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More Central Asia

Nathan Hamm tracks back to my post below on the trouble with Bush's inaugural to lament that my position is based on several problematic prejudices:

1)  I "don't like Bush."

2)  I "don’t pay all that much attention to current events Central Asia and the Caucasus let alone Bush’s track record on these issues in the CIS."  As a result, I'm unaware that opposition groups were speaking out in places like Uzbekistan before the inaugural.

3)  According to Hamm, if I "want to know what we’ll do, read the speech. Sure a lot of it is idealistic, but there’s a big clue in the “When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you,” line, which I read as the realist temper to the soaring idealism of the speech. If you want illustrative examples, look at Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Georgia."

4)  "[The answer to the question] what are we going to do in Central Asia? Well, a lot of that depends on what Central Asian opposition groups themselves are prepared to do. I personally think that some of these groups are getting ahead of themselves, but if they can pull it off, more power to them. Given our past performance, I fully expect that we’ll be by their side, but that it will be more difficult down the road as leaders in the CIS have gotten wise to the game. I also fully expect that if Kyrgyz opposition groups can only muster a small number of protesters and the Bush administration doesn’t come out willing to burn the bridge that he’ll be accused of not being serious about democracy. I suppose that comes with the territory of actually having to make difficult decisions and striking a balance in making and executing a foreign policy though."

Might I proffer that Mr. Hamm is getting a bit ahead of himself.  Let's clean up his post.

1)  Thanks for that bolt of wisdom.  My feelings towards President Bush's policies haven't been too well hidden, but if Hamm is attempting to impugn my intentions, or my allegiance, he'd do well to come out and say it.

2)  I never claimed that the opposition emerged spontaneously in the past week and a half.  (One might say that that bar is below even the standard of "not paying all that much attention to events in Central Asia.")  But thanks to him for pointing out that the opposition movements didn't emerge precipitously in the wake of the president's inaugural.  One may imagine, though, that if they did hear it, they believed it was true.  (That does, of course, forego the possibility that 50 years of Soviet-style domination has rendered them sufficiently cynical to parse such a speech.)

3)  I have no idea what Hamm is talking about here.  Yes, perhaps I'm being too naive when I read the president's inaugural.  Perhaps when the President said "There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom" he meant "unless we have a base at Manas."  Perhaps when he said "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.  The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world" he meant "unless it's my buddy Islam who's doing the boiling alive, or my buddy 'bashi who's strangling the opposition.  They're strong allies in the war on terror."  Maybe when he said "From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth...[a]dvancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation" he meant "unless geostrategic reality dictates otherwise."  Or perhaps " We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right" meant "Well, sorta."  Or this: "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.  Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country."

If that's "realist temper," I'd hate to see shameless, irresponsible utopianism.  Sure, maybe all those things were lies.  That's fine.  I just hope the leaders of the opposition movements are more parsimonious and Machiavellian than I am.  Gorgeous, majestic rhetoric in defense of realpolitik is a disgusting exercise in either moral corruption or inexcusable ignorance.

4)  Hamm's peace corps naivete is coming out here.  We won't be standing with anybody in Central Asia.  Not anybody.  As a result, it's my sincere hope that nobody there thinks we're going to.  Because the IRI and NDI can't stop what leaders like Karimov and Akayev are willing to do.

The Morally Hazardous Inaugural

One of the points one of my bosses made in light of the inaugural address was the massive moral hazard problem it created.

Bush's speech was essentially the same thing as his father's call to Shiite Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, which, as we've heard so often, he did not back up, and which led to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi oppositionists.

Unfortunately, the world listened to Bush's speech, and opposition in places as far-flung and sloppy as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and even Uzbekistan has been emboldened, and is increasingly taking to the streets.  The governments of these countries (who are our friends at this point) have taken to issuing statements like this:

"Some are dying to see that the way the elites in Georgia and Ukraine changed becomes a model to be emulated by other countries," Karimov, who tolerates no opposition, told parliament in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

"To those who still have not understood me, I want to issue a warning that everything should be on the basis of law and we will rein in those who move outside the framework of law," he said. "We have the necessary force for that."

Looking directly at Western ambassadors, whose countries he had accused of financing the opposition, Karimov said: "Those sitting up there in the balcony should understand that better."

So what are we going to do?

Rich Lowry Is a Slanderous Twit

From KR:

Rich Lowry, who edits National Review, paints [conservative Iraq war] dissenters as "cowboys without cattle. They have little public support, and a naive view of the world. The poisons of the world reached out and killed 3,000 people (on Sept. 11, 2001). They don't seem to appreciate that." Yet his former boss, National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., said recently: "If I knew (in 2002) what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war." Lowry won't comment on Buckley.

And a weasel, too.  And what the hell does "the poisons of the world" mean?  Is that what we're at war with?  Purge the world of its poison?  That sounds conservative...feller might wanna go back and reread his Edmund Burke, methinks.

Now That's What I Call Praise!

As one may well know, Cato has gotten flack for having, shall we say, outside the contemporary mainstream views about how to calibrate U.S. foreign policy and what prerequisites must be met before the American government is allowed to initiate foreign wars.

So it really brightens your day when you see during a discussion of military spending vis-a-vis the GWOT, a commenter over at Kevin Drum's note that:

This is one subject where I judge the folks at Cato to be principled conservatives rather than corporate-apologist shills for the Republican Party like most right-wing think tanks. They are actually concerned about national security rather than funneling gazillions of dollars to Republican campaign contributors in the military-industrial complex.

Kind of gives you the warm and fuzzies...

The Relevance and Irrelevance of Auschwitz

Pretty powerful op-ed from the editor of the Forward, Ami Eden, in the Times today.  A snippet:

[In light of the Auschwitz commemoration] the Jews, the main targets of Nazi racism...face a very different sort of problem today, one that is partly of their own making. Jewish organizations have pursued an effective campaign to combat bigotry through a combination of protest and education, hoping to shame wrongdoers and encourage the next generation to shed old prejudices. And yet, as they look around, they see a world increasingly hostile to them and to Israel. It is time Jews recognize that the old strategies no longer work.

Jewish organizations and advocates of Israel fail to grasp that they are no longer viewed as the voice of the disenfranchised. Rather, they are seen as a global Goliath, close to the seats of power and capable of influencing policies and damaging reputations. As such, their efforts to raise the alarm increasingly appear as bullying.

The most recent example came earlier this month, after Prince Harry of Britain was photographed attending a private masquerade party in a World War II-era German uniform and Nazi armband. His appearance touched off a frenzy in the news media. The prince was called insensitive to Jewish suffering, with some suggesting that he was infected with anti-Jewish bigotry lurking in the genes of the royal family. One protester, Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, called on the prince to make amends by traveling to Poland for the Auschwitz ceremony.

This is exactly the wrong approach. By playing the Holocaust card against Harry, Jewish critics deflected attention from how Harry had insulted the memory of the millions of Britons who suffered during World War II; they also risked squandering a diminishing supply of hard-won moral capital better spent in the fight against terrorism and the rise in Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

[...]

For more than half a century, Auschwitz has rightly stood at the heart of virtually every moral argument put forth by spokesmen for the Jewish community, a powerful testament to the consequences of otherwise decent people remaining silent in the face of evil. Yet this legacy is in peril, threatened by an increasing reliance on raw political muscle over appeals to conscience.

As the world recalls the horrors and liberation of Auschwitz, Jewish organizations and advocates for Israel should remember that "speaking truth to power" does not work when you are seen as the powerful one.

I don't really have anything to add to this piece, but it in a very short space it both reminded us of the central role played by world Jewry in substantially raising the world's ethical bar, as well as pointing out that the world changes, and one worldview, one clarion call, cannot persist in light of a changed world.

Both important points.

The Trouble With Brookings

Bill Kristol alluded to this at the Brookings event the other day, and now I see it's out.  A "bipartisan" letter calling for a dramatic expansion in the military.  (Most offensive line: "Our regulars and reserves are not only proving themselves as warriors, but as humanitarians and builders of emerging democracies.")  As far as I can see, the "bipartisan" consists primarily of Peter Beinart, Michael O'Hanlon, and Ivo Daalder.

What a disgrace.

The problem, of course, is not that the military is too small, but that it is being asked to do too many dumb things, such as walk children to kindergarten in Iraq.  Michael O'Hanlon, for all his best efforts to the contrary, recognizes this.  At this event last summer, it was a good chuckle watching him object to the notion of leaving Iraq, and then say something quite like "But jeez, I'm not sure what other strategy is right at this point..."

I think O'Hanlon and Daalder are so concerned with remaining within the "establishment" that they can't take a bold position on this.  What ends up happening is that they lend credence to what otherwise would be a group of crackpots and lunatics who want the United States to go to war with China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, and maybe Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, or France.

