All too real
I have been going through the recent report, “Iran: Time for a New Approach” co-chaired by Zbigniew Brzezinski (in charge at National Security during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979) and Robert Gates (involved in Iran-Contra). It makes depressing reading in its call for new talks with the dictators in Iran, since we have done that for 20 years, and should have learned that they lip-synch back only when they feel they have more to gain than lose. Churchill understood that when he put an end to Tory backchannel efforts to talk with ascendant Nazis after the fall of France. And surely we should learn something from the recent Hamas step back and apparent willingness to rethink talking to Israel—given its loss of millions in Western handouts and tough Israel retaliation against Gaza.
Next will come the Baker group report on Iraq—no doubt with more calls to reassure regional dictatorships and to ask them to help “stabilize” Iraq, as if such creepy strongmen would find anything to their advantage in having a successful democracy next door.
And we should remember a few things about the return of “realism” which is really just an academic veneer to the old isolationism. This was a policy that gave us the arming of Osama bin Laden et al. to stop the Soviets in Afghanistan, sort of played Iran off against Iran in their murderous war of the 1980s, abandoned the Kurds, favored the Soviet Gorbachev over the Russian Yeltsin, stopped outside Baghdad and let the Shiites and Kurds be gunned down after urging them to revolt, let Milosevic do his murdering unopposed, and established a revolving door in the Middle East in which former American officials simply went out of office and into great profit by using their past contacts to be rewarded with legal, financial, and arms links to petro-dollar rich dictatorships. Could we not have a simple rule: bar anyone from official duty in American Middle East affairs, Left or Right, who currently or in the past, has had profitable business conducted with the region’s dictatorial governments? De facto, they become suspect when they return in their latest incarnations as senior statesmen. Indeed, it is hard to find very many senior realists who at one time or another have not been consultants, academics, lawyers, salesmen, or investors whose income was not in some way enhanced by Gulf state oil money
As a sidebar: those reformers in the Middle East who used to rail against this realpolitik never said a word in support of recent American efforts to offer a democratic alternative in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to pressure Arab dictatorships to reform. And so when the realist mindset returns, Americans will hardly listen to any of their renewed cries of help, since their train left the station years ago.
Ditto those who now cry for action in Darfur. They were some of the harshest critics of trying to help Iraq, and apparently think we could intervene in the Sudan without the sort of mess that is intrinsic anywhere Westerners must fight jihadists and Islamicists on the ground. Saddam killed just as many innocents as the Muslims did in Darfur, and it would be just as messy in righting that wrong there as it was in Iraq.
Our friends, the Kurds
The Kurds are landlocked, surrounded by Turks and Iranians, often challenged by Iraqi Wahhabists—and booming. With all the talk of Iraq’s “failure” and the need to pull up stakes and call it quits, no one is talking about what happens to Kurdistan, a strong U.S. ally that did everything we have asked of it, and is a model of reform in the Islamic world. Surely, we owe these brave people with a tortured history our continued friendship, and to keep faith to our promises to stabilize Iraq—especially after the debacle of 1991, and of course our earlier realist indifference to their gassing by Saddam. How odd we now contemplate leaving Iraq and the Kurds hanging and getting closer to those of the House of Saud, when the former have offered us only friendship and success at trying to open their economy and establish freedom, and the latter little other than (high-priced oil) and stealthy subsidies for those who have killed us.
Lost in all the campaign rhetoric over the war also is the position of the United States, and its military—if we leave Iraq before it is stabilized. Far from “freeing” up our “overburdened” forces by getting out, we will be instead ensuring that they really will be overworked as crises with Iran and North Korea flare up, and jihadists pour into Afghanistan as Pakistan goes ever more Islamic. In contrast, if the military can defeat the jihadists, train the Iraqis in counter-insurgency, ditto the Kurdish economic model in Iraq and ensure constitutional reform lasts, then opportunistic enemies will hold back. You could have a 5-million-man military after a defeat in Iraq, and it would be kept busy and stretched too thin trying to deal with all the strongmen who thought they smelled weakness and wished to take advantage of American impotence.
Immigration
Language is the keystone to politics. This past week I gave some lectures about illegal immigration. I noticed how the supporters of open borders so often prefer to demonize their opponents as “anti-immigrant”, hoping to reframe the debate into Americans’ supposed animosity against individual arrivals, legal and illegal. And why not when a rational defense of illegal immigration is indefensible? “Undocumented worker” is another favorite. But with 25% of all illegal alien households on entitlements in California, it is hard to think that all aliens are working or simply forgot their documents at the border. “The borders crossed us” is yet another deliberate misnomer, when the vast majority of Mexicans and Mexican-American in the United States cannot trace their family lineage in America past three generations. You get the picture: when an argument is indefensible then language is contorted to do what reason cannot.
Whom do we admire?
