Obsidian Wings

There is Too Much History, Too Much Biography Between Us

by Eric Martin

In a somewhat brazen fashion, General McChrystal and some of his top aides have taken to the pages of Rolling Stone to air out political differences with some top administration officials, and the story, is rightly, generating quite a bit of controversey.  In the Rolling Stone piece, McChrystal and his team level some harsh (and pointed) criticisms at Vice President Biden, National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and even President Obama himself.

I tend to agree with Gregg Carlstrom when he says that the actual criticisms (if a bit on the disrespectful and, at times, childish side) are not really all that surprising.  The underlying tensions and policy differences are well known - even if a public airing in such a fashion is a bit jarring.  But even then, as Carlstrom argues, this is well within McChrystal's modus operandi:

I will say that his direct attacks on Biden and Eikenberry concern me less than his political maneuvering. The profile reinforces the perception that McChrystal is a deeply political animal, determined to push his own policy rather than follow what's handed down from above.

I don't want to sound naive, because clearly war has a political dimension. But this profile fits the pattern established with McChrystal's London speech in October and the leaking of his strategy review: he's determined to push the administration into a corner on Afghanistan strategy. Whether or not this fits the legal definition of insubordination -- McChrystal is overstepping his boundaries vis-a-vis civil-military relations.

Near the end of the article, an unnamed "senior military official" speculates that McChrystal might ask for another troop surge next summer (instead of the drawdown promised by President Obama).

But facts on the ground, as history has proven, offer little deterrent to a military determined to stay the course. Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan. "If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular," a senior adviser to McChrystal says.

Such realism, however, doesn't prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further. "There's a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here," a senior military official in Kabul tells me.

This again fits a pattern: The civilian leadership in the White House has repeatedly insisted that the July 2011 withdrawal date is a "firm" one. The military clearly doesn't think much of that deadline, and it's trying to push an alternative.

There are a few moving parts at play here.  On the one hand, Obama established a timeline for beginning troop withdrawals from Afghanistan during the review process and asked his military people to offer strategies to fit that timeline.  General McChrystal and others offered a COIN-type strategy that they claimed would work within those parameters. 

Some influential policy makers, like Ambassador Eikenberry (and lowly bloggers such as myself), made the argument that there was very little chance the McChrystal plan would work, and that an 18 month turnaround employing COIN in Afghanistan (heck, a 180 month turn around employing COIN) was highly unlikely.  After all, if you read the proponents of COIN themselves, who were talking a 10-15 year timelines, maybe longer, pessimism about a 1.5 year COIN horizon seemed like a no-brainer. 

Nevertheless, McChrystal insisted he could get the job done within that timeframe.  Marc Ambinder gives a decent sketch of this process:

During the strategy review, Eikenberry didn't think McChrystal's surge could work. He told the White House that contractors would have to pick up the slack for years to come. McChrystal insisted that he could execute his COIN strategy with a heavy presence of special operations forces ... and be out in 18 months (i.e, troops would begin to be drawn down). The White House ultimately sided with McChrystal. 

Some would argue that McChrystal knew all along that he wouldn't be able to achieve the desired results in 18 months, and that he figured he could lean on Obama to extend the timeline as needed (one would have to imagine that such extensions would stretch into the next administration, even if Obama served the full 8 years).  Perhaps so, perhaps not, but in either instance, now that Eikenberry's assessment has been vindicated, McChrystal's team is attempting a political end around that serves multiple purposes. 

If the political gambit is successful, McChrystal would get his extra rope with which to tie us up further in Central Asia.  If not, McChrystal will be able to frame the failure of his strategy as a case of leaders in Washington failing him, not the other way around.

The recent complaints about the constraints that the timeline is putting on military forces that were leaked to other news sources is clearly a part of this political maneuvering, and concomitant attempt to apportion blame and massage the historical record. As Michael Cohen argues, such complaints are just as disingenuous as the McChrystal-faction's Rolling Stone whinges when originating from a military brass that insisted that the timeframe was not a problem beforehand.

