The Result of Actually Engaging With Other Countries

Iran, in this case, not Cuba.

Shaping the Middle East to become more peaceful may seem a daunting ordeal but not when its people are allowed to speak. In a Feb. 26 election that was really more of a plebiscite, voters in Iran sent a clear message to their controlling clerics. They want Iran to be open to the world, not self-isolating by threatening other countries or barring foreign investment.

I had seen elsewhere that some of those running as reformers were not so much actual reformers. happy to see this then.

(D)espite the stunted democracy, voters were able to triple the number of reformist members in parliament. More important, reformers took a majority in the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with selecting the next supreme leader.

Voters also defeated many hard-line candidates opposed to last July’s nuclear agreement that lifted most sanctions on Iran. Overall, the election results boosted the political strength of President Hassan Rouhani, a centrist who won the 2013 election with the support of moderates and who wants to open the economy and create jobs. 

As someone who is technologically illiterate, this fascinates me. Truly the bright side of the internet. 

They mobilized popular support using a Russian-designed messaging application called Telegram, an encrypted platform used by at least 20 million of Iran’s 77 million people. Activists were forced into operating in cyberspace after a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2009 following a highly rigged election. 

This is a link to the actual news article at CSM on the elections. 

In results announced Monday, a moderate-reformist coalition swept all 30 seats in Tehran for the 290-seat parliament, with the remainder still nearly a 2-to-1 pro-Rouhani advantage and 59 seats subject to a runoff.

Pro-Rouhani ayatollahs also won 15 of the 16 Tehran seats in the Assembly of Experts, squeezing out two hard-liners in the 88-member clerical body that will choose the next supreme leader.

I trust voters in this country will remember what party was so obstructionist in regards to the Iran nuclear deal. 

Tea Party and other conservatives had hoped to make their gathering in Washington on Wednesday a clarion call to rally against the Iran nuclear deal, drawing on the star power of Donald J. Trump, the rhetoric of Senator Ted Cruz and a cast of 40 or so supporting characters speaking on a stage with the United States Capitol looming in the background.

I am so looking forward to seeing Hillary debate one of these LOSERS.

More Evidence Against Bush and Blair

What the post title says.

Tony Blair went to war in Iraq despite a report by South African experts with unique knowledge of the country that showed it did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to a book published on Sunday.

God, Spies and Lies, by South African journalist John Matisonn , describes how then president Thabo Mbeki tried in vain to convince both Blair and President George W Bush that toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 would be a terrible mistake.

Mbeki’s predecessor, Nelson Mandela, also tried to convince the American leader, but was left fuming that “President Bush doesn’t know how to think”.

The claim was this week supported by Mbeki’s office, which confirmed that he pleaded with both leaders to heed the WMD experts and even offered to become their intermediary with Saddam in a bid to maintain peace.

So, not being able to think is Bush's excuse. What's Blair's? 

Bacevich on the Iran Deal

This is kinda long so I'll probably just link to it mostly.

The nuclear deal that the United States and five other world powers signed with Iran is a means to an end, not the end in itself. In that regard, the pact, scheduled for formal adoption on Oct. 19, necessarily rates as a high-risk proposition. If the agreement succeeds, it may mark a first step toward restoring some semblance of stability to the Greater Middle East, thereby allowing the US to lower its profile there. If it fails, the current disorder may in retrospect seem tame.

I try to think positive. 

US military involvement in the Greater Middle East, dating as far back as the abortive peacekeeping mission in Lebanon during the early 1980s, has been counterproductive. Whether in Iraq or Libya, Somalia or Afghanistan, it has never produced the results promised or expected.

Obama’s acceptance of the risks inherent in the JCPOA constitutes a de facto admission that the attempt to impose order on this region through the application of hard power has failed. Period. Full stop.

Simply trying harder – more bombs or more boots on the ground – won’t produce a more favorable outcome. In effect, the verdict is in: The militarization of US policy in the Islamic world has reached a dead end.

Amen.

There are certain tasks that exceed the capabilities of even the world’s sole superpower and that should therefore be left to others. Managing the Greater Middle East is one of those things.

Prominent among those “others” who share an interest in preventing further regional disintegration are Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq (if it ever manages to get its act together). While the regimes controlling these several nations disagree about many things, they are all fundamentally committed to the status quo. That is, unlike Islamic State, Al Qaeda, or any of their offshoots, they are committed to preserving rather than destroying the existing system of nation-states within (more or less) their existing borders.

Obama is betting that Iran also qualifies as a status quo nation – or, if it is not presently, that it can be coaxed into becoming one. The impetus behind the bet is quite clear. Only by restoring Iran to its rightful place among regional heavyweights – as a player, not simply as a spoiler – will it be possible for a stable equilibrium of power to emerge. 

In other words, making lemonade out the big pile of rotten lemons left by his predecessor. 

Two of Hometown's Usual Topics

Sorry Matt, you didn't make the cut today. First up, more on the Iran deal. This is Josh Marshall with a post on something I've mentioned here from time to time.

It's not so much surprising, if you've been paying attention. But it confirms a basic reality, which is that the hysteria from Benjamin Netanyahu, much of the Israeli political establishment, purportedly 'pro-Israel' conservatives in the US, and others, was never shared by the Israeli defense establishment and, in a real sense, was manufactured BS meant to leverage the U.S. political climate.

I've been paying attention and it's therefore no surprise, but I never get tired of seeing it verified. Since Marshall links to a piece on Benny Gantz, I'll include the hysteria link. 

