Much current debate in the United States about foreign policy can be boiled down—at the risk of the sort of oversimplification that too often characterizes the debate itself—to the following. On one side are calls for the United States to do more (exactly what it is supposed to do more of often [...]]]> by Paul Pillar

Much current debate in the United States about foreign policy can be boiled down—at the risk of the sort of oversimplification that too often characterizes the debate itself—to the following. On one side are calls for the United States to do more (exactly what it is supposed to do more of often does not seem to matter) in response to untoward happenings in hot spots such as Iraq, Syria, or Ukraine. On the other side, which includes most of the time the Obama administration, is a tempered restraint based on the limitations and complications of trying to do anything more in such places.

This line-up has some similarities to age-old confrontations between hedgehogs, who know (or think they know) one big thing, and foxes, who pay attention to a lot of things without having any one big idea. The nature of the debate has even more to do with the highly asymmetric nature of any argument between incumbent policy-makers, who have the burden of taking real action with real consequences and of dealing with all the messy and costly details, and of outside critics, who have the luxury of bemoaning bad things happening in the world without actually having to take any practical steps to do anything about them, and without having responsibility for the consequences.

This asymmetry has seemed especially marked with the current president, and not only because some of the biggest burdens of his foreign policy have involved cleaning up leftovers from his predecessor’s foreign policy (including the premiere threat du jour, the group usually known as ISIS, whose birth was a direct consequence of the Iraq War). The current clear preference of the American public to avoid new entangling military encounters naturally gives rise to the charge that President Obama is merely bowing to that public opinion rather than exerting leadership.

The principal features of the non-incumbent side of the debate are seen over and over again, even if looking beyond such prominent and stalwart members of that side as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who never met an entangling military encounter they didn’t like. One sees these features in the pronouncements of, for example, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, or of the Washington Post editorial page, which has beaten its drum particularly hard for getting more deeply involved in the Syrian civil war. One familiar feature is the implicit assumption that if there is a nasty situation out there, the United States ought to be able to do something to solve it, coupled with the further assumption that the more actively involved the Untied States becomes in the problem, the more good will come out of the situation.

Another feature is a fondness for applying (again without supporting analysis) the most optimistic assumptions about how some hypothetical alternative policy in the past would have come out. E.g., the idea that if only the United States had done more earlier to assist a “moderate” opposition in Syria, we wouldn’t have Assad, or ISIS, or both to deal with today. Or, if only we had come down harder on Putin he wouldn’t be mucking around in eastern Ukraine today. Yet another repeated feature is an equation of leadership with forceful action, especially military action—as illustrated by Corker’s charge that President Obama is “uncomfortable being commander in chief”.

Also recurrent is the invoking of very hedgehog-like calls for a single “coherent strategy” or “organizing principle” or some such thing, with those making the calls secure in the knowledge that rhetorically such formulations always have an advantage over anything that can be belittled as ad hoc or reactive. The oversimplification involved is grossest when applied to U.S. policy toward the entire world, but there is still oversimplification when such a call is applied even to a single country. We hear, for example, that problems of U.S. policy toward Iraq are a simple matter of deciding whether the United State has a mission of stabilizing Iraq. Actually, it’s not really anywhere near that simple. Instability in Iraq has many different facets, some of which should concern the United States and some of which should not, and some of which are amenable to U.S. influence and some of which are not.

Hillary Clinton, whose recent pronouncements must be dismaying to progressive realists fearing they will not have any acceptable choice at the top of the ballot in November 2016, has been talking in the same mode. She tells us that not doing stupid stuff is not an “organizing principle,” and a great nation like the United States needs an organizing principle for its foreign policy. Two things about that comment make it, well, not quite smart. One is that the world is a very disorganized place, and any single organizing principle is too simple to be effective in dealing with all, or even most, of the problems the world throws at us.

The other thing wrong with that comment is that not doing stupid stuff is so important that it deserves to be at the top of any president’s checklist, just as Hippocrates taught that “first do no harm” should be at the top of any physician’s checklist. Think about the Middle East, and ask what development, whether involving an action or inaction by the United States, has had the biggest effects, for good or for ill, on U.S. interests in recent years. The answer has to be—firmly implanted on the “for ill” side of the ledger—the Iraq War. The most important thing any U.S. president should do is not to do stupid stuff like that, or to get into a position with a serious risk of sliding into something like that.