Either they weren't being honest then, or they were simply wrong about what they could achieve.  But they knew the rules of the engagement, and they are vastly overstepping their proper authority in attempting to hijack the political process in such a fashion.

But We Know It's Just a Lie, to Scare Your Son, Scare Your Daughter

by Eric Martin

Paul Krugman provides a concise take-down of the "ZOMG! Social Security is going bankrupt!!!" canard, and indirectly makes the argument that maybe Social Security/the federal government would be a little more solvent if the establishment media had spent less time snickering about the fact that Al Gore said "lockbox" several times, and more time wondering whether or not "would rather have a beer with" was the right criteria with which to choose the next President.

Specifically, Simpson has resurrected the old nonsense about how Social Security will be bankrupt as soon as payroll tax revenues fall short of benefit payments, never mind the quarter century of surpluses that came first.

We went through all this at length back in 2005, but let me do this yet again.

Social Security is a government program funded by a dedicated tax. There are two ways to look at this. First, you can simply view the program as part of the general federal budget, with the the dedicated tax bit just a formality. And there’s a lot to be said for that point of view; if you take it, benefits are a federal cost, payroll taxes a source of revenue, and they don’t really have anything to do with each other.

Alternatively, you can look at Social Security on its own. And as a practical matter, this has considerable significance too; as long as Social Security still has funds in its trust fund, it doesn’t need new legislation to keep paying promised benefits.

OK, so two views, both of some use. But here’s what you can’t do: you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that for the last 25 years, when Social Security ran surpluses, well, that didn’t mean anything, because it’s just part of the federal government — but when payroll taxes fall short of benefits, even though there’s lots of money in the trust fund, Social Security is broke.

And bear in mind what happens when payroll receipts fall short of benefits: NOTHING. No new action is required; the checks just keep going out.

Right.  When there's a Social Security surplus, the money gets eaten by general expenditures and, in the case of Bush, massive tax cuts aimed primarily at the uber wealthy.  But if there's a prospect of a Social Security deficit, eventually, we can't possibly buttress the Social Security pool with general revenue (perhaps even boost said revenue by repealing some of those deficit busting tax cuts*).  No, it's time to cut benefits and extend the retirement age to 70.

* (though perhaps we should hold off until we're out of the recession)

As Many Times, Times the Timetables

by Eric Martin

Joe Klein reports on what is becoming an increasingly popular form of pre-emptive scapegoating for what will be the inevitable failure to achieve the more grandiose objectives in Afghanistan (via Michael Cohen): 

There are increasing grumblings about the timetable set by Obama, which would begin troop withdrawals in July 2011. "It's like fighting with both arms tied behind your back," a former senior military official told me.

See, also, John McCain and Congressional Republicans making a variation of the same argument. 

These arguments are wrong on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin.

First, while Obama did set an 18 month timetable to begin withdrawing some troops in December 2009, the war began more than 8 years before Obama even made such a tacit commitment.  So if it is the timetable, and not the intractable nature of the conflict, that is hampering our efforts now, and for the next few months, what exactly was holding up progress during the intervening 8+ years?  Procrastination?

Which is a nice segue to one of the arguments underlying the "timetable ruined everything" thesis: the timetable will provide sustenance to the Taliban and other insurgent groups, while leading the Afghan people to side with those groups rather than the Karzai regime.

Again, though, this defies logic, chronology and causality.  For a considerable swath of the Afghan resistance, news of our imminent departure will not provide impetus to fight us, but, rather, the continued presence of a large, foreign occupying power is the very reason they are fighting in the first place.  For what David Kilcullen calls "accidental guerrillas," it is prolonged occupations, not announced future partial withdrawals, that provide the determinative incentive to fight.

As for the Taliban, they have been fighting us for almost 9 years, and would continue to fight us no matter how long we stay.  For them, it is a religious/ideological duty to fight, and it's not as if they were on the verge of throwing in the towel this past December, but since Obama announced an aspirational timetable, now they'll pick up their guns again.  Like the accidental guerrillas, they will fight us for as long as we occupy their country.  Full stop. 