Thus, Michael O'Hanlon and Ivo Daalder, in their thirst for acceptance, are lending their names and good reputations to a movement over which they have no control and which threatens to plunge the United States into permanent war for permanent war's sake.

And that's the trouble with Brookings.

Chastened Much?

Lawrence Kaplan seems to be.

Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, seems not to be.  Just heard on C-SPAN The Hitch giving us Zarqawi = Hitler.  AND immediately followed by "there WUUH weapons of mahs destrocktion in Iraq!"

Man, does listening to The Hitch bring out the Irish Catholic in me.

Stay Away from the Arab Liberals!

Matt Yglesias wonders whether we shouldn't give some more support and money to liberals in places like Egypt and Pakistan.

We should not.  As several commenters at Matt's have pointed out, the sure fire way to poison anything in the Arab world right now is to stick "Made in the U.S.A." on it.  Leave the poor liberals alone and let them do their thing.  Sort of a "we're from the U.S. government and we're here to help" situation.  With the amount of unfounded conspiracy-mongering that goes on in some corners of the Arab world, all we need to do is create more conspiracy-mongering that is founded.

Which brings me to a question I was glibly discussing with a colleague yesterday.  Given the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories in the Arab world, how come we haven't started our own?  We were just brainstorming, but the thinking went like this:

Leak to al Jazeera that a secret group in Cheney's office was discussing ways to disrupt the Iraq elections so that U.S. troops would be forced to continue to occupy the country and would have time to bring the oil system back up to full production and we could start really pulling some of it out of the ground for a good long time.  How Cheney was freaking out that people thought the elections might come off all right.

Of course, there are at least two problems.  One is that it's far too late.  It would have been interesting, though, to have done this a month ago.

The second problem is that the theory is just plain nuts, but if you've ever heard some of the odder Arab conspiracy theories, it's certainly not that nuts.  It would have been a low-cost project, and who knows, maybe it could have worked.

Michael Rubin, Very Odd Fellow

Ever since he joined up AEI, I've enjoyed (if that's the word) reading Michael Rubin's stuff.  He's not demonstrably a hack like someone like Ledeen or Donnelly, and he speaks Arabic, goes to Iraq.  He and Gerecht.  Of course, I don't think I've agreed with him once, but still.

But this piece is simply too bizarre for words.  There are so many just weird claims in it, I thought I'd have at a few of them here.

The oddest of them all is this passage:

Regardless of the State Department trial balloons, there will be no quick withdrawal from Iraq. Iraq's neighbors all wanted the United States to succeed militarily and fail politically. Their reasons vary: All but Iran fear consolidation of Shiite power. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia worry about a federalist precedent. Iran dreads both democracy and Shiite voices it cannot control emanating from holy cities it does not possess. Both Tehran and Damascus see American withdrawal as an existential threat. Should there be any significant American pullout, Bush would be freer to deploy them against Iran and Syria. Iraq's neighbors will accordingly lend passive if not active support to the insurgents to maintain a low-level conflict in Iraq. American forces may redeploy outside the cities, but they will be needed in Iraq for a long time to come.

I find this very odd.  So Iran and Syria are lending "passive if not active support to the insurgents to maintain a low-level conflict in Iraq" because "Tehran and Damascus see American withdrawal as an existential threat."  So by that logic, given what we're trying to do with those regimes (change them, if I remember correctly), shouldn't we leave Iraq?  Or at least threaten to?  Start heading to Basra and then ask Iran if they're sure they don't want to give up their nuke program?  I understand that part of Rubin's argument is that they would be afraid of U.S. intervention, but still.  Leaving now would seem to codify "succeeding military and failing politically," no?  And that's what they wanted.  But they don't want us to leave now?

Then we get

Iran's continuing support for Al Qaeda, continued Revolutionary Guard consolidation of power, and hardliners set to triumph in Iran's June 2005 presidential elections all increase the likelihood that Iranian-backed terrorists will conduct an operation that would leave Bush little choice but to respond. Recent American requests to station U-2 reconnaissance aircraft in Turkey should be a warning to Tehran.

Okay, but let's just clear one thing up here.  Iran offered cooperation in 2002 on al Qaeda after the Axis of Evil speech and the administration turned it down.  From the WaPo:

Diplomats from Tehran and Washington had been meeting quietly all winter [2002] in New York and Bonn. They found common interests against the Taliban, Iran's bitter enemy. Iranian envoys notified their U.S. counterparts about the 290 arrests and proposed to cooperate against al Qaeda as well. The U.S. delegation sought instructions from Washington.

