| Dangerous Illusions / Peace-processing our way to disaster. by Reuel Marc Gerecht American foreign policy in the Middle East can produce severe cognitive dissonance. Take Palestine and Iran. The White House's evolving policies toward the Palestinians and the clerical regime in Tehran show how easy it is for history to take a back seat to process, for reality to give way to illusions, and for hope in diplomacy to obscure the need to make serious decisions. The difficulties in Iraq can be blamed for much of this: The administration has been reeling since 2005, first crippled by the hapless strategy and tactics of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General John Abizaid, and now plagued by self-doubt about the war itself and the possibility of maintaining political support at home. Former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9/11 Commission, made the case for the Iraq war simply and eloquently in the Wall Street Journal. Yet the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, a member of the Iraq Study Group, increasingly reveals that he cannot argue for wars--the one in Iraq and the broader one against jihadism--that he does not appear to understand or believe in. |
Would Col. Spook approve of Sec. Gates more if that neocomrade did run around arguing for the incomprehensible and the incredible? The charge against him is framed along "When did you stop beating your wife lines?" -- the defendant is guilty no matter what. But presumably Spook wil tell us what Gates ought to be understandin' and believin'.
Meanwhile, consider that paragraph again. Did you "take Palestine and Iran" like me and then find yourself at a loss to decide what to do with them? Apparently they both illustrate that Little Brother and his merry men are out of touch with Reality and History. (So what else is new?) Apparently the reason for their out-of-touchness is the state of the neo-Iraqi aggression.
Well, I suppose that last bit is new, but unfortunately it does not seem to make sense. The Palestine Puzzle dates from 1947 at latest, sixty years ago. The evil Qommies have been in business for twenty-eight years, since 1979. How can the Big Management Party's quagmirization policy for "Iraq," a policy that is much younger and pertains to entirely different provinces, be significantly to blame for whatever Spook dislikes in Palestine and Persia? Even further around the bend, how could the Hambakerites have screwed up Palestine and Persia, when the only made suggestions, not policies, and those suggestions were about "Iraq"? If poor Gates could get his head screwed on right and become as gung-ho about the Kiddie Krusade as Sen. Kerrey seems to be, I can understand why Spook would feel gratified, but what does my taking Palestine and Iran have to do with that?
| The administration is tired. Arguments for the war on terror and Iraq that once came easily (if seldom eloquently) are rarely heard now. So we are left to parse the administration's actions for thematic content. It's not a happy task. We'll take the depressing first, leaving Iran, which is with the possible exception of Sunni jihadism the greatest menace confronting the United States, for last. The West Bank and Gaza are increasingly convulsed by civil strife--in Iraq such violence is sometimes called "civil war"--yet many people, in government and out, think that an Israeli-Palestinian deal is still possible, provided Washington has the will to force Jerusalem to make concessions. Yet the Islamic fundamentalist movement Hamas has grown powerful electorally and militarily by advancing an uncompromising hostility to the existence of Israel. Fatah, the backbone of the now-defunct Palestine Liberation Organization and the political base on which the Bush administration and the Europeans want to build a Palestinian state living in peace with its Jewish neighbor, has grown noticeably more anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. Competition with Hamas, more popular and more religious, now defines Fatah's themes. Not just on the West Bank and in Gaza, but throughout the Sunni Muslim world, fundamentalism has eclipsed virtually every other rallying cry. Born in anger at the unstoppable bulldozer of the West's seductive and deracinating modernity, Islamic fundamentalism shows no signs of receding in Sunni lands, let alone in Palestine, where the faithful live right next to rich, technically accomplished, and militarily powerful Westerners. |
I believe these facts are well known. Have the natives of East Palestine taken to militant neo-Islam, then, because Mr. Robert Gates is a bit wobbly (maybe) as regards Responsible Nonwithdrawal from "Iraq"?
