By Scott McConnell

I spent the weekend canvassing for Obama in the Virginia Beach area. The task for the hundreds of volunteers who descended from DC and New York was to make sure the maximum number of Virginia’s “sporadic Democratic voters” — a designation which seemed to mean, pretty much, [...]]]> via Lobe Log

By Scott McConnell

I spent the weekend canvassing for Obama in the Virginia Beach area. The task for the hundreds of volunteers who descended from DC and New York was to make sure the maximum number of Virginia’s “sporadic Democratic voters” — a designation which seemed to mean, pretty much, poor minorities — get to the polls on Tuesday. People needed to know where their polling place was, what ID they needed, be reminded that it’s important and make a foolproof plan to vote. And, of course shooting down the various disinfomational memes that “someone” has been circulating in the area: that “because of the hurricane” you can vote by calling this number, or that you can’t vote a straight Democratic ticket — if you do, your Senate or Congress vote won’t count.

It is a core axiom among Democratic activists that the essence of the Republican “ground game” is to suppress the Democratic votes with lies, intimidation and whatever might work.

It was a curiously moving experience. Much of the sentiment comes from simple exposure. I have led most of my life not caring very much whether the poor voted, and indeed have sometimes been aware my interests aligned with them not voting at all. But that has changed. And so one knocks on one door after another in tiny houses and apartments in Chesapeake and Newport News, some of them nicely kept and clearly striving to make the best of a modest lot, others as close to the developing world as one gets in America. And at moments one feels a kind of calling — and then laughs at the Alinskian presumption of it all. Yes, we are all connected.

At times when I might have been afraid — knocking on a door of what might of well have been a sort of crack house — I felt no fear. I was protected by age and my Obama campaign informational doorhangers.

And occasionally, one strikes canvassing gold. In one decrepit garden apartment complex, where families lived in dwellings the size of maybe two large cars, a young man (registered) came around behind me while I was talking to his mother. “Yeah” he said, “Romney wins, I’m moving back to the islands. He’s gonna start a war, to get the economy going.” Really. He stopped to show me a video on his smart phone, of one of his best friends, a white guy in the Marines. I couldn’t make out what the video was saying, but I took it as a Monthly Review moment. In a good way.

And Tomiko. Plump, pretty, dressed in a New York Jets jersey and sweatpants. “If the campaign can get me a van, I can get dozens of people around here to the polls on Tuesday.” Yes, Tomiko, the campaign might be able to do that, and someone will be calling you.

A very small sample size, but of the white female Obama volunteers with whom I had long conversations, one hundred percent had close relatives who had failed marriages with Mormon men. I think Mormonism is the great undiscussed subject of the campaign, and I don’t quite know what to make of it myself. But contrary to Kennedy’s Catholicism (much agonized over) and Obama’s Jeremiah Wright ties (ditto), Mormonism is obviously the central driving factor of Romney’s life. This may be a good thing or a bad thing — but it is rather odd that it is not discussed, at all. I think it’s safe to say that if Romney wins, the Church of Latter Day Saints will come under very intense scrutiny, and those of us who have thought of the church as simply a Mountain West variation on Protestantism will be very much surprised.

I spent a good deal of time driving and sharing meals with three fellow volunteers, professional women maybe in their early forties, two black, one white, all gentile, all connected in some way, as staffers or lobbyists, to the Democratic Party. All had held staff positions at the Democratic convention. They had scoped out my biography, knew the rough outlines from neocon, to Buchananite, to whatever I am now. They knew my principal reason for supporting Obama was foreign policy, especially Iran. They spent many hours interrogating me about my reactionary attitudes on women, race, immigration, all in good comradely fun of course. At supper last night before we drove back to DC,  I asked them (all former convention staffers) what they thought about the contested platform amendment on Jerusalem. Silence. Finally one of them said, with uncharacteristic tentativeness, “Well, I’m not sure I really know enough about that issue.” More silence.

Then I told them I thought it was a historic moment, (though I refrained from the Rosa Parks analogy I have deployed before) which portended a sea change in Democratic Party attitudes on the question. I cited various neocon enforcers who feared the same thing.

And now, with permission to speak freely, they spoke up. It came pouring out. Yes, obviously Israel has to give up something.  There has to be a two-state solution. We can’t just one-sidedly support Israel, and so on. But really striking was their reluctance, perhaps even fear, to voice their own opinions before hearing mine.

– Scott McConnell is a founding editor of The American Conservative. 

The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George [...]]]> via Lobe Log

The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, has done anything but appease that evil regime for reasons that befuddle us all.

Hence, it is now of paramount importance to halt the current president’s “outreach” to Iran because all previous attempts motivated by Washington’s “excess of decency” have allowed “33 years of Iranian outrages” to go “unavenged” and “undeterred”.

Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, was an avid supporter of the US invasion of Iraq and a fierce critic of the planned 2011 troop withdrawal, arguing that the US should have maintained a “serious tripwire force in Iraq as a hedge against Iran and other bad forces in the region” instead.

Now, again, he is amplifying his call to arms with fear mongering and a line that fellow neoconservative pundit Michael Ledeen has been using for years – Iran and the US are already at war, so the US should start acting like it:

Maybe the president thinks decency obliges him to give diplomacy another chance. But it is from an excess of decency that 33 years of Iranian outrages have gone unavenged, and Iran now proceeds undeterred. Sensible policy on Iran begins not with the question of how to avoid a war—that war was foisted on U.S. in 1979—but how to win it. Anything less invites further terror and dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.