“I refuse to get hysterical” about the nuclear deal, he told a gathering of policymakers and analysts in Washington DC Friday morning, in likely reference to official Israel’s excoriation of the agreement.

While Gantz, who ended his tenure as IDF chief in February, said a better deal may have been possible, he also acknowledged the final agreement’s success in putting off a nuclear-armed Iran for at least 10-15 years. Diplomacy, he said, had prevented war from breaking out.

Thanks Josh. Thanks Benny. And thanks John Cole for bringing me some gunwingnuttery that's been missing from the blog lately. Here's the latest victim of political correctness directed at the poor misunderstood gun owner. 

Over the weekend, a soldier with the National Guard was told to leave his gun outside of the Nicholasville Waffle House or he wouldn’t be served. The situation is now getting national attention.

Billy Welch said that he stopped at the Waffle House Sunday morning for breakfast. He was in his 

Army National Guard uniform and had his gun holstered to his side. After ordering his food, Welch said that a waitress signaled for him to come over.

"I got up and I walked over to them, asked them how they were doing and stuff, and they said I'd have to take my firearm outside,” said Welch. "I don't feel comfortable taking my firearm away from me. I always keep it with me and they said, ‘it's one of our policies.’"

In fairness, it was not the soldier who made a big deal of it. He seemed cool about it all. One of his fellow diners is the one that sent it viral. I can see the logic of not leaving a weapon in your vehicle. But I can see not walking around with one strapped to your hip everywhere you go, as well. I am relieved to know that if I want waffles in Kentucky I can dine in a gun-free establishment. 

The Iranian Tea Party

Yes, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz would feel right at home in the Iranian Parliament. Extremism is extremism.

 The Iranian foreign minister's reported handshake with US President Barack Obama triggered chants of "Death to America" in Tehran's parliament Wednesday and a warning against "another kind of spying".

The foreign ministry has confirmed a "completely accidental" encounter between Obama and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, without denying there was a handshake as reported by Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency.

But hardline lawmakers went on the offensive against Zarif.

C'mon, isn't that "Death to America" thing just so 1980's?

The Saudis Look to Have a Vietnam

The Saudis and the members of their coalition in Yemen aren't so experienced the whole intervention in other countries thing. They're likely to get experienced fast.

Saudi Arabia’s newfound military prowess and interventionist policy is being put to the test in the battle for central Yemen, with rising casualties posing a challenge to public support for the war.

For Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Arab Gulf allies, the military campaign in Yemen’s central province of Marib is their largest in more than 80 years and for some members of the coalition, their first real taste of war.

The fact that former President Hadi of Yemen is a guest of the Saudis and is kicking back waiting to be re-installed in his former job suggests to me this ain't gonna go well. 

And casualties have risen. Shortly before the ground invasion, a Houthi rocket attack on a military base outside Marib on Sept. 4 killed 60 Gulf troops, including 45 Emirati soldiers, according to official news agencies in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

“I think the biggest question is the sustainability of casualties – UAE, Kuwait and Qatar – these societies really haven’t suffered casualties in foreign wars in the living memory of anyone,” Mr. Gause said.

Hearts and minds still matter.

“The public debate in the Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain is very simple: action in Yemen is not only to save Yemen from the hand of Houthi militia control, it is rather an important part of an overdue regional, Arab confrontation with Iran,” says Mustafa Alani, director of national security at the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Center

“Winning in Yemen is a key battlefield in the wide war against Iran aggressive policy,” he says. “Coalition forces understand the cost of this confrontation, and the possibility of high causalities in certain areas.”

Yes, well if they truly want to take on Iran, they better get used to casualties. The Iranians already know about suffering them. 

The death toll, overall, was an estimated 1 million for Iran and 250,000-500,000 for Iraq.

I suspect none of these coalition countries are prepared to sacrifice numbers like that. 

There Have to Be Clowns

I went looking for this knowing that Trump and Cruz were involved. What a bonus to find that La Palin is also getting into the act. Will she never go away?

Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz will join forces Wednesday afternoon with Sarah Palin and others at a rally against the Iran nuclear deal.

The rally is expected to draw thousands of anti-Iran, anti-Obama protestors, though White House allies on Tuesday secured enough votes to protect the deal from a congressional backlash.

And despite that star power:

On Tuesday, three more Democratic senators announced support. That brought the tally to 41 — far more than the 34 needed to back a presidential veto if Congress sends Obama a resolution disapproving the deal.

That’s also enough to block such a resolution from coming to a vote at all.

Oh, in case those three leading lights of the GOP weren't enough, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Louie Gohmert will also be there. Sets my heart aflutter. 

Gotcha Questions on Fox News?

In addition to taking out Iran's chief rival and screwing up the balance of power:

At the time, in response to Iran’s nuclear program, the Bush/Cheney administration did nothing – except, of course, strengthen Iran’s regional power by invading Iraq.

With this in mind, Fox News’ Chris Wallace reminded Cheney over the weekend that Iran “went from zero known [nuclear] centrifuges in operation to more than 5,000.” The Republican’s response was extraordinary.

The Fox News host flashed that data on screen so no one could miss it, and added: “So in fairness, didn’t you leave – the Bush-Cheney administration – leave President Obama with a mess?” 

“Well, I don’t think of it that way,” Cheney countered. […] “But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000,” Wallace pressed.

“Well, they may well have gone but that happened on Obama’s watch, not on our watch,” Cheney replied.

That’s the exact opposite of the truth, as Wallace, to his credit, quickly reminded the former V.P. Iran’s nuclear program blossomed, not under President Obama, but during the Bush/Cheney era.

Nice work, Chris Wallace!

