“Obama’s comments have confirmed that there will be no change in the U.S. administration’s foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters in Gaza.
“The Democratic and Republican parties support totally the Israeli occupation at the expense of the interests and rights of Arabs and Palestinians,” he said.
“Hamas does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and Mccain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win,” Zuhri said.
In the past week, Hillary has dramatically altered US policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Specifically, Hillary is saying that she would launch a nuclear strike on Iran if they launched a nuclear strike on Israel. She is also saying that she wants to extend the US nuclear umbrella beyond Israel, and include other US allies in the Middle East (i.e., we would nuke Iran if they nuked these US allies).
That's a huge, and newsworthy, change in US policy. First, we don't admit publicly when and if we are going to use nukes. Hillary just did. That's big news. Second, defense experts I talk to say that we have never said publicly that we would use nukes to defend Israel (even though this might be assumed, it's different when you confirm it publicly). Third, we have never before said that we would extend the US nuclear umbrella to defend other countries in the Middle East. Again, Hillary just did.
Whether Hillary has adopted this major change in US nuclear policy simply to curry favor with voters in Pennsylvania is certainly worthy of discussion (one would hope that such policy is made to advance US national security and not to simply win votes). But there is something even more newsworthy to this story. Hillary's staff twice, yesterday, told the media that Hillary didn't say what she said. Top Clinton staffer Howard Wolfson said last night that Hillary did not mean to say that she'd use nukes against Iran. And then a second Clinton staffer told CNN that she did not mean to suggest that she would extend the US nuclear umbrella to other countries in the Middle East. Only problem? She did, repeatedly. (UPDATE: In fact, senior Hillary staff denied a third time that Hillary never mentioned using nukes, when she clearly said the US will have "a nuclear response" to Iran.)
So now we have no idea what US nuclear weapons policy would be under Hillary, and neither do our friends or our enemies. That creates an incredibly dangerous situation. One of the hallmarks of the US mutually-assured-destruction (MAD) policy during the Cold War was that the Soviets knew exactly what US policy was. If they used nukes, we would use nukes. There was no confusion. Confusion breeds uncertainty, and uncertainty leads your opponent to act in unexpected ways. And when you're dealing with nuclear war planning, you don't want a jittery opponent acting in ways you can't predict. Iran needs to know what will happen to it if it goes nuclear and attacks Israel (or anyone else). It is not helpful for Iran to think that, per Howard Wolfson and Hillary's other senior staff, maybe it can get away with a nuclear attack on Israel, or at least Saudi Arabia.
And finally, the same dilemma occurs with regards to our allies. It does no good for our allies, including Israel, to now be speculating that maybe the US won't defend them should Iran come knocking. That kind of uncertainty could lead our allies to take matters into their own hands, possibly even leading them to pre-emptive war, or even to seek their own nuclear weapons (Israel already has several hundred, but other US allies in the region have none).
Hillary's public battles with her own staff over the issues of US nuclear policy vis-a-vis Iran and US policy vis-a-vis our overall nuclear umbrella in the Middle East suggest that she doesn't have a clear, well thought out, policy - that she is simply winging it. If this were official campaign policy, her senior staff would know about it. And you'd think that nuking Iran and extending the US nuclear umbrella to our allies in the Middle East would be a sufficiently important enough policy change for it to have been vetted by Hillary's staff. Hillary's staff didn't even know about the policy - hell, they denied the existence of the policy - because it appears that Hillary made up this new nuclear policy on the fly, and is still honing the details in public as she speaks. So much for the phone ringing at 3am. It's not clear what Hillary thinks even at 3pm during the light of day.
Let me walk you through the various positions of Hillary and her staff regarding US nuclear policy and the Middle East:
1. Last October, Hillary says it would be wrong to speculate publicly about when and if the US should attack Iran: "I am not going to speculate about when or if they get nuclear weapons." Hillary also criticized her Democratic opponents for publicly discussing their war plans for the region: "[R]emember, you shouldn’t always say everything you think if you’re running for president, because it has consequences across the world. And we don’t need that right now."
2. During the ABC debate a week ago, Hillary implied that she'd nuke Iran if they nuked Israel. She also suggested that the US extend its nuclear umbrella beyond Israel, to protect other Middle Eastern countries from an Irani attack.
"I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course, I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region."
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."
5. Then, minutes later, Hillary goes on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's show and says explicitly that she would use nuclear weapons against Iran, and that she would consider extending the US nuclear umbrella to other countries in the Middle East besides Israel:
"In order to forestall that, creating some kind of a security agreement [with countries in the region] where we said, no, you do not need to acquire nuclear weapons. If you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States and hopefully our NATO allies would respond to that as well....
"[T]heir use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States, which personally I believe would prevent it from happening. And that we would try to help the other countries that might be intimidated and bullied into submission by Iran because they were a nuclear power, avoid that fate by creating this new security umbrella."
6. Then, a senior Hillary aide tells CNN that she didn't mean to imply that she would extend the US nuclear umbrella to other countries in the region, even though this is what she repeatedly said over the past week.
Just for fun, check out what Michael Ledeen, hugely influential (close ties to the White House, resident scholar at AEI, contributing editor to National Review, etc etc) neoconservative foreign policy expert (er, "expert") had to say exactly a week ago about the situation in Iraq:
A lot of the coverage revolves around the colorful figure of Moqtada al Sadr, as if he were calling some of the shots in Baghdad and Basra, but those stories are anachronistic. Mookie is no longer a major player in these events. . . . Today, on the most reliable accounts, most Iraqi Shi’ites (and Sunnis, for that matter) despise the Iranian regime, blame it for most of the violence, and are fighting Iranians and their proxies throughout the land. . . . Democracy works its magic, even in the Middle East, and Maliki wants to keep his job. Right now, that requires him to fight the Iranian-sponsored militias.
This is all -- all! -- absolutely and thoroughly ridiculous, and reflects such a contradictory, dumbass understanding of the realities in Iraq that I wondered if it was an early April Fools joke. Any sentient observer of Iraq would know all those statements are wrong, but the piece is particularly notable because it was disproved virtually in its entirety just days after being posted last week.
First of all, and most importantly, the militia that keeps Maliki in power, the Badr Corps, is the single most Iran-connected organization in Iraq. Iran trained and funded Badr, an Iranian-based expat group, for years while Saddam was in power; by contrast, Sadr has a relatively tenuous relationship with Iran because he and his family stuck around in Iraq throughout Saddam's reign and because he's more of an Iraqi nationalist than Iran would like. The idea that Maliki is going around fighting Iranian influence is simply ludicrous.
Further, despite Ledeen's confident predictions of a Sadrist wipeout, Maliki and the Iraqi Army (if that's what we want to call essentially a bunch of deputized and uniformed Badr members) basically lost the battles in Basra and Baghdad, both from tactical and PR perspectives. And who brokered the truce that ended the fighting? Iran! The same nation Ledeen claimed was fomenting the violence. This is a guy with huge influence and a significant readership/following, and his position in the world would be hilarious if the effects weren't, y'know, the deaths of thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
Combining foreign policy analysis with Kelly Clarkson analysis is, let's be honest, basically catnip for me. There's no way I'm not linking to it, but it certainly helps that Spencer Ackerman's analysis of the resignation of CENTCOM head Adm. William Fallon is right on. Spencer explains,
Gates said in a press conference just now that no one should think the move reflects any substantive change in policy. That sure won’t be how Teheran sees it. The Iranians will consider Fallon’s resignation to indicate that the bombing begins in the next five minutes.
Fallon was widely believed to be a (lone?) voice of sanity in terms of administration policy regarding Iran. It may not be especially bad news, but it's certainly not good.
NOTE FROM JOHN: I think Gates is telling the truth. The policy always was to force a war with Iran, and pushing Fallon out helps to eliminate the greatest risk to that policy. So Gates is technically correct: With Fallon's departure there will be no substantive change in the Bush administration policy of seeking a military conflict with Iran. Feeling reassured?
NYT has reports some puzzling analysis on Iraq from Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the former second-in-command of US forces in there. Odierno has been relatively straightforward on a number of issues in recent years, and he correctly notes that political and economic progress will be required for any lasting improvement of the situation in Iraq. The nominee to be the Army's next vice chief of staff, Odierno also mentioned the importance of provincial elections and encouragingly cited literacy and vocational programs as key to establishing a functional society.
He also, however, says two things that stunned me -- one which would be shocking if true, and another that I find extraordinarily difficult to believe. The article says, "About half of the attacks carried out by militants are by Shiite groups, he said. The rest are primarily orchestrated by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia". For years, the vast majority of attacks in Iraq have been by the domestic (non-AQI) Sunni insurgency, especially in the west (Anbar) and in Baghdad -- so if what he says is true, then the Sunni insurgency is over, and there is nobody left for us to fight, especially given all the talk of "al Qaeda in Iraq" being routed by indigenous Sunnis.
The claim about Shia groups plays into the second confounding claim, which is that Shia groups are responsible for half the attacks and, "The general said that Iran continues to train and finance Shiite extremists in Iraq and that Iran’s goal is to ensure that the Iraqi state remains too weak to challenge Iran’s increasing power." But . . . what Shia extremists?? The two major Shia armed groups, Sadr's Mahdi Militia and ISCI's Badr Corps, are the armed wings of the two most significant Shia political parties, both of which are full participants in the government. They could hardly be accused of working to weaken the government, and I can't think of any other groups Iran would be working with to undermine Iraq, especially considering Iran's longtime association with ISCI.
Unfortunately, the Times doesn't appear to have asked the two natural follow-up questions: "So is the Sunni domestic insurgency over?" and "Which Shia groups are working with Iran to undermine the government?" It's surprising, because reporter Michael Gordon knows these issues very well; I'd love to know what Odierno would say in response. Instead, the reader is left thinking that these two bombshells are nothing particularly special. Very weird.
It's hard to have any optimism when it comes to Iraq, but I do think there was some potentially good news from Baghdad this week. It resulted from what appears to be an undemocratic process, but basically three major political groups held their noses and voted for a bill that gave each of them one big prize. I fervently hope that the potential benefits come to fruition, and with these specific elements, I think there may be some cause for optimism.
The legislation set a date for provincial elections, created a budget for 2008, and provided limited amnesty for some non-violent prisoners. It was all passed together in a single bundle, and apparently not by voice vote but rather by "consensus," both of which are, to be charitable, extra-constitutional. Still, it's hard to criticize given the results. Not everybody is happy, of course -- Sadrists, Allawi's party, and the smaller Sunni group are unhappy with elements of the agreement -- but it did get passed, which represents a move forward. Previously, the groups that pushed this agreement through all were willing to sacrifice their own goals so nobody else got what they wanted, so this is progress.
I think this would have happened a lot sooner if we had begun to redeploy troops earlier, and certainly it has no great effect on my overall view of the strategic picture, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye on.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I strongly believe in giving a bigger megaphone to those who deserve it but perhaps aren't yet very well known, especially because that's the kind of perspective that allowed me to come on board here in the first place. So I'm making an effort to highlight and recommend emerging voices every few weeks or so, mostly on foreign policy but sometimes other topics as well. The first was Matt Duss, and today I'd like to introduce y'all to Alex Thurston, another young foreign policy observer whose insights and expertise make his writing essential reading.
Alex is currently a student in the Master's program of Arab Studies at Georgetown, and studied religion as an undergrad at Northwestern. Unlike many pundits, he has actually lived abroad, spending much of 2006 and 2007 in Senegal as part of the Fulbright exchange program, studying Muslim youth movements. His understanding of the Middle East and Africa is comprehensive, and he's one of a growing group that understand internationalism *and* politics -- an intersection that was less necessary before the entire foreign policy apparatus was politicized but is absolutely vital now.
His recent post on continued escalation of tensions in Pakistan rightly warns against any rash moves by the US; moving east, his excellent analysis of the latest in Darfur helps keep focus on a still-overlooked tragedy. So you know the drill: Add The Seminal to your RSS feed or your daily reading list, and know that when you read Thurston, you're reading a progressive who knows his stuff and can be trusted. It's important.
Quack, quack, quack. That said, the Washington Post does a fine job of quoting the always popular John Bolton *and* Ed Gillespie just so we can have both sides of the debate. Nice work, fellows! They even manage to quote one person in the the region who complains about American isolationism. So after seven years of expensive overseas failure and a crashing economy at home, is it OK to just leave such a remark out there without question? It's more a sign of well-founded concern at home and frustration with Bush-specific failures and less a sign of any long term trend. Why has the Post become so lousy?
Let's just say the reviews are about as positive as they have ever been in the region. That reminds me...no news on the Saudi blogger being imprisoned.
Seldom has an American President's visit left the region so underwhelmed, confirming Bush's huge unpopularity on the street and his sagging credibility among Arab leaders he counts as allies. Part of the problem was the Administration's increasingly mixed message, amplified by the intense media coverage of his trip. For example, in Dubai he gave what the White House billed as a landmark speech calling for "democratic freedom in the Middle East." But during his last stop in Sharm el-Sheikh Wednesday, he lauded President Hosni Mubarak as an experienced, valued strategic partner for regional peace and security and made no mention of Cairo's ongoing crackdown on opponents and critics - and the continuing imprisonment of Mubarak's main opponent in the 2005 presidential election.
Bush has been big on talk when it comes to democracy, but despite what he says in America, he's been terrified to speak as boldly with American "allies" in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are both holding bloggers in prison so we ought to be hearing something from the man who loves talking about democracy, shouldn't we? Even in Bahrain, the US could not even accept a letter from a human rights activist without extended debate. Even then, Bush went on to praise the local government despite the lack of democratic reforms.
Bush can talk all he wants about democracy but it's obvious to the world that he's a hypocrite who has little interest in democracy. It's the same old Bush that we already know, which is all talk and no action. What leverage does he even have with discussing democracy? He's running a trashed economy that is burdened with debt and addicted to oil. Even Wall Street is in the Middle East begging for cash. It's not as though he can use the US as a shining example of freedom and democracy, now that he's crossed all of the lines and spies on American citizens. Our own human rights record - including in neighboring Iraq - is not much of an example either. Are we ever going to see him walk the walk?
There are slightly conflicting reports about the suicide bomber who killed at least 15 people and wounded 30+ north of Baghdad earlier today (not sure if bomber was male or female, not sure of the allegiance, etc). But the striking thing to me is not the specifics of the attack, but the casual way news reports are describing the target of the attack: former insurgents now working with Americans.
For the millionth time, the greatest threat to a stable (or at least stabilizing) Iraq is the Sunni anti-government insurgency. So-called al Qaeda in Iraq is an accelerant to the violence, but it doesn't have nearly the impact ascribed to it by US government and military officials. Just weeks ago, the US was claiming that AQI was wiped out, and surely when locals stop tolerating the foreigners in their midst, AQI will be driven out. But instead of recognizing this and pushing for political reconciliation between the Shia government and dissatisfied Sunnis, we've allied with the insurgents -- again, the main problem for stability -- against a more minor threat to the country.
After years of rhetoric about how the nationalistic Iraqi insurgents were really terrorists, and how no one could negotiate -- much less work with! -- terrorists, the "former insurgents" (now that they've temporarily shifted focus, I suppose) are now our buddies. The lack of critical analysis of a shift in strategy so sudden and drastic it could cause whiplash is really amazing. And round and round it goes.
I haven't said much about next week's Middle East meetings because, well, it certainly looks like it will just be a huge photo op. There doesn't seem to have been any significant diplomacy in preparation, and there are 46 countries and international organizations coming. But hey, don't take my word for it, apparently the Bush administration doesn't see it as particularly important either:
In fact, Mr. Bush and his aides still deplore what they view as President Clinton’s disastrously hands-on involvement in the peace process in 2000. And they insist that Mr. Bush does not intend to negotiate personally the two-state peace he has pronounced as his vision . . . For all the pomp of the Annapolis gathering, the White House is not calling it a summit meeting or anything else suggestive of substantive progress. Mr. Bush’s vision is ambitious, but his strategy is cautious — he may be repeating Mr. Clinton’s role, yet he rejects what he sees as the meddlesome quality of it.
To call this "repeating" the role that President Clinton played is hyperbole, to say the least -- while people can (and do) argue over particular Clintonian successes and failures, by all accounts he really, really knew his stuff when it came to Israel/Palestine issues. Down to the neighborhoods in Jerusalem, locations of settlements, etc. Somehow I don't think Bush has quite the same command of the details.
In any case, though, there's no real goal to the conference, the administration has ignored the issue for seven years, and it refuses to put any pressure on Israel, so it's not like anybody has high hopes. On the other hand, one *can* hope that it goes well, because as with most diplomacy, baby steps are needed at the beginning. Perhaps this can set the stage for further movement in the coming years, especially if a Democrat takes office in 2009 (anybody want to guess who might be names Special Envoy to the Middle East in a Clinton administration?).
Finally, kudos to the Times for including this paragraph:
Mr. Bush’s aides often point out that in 2002 he was the first American president to declare support for a Palestinian state. That is true, but they fail to mention that he did so while refusing to negotiate with Yasir Arafat, then the Palestinian leader, effectively endorsing a deadly stalemate.
Far too often, that kind of ridiculous administration claim is allowed to pass without context of, y'know, the facts. Nice to have them in this instance.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the U.S. effort in Iraq is not one of military and political goals. The military is *a tool* for US political objectives. A highly trained, extremely competent tool, but one that is not somehow independent of our overall political strategy.
So when the NY Times reports that "American military successes [are] outpacing political gains in Iraq," the real translation should be something like, "Despite tactical victories, US strategy continues to fail." It's not the kind of thing where if we kill enough bad guys, we win -- we're not fighting to topple a government, and we're not fighting to take over territory, we're trying to establish a political system wherein the major groups are satisfied enough that they don't want to kill each other en masse. There have been security improvements in Iraq in recent months (though it's all relative, of course); the key, though, is that those improvements have not led to any significant political reconciliation. If anything, the main parties are more intransigent than ever.
So here's the bottom line: If the whole point of our military presence in Iraq is to establish "breathing space" for political compromise to end the raging internal political conflict, and there is now more breathing space than there's been some time, and yet there's still no political movement by Iraqis themselves . . . why are we still there?
It's not to prevent genocide (which largely occurs outside of the ability of US forces to stop), and it's not to quash al Qaeda (whose Iraq contingent is apparently vanquished and whose important members are elsewhere), so again: why are we still there?
It's hurting our national security. It's distracting us from global terrorist groups. It's killing and maiming tens of thousands of Americans. And now the Bush administration says the major political goal of the past year (four years, really) is no longer an immediate priority.
In general I think discussions of turning points in Iraq -- even in retrospect, much less forward-looking -- are over-hyped; Iraq has been, if nothing else, a slow-moving process, much of it predictable based on the failures of governance by US and Iraqi leadership. Spencer Ackerman takes a look at the current landscape, though, and wonders whether the coming weeks might give a clearer picture of where Iraq is heading for the next few years:
Shiites have started to unite as Sunnis have started to expand their power. By some measurements, violence has decreased. November 2007 is a moment to test whether progress on reconciliation is possible, or whether both sides are gearing up for a larger conflict.
As Ackerman says, there are indications that casualties are down, and groups are tentatively reaching out to each other, both intra-sect (the Shia truce between Badr and Sadr is, however tentative, an important symbolic step) and inter-sect (Shia groups have been visiting with some of the resurgent Sunni groups). While one certainly hopes these are indications of broader reconciliation, it's also just as likely that the sides are gearing up for a broader war. The problem with splintered groups is anarchy; the problem with united groups is potential titanic conflict. Ackerman recognizes this, of course, and rightly acknowledges the usual Iraq dichotomy of opportunity and risk:
There's breathing room here for negotiations, as shallow a breath as it may be. No one should believe reconciliation is at hand, or that the process of achieving it won't be protracted and laborious. But consider that with the decline of violence comes a rise in expectations. If those expectations aren't addressed expeditiously, what will remain will be frustrated sectarian factions that are more consolidat
