“The Unknown Man”: Rummy Returns And It’s Like He Never Left
Don Rumsfeld, believe it or not, is back. And though I haven’t read Rumsfeld’s Rules, (available in paperback soon!), I’m pretty sure he hasn’t changed a bit. Which is something that I think it’s fair to say is true of most people who worked at high levels for George W. Bush. As far as they’re concerned, they were right all along, about everything. Rumsfeld thinks President Obama is going about this Syria thing all wrong, about which he could well be right, but how can anybody hear him offer opinions about that sort of thing and not remind themselves that he bore as much responsibility as anyone for what was probably the single greatest foreign-policy screw-up in American history?
Anyhow, the real reason I mention Rummy is that Errol Morris has a new documentary about him coming out soon called The Unknown Known. Like Morris’ The Fog of War, his film on Robert McNamara, it’s basically a long interview with Rumsfeld. But unlike McNamara, Rumsfeld has no regrets. Watch this preview all the way to the end: http://youtu.be/NptUMuDAljA
“Not an obsession. A very measured, nuanced approach.”
To me, that self-satisfied smile Rumsfeld gives at the end says, You can try all day, buddy, but I’m never going to say we were wrong. Give me your best shot. Rumsfeld seems to be treating the interview like a game, which in some sense it is. It might seem odd that Rumsfeld would agree to participate in the film, but he has no small amount of self-regard. He no doubt believed that no matter what Morris asked him, he’d be able to give the answer he wanted and not get trapped into saying something embarrassing. In the end, he’d be victorious. Just like he was in Iraq, right?
But the fact that he can describe the administration’s beliefs about Iraq as “Not an obsession. A very measured, nuanced approach” is quite something. You’d expect at least an acknowledgement that things didn’t work out quite as they had hoped. This is, after all, the man who said about phantom WMDs, “We know where they are,” and who predicted about the war, “It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months” (another time he said, “Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that”).
The propaganda war over Iraq never ends, I guess. Maybe the bigger the mistake you make, the more you need to convince yourself and others that it was never really a mistake to begin with.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 4, 2013
“It’s Always Morning In America”: Republicans, Before Talking About Reagan And Chemical Weapons, Don’t Forget Actual History
Reagan worship in Republican politics reaches unhealthy levels from time to time — “Ronaldus Magnus,” for example — though it’s generally the result of Reagan fans not remembering the 40th president nearly as well as they think they do.
A few years ago, for example, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia was the result of Reagan’s historic leadership. That didn’t make any sense at all — the Prague Spring happened in 1968.
Or take today’s example, from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“It is against the norms of international standards and to let something like this go unanswered, I think will weaken our resolve. I — I know that President Reagan would have never let this happen. He would stand up to this. And President Obama — the only reason he is consulting with Congress, he wants to blame somebody for his lack of resolve. We have to think like President Reagan would do and he would say chemical use is unacceptable.”
Look, I realize the 1980s seems like a long time ago, and on Capitol Hill, memories are short. But if prominent members of Congress are going to talk about Reagan and the use of chemical weapons, at a bare minimum, they should have some rudimentary understanding of how Reagan approached the use of chemical weapons.
So long as saying unpleasant-but-true things about Reagan is still legal, let’s set the record straight.
The Reagan administration was, of course, quite ambitious when it came to foreign policy and national security. For example, Reagan invaded Grenada without telling Congress he intended to do so; he bombed Libya without congressional approval or consultation; and he illegally sold over 1,000 missiles to Iran to finance an illegal war in Nicaragua.
And as Heyes Brown explained, Reagan also did largely the opposite of what Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said he did with regards to the use of chemical weapons.
For the majority of the 1980s, Iraq under Sadaam Hussein was locked in combat with the Islamic Republic of Iran in a war that killed more than 100,000 people on both sides. The United States explicitly backed the secular Hussein over the Ayatollah Khomeini’s government in Tehran, still smarting from the embassy hostage crisis that had only ended when Reagan took office. That backing not only included the shipment of tons of weapons to support Baghdad, but also looking the other way when Iraq unleashed its chemical weapons stockpiles — including sarin and mustard gas — against Iranian civilians and soldiers alike.