More Letters to Chuckles the Neocon

Just dashed off a letter to the Post Star in response to a recent Krauthammer column. I'll just link to his nastiness. It's not worth cutting and pasting any of it here. It leaves a slime trail. Anyway:

I'd like to respond to Charles Krauthammer's latest column in which he has the heebie-jeebies over Russia. He states, "Eastern Europe has been begging NATO to station permanent bases on its territory as a tripwire guaranteeing a powerful NATO/U.S. response to any Russian aggression." He points out that our allies in NATO are not willing to put these bases in. Then he states that Russia knows, "what stands in the way of westward expansion was not Europe, living happily in decadent repose, but the U.S. as guarantor of Western security."

     

The countries of Eastern Europe have my sympathy if they are truly in danger of being annexed by their neighbor. I'd bet that not one in a million Americans (including me) can find Lithuania or Estonia on a map, though. And if it doesn't concern the West Europeans enough to get them to set down their Beaujolais and respond, then I don't know why the residents of upstate New York should get excited.

     

The Russians died by the tens of millions fighting the Nazis, so I'd like to think that even if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz get elected, we're not going to get into a real war against them. So, maybe his problem is that we're not making enough empty threats. Congrats to him on making it through a column without mentioning Adolph Hitler, Munich or Neville Chamberlain. One day at a time.

     
As for the snide remark about the president's library being located in Havana, I'll just say hats off to Obama for putting an end to that foolishness with Cuba. Maybe Doctor Krauthammer can prescribe himself some Prozac if nightmares of Cubans attacking have him as jittery as the fear of a second world nation like Russia. 

I don't like wingnuts in my morning paper. I've tried them and I don't like them one bit.

I'm going to tack this on as well. Pretty sure I'm going to see this "political legitimacy" thing come up. already seen the "people are against it 2 to 1" meme from Chuckles himself.

Letter to Chuckles the Neoclown

My local paper has the unfortunate poor taste to run Charles Krauthammer's column. I know. Barf. Right? Anyway, this is a response to his latest missive against Dear Leader's plan to arm the Iranians. Oh wait, that was Ron Reagan. I didn't want the link that long, but I'm simple-minded. Anyway, the letter.

I'd like to respond to Charles Krauthammer's dismissal of the Iran nuclear agreement. He states that two out of three Americans oppose the deal, as support for his position. Let's just note that in March 2003 nearly two of three supported going to war in Iraq. The wisdom of the masses seems easily swayed by propaganda and fear mongering, the realm of the punditocracy.

Recently, three dozen retired generals and admirals wrote to the Washington Post. They write that the agreement is "the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons." The Israeli Defense Forces just released an overview of its strategic doctrine that barely mentions Iran. They're certainly not on the same page as Prime Minister Netanyahu. Many in Israeli intelligence reportedly feel the agreement will do what it's designed to do: keep Iran from nuclear weapons for at least a decade.

In any case, if the accord is rejected by Congress, what are the effects? It already has the blessing of our partners: England, France, Germany, Russia and China, plus the U.N. They're not going back to the table; they've already made moves to resume trade. Are unilateral sanctions going to hurt anyone other than U.S. manufacturers and farmers?

As one of three voices crying in the wilderness, I'd urge Congresswoman Stefanik to "listen to the generals" and not to AIPAC.

Peter Beinart Day

First up, I do remember Beinart as a big supporter of George Bush's misadventure in Iraq, so I'm happy to see him writing this here.

I supported the Iraq War enthusiastically. I supported it because my formative foreign-policy experiences had been the Gulf War and the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, all of which led me to exaggerate the efficacy of military force and downplay its risks. As Iraq spiraled into disaster, I felt intellectually unmoored. When my sister-in-law was deployed there for a year, leaving her young daughter behind, I was consumed with guilt that I had contributed to their hardship. To this day, when I walk down the street and see a homeless veteran, I feel nauseous. I give some money and a word of thanks, and think about offering an apology. But I don’t, because there’s no apology big enough. The best I can do is learn from my mistake. These days, that means supporting the diplomatic deal with Iran.

Of course, some neo-cons never change their tune. They're always singing about Munich and Chamberlain.

 When it comes to Iran, the debate is almost entirely a la carte. It’s as if there are no relevant precedents (except, perhaps, Munich). Again and again, pundits who championed the invasion of Iraq—people like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer—appear on television advocating the same worldview they advocated in 2002 and 2003, and get to pretend that nothing has happened over the last 15 years to throw that worldview into question. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which championed the invasion of Iraq (which is not to suggest, as some have, that AIPAC caused it), can mount a mammoth lobbying campaign against the Iran deal without being asked why, given its track record, anyone should listen to it this time. 

And here the only question is "Good God, why don't they?"

If Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Benjamin Netanyahu knew that before denouncing the Iran deal they’d be required to account for their views on Iraq, they might not show up in the green room. If they did, their television appearances would take a radically different course from the course they generally take today.

Speaking of the Reich, here's a Beinart article stating that Iran actually is not equivalent to Nazi Germany. Democrats are also not equivalent to Republicans, but that's another topic for another day.

 The Iranian regime has been in power for 36 years. It governs a Jewish population of between 10,000 and 25,000. Life for Iranian Jews is not easy. They cannot express any sympathy for Israel. Indeed, they must go out of their way to reject Zionism lest they confirm regime suspicions about their loyalty. And those suspicions sometimes descend into outright persecution,as happened in 1999 in the city of Shiraz, when 13 Jews were imprisoned for several years on charges of spying for Israel.