Staying will not cause them, or the rest of the Afghan population, to become any more enamored with the remarkably corrupt Karzai government propped up by foreign eleements, and cobbled together from often-brutal and retrograde warlords (some of which the Taliban usurped to popular delight in the 1990s).

Along these lines, the Taliban, as well as the rest of the Afghan population, have, from the outset, understood quite well that the United States would not be staying forever (heck, I'm sure if you took bets early on, few would have guessed that we'd have lasted the 10+ years we're already slated for).  And there's a good reason for that: while the United States could conceivably remain in Afghanistan with its current occupying force structure for the next quarter century, the costs would be astronomical, vastly outweighing any potential benefits - with dogged obstinacy replacing reason, common sense and effective allocation of resources.  Or, in other words, the triumph of neoconservative foreign policy.

On the other hand, the Taliban and the assorted non-Taliban resistance groups live in Afghanistan (or just across the Durand Line), which is, to state a tautology, infinitely cheaper in terms of maintaining a presence within that country.  As the locals are fond of pointing out, quite correctly, "NATO has all the watches, but we have all the time."      

Ultimately, it's up to those that want to blame the timetable for the lack of progress in Afghanistan to do two things.  First, point to all the progress that was being made during the prior 8+ years that was somehow interrupted and turned back because of the timetable - progress that would be substantial enough to offer real promise for a positive outcome, within reasonable cost limits, and in the near future.  Next, in a related sense, explain what exactly we would be achieving now but for the announced timetable.

As if such a secondary phenomenon as a proposed timetable at this late stage in a protracted conflict were in any way responsible for the more crucial difficulties stemming from dealing with a complex matrix of fighting factions: from ideological/religious fighters and warlords, to "accidental guerrillas," tribal groupings and drug growers/smugglers.  Or the deep corruption and pervasive ineptitude of the Karzai regime (that has little to do with Karzai the person, and more to do with necessary alliances with self-interested warlords, and other demographic realities). 

Or perhaps the underlying ethnic/regional rifts/competitions (both within Afghanistan, and vis-a-vis neighboring countries like Pakistan), the lack of basic foundations on which to build advanced, Western-modeled institutions, geographical and logistical obstacles and myriad other far more essential impediments that have stymied our efforts, and will continue to do so for as long as we pretend that "we" are the ones driving events, with every utterance from the President a sea-changing moment.

Happy Father's Day!

by Eric Martin

Because, really, is there a more important holiday?

I recently took a day off of work to take E-Money to his swim class.

 
Or as I like to call it...

 
Pre-Olympic training/my retirement fund.  What?  There's nothing wrong with him earning his keep for a change.

 
Happy Father's Day to all you daddies in the house.  It ain't always easy, especially if you're doing it right, but the payoff means the world.

The Hollow Sham

by Eric Martin

Marc Lynch has an extremely insightful post about the impact of US foreign policy on the Middle East and its various ruling regimes:

"So the Arab core grows hollow," laments former Bush administration Middle East adviser Elliott Abrams in the Weekly Standard today. Most of the essay is an unexceptional restatement of neo-conservative tropes: Obama is weak, Arabs only respect power, Turkey has become a radical Islamist enemy... you can fill in the rest of the blanks. But the lament about the hollowness of the Arab core deserves more careful attention. Why has the Arab core grown so hollow? After all, the Arab core --- in his definition, mostly Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- has been closely aligned with the United States for many decades, and its leaders cooperated very closely with the Bush administration on virtually every issue. This points to a contradiction at the core of the approach favored by Abrams. The cooperation by these Arab leaders, in the face of widespread and deep hostility towards those policies among much of the Arab public, contributed immensely towards stripping away their legitimacy and driving them towards ever greater repression. The approach outlined so ably by Abrams isn't the solution to the problem of this "hollow Arab core." It is one of its causes. And the problem with Obama administration's regional diplomacy thus far has been that it has changed too little.. not too much.

Abrams attributes the diminished influence of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the advancing age of those countries' respective rules, but Lynch correctly critiques this thesis as "oddly personalized."  Aside from that curious angle, Abrams misses the actual story, and it's an important, if inconvenient, one - and Lynch tells it quite well.  By virtue of Egypt and Saudi Arabia's relegation to the mere parroting of  unpopular US foreign policy dictates, those nations are incapable of showing any initiative, offering creative solutions or inspiring much confidence from other regional powers in terms of new policy directions.  Compared those moribund regimes with Turkey, which has taken on a more kinetic leadership role, as evidenced by both the brokering of peace talks between Israel and Syria (which had Iran's blessing), and the nuclear fuel deal with Iran (with an assist from Brazil).

The advancing age of a few individuals is not on its own a satisfying explanation for the declining influence of Arab leaders. States like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have lost influence not only because of their leaders' advancing age, but also because of the deep unpopularity of many of the policies they have been led to defend by the United States. A more vigorous Hosni Mubarak would not make Egypt's role in enforcing the blockade of Gaza more attractive to most Arabs. Abrams, who has long been a vocal advocate of democracy promotion in the Middle East, would likely agree that the stultifying repression in these countries has impeded the emergence of new leaders. But he, like many neoconservative advocates of democracy promotion, rarely addresses head on the reality that the policies pursued by these friendly autocrats in support of U.S. policy objectives contribute deeply to the unpopularity of those regimes. The Arab core has been hollowed out in large part because of, not in spite of, its role in American foreign policy.

The Bush administration sought to polarize the Middle East into an axis of "moderates" -- grouping Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other like-minded Sunni autocrats with Israel -- against "radicals" such as Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. The Arab leaders on which the U.S. relied mostly went along, cooperating to a considerable degree in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and siding against Hezbollah in the 2006 Israeli war with Lebanon and against Hamas during the 2008 Israeli attack on Gaza. But Arab public opinion was largely on the other side, with broad majorities of the population in most of those Arab countries angrily denouncing both the Israeli wars and their own leaders for the positions they took in line with American preferences. To contain this popular anger and to continue to help American policies (such as Egypt's enforcing the blockade of Gaza), those Arab regimes became increasingly repressive. It is not an accident that after all the Bush administration's rhetoric about democracy promotion, it almost completely abandoned such efforts by early 2006 after the electoral victory by Hamas, and its legacy was a Middle East considerably less democratic than when it took office.

Ironically, or not, while fealty to our agenda has drained the prestige of our putative allies, opposition to our policies (and those of Israel) has led to increased popularity in the region for Iran and Hezbollah - who, rightly or wrongly, are seen as the only groups defending the Palestinians from Israeli oppression.  And don't even get me started with the canard of describing regimes like Saudi Arabia as "moderate."

It is also not an accident that the two most vital, energetic forces in the region today, Qatar and Turkey, are the two countries which have tried the hardest to break away from the Bush administration's polarized world view. Each attempted to play the role of a bridge across the regional divides, maintaining ties with both sides in order to depolarize regional politics. Both are close American allies with strong military ties and both have had good relations with Israel in the past. At the same time, both maintain good relations with actors in the so-called "radical" camp and have made major efforts to reach out to Arab public opinion rather than to try to silence or repress it. As relatively new actors on the scene, they have been palpably impatient with a moribund old order and unconcerned with finding a way to fit in with the entrenched, calcified lines of conflict in the region.

The failure of the Obama administration thus far is not that it has been insufficiently aggressive, a "fierce and certain ally [which] gives moderates strength and radicals pause." It is that it has not changed enough. It has too often remained locked in the Bush administration's framework of moderates and radicals, and has failed to truly take advantage of the opportunities offered by these energetic new "bridge" actors such as Turkey and Qatar. The growing Arab disenchantment with Obama is rooted in the widespread belief that American policies have not changed very much from the Bush years despite the improved rhetoric. [...]

...[F]or the most part, the Obama administration chose to fall back on the conventional policies of the past: Palestinian reconciliation remained in the hands of an enfeebled and partisan Egypt, the grand bargain with Iran faded from an agenda dominated by the nuclear question and sanctions, and the Turks are now seen as more of a problem than an asset. Breaking through some of these intractable problems will require not going back to the failed approach of the Bush administration, but rather rediscovering the genuine conceptual changes which Obama originally brought to the table.

Not only has the Iranian government's popularity in the region grown because of its independent policies, but the Iranian public does not blame the United States for propping up its regime, and thus has a more favorable view toward America than populations in neighboring countries, such as the Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose publics tend to blame America for the longevity of their respective regimes.  Quite an inverse dynamic.

Our Middle East posture could stand a complete overhaul, but as Lynch notes, Obama doesn't seem inclined to make a go at it.  In his defense, such an attempt would face a massive amount of resistance from various quarters.  But the path of less resistance isn't as easy a road as it might appear at first.  And there is definitely some room around the edges that he could nibble.

Remarkably, Our Land War in Asia Is Not Proceeding as Planned

by Eric Martin

There are a couple of recent items on Afghanistan worth checking out.  First, Anthony Cordesman penned a pessimistic report about our chances at achieving some sort of victory in Afghanistan (at least as measured against the unrealistic criteria for success that we have been operating under).  It's worth a read.  Speaking of definitions of victory, Bernard Finel makes an intriguing argument:

All of which gets to a simple point: the surge in Afghanistan has worked out as well as anyone could reasonably hope.  This is what success looks like.  Accept it and understand the limitations on what we can accomplish.

The idea that responsive “government in a box” would be established quickly in clear areas, or that Afghan security forces would be able to backfill American forces to provide durable security, or that the Afghans (particularly Pashtuns) would spontaneously coalesce against the insurgency… that was all fantasy world stuff.

Forgot about good government.  Forget about electricity in Kandahar.  Forget especially about fantasies about mineral wealth...[T]he fact is that our biggest problem in developing a coherent Afghan strategy is the continued influence of people who have no interest in reality and are instead wedded to trying implement ahistorical and strategically incoherent concepts about how to defeat insurgencies.

But I digress.  Jason Sigger weighs in on the Cordesman piece, as does Spencer Ackerman and Michael Cohen. I'd echo J-Sig's frustration with Cordesman's unwillingness to come to the obvious conclusion that his analysis walks him right to the edge of: it is well past time to de-escalate, big time, pare back our goals and, eventually, disengage.  This is the same exasperation I felt with David Kilcullen's book about counterinsurgency doctrine - Kilcullen does a fine job of laying out the enormous difficulties of COIN campaigns, points out how costly and draining our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are, argues that containment would be a better model of counterterrorism, acknowledges the fact that our current strategy plays into Bin Laden's hands, yet, on the other hand, thinks we should keep on keeping on in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The Cordesman piece also touched off a re-evaluation of sorts from Andrew Exum regarding his take on our Afghanistan policy, and perhaps even the efficacy of COIN in general.  He offers a list of prior assumptions that informed policy decisions, and analyzes each with the benefit of recent history as a feedback loop.  One item in particular caught my eye:

"What we do is what matters".** Mostly false. I think we drew some false lessons out of the Baghdad security operations of 2007, thinking it was what we did that caused the dramatic drop in violence that allowed for a political process to take place and allows us to consider the Surge to have been a success. As I have pointed out several times here on the blog, there was a lot of stuff going on in Iraq in 2007 – a Jaysh al-Mahdi ceasefire, the effects of a brutal civil war, the Sahwa, etc. U.S. military operations most certainly had an effect on levels of violence, but correctly portioning out causal responsibility for the drop in violence among all those factors is impossible. One lesson from the Surge, though, might have been that in order for us to be successful in Afghanistan, a lot of stuff outside U.S. and allied military operations was going to have to go right. Another lesson might have been that conditions might change on the ground without us having the ability to accurately explain why. Regardless, in Afghanistan, it is always worth remembering that we are waging a war on behalf of a host nation. What the leaders of that host nation do or fail to do matters more than what we do or fail to do.

I agree with the general jist of what Exum is saying here, but wanted to focus on his definition of "success" with respect to the Surge.  Exum considers the Surge a success because it, and the crucial extenuating developments he lists, created space for the political process to gain momentum and possibly lead to an accord sufficient to stop the fighting. 

