Hoover Doves

Last week Larry Diamond and Leonard Weiss published in op-ed in the LA Times arguing that "Congress must stop a war on Iran" (h/t: Undercover Blue). Now Diamond has followed up with an article in the Christian Science Monitor, writing with Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul about how "Iran's weakened hardliners crave a U.S. attack." The authors are making a similar point point to the one Ali Ansari did at the Guardian online a couple of weeks ago, when he argued that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is politically weak and isolated - and that a U.S. attack may be the only thing that can save him.

Diamond et al agree with the point about Ahmadinejad's own troubles, but their analysis goes beyond the president himself. Neocon hawks continually fail to note - whether out of ignorance or dishonesty - that the Iranian president is not by any means the most powerful figure in Iran's government. The real power belongs to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and as the CSM article observes, "his failing health has launched a succession struggle." This struggle pits Iran's considerable reform constituency against Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guards hardliners, and their thuggish supporters. As Ahmadinejad falters, he still has one major hope: that the U.S. will launch an attack.

To reverse his waning popular support, Ahmadinejad has tried to change the subject from his domestic failures to his foreign adventures. He knows there is only one thing that could bring the people back to him – a US military attack on Iran. His repulsive remarks about Israel and his nuclear bravado aim precisely to provoke such an attack, which would create the crisis conditions necessary for his faction to seize full power.

Just as Iran's reactionaries are pining for war, some of Iran's more moderate leaders have written a letter asking the Saudi government to help reduce tensions between the US and Iran. Military confrontation with US forces would silence this camp domestically.

In fact, Iran's democratic opposition warns that a US military strike would strengthen the regime hard-liners and weaken their own already limited ability to operate. If Ahmadinejad welcomes war with America and Iran's dissidents fear it, shouldn't the Bush administration think twice about the unintended consequences of military action?

Kevin Drum has called Diamond a "member in good standing of the mainstream liberal foreign policy community," by which he means that he's no Ramsey Clark. Diamond was one of those liberals whose internationalist instincts were challenged by Bush's Iraq war; he worked with the Coalition Provisional Authority for some time, though he claims to have opposed the initial invasion of Iraq.

I bring up this background on Diamond because he's also, interestingly, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. One of the products of the Iraq disaster has been a revitalization of foreign-policy realism, much of it taking place from within conservative think-tanks and publications. There's a danger - which is worth discussing in another post - that liberals opposed to the Iraq war might too easily let themselves be seduced by these new realist allies. But it's worth noting that such a tactical alliance exists at all, and that parts of the conservative intellectual sphere are helping to foster it.

Labels: Foreign Policy, Hoover Institution, Iran, Larry Diamond, liberalism, Neocons, realists

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:50 AM 0 comments

  How They'll Try to Destroy Obama

Mike Allen has a post at the Politico about "the coming effort to dismantle" Barack Obama. Seems that strategists - from both parties - have been leaking information outlining points of attack in their upcoming offensive against the Senator from Illinois. Donna Brazille claims Obama is prepared for the onslaught but there's no doubt that his rivals are hoping to achieve what one of them calls a "souffle effect," whereby his media goodwill is deflated.

The whole piece gives the impression that Allen was just letting himself be spun by a bunch of canny operatives, and then went on to re-post their talking points. A number of the criticisms of Obama are weak, or already well-known. But, for the record, here's what to expect:

Why has he sometimes said his first name is Arabic, and other times Swahili? Why did he make up names in his first book, as the introduction acknowledges? Why did he say two years ago that he would “absolutely” serve out his Senate term, which ends in 2011, and that the idea of him running for president this cycle was “silly” and hype “that’s been a little overblown”?

In interviews, strategists in both parties pointed to four big vulnerabilities: Obama’s inexperience, the thinness of his policy record, his frank liberalism in a time when the party needs centrist voters and the wealth of targets that are provided by the personal recollections in his first book, from past drug use to conversations that cannot be documented.

The "experience" thing is a known-known - it's already being debated ad nauseum and can hardly be seen as some surprising new "gotcha." Likewise the so-called "thinness of his policy record." The book stuff and the name stuff I hadn't heard before, and I suppose the right-wing outrage machine is capable of gearing up dudgeon about pretty much anything, so it's worth watching if those attacks are taken up by people besides some of our dim-witted Democratic consultants.

The "liberalism" thing I find both deeply irritating and weirdly tone-deaf. This had better not come out of the mouths of any Democrats, because it's straight-up Joe Lieberman, and any Democratic candidate whose operatives are caught mouthing this crap can kiss his or her grassroots/netroots support goodbye. The idea that any Democrat would be apologizing for or even bad-mouthing values that once again have been proven right, that should be defended now more than ever, that offer the only real values-based alternative to the vapididy and corruption of the right, is frankly too enraging to even contemplate on a Saturday morning.

But let's look at what Allen cites as examples of this supposedly crippling liberalism:

“Audacity of Hope” advocates civil unions for gay people (a position held by most national democratics), declaring tartly that Obama is not “willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.” He says he doesn’t “believe we strengthen the family by bullying or coercing people into the relationships we think are best for them – or by punishing those who fail to meet our standards of sexual propriety.”

He writes that Bill Clinton and conservatives turned out to be “right about welfare as it was previously structured.” He adds, “But we also need to admit that work alone does not ensure that people can rise out of poverty.”

Gee. So we've got:

1. Support for civil unions, and


2. A retrospective endorsement of the Clinton/conservative position on welfare reform - albeit with the caveat that "work alone does not ensure that people rise out of poverty."

Allen and the knuckle-dragging "strategists" may be unaware that support for civil unions is now the majority position in America, and it's the "moderate" position, since momentum is rapidly shifting towards the understanding that all people deserve fully equal marriage rights. Liberals support full marriage equality. Obama's not taking the liberal position, but the majoritarian compromise position.

And if Democratic candidates are no longer allowed to observe that "work alone does not ensure that people rise out of poverty," then frankly I'm not sure why we even have a Democratic party anymore.

All this crap is just so 1994. I'm dead tired of it, and any Democratic candidate worthy of even an ounce of respect is not going to stand for this kind of weak-kneed, unprincipled caving to a right wing that has never been so discredited as it is today. Don't fall for it when it comes from the right, and blow it out of the damn water when it comes from the right's stooges in the Democratic party.

Labels: 2008, Barack Obama, Democrats, liberalism, Mike Allen, Presidential election, The Politico

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:14 AM 2 comments