But while Iran’s Jews are not free, neither is their government trying to kill them. Three and a half decades after the Islamic Revolution, Iran boasts perhaps 60 functioning synagogues, along with multiple kosher butchers and Jewish schools. The regime recently erected a monument to Jews who died fighting in the Iran-Iraq War. When former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust, the leader of Iran’s Jewish community publicly reprimanded him. Perhaps most tellingly, a substantial Jewish community remains in Iran, despite being allowed to leave.

Sorry Mike Huckabee, not an oven or oven door in sight. Watch kids! This is how you cut and paste like a doctor of political science. 

While Iran supports Hezbollah and Hamas, it has not done everything in its power to help them kill Israelis. Not even close. To the contrary, the regime’s apparent fear of Israeli retaliation generally has led it to exhibit the very restraint that Huckabee, Cruz, and Netanyahu insist it would not show once it has the bomb.

Consider a few examples. In his book Unthinkable, the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack notes that although Iran likely has biological weapons, it has not given them to Hezbollah. In 1982, when Lebanese Shia leaders asked Iran to send troops to repel Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, refused. In 1996, Iran pressured Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire with Israel. And as Trita Parsi notes in his indispensable book on Iranian-Israeli relations, Treacherous Alliance, Israel’s then-defense minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, even praised Tehran for its efforts to return Israeli soldiers that Hezbollah had captured. In 2001, according to Parsi, leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad vented frustration that Iran was not offering them greater assistance during the Second Intifada. And in 2003, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran offered the United States a grand bargain that included an offer to cut ties to Hamas and Islamic Jihad and pressure Hezbollah to shut down its military wing if the United States ended sanctions and restored diplomatic ties.

Great countries need great enemies, so Iran had to be built into the new Goliath. 

As Parsi argues convincingly, Israeli claims about Iran’s genocidal intent only began more than a decade after the Islamic Republic was established. They occurred not in response to any change in Tehran’s rhetoric or behavior, but in response to a fundamental shift in the strategic landscape. In the 1980s, Israeli anxieties had centered on Saddam’s Iraq, which was geographically closer to Israel and with Soviet help had built the world’s fourth-largest army. But in the early 1990s, Saddam’s power collapsed. Iraq lost its major patron when the U.S.S.R. fell, was humiliated in the Gulf War, and became the subject of global sanctions. It was only then that Israeli leaders began describing Iran as the primary danger—a perception that grew after the United States toppled Saddam in 2003, creating a political vacuum that pro-Iranian forces filled. In the words of retired Israeli Brigadier General Shlomo Brom, “Nothing special happened with Iran, but because Iraq was removed, Iran started to play a greater role in the threat perception of Israel.”

Netanyahu is not alone in his propaganda against the Iranians, but he does have many who disagree with him.

But while Netanyahu has responded to this shift by describing Iran’s leaders as Nazis (an analogy he previously reserved for Palestinians), many in the Israeli security establishment have not. In their view, Iran has grown in power, which makes it a more potent adversary. But it is today no more genocidal than it was when Israel assisted it during the Iran-Iraq War. Contrary to Netanyahu, top Israeli security officials don’t believe Iran’s leaders are so fanatically determined to kill Jews that they would launch a nuclear attack that could bring about their own destruction. Meir Dagan, who ran Israel’s external spy agency, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has called the Iranian regime “rational.” Benny Gantz, who led the Israel Defense Forces from 2011 to 2015, has said “the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.” Dan Halutz, who led the IDF from 2005 to 2007, believes that “Iran poses a serious threat but not an existential one.” He is joined in that view by another former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, who earlier this year argued that “we are not in a Holocaust situation. … I do not believe there is an existential threat to Israel” from Iran.

Moving onto the success of the surge which is such a prominent theme on the Right. That story is necessary for the resurrection of the neo-cons who are harder to kill than vampires and just as blood thirsty.

As George W. Bush’s administration drew to an end, the brand of ambitious, expensive, Manichaean, militaristic foreign policy commonly dubbed “neoconservative” seemed on the verge of collapse. In December 2006, the Iraq Study Group, which included such Republican eminences as James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Ed Meese, and Alan Simpson, repudiated Bush’s core approach to the Middle East. The group not only called for the withdrawal from Iraq by early 2008 of all U.S. combat troops not necessary for force protection. It also proposed that the United States begin a “diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions,” with the government of Iran, which Bush had included in his “axis of evil,” and that it make the Arab-Israeli peace process, long scorned by hawks, a priority. Other prominent Republicans defected too. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon called the president’s Iraq policy “absurd” if not “criminal.” George Will, the dean of conservative columnists, deemed neoconservatism a “spectacularly misnamed radicalism” that true conservatives should disdain.

How short are people's memories in this country? Turn off the fuckin' Duck Dynasty!

Today, hawkishness is the hottest thing on the American right. With the exception of Rand Paul, the GOP presidential contenders are vying to take the most aggressive stance against Iran and the Islamic State, or ISIS. The most celebrated freshman Republican senator is Tom Cotton, who gained fame with a letter to Iran’s leaders warning that the United States might not abide by a nuclear deal. According to recent polls, GOP voters now see national security as more important than either cultural issues or the economy. More than three-quarters of Republicans want American ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq, and a plurality says that stopping Iran’s nuclear program requires an immediate military strike.

Cutting to the chase: the surge was a military success that did not lead to the necessary political success. But of course, most on the Right are more interested in things that go boom than they are in negotiated deals. 

