Obsidian Wings

Clouds

by von

There is a lot that we don't know about the raid of an activist ship by IDF Naval forces.  But there are a few things that I'm starting to get my own head around.

First, it was yet another deeply stupid move by Netanyahu's government.  Dropping commandos one-by-one from a helicopter onto the deck of a (large) ship in international waters?  Did no one foresee the possibility that this plan, such as it was, might end badly?  And what was it going to achieve?  What was the best case scenario that would justify the international outrage from a successful raid?  These aren't rhetorical questions.  They should be asked and answers demanded -- by the US, among others.  Because Israel is being poorly led at the moment, and that can't help the US achieve its foreign policy goals.

Second, let's not lose our heads over what these protesters were doing.  There's a lot that can be said about the Gaza blockade, and a case can be made against it.  But, with due respect to Eric and Brian Ulrich, the folks on the boarded vessel were not "peaceful" activists.  They were activists spoiling for a fight.  The video shows the very first soldier boarding the Mavi Marnara being attacked and thrown off the deck, almost immediately.

I understand that explanations can be offered for this behavior.  But don't get played.  As soon as the first commando was assaulted, someone was going to get shot.  And the folks who assaulted that commando knew that.  You don't throw a man thirty feet off a deck (aka, try to kill him) and expect his compatriots not to not to react.  The IDF's overreaction might not have been expected, but violence surely was.  What's surprising is not that the shooting began, but that it didn't begin immediately.

Which brings me to my third point, which is really just the first point restated.  I am trying to stay open to new facts and possibilities, but I am having trouble imagining facts that exonerate the folks who greenlighted this raid.  This whole mess seems predictable in the extreme, including the fall out, and a bunch of people are now dead for no good reason.  Possibly, a war crime has been committed.  Unless there's some stunning new development, the blame for this debacle/tragedy seems to lie squarely on an overwhelmed and incompetent Israeli leadership. 

I don't have my co-bloggers' aversion to a more hawkish stance by Israel on some of these questions.  You can't be a hawk and a total screw up, however, such that your every move backfires.  Sometimes I think that Netanyahu would be better defender of Israel if he just stopped trying.

Stuck Here Out of Gas, Out Here on the Gaza Strip

by Eric Martin

Brian Ulrich at American Footprints:

Israeli military forces have used lethal force against peaceful humanitarian activists in international waters:

“Israeli naval commandos shot dead at least 16 people and wounded over 30 on Monday morning, as they attacked an unarmed humanitarian and civilian flotilla – in international waters – trying to bring desperately needed aid to Gaza. The death toll was expected to rise.

“Chaos, confusion and outrage surround the exact circumstances under which the Free Gaza (FG) flotilla was stormed with live footage from a Turkish TV channel showing masked and heavily armed Israeli soldiers commandeering one of the six (FG) boats, the Mavi Marmara.

“An Al Jazeera correspondent who was on board, reported that Israeli troops used live ammunition during the operation. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) countered that some of those on board attacked soldiers with sharp objects, including knives.

“The organisers disputed this, saying the IDF opened fire as soon as they boarded the boats.

“It is uncertain how the Turkish channel managed to air the live footage. Israeli authorities had scrambled the boats' communications system shortly before the commando raid in a bid to prevent the crews from using navigational equipment and contacting the crews on the other boats.”

Juan Cole suggests that the shooting may have come when Israeli soldiers overreacted, but frankly any time you set up this sort of military encounter you have to expect the possibility for fatalities caused by the side with all the weapons. This was a brutal attempt to enforce a brutal and inhumane siege of one of the world’s most impoverished patches of land.

Gregg Carlstrom has a good piece relaying the background on the trip (composed prior to the raid) and one about the raid itself.  Matt Duss reports:

Greater international attention and sympathy to the plight of Palestinians suffering under the Israeli-Egyptian- (and U.S.) enforced siege of Hamas-ruled Gaza is precisely what Israeli authorities were hoping to avoid. In the days and weeks leading up to the launch of the flotilla, the Israeli government and its American mouthpieces were hard at work both to downplay the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and to present the flotilla’s sponsors as supporters of terrorism. (The evidence for the latter claim seems to amount to the usual game of “Six Degrees of Osama bin Laden,” wherein everyone who has ever contributed money to a Palestinian cause is linked to global jihadism.)