How odd that today we admire Ronald Reagan whose coattails never could translate into a House majority, who was nearly destroyed by Iran-Contra, and who left office in uncertainty over whether he had really changed much the Cold War calculus. Harry Truman finished with about a 25% approval rating, winning no credit for the birth of containment. After his crankiness, the Democrats wanted a more “thoughtful” liberal like Adlai Stevenson as their leader. Churchill—demonized after Gallipoli, and ostracized during the 1930s—was then voted out of office in 1945 after saving Britain from its enemies. Lincoln was perhaps the most hated man in the United States by August 1864.
I mention all this because George W. Bush, who won two wars after September 11, and changed the course of U.S. foreign policy to encourage reform abroad, and prevented so far another 9/11 like attack, can obtain a similar respect from history—as long as he realizes two truths: he must persevere, and no more give into realist seducers than did Churchill to those who called for dialoguing with Hitler; and he must accept that he will leave office hated. But if he flip-flops to get his approval ratings back up to 50%, he can be assured that history’s will be no kinder to him than it was to LBJ, Nixon, George Bush Sr., or Bill Clinton.
For all the present gloom, if Bush hangs tough and gets Iraq stabilized, does not appease North Korea and Iran, and sees movement in the Middle East toward more reform, then in 10 years he will be seen as a rarely successful American President.
Outstanding clarity. Thank you. I hope the President heeds your prediction and stands on principle and has learned from history; that he must fight and stand tall regardless of the political winds. It will be a true test of character and timber. We need an Andrew Jackson right now very badly.
Talk about a delightful yet daunting crossroads opportunity for Condi Rice: all she has to do is review the recommendations of her predecessors as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, respectively… and then, for all practical purposes, do the effective opposite, starting by expanding her outreach to Kurdish President Massoud Barzani and congressional allocations to outgoing Senator Rick Santorum’s Iran Freedom Support Act — if my memory of the name for that bill serves me correctly. Even better, Dr. Rice could “covertly” start bankrolling several Iranian pro-democracy groups, enlisting Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran author Kenneth R. Timmerman and would-be Iranian Shah Cyrus Reza Pahlavi to spearhead a pending democratic coup against the ayatollahs, thus consigning Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his fellow messianic mullahs of despicable deception to the eternally fiery trash heap of history, precisely where they belong.
Given Condi’s old mentors’ record, however, I realize that I am a bit less than optimistic about the capacity of her and President Bush to shoot down Jim Baker’s “false,” if that’s the proper term, realism. Thus, I would like to propose a special advisory “dream team” of foreign policy for George Walker Bush during these last two years of his time in the Oval Office: Charles Krauthammer, Robert Spencer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Walter Russell Mead, and, finally, you, Dr. Hanson. As fascinating as I find the “moderate” Republican views that Michael Charles Smith espouses — from social libertarianism to global warming skepticism to economic (justice) concerns — I’m afraid that in the context of current circumstances, such opinions may prevent this Mr. Smith from going to Washington and into the Oval Office come January 2009.
I fear the Long War just got longer and more bloody for us. It seems like history rhyming w The River War,written by young Winston Churchill.
Islam came, again, out of dormancy w the Madhi in Soudan. Egypt, a British concern, was threatened. The Prime Minister and Parliment sent General Gordon to Khartoum and then vacillated support resulting in his death!
Massive killings and slavery occured for 10 years until Parliment got serious. Sidar Kitchner w 20,000 Tommies and Brit-trained Eygptians defeated by 1898 70,000 Islam savages, by railroad, gunboats, denial of food/forage/slaves and technology of British Squares. (Interestingly, France pulled the same tricks as today at Fashoda-to no avail…)
The first time was “cut and run”. The second time was “make it cost prohibitive to Islam”. Islam went dormant for a few decades, but all those slaughtered between the 1st and 2nd wars might, otherwise, have lived…..
Semper Fi,
Jerry R. Cadick
Colonel USMC(ret.)
zbig and gates were not merely associated with iran during their service in the USA, but intimately responsible for the 2 biggest USA foreign policy failures of all time:
the fall of the Shah (and the hiostage crisis) and Iran-Contra.
i feel that part of their posturing ever since has been to cover their butts.
if zbig and gates can convince people/posterity that iran is not really as bad as some claim, then the mistakes they each made are not so important.
this may be an unconscious effort on their part.
iran is the hub of nearly all of our ME problems: they support Assad, Hiballah, and Hamas – AND the Shia militias.
Rather than trying to fix each of these problems first, and THEN trying to tackle Iran, perhaps we should just attack Iran.
If you want to kill an octopus you do not just cut-off tentacles. That just won’t work.
Thanks, VDH! Your writing is required reading for me.
Let’s all pray for Bush to “hang tough.” The “new appeasement” is such a depressing thought.
I am constantly amazed at why this constant “chat” process rears its head up. I don’t know if its a personal agenda in play, a world view, or something else.
Regardless, I still feel as if half the U.S. is in a coma again and that the larger the giant and more successful we become, the harder it is to get our attention, maintain it, and see outside our comfort zone. Surprisingly, is the amount of fighting we have not without being on a “warfooting.”