The delegation's room to maneuver, however, was limited by a policy guideline set shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In late November 2001, the State Department's policy planning staff wrote a paper arguing that "we have a real opportunity here" to work more closely with Iran in fighting al Qaeda, according to Flynt Leverett, a career CIA analyst then assigned to State, who is now at the Brookings Institution and has provided advice to Kerry's campaign. Participants in the ensuing interagency debate said the CIA joined the proposal to exchange information and coordinate border sweeps against al Qaeda. Some of the most elusive high-value targets were living in or transiting Iran, including bin Laden's son Saad, al-Adel and Abu Hafs the Mauritanian.

Representatives of Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fought back. Any engagement, they argued, would legitimate Iran and other historic state sponsors of terrorism such as Syria. In the last weeks of 2001, the Deputies Committee adopted what came to be called "Hadley Rules," after deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, who chaired the meeting. The document said the United States would accept tactical information about terrorists from countries on the "state sponsors" list but offer nothing in return. Bush's State of the Union speech the next month linked Iran to Iraq and North Korea as "terrorist allies."

Twice in the coming year, Washington passed requests for Tehran to deliver al Qaeda suspects to the Afghan government. Iran transferred two of the suspects and sought more information about others.

Iran, in turn, asked the United States, among other things, to question four Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. They were suspects in the 1998 slayings of nine Iranian diplomats in Kabul.

Participants said Bush's divided national security team was unable to agree on an answer. Some believe important opportunities were lost.

"I sided with the Langley guys on that," [Gen. Wayne] Downing said. "I was willing to make a deal with the devil if we could clip somebody important off or stop an attack."

So the Iranians offered their cooperation on al Qaeda, and Rubin's buddies in the administration said no, because they didn't want to "legitimate" Iran.  Keeping Iran "illegitimate" was more important than hundreds of al Qaeda suspects.  I guess Cheney had "other priorities" again.

Second, if you guys want to fight Iran, you go do it.  They haven't attacked us, if we don't provoke them they aren't going to attack us, so don't go dragging U.S. soldiers into another quagmire so that you can write incessantly about how heroic you are because you go outside the Green Zone.

Then Rubin fires up the smear machine to take a hit at Abu Mazen:

While the Israeli government may want peace, the Palestinian leadership values the process more. If aid again fills Palestinian coffers and Palestinian officials are again welcomed in the White House, why make peace? There is neither indication that states like Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran will cease supporting Palestinian terrorism, nor that the new Palestinian leadership has the will to abandon terrorism, especially since any final status agreement would mean accepting the reality that there would be no right of Palestinian return to Israel.

Let me just do one of my tricky little word substitution exercises here and see how things shake out.  Ready?  "If aid [continues to fill Israeli] coffers and [Israeli] officials are again welcomed [to work] in the [Defense Department], why make peace?"

Now, that's a pretty vicious statement, but I'd submit that it's no more odious than Rubin's smear of a man who is taking a bold, courageous stand against terrorism both Israeli and Palestinian.  Rubin's slurs are nothing short of despicable.

Then, Rubin flirts with making a very serious accusation, one I wish he would make publicly:

When the White House inserts political appointees into Foggy Bottom, career Foreign Service officers up to the assistant secretary level simply channel information and decisions away from them. Bush's policies not only threaten the status quo on which professional diplomats' careers have been built, but also the relationships with Arab elites upon which many cash in after retirement.

Now, call me crazy, but this seems like an awfully serious claim.  Are US foreign service officers undermining U.S. foreign policy by accepting money from "Arab elites?"  Does he have examples to back this up?  (If so, the FSOs are remarkably inept and the "Arab elites" aren't getting their money's worth.)  And is the implication here that Arab elites are the ones supporting terrorism?

I'd very much like to see this article teased out a bit.

Drug War Music

My strange viewing habits have caused me to bump into this band whose very title is intriguing to libertarians: Drug War Music.  They're an old school, hard-core, bad-recording-quality-made-up-for-in-intensity punk band.  Their website is here, and their mp3s are here.  My faves (such as they are; be forewarned) are 2 Bombs Too Many and The Milk of Strangers.  In their bios, they have to lay claim to their favorite drug (everything from Paxil to methamphetamine) and their favorite war (the Crimean War to the cola wars).

Bizarre, if nothing else.