Responding to claims that the aid flotilla itself represented a “provocation,” Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine writes, well, yeah: “The whole point of the ‘Gaza flotilla’ was to get a reaction out of Israel and call international attention to the problem of the blockade of Gaza…like all other acts of civil disobedience it was designed to provoke a response.”

Writing that the attack “is likely to create sustained international attention to the way Israel has treated the Gaza Strip in a way that nothing else has since the Gaza war and possibly since the beginning of the blockade,” Ibish suggests we compare the flotilla “to the ‘Mississippi Freedom Summer’ in which young white Americans from around the country went to the bastion of Jim Crow in order to organize local African-Americans, register them to vote, educate them and confront segregation”:

They knew it was a dangerous situation, and they were shocked but not surprised when James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were abducted and killed by the KKK as the project just got going. There were many other acts of quasi-official violence meted out to the volunteers, and while the organizers obviously would have preferred to have avoided all of that, they expected it and it was part of their strategy. The largely but not entirely unstated reasoning was that the country would continue to ignore massive violence directed towards the African-American community in Mississippi, but could and would not remain oblivious to similar violence directed towards young, white, middle-class college students from New York City and other metropolitan centers. This, indeed, proved the case. The violence directed at the Mississippi Freedom Summer shocked the conscience of the country and was among the numerous decisive moments in the civil rights movement that ultimately succeeded in dismantling the apparatus of formalized racism in the United States.

Like segregation in the American South, the siege of Gaza (and the entire Israeli occupation, for that matter) is a moral abomination that should be intolerable to anyone claiming progressive values. It’s sad that it should require the deaths of non-Palestinians to finally shake the international community from apathy and inaction, but, as with the tragic murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, if it contributes to ending the situation then that’s a positive outcome.

Unfortunately, the killings will also likely result in the strengthening of support for Hamas vis a vis more moderate Palestinian leaders, greater unrest and more violence, which is not.

The blockade of Gaza is at best marked by  depraved indifference to massive human suffering, and quite possibly a war crime.  The use of armed commandoes to raid humanitarian ships in international waters leading to such loss of life is, also, a despicable act.

UPDATE: This, if the report is true and the act followed through on, could get dicey:

Two Turkish activists were reported to be among those killed in the flotilla. Ankara warned that further supply vessels will be sent to Gaza, escorted by the Turkish Navy, a development with unpredictable consequences.

via Steve Hynd.

Happy Memorial Day: A Message to Our Veterans and Active Duty Soldiers

by Eric Martin

Baby Eric would like to extend a heart-felt thumbs up to all of the soldiers that have given so much of themselves, by choice and otherwise, in the military service of this nation and others.  He thinks you're groovy, man.

And to their families, friends and loved ones, who can sometimes feel overwhelmed by circumstances.
Thank you for the solemn sacrifices.

Talking Sweet About Nothing

by Eric Martin

Rodger Payne makes a good point regarding the further erosion of the already imprecise-to-a-fault term "WMD."  Bottom line: lumping chemical, biological and nuclear weapons into a single category is more misleading than it is illuminating.  The lethality varies greatly, as does the countermeasures and feasibility of use, and allowing politicians and policymakers to use the term to refer to all three interchangably is conducive to the hyping of threats and misallocation of resources - both deliberate and accidental. 

Iraq is perhaps the poster child of this pitfall.  While it is common to hear supporters claim that "everyone thought Iraq had WMD," the truth is that there was a pretty strong consensus that Iraq did NOT have nuclear weapons, but rather some outdated and hard to deliver chemical weapons and, perhaps, biological agents.  The latter would be very hard to use in a terrorist attack, and the lethality often less than conventional explosives (see, ie, the use of sarin gas in the subway attack in Japan). Yet when selling the war, the Bush administration and its allies made constant reference to the threat of "mushroom clouds" and were meticulous in their efforts to avoid differentiation between the intel regarding the various WMD.