I think we are in a very bad time that is hard to acknowledge. Oncoming, is an ever more horrific series of disasters that will befall us again, like 9/11, to provide short windows of focused time during which we will have to respond with ever more horrific levels of viciousness in a 100-year cycle of violence to defeat the islamic fascist religious ideology.
The forthcoming report by the Baker group is most depressing. Its members, authors or responsible in great part for a failed, if not disastrous, foreign policy now step to the fore to add to the disasters for which they aleady bear considerable responsibility.
Ever since I read Dobrynin’s memoirs, Zbigniew Brzezinski worries me. He blamed ZB and portrayed him as a kind of spoiler, messing up diplomatic initiatives that could have worked if it wasn’t for Carter’s dithering and reversals. By the time of the 1980 election, the Soviets thought Reagan couldn’t be any worse that Carter was.
Brzezinski, of course, was the guy with the bright idea of creating and training an Islamic resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan, something that ultimately backfired on 9-11, and the fellow who navigated Carter through the hostage crisis in a fashion that weakened America’s standing.
Why should the U.S. rely on ZB’s opinions for solutions to long-term problems? Yet Ambassador James Robbins claims it was the Iranians who pushed for a democratic government in Afghanistan. The chess-playing carpet-weavers are charming, but who knows what cards they have up their sleeve or how they will play them?
VDH:
Outstanding insights, as I find true of most of your work.
Please keep up the good fight, as your work is the source of much-needed historical perspective and Western confidence — two items that are utterly lacking in today’s political and cultural climate.
Excellent column. Frightening, but excellent. Please, please Mr. President…don’t give in.
The problem, of course…is that with apologists/enablers/sycophants on the left…and appeasers/isolationists on the right we become the most disloyal and unreliable of allies.
And when they join hands to achieve a “goal”, check for your wallet and watch.
We give our “word” which apparently means nothing, we take back promises like they were ugly ties bought by distant relatives at a thrift shop.
We abandon people we asked to go out on a limb for our “principles”, then turn the channel to the latest HSN as their limbs are brutally sawed off. (Yawn)
The left skips gleefully as they take “credit” for “taking down” yet another attempt to stand up to worldwide bullies and deliver their vacuous homilies with attendant sanctimonious breastbeating at how it was “all our fault” to begin with.
The isolationists/appeasers on the right take up the left’s drumbeat about how evil Israel and the Jews are aloud (and whisper that Mel Gibson was right, dontcha know, behind closed doors).
And Osama Bin Laden and all the sideline sitters watching Iran and Al-Qaeda get yet one more lesson on how “Americans don’t have stomach for standing up to us”, and further up the ante.
And most sadly of all…those stuck in the center are bypassed by the wildly swinging pendulum of extreme right and extreme left..are utterly unable to get any traction for rational and sane reasoning…because there is absolutely no political framework upon which it might attach.
Sanity….like the Kurds and quite soon, Israel…will be left to twist slowly in the coming cold, cold wind.
I have absolutely no faith in El Busho with regards to the illegal invasion. He’s the one that’s been upfront, holding the Mexican flag and yelling ‘charge.’ I really believe his intention was for the Senate and House especially to lose so he’d have his buddies supporting his disasterous ‘vision.’ He didn’t support certain candidates and I don’t think I’m out of line on this reasoning.
He just put Martinez..the big ol’ author of Amnesty ahead of the Rnc…it’s starting.
and it’s thoroughly depressing.
Cheers to that! Thank you VDH.
Reference “the long war”–I am challenged to think of anything this country has done of late that suggests we can execute anything that requires the discipline involved in a long haul of any kind.
Now instant gratification and feeling good–we’re all over that.
Sometimes I think our “leadership” is firmly stuck somewhere around the third grade of life.
I like what you say about the Kurds, but I’m not sure sure about the ‘reform’ part. Haven’t they always been more moderate in their approach to Islam?
VDH said above: “established a revolving door in the Middle East in which former American officials simply went out of office and into great profit by using their past contacts to be rewarded with legal, financial, and arms links to petro-dollar rich dictatorships. Could we not have a simple rule: bar anyone from official duty in American Middle East affairs, Left or Right, who currently or in the past, has had profitable business conducted with the region’s dictatorial governments? De facto, they become suspect when they return in their latest incarnations as senior statesmen. Indeed, it is hard to find very many senior realists who at one time or another have not been consultants, academics, lawyers, salesmen, or investors whose income was not in some way enhanced by Gulf state oil money”
Exhibit “A” for that sort of behavior would be SoS Rice, former member of the Board of Chevron Corporation (www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ricebio.html).
Dr. Hanson, do you consider SoS Rice to be “suspect”? Should President Bush have considered her views on the Middle East to have been “suspect”?
You hit the proverbial nail on the head with “Language is the keystone to politics” lead in to immigration.
You can’t be more right on that one.
I get very annoyed when the MSM decides to use the language of the open borders crowd.
Good post sir.