To paraphrese Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon, Diplomacy is such an ugly word. So tedious, complicated, and unpredictable. So much deferred gratification, if any. I prefer blackmail.

And, pray tell, why do we need to know anything?

Don't try to explain that to Al, though.

Bob

The Corner lets us in on the current conservative zeitgeist:

Hey, Kevin, I already referred to that article here in your comments. I guess great minds like me and K-Lo think alike right?

By the way, here's another good article on Iran's imminent nuclear threat.

Link

"A report yesterday that Iran will soon announce a nuclear breakthrough by the nation's Mehr News agency also
may spur dollar buying."

Unfortunatlely, I don't see any serious discussion from you or other liberals on how to deal with Iran's imminent nuclear threat. This will no doubt impact the November elections when the American people will realize that liberals have no serious foreign/military policy to deal with the nuclear threat of Iran while Republicans do have one by supporting a military attack on Iran. The American people will react by voting for the Republican Party in a landslide and causing the Ned Lamont Democrats to lose.

Only six?

FMguru:

in an hour and a half.

Al:

Only the frothing, hardest-of-hardcore wingnut base advoctes military action against Iran.

Even your buddy rdw doesn't go that far.

Bob

Over at No Quarter, Ray Close (fomer CIA analyst, I believe) writes:

it seems clear to me that Bush has laid out the following course for American policy, adding up to a Catch-22 from which I see no escape:

a. Continuing futile efforts to achieve Iranian capitulation through weak and ineffective economic sanctions, to the accompaniment of counterproductive vituperation and bombast;

b. Quickly followed by a period of rapidly escalating threats of military action, during which international and domestic opposition to American policy will increase dramatically, making Bush’s choices increasingly more painful and difficult in every respect;

c. A judgment by Bush that the immediate risks and costs of preemptive military action against Iran are, in the final analysis, less formidable than the risks and costs of tolerating Iranian nuclear possession --- and the personal and national humiliation that would result from passive acceptance of that outcome.

d. Sometime before the end of his term, a massive air military attack on a wide range of carefully selected targets in Iran, in partnership with Israel, and against the advice of many of his advisers --- justified by the conviction that a nuclear Iran would pose an intolerable threat to American national security, firm in his faith that God agrees with him on that point, and certain that history will eventually recognize and properly appreciate his courageous and visionary leadership.

The writer does not think this is a sane course of action, by the way.

How many conservative commentators believed Bernard Lewis' crap about the Iranian Apocalypse on August 22nd? The usual suspects. What is the date today, 24th here in the UK or 23rd in the US. What a bunch of dumb wankers.

Listen, I think you are the smartest liberals I have ever come across. Would you do me a favor? This conservative blog thinks that ALL liberals are stupid, I would love it if you astute and bright liberals would teach them a lesson.

www.vonfrederick.com

George W. Bush has repeatedly blamed Syria and Iran for inciting Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel, but, in seeking to resolve the conflict, the administration made no effort to draw the two countries into negotiations.

Shorter left wing radical TNR: Terrorists would stop being terrorists if we just gave them a biiiig hug. What a joke.

bad Jim:

Not before '06, certainly.

But I've heard speculation like that as well. It would be a disasterous course of action on so many levels it's difficult to list them all.

Start with a blockade of the Straits of Hormuz and the attendant sharp spike in oil futures followed by a no-holds-barred order by Moktada for his armed Shi'ites to attack the American occupation.

You've all heard about those "peaceful" provences in Iraq? Heh, no longer ...

Bob

Thank you so much!

I don't know if it's a bellweather or not, but I'm still amazed at Kevin Drum's post about how American political leaders need to obey dictates from CAIR.

Shorter American Hawk:

I'm in desperate need of a big hug, but the very thought challenges my manhood so deeply that I instantly convert the cognitive dissonance into testoerone-sodden rage.

Well, maybe not *shorter*, but you get the idea.

I charge $120 an hour, so with pro-ration that'll be 10 cents, please.

Samantha:

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. You only hurt yourself, and annoy the pig."

--Mark Twain

Bob

BTW Al, the rabid old war criminal, Henry Kissinger, reckons that a deal can be done with Iran over its nuclear program.

The United States should hold constructive talks with Iran, he said, adding, “Tehran’s security concerns should be addressed.”

Kissinger said that there are several ways to defuse Iran’s nuclear impasse but the best option is to pursue negotiations.

China and Russia can play a key role in settling the nuclear row in view of their close nuclear cooperation with the Islamic Republic, he stated.

Almost makes me nostalgic for Tricky Dicky. He was less of a fuckup than Bush

Frequency Kenneth:

You actually *know* virtually nothing.