But with the new expansion and overuse of the term, the potential for skewed priorities and policies is increasing:

What does the term "weapon of mass destruction" mean to you? A few years ago, I was part of a team of academics involved in a project examining the implications of the so-called "Bush Doctrine" of preventive use of force. The editors of the book we produced, William Keller and Gordon Mitchell of the University of Pittsburgh, wanted us to avoid using the phrase "WMD."

In their introductory chapter, Keller and Mitchell noted that the phrase WMD misleadingly linked together chemical and biological weapons with nuclear weapons:

This semantic leveling obscures the fact that each class of weapons falling under the “WMD” umbrella varies significantly with regard to potential lethality and destructive power; the feasibility of protection and defenses; and potential missions. When dimensions of threat are blurred in this fashion, inaccuracies are easy to introduce. For example, the rhetorical flexibility afforded by the omnibus category “weapons of mass destruction” enabled Bush administration officials to support claims of an Iraqi “WMD” threat (replete with ominous “mushroom cloud” imagery) by pointing to evidence of possible Iraqi chemical weapons development. Obviously, chemical weapons lack the capacity for nuclear destruction, yet as Wolfgang Panofsky points out, “Linking these three classes of weapons in a single WMD category elevates the status of both biological and chemical weapons.”

Yet, despite this reasonable critique, federal law enforcement officials are even now stretching the term WMD to a point well beyond the breaking point.

I refer specifically to the arrest of the so-called "Hutaree militia" in late March. Time, April 12:

federal authorities charged nine alleged Hutaree members with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction.

Did the Michigan Christian Fundamentalist group have chemical or biological weapons -- or perhaps nuclear materials to build a "dirty bomb"?

No.

The group planned horrible crimes, but none involved what any reasonable person would consider "weapons of mass destruction," unless you are the kind of person who would consider even a simple weapon like a machete a WMD:

The group's alleged plot appears to have required killing a cop at a traffic stop, or after a faked 911 call. Then, the group planned to attack the funeral of that officer — in order to wreak further havoc by killing even more government and law-enforcement officials who would have gathered to mourn.

Payne's snark aside, the Hutaree militia were also, allegedly, planning to use conventional explosives.  Which, by virtue of them being conventional explosives and all, should not be considered WMD.  However, we see the same WMD allegations against the Times Sqaure bomber for his failed attempt at detonating a conventional bomb.  Actually, it's quite the pervasive pattern these days.

Al-Qaeda's World Cup Own Goal

by Eric Martin

Michael Hanna is right on the money about al-Qaeda being its own worst enemy.  Now if we could just get out of the way:

...I wanted to take a closer look at one very small subsection of the [recently released National Security Strategy] dealing with how the United States seeks to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” al-Qaeda, namely, by contrasting al-Qaeda’s intent to destroy with our “constructive vision.” First off, I think we overestimate the current efficacy of using our “constructive vision” as a tool for changing minds in the region. The nature of Arab political grievance is deeply entrenched, and the lack of deliverables following President Obama’s Cairo speech has reinforced a robust skepticism of U.S. intentions and capacity. Of course, movement on issues of political salience would be a huge boost to U.S. credibility and would go a long way in blunting the effectiveness of transnational Islamist messaging, but, unfortunately, the prospects for any near-term wins look bleak.

But the broader and more important point is that, in many ways, we do not have to change minds; instead, we need to focus on reinforcing the existing distaste for al-Qaeda’s vision and tactics. This approach recognizes the crucial distinction between the huge appeal of narratives of resistance as propounded by groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah and the obscurantist and fringe views that are the bedrock of al-Qaeda’s ideology. This resistance narrative has wide resonance and al-Qaeda goes to great lengths to camouflage many of their far-reaching beliefs by employing popular rhetorical tropes that play upon existing political grievances. But their ideology goes much further and embraces takfiri thought and a promiscuous view of the legitimacy of the slaughter of innocents, who more often than not are, in fact, Muslims. Needless to say, there is not much of a constituency for such ideas. Of course, al-Qaeda does not need huge numbers of recruits, but even small steps to poison the well can be useful.