The surge was not intended merely to reduce violence. Reducing violence was a means to a larger goal: political reconciliation. Only when Iraq’s Sunni and Shia Arabs and its Kurds all felt represented by the government would the country be safe from civil war. As a senior administration official told journalists the day Bush announced the surge, “The purpose of all this is to get the violence in Baghdad down, get control of the situation and the sectarian violence, because now, without it, the reconciliation that everybody knows in the long term is the key to getting security in the country—the reconciliation will not happen.”

But although the violence went down, the reconciliation never occurred. 

Anyway, my scissors are getting dull and my only real goal is to bookmark this for my own future reference. Anyone stopping by feel free to go read all.

Lots of Links on the Middle East

Despite the United States, Iraq seems to maybe be cobbling together a government.

Iraq’s parliament has passed the most sweeping political reforms in the country’s post-Saddam history, prompting euphoria over the ability of peaceful public protests to bring about meaningful change.

In the midst of a sweltering summer, public protests in Baghdad, Basra, and other cities over corruption and a lack of services have provided Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi a mandate to cut across sectarian and political lines and push through the drastic changes.

Demands for change by Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sealed the deal, allowing quick cabinet approval and an unprecedented unanimous vote Tuesday in Iraq’s fractious parliament.

The reforms would eliminate multiple positions of vice president and deputy prime minister traditionally negotiated between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds as well as other senior posts for political appointees. Up to a dozen government ministries would also be cut.

Then there is the effort to bring peace, or at least less war, to Syria. 

More than two dozen people were killed in airstrikes in and around the Syrian capital Damascus early Wednesday, casting doubt on an already shaky premise of an Iranian-led peace initiative. 

The attacks — a combination of rebel shelling and government airstrikes — came just hours before the scheduled arrival of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif. He was expected to speak about Iran’s prospective four-point peace plan for ending Syria’s grinding four-year civil war, which is said to include a cease-fire and “national unity government,” the Associated Press reports. 

...

Recent negotiations aimed at achieving the cease-fire in Zabadani, which lies northwest of Damascus, and in the northern villages of Foua and Kfarya were seen as consistent with an evolving Iran-backed plan to contract the territory controlled by Assad to manageable dimensions, The Christian Science Monitor has reported.

Assad will soon control just Damascus. Or possibly the ground he stands on. 

The group United Against A Nuclear Iran lost its president. 

When the bipartisan advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran decided last week to mobilize opposition against the nuclear deal with Tehran, their president, Gary Samore stepped down, The New York Times reported.

Mr. Samore, a former nuclear adviser to President Obama, initially felt “chances of a successful negotiation were dim. But after the framework of an accord was announced in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April, he praised it as a good step,” The Times noted. “I think President Obama’s strategy succeeded,” he told the Times.

And as Shaw points out at Progressive Eruptions, we need to listen to the generals. 

Three dozen retired generals and admirals released an open letter Tuesday supporting the Iran nuclear deal and urging Congress to do the same.

Calling the agreement “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the letter said that gaining international support for military action against Iran, should that ever become necessary, “would only be possible if we have first given the diplomatic path a chance.”

And hating on Iran creates strange bedfellows: Israelis and Saudis embracing on enemy of my enemy basis. 

For now, any peace feelers are based on what Israel and Saudi Arabia jointly oppose, not what they might gain in benefits from friendly relations. And that list only gets longer.

For starters, they do not like the Iran nuclear deal based on their concern that it might embolden Iran and its militant proxies in the Middle East, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to rebels in Yemen. But they also worry about a collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and the rise of Islamic State and other jihadi groups. And preventing Hamas in Gaza from starting another war with Israel is also in their interest.

Ain't love grand?

Schumer's Iran Stance

I considered that maybe Chuck Schumer was taking the position against the Iran deal for political purposes and James Fallows is of that opinion as well. I was confident that Schumer's years in the Senate had given him the ability to count votes.

How can a powerful Democrat’s opposition be a good sign? Because it suggests that Schumer has already calculated that the administration can do without his vote.

Congress would have to override the veto, which requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers—and this is what the Democrats, even in their diminished numbers, should still be able to blockwith some votes to spare.

Schumer doesn’t put it this way, but obviously he is hoping that one of those spare votes will be his. His life will be easier in many ways—in minimizing hassle during his upcoming reelection run in New York, and thus maximizing his efforts to help other Democratic candidates so that he has a chance of becoming Senate majority rather than minority leader—if he doesn’t have to spend time explaining away a vote for the deal to his conservative and AIPAC-aligned constituents. If the deal goes through despite Schumer’s opposition, people who support the deal won’t care, and those who oppose it can blame evil Barack rather than valiant Chuck.

Gotta love realpolitik!

More Fallows on Iran in his coverage of the president's defense of the plan. 

The real-world context for Obama’s certainty on these points is his knowledge that in the rest of the world, this agreement is not controversial at all.

Imagine that.

There is practically no other big strategic point on which the U.S., Russia, and China all agree—but they held together on this deal. (“I was surprised that Russia was able to compartmentalize the Iran issue, in light of the severe tensions that we have over Ukraine,” Obama said.) The French, Germans, and British stayed together too, even though they don’t always see eye-to-eye with America on nuclear issues. High-stakes measures don’t often get through the UN Security Council on a 15-0 vote; this deal did.

And the loyal opposition?

“The fact that there is a robust debate in Congress is good,” he said in our session. “The fact that the debate sometimes seems unanchored to facts is not so good. ... [We need] to return to some semblance of bipartisanship and soberness when we approach these problems.” (I finished this post while watching the Fox News GOP debate, which gave “semblance of bipartisanship and soberness” new meaning.)

