by Jim Lobe
It’s not clear whether Bill Kristol went to the dentist Thursday and had a prolonged reaction to the Sodium Pentothal he was administered or whether he’s become desperate over the prospect that neoconservatives are losing their hold over the GOP (even his Keep America Safe co-founder,
by Jim Lobe
It’s not clear whether Bill Kristol went to the dentist Thursday and had a prolonged reaction to the Sodium Pentothal he was administered or whether he’s become desperate over the prospect that neoconservatives are losing their hold over the GOP (even his Keep America Safe co-founder, Liz Cheney opposes attacking Syria), but his lead editorial in this week’s Weekly Standard makes public the kind of argument one suspects he usually reserves for the back rooms and private dinner parties with impressionable “princes” of the Republican Party for whom he can serve as their private Machiavelli. The cynicism shown here is truly remarkable. After summarily dispensing with the “statesmanship” argument as to why Republicans should vote yes on President Obama’s AUMF — and statesmanship has nothing to do with the plight of the Syrian people or the use of chemical weapons; it’s all about U.S. power and credibility — he moves on to the “crass political reasons” why they should do so. Those reasons deserve to be quoted at length:
A Yes vote is in fact the easy vote. It’s actually close to risk-free. After all, it’s President Obama who is seeking the authorization to use force and who will order and preside over the use of force. It’s fundamentally his policy. Lots of Democrats voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. When that war ran into trouble, it was President Bush and Republicans who paid the price. [Editor's note: don't tell that to Hillary Clinton.] If the Syria effort goes badly, the public will blame President Obama, who dithered for two years, and who seems inclined to a halfhearted execution of any military campaign. If it goes well, Republicans can take credit for pushing him to act decisively, and for casting a tough vote supporting him when he asked for authorization to act.
A No vote is the risky vote. In fact, the risk is all on the side of voting No. The only thing that can get Obama off the hook now is for Republicans to deny him authorization for the use of force against the Assad regime. Then the GOP can be blamed for whatever goes wrong in Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East, over the next months and years. And plenty will go wrong. It’s a Yes vote that gets Republicans in Congress off the hook.
A Yes vote seems to be statesmanlike. …In fact, many voters do like to think they’re voting for someone who has at least a touch of statesmanship, and so casting what appears superficially to be a politically perilous vote could well help the stature of Republicans with many of their constituents back home.
It’s true that a Yes vote will be temporarily unpopular with the base. To support Obama now may seem to invite primary opposition from challengers who would be more in tune with popular sentiment to stay out of the Syrian civil war. For a few weeks after the vote, Republicans will hear such rumblings. But at the end of the day, Republican primary voters are a pretty hawkish bunch. It’s hard to believe they’re going to end up removing otherwise conservative representatives or senators in favor of challengers who run on a platform whose key plank is that Republicans should have voted to let an Iran-supported, terror-backing dictator with American blood on his hands off the hook after he’s used chemical weapons. What’s more, primary elections are more than half a year away. Republican senators and congressmen will have plenty of time to reestablish their anti-Obama credentials by fighting Obama on Obama-care, immigration, the debt ceiling, and a host of other issues.
A Yes vote can also be explained as a vote to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Syria is an Iranian proxy. Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons is a proxy for Iran’s ability to move ahead unimpeded in its acquisition of nuclear weapons. To bring this point home, soon after voting to authorize the use of force against the Assad regime, Republicans might consider moving an authorization for the use of force against the Iranian nuclear weapons program. They can explain that Obama’s dithering in the case of Syria shows the utility of unequivocally giving him the authority to act early with respect to Iran. An Iran debate would pretty much unite Republicans and conservatives and would help mitigate political problems arising from a Yes vote on Syria. The issue of Iran will most likely come to a head before Election Day 2014, probably even before primary elections earlier next year. An Iran resolution means the Syria vote won’t be the most important vote Republicans cast in this session of Congress—it won’t even be the most important foreign policy vote.
Of course, these arguments are also being made with Republicans by AIPAC and other institutions of the Israel lobby, but not nearly so publicly. Which, in my view, makes this such a remarkable document.
This week’s Weekly Standard appears devoted almost entirely to the Syria vote, with featured contributions by Fred Barnes, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Gary Schmitt, Fred Kagan, and Stephen “Case Closed” (a reference to his book purportedly proving Saddam’s ties to al-Qaeda) Hayes (who just came out with a paywalled op-ed actually opposing Obama’s AUMF unless it’s amended to authorize a much bigger commitment). Schmitt directs his comments at the 2016 Republican presidential aspirants — the three senators currently considered most likely to run (Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz) have voted against or indicated opposition to the AUMF — in ways similar to Kristol’s:
No doubt, there are conservatives who, like the president, want simply to pivot away from the Middle East altogether and believe that’s what the public wants as well. But what the public wants today and what it sees as important down the road will almost certainly not be the same. In 1999, John McCain went against the majority of his congressional GOP colleagues, supported a military intervention in Kosovo, and stole a march on his nomination opponents in appearing more presidential. He was joined by then-governor George W. Bush in support of the intervention, and soon enough the polls showed a majority of Americans in agreement.
On the other side of the coin, another senator with presidential aspirations, the relatively hawkish Democrat Sam Nunn, voted in 1991 against the congressional authorization for the first Gulf war and now admits it was the greatest mistake of his career.
In short, conservatives, especially those thinking that they could be sitting in the Oval Office one day, ought to think long and hard before they reject a sensible, if not perfect, authorization for the use of force.
So, it’s clear that Kristol and the Weekly Standard see the upcoming vote as a critical test of their enduring influence over the Republican Party.
]]>In terms of leaping to Islamophobic conclusions, this must rank right up there with the smug certainty with which The Investigative Project’s Steven Emerson claimed on CBS News the afternoon of the 1995 Oklahoma [...]]]>
In terms of leaping to Islamophobic conclusions, this must rank right up there with the smug certainty with which The Investigative Project’s Steven Emerson claimed on CBS News the afternoon of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that the act showed “a Middle Eastern trait” because it “was done with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible” — a memorable moment for me, if only because we at the IPS Washington bureau, as subsequently noted by the Washington Post and The Guardian of London, were the first news organization to publish that the bombing’s source likely would be found closer to the Midwest than the Middle East. (Sorry I don’t have a link; it’s too old.) In this case, it appears that Norway has found its Timothy McVeigh. Mondoweiss did an excellent profile on the alleged bomber/mass killer.
Of course, the Journal’s editorial writers were hardly alone as a quick scan at the blogs of the usual suspects — Commentary’s ‘Contentions’ (John Podhoretz), The Weekly Standard (Tom Joscelyn), the American Enterprise Institute’s blog, etc. — shows.
But special attention should be paid to Jennifer Rubin, whose “Right Turn” blog on the Post’s website has, in its relatively short and controversial life, become kind of one-stop shopping site for all the hard-line neo-conservative memes and rages of the day. Yesterday’s blog on the Norwegian outrage was no exception, and she hasn’t yet bothered to amend it in light of new details about the alleged perpetrator, as the Journal felt compelled to do. The Atlantic’s James Fallows and Steve Clemons have already taken her on, and I’m sure many more will follow.
Perhaps the most objectionable part of Rubin’s comments was actually voiced by American Enterprise Institute’s resident intelligence expert, Gary Schmitt, who, unlike most his AEI foreign-policy colleagues, tends to keep a low media profile. Nonetheless, she quotes him as telling her:
- “There has been a lot of talk over the past few months on how we’ve got al-Qaeda on the run and, compared with what it once was, it’s become a rump organization. But as the attack in Oslo reminds us, there are plenty of al-Qaeda allies still operating. No doubt cutting the head off a snake is important; the problem is, we’re dealing with global nest of snakes.”
Now we don’t know whether Rubin had taken this quote out of context or whether the certainty with which he expressed the view that Al Qaeda was behind the Oslo killings in this excerpt had been preceded by the caveat “if” or “assuming” that Al Qaeda was responsible or similar cautions against leaping to conclusions. If so, then this statement wouldn’t be nearly as objectionable.
Nonetheless, it’s significant that Rubin turned to Schmitt, the former executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), as an expert on this question. Here are some relevant excerpts about Schmitt’s experience and expertise in intelligence from his Right Web profile, particularly with respect to the Iraq War and long-time association with Abram Shulsky of the notorious Office of Special Plans (with my emphasis):
- Like many of the proponents of the Iraq War, Schmitt has had to struggle with both faulty rationales he and other neoconservatives peddled before the war began and the spiraling problems confronted by the U.S. military in the wake of the invasion. In an article for the Weekly Standard several weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Schmitt wrote: “We know [Iraq] has stockpiled mass quantities of anthrax and has worked hard to make it as potent a weapon of terror as possible. We know that Saddam’s Iraq continues to pursue development of weapons of mass destruction-nuclear, chemical, and biological-believing that these are the ultimate keys to overcoming America’s military dominance in the region. In short, Iraq is both equipped with dangerous weapons and out to get the United States” (October 29, 2001).
In a subsequent article published in the Los Angeles Times after the invasion, Schmitt wrote: “Why can’t the coalition teams find stocks of weapons today? Probably because Hussein destroyed them either before the UN inspectors returned to Iraq last December or just before the war began. The credibility of both President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will remain in question until coalition investigators have not only gotten to the bottom of the missing weapons but also, and more important, the weapons programs themselves. Here, patience is required. Intelligence products are not gospel, and they should not be treated as such. Failure to find [WMDs] would complicate a president’s ability to rally support for taking action in similar situations in the future” (June 28, 2003).
Schmitt is the author of a number of works, including with Shulsky Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence (2002), in which the authors argue that “truth is not the goal” of intelligence operations, but “victory” (p. 176). He also co-authored with Shulsky The Future of U.S. Intelligence, a report published by the hardline National Strategy Information Center that seemed to foreshadow the work of the Office of Special Plans. The report concluded that intelligence should not be centralized in the CIA, and that the intelligence community should adopt new methodology aimed at “obtaining information others try to keep secret and penetrating below the ‘surface’ impression created by publicly available information to determine whether an adversary is deceiving us or denying us key information.” It recommended creating “competing analytic centers” with “different points of view” that could “provide policymakers better protection against new ‘Pearl Harbors,’ i.e., against being surprised.