Many of the positions that these types of salafi jihadis have espoused have crossed into the realm of culture as they have sought to ban smoking, music, and even soccer—positions that are not likely to inspire adherents in the Arab world. Of course the unmitigated savagery of the movement, particularly as it pertains to the deaths of other Muslims, has served to distance the group even further from mainstream discourse. A movement such as the one led by Abu Musa’b al-Zarqawi in Iraq, which formally sought legitimacy from the umbrella of affiliation with al-Qaeda, reached a level of self-destructive nihilist violence that necessitated a stern warning from none other than ‘Ayman al-Zawahri. When al-Zawahri is telling you to dial things down, you probably have taken things a bit far.

Recognizing where al-Qaeda’s vision fits within the broader cultural and political ferment in the region offers a host of opportunities for further driving home the fundamental absurdity of al-Qaeda’s claims, starting with their very effectiveness as an organization. One of the initial reactions to the attacks of September 11 in the Arab world was one of disbelief among many Arabs that an Arab-led group could have undertaken and implemented such a complicated and sophisticated plot. This obviously also speaks to a larger point regarding the deep malaise in the region. Of course, our focusing on the group’s failures and weakness would require a certain degree of stoicism and calm in the face of the still real threats we face from such groups. And, unfortunately, such equanimity has often been lacking in our responses to terrorism and attempted attacks.

The nature of al-Qaeda’s tactics also offers a real opportunity to drive home the group’s extremism, and this is a space that our intelligence agencies should be more aggressive in filling. I recently read a series of stories that outlined various plots aimed at conducting operations at the upcoming World Cup in South Africa. I was happy to see these accounts, even if I have some suspicions regarding the provenance of the stories. But either way, this is a useful development. If the stories are in fact true, then we should take heart in the utter strategic stupidity of al-Qaeda. Having spent many a World Cup summer in Egypt, I can state with great certitude that targeting the World Cup would be about the most alienating action that the group could undertake. The other possibility is that this story was a form of information operations (perhaps devised by the Iraqis) and, if so, it was a solid effort...I hope to soon see a story about al-Qaeda’s attempts to outlaw Um Kalthoum or to ban cigarettes—now those would be effective wedges in the Arab world. 

I realize this is a rather small point to draw out of a sprawling document, but this subsection of the NSS provided a useful excuse to write about this issue. While I would hope that our collective positive example and our diplomatic efforts could construct a positive narrative about the role of the United States in the world and the region, in light of current political realities in the region, I also don’t see this as the most effective avenue for undermining al-Qaeda. In effect, they are their own worst enemy, and we should be engaged in helping them seal their own fate.

Like Hanna, unfortunately, I don't think there is much potential in pushing our "constructive role" in the region as a counternarrative.  The Obama administration doesn't seem likely to make any breaks with predecessors in terms of pushing for real progress on the Israel/Palestine front, reducing support for despotic regimes, fully disengaging from Afghanistan and/or Iraq, etc.  However, given al-Qaeda's odious ideology and worse tactical decisions, we don't have to win hearts and minds as much as not lose them at the same rate.