More important, the good colonel seems to be dodging his own spookiness just a bit. I recall that he advised us that the indigs should be allowed to have their "political Islam" even though things might be a bit messy for a while and the process might not lead them straight to Republican Party values. Is Spook now gettin' tired of that line?
| Peace-processing has become an institution in Washington. Among many Democrats and Republicans, it's a reflex. Normally historically sensitive people will quickly affirm the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio to the spread of religious radicalism in the Islamic world and its now nervous offshoot, Europe. Yet the dynamic unfolding in Palestine--Islamic fundamentalism gobbling up the decaying corpse of secular dictatorship--is what we've seen almost everywhere in the Arab world. In Algeria, Syria, and Iraq, the process has been even more violent than in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is basically irrelevant to this ongoing collision of modernity and Islam. Still, it is entirely likely that a majority of Palestinians, perhaps a decisive majority, do not want to live peacefully next to a "Western, Jewish-colonial settler state." There is a reason Fatah has moved closer to Hamas ideologically. Religious Muslims, let alone fundamentalists, loathe the idea of a Western, Jewish state in what they see as the Muslim Middle East. As fundamentalism has gained strength in the region, the U.S.-backed dictators and their clientele--the Middle East's peace-processing establishment--have become an ever smaller minority among a more politically faithful majority who are deeply offended by the idea of Israel. What the Bush administration is now halfheartedly and wearily trying to do is restore the ancien régime after 1789. |
Again, the facts are familiar, and the interpretations are not outrageously tendentious in the AEIdeological direction. Perhaps there is a faint glimmer of what Spook is really up to. Though he repeats proposition P the same as always -- "Israel is basically irrelevant" -- he seems to be comin' arount to not-P all the same. That is to say, the Spook Doctrine, as originally proclaimed, is now to be reworked so as to take more account of Jewish Statism. To capitalize on this faint hink unilaterally and preëmptively, let us leap to the conclusion that Spook Doctrine II, when beta-testing is over and the product is released, will contain a restrictive clause about exactly what neo-Islamic political messinesses can be tolerated. In particular, faith-crazed native pols are not ever to mess about with interests really vital to the Tel Aviv statelet.
Spook knows enough about the Middle East that he really ought to have thought of it on the first pass. I recall, however, a vague impression from the AEI leaflet in which Spook Doctrine I was revealed to the world that the colonel had Algeria in the 1990's on his mind. Those provinces are far enough removed from Palestine to make it likely that if the faith-crazies ever actually took over, their anti-Zionism would be all bark and no bite. (Unless, to be sure, they were to as much interests in obtaining nukes as the evil Qommies do.)
| Fortunately, with the Palestinians, the administration's search for a new policy can't be too detrimental to the United States. The Palestinians have enthusiastically rejoined the mad rush of modern Islamic history. They are no longer a separate, special people. The Palestinians are in the early stages of their "civil war," and it's impossible to know where it will finish--though one could make a decent guess that in these early rounds, Hamas will win and the illusion of a Palestinian partner for peace will end, even for the most committed Americans and Europeans. What America can actually do in the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio is now irrelevant. What is sad, however, and worrisome, is the extent to which the administration's actions reveal its philosophical crack-up. Where once the administration tried to understand the spread of Islamic radicalism (the president's vivid allusions to American support of autocracy in the Middle East were path-breaking), the administration is now defaulting to language and priorities typical of the decades that the president once criticized. The State Department, a profoundly conservative and cautious institution that, like all foreign ministries, exists to fortify government-to-government relations, has always been waiting to bring back the familiar, comparatively manageable world of Israeli-Fatah negotiations. |
Gloatin' "Aha! Now they are going to kill one another off, so we won't have to" is not very becoming. AEI corrupts, no doubt about it. Still, even a tarnished Spook remains interesting (though scarcely important). From what point of view is, or was, it a grave threat that East or Gentile Palestinians should be accounted "a special, separate people"? The answer seems plain, but the analysis Spook implies is not very persuasive. Is Jewish Statism really better off to be opposed by "only" all of political Islam, and not those special, separate West Bank pests?