Obama's beliefs on the results of the deal.

Iran is the latest expression of a deep, ancient, powerful culture that’s different than ours. And we don’t know how it’s going to play itself out. But as I said before, it’s not necessary for us to be optimistic in order for us to assess the value of this deal. If you believe that Tehran will not change, and the latest version of the current supreme leader is in charge 10, 15 years from now … you’d still want this deal. In fact, you want this deal even more.

The fantasy, the naiveté, the optimism, is to think that we reject this deal and somehow it all solves itself with a couple of missile strikes—that is not sound foreign policy.

There's too much to pick and choose from so just go read it all and anything else that Fallows has written on Iran or anything else. 

Yes, Rejection Likely Will Lead to War

No, not right away.

"Let's not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war," he said during a foreign policy address at American University in Washington Wednesday. "Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon."

I'm a traditionalist and a sucker for that old-time diplomacy ( a Conservative, if you will).

In his American University speech Wednesday, Obama likened today’s situation regarding Iran – in particular the promise he sees in the nuclear agreement hammered out over two years of tough multilateral negotiations – to the lessening of nuclear arsenals and tensions between the US and the former Soviet Union.

“Under Democratic and Republican presidents, new agreements were forged: A nonproliferation treaty that prohibited nations from acquiring nuclear weapons, while allowing them to access peaceful nuclear energy, the SALT and START treaties, which bound the United States and the Soviet Union to cooperation on arms control,” he said. “Not every conflict was averted, but the world avoided nuclear catastrophe, and we created the time and the space to win the cold war without firing a shot at the Soviets.”

And, I shit you not, this is what the Right has to say:

Opponents of the Iran nuclear deal were quick to react to Obama’s speech, which did not mince words in its criticism of congressional critics – accusing them of “magnifying threats” and “playing on people’s fears.”

Yes, the party of " the smoking gun coming in the form of a mushroom cloud" along with other outrageous propaganda is accusing Obama of hyperbole. Fuckwits, as we say  at Hometown. BTW, the suggestion I got for fuckwits is kiwifruit. Maybe I should use that instead. 

 “As Congress and the American people review this deal, President Obama’s rhetoric is raising far more questions than answers,” Cory Fritz, spokesman for Republican House Speaker John Boehner, said in a statement. “Instead of offering facts and proving this deal will make America safer, the president is relying on partisan attacks, false claims, and fear.”

Open your eyes and ears, Mr. Fritz. The president has absolutely answered your questions. The fact that the opponents don't want to hear the answers is irrelevant. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Trolls Israel

And good for him.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says now that his country has accepted strict curbs on its nuclear program, it’s time for Israel and the world's other nuclear powers to begin their disarmament.

Nukes are useless and the military has long known that. And either Israel or the US could easily destroy Iran with just conventional weapons. 

Bruce Riedel, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution, contends in a column for Al-Monitor that Israel is the country that started the nuclear arms race in the region. “Some have argued the Vienna deal will start a nuclear arms race in the region,” he said. “In fact, a nuclear arms race has been underway in the Middle East for 65 years. Israel won it.”

Mr. Riedel asserts that Israel has a right to develop a nuclear arsenal since it has been at war since its birth. But, he said suggesting that Israel is an impotent defenseless country is not correct, adding that the country has been benefiting from “enormous amounts of American intelligence and military support.”

Since the Hometown blog always believes in giving credit where it's due, in addition to shame where it's due, kudos to Ami Ayalon. 

I spoke recently with Ami Ayalon, a former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, and a former chief of the Israeli Navy. Even as he explained that the issue “is not black and white,” he reeled off a list of former defense ministers and chiefs of Shin Bet and Mossad who agree with him that “when it comes to Iran's nuclear capability, this [deal] is the best option.”

“When negotiations began, Iran was two months away from acquiring enough material for a [nuclear] bomb. Now it will be 12 months,” Ayalon says, and the difference is significant to anyone with a background in intelligence. “Israelis are failing to distinguish between reducing Iran’s nuclear capability and Iran being the biggest devil in the Middle East,” he says.

Why has the response been more emotional than logical? “It’s very easy to play with fears in a fearful society,” he says.

Had to include that last line for the bed-wetters in the Grand Old Party which is given a right good thrashing by William Saletan here. There is really too much good stuff to pick and choose, so just go see it in all its glory. Also, got the Daily Beast link from him. Thank you for that. 

Oh fine, here's a soupçon (Hometown Word of the Day): 

If Republicans win the White House next year, they’ll almost certainly control the entire federal government. Many of them, running for president or aspiring to leadership roles in Congress, are trying to block the nuclear deal with Iran. This would be a good time for these leaders to show that they’re ready for the responsibilities of national security and foreign policy. Instead, they’re showing the opposite. Over the past several days, congressional hearings on the deal have become a spectacle of dishonesty, incomprehension, and inability to cope with the challenges of a multilateral world.

We Want More!

Why can't we Americans be satisfied with having and consuming more than anyone in the world?

 “Sure I’d like a better deal – I’d like a pony, too, but it’s not realistic,” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of nonproliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif. “The most important thing now is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon in the next 10 to 15 years, and this deal does that.”

Director of Snark, I'd say. What say you, Mr. Dubowitz?

Iran could go ahead and implement its commitments under the deal, he says. It could also “abandon its commitments” and escalate it nuclear program. Or it could try to do both, complying with certain commitments while abandoning others – and thus attempt to divide world powers while advancing its nuclear program.

But under any of those scenarios, Dubowitz says, the US could work to “persuade the Europeans to join the US” in demanding a renegotiation of key parts of the deal.