What passes for "reality" with you is manufactured out of whole cloth from a handful of a-priori assumptions.

That'll be 2 cents, please.

Bob

blowback:

Tricky Dick and Dr. Strangelove are giants among pygmies like Bolton, Cheney and Rice.

Bob

Shorter left wing radical TNR: Terrorists would stop being terrorists if we just gave them a biiiig hug. What a joke.
Posted by: American Hawk on August 23, 2006 at 10:10 PM | PERMALINK

Shorter Neocon: Iran would be so much farther away from developing nukes if we would just keep outing CIA agents working on nonproliferation, and letting Pakistani nuclear scientists get away with selling secrets to the Iranians, and invading countries on their borders.

It's so utterly amusing to see TNR described as "radical."

But not too "radical" to endorse Joe Lieberman for president, eh.

Bob

T-Shirt:

Annoy the NRO: Hug a terrorist.

Bob

Shorter Neocon: Waaah! The power vacuum my stupid invasion of Iraq created was filled by the Mullahs!

"It turns out that approaching foreign affairs like a guy at a bar with six beers in him hasn't worked so well."

hell, the drunks I know don't even get started until they're on their 3rd 6-pack.

'My kingdom is not of this world.'
-Jesus Christ

A senior US military official said there is "clear evidence" that Iran is funding, training and arming Shiite extremists to destabilize Iraq.

What a dumb fuck!

How could anyone have their head so far shoved up their ass?

There is "clear evidence" that the Al Dawa party of PM al Maliki and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution is funding, training and arming Shiite extremists to ***stabilize*** Iraq and to formally concretize a decades old desire to become a religious, political, social, etc partner with Iran.

Nearly 3000 people were murdered and billions of dollars in damage were incurred on 9/11.

In direct response to these horrific attacks, Bush and the GOP attacked and deposed Saddam Hussein thereby creating the perfect conditions by which Shiite fundamentalists can take over Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

In short: 9/11 + Iraq = Bush's Islamic fundamentalist ME

WTF?!!!

I'm not sure I think that we'll bomb Iran even before 2008 (would make one hell of an October surprise, though). Given the dismal results of strategic bombing so far, can there really still be people in the Air Force who believe it could do the job? Even if it entailed nukes?

I have to admit that the fact that it would be an utterly insane thing to do doesn't mean that Bush & Cheney wouldn't do it, but could they really get everyone else to go along?

approaching foreign affairs like a guy at a bar with six beers in him hasn't worked so well

Actually, conservatives approach everything with the Daddy-strategy. Their daddies whacked them or threatened to whack in response to every behavior violation and it worked.

Trouble is, most people grow up and learn you can't treat adults like that. Sooner or later, adults will respond effectively rather than obey.

GWB and company are stuck in whack world.

...like a guy at a bar with six beers in him hasn't worked so well.

That's the way conservatives act after only six beers?

Pussies!

Tho' it does explain Cheney's ichy trigger finger!

Their daddies whacked them or threatened to whack in response to every behavior violation and it worked.

Yeah, it worked, allright. When the whacked grow up, they became whackers. The soviets whacked afghanistan - they became whackers. I hate to think of the kind of whacker Iraq will be when they grow up.

I would love it if you astute and bright liberals would teach them a lesson.

I doubt they can afford my per deim, plus I have a firm rule against slumming.

Why am I reminded of a very disturbed student, who was in Junior High School at the time, who used to shout, "Bomb 'em! Bomb 'em!" whenever something happened that he didn't understand or like. However, unless cooler heads prevail, we may find ourselves fighting a war on three (Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran) fronts, something the military doesn't believe in. Watch out; if W gets upset or too frustrated, he may just shout, "Bomb 'em!"

OBF:

Heh. Just look at Israel ...

Bob

. . .we may find ourselves fighting a war on three (Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran) fronts,
Posted by: OCPatriot on August 23, 2006 at 11:03 PM |

It's all one front. One War on Terror. One "Islamofascist" Threat.

OBF:

Exactly. Which is part of why these guys have such an aversion to pencil-neck concepts like understanding what the hell is going on in the world.

Bob

Yeah, the whacked do, sooner or later, get their day.

And it's hard to reform a whacker. Even those who grow up an are afraid to do whacking themselves are prone to cheering others who whack. Anything less than whacking is liberal mumbojumbo.

OCPatriot: hey, there are GWB supporters at my work place who have already, in frustration with at the ungrateful Iraqis, literally shouted "bomb 'em!"

The Corner clues us into the current conservative zeitgeist

Scroll down to The Corner's Stanley Kurtz rant for a closer look at the conservative zeitgeist. I suggest you shower after reading it.