Whatever It Is You're Against, He's It

by Eric Martin

Larison takes on Peggy Noonan and the latest incoherent demagoguery:

I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president’s political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don’t see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They’re in one reality, he’s in another. ~Peggy Noonan

Of these three things, only the handling of the oil spill has the potential to be as much of a political disaster for the administration as it has been an environmental disaster for the Gulf coast. Oddly enough, Obama is in this position partly because he had tacked towards the center on offshore drilling as part of a bid to win Republican support for climate change legislation. Had he been adamantly against offshore drilling all along, he might have been called an environmentalist ideologue and “out of touch” with the blessed center, but he could point to the oil spill as an example of why he took that view. Were he actually the left-winger Republicans like to pretend that he is, his response to a major oil spill by a multinational corporation would have been much more aggressive and angrier, but that isn’t who he is. Unfortunately, he is all too often “in sync with the center,” by which I mean the Washington centrists’ center, and that means accommodation and support for entrenched and powerful interests. It is largely because of his instinct to accommodate that he finds himself in this mess. The latest Gallup poll finds that 53% regard Obama’s handling of the spill as poor or very poor, so there’s no question that most of the public does not approve. Even so, his average approval rating remains 47%, which is more or less where it has been during the three “disasters” Noonan thinks no one can survive.

It’s also probably true that his opposition is uniquely unsuited to take advantage of the administration’s vulnerability. The party of “drill here, drill now” is a strange one to lead the fight against an oil corporation and an administration perceived as being too deferential and easy on said corporation. Republicans have spent the last two years trying to be more pro-drilling than the oil companies and more hostile to financial regulation than the financial industry, but they also want to complain about administration collusion with corporate and financial interests. They can’t quite get their demagoguing script worked out, and so one day it is an attack on Obama the corporatist, which has the virtue of being the most accurate, and then the next it is an attack on Obama the radical leftist who hates capitalism. Amid all the contradictory and confusing messages, Obama seems to escape the attacks with minimal damage. [...]

Noonan also declares the oil spill a disaster also for Obama’s political assumptions. This is the part that makes the least sense:

His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: “Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust.” Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: “We pay so much for the government and it can’t cap an undersea oil well!”

The trouble is that when we look at what Obama has actually done, or rather failed to do, we do not see someone pursuing a philosophy that the federal government should “occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America.” The actual complaint against the administration is that it has been too hands off, too uninvolved, too passive! Americans have conditioned themselves to think of Presidents as problem-solvers who are supposed to take an active role in addressing any and every major event that occurs, and conservatives no less than liberals have invested the Presidency with a moral and national leadership role quite apart from constitutional responsibilities.

If a President does not actively “take charge” and is not seen as “doing something,” he is ridiculed as weak and ineffective, when according to any vision of a less activist, less interventionist, less intrusive government the President would not involve himself closely in most events similar to this oil spill. It is a bit more absurd in the conservatives’ case. They are horrified by the tyranny of the individual mandate, but most otherwise seem content to demand the firm smack of a strong executive and the protections of an omnicompetent managerial state. Having mocked Obama’s more enthusiastic supporters for wanting him to be a savior of sorts, some Republicans seem genuinely annoyed that he has not been able to work miracles.

Hitler and Stalin.  A fascist and a socialist.  Whatever it is you're against, he's it.

Katrina and the Nabes

by Eric Martin

Kevin Drum does a good job of explaining the facile comparison of the BP spill to Katrina:

Katrina was an example of the type of disaster that the federal government is specifically tasked with handling. And for most of the 90s, it was very good at handling them. But when George Bush became president and Joe Allbaugh became director of FEMA, everything changed. Allbaugh neither knew nor cared about disaster preparedness. For ideological reasons, FEMA was downsized and much of its work outsourced. When Allbaugh left after less than two years on the job, he was replaced by the hapless Michael Brown and the agency was downgraded and broken up yet again. By the time Katrina hit, the upper levels of FEMA were populated largely with political appointees with no disaster preparedness experience and the agency was simply not up to the job of dealing with a huge storm anymore.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion is almost the exact opposite. There is no federal expertise in capping oil blowouts. There is no federal agency tasked specifically with repairing broken well pipes. There is no expectation that the federal government should be able to respond instantly to a disaster like this. There never has been. For better or worse, it's simply not something that's ever been considered the responsibility of the federal government.

In the case of Katrina, you have the kind of disaster that, contra Levin, can be addressed by the federal government. In the case of the BP spill, we're faced with a technological challenge that can't be. They could hardly be more different.