However, that accord has not been hammered out, hundreds of Iraqis are still dying in political violence each month, there are serious tensions between Iraq's various ethnic and sectarian communities and, due to this, Iraq ranks as the least peaceful country on Earth (edging out Afghanistan and Somalia, which is no small feat).

Which is to highlight the point that not only was the additional influx of soldiers oversold in terms of bringing about the reduction of violence in Iraq (from extra horrific to merely horrific), but even the eventual payoff that the Surge was supposed to deliver was greatly exaggerated.  Using Exum's criteria, a successful Surge would create space for political progress that could wind down a conflict, but as is often the case, the conflict exists because there is no easy political solution - thus the "space" is likely to be of little use. 

As I said at the time that the Surge was being sold to the public, the "political space as savior" argument inverted the essential dynamic driving events.  Namely, the Iraqi groups weren't fighting because there wasn't a lull in the fighting long enough to reach a grand political accord, but rather there wasn't a lull in the fighting because the various factions could not agree as to the parameters of that same accord (including the presence of US troops).

America the Model?

by Eric Marin

Quotable Henley, regarding the Gulf spill, which he calls America's Chernobyl:

There can’t be three foreigners not in the employ of Rupert Murdoch who, today, can read about the “American model of democratic capitalism” without sniggering. This is a country whose elites can cry real tears about the pensions of Britons while regarding the pensions of American autoworkers as the next thing to a crime. While there is a real principle at stake in the difference, it’s not one you’re supposed to voice: Concern for British pensions is a way to keep powerful and connected people unaccountable for their actions; Auto worker pensions can only cost such people money.

I'll add two pennies to that: currently, Americans are paying less in taxes than at any time since the Truman administration, and for the wealthiest Americans, the effective rate is scandalously low.  Unsurprisingly, income disparaties have been growing at a rapid pace.  And yet, our very serious economic thinkers are obsessed with Hooveristic austerity measures during a deep recession and unemployment crisis (with state budget cuts, many of which are statutorily mandated, essentially cancelling out the already too small federal stimulus), as well as ways to gut Social Security.

Just, you know, don't raise taxes to the already low rates that applied in the 1990s.  That would be unthinkable.  And whatever you do, don't create additional brackets for millionaires, multi-millionaires, billionaires and multi-billionaires.  Better to cut vital services for people who depend on them, and let our infrastructure rot (but at least we spend as much as the rest of the world combined on defense!).

This country's worship of wealth and the wealthy, and the capture of our political system by those same elites, will be our undoing.  And yet, unlike just about every other Western industrialized nation, our proletariat come out in droves to protest against efforts to bring the scales down from their enormous upward tilt.

The Best from a Solid Bunch

by Eric Martin

For ther record, this is my nomination for best U2 song ever.  I went to see them three times during the Joshua Tree tour - at all three New York venues (at Brendan Byrne - the Meadowlands - Madison Square Garden and the Nassau Coliseum).  They didn't play this song once.  But in terms of consolations, The Pogues did open for them at the Garden.  Anyway, love this one.  And would have lost my sh#@ had Bono found the gumption to rock it (I know he doesn't like to do the emotional jams live - in other words, other songs not seen live: Bad and Running to Stand Still).  Turn off the visuals if you must and enjoy:

Hope, Faith, Her Vanity

by Eric Martin

Daniel Larison, riffing on a Hooman Majd post commemorating the one year anniversary of the controversial Iranian election that helped spawn the Green movement, says much of what I was saying at the time, and would like to reiterate now - only he does it better.  In particular, Larison discusses some of the "unassailable" conventional wisdom concerning the Green movement, its goals, its Western orientation and how the phenomenon should guide Obama administration policy.  There is so much of value in Larison's post that I will take the liberty of an extended excerpt:

...I [want] to address Majd’s observation about the “unassailable” ideas he describes. He is absolutely right that these were the prevailing, overwhelmingly dominant ideas at the time, and to some extent they continue to be the default view of Western Green movement sympathizers. Iran hawks and other opponents of engagement with Iran took shelter behind these “unassailable” ideas in order to ridicule Obama for “weakness” and “appeasement” or to position themselves as idealistic friends of Iran’s democrats rather than the shabby, amoral, deal-making realists. To assail these ideas was to be considered a supporter of the Iranian regime, an apologist for Ahmadinejad, and all the rest of the insults opponents of the Iraq war had hurled at them seven and eight years ago. One of the reasons why I kept making counter-arguments against claims that the Green movement was going from strength to strength was that these arguments seemed to be built mostly on exaggeration and emotion, and there was never much evidence to persuade a skeptic that these arguments were correct. You were supposed to believe in the power of the Green movement because it felt like the right thing to believe, or else you were just a heartless villain rejoicing in the deaths of protestors. That was more or less the quality of the debate...What mattered was demonstrating empty solidarity with a movement most Westerners misunderstood and one that many wanted to use for their own ends.

One of the reasons I spent as much time as I have over the last year attacking and questioning the claims of Green movement sympathizers here in the U.S., is that it was quite clear to me that isolating and vilifying Iran can only strengthen the hand of the Iranian government at home, split the opposition, and distract Iranians from domestic grievances by creating an external challenge to Iranian sovereignty and nationalism. Nonetheless, this approach of isolation and vilification was exactly what most Western sympathizers urged the administration to adopt. Because there was so much outrage at how the Iranian government had treated its dissidents, Green movement sympathizers wanted nothing to do with engagement any longer, and this ended up aligning them in the debate with Iran hawks who saw the Green movement as a useful short-cut to “solve” the problems they have with Iran. The goal of regime change was still there, but the heavy lifting was going to be assigned to the Iranian opposition.

One small problem with this was that this was not what the Iranian opposition wanted. As Majd explains, this is what Iranian exile groups and their Western supporters wanted the Iranian opposition to want, and it is what the exiles and Westerners claimed that they wanted. The exile groups were trying to turn what could have conceivably turned into a broader-based political protest movement into a politically non-viable anti-regime force. As Majd writes:

A raft of Iranian opposition groups and individuals, mostly abroad, have jumped aboard the Green train—in some cases even claiming the mantle of leadership—and their basic agenda (overthrow of the Islamic regime) invariably contradicts the Green Movement agenda (electoral transparency and civil rights). Statements of support from the much-despised Mujahedin-e Khalq, based in Paris, and the green wristband worn by the shah’s son Reza Pahlavi, were godsends to the government, which has from the start labeled the Green Movement a “velvet” or “color” revolution backed by foreigners. Green leaders have taken pains not to advocate the end of their government, since this is clearly the regime’s most potent charge against them. Though a few of their ranks may harbor seditious dreams, the movement writ large is about civil rights, not pro-Western revolution. [...]

By celebrating them as radical revolutionaries and ignoring or downplaying the insider credentials of many of the movement’s figureheads, Western admirers imputed their own hopes to the movement and thereby did some significant political damage to the movement by portraying it as a subversive, anti-regime force. It would probably have been better to remain completely aloof and skeptical than offer this sort of harmful “support.” On the whole, the administration responded wisely for the first few months by saying as little as possible, but gradually came under pressure to pay more attention to the Green movement from the usual quarters that are always insisting that the U.S. “do something” about everything on the planet. Of course, this is a crucial part of the problem with much of the Western sympathy for the movement: unless it is an anti-regime force, it is of no use to the U.S. and the West, and it is therefore of little interest. As we have seen in recent years in their reactions to political changes in Turkey, Japan, Brazil and other countries throughout Latin America, many democratists quickly lose interest in democratization abroad when it threatens to complicate things for the U.S.

The Green movement has been struggling for Iranian rights and for the sake of their own country. Perhaps someday they or their successors will have some success, but whatever happens it has nothing to do with us. Unlike many of the “pro-Western” movements Washington has enthusiastically backed in the last ten years, the Green movement is not interested in dragging their countrymen against their will into a Western orbit in ways contrary to their national interests. What we cannot seem to abide here in the U.S. is the idea that there is a political reform movement in Iran that has emerged and developed pretty much entirely on its own, does not owe Washington anything for its existence, and does not particularly harbor “pro-Western” inclinations on contested issues. For a lot of its sympathizers, it has to be pursuing the same goals of regime change and compliance with Western demands, or it doesn’t really count. I agree with Majd that the assumption that the Green movement somehow needs U.S. support is insulting to Iranians, and more than that it reflects the fundamentally self-absorbed assumption of so many of our politicians and pundits that every great political change in the world can only be brought about through the exercise of American power and influence.

