Norman Podhoretz’s Big Sandy

John McCain made a fool of himself during a campaign stop not long ago. Asked what to do about Iran’s nuclear development program and its president’s well-publicized desire to “wipe Israel off the map,” the Republican senator channeled the Beach Boys’ hit, “Barbara Ann,” amending the lyrics to chant, “Bomb, bomb, bomb — bomb, bomb Iran.”

If you missed his performance, you can catch it on YouTube by clicking <here>.

McCain may have hoped that this bit of “straight talk” would boost his poll numbers, but he has so far been disappointed. The American electorate, judging from its ever-diminishing support for the Iraq war in public opinion surveys, is unlikely to set aside its misgivings to take on a presidential candidate who wants to take on Iran.

But leave it to Norman Podhoretz to barge in where others tread warily now that neoconservative dreams of “remaking” the Middle East have come a cropper along the shores of the Tigris and Euphrates.

His latest opus, “The Case for Bombing Iran,” appears in the June issue of Commentary magazine, whose previous sponsor, the American Jewish Committee, may be breathing a sigh of relief that it divested itself of bomb-thrower before it unleashed this latest salvo. [Click <here> for the article.]

Originally presented in April as an address “in somewhat different form” at a conference sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College, City University of New York, “The Case for Bombing Iran,” amounts to a seal of hechsher — approval that an item is kosher — for ideas (some neoconservative, some plain lunatic) that have been floating around on the Jewish right since before last autumn’s midterm Congressional elections.

On March 22, this blog posted my entry, “Tehran Willies” [read it by clicking <here>], summarizing some choice examples which counseled President Bush that bombing Iran would save the neoconservative movement and/or secure his place in history as “God’s agent.” By then, the Republicans’ loss of the Senate and House, combined with steadily plummeting poll numbers for the president and the Iraq war, appeared to have put a damper on the White Houses’ ability to launch another war of choice.

But neoconservatives pride themselves on disdaining public opinion. True to the Trotskyist origins of many of the movement’s founders, they have never disavowed their belief that they constitute a “vanguard” — if not of the proletariat, then of US foreign and military policy strategists. And though none of their sons and daughters and grandchildren are serving frontline tours in their Iraq debacle, it fazes them not one whit to propose trudging even further into the Big Sandy, where yet more American lives — albeit those of other Americans, as well as unfortunate local inhabitants — will be sacrificed.

“The Case for Bombing Iran” has many classic earmarks of Podhoretz polemic: the portentous assertion that a doomsday clock is about to strike midnight and the fate of Western civilization hanging in the balance if no one pays heed to his warning; the clarion invocation of “American will,” seen as currently flabby and wavering, but which can triumph over any deficits of treasure and materiel that may be hobbling his call to arms; and crocodile tears for the innocents who may happen to be in harm’s way when a “responsible” America finally awakens from its sloth to save them (and civilization) from a fate which he assures us is worse than death itself.

But also on view are signs of a certain calcification of the polemical faculty.

Take, for example, his use of the term “Islamofascism.” We are now, Podhoretz informs us, engaged in World War IV — number III having been the Cold War. And we are told that, as in the forty-year confrontation with the Soviet Union, “the war we are now in has ideological roots, pitting us against Islamofascism, yet another mutation of the totalitarian disease we defeated in the shape of Nazism and fascism and then in the shape of Communism ….”

As I noted in a lengthy essay for the Autumn 2006 issue of the Jewish Peace Fellowship’s newsletter, Shalom [available on this blog by clicking <here>], “Islamofascism” is a term devoid of substantive intellectual content and useless for any serious analysis. Rather, it is an epithet, like “Judeo-Bolshevism,” “imperialist lackey,” “capitalist roader,” etc., designed to short circuit thought by arousing visceral fear and loathing. The French describe this sort of verbiage as la langue de bois — literally, “the wooden tongue”; more felicitously translated as “cant” — and it is disheartening to see Podhoretz’s polemical talents degenerate to this level.

More striking to observe is the atrophy of his reasoning by historical analogy. Renaming the Cold War “World War III” is an interesting rhetorical maneuver. By doing so, Podhoretz evidently means to conjure up images of the national mobilization and sacrifice necessary to confront the challenges he posits the West faces from a nuclear-capable Iran. Moreover, he invokes the legacy of Ronald Reagan who, with “the grace of God [and] the dissidents behind the Iron Curtain … we won” that war.

But before joining Podhoretz to enlist in World War IV, it is instructive to look more closely Reagan’s legacy. Like Bush Jr., the Gipper made a disastrous foray into the Middle East, when in 1983 he sent U.S. troops to Lebanon as peacekeepers. After a Marine barracks was destroyed by a suicide truck bomb, with the loss of 241 American service personnel, Reagan in short order withdrew the remaining military contingent. In our day, right-wing bloviators would call this a policy of “cut and run” — except that it was one of their political heroes who did the cutting and running.

Obscured, too, in Podhoretz’s rendition of Reagan’s conduct of the Cold War is the inconvenient fact that following a thoroughly bollixed proxy war in Nicaragua — during which, at one point, his national security advisor personally hand-delivered a cake to Tehran’s mullahs — Reagan thereafter essentially relied on negotiation in dealing with the Soviet “evil empire.”

If, indeed, Reagan “won” the Cold War, then it ended not with a bang of “shock and awe” cruise-missile barrage on the Kremlin, but rather with a simper of broad smiles and hearty handshakes exchanged with Mikhail Gorbachev. Similarly, Reagan’s predecessor, Richard Nixon, wound down World War III’s Asian front by engaging in much the same strategy (minus the backslapping) with Mao Tse-tung. (There is, of course, the inconvenient matter of 90,000 American and countless Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian lives sacrificed in what is now almost universally regarded as an ill-conceived and unwinnable military conflict that Nixon nonetheless continued even after he “opened China” and bequeathed to his successor to wind up in a flurry of helicopter airlifts from the U.S. embassy in what was then Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City …)

What Podhoretz’s analogy fails to acknowledge is that whereas the first two world wars were conducted as head-on armed contests between competing states, the central opposing powers of “WWIII” did everything in their power to avoid such direct confrontation. He confuses rhetorical preludes to negotiation with battle orders, and he does so with little concern for the price that others might have to pay for his tin ear.

So, too, with Podhoretz’s call to World War IV against Iran.

For the moment, President Bush — though, according to recent reports, not necessarily Vice President Richard Cheney — has stopped rattling his saber and is calling upon Europe, Russia and China to support stiffened sanctions against Iran for refusing to halt its nuclear development program and allow unhindered inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Podhoretz has no use for sanctions. “As it happens,” he writes, “sanctions have rarely worked in the past” — purposefully ignoring the fact that Saddam Hussein dismantled his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs in response to the sanctions regime imposed on Iraq during the 1990s, which is why no WMD have been found in Iraq during the five years after our invasion.

“Worse yet,” Podhoretz continues, “[sanctions] have usually ended up hurting the hapless people of the target country while leaving the leadership unscathed.” On this, paradoxically, he and elements of the wackadoodle left agree. One need only recall the prewar outcries against the sanctions regime for depriving Iraqi children of medicines, milk and clean water, and unconfirmed (and still unverified) estimates of tens of thousands of resulting deaths. Such arguments hold water only if one considers the death toll from sectarian violence unleashed in the wake of our military overthrow of Saddam’s Ba’athist regime a lesser or worse form of violence than the sanctions regime — as, by inference, Podhoretz evidently does.

However unwilling Podhoretz is to admit that sanctions may have worked in pre-invasion Iraq, he nonetheless circuitously acknowledges that U.S. military action there has seriously undermined this nation’s capacity to confront Iran with an ultimate demonstration of American “will.” He writes:

Since a ground invasion of Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done, if it is to be done at all, by a campaign of air strikes. Furthermore, because Iran’s nuclear facilities are dispersed, and because some of them are underground, many sorties and bunker-busting munitions would be required. And because such a campaign is beyond the capabilities of Israel, and the will, let alone the courage, of any of our other allies, it could be carried out only by the United States. Even then, we would probably be unable to get at all the underground facilities, which means that, if Iran were still intent on going nuclear, it would not have to start over again from scratch. But a bombing campaign would without question set back its nuclear program for years to come, and might even lead to the overthrow of the mullahs.

But then again, maybe not.

Acknowledging that “it would be foolish to discount any or all of these scenarios,” Podhoretz concedes — grudgingly — that opponents of his proposed bombing campaign possibly have a point in predicting that “shock and awe” alone might not topple the Iranian regime — any more than it did Saddam Hussein’s.

On the contrary, [opponents of a bombing campaign] are certain that all Iranians, even the democratic dissidents, would be impelled to rally around the flag. And this is only one of the worst-case scenarios they envisage. To wit: Iran would retaliate by increasing the trouble it is already making for us in Iraq. It would attack Israel with missiles armed with non-nuclear warheads but possibly containing biological and/or chemical weapons. There would be a vast increase in the price of oil, with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world, very much including our own. The worldwide outcry against the inevitable civilian casualties would make the anti-Americanism of today look like a love-fest.

Strip away the rhetorical evasions shot throughout Podhoretz’s essay and here is the train of logic: We shouldn’t apply sanctions because sanctions hurt innocent civilians while leaving the leadership intact. But a bombing campaign brings with it no assurance that Iran’s leadership will be toppled — or that it won’t retaliate in Iraq or against Israel, the U.S. and the world.

Rarely has the difference between an armchair general and a bona fide military strategist been on plainer view. Podhoretz, the hawk, has only entry strategies. There are no exits in his Hobbesian universe. On to Tehran! — even though there can be no guarantee that resorting to violence, with its attendant costs in blood, treasure, chaos and collateral damage, will eventually bring peace.

For Norman Podhoretz, there is only war. There is a word to describe this kind of worldview. That word is madness.

— Adam Simms

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Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief

The problem with spin-doctors, like White House press spokesperson Tony Snow, is that their hubris compels them to talk — when a simple “No comment” would be better advised.

Thanks to Think Progress for today’s telling tidbit from inside the bubble.

= = =

Snow: President Bush Is ‘On The Frontlines’ Of The Iraq War ‘Every Day’

In today’s White House press briefing, reporter Helen Thomas asked Tony Snow if there are “any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war.” Stunningly, Snow claimed that President Bush is actually on the “frontlines” of the war in Iraq:

Q: Are there any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war?

SNOW: Yeah, the President. The President is in the war every day.

Q: Come on, that isn’t my question –

SNOW: Well, no, if you ask any president who is a commander in chief –

Q: On the frontlines, wherever…

SNOW: The President.

Watch a video of the exchange <here>.

In reality, Bush and his administration have repeatedly shown they are deeply out of touch with the sacrifices and the fighting by U.S. troops and their families. Bush himself acknowledged his detachment during a press conference in February:

I can only tell you what people on the ground, whose judgment — it’s hard for me, living in this beautiful White House, to give you an assessment, firsthand assessment. I haven’t been there; you have, I haven’t.

In April, First Lady Laura Bush tried to claim that “no one suffers more than their President and I do.” When asked by PBS’s Jim Lehrer why he hasn’t called on more Americans to sacrifice for the war, Bush claimed that Americans have had to “sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible image of violence on TV every night.”

— Adam Simms

Cheney mugs AIPAC — and American Jews

A Gallup poll released last month found that 77 percent of American Jews believe US military involvement in Iraq was a mistake from the get-go. (See our post of Feb. 28, “US Jews toughest foes of Iraq war.”)

Those findings, set against events emanating from this week’s annual policy conclave of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, DC, throw into stark relief the radical disconnect between American Jews and the people who claim to be our “leaders.”

And a strange style of “leadership” it is, too — one that “leads” by toadying to powers-that-be.

For those who play the game, it is exhilarating to hobnob with the real movers and shakers, bask in their reflected glory and delude yourself that, in a democracy, they do your bidding. Until, that is, they demand that you do their bidding.

So it was that AIPAC invited Vice President Richard Cheney to lend some luster to their Monday session. To all outward appearances, it probably looked to the AIPACers like a perfect fit: AIPAC favors a hard line toward the Palestinians and Iran, and the vice president is the hardest of hardliners in the Bush administration.

AIPAC undoubtedly expected a love fest. What it got instead was a dose of the veep’s well-practiced menace.

“It is simply not consistent,” he intoned, “for anyone to demand aggressive action against the menace that is posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave Israel’s best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened.”

Translation: You want us to protect Israel from Iran? Fine. Quid pro quo: support us on Iraq.

An editorial in the Forward’s March 16 edition clearly and forcefully dissects the threats inherent in Cheney’s message:

… Cheney was telling the Jewish community that the war in Iraq had been launched and fought in considerable measure for their benefit and Israel’s. That’s precisely the message that Israel’s worst enemies have been peddling for the past four years as America’s blood and treasure have been poured wastefully down the sinkhole of a misconceived and unwinnable war. It was a lie then, and it is a lie now. And now he seems to be casting Iran in the same light: as the Jews’ war.

…

… It is not the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq that threatens disaster to the United States and the entire Middle East. The disaster is already here; it was precipitated by the entry of American troops into Iraq. The American-led invasion turned Iraq from a dreary dictatorship into a maelstrom of communal violence and a breeding ground of terrorism. The toppling of the tin-pot tyrant Saddam Hussein removed Iran’s worst enemy, unleashing the Islamic Republic as a regional superpower. The continuing presence of American troops as unwanted occupiers in the fabled city of Baghdad is inflaming rage in the streets throughout the Muslim world, putting Americans and Israelis alike at greater risk than ever.

The burning question for America and its allies in the region, Muslim and Jewish alike, is how to end the nightmare of the Iraq quagmire as quickly as possible, with the least damage to the torn fabric of civilization.

— David Gradis

Union for Reform Judaism considers a resolution on the war in Iraq

The Union for Reform Judaism’s Executive Committee has circulated to congregational rabbis and presidents an advance copy of a proposed resolution on the U.S. war in Iraq, which is scheduled to be considered on March 14. (A copy can be downloaded in the form of a Microsoft Word .doc file by clicking here.)

Though the URJ does not take a pacifist position with regard to war, the resolution's discussion of “Jewish Values Regarding Rules for War” provides persuasive ethical considerations for determining that U.S. military action in Iraq has been misbegotten from its start.

Here are some highlights of the resolution:

Noting that its reading of Jewish tradition “offers ethical analysis as to the causes justifying the use of force (‘just cause’),” the resolution notes:

Nonetheless, just because a government has a right to do something does not make what it does right — or wise. Further, meeting one just war norm does not justify the violation of others.

. . .

The halachah is clear about the need to pursue vigorously peaceful options before the use of force could be justified (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Melachim 6:1). This was a requirement that the 2002 URJ Executive committee decision called for and one that the 9/11 Commission found we had failed to achieve.

. . .

In conclusion, our failure to pursue all reasonable alternatives to war, to mobilize the kind of broad-based international cooperation we had in the first Gulf War, the array of faulty justifications for war offered, the woeful lack of planning for the aftermath of the traditional warfare component of the war, the disgraceful failure to protect the civilian infrastructure (bal tashchit), the abuses of prisoners, the alarming devastation wrought on civilians — all these and more raise significant abuses and failures of Jewish just war standards.

The URJ’s proposed statement concludes with the following resolutions to:

1. Reaffirm the principles stated in the 2005 Resolution on the War in Iraq, particularly:

A. Commending our service women and men (and their families) who have answered duty's call and served our nations honorably…and support generous benefits for them;

B. Encouraging the involvement and support of the international community towards a working democratic Iraqi government and rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure;

C. Ensuring the United States government provides sufficient armor, supplies, and security for our troops through the completion of phased withdrawal;

D. Providing diligent congressional oversight of the war and related expenditures;

E. Ensuring that the financial burden of the war falls not just on the poor and on future generations, but be shared equitably;

F. Immediately begin the process of phased withdrawal of our troops from Iraq now that Iraqi Parliamentary elections have occurred; and

2. Call on President Bush to:

A. Clearly set and announce a timetable for the phased and expeditious withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq;

B. Include the estimated cost of the war in the annual budget request and not through emergency supplemental bills; and

3. Oppose an escalation in troop strength; and

4. Call upon the United States and Canadian governments and the international community to:

A. Encourage Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Malaki to resume reconciliation talks with the full range of Iraq's political leaders;

B. Actively support a dialogue between Iraq and all its neighbors, especially in regards to helping to stop civil strife and terrorism and helping finance Iraqi job programs and reconstruction.

— Posted by Adam Simms

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IRAN

Nuclear Watch

Eric Hundman of the Center for Defense Information, writing on the Wire Blog Network’s Danger Room – What’s Next in National Security blog, reported 2/23/07 that the International Atomic Energy Association reported the previous day that despite a UN Security Council resolution, Iran continues its uranium enrichment program.

However, Hundman noted, the IAEA also reported:

First, Iran has only enriched uranium up to 4.2% U-235, just about the level required to fuel a proliferation-resistant light-water reactor. This is still far below the threshold required to make nuclear weapons (20% U-235 is the minimum required to make a weapon, but most use about 90%). Unfortunately, just because Iran hasn’t enriched further doesn’t mean they can’t; the report says nothing about possible technical problems.