Mr. Obama’s interview with Tom Friedman last week was a clear statement of the other side of the foreign policy debate. Friedman writes that “the president has a take on the world, born of many lessons over the last six years, and he has feisty answers for all his foreign policy critics.” The president’s observations reflected at least as comprehensive view of the world as those throwing out the buzz phrases ofcomprehensive strategy and organizing principle, coupled with an awareness of the unavoidable complexities whether one is dealing with the whole world or with a single troubling country. His answers were not just feisty but insightful, such as explaining why the idea that putting more arms in the hands of “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” was never going to be a solution to the problems of Syria, and why in Iraq the incentives for political deal-makers in Baghdad will have at least as much to do with that country’s future stability as munitions in Nineveh. The least persuasive aspect of his comments concerned his unwillingness to recognize intervention in Libya as a mistake.

One should hope that Mr. Obama, as a second term president, will not let his policies over the next two years be diverted by ill-aimed screeching of hawks. Even if he doesn’t, however, the shape and tenor of current debate risks creating a narrative, the effects of which might not be felt until the next administration, that most of the world’s maladies exist because the United States didn’t do something more, whatever that something might be.

Photo: President Barack Obama meets with National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice and National Security Council staff in the Situation Room of the White House, April 3, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

This article was first published by the National Interest and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright the National Interest.

by Mitchell Plitnick

When the history of pro-Israel lobbying in Washington is fully written, it may well be that the push for conflict with Iran will be seen as a major turning point. On Monday, a consistently hawkish, pro-Israel Democrat, Robert Menendez (D-NJ), withdrew the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act from the [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

When the history of pro-Israel lobbying in Washington is fully written, it may well be that the push for conflict with Iran will be seen as a major turning point. On Monday, a consistently hawkish, pro-Israel Democrat, Robert Menendez (D-NJ), withdrew the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s docket. Menendez made the surprise move because a Republican member of the committee, Bob Corker (R-TN), was going to add an amendment intended to undermine the Obama administration’s efforts to reach an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.

Judging from news reports in mainstream and far-right outlets, it seems the amendment was Corker’s idea. It would have required the U.S. president, upon reaching a deal with Iran, to submit a report to Congress within three days. Congress would then have a non-binding “vote of disapproval.” But AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, stood by the amendment, and one has to think that Corker would not have introduced it if he knew AIPAC would oppose it. AIPAC eased up on its pressure against negotiations with Iran earlier this year, but it has remained steadfast in its distrust of the diplomatic process, as has, of course, the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. AIPAC’s decision to support the Corker amendment, coupled with a ratcheting up of the rhetoric coming from Netanyahu against the negotiations in recent days, suggests a renewed campaign to derail Obama’s efforts to resolve the dispute with Iran diplomatically.

Perhaps even more notably, this episode marks another step in the increasing polarization of Israel as a domestic U.S. political issue. The Republicans have been working hard ever since Barack Obama got elected to “own” the issue of Israel. In this case, however, they and AIPAC may have overplayed their hand, just as it did at the beginning of the year with S. 1881, when it lined up with Republicans to try to strangle the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) between world powers and Iran in its crib.

The U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act had already generated some controversy, especially over a provision that would have allowed Israel to participate in the U.S.’ visa waiver program, which would make it easier for Israeli citizens to obtain American visas. The House of Representatives ended up amending the bill to address the initial objections to admitting Israel into that program program. The objection centered on Israel’s unwillingness to reciprocate in granting visas to U.S. citizens, a standard expectation of the program. The bill now addresses this with language that requires Israel to treat U.S. citizens (including Arab Americans) as it wishes the U.S. to treat Israelis and satisfy all other requirements of the visa waiver program. Many believe that other objections, specifically revolving around Israel’s espionage activities in the U.S. (which Israel vehemently denies but are well known in the U.S. intelligence community), are the reason for a recent spate of leaks to Newsweek magazine on the subject.

But aside from that piece, the legislation is a pretty standard piece of pro-Israel fluff, which would provide only a modest, small boost to existing cooperation between the United States and Israel in military, security and scientific arenas. Yet it appears quite possible that AIPAC helped Corker kill it, however unintentionally. Why did that happen?

This seems to have been a miscalculation on AIPAC’s part. If this amendment originated with Corker and not AIPAC, as seems likely, then it was clearly an attempt by the Tennessee Republican to drive a wedge between the “pro-Israel community” and the president. AIPAC backs the idea, but they surely treasure bi-partisan support for their initiatives in Congress much more, as indicated by their decision to back down on S. 1881 in February, especially after it ran up against a solid wall of Democratic opposition. Yet AIPAC has been remarkably passive in the face of Republican efforts to make Israel a partisan issue. Of course, Republicans have gotten a lot of help from Netanyahu (and now his new ambassador, Ron Dermer) on that score in recent years. But the alienation of liberal Democrats from pro-Israel sentiment is growing as a result. This amendment and its result constitute one more step in that direction.

AIPAC, and probably Corker as well, did not expect Menendez to pull a popular pro-Israel bill from the Senate docket. But Menendez appears to have recognized the difficult position this amendment would put Senate Democrats in. They cannot credibly oppose Obama on negotiations with Iran because their constituents support the talks and are deeply opposed to military action against Iran. Once Obama, in his State of the Union Address no less, declared that he was standing firm on negotiating seriously with Iran and then prevailed in the fight over S. 1881, it was clear that most Congressional Democrats would not challenge the president so long as the talks continued. So, if the Corker amendment was brought, Senate Democrats would either have to vote against their president or against AIPAC. Neither prospect held any appeal to Menendez. So he pulled the bill.

In many ways, Menendez and other Senate Democrats who are particularly close to AIPAC just want to keep their heads down for the next two years. If Obama can work out a viable deal with Iran, that’s great. If not, they are probably hoping that a more hawkish leader, like Hillary Clinton, who will be more in line with AIPAC on Middle East policy, will win in 2016. Until then, they are going to have to walk a tightrope.

Republicans, meanwhile, are likely to continue their efforts to “own” the issue. Corker will probably back down on his amendment eventually so that the rest of the bill can go through. But that will mean that the Republicans can claim that Menendez, well-known as among the most pro-Israel Democrats in Congress, thwarted AIPAC’s plans.

If, as AIPAC surely hopes, the next president, from either party, is more in tune with the Netanyahu government than Obama, then a rightward move of the Israel issue serves it well in the long-term. Indeed, in such a case, AIPAC would probably prefer a Democrat again in the White House, reinforcing the group’s bipartisan image and influence, while Israel gets framed in Washington in a more comfortable way than it is now.

Still, this could backfire. Aggressive Republican efforts to make Israel a partisan issue — and AIPAC’s acquiescence in that strategy — are alienating a lot of Jews and a lot of Democrats. Most of those groups want a secure Israel, to be sure. But they also want to avoid war with Iran and an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. AIPAC is working against both of the latter goals.

AIPAC will have no problem keeping Republicans in their camp, unless more radical groups, such as Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and, of course, the Republican Jewish Coalition, that criticized its capitulation on S. 1881 persuade its wealthiest donors to desert it. But Democrats might find it increasingly difficult to toe the AIPAC line, even with a more hawkish figure like Clinton in the White House. AIPAC has come a long way by justifiably touting its bipartisanship. Should “pro-Israel” become a Republican label, however, they stand to lose a great deal in the long run. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

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by Jasmin Ramsey

Geneva – While Iran and 6 world powers known as the P5+1 are remaining secretive about the details of ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the Nov. 7-8  talks here have kicked off with official statements that some “progress” has already occurred.

After describing the negotiations as “extremely complex,” the spokesman for [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jasmin Ramsey

Geneva – While Iran and 6 world powers known as the P5+1 are remaining secretive about the details of ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the Nov. 7-8  talks here have kicked off with official statements that some “progress” has already occurred.

After describing the negotiations as “extremely complex,” the spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told reporters today that the discussions “are now heading into a serious phase.”

“We very much hope there will be concrete progress here over the next few days,” said Michael Mann.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi meanwhile told Iranian State TV this afternoon that the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany) has agreed to Iran’s ”proposed negotiation framework” and that discussions about the content can now begin.

Revised Schedule

Earlier today Iranian press had reported that Iran’s Foreign Minister and chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif would be meeting his Italian counterpart in Rome after his working breakfast meeting with Ashton, but that meeting has been cancelled.

Zarif will now remain in Geneva while the Iranians attend several bilateral meetings today with their U.S., Chinese and Russian counterparts; he is also scheduled to meet with Ashton at 6pm tonight.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Zarif made history when they met bilaterally in September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. That meeting was followed by the historic 15-minute telephone conversation between Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and US President Barack Obama.

The seeds for those events were planted months in advance according to a Wall Street Journal report on behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Obama administration that involved “secret meetings and telephone calls and convening an assortment of Arab monarchs, Iranian exiles and former U.S. diplomats to clandestinely ferry messages between Washington and Tehran.”

Potential stumbling blocks 

While developments have contributed at least in part to the clearly upbeat mood here now, reaching a mutual agreement on Iran’s insistence on what it considers its right to peacefully enrich uranium as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the extreme sanctions regime the Iranians have long been seeking relief from would be integral for a final deal.

Although the Obama administration has recently been lobbying for a temporary pause in the implementation of more sanctions on Iran while talks are in progress, key figures in Congress are resisting the effort.

A senior administration official told reporters yesterday that ”Our experts strongly believe that any forward progress on additional sanctions at this time would be harmful to and potentially undermine the negotiating process at a truly crucial moment.”

“In response to a first step agreed to by Iran that halts their program from advancing further, we are prepared to offer limited, targeted, and reversible sanctions relief.” said the official, who was speaking on the condition of anonymity.

That same day the top Republican senator on the Foreign Relations Committee said he was preparing legislation that would prevent the loosening of sanctions on Iran.

“We’ve crafted an amendment to freeze the administration in and make it so they are unable to reduce the sanctions unless certain things occur,” Sen. Bob Corker told the Daily Beast on Wednesday.

But some experts argue that adding more sanctions at this critical stage in the diplomatic progress with Iran could lead to counterproductive results.

“New sanctions passed before a true test of Iran’s intentions may result in a bleak future: a risky and costly war with Iran with no guarantee of success; or the acceptance of an increasingly embittered, isolated, repressive, and nuclear capable Islamic Republic,” wrote Alireza Nader, an Iran specialist at the Rand Corporation, in The Hill.

Majid Takht-e Ravanchi, another Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister who is part of the Iranian negotiating team here expressed a long-held Iranian view when he recently called all sanctions on his country “illegal”.

He added that some should be removed as part of an initial phase.

“We have frequently announced that to prove its goodwill, the opposite side can take steps to remove anti-Iran sanctions, even if sanctions removed in the first stages would not be so significant,” said Ravanchi in an Oct. 27 interview.

Photo Credit: European External Action Service

by Marsha B. Cohen

Hours before the U.S. federal government shutdown, members of the House and Senate from both parties were with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a reception honoring outgoing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and Minority Leader Steny [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Marsha B. Cohen

Hours before the U.S. federal government shutdown, members of the House and Senate from both parties were with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a reception honoring outgoing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and Minority Leader Steny Hoyer spoke at the event, according to the Times of Israel. Others proudly gushed about their attendance to their constituents via e-mail. The office of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-F), Chair of the House Subcommittee, sent out the following message at 10:34 pm last night:

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, attended Ambassador Oren’s farewell event with Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro and Miami Beach native, and incoming Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer. Ambassador Oren was honored by Members of Congress for his years of service to Israel and for his advancing of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Ros-Lehtinen did not mention that she and her Republican colleagues would be shutting down the U.S. government in less than an hour and a half.

Ron Dermer, Israel’s new Ambassador to the U.S., was also introduced to the attending members of Congress at the reception. I discussed the likelihood of Dermer’s new position as far back as December 2012 when I wrote that Oren, who has been Israel’s top envoy to the U.S. since 2009, would be replaced by the American-born neoconservative who helped plan Mitt Romney’s 2012 visit to Israel prior to the U.S. presidential election. Dermer is believed to have convinced Netanyahu that Romney was going to win the election; his appointment is clearly a thumb in Obama’s eye. Not only has Netanyahu appointed another fellow Likudnik as Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., he has also appointed a strongly partisan Republican to the diplomatic post.

But Netanyahu isn’t worried about offending Obama. Despite the fulmination in his UN General Assembly speech on Monday about Israel standing alone against Iran, Bibi’s Gang remains on his side.

The Senate Foreign Affairs Committee (SFRC) also hosted its own event with Netanyahu on Sept. 30. Members were photographed with Oren and Netanyahu in a “class photo.” Netanyahu thanked them, according to Julian Pecquet of The Hill, “for their support of bills sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program, and urging them to continue to pressure the Islamic Republic.” Senators from both parties basked in Netanyahu’s praise and reciprocated it with their endorsement of what he had to say:

“Diplomacy without pressure is probably a futile exercise,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “He believes the sanctions are working, and I agree.” Graham said there’s consensus in the Senate to move ahead with a new round of sanctions, which the Senate Banking Committee is expected to take up shortly. The House passed similar legislation by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in July.

“During the meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, senators spoke with a unity of purpose, hopeful for a diplomatic outcome with Iran that leads to a verifiable termination of its pursuit of nuclear weapons program, but resolute that U.S. national security objectives can never be compromised,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the SFRC’s Chair, said in a statement following the meeting. “Our resolve to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability remains unchanged and we will not hesitate from proceeding with further sanctions and other options to protect U.S. interests and ensure regional security,” he said.

Graham and Menendez, two of the Senate’s most vociferous advocates of sanctions against Iran, jointly authored an op-ed in the Washington Post last week in which they declared, “In the coming days, we will be outspoken in our support for furthering sanctions against Iran, requiring countries to again reduce their purchases of Iranian petroleum and imposing further prohibitions on strategic sectors of the Iranian economy.”

(If only Graham and Menendez could apply their bipartisan resolve to convincing the hardliners in the House of Representatives to restore the functioning of the U.S. government.)

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) the SFRC’s top Republican, said Netanyahu gave “very detailed” answers about his views at the meeting. “Like all of us, I don’t think he wants the negotiations to go on forever,” Corker said. He continued: “Obviously letting up on the sanctions is not something any us are interested in. And like all of us, he understands that if there is an agreement it needs to be a full agreement.” The senator declined to state whether Netanyahu requested that the Committee pass more sanctions: “I’m not going to answer that,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee, of which Corker is also a member, decided to delay the consideration of a new package of Iran sanctions until after the mid-month talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). Reuters reports that the sanctions issue has been slowed by congressional wrangling over the government funding bill that has led to our government’s shutdown. Nonetheless, it occurred to members of the Committee that “deliberately delaying new sanctions” might improve the mood at the talks with Iran in Geneva later this month. Corker is quoted as saying, “There’s been some discussion about whether it’s best right now, while the negotiations are occurring, just to keep the existing ones in place.” Corker also reiterated that Congress remains deeply suspicious of Iran and supportive of tougher sanctions.

Right-wing news sites, and even some elements of the mainstream media, have been echoing the complaints of Tea Party members of the House who are responsible for the current government shutdown, asking why President Obama is so willing to talk to Iran but not to them. As satirist Jon Stewart of the Daily Show pointed out on Monday night, the “why Iran and not us?” talking point doesn’t exactly work in their favor:

You’re not helping yourselves.  If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hardline, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans, maybe he’s not the problem.

Part of the problem may be the willingness of members of both Houses, and both parties, to spend the hours before a government shutdown hobnobbing with a foreign leader — any foreign leader — and deferentially reveling in his advocacy of a foreign policy prescription that demeans, and seeks to undermine, the  diplomatic efforts of their own president.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has his Revolutionary Guards to contend with; Obama’s got Bibi’s Gang in Congress. Which one will prove to be the bigger challenge?

In light of Amb. Hunter’s post about the important constitutional implications of Obama’s decision to seek an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) from Congress, I wanted to make a few quick observations about the move and some of its possibilities.

1) This could set the stage for a [...]]]> By Jim Lobe

In light of Amb. Hunter’s post about the important constitutional implications of Obama’s decision to seek an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) from Congress, I wanted to make a few quick observations about the move and some of its possibilities.

1) This could set the stage for a long-overdue debate about the role of the United States in the post-Cold war, post-Iraq War world. Poll after poll has shown a great ambivalence in public opinion over whether the U.S. should act as the world’s policeman (no) and whether it should sustain its military dominance and its ability to act unilaterally if its security is threatened (yes). As Amb. Hunter pointed out,  a serious debate would also address Washington’s “indispensability” and what that means, as well as whether the U.S. is willing to act, unilaterally if necessary, to uphold what it regards as “international norms.” These are huge questions that began to be debated in Congress over the Libya intervention but never captured public attention in a major way, in part because a) Obama, as commander-in-chief, never felt obliged to seriously engage in it; and b) the UN Security Council had authorized military action, thus giving it an international legitimacy which, at least at this point, action against Syria is very likely to lack. 

2) The coming debate is likely to expose and exacerbate deepening fissures in the Republican Party over Washington’s role in the world. With the exception of Ron Paul and John Huntsman, all of the Republican primary candidates in the 2012 election ran on what might be called a neo-conservative/aggressive-nationalist foreign-policy platform which today is best embodied by Sens. McCain and Graham, the mainstream media’s go-to Republican foreign-policy spokesmen.  It’s significant that in a statement issued shortly after Obama’s announcement today, the duo suggested they could not support “isolated military strikes in Syria that are not part of an overall strategy that can change the momentum on the battlefield, achieve the President’s stated goal of Assad’s removal from power, and bring an end to this conflict…” By taking such a position, they clearly invite opposition from a pretty broad range of their fellow-Republican lawmakers (especially in the House) associated with the non-interventionist (some would say neo-isolationist) positions associated with Ron Paul, and the realist stance represented by someone like Sen. Corker, as well as fiscal conservatives associated with the Tea Party. (Not that these three groups are entirely discrete factions.) The debate could really turn into a battle royal among the Republicans over who speaks for the party when it comes to foreign policy.

3) Similarly, Democrats are likely have a difficult time bringing their ranks into line. Many of them will be torn between their loyalty to Obama and the White House (and their historic fear of being called soft on the enemy of the day) on the one hand, and anti-war forces on the other. The latter have time to mobilize their troops against military action in a major way and, in any event, play a much stronger role in the party at the grassroots level (to which House members, in particular, have to pay attention), than inside the Beltway.

4) One other point worth noting. The proposed AUMF includes an intriguing “whereas” clause that suggests an important change of position with respect to Iran’s participation at Geneva 2.0, if it should come to pass:

Whereas, the conflict in Syria will only be resolved through a negotiated settlement, and Congress calls on all parties to the conflict in Syria to participate urgently and constructively in the Geneva process…”

Of course, the invitation for Iranian participation is not made explicit, but Obama hinted at this during his PBS interview last week, as pointed out by Barbara Slavin.

Photo Credit: Brookings Institution

Perhaps that’s why, just in time for the holidays, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) launched a scathing attack on some of the most prominent — and pro-Israel– [...]]]> There’s no better way to commemorate a civil war among Jews 2,275 years ago, memorialized by the Jewish festival of Chanuka, than by a little intra-tribe squabbling.

Perhaps that’s why, just in time for the holidays, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) launched a scathing attack on some of the most prominent — and pro-Israel– Jewish Senators and organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Noah Silverman, RJC’s Congressional Affairs Director since 2006, may have been moved by the sight of boiling oil when he made his debut as an official RJC blogger. No sooner writ than said, Silverman’s pontifications splattered over to RJC’s e-mail list on Thursday night.

Silverman attacks Jews and Jewish organizations who have come out in support of the immediate ratification of the New START Treaty. Picking up where the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) and JINSA left off, Silverman’s rails against “an unprecedented effort to ‘make START a Jewish issue‘ by pressuring Jewish communal organizations to advocate for the treaty’s ratification.”

He’s irate with the ADL and the American Council of World Jewry, both of whom  objected when Senate Republicans made it known that they would use member prerogative to block ratification: “We are deeply concerned that failure to ratify the new START treaty will have national security consequences far beyond the subject of the treaty itself,” a Nov. 19 letter from the ADL to all members of the Senate asserted. ”The U.S. diplomatic strategy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons requires a U.S.-Russia relationship of trust and cooperation.”

Granted that the ADL was speaking from the perspective of its anti-Iran agenda. Nonetheless — and perhaps especially so — it’s bizarre to hear the RJC’s Silverman challenging the right of Jewish organizations to weigh in on issues other than Israel. And Silverman is livid that Senate Democrats would dare to use an argument about Israel’s security to enlist AIPAC in the effort to get START ratified.