Recently declassified documents from that time indicate that not only did the U.S. government know that Hussein possessed these weapons, but “conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin.” President Reagan also remained silent during the Al-Anfal campaign, in which Hussein used poison gas against the Kurdish population in Northern Iraq to put down a revolt against his rule. In what has later been called a genocide, more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed, nearly 100 times more than the attack that took place outside of Damascus last month.
Indeed, after Saddam Hussein gassed his own people, Reagan dispatched … wait for it … Donald Rumsfeld to help solidify the relationship between the Reagan administration and the brutal, murderous Iraqi dictator. Rumsfeld gladly shook hands with Hussein after he used chemical weapons to kill Iraqi dissidents.
Perhaps someone can let Rep. Ros-Lehtinen know.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 5, 2013
“Armchair Warriors”: The Syria Question That Congress Must Answer
Congress is asking the wrong questions about Syria. The issue can’t be who wins that country’s civil war. It has to be whether the regime of Bashar al-Assad should be punished for using chemical weapons — and, if the answer is yes, whether there is any effective means of punishment other than a U.S. military strike.
Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey showed the patience of Job this week as House and Senate members grilled them about the impossible, the inconceivable and the irrelevant.
At Wednesday’s hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I thought for a moment that Kerry was going to blow. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) launched into a self-righteous soliloquy about Benghazi, the IRS, the National Security Agency and what he portrayed as Kerry’s longtime aversion to using military force.
Kerry, you may recall, is a highly decorated Vietnam combat veteran. Duncan is an armchair warrior.
“I am not going to sit here and be told by you that I don’t have a sense of what the judgment is with respect to this,” Kerry said.
But he held it together and gave Duncan a more civil answer than he deserved. “This is not about getting into Syria’s civil war,” Kerry explained. “This is about enforcing the principle that people shouldn’t be allowed to gas their citizens with impunity.”
For Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the question is why President Obama hasn’t been doing more to shape the outcome of the war. As the price of his vote to authorize a strike, McCain insisted that the resolution approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee include language calling on Obama to “change the military equation on the battlefield.”
I respect McCain’s knowledge and experience on military matters, even when I disagree with him. In this case, I think he’s hallucinating.
In Iraq, with U.S. forces occupying the country and a compliant government installed, it took a huge troop surge and a long counterinsurgency campaign to beat back the jihadists who threatened to take over part of the country. In Syria, with no boots on the ground and a hostile regime clinging to power, how is Obama supposed to ensure that the “good” rebels triumph over the “bad” ones? Why does McCain think we have it in our power to favorably change the equation now?
Let me clarify: I believe that a U.S. strike of the kind being discussed, involving cruise missiles and perhaps other air-power assets, can make it more likely that Assad loses. But I also believe that — absent a major commitment of American forces, which is out of the question — we cannot determine who wins.
For some skeptics on Capitol Hill, the question is why we don’t wait for others to act — the United Nations, perhaps, or some of the 188 other nations that have ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention outlawing atrocities such as those committed in Syria.
I guess hope springs eternal, but that’s how long the wait will be. Russia has vetoed every attempt by the U.N. Security Council to act. Britain’s House of Commons has said no. France is willing but won’t go it alone.
Maybe all this reluctance is a warning that we, too, should demur. But let’s at least be honest with ourselves: If we don’t act, nobody will. The clear message to Assad, and to other tyrants, will be that poison gas is frowned upon but not prohibited.
There is no way that Assad can be shamed into contrition and atonement; at this point, he’s fighting not just for power but for his life. He has to believe that if he loses the war and is captured by rebels, be they the “good” ones or the “bad,” he will be tried and executed like Saddam Hussein — or perhaps killed on the spot like Moammar Gaddafi.
If someone has a workable plan to snatch Assad and his henchmen, haul them before the International Criminal Court and put them on trial, I’m all ears. As things stand, however, the possibility of someday facing charges in the Hague must be low on the Syrian dictator’s list of worries.