This product definitely needs further beta-testing. Factoring in Zionism and Hyperzionism and Counterzionism is a sensible idea, but the geopoliticsitarian chef has not worked out exactly how much of that ingredient will work best. He's just, so to speak, tossed three tablespoons of salt-of-the-earth into his new pottage when something like half a teaspoon of it would be much tastier.
| The White House, under fewer illusions, may simply want to maintain the appearance of peace-processing for the benefit of transatlantic ties. There is an argument for this, given the essential European role in imposing serious sanctions against an Iran that is pursuing nuclear weaponry. Just a little sop to keep the Palestinian-focused BBC and Bundestag happy. And the Europeans don't require much since the undeniable popular power of Hamas, its hard-to-conceal ugly ethics, and its blatant revulsion for Israel have severely tarnished the once romantic Palestinian cause. But no more than a sop is justified. The sooner Washington gets beyond the peace process, the sooner both Democrats and Republicans can think more seriously about how to deal with rising Islamic radicalism in the Middle East and the threat it poses to the West. Returning to the pre-9/11 preference for stable Muslim autocracies and the peace process is a dangerous cul-de-sac. |
Spook has no better credentials to practice Crawfordology than anybody else. Like thee and me, he's obviously only guessin' what his Little Brother might do next and what the rationale for it will be. Reading the first paragraph backhandedly, though, we perceive that Spook is really, really worried about the evil Qommies.
The second paragraph is more interesting. The corruption of AEI extends to Spook's not wantin' to make any serious concessions to the Old Euros. The corruption may even include thinkin' those folks rather less intelligent than they actually are, as well as, obviously, thinkin' them less significant. Lone Rangerism lives! Only now Lone Rangerism, rather oddly, has started poundin' the table about "the threat ... to the West." We've already had the Tel Aviv statelet presented as "Western" par excellance, which is paradoxical in itself, but it is difficult to imagine that Spook has been corrupted to the point where Charlemagne country is to be excommunicated from Westistan altogether. That sort of ideoproduct is readily available elsewhere, but I had thought Col. Spook a couple of links higher up the great chain of wingnuttery than to deal in such trashy wares.
In any case, here is a fine example of why I react to "the West" from the likes of Spook much as Prince Bismarck did to an earlier and similar buzzword: "I always find the word 'Europe' in the mouthes of statesman who are afraid to ask for what they want in their own name." (Quoted from memory) A Lone Rangerism that dare not speak its name?
Then there is final sentence, which is of course a covert advertisement for the Spook Doctrine. Whether additionally restricted in the interests of Jewish Statism or not, the product remains, according to its manufacturer, clearly better than all the competition, and far, far better than "preference for stable Muslim autocracies ." On Pass One, I don't think Spook would have dragged in "the peace process" as an inferior alternative to his own stuff. More likely he'd simply have ignored it. He really ought to think things out a little and write them down for us to pick holes in. Does Spook now suppose that "the peace process" has always been -- or at one point was, or conceivably might be -- a behavior directed at ensuring the survival of the cardboard kingdoms and the barracks-based republics? If so, I'd venture to say that he is mistaken, that he should take a WYSIWYG or Aristotelian view of it and regard the peace process as having been aimed at obtaining peace by solving the Palestine Puzzle. That may be very boring and conventional, but Lady Veritas never promised us that she would never get a bit tiresome and eye-glazing at times.
