. In that context, Israeli nuclear bombs serving as deterrence against Iran's potential nuclear military capability.
And if the democratic opposition in Iran has so much public backing, as many observers suggest, (again, that is a questionable assumption), there is no reason why this movement could not continue mobilizing its supporters if and when the U.S. (and the West) make a deal with Iran. If anything, U.S. diplomatic ties as well as trade and investment with Iran should be in the interest of the westernized and educated pro-democracy activists in Iran (which explains why the Ayatollahs do not like the idea).
In any case, President Obama and U.S. Congress, as well as various non-government organizations and the media, will continue -- as they should -- to have an opportunity to express their disapproval of the human rights conduct and other domestic and foreign policies of the Iranian regime -- without using American diplomatic and military power to replace it. After all, this is the same kind of policy that we apply today to our relationship with, say, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, or China and Russia. To paraphrase a familiar saying, the degree of a government's diplomatic intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes it can bring to bear on the same foreign policy. Or as poet Walt Whitman once said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

[Herb Schaffler]

Budget Freeze as Political Theater
by [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. , February 05, 2010

President Obama has sent to Congress a proposed $3.8 trillion budget for the federal government for fiscal year 2011 – three percent more than the current fiscal year (a little more than a billion dollars). Although Obama inherited a more than a trillion-dollar deficit from the Bush administration, his new budget will result in a projected deficit of $1.3 trillion in 2011 (although projected future deficits are lower, federal fiscal forecasting is legerdemain at best). And the proposed 2011 budget continues the trend of Washington largesse comprising more than 20 percent of the total economy (represented by gross domestic product or GDP). Prior to World War I, the federal budget was less than 5 percent of GDP. After World War I and just prior to World War II, it grew to about 10 percent of GDP. After World War II and during most of the Cold War, it hovered around 15 percent of GDP. And beginning in the 1980s (ironically, when Ronald Reagan – a proponent of smaller government – was president), the federal budget grew to more than 20 percent of GDP (also ironically, there was a steady decline during the Clinton administration). So while it may be fashionable to complain about Obama being a big spender (he is), it’s worth noting that he’s not alone nor is it the sole domain of Democrats.
In an effort to make it look like he’s doing something to bring rampant spending under control, Obama proclaimed in his message to Congress accompanying the budget:

To help put our country on a fiscally sustainable path, we will freeze non-security discretionary funding for 3 years. This freeze will require a level of discipline with Americans’ tax dollars and a number of hard choices and painful tradeoffs not seen in Washington for many years. But it is what needs to be done to restore fiscal responsibility as we begin to rebuild our economy.

But simple math shows that this is just sound and fury signifying nothing.
To begin, limiting the budget freeze to discretionary spending means that more than half the federal budget is off limits. Mandatory, i.e., non-discretionary, federal spending amounts to $2.1 trillion (55 percent of the total federal budget). Of that $2.1 trillion, $730 billion is for Social Security, $491 billion is for Medicare, and $297 billion is for Medicaid. So any talk about reducing the size of the federal budget must include non-discretionary spending programs – especially since they are projected to nearly double in ten years – otherwise it’s just talk.
Just as importantly, any talk about freezing discretionary spending as a way to bring the budget under control must include security spending. In the 2011 proposed budget, discretionary security spending is $895 billion versus $520 billion for non-security. Put another way, security spending accounts for 63 percent of discretionary spending (and 23 percent of the total federal budget). The Department of Defense’s share alone is $708 billion – more than all of the other federal departments combined.
But we don’t need to spend $708 billion (not only more than the rest of the federal government combined, but also more than what the rest of the world combined – friend and foe alike – spends on defense) to be secure. The United States is not confronted by a hegemonic superpower that we have to contain militarily – as we were in the form of the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. No country (friend or foe) possesses global power projection capability as a threat to invade America. And the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal acts as a powerful deterrent against any country contemplating direct military action against the United States. So we no longer need a large military spread around the globe – especially since the terrorist threat is not a threat that can be contained by the military. Moreover, it is our military presence in other countries – particularly Muslim countries – that stokes the flames of anti-American sentiment that is the basis for terrorism.
And although it pales in comparison to the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) $43 billion budget shouldn’t be immune from freezing (or reducing) either. Created in the wake of 9/11 by throwing 23 different federal agencies under a single umbrella without thinking about what should be cut out before pasting together, DHS seems more like an organization of political convenience – politicians can claim that they’re doing something and when something goes wrong (like the Christmas underwear bomber) they have someone to blame.
The reality is if both non-discretionary spending and discretionary security spending are considered off limits, only 13 percent of the total federal budget is subject to freezing – which won’t result in any significant change. At best, the result might be a 10 percent reduction in federal spending and the more likely case is that spending might remain flat (the administration’s projection are for the federal budget to grow to $5.7 trillion in 2020). In other words, it’s all just political theater – full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