But there is one way in which they're similar. As Levin says, Katrina would have been an immense disaster no matter what. But it was far worse than it had to be because a conservative administration, one that fundamentally disdained the mechanics of government for ideological reasons, decided that FEMA wasn't very important. Likewise, the BP blowout was made more likely because that same administration decided that government regulation of private industry wasn't very important and turned the relevant agency into a joke. If you believe that government is the problem, not the solution, and if you actually run the country that way for eight years, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But we shouldn't pretend it's inevitable.

While I'm quoting Kevin Drum, let me also state my agreement with this sentiment expressed in an unrelated post that while Sarah Palin's response (to implicate Joe McGinnis in some type of pedophiliac perversion) was despicable:

Still, I have to wonder: am I the only lefty around who finds McGinniss's action a little disturbing? McGinniss obviously isn't breaking any laws, public figures have very little expectation (legal or otherwise) of privacy, and digging deep for book material is what any good journalist should do. Still. It seems a little over the top.

Moving in right next door is a bit much, and I can understand her feeling put off by that.

En Focus

by Eric Martin

Matt's Atomic Duss Bin highlights some key takeaways from the just released National Security Strategy (quoted in full with permission from the author):

One of the starkest differences between the Obama administration’s new National Security Strategy (pdf) and the Bush administration’s (pdf) is its tighter focus on Al Qaeda and affiliated extremists, and its recognition that responding to Al Qaeda with fear and overreaction is playing right into Al Qaeda’s hands.

Where Bush’s 2006 NSS stated the goal of “defeating global terrorism,” Obama’s is very specific, stating “The United States is waging a global campaign against al-Qa’ida and its terrorist affiliates.” The new NSS also makes very clear what this effort is not:

We will always seek to delegitimize the use of terrorism and to isolate those who carry it out. Yet this is not a global war against a tactic — terrorism or a religion — Islam. We are at war with a specific network, al-Qa’ida, and its terrorist affiliates who support efforts to attack the United States, our allies, and partners.

Here’s the section that Liz Cheney should read:

The goal of those who perpetrate terrorist attacks is in part to sow fear. If we respond with fear, we allow violent extremists to succeed far beyond the initial impact of their attacks, or attempted attacks — altering our society and enlarging the standing of al-Qa’ida and its terrorist affiliates far beyond its actual reach. Similarly, overreacting in a way that creates fissures between America and certain regions or religions will undercut our leadership and make us less safe.

There’s also a welcome assault on Al Qaeda’s religious legitimacy:

Finally, we reject the notion that al-Qa’ida represents any religious authority. They are not religious leaders, they are killers; and neither Islam nor any other religion condones the slaughter of innocents.

As Malcolm Nance writes in his new book An End To Al Qaeda, challenging Al Qaeda in the realm of ideology is a hugely important and thus far neglected aspect of the effort to diminish and defeat them. On the other side, you have people like Frank Gaffney who argue that Islam is inherently violent, and that therefore Osama bin Laden and his allies are the true Muslims, which is a clever way of effectively ceding the entire ideological debate to our enemies. Fortunately, the new NSS seems to recognize the foolishness of that idea.  

Not only do al-Qaeda's leaders lack religious credentials, but we know from profiles of known terrorists that they tend to be ill-informed about Islam themselves, without a solid base of knowledge to draw from in order to spot the ways that al-Qaeda and its ilk pervert the Koran and related theology.

In fact, Marc Sageman has found that attending a maddrassa at a young age tends to lessen the risk of engaging in such extremist behavior at a later time, and the Koran itself is often used as a tool to rehabillitate convicted terrorists.

UPDATE: Marc Lynch has more.