| The mess in Iraq has also allowed the idea of possibly productive negotiations with Iran's mullahs to take hold in Washington. However, only staunch doves and "realists" who are blind to the reality of power politics in the region can look optimistically upon the negotiations between the United States and Iran. We have a clerical regime that has aided and abetted virulently anti-American, radical Iraqi groups, exported to Iraq sophisticated automatic explosive devices designed to kill American and British soldiers, pushed forward defiantly its construction of uranium-enriching centrifuges, and kidnapped at least five American citizens in Iran, four of them Iranian-American dual-nationals. Utterly bogus espionage charges have been hurled at three, including Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center in Washington. Like her boss, former congressman Lee Hamilton, a chairman of the Iraq Study Group, Ms. Esfandiari has been an advocate of reconciliation between the United States and her homeland. Note: The espionage charges were thrown at these Americans, who had absolutely nothing to do with U.S. intelligence and would have recoiled from any advocacy of "regime change," a day after the May 28 meeting between the Americans and Iranians in Baghdad. This isn't rocket science. We have a meeting, and the regime in Tehran wants to make crystal clear its contempt for any suggestion that the mullahs might want to build a bridge or two. The clerical regime hasn't been killing American and British soldiers in Iraq because they think it's counterproductive. They haven't been aiding radical Shiite groups because it's counterproductive. It looks increasingly likely that Iran has also aided Sunni insurgents--which the mullahs apparently don't think is counterproductive. The truth about Iran's revolutionary elite is that they have little regard for the Iraqi Shia, whom they blame for failing to rise against Saddam Hussein during the 1980-'88 Iran-Iraq war. Compromising the Iraqi Shia for the greater goal of hurting the United States and radicalizing the Iraqi Shiite community is undoubtedly seen in Tehran as a price worth paying. |
Ah, here's the red meat at last! Spook should have written his anti-Qommie tirade separately so as to have more room to arrange his ideas in. Notice how in the first couple of sentences he makes plain, but without ever actually sayin' so explicitly, that he thinks Little Brother and the rest of the Party cowpokers are doin' everythin' about as wrong as wrong can be. AEI corrupts: the neocomrade has been reduced to this tactic before, and no doubt will be again. Considering that Spook is much more intelligent and far less ignorant than your average GOP genius, let alone the Party base and vile, I once again find myself wondering if the geniuses realize that the scribbler they are reading does not at all support what Big Management has been doin'. The camouflage gets pretty thin, I should think, when Spook is reduced to stickin' pins in a wax image of the SECDEF.
The main thing is that Little Brother and Associates are now supposed to perceive how the evil Qommies toy with them. Obviously Spook is perfectly sure that they have yet to perceive it. Since the camouflage is so thin, perhaps the allusion to rocket science might have been dispensed with: that sounds dangerously like lesé majesté. Dale Carnegie or somebody might advise him that it does not often help to make the sale to begin by calling the customer a blind moron. On the other hand, the chances that the Crawfordites were goin'ta buy anythin' from Spook were negligible to begin with, so there is no practical effect. (In that case, though, what would he have to lose by sayin' in so many words that he thinks their latest aggression and occupation policies are mistaken and dangerous? Not only does AEI corrupt, AEI corrupts pointlessly!)
Spook would probably claim a special expertise in Qommie Studies, but is he in fact any better at that parlor game than at Crawfordology? There is no way to judge from a popular and polemical scribble like this one, where he, quite reasonably, does not explain how he knows interesting things like "Iran's revolutionary elite ... have little regard for the Iraqi Shia, whom they blame for failing to rise against Saddam Hussein during the 1980-'88 Iran-Iraq war. Compromising the Iraqi Shia for the greater goal of hurting the United States and radicalizing the Iraqi Shiite community is undoubtedly seen in Tehran as a price worth paying."
"Compromising" the Iraqi Shia pretty clearly means (allegedly) furnishing arms to non-Twelvers as well as Twelvers, but I could do with more evidence to decide exactly what Spook means when he talks about "radicalizing" them. Does that only mean encouraging them to rid "Iraq" of extremist GOP palefaces, or is there some broader and more durable radicalization to be feared? Probably the latter, since Spook exhorts to the Kiddie Krusade, against "rising Islamic radicalism in the Middle East and the threat it poses to the West" &c. &c. Unfortunately he has not allowed himself sufficient space to explain these things adequately.