[Herb Schaffler]

Will Obama Play the War Card?
by [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. , February 05, 2010


Republicans already counting the seats they will pick up this fall should keep in mind Obama has a big card yet to play.
Should the president declare he has gone the last mile for a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear program and impose the "crippling" sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war.
And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate.
Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with him at the president’s side, could assure his re-election. Last week, Reid whistled through the Senate, by voice vote, a bill to put us on that escalator.
Senate bill 2799 would punish any company exporting gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its homes.
And cutting off a country’s oil or gas is a proven path to war.
In 1941, the United States froze Japan’s assets, denying her the funds to pay for the U.S. oil on which she relied, forcing Tokyo either to retreat from her empire or seize the only oil in reach, in the Dutch East Indies.
The only force able to interfere with a Japanese drive into the East Indies? The U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser in 1967 threatened to close the Straits of Tiran between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba to ships going to the Israeli port of Elath. That would have cut off 95 percent of Israel’s oil.
Israel response: a pre-emptive war that destroyed Egypt’s air force and put Israeli troops at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Straits of Tiran.
Were Reid and colleagues seeking to strengthen Obama’s negotiating hand?
The opposite is true. The Senate is trying to force Obama’s hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a track to war — a war to deny Iran weapons that the U.S. Intelligence community said in December 2007 Iran gave up trying to acquire in 2003.
Sound familiar?
Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made clear the Senate is seizing control of the Iran portfolio. "If the Obama administration will not take action against this regime, then Congress must."
U.S. interests would seem to dictate supporting those elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and re-engage the West. But if that is our goal, the Senate bill, and a House version that passed 412 to 12, seem almost diabolically perverse.
For a cutoff in gas would hammer Iran’s middle class. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia on their motorbikes would get all they need. Thus the leaders of the Green Movement who have stood up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah oppose sanctions that inflict suffering on their own people.
Cutting off gas to Iran would cause many deaths. And the families of the sick, the old, the weak, the women and the children who die are unlikely to feel gratitude toward those who killed them.
And despite the hysteria about Iran’s imminent testing of a bomb, the U.S. intelligence community still has not changed its finding that Tehran is not seeking a bomb.
The low-enriched uranium at Natanz, enough for one test, has neither been moved nor enriched to weapons grade. Ahmadinejad this week offered to take the West’s deal and trade it for fuel for its reactor. Iran’s known nuclear facilities are under U.N. watch. The number of centrifuges operating at Natanz has fallen below 4,000. There is speculation they are breaking down or have been sabotaged.
And if Iran is hell-bent on a bomb, why has Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair not revised the 2007 finding and given us the hard evidence?
U.S. anti-missile ships are moving into the Gulf. Anti-missile batteries are being deployed on the Arab shore. Yet, Gen. David Petraeus warned yesterday that a strike on Iran could stir nationalist sentiment behind the regime.
Nevertheless, the war drums have again begun to beat.
Daniel Pipes in a National Review Online piece featured by the Jerusalem Post — "[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link. " — urges Obama to make a "dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue" by ordering the U.S. military to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Citing six polls, Pipes says Americans support an attack today and will "presumably rally around the flag" when the bombs fall.
Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card and make "conservatives swoon," in Pipes’ phrase, to save himself and his party? We shall see.
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