Extended Hand or Clenched Fist...or Both?

by Eric Martin

Flyntt and Hillary Mann Leverett discuss recent revelations about an extensive use of military personnel in various friendly, and non-friendly nations in the Middle East/North Africa/Central Asia region.  These would be military operations undertaken absent a public debate (or even legislative debate) about the merits of what are extremely risky and potentially costly activities.  The Leverett's focus on the fact that such activities vis-a-vis Iran undermine the ostensible engagement with, and extension of a hand to, Iran as claimed by the Obama administration:

When, in an Op Ed published in The New York Times in May 2009, we first criticized President Obama’s early decision to continue covert anti-Iranian programs he inherited from George W. Bush, some expressed disbelief that Obama would undermine his own rhetoric about engaging Tehran in a climate of mutual respect by conducting a dirty war against the Islamic Republic.  But, in an important piece of reporting published today in The New York Times, Mark Mazzetti documents that Obama has not just failed to roll back covert anti-Iranian programs he inherited from his predecessor—he is instead presiding over a dramatic intensification of America’s covert war against the Islamic Republic.  And, in a manner powerfully reminiscent of Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the intensification of America’s covert war against Iran is taking place through the efforts of General David Petraeus and CENTCOM—because military intelligence operations are not subject to the same congressional oversight and reporting requirements as the Central Intelligence Agency.  

We excerpt the critical passages from Mazzetti’s article below: 

“The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents. 

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces.  Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.”

As alluded to by the Leveretts, the use of Special Operations forces is fast becoming a favorite vehicle for policymakers and military leaders seeking to circumvent legal prohibitions and other statutory requirements.  They are the do-ers of the dirty work, availing themselves of methods, tactics and actions that are at worst illegal and, at best render the implementation of population centric counterinsurgency doctrine a schizophrenic mess.  For example, Special Operations units in Afghanistan are the groups implicated in the infamous "Night Raids" that have terrorized the local population.  As previously discussed on this site:

These Night Raids often involve unprovoked killings, and even when the suspects are detained, they are frequently subjected to torture, abuse and are further deprived of rights.  Not exactly a tactic likely to win over hearts and minds.  One recent Night Raid-gone-bad has made news due to the tragic results (three women were killed, two of them pregnant), as well as an apparent attempt to cover up events.

Special Operations are the ones that, allegedly, are doing the detaining and torturing as well - a convenient workaround to prohibitions on such behavior.

It is unclear to what purpose they are being put under the current policy regime reported by the Times.  The Leveretts, again, return to the topic of engagement with Iran:

In our criticism of President Obama’s early decision to continue the anti-Iranian covert programs he inherited from his predecessor, we compared his lack of strategic vision to the statesmanship of President Richard Nixon—who, on coming to the White House in 1969, ordered the CIA to stand down from a longstanding covert action program in Tibet, to show Beijing that he was serious about rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China.  As we predicted early on, Obama is, unfortunately, headed in exactly the opposite direction.

President Obama’s policies are not only generating risks for innocent, non-official Americans.  They are further eroding the already deteriorating prospects for an improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations—and increasing the chances of an eventual U.S.-Iranian military confrontation.                

I can't imagine how sending in Special Operations forces who have grown accustomed to a certain amount of autonomy and outside-the-rules latitude could lead to that.  Sarcasm aside, aren't these the types of decisions that should involve Congress, and shouldn't the American people have a right to know in what ways we might be triggering even more large scale military conflicts/blowback/anti-American animus?

I'll Tell Them Anything at All, I Know I'll Give Them More and More

by Eric Martin

David Shorr (whose byline always inspires me to read on), on the most recent developments in the Iran nuclear program saga:

[The cold-water-in-face award]...goes to Les Gelb, for pointing out how US nonproliferation priorities have little resonance with the rest of the world. According to his reading of Brazil and Turkey's recent mediation initiative, "the good old days of most nations automatically supporting U.S. non-proliferation efforts is over." Gelb notes that other countries don't understand why all the fuss about Iran and not about de facto nuclear weapons states like India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. As this kind of skepticism grows, it's bound to erode America's influence as the nonproliferation agenda-setter.