As to mind-readin' the mullahs, Spook seems to think, but does not plainly say, that they regard chaos in the former Iraq as a good in itself. There is no way to argue with him about it, though, since there is no clue what his guesswork is based on. The idea is antecedently imporobable, however, and would therefore require quite a lot of evidence to support it. The only evidence Spook sticks in is about the arrested Americans, which has no discernible bearing on evil Qommie schemes to compromise and radicalize the Shia of "Iraq."
| An assumption of the Iraq Study Group was that the clerical regime wants stability next door in Iraq. Hence it might be willing to work with Americans. Yet Iran has benefited enormously from Iraqi instability. Traditional, moderate clerics like Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who have been willing to work with Americans, have been battered and bruised by the violence. The radical Moktada al-Sadr, a little-known and little-admired scion of a famous clerical family, skyrocketed to prominence because of the strife and thanks to critical Iranian aid to him. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its more radical military wing, the Badr Organization, has also benefited enormously from the violence. SCIRI is a key Iraqi player that has received substantial assistance from Tehran. What is particularly regrettable about SCIRI is that the bloodletting has made life more difficult for moderates within the organization. And the violence has made it harder for SCIRI to pull away from Iranian patronage. |
Applying my Leo Strauss Brand™ Secret Decoder Ring to that bit of evidence-unbuttressed guesswork, I gather that Spook thinks the evil Qommies want to destabilize and compromise and radicalize the former "Iraq" so as to discredit Cardinal al-Sístání and the Najaf Hawza and the so-called "quietist" strain of the ’Ímámiyya. The Hambakers were blind morons not to appreciate so perspicuous and luminous a truth of Area Studies! (I fear I may be a blind moron too.) Be that as it may, one does still wonder exactly what the evil Qommies can see in that program for themselves. If one were told that they want to put SCIRI in power, or something of that sort, that would be different, but the Spook theory of them seems to be that of certain Saturday-morning cartoon "mad scientists determined to destroy the Universe for ends of their own."
| Does Iran want to stop this process? Iraq's Arab Sunni community--detested by the Iranians--has been routed from much of Baghdad, badly bloodied, and put to flight by the hundreds of thousands. This is a bad thing in the eyes of Tehran? Where does Iran have the most influence in Iraq? In Basra, where Shiite-versus-Shiite violence is at its worst. This is not a coincidence. Tehran has benefited massively from Iraqi Shiite division and internecine strife. What the United States should expect from Iran is that it will continue to ship its deadly explosives to Iraq and, through violence, feed the radicalization of the Shiite community. Success through Hezbollah in civil-war-torn Lebanon is the model to remember. Until now, it's been Iran's only successful foray abroad. "Stability" in Iraq means only one thing to Tehran: an American success. |
The AEIdeologue says " Tehran has benefited massively," but apart from suggesting that dead Sunnis are an obvious good thing, no questions asked, what this massive benefit consists in, who can guess? The success of Lebanon's God Party, such as it was, was attained chiefly at the expense of Jewish Statism and other factions inside the Beirut statelet, and how it parallels developments in "Iraq" I cannot begin to make out. Maybe if we turn the final fortune cookie inside out, however, we catch a glimpse of what Spook's glands teach him: any American, or militant GOP, success anywhere is eo ipso a grave setback for the evil Qommies. That would be AEI corruption run berserk, however, that Col. Spook has now been reduced to the level of a typical Boy-'n'-Party gland-baser. "Say it ain't so, Reuel!"
| It should be clear that the clerical regime now believes it can move rapidly forward with its nuclear program without much fear of American preventive military strikes. The once palpable fear of George W. Bush seems to have dissipated as America has floundered in Mesopotamia. Everyone can see that Washington, not Tehran, was more desirous of the recent meeting (NSC spokesmen clearly signaled that we wanted this meeting because U.S. troops were dying in Iraq). Even the most inept power politician in Tehran saw that America was weak and on the run. What once provoked anxiety (American troops in Iraq) now whets the appetite. The failure of the United States to respond more forcefully to Iranian arms shipments to Iraq has reinforced the message. Ditto the low-volume response to the kidnapping of American citizens in Iran. The only good news here is that it will be difficult for the clerical regime to continue talks with the United States even though doing so is manifestly in its interest. When Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently said, "Those who imagine that the Islamic Republic of Iran will change its established, logical and defendable policy of forswearing negotiations and relations with the United States are seriously in error," he was being understated. It wouldn't be the first time that clerical Iran had refrained from doing what was in its best interests. But it probably wouldn't take much to tie America up in negotiations--or the hope of negotiations--with Iran over Iraq. And the more America is wedded to talks, the smaller the possibility that it will effectively counter Iran's nuclear-weapons program--the ultimate objective guiding the mullahs' foreign policy. What Tehran would surely like to do is convert its discussions with the European Union over its nuclear program from negotiations about stopping the enrichment of uranium to negotiations about managing an actual nuclear-weapons capacity. Iranians know the North Korean model well. It's a good one. Keep America talking on Iraq, and press ahead for the nuclear prize. Does President Bush understand all this? Probably. Does his administration? The wish to disbelieve the obvious remains great, particularly as Iraq becomes more violent, which will happen this summer even if the surge is working. And although some might still want to put faith in the CIA's estimate that Iran will make a nuclear bomb in 10 years, it's a better bet that Iranians are significantly increasing centrifuge production because they have figured out how to make it work. Most likely, the time for diplomacy and sanctions is shrinking fast. Since the alternatives aren't easy--blockading Iranian oil exports through the Gulf or preventive military strikes--the Bush administration will be tempted to believe in the illusion of negotiations. We can raise the white flag, and call it victory. |
Should anybody care to take the RMG camouflage shtik seriously, she would learn that Little Brother has now lost control of his own Administration -- which is not a very nice or loyal thing to say about His Nibs, surely, although perhaps not quite as bad as "blind moron" would be.
Then there is the "wish to disbelieve the obvious" shtik, which needs some work before it is ready for rhetorical prime time. The way it is deployed here it amounts to certain blind morons wishin' to disbelieve what is obvious to Col. Spook, perhaps to Col. Spook alone, rather than obvious to themselves. That's not really much of a club to hit one's Party enemies over the head with. It is unlikely that poor Neocomrade R. Gates will delegate some underlin' the task of respondin' to Spook, but if he did, the obvious line of attack would be to maintain that the honourable and gallant is in most cases seein' only mirages and turnip ghosts, then dismiss him more in sorrow than in anger.
It's doubtful that the vigilante cowpokers have any clear and distinct ideas behind their current aggression and occupation policies, so it would be wiser not to try to tackle Spook's unclarities and indistinctions and mind-readin's head-on. They might, though, point out Spook's irresponsibility. THEY have to worry about payin' for their Party's aggressions and occupations, and findin' enough warm uniformed bodies for them, and persuadin' Televisionland and the electorate to put up with them, even ideally to "support" these capers. Col. Spook is not required to worry about such matters, and he does not worry about them. To point this fact out would not really address any of Spook's concerns, but it would tend to discredit him before an audience of GOP geniuses all the same. As I said, though, Spook is probably not important enough to need to be discredited, and even if he was, his own camoflage shtik would allow them to pretend not to have noticed his assaults.
As regards the biggest turnip ghost of all, perhaps the perps down at the ranch might mercifully inform Neocomrade R. M. Gerecht of AEI, in strictest secrecy, that they have no more intention of seriously negotiatin' with the evil Qommies than he attributes to the evil Qommies of negotiating with the GOP. That way Spook can stop chewin' his nails about Dubya gettin' duped and move on to, hopefully, some more profitable hobbyhorse.
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[*] The Weekly Standard señoritos did indeed mistitle the scribble. It is not "the peace process," but rather his private mirage of George XLIII duped by the mullahs, that the writer expects "disaster" to come from. Perhaps that discrepancy means that Kristol Minor's crew are more fixated on Jewish Statism than even the Mark II Spook Doctrine. Or perhaps it means nothing at all.
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