Following this line of reasoning requires diverting the conversation from how best to effectively engage with Iran in order to stop its nuclear program, to how to wage a successful war against an intractable and wicked enemy. Stephens’ conclusion is based on a litany of Iranian offenses (some of which remain questionable, let alone unproven) from the hostage crisis to bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon in the 1980s, the Khobar Tower bombing in Saudi Arabia, “thousands of U.S. troops killed by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan” and the curious case of Mansour Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American who recently pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in collusion with Iranian counterparts. This, according to our militarist pundit, has been the Iranian record against the United States.

And what of the US record against Iran? Why, an “excess of decency” of course! For reasons that Stephens doesn’t have time to get into or simply cannot explain, the US leadership from Reagan to Obama has repeatedly chosen the soft line with Iran. Perhaps the inherently peaceful character of the US has led to its impressive military hardware being reserved for only special occasions, which, in the case of the Middle East, Stephens forgets to mention, has somehow been deployed since the first 1991 Gulf War with no hiatus in between.

With this in mind, there really is no reason to waste time over the nuclear issue. Stephens wants a war to “avenge” the Islamic Republic’s 33-year long record of crimes and does not shy away from declaring his unhappiness regarding the direction of the Iran conversation in the US. The idea that sanctions are working unsettles him because it suggests that there is still time for serious and public diplomatic engagement with Iran to resolve the nuclear issue once and for all. (And no, I am not talking about a Reaganesque mission to secretly dispatch a national security adviser with a cake and bible to Tehran.) Even attempting peaceful conflict resolution is difficult for Stephens to accept because it “dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.” For Stephens and many of his neocon colleagues, the real issue goes beyond the nuclear impasse; what we should really be concerned about is Iran’s history of “dishonoring” America since its Revolution.

Interestingly, this argument echoes talking points made by Iranian neoconservatives (which we often refer to as hardliners). Just read any column by Hossein Shariatmadari, the intractable editor of Kayhan Daily, and you will understand what I mean.

What are the similarities? First there is the victim mentality. Nothing the US or Iran has done can outdo the “bad” things that are done to them. From Shariatmadari’s point of view, the Islamic Republic has always been on the receiving end of Western “savagery” (a term also recently used by Leader Ali Khamenei to describe US conduct vis-à-vis Iran) because of its values, principles, and its daring resistance against US “arrogance.” From Stephens’ point of view, nothing the US has done – like siding with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war and at a minimum engaging in a collusion of silence over Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran’s military and civilians, or shooting down, even if accidentally, an Iranian civilian airliner and then promoting the naval commander responsible for it – is even worth mentioning. Iranian conduct always occurs in a vacuum and is only worth noting in terms of the harm that is imposed.

From the neoconservative point of view — in the U.S. and Iran — correct values, “decency,” and the desire to be a beacon of goodwill, is the only mark of their respective countries. And the violent and disdainful conduct of the other side is the only conduct that needs to be noted. I am sure that, in the minds of folks like Shariatmadari and Stephens, that is indeed the only conduct noted.

This is why Stephens refers to the “crippling” sanctions that Governor Romney and President Obama referenced in Monday night’s debate as more of a “campaign prop than policy tool.” The notion that “unprecedented” sanctions that target the financial core of another country — not to mention killing nuclear scientists and sabotaging nuclear facilities — could also be considered an act of war is incomprehensible for Stephens.

Beyond feigned or actual feelings of victimhood, there is also a similarity in their avoidance of responsibility for the outcome of their proposed solutions. Neoconservatives in both Iran and the United States have had their chances at influencing their respective countries’ foreign and security policies. George W. Bush’s “muscular foreign policy” promoted by the likes of Stephens brought the US the debacle that has been Iraq — which, if anything, has actually strengthened Iran — and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “aggressive foreign policy,” pushed by folks like Shariatmadari, has brought Iran crippling sanctions.

Do they take responsibility for any of their disasters? Absolutely not! Stephens’ push for another war in the Middle East is clear evidence that he does not see himself or his cohorts as responsible for the fiasco in Iraq. In fact, he has said so plainly. The war was not the “original sin,” he wrote in 2007. In fact, it was no sin at all. Things went wrong because of mistakes that occurred after the neoconservatives lost their influence in the Bush administration when Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State (this being, by the way, the reason Stephens vehemently opposed Rice becoming Romney’s running mate).

A similar argument is now being parlayed by Iranian neoconservatives. Things always begin to go wrong when the Iranian government indicates a willingness to talk with the United States, they say. It exhibits weakness, and it is only through a show of strength and “will”– a favorite mantra of neoconservatives everywhere — that “bullies” like the US can be deterred.

Let me end by pointing out that despite the uncanny similarities of their worldviews, there is at least one critical difference between Iranian and US neoconservatives. This difference does not exist in their self-satisfied and belligerent poses; it relates to the location of their respective countries in the geopolitical and economic order.

It is the United States and its allies that are trying to strangle Iran economically, not the other way around. And of course it is the United States that will be engaging in yet another version of “shock and awe” if folks like Bret Stephens have their way, not the other way around.

By Wayne White

It is probably inaccurate to take the State Department to task in isolation as having made the decision to delist the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (MEK) from the US foