Libya: The case has not been made

I can't believe I'm typing this, but, What Douthat Said.

Advocates of a Libyan intervention don’t seem to have internalized these lessons. They have rallied around a no-flight zone as their Plan A for toppling Qaddafi, but most military analysts seem to think that it will fail to do the job, and there’s no consensus on Plan B. Would we escalate to air strikes? Arm the rebels? Sit back and let Qaddafi claim to have outlasted us?

If we did supply the rebels, who exactly would be receiving our money and munitions? Libya’s internal politics are opaque, to put it mildly. But here’s one disquieting data point, courtesy of the Center for a New American Security’s Andrew Exum: Eastern Libya, the locus of the rebellion, sent more foreign fighters per capita to join the Iraqi insurgency than any other region in the Arab world.

I don't know what to do about Libya, but I feel fairly confident that, as was the case eight years ago, the Liberal Hawks and the NeoCons don't either.

Eye on the prize

Krauthammer (no link, you know where to find him), sounding suspiciously like Christopher Walken demanding "more cowbell," rants that we need "more hegemon, please" (but without the "please" -- that would be too pussified). Joe Klein rightly takes him to task for this.

In the end, the real problem with Krauthammer's rant is this: he really doesn't want us to be exceptional. He wants us to be more brutal, more like other historically powerful countries, more like the Russians in Afghanistan or the British in Mesopotamia. His position on Iraq tips his hand, as he excoriates Obama for having

...almost no interest in garnering the fruits of a very costly and very bloody success--namely, using our Strategic Framework Agreement to turn the new Iraq into a strategic partner and anchor for U.S. influence in the most volatile area of the world. Iraq is a prize--we can debate endlessly whether it was worth the cost--of great strategic significance that the administration seems to have no intention of exploiting in its determination to execute a full and final exit.

A prize! Sounds sort of like Churchill in his most demented colonial moments: India, the jewel in the crown! (The fact that a duly elected Iraqi government wants us to leave is ignored.)

Klein is shocked by the characterization of Mess'opotamia as "a prize." But Klein is forgetting the madness of those days when the neo-conservative world view ruled our world. Iraq was intended to be a prize. A prize of vast oil reserves and the U.S. as preferred customer. A prize of vast strategic military bases not in the same country as Mecca. A prize of a U.S.-friendly government amenable to Israel.

And of course, we mustn't forget the best prize of all.

Kagans on the warpath...again

Joe Klein is shrill.

The Wandering Kagan Minstrel Singers are in full voice this week, plumping for all the usual stuff--regime change in Iran, a surge in Afghanistan. Happily, they have less stroke than they used to--the neocons are not only gone from office, but also pretty much gone from the vast centrist foreign policy consensus. Still, they endure: Fred Kagan allegedly is an adviser to Stanley McChrystal--advising caution, no doubt. But the primary offender this week is Robert Kagan, who is pushing for regime change in Iran on the op-ed turf of the Washington Post.

This is a particularly ridiculous and odious notion--not that the Iranian regime isn't disgraceful and badly in need of a thorough, internal cleansing. It is ridiculous because the vast majority of Iranian dissidents have no intention of overturning the Islamic Republic, but want to reform it. They are joined now by a significant slice of the theocracy, which is appalled by recent events and have no desire to live in a military dictatorship quietly dominated by the Revolutionary Guards. They have made it clear that they are opposed to foreign economic sanctions, to foreign interference of any sort. Mir Hossein Mousavi came out against sanctions a few days ago, on the ground that they would hurt ordinary people more than they would hurt the regime.

What makes the call for regime change particularly tone-deaf and odious is history. Iranians--all Iranians--are extremely aware of past US meddling in their country's internal affairs. There was the CIA involvement in the 1953 coup against Mossedegh. There was also the not-so-covert US support for Saddam Hussein, including the provision of chemical precursors for the poison gas Saddam used in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The Iranian opposition knows that any association with the Great Satan will fatally taint their movement; they know that Barack Obama's low-key strategy has made life particularly tough on those, like Ahmadinejad, who feast on American bellicosity and overreach.

Tiresome, but important

Matt Y makes an important point.

It’s actually true that neocon bashing is a bit on the tiresome side. That said, I think it really has to be understood as a vital social necessity. Adherents of a deranged and sociopoathic “neocon” conception of America’s role in the world continue to be tremendously influential in our society. They have columns at The Washington Post and dominate the foreign policy coverage on Fox News. They have The Weekly Standard and Commentary and a healthy slice of The New Republic. And most important, as best as anyone can tell their ideas remain utterly dominant in the Republican Party. Their intra-party critics like Colin Powell, rather than winning intra-party arguments seem to be simply drifting out of the GOP coalition.

This is a dangerous situation. In the United States, the opposition party is always one ill-timed recession or political scandal from taking power. So a set of ideas that dominates one such party is something you need to keep a watchful eye on, no matter how marginalized that party may seem at any particular moment.

The mustache of doom

The always surprising John Bolten brings us a novel idea in the NeoCon House Organ thoughtful OpEd pages of the Washington Post...

wait for it...

Bomb Iran.

And since we're kinda tied up, have Israel do it by proxy.

Snark aside, we're watching a brave population undermining an authoritarian regime that has lost whatever moral authority it had, and John Bolten wants to 1.) kill many of those brave people, 2.) unify the remainder in renewed hatred for The Great Satan, and 3.) strengthen the hand of Ahmadinejad's when domestically he's never been weaker. And, as an added bonus, rally the Sunni Middle East around the isolated Shi'ite Islamic Republic of Iran after their bombing by Israel.

"We have cards"

Charles Krauthammer, in a piece titled "Russia needs a wakeup call," perfectly embodies the batshit silliness of the McCain/neocon response to what must be WWIX by now:

President Bush could cash in on his close personal relationship with Putin by sending him a copy of the highly entertaining (and highly fictionalized) film "Charlie Wilson's War" to remind Vlad of our capacity to make Russia bleed. Putin would need no reminders of the Georgians' capacity and long history of doing likewise to invaders.

"Vlad?" "Make Russia bleed?"

In the previous paragraph he called for Bush to support a Saakashvilli government in exile. Cue La Marseillaise! Our new De Gaulle!

Every event is the single greatest existential threat since the Cuban Missile Crisis (and imagine if McCain was faced with something like that -- we'd still be poking around the smoking ruins). Because this is THE MOMENT he's been waiting for.

Destroying a country in order to save it

We here at Vega central generally avoid giving advice to liberal hawks and neocons, and we know very little about Myanmar, but here goes. Instead of musing about the efficacy of mounting relief efforts in the guise of a U.S. invasion of the country, why not try helping the people of Myanmar.

The imaginary state

Why do all these Kleins hate the Jews?

"Neo-nepotism"

Quite a family business, encouraging war 24/7.

The new appointment puts three generations of Podhoretzes at the magazine, with Norman holding the title of editor at large and his grandson Sam Munson as online editor. Of course, the ancestral streak is not exactly surprising. The Podhoretz, Kagan (Fred, Donald, Robert and Kimberly) and Kristol clans have dominated the movement for 40 years.

“There’s a family business aspect to the neoconservative enterprise,” said Mr. Bellow, whose book “In Praise of Nepotism” was published in 2003. Such kinship ties are part of “a very broad phenomenon across American society; it’s not really right to single out neoconservatives,” he said. “They just won’t shut up about it.”

"Just say no..."

To China? Teh stoopid. It burns.

The Thing About China is that we are bound to have a war with them... it could be a small war. It could be a big war...

Yes, the neocons and their dream of a war with China...But I thought we'd already done the "small war" with China thing. How'd that turn out?