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The Neocons' Victory Lap

You've spent years beating the drums for regime change in Iraq.  After years in the political wilderness, 9/11 happens, and you mount a campaign to link Iraq to the attacks, obscure the focus on terrorism and bring troublesome but unrelated states in the Middle East into the country's military sights.  Ultimately, you get your way, precipitating the most significant politico-military setback the country has faced since Vietnam.  What are you going to do next?

Go to a posh resort in the Bahamas, courtesy of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, to collect a $1000 check and plot U.S. strategy against Iran!  Congratulations!

Via Doug Bandow.

Dumbest Response to the Ron Paul Moment

There are any number of candidates, but my nominee comes from an unsurprising source: Jonah Goldberg:

Ron Paul anointed Osama bin Laden the authentic expression of the entire Middle East. “I’m suggesting we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it,” he declared. And: “We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody did it to us.”

So, in other words, Osama bin Laden & Co. get to determine the legitimacy of our policies because these terrorists are the truest expression of the will of the people? Isn’t this a bit like saying a farmer can’t clear a field if it might upset a rattlesnake?

Hm, let's think about this: So we're the farmer, the Middle East is, umm, a field that we're trying to clear, and OBL is a rattlesnake who's obstructing us.  Further, it's abundantly clear from every public opinion survey that's been done in the region since before 9/11 that the vast majority of people in the Islamic world do not want American politico-military domination of their region.  Thankfully, the majority of those folks aren't willing to resort to terrorism to express this desire, but it's clear as day that "the truest expression of the will of the people" stands in direct opposition to the foreign policy Jonah Goldberg favors.

As for the point last night that sent the jingoes into rapturous applause, when we investigate murders, we inquire into what we call "motive."  When we do so, we don't conclude, "Oh, well, Hell, the guy was schtupping his wife!  No wonder!  Let's let him out, then."  Rather, inquiring into motive is useful for indictment, and useful in terms of figuring out crime policies.  (Not a whole hell of a lot you can do policy-wise to deal with wife-schtupping inspired murder, but still.)  Attempting to nail down the "why they hate us" question says exactly nothing to "justify" terrorism.  Our government's policies have been disastrous for the country.  To Jonah Goldberg, that's a controversial point, and worse, one that justifies terrorism against the American people.  It's an insult to Sophists to call this sophistry.

Additional entries/Goldberg snarking welcome in comments.

Or, Maybe We Could Just Shut Up

Via Matt Yglesias, Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations argues that “the best manner of ensuring the cause of disarmament in Iran is to explicitly take the use of force off the table.” Matt remarks, “I agree.” I don’t. Let me explain why.

Takeyh frames the decision as binary: Either come swaggering into the room with your thumbs tucked into your belt loops, chin up, saying something silly like “bring ‘em on,” or, in Takeyh’s telling, there’s a straightforward policy of unilateral, conditionless engagement that Takeyh describes in more detail in this Foreign Affairs piece.

But what Takeyh and Yglesias ignore is that there is another alternative: just shutting up about the military option altogether. It should not need to be said that politicians–and diplomats in particular–are masters at deflection and obfuscation. So it seems to me altogether better just to stop talking about the military option, while leaving the concept, unspoken, to percolate in the mullahs’ minds.

First, the mullahs do not want to be bombed. (You can make an abominably cynical case that they do want to be bombed, in order for them to have an excuse to do away with any domestic dissent and opposition, but I think this is unlikely.) Thus, in any calculation where that unhappy outcome is possible, even if not probable and unspoken, it should bear against any options that would be thought to lead to being bombed.

Second, it seems unlikely that with the military option off the table the mullahs are going to feel all too inclined to make concessions of their own. With it off the table, there are going to be a host of regional implications, the Egyptians and the Saudis seem likely to kick-start their own nuclear programs, the soft panic that’s set in over Iran’s enhanced position in the region seems likely to get worse.

But the real problem with putting the military option on the table is one that Takeyh overlooks: It creates a crisis of credibility, constraining our options should we find ourselves at the threshold of a nuclear Iran. Put another way, if we’ve been waving around the military option, sending multiple carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf to *ahem* “reassure our allies of our commitment to the region,” it’s going to look like a pretty awful, shameful climbdown if you find yourself all of a sudden acquiescing to an Iranian nuclear capability. It serves to constrain your options unless you’re willing to countenance a fairly significant crisis of credibility.

All told, it seems to me that the best thing to do about the military option is neither to put it on the table nor take it off. How about just shutting up about it?

Write Your Own Snarky Headline

I'm not sure what, but there's got to be some sort of esoteric meaning in the fact that the Google ads algorithm came up with this ad for Bill Kristol's "a hawk can still win in 2008" piece for Time:

Ron Jeremy T-shirt $13.99
Ron Jeremy for President 2008 He's a long shot!
In stock Nowwww.Tshirtbordello.com

I've removed the hotlinks from the ad, so no excuses if you type in the URL to go see for yourselves.  You sleazeballs.

More US as Revisionist Power

For another example of a neoconservative expressing the straightforward view that the United States is a revisionist power, go here and click to around 15:00 for Robert Kagan to defend the claim.  It would be really good if we would take into account the fact that others believe this when thinking about how countries will--and should--respond to us.  There seems to be a real disconnect between our own introspective recognition of this fact and a willingness to acknowledge that others can see it, too.

It all sounds alarmingly like waning empire hubris to me.

Update: Ah, it comes later.  At 54:00, we get (paraphrasing) "China is, in a way, the status quo nation and we in the West, the Transatlantic community, are the ones asking for change in the international system.  The Chinese, I think quite understandably say, "Wait a second--we thought this was a Westphalian world: sovereignty is king, that's what the UN Charter is about, and now you're...changing the rules."

It's just not clear to me that the American people are unified behind the idea that we, as the world's sole superpower, need to overturn the very world order that has helped get us where we are.