On a cold day in Hell. 

Yet many regional experts say that prospects for wooing the Europeans to join the US in pressing for a tougher deal, if Congress rejects the one now before it, are dim.

“European and Asian partners would feel frustrated and misled” in the wake of a US rejection of the deal, Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the House Armed Services Committee this week. European allies would likely join countries like China and India in investing in Iran’s energy sector, he added.

“Broadly, the action would create distance between the US and the world and diminish distance between Iran and the world,” Dr. Alterman added, “after more than a decade when the reverse was the case.” 

Or you could just put it that way. 

“We had a ‘better deal’ in Iraq after 1991 [following the Gulf War], there were no restrictions, inspectors could go where they wanted when they wanted, and that deal wasn’t good enough,” says Dr. Lewis, adding that “we still went to war. So really I don’t believe them when they say they just want a ‘better deal’ this time.”

Other doubters of the sincerity of the seekers of a “better deal” say it’s telling to note that the sponsor of the TV ad campaign demanding a better deal is a group called Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, which is backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel organization lobbying Congress hard for the deal’s defeat.

You doubt the sincerity of AIPAC? Yeah, me too. 

Today In CSM

Can we at least get the Turks and the Kurds to make peace? I don't know how we ever get peace between a lot of other factions that are fighting if we can't even get the two of them to agree to fight against IS and not each other. This link is for the summary of who hates who and make things nearly as clear as mud.

To sum up: The US is bombing IS to help the Kurds – whom it views as allies – and the government in Baghdad. The US is generally avoiding attacks on the Syrian regime as a lesser of two evils. Turkey, meanwhile, is enthusiastically bombing the Kurds and only reluctantly going after IS, while lusting to set its sets on the government in Damascus. Turkey doesn't trust Baghdad and its burgeoning military relationship with Iran.

The Sunni Arab monarchies in the US coalition also can't stand the Baghdad government, which they view as oppressing the country's Sunni Arab minority, and are far less interested in fighting IS than Assad's government, which they view as an Iranian proxy that is oppressing Syria's Sunni Arab majority. Iran wants to destroy the Islamic State, particularly in Iraq, but the Islamic Republic and its Hezbollah allies from Lebanon also desperately want to shore up the Syrian regime.

The Islamic State wants to slaughter everyone who doesn't agree with them. The Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, though slightly more restrained than the cartoonishly savage IS fighters, feels likewise. Meanwhile, the trickle of Free Syrian Army fighters the US is training aren't fighting anyone much at all, at least not yet. 

Yes, Turkey is bombing our allies in the fight against IS. And in other news of people doing shit to hurt their own interests, there is the US Congress who can't wrap their minds around the idea that we don't run the world. 

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush played down diplomacy in favor of isolation and military action – unilateral American action if necessary – for dealing with rogue states like Iraq and Iran.

The approach never won the broad support of global powers, instead leaving the United States essentially isolated and criticized, rather than supported, as it sought to address the regime of Saddam Hussein. When Mr. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, America was left to largely go it alone.

We did have allies, but they were few and far between. Back to CSM and the fact that the rest of the world is not waiting on our Congress to give its OK to the deal.

Three European powers, Russia, and China – are already moving forward with Iran based on an assumption that the nuclear deal is done and sanctions on Iran will start to be lifted by the fall. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was in Tehran last week, and European businesses are flooding into Iran to secure a slice of the anticipated boom as the government starts spending in big-ticket projects again.

So the rest of the world is going to be free to trade with the Iranians and the only thing we are left with is the likelihood (especially if we have a Rep president) of going to war with Iran.

The rest of the international community would blame the deal’s failure on the US, Secretary Kerry says. Other powers would lift their sanctions, and Iran, freed from both sanctions and constraints on its nuclear program, would ramp up its uranium enrichment – raising again the specter of military action to halt Iran’s nuclear progress.

But at least we'll always have Israel.

Some Middle East experts worry that rejection of the deal would leave the US and Israel isolated, both in the region and internationally. That is especially true as Gulf Arab states appear to be coming to a consensus of support for the deal – especially in light of the reinforced US strategic support that the Obama administration has been pledging to help counter a deal-emboldened Iran.

America’s isolation in the wake of congressional rejection of the deal would be all the stronger, says Mr. Litwak of the Wilson Center, because it would appear to the rest of the world that the US was turning back to a post-9/11 faith in “regime change” as the only way to deal with rogue states.

Just to end with some "good" news; here's Bernie Sanders on guns. 

Senator Sanders might once have agreed with Perry that taking guns away is not the solution. Coming from a rural state where hunting is common and gun rights have popular support, Sanders has opposed some of Democrats’ gun control measures. But on Sunday he told NBC’s Meet the Press that he supported a nationwide ban on guns other than those used for hunting.

"Nobody should have a gun who has a criminal background, was involved in domestic abuse situations. People should not have guns who are going to hurt other people, who are unstable," Sanders said. "We need to make sure that certain types of guns used to kill people, exclusively, not for hunting, should not be sold in the United States of America."

Now that's a nice strong stance that I can get behind. Yes, you hunters can have guns. From the wingnut perspective, we have Rick Perry. 

Mr. Perry told Jake Tapper Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” the answer to gun violence is not restricting guns, but allowing more people to carry them. If more people had had guns in the Lafayette theater, he said, the gunman would have been stopped before he got the chance to cause so much harm.

Of course, arm everyone. Then instead of the two deaths, plus the gunman, it would have looked like a Shakespearean tragedy with everyone shooting everyone because no one can distinguish good guy from bad guy. The glasses didn't make him any smarter. 