Second, the IAEA’s inventory of nuclear material at the Natanz pilot plant is “consistent with” the inventory supplied by the Iranians themselves. This gives some assurance that nuclear material is not being diverted to secret facilities. However, the main (underground) enrichment facility is not mentioned.

Third, while Iran has “declined to agree at this stage” to the use of remote monitoring, in the interim it has allowed “frequent inspector access” to the main underground enrichment plant at Natanz – the IAEA has eyes there, occasionally at least. This agreement will satisfy the IAEA only until the number of centrifuges reaches 500.

Fourth, there seem to be only about 500 fully installed centrifuges at Natanz – if all of them were running at full speed it would take about six years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb. However, Iran claims it has roughly 350 more “in final stages of installation;” this seems to be happening sooner than many experts expected.

Fifth, the IAEA has found no indications that spent fuel is being reprocessed for plutonium, at any of Iran’s declared nuclear facilities. However, construction continues at Iran’s planned heavy-water reactor, which could produce fuel for nuclear weapons. These are some pretty dim glimmers of hope, but they do indicate that some time remains before Iran will even have enough material to build a nuclear weapon. Given some hints that sanctions and financial pressure might be starting to work, who knows -- there might even be enough time to reach some sort of agreement.

War Watch

Haaretz 2/24/07 quoted Britain’s Daily Telegraph's report that “Israel is negotiating with the United States over permission for an ‘air corridor’ over Iraq should an attack on that country's nuclear facilities become necessary.”

Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh denied Saturday that Israel was conducting such negotiations.

Meanwhile, The Times of London 2/24/07 reported that Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair said “publicly for the first time that it would be wrong to take military action against Iran.” Blair was quoted in a BBC interview on Thursday as saying: “I can’t think that it would be right to take military action against Iran . . . What is important is to pursue the political, diplomatic channel. I think it is the only way that we are going to get a sensible solution to the Iranian issue.”

The Times also reported that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates “who has previously called for direct talks with Tehran, is said to be totally opposed to military action.” In addition, it reported that “Condoleeza Rice, the Secretary of State, is also opposed to using force, while Steve Hadley, the President’s National Security Adviser, is said to be deeply sceptical."

IRAQ

US Casualties Watch

The Huffington Post reported via Associated Press correspondent Michelle Roberts’ story of 2/23/07 that:

...nearly 800 civilians working under contract to the Pentagon have been killed and more than 3,300 hurt doing jobs normally handled by the U.S. military, according to figures gathered by The Associated Press.

Exactly how many of these employees doing the Pentagon's work are Americans is uncertain. But the casualty figures make it clear that the Defense Department's count of more than 3,100 U.S. military dead does not tell the whole story.

. . .

Employees of defense contractors such as Halliburton, Blackwater and Wackenhut cook meals, do laundry, repair infrastructure, translate documents, analyze intelligence, guard prisoners, protect military convoys, deliver water in the heavily fortified Green Zone and stand sentry at buildings -- often highly dangerous duties almost identical to those performed by many U.S. troops.

Speak-Up Watch

JTA reported 2/20/07:

The Union of Reform Judaism’s executive committee, due to meet March 12, is considering a resolution to oppose Bush’s troop surge in blunt terms. Reform leaders will raise the issue during the Jewish Council for Public Affairs plenum that begins Feb. 25.

The URJ draft resolves to “oppose an escalation in troop strength.” “Escalation” is a word the White House has said is loaded and has urged others to avoid in describing the additional 21,000 troops Bush has assigned to the region.

. . .

A resolution opposing the war, passed overwhelmingly at the Reform movement´s biennial general assembly in late 2005 was less confrontational, calling for the United States to begin considering a withdrawal.

ISRAEL

Settlement Watch

Peace Now in Israel (Shalom Achshav) 2/21/07 reported that the number of settlements did not grow during 2006. However, Interior Ministry figures put the number of settlers at 268,000, a growth of 5% during the last year. Peace Now noted that growth in the settler population remains steady.

The number of outposts stands at 102. No new outposts were established during the previous year, and 1 was dismantled. Approximately 2,000 settlers currently live in outposts. Peace Now stated that despite the government's commitment to delimitate six outposts, they did not stop growing in 2006 and they are now building permanent housing units. In May 2006, in response to a petition filed by Peace Now with the Supreme Court, the government promised to present an overall outpost evacuation plan. The court is scheduled to discuss the petition again in March.

Click here to read the full report.

-- Posted by Barnett Axelrad