Speaking of self-serving myths, Flyntt and Hillary Mann Leverett have a thought-provoking post discussing the evidence, or lack thereof, of electoral fraud in the infamous 2009 election:

Since manufactured claims about Iraqi WMD led the United States to invade Iraq in 2003, no analytic line about developments in the Middle East has had a bigger impact on American foreign policy than the assertion that the outcome of Iran’s June 12, 2009 presidential election—held one year ago tomorrow—was a fraud.  Since shortly after the election, we have been subjected to a great deal of criticism (a disappointingly high percentage of it personal in nature) for arguing that no hard evidence of electoral fraud has been produced, and that Ahmadinejad’s re-election was, in fact, quite plausible as an outcome.  Of course, these are arguments that went against the conventional wisdom that took root among most Western Iran “experts” literally on the morning after the election.   

We stand by these judgments today.  We are certainly not in a position to vouch personally for the physical handling of ballots, the counting process, etc.—in other words, we are not in a position to conclude definitively that there was no fraud in Iran’s 2009 presidential election.  However, we continue to hold that no evidence of fraud has been produced, and that Ahmadinejad’s re-election, without fraud, was eminently plausible. 

We also believe that it should be incumbent on those who continue to assert that there was decisive fraud in the election to come up with hard evidence to support their claim—and not rely solely on “must have been” conjecture...

In that spirit, we want to highlight two pieces of analysis on the Islamic Republic’s presidential election that have informed our own thinking about this critically important event.... 

The first of these pieces is by Reza Esfandiari and Yousef Bozorgmehr, entitled “A Rejoinder to the Chatham House Report on Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election Offering a New Analysis on the Results”, see here.  The second is by Eric Brill, entitled “Did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Steal the 2009 Iran Election?”, see here. 

Worth a look if the subject matter interests you.

His Accent Sounded Fine to Me

by Eric Martin

Since the various arguments regarding the ostensible justifications for Arizona's heavy-handed, discriminatory immigration law generated a good amount of heat on this site, this post from Adam Serwer seemed useful in directly addressing some of the relevant issues:

The arguments in favor of Arizona's draconian immigration law have already been debunked. Arizona isn't being overwhelmed by the undocumented because the undocumented population is decreasing. Crime in the U.S. is down, crime in Arizona is down "dramatically." There is no spillover violence from the border -- in fact the top four big cities with the lowest crime rates are all along the border. The federal government hasn't done "nothing"; it's deporting people in numbers higher than anything seen during the Bush administration. So there's very little empirical evidence to support the idea that Arizona is being overwhelmed by an illegal immigrant crime wave, because it isn't.

In Georgia, another draconian measure is being considered that again proves that anti-immigrant sentiment has nothing to do with crime at all. From Jessica Calefati at Mother Jones:

Georgia's Board of Regents joined the national debate on illegal immigration this week by announcing plans for its public colleges to review every student's immigration status and identify those who are undocumented, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. While illegal immigrants are allowed to attend Georgia's public colleges, they aren't allowed to enroll at the less expensive in-state tuition rate. And because undocumented students can't work legally, the higher out-of-state tuition rate is something most can't afford.

This effort cannot plausibly be directed at criminals. It is directed at those immigrants who are productive members of American society but also happen to be undocumented, including those whose only crime was being brought here by their parents when they were children. The people being targeted by this law aren't committing crimes--they're trying to get an education so they can make something of themselves. In other words, it's targeted at the kind of immigrants anti-immigration activists claim they want.

Ah, just some more lazy immigrants who come here to steal all of our jobs, and collect welfare, attend our best universities, and refuse to learn our ways and assimilate.