All Munich All The Time

Oh wait, maybe it's not like Munich.

The comments of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina yesterday were typical. He called President Barack Obama "the Neville Chamberlain of our time."

I'm so tired of Chamberlain and Munich. Maybe Krauthammer has something fresh. 

Conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer has made 1930s Nazi Germany "appeasement" comparisons so often there's hardly space for them all. Some instances include nuclear diplomacy with Iran in 2006, Obama's comments on Russia's war in Georgia in 2009, the Bush administration's initial responses to Saddam Hussein's aggression towards Kuwait in 1990 (A "nightmare out of the 1930s,"he called Saddam), the Clinton administration's handling of North Korea's nuclear program in 1994 (an article called "Peace in our time"), and, of course, the interim deal with Iran in 2013 that led to current agreement – "worst deal since Munich" he said then.

Nope

Good News From Ramadi?

Probably not, but this is better than posting about Bill O'Reilly. And I'm giving Funiciello posts a break til closer to the election (maybe tomorrow).

So, we continue to fight shoulder to shoulder with the Iranians to defeat the terrorists that the Bush Administration created, IS or ISIS if you're not into that whole brevity thing.

On Monday, thousands of Shiite militiamen were assembling at an Iraqi army base east of Ramadi preparing a battle to retake the city, after Iraqi forces, backed by US airstrikes, failed Sunday to hold onto it. The entry into the fight of the Iran-backed militias was approved by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who initially resisted their involvement in hopes that Iraqi Army forces could hold Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.

I want to thank Trudy Rubin because Paul Bremer has been on my mind lately and this was also my thoughts when that college student confronted the smarter Bush brother. 

On that May 23, Mr. Bremer fired tens of thousands of military officers without pensions or severance. His order propelled the birth of an armed Sunni resistance among ex-Iraqi officers, which morphed into al-Qaida in Iraq and ultimately the Islamic State.

Mr. Bremer’s decision reflected the lack of coherent planning in the Bush administration about what to do after the U.S. invasion. Before the war, the U.S. military had recognized the danger of disbanding Iraq’s armed forces at a time of high unemployment and great social upheaval; it had planned to dissolve the units closest to Saddam Hussein, while vetting the rest and creating a smaller force that could help rebuilded the country.

But George W. Bush’s emissary, Mr. Bremer, changed the plan, apparently without consulting top U.S. military or State Department officials. After Mr. Bremer’s announcement, I knocked on doors in a Baghdad neighborhood populated by senior Sunni army brass and heard the same message over and over: “We laid down our arms, as you asked in leaflets dropped from your planes, and this is how you reward us. We will fight you.”

As Al Franken used to say, "We fired the police and military and told them to take their guns and go home." Unemployed and pissed off. And for good measure we fired all of the government administrators just because they were Baathists. As if they had any choice about joining the Baath Party, if they wanted to work. 

In fairness, Ms. Rubin does criticize our current president. 

None of this absolves Mr. Obama from responsibility for his role in the Islamic States’s emergence. Most glaring was the strong U.S. support for Mr. Maliki after he lost a close election in 2010. U.S. officials should have tried harder to help the winner, Iyad Allawi, form a government. As a secular Shiite, Allawi was far more skeptical of Iran and might have allayed the Sunni resentments that helped fuel the Islamic States. Mr. Obama also should have pushed much harder to keep a small U.S. troop presence in Iraq.

That is likely true, the overall effect of our invasion was to remove a counterbalance to Iran in the region and install Shiite Muslims in charge of Iraq, though. Not that we can do anything about that now, except go to war against Iran if you're a crazy-ass neocon. Well that would be, send someone else to war if you're a crazy-ass neocon.

Back to CSM and the possible good news. 

The militias are also moving in with the blessing of Anbar’s majority-Sunni provincial council and Sunni tribal leaders – raising the prospect that a combination of Shiite militiamen, Sunni tribesmen, and government forces could retake the city.

Such a possibility is fraught with all kinds of potential dangers, from sectarian fighting among groups presumably working toward the same goal to the threat of cleansing operations by Shiite forces in the Sunni city once the fighting was over.

But a victory against IS by the three fighting groups – Shiite, Sunni, government – could also help pull Iraq back from the brink of a sectarian civil conflict like the one entering its fifth year in neighboring Syria, some regional experts say.

Maybe we can make lemonade yet. 

A Reminder From Paul Krugman

That going to war in Iraq had nothing to do with intelligence (in any sense of the word).

The Iraq war wasn't an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.

You really can't say it much plainer than that. Despite the Nobel Prize, he speaks in a way that even I can understand. 

the talk about W.M.D that conflated chemical weapons (which many people did think Saddam had) with nukes, the constant insinuations that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11. 

Oh where have you gone, smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud?

Did the intelligence agencies wrongly conclude that Iraq had chemical weapons and a nuclear program? That’s because they were under intense pressure to justify the war. Did prewar assessments vastly understate the difficulty and cost of occupation? That’s because the war party didn’t want to hear anything that might raise doubts about the rush to invade. Indeed, the Army’s chief of staff was effectively fired for questioning claims that the occupation phase would be cheap and easy.

Why did they want a war?

Can't say for sure why they wanted it, but I have no doubt that Iran was next on their hit list, if Iraq hadn't turned into the giant debacle that anyone with any sense could have predicted. Oh yes, real men go to Tehran.

Just gotta add this Marco Rubio quote:

"The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn't run Iraq," he said then. 

The world? Iraq is not even a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn't run it.