MJ Rosenberg — citing Nathan Guttman in the Forward and Ron Kampeas at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency — suggests that

AIPAC is in agony. It desperately wants to support the US-Russia START treaty aimed at limiting nuclear warheads because the treaty would greatly advance Israel’s security.

But it is afraid of defying right-wing Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in particular, is telling AIPAC “don’t you dare.” His reason is simple: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has ordered Republicans to block anything the President submits to the Senate except, of course, tax cuts for millionaires. That includes START.

Tight-with-the-right Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is Silverman’s source that the involvement of AIPAC in a non-Israel issue is shocking. Rubin writes,  “An experienced Israel hand tells me, ‘Well, they of course claim there is a direct link to Israeli security. But, no, this must be very rare.’ A Capitol Hill adviser from another office says ‘I’ve never seen this done with AIPAC on a non-Israel issue.’”

But it’s not all that rare, according to Rosenberg:

AIPAC argues that it does not get involved in congressional battles that do not directly involve Israel. Of course, they do. They always have. Even when I worked at AIPAC decades ago, they put their full lobbying weight behind a then-controversial plan to establish a military base on the Pacific island of Diego Garcia.

Why? Because the Republican President at the time asked them to. More recently, AIPAC made sure that its friends in Congress knew that the “right vote” for Israel was supporting both Iraq wars. (Had AIPAC not indicated its support for war, far fewer Democrats would have voted for the second Iraq war.)

Silverman frames the effort to pass START as evidence of  “a panicked White House is scrambling to salvage what it can of its legislative agenda before its influence in Congress is diminished next year.” But the letter to AIPAC which so outrages Silverman was written by two longtime senators who supported arms control long before Barack Obama was elected president.

Michigan Democrat Carl Levin was first elected to the Senate in 1978, where he’s Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He’s been consistently supportive of conventional forces and basic, reliable weapons systems to protect national security. His support for START is anything but last minute. In a column in the Niles Daily Star on July 9, Levin wrote:

As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described it, New START will “make our country more secure and advance our core national security interests.” This treaty is in keeping with a long tradition of bilateral, verifiable arms control agreements with Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, and it strengthens the U.S. commitment to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

Silverman not only ignores Mullen’s endorsement of START, he seems completely oblivious to the support expressed by Republicans for “resetting” the Treaty. They include what Jim Lobe calls are the “big guns in what remains of the Republican foreign policy Establishment, including five former secretaries of state whose service spanned the last five Republican administrations.” They include Colin Powell, James Baker, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and Lawrence Eagleburger, who wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that there are “compelling reasons” for Republicans to approve ratification of START.

Bloomberg News reports that several Republican senators — among them Richard Lugar, Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, Bob Bennett, John McCain, and Kyl himself, are hinting they could support the reset of START in the lame-duck Senate session if (and perhaps only if) the Senate voted to extend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts to cover Americans in all income groups. So it’s domestic politics, not national security, that may determine the fate of START, JINSA notwithstanding. MJ Rosenberg also thinks that “Kyl may come around and then AIPAC can too.”

Silverman, who worked for seven years as a legislative aide in Kyl’s office, also uses his first blogpost to defend Kyl against what he deems to be assaults on his former boss’s reputation. He is no doubt bristling at the thought that his former boss will give in on START out of political expediency. Although the RJC launched some of the most vicious ad hominem attack ads against Obama before the 2008 election, Silverman huffs that “Pro-Obama commentators attacked Kyl in the most demeaning and personal terms — including calling him unpatriotic.”

The “demeaning” attack on Kyl to which Silverman links is a Huffington Post rhymed rant by self-described Ranting Political Poet Jim Parry. The personal attack: a single Tweet by Washington Monthly contributor and blogger Steve Benen. And the accusation of Kyl’s being “unpatriotic”? A tweet by actress Elizabeth Banks, co-star of the frat-boy comedy film Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

Does Silverman really consider two tweets and a rant “pro-Obama news commentary”? If so, it explains alot.

Like why, after 25 years of Republican Jewish Coalition activism, there is only one single Jewish Republican to be found in the U.S. Congress — in either the upper or lower chamber.