Antiwar.com Blog

I’ve got the scoop on Ron Paul — he’s back!

David D. Friedman & his readers suggest some things Obama can do get libertarian Republicans to vote for him (“Thoughts for Obama“):

“[A] possibility that occurs to me is to take advantage of the budgetary implications of Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War. If the U.S. pulls out, we will get a ‘peace dividend’ — a whole lot of money now being spent on the war will be available for other purposes. No doubt lots of people, in both parties, will have ideas for ways of spending it.

“Suppose Obama commits himself not to let the peace dividend be spent on new projects, or at least not all of it. Suppose, for instance, that he promises that at least half of the saving will be used to reduce the budget deficit. That puts him in the position of the fiscally responsible candidate, which should appeal to conservatives as well as libertarians. And it is a pledge that McCain cannot match, since he supports the war and so is not going to have any peace dividend to allocate. …”

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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.