Kevin - what has diplomacy done for Israel?

Israel gave up the West Bank in exchange for peace. So how did the terrorists respond to Israel's goodwill gesture?

ANSWER: They launched over a thousand indiscriminate missiles into Israel.

LOJIRC & OBF:

It really all can be explained with family psychology, can't it. the NRO's idea of foreign relations is classic blame-the-victim-ism, and the American public vote for it out of Stockholm Syndrome, just like a battered wife makes up all kinds of twisted rationalizations to defend the absuer she lives with.

Just like an angry drunk has no language with which to communicate other than resentment-driven threats, so the dry-drunk Bush war cabinet believes that if they can't generate respect any other way, then raw fear will have to do.

And the results -- just like in a dysfunctional family -- are an endless cycle of victimization. Victimizers beget victims who become victimizers in their turn.

We need an intervention here.

Bob

Frequency Kenneth -- Israel still occupies the West Bank. You might be thinking of Gaza--that's to the Southwest on the Mediteranean. But those "thousand indiscriminate missiles" didn't come from Gaza (although a few of the more primitive Qassam's do; those missles came from Lebanon--thats a different country, to the North of Israel.

Frequency Kenneth:

Which is like an angry alcoholic husband telling his wife that she's the reason he drinks to excess.

Bob

Rove's wingnuts are beating the war drums. I wonder if Bush will attack before November?

More on Iran.

Where's the Democratic plan for dealing with this kind of thinking?

And isn't Kissinger the one who won the Vietnam War for us?

It really all can be explained with family psychology, can't it.. . .
Posted by: rmck1 on August 23, 2006 at 11:21 PM | PERMALINK

Actually, kind of reminds me of that Dixie Chick's song about the guy named Earl. . .

ANSWER: They launched over a thousand indiscriminate missiles into Israel.
Posted by: Frequency Kenneth on August 23, 2006 at 11:18 PM | PERMALINK

Shorter Freq.ken: they all look alike to me. . .

Israel gave up the West Bank in exchange for peace. So how did the terrorists respond to Israel's goodwill gesture?

How can you "give up" somethhing that doesn't belong to you?

Yep, them Chicks hit back.

hank:

Thanks for the link. I'm familiar with all of what was in that Daily Mail piece, and much of it makes points I've been saying for months here: 70% of Iran's population is under 30 and deeply resentful of the mullahs, sabre-rattling against them only awakens Persian pride and glues the regime together, etc.

I think he's blowing the eschatology biz a bit out of proportion, though. The president of Iran is not the C-i-C of the armed forces. Power in Iran is quite diffused; it filters through the Guardian Council of mullahs (the vast majority of whom don't buy into that create-chaos-to-bring-back-the-Hidden-Imam stuff, because that's part of a Shi'ite splinter group so radical that Khomenei banned it after the Revolution), who have veto power over acts of Parliament. The busines elite also hold a great deal of sway. So it's much more likely that Ahmadinejad is allowed to pursue those religious trappings as a way to build solidarity with the dirt-poor, who in Iran tend to be the most religious -- and also quite resentful of the wealthy young and their Western-aping decadent ways. Ahmadinejad's firey rhetoric and religious posturing -- sincere or not -- are thus seen in very ordinary political terms.

I don't know if the Dems would go for this -- but I've been saying for a long time that it's a huge mistake we don't have relations with Iran. President Khatamei, the reformer who's applying for a visa to visit the US for a religious conference next month, proposed a "dialogue of civilizations" in 2000.

We truly were fools not to take him up on his offer. It's not long for the mullacracy once those Western-leaning kids start taking positions of power and influence in Iranian society.

Bob

OBF:

I'm not familiar with that Dixie Chicks song.

Post the lyrics, if they come to you ...

Bob

It turns out that approaching foreign affairs like a guy at a bar with six beers in him hasn't worked so well.

How so? On the domestic front drunken agression plays quite well. Bush is "strong" on foreign policy. Just read USA Today.

In fact, conventional wisdom was that Bush the elder lost because of a wimpy image and he should have taken out Saddam and installed a pro-US puppet government. It would have been easy!

Ford lost. I'm not sure what would have helped, but I don't think withdrawing from Vietnam, watching Saigon fall, and invading the wrong Cambodian island helped him.

Bob:

Hope you're right about Iran. I as understand it, their general population is more pro-American than most in the Middle East.

As for President Khatamei, I read that his visa and visit had been approved.

I think that the problem is not that these assholes got whacked around when they were kids, but that they didn't. Only someone with no direct experience of violence could wish so strongly for it's alleged bracing, purifying effect.