If Assad and his government are ever to be held accountable for the use of forbidden weapons to murder hundreds of civilians, the only realistic way for that to happen is a punitive, U.S.-led military strike. This is the question that Obama put on the table — and that too many members of Congress seem determined to avoid.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 5, 2013
“Insincere Symbolism”: The Stakes In What Happens Next Are Not Necessarily Greater Than The Lives Immediately Affected
Regardless of one’s position on a hypothetical U.S. military strike on Syria, it’s rather important to recognize that a lot of the highfalutin talk about Obama setting some terrible or wonderful precedent–or about the acceptance or rejection of his position by Congress or this or that subset of the international community determining the ultimate fate of his presidency–disguises some very petty motives and/or very fixed loyalties and antipathies. Kevin Drum nails it today:
[I]t’s almost as if the only thing anyone really cares about is their own narrow parochial interest. Enforcing a century-old ban against the use of chemical weapons may sound high-minded in the abstract, but down on the ground there’s virtually no one who (a) actually cares about that and (b) would view a U.S. strike through that lens. You’re for it because you’re a Democrat or a Sunni or an Israeli or a member of the rebel army. You’re against it if you’re a Republican or a Shiite or an Egyptian or Vladimir Putin. Hardly anyone truly cares about American credibility or international norms or foreign policy doctrines or any of the other usual talking points. They’ve just chosen sides, that’s all.
Regardless of your own personal view on a Syrian strike, you should keep this in mind. Your motivations—either for or against a strike—might be entirely virtuous, but there’s very little virtue among the actors whose opinions actually matter. The lesson you think will be sent by either restraint or action is probably not the lesson the rest of the world will take from it.
I’d go further and say that those who have “chosen sides” for “parochial interests” have every reason to inflate their own motives into great matters of philosophy, law, geopolitics and morality. It’s all the more reason to stand guard against claims that the stakes in what happens next are much greater than the lives immediately affected–which ought to be more than high enough to ensure grave reflection.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Editor, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 2, 2013
“Mitch McConnell’s Muddle”: Leadership Just Isn’t An Option
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has found himself in an awkward position. He’s an unpopular incumbent facing a credible Republican primary challenger and a credible Democratic opponent. His own campaign staff doesn’t really like him, either.
No matter which direction McConnell tries to lead his caucus, the Kentucky Republican risks alienating some key constituency’s support, so he’s left to just bite his tongue, doing nothing.
Last month, for example, when much of his caucus was at odds over a government-shutdown strategy, Senate Republicans needed some leadership. McConnell went out of his way to steer clear of the fight.
This month, Senate Republicans are at odds over U.S. policy in Syria, and once more, McConnell doesn’t want to talk about it.
Only one of the top five members of the bipartisan congressional hierarchy still sits on the fence about launching a punitive strike against Syria: Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.
The Kentucky Republican emerged from the White House on Monday as the only member of the bicameral leadership group still uncommitted to voting in favor of legislation authorizing military action.
McConnell looks to be taking as much time as he can. He’s weighing his political considerations back home, where an isolationist stance would provide clear short-term benefit, against the pressures of his leadership role at the Capitol, where he’s spent almost three decades as a Republican voice for a hawkish defense posture and an interventionist foreign policy.
This is the point at which congressional leaders try to, you know, lead. But McConnell, now afraid of his own shadow, is struggling to figure out which course will cause him the least amount of trouble. So as literally every other congressional leader takes a side — in this case, in support of using force in Syria — the Senate’s top Republican is left to effectively declare, “I’ll get back to you some other time.”
Perhaps McConnell is waiting to announce a position late on a Friday afternoon when he assumes it’ll make less news? More to the point, perhaps “Senate Minority Leader” is the wrong title for a lawmaker who feels so trapped, leadership isn’t really an option?
Sean Sullivan walked through some of the troubles weighing on McConnell.
For starters, McConnell is facing reelection in 2014 and a primary challenger who has said that the United States should not get involved in Syria. If he argues the opposite view, McConnell would immediately fuel debate and elevate the issue in the campaign.
What’s more, fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has come out in full force against military intervention. If McConnell had come out of the meeting Tuesday as supportive of Obama’s plan, he would instantly be triggering a story about discord over Syria within the Kentucky GOP delegation. And he would risk alienating Paul’s supporters. (Paul has endorsed McConnell’s bid for reelection.)
Third, there is some disagreement among Senate Republicans about which stance the United States should take with Syria, and the fault lines are complex.
No wonder McConnell is struggling. It’s getting to the point that he no longer remembers his positions on key issues.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 4, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 