Antiwar.com Blog

AEI’s Reuel Marc Gerecht now believes that Washington should offer to engage in unconditional, high-level talks and even normalize diplomatic relations with Iran…apparently in order to rally support for war.

In a New York Times op-ed misleadingly entitled “Attack Iran, With Words,” Gerecht, who is certain there’s no way that the mullahs will agree to such offer, argues that their predictable refusal will rally the public and perhaps even Washington’s European allies to support a pre-emptive attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

“If the mullahs don’t want to negotiate, fine: making the offer is something that must be checked off before the next president could unleash the Air Force and the Navy. To make the threat of force against clerical Iran again credible, there needs to be a consensus among far more Democrats and Republicans that a nuclear-armed Iran is intolerable. If the White House tried more energetically to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear threat, if it demonstrated that it had reached out to Iranian “pragmatists” and “moderates,” and that again no one responded, then the military option would likely become convincing to more Americans.

“…If the Bush administration were to use this sort of diplomatic jujitsu on the ruling clerics, it could convulse their world. No, this is absolutely no guarantee that Tehran will stop, or even suspend, uranium enrichment. But a new approach would certainly put the United States on offense and Iran on defense. We would, at least, have the unquestioned moral and political high ground. And from there, it would be a lot easier for the next administration, if it must, to stop militarily the mullahs’ quest for the bomb.”

It’s worth noting that Gerecht, like other neo-cons including several of his AEI colleagues, appears to have given up hope of an attack before the end of Bush’s term and now believes that it will up to his successor to decide what to do about Tehran’s nuclear program. His argument echoes that of the generally more pragmatic Robert Kagan who came out in favor of negotiations after the NIE’s release in early December in a Washington Post column entitled “Time to Talk to Iran.” Two differences: Kagan was less certain than Gerecht that Tehran wouldn’t take up a negotiations offer. He also did not stress the importance of offering high-level talks, although that the fact that he suggested putting all outstanding issues between the U.S. and Iran on the table implied it. The basic line was much the same. Here’s Kagan nearly three months ago:

“Beginning talks today does not limit American options in the future. If the Iranians stonewall or refuse to talk — a distinct possibility — they will establish a record of intransigence that can be used against them now and in the critical years to come. It’s possible the American offer itself could open fissures in Iran. In any case, it is hard to see what other policy options are available. This is the hand that has been dealt. The Bush administration needs to be smart and creative enough to play it well.”

It will be very interesting to see if Gerecht’s and Kagan’s advice, as cynical as it may be, is being considered by the hawks within the administration, and particularly in Cheney’s office.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

It must be nice to be able to take a vacation — or to tell your readers that “postings will resume when I feel better.” So la-dee-dah! Unfortunately, here at Antiwar.com, the word “vacation” is missing from our lexicon. Not only that, but there ain’t no sick leave – because here I am, with the worst case of bronchitis, ever, pounding away at my keyboard. And it’s fundraising week — or, rather, weeks — which means I’m doing double-time. Ah, but I’m not really all that interested in a vacation — never having had one, I don’t miss it! And I’m not really complaining: just reminding you that we are in the middle of our Winter 2008 Fundraising Drive (if I capitalize it, that makes it seem much more official, don’t you think?) and the Antiwar.com is busy as ever, working at breakneck speed to get you the best coverage of our f*cked-up world on the Internets.

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From Laura Rozen, writing on the Mother Jones blog:

“It was only then, after the Serbian occupation had been driven out, that I learned an ugly lesson: that sometimes when the oppressed are liberated, they act with the brutality of their former tormenters. In the aftermath of the 1999 Nato intervention in Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing continued, only this time the majority of the atrocities being meted out were by the majority Albanians against the province’s minority Serbs, Roma, and Turks. It was a phenomenon witnessed later in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.”

Yes, but one has to wonder: how come it took so long to learn — or publicly aknowledge — this lesson? At least the neocons — or some of them, such as Francis Fukuyama, and Andrew Sullivan — had the class to utter a few mea culpas within a reasonable time-frame. Except for Laura, however, the Clintonian interventionists, are still touting their great “victory” — nearly a decade after the horrific results have been all too apparent.

OmiGOD! — did you know that Obama is not only a “secret smoker,” he’s also a secret member of the Communist Party? By today’s standards, the former is much worse, but the always reliably nutty Cliff Kincaid — I once appeared on a tv show with him, in which he called me “anti-American” — has the goods on the latter charge.

I must register my dissent on Sam Koritz’s thesis — explained in a two–part post on antiwar.com —  that “what the country wants” is a white, Protestant, male of northern European descent who is “mildly” opposed to the Iraq war. From what I can make of it, Sam’s argument seems to be that you can’t win the election without winning the South, but I believe Obama could at least make inroads into the GOP’s electoral hegemony in the region, and he’s certainly mobilizing a lot of voters who haven’t voted in previous elections.

This “science” of “demographics” as a predictive tool is bollocks, pure and simple. The “country,” whatever that is, doesn’t know what it wants — which is why we have these odd things called political campaigns.

Listen to Philip Weiss, one of the smartest writers around, on the Israel lobby and Obama: the Lobby, he says, considered Obama “a green no-account,” and they all jumped on Hillary’s bandwagon without realizing that the wheels were about to come off, while the neocons went first to Rudy and now are attaching themselves to the McCain campaign. The Lobby never saw what was coming straight at them:

“Barack Hussein Obama was always low on the Haaretz Who-loves-Israel ratings. Which is to say, Obama rose without the active support of the lobby. Much as Ned Lamont did in Connecticut. Now the lobby is freaking out and trying to claim him after all. Marty Peretz is writing articles saying he is good for the Jews, because Marty hates to feel left out of the Democratic Party party, and Obama himself is making a good show of it. But Marty is a romantic and an enthusiast not a shrewdy, while Malcolm Hoenlein, a very shrewd man, knows better, and sees the writing on the wall. These guys really don’t know whether to shit or shine their shoes right now. It’s too late to embrace Obama and really make a difference (he’s already won, per the theory). And if they follow Joe to McCain, they could get swamped in the fall…”

Weiss goes on to say that progressives of his sort “aren’t worried about Obama’s lip service re Israel. They know in their hearts that a man with a Muslim parent who grew up in, among other places, the largest Muslim country on the planet, Indonesia, cares about Palestinian human rights. And what’s most important– he will owe the lobby nothing….”

Which is precisely why the Obama campaign had better get ready for the Barack Hussein Obama business — that is, if the Clintonites haven’t already started it before this gets posted. Yet this much-anticipated low blow is likely to boomerang if anyone, of either party, dares say it out loud: the backlash will help Obama, or, at least, blow away his enemies, who will finally discover that change is not a platitude.