Do we _really_ have to be in the same country with these fools? Do we really have to share a planet with them? Couldn't they have their own planet, one that it would be OK to ruin.
Sorry. Had to get that out of my system.

I still wonder if there isn't some smart way to work with Iran's pride. I mean if they proved their status by becoming a biotech super-power or a top force in chip making, they'd be better off and so would we.
And the obstacles to this are not all in Tehran by any means.

And in case my idea for letting Iran express its pride economically rather than militarily sounds stupid, remember that that is basically what we did with "Red China".
Let Iran evolve into a nationalist development government like China (and South Korea and Taiwan and Japan), where the government derives its legitimacy in the eyes of its own people from its ability to lead economic development.
Given that much of Iran wants to join the modern world that we are the center of and even the most fanatic Islamists in the Iranian government know that they have to satisfy that part of Iran somewhat in order to survive, I think this is one cause where we would catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
I am not saying that is always the case. But it is here.
(When would force/threat of force work better than respect and reason? Against Germany and Japan in the 1940s, to contain the Soviet Union after WW2, against the Taliban, against Saddam Hussein, against North Korea now.)
In other words, Iran now is like the Soviet Union under Gorbachev (or under the hardliners who tried to overthrow him in 1991) not like the Soviet Union of the late 1940s.

Sure the brownshirts are all motivated by their various pathologies, but don't forget that there is only one reason the elites want to put Operation Iranian Liberation into motion.

Hint: It turns out that approaching foreign affairs like a guy at a bar with six beers in him hasn't worked so well.

More like a guy that washed down a handful of peyote buttons with a bottle of whiskey.

Holbrooke is a guy with a ton of credibility. When he says that diplomacy has to be backed up by a credible threat of force, he obviously means it: he recommended military action twice in the Balkans during the 90s. At the same time, when he says it should be a last resort, he obviously means that too: he devoted uncounted thousands of hours to serious, toughminded diplomacy during the same period. Some of it worked and some of it didn't, but his dedication to the cause is hardly questionable.And despite his continued unwillingness to flatly face the reality that we can't afford to stay in I

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How nice that the folks at NRO feel the need to cheerlead a frenzy akin to that which led up to WWI. Most people don't feel an itch to bomb Iran. They know that a) Iran is years from developing a nuclear bomb, b) Pakistan, a far more dangerous agent has had a bomb for years and that we haven't been menaced by it and c) such military acts are merely beards for distractions for an insidious domestic agenda.

Lopez take note:

It's bellwether, not bellwhether.

So, the military option in Iran is what, exactly?
.

While many in Iran may be pro-American (that term must be applied carefully), a good way to make them anti-American is to shoot at them.

A major concern should be a provocation by either side that causes a shooting incident--even a small and contained one--that has nothing to do with Iran's nuke program. It appears there are too many in both the US and the Iran who would be willing to create or who would welcome such a provocation, or whose preferred response would be to shoot. The Gulf is a crowded and tense place.

Such an incident would further inflame the region and help stoke Iranian nationalist sentiment, and consequently help the Iranian hard-liners.

...speaking of "the guy at the bar"......

....when Spiro Agnew died nearly ten years ago, the correspondent writing his obituary in "The Economist" began with a 1970 recollection from a blue collar bar in Baltimore. He said the patrons were whooping up his televised remarks about the long-hairs, the uppity blacks, NOW members, et al. Yet after asking whether that meant they'd like to see their former governor succeed Richard Nixon as president, they were silent. When he asked "If you approve of him so much, why wouldn't you want to see him as your next president?", one man finally seemed to have the answer. "I don't think the President of the United States should sound like I do after I've had a couple of beers".

> When he asked "If you approve of him so much,
> why wouldn't you want to see him as your next
> president?", one man finally seemed to have the
> answer. "I don't think the President of the
> United States should sound like I do after I've
> had a couple of beers".

The genius of Abramoff and Rove of course is that they managed to tap into the fairly large number of voters who don't have that level of self-reflection and who DO think the President of the United States should act exactly as they do at the bar.

Cranky

It appears there are too many in both the US and the Iran who would be willing to create or who would welcome such a provocation, or whose preferred response would be to shoot.

It appears there are too many in both the US and the Iran who would be willing to create or who would welcome such a provocation, or whose preferred response would be to shoot.

But again we go back to the point that the elctoarte has "chosen" a man they think of as a beer-and-BBQ man -- but who is a Connecticut elite who isn't allowed to drink because of the trouble he keeps making. They want the US represented by that? And why were the Dems so afraid to characterize him that way, especially when Al's masters were not reluctant to make up horrible shit about Kerry?

...or electorate, even.