If this is a clash of worldviews, it could lead to much deeper differences of approach to nuclear proliferation. Gelb didn't look into that abyss, saying a sense of common interests can be bolstered by welcoming a role for new powers like Brazil and Turkey and placing the emphasis on intrusive inspections (clearly central to the ultimate resolution of the issue). The United States is already fighting a diplomatic battle with other nations' belief that an agreement with Iran can be reached without applying any pressure. But what if they really don't care whether Iran obtains a virtual weapons capability?

As Gelb points out, the root issue is the irrationality and inequity of not having a single standard. From the US perspective, I count eight different standards in dealing with the official weapons states, "de factos," and Iran.

Hence, the United States has had to push and pull, and give and threaten to take, in order to get some baseline of support for a new round of sanctions from China and Russia - all while Brazil and Turkey were (independently) pursuing alternative routes to a workable deal with Iran (to Obama's credit, cooperation from Russia was likely one of the byproducts of the New START treaty, which itself was a big victory - although I would have preferred a more valuable quo for the quid).

To put it bluntly, American foreign policy is distorted by an over-identification with Israeli interests in the Middle East.  The rest of the world is less influenced by Israel's core interests, and thus is not as convinced that Iran represents such a special non-proliferation case as opposed to states like India, Pakistan or...Israel itself.  The disconnect, and imbalance, results in inordinately high costs paid by the United States for dubious benefits.   

Not to mention the obvious fact that Israel does not reciprocate in terms of sacrificing for the benefit of U.S. interests.  One recent revelation, reported by Ryan Powers, highlights the disparity:

A new book on the history of the relationship between Israel and South Africa appears to have confirmed the long-standing suspicion that Israel offered to sell nuclear arms to South Africa in the 1970s. While the sale didn’t pan out, Israel did provide South Africa with Tritium — the material they needed to kickstart their now-abandoned nuclear weapons program — in return for easing restrictions on how South African yellowcake Uranium could be used:

[A]fter the 1973 Yom Kippur war, African governments increasingly came to look on the Jewish state as another colonialist power. The government in Jerusalem cast around for new allies and found one in Pretoria. For a start, South Africa was already providing the yellowcake essential for building a nuclear weapon. …

“South Africa’s leaders yearned for a nuclear deterrent – which they believed would force the west to intervene on their behalf if Pretoria were ever seriously threatened – and the Israeli proposition put that goal within reach,” Polakow-Suransky says in the book. …

Polakow-Suransky establishes that the relationship was so intimate that in the mid-1970s, South Africa lifted the safeguards supposed to govern how the yellowcake was used to prevent nuclear proliferation.

In return, Israel sent South Africa 30 grams of tritium, which gives thermonuclear weapons the boost to their explosive power. The delivery was enough to build several atomic bombs, which South Africa did in the coming years. [emphasis from RP]

...Regardless, I think we should take this revelation as a reminder that Israel — as they have every right to do — will nearly always do what is best for Israel and, as such, U.S. foreign policy towards Israel needs to be calibrated accordingly. As Walt and Mearsheimer put it:

A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it sometimes does not act like a loyal ally. Like most states, Israel looks first and foremost to its own interests, and is has been willing to do things contrary to American interests when it believed (rightly or wrongly) that doing so would advance its own national goals. … Such behavior is neither surprising nor particularly reprehensible, because international politics is a rough business and states often do unscrupulous things in their efforts to gain an edge over other countries.

In the coming years, two things need to happen to bring American foreign policy in the region into its proper balance: First, America needs to become a better friend to Israel by setting limits and conditions on support, thus pushing Israel to adopt a course more beneficial to itself in the long run.  Real friends criticize when a friend is going astray.  Enablers of self-destructive behavior are not real friends - especially when the self-destructive behavior harms the enabler as well. 

Second, Israel needs to become a better friend to America by making some sacrifices in recognition of the large price paid by the U.S. for years of unconditional support, which support - while not unconditional - will and should continue.  By, say, ceasing new settlement construction, dismantling others and working in an honest, good faith manner toward a real two-state solution.