Woe to be a lib.

How awful is Democracy? Whoever thought it made sense to give EACH citizen the right to vote? Obviously Jefferson and the boys didn't foresee Conservatives. If they did they would have set limits.

Alas, they didn't. There's one thing I can't quite figure out. Actually, I'm a conservative so wo am I kidding? There's a lot of things I can't figure out. But there's one enigma I know the liberals can solve for me. Let's establish upfront something we all know to be a fact. Liberals are smarter than Conservatives. Lots smarter and everyone knows it. So how is it if you are so much smarter you keep screwing up elections?

What is going on with Leiberman? You killed him but he's not dead.

What is going on with Santorum? He was dead and now he's alive.

What is going on with Steele? How is it possible for a friggin republican to conpete for a seat in Maryland?

Iraq is not going well and Afghanistan is off the radar (and possibly not going well either) so maybe they are searching for a new country to work over in the vain attempt to make themselves feel better. War junkies need their fix.

http://americaabroad.tpmcafe.com/node/26922

Overheard...
By Anne-Marie Slaughter | bio

As the fall-out from the publication of the Danish cartoons continues, I found the following description of a speech by AEI's Michael Ledeen worth passing on. It is from a very knowledgeable observer of the Middle East generally, and the lesson is one well worth bearing in mind at the moment…

"Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute bombed in his talk at Princeton University two nights ago. Although escorted on his arrival by an honor guard of apparently orthodox Jewish students, he was heckled and angrily questioned by Muslim young people from (I guessed from their accents) Palestine, Turkey, Pakistan and especially Iran ---- exactly the population that Ledeen was claiming would welcome U.S. covert action to rid them of their tyrannical rulers. He ended up losing his cool completely --- calling them ‘children’ and suggesting that they were naive and ignorant of the real world. There was one particular line of reasoning that most seriously antagonized these proud young people --- ‘The tyrants whom you passively allow to rule you are exhorting you to wage a terrorist war to the death against America. These reactionary despots do not hate America and wage terrorist war against America because of American policies (Israel, etc.), but because America's freedom and prosperity challenge their ability to oppress and exploit you. The United States should overturn and destroy all the corrupt and repressive governments in the Middle East --- starting with Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia --- and then you (Muslim youth) will be free to create new, modern societies that emulate American cultural, economic and political values.’ (Paraphrasing)

It was fascinating to me to observe that this thesis, especially coming from a man with Ledeen's credentials, was deeply offensive to the majority of his audience.Interestingly, I thought the most vocal and articulate critics of Ledeen were some young Iranian women, very Westernized and intellectually sophisticated, who were obviously deeply offended at the patronizing way that Ledeen told them what their hopes and ambitions should be. There is an old and eternal lessen here for all of us (excluding Ledeen, who's too arrogant and self-assured to learn anything): it is that nobody outside their culture, and especially not an American, can tell the young people of the Muslim and Arab worlds today what they should believe, how they should act, and what kind of society they should be building for themselves. Attempts to do so will only turn them off, no matter what their personal beliefs and aspirations may be."

rdw, this a discussion on a particular topic called Iran. Maybe you've heard of it. If you don't have anything relevant to say, you're just babbling like a stoned rock star in an interview randomly yelling out lines from his songs.

But then again, it all just boils down to your tribe and team, doesn't it? It doesn't matter if your team is fucking up the country as long as they're in charge.

And who is this Leiberman of which he speaks?

There used to be something called "deterrence". It worked against a Soviet Union that had 20,000 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. I think that if we station one or two Trident submarines in the Indian Ocean that the Iranian government might be similarly sobered.

A military strike against Iran would be a disaster for all concerned, including us. Wargamers in D.C. worked on this problem at the behest of The Atlantic. The wargamers came to the conclusion that an attack on Iran was the least desirable outcome out of many for resolving our differences with Iran. And these wargamers were overwhelmingly Pentagon and military service veterans, not pacifists by any means.

Bill Kristol, NRO and the others beating the wardrums for an attack on Iran are the same group that helped drag us to disaster in Iraq. We can't let them ruin us again.

It doesn't matter if your team is fucking up the country as long as they're in charge.

I love these posts for the rants. Libs are the best. None smarter! I'm just looking for a liberal smart enough to explain to me how the dumbest people on the planet keep on beating them.

Think about it. The greatest minds on every subject are liberals. Yet when it comes to making decisions you are never in the mix. You are standing on the sidelines babbling. Has any liberal taken any part in any serious policy discussion in the last 6 years? One would think if you were so smart you could at least get one person to listen to you one time. We can at least agree your party is pathetic and you have not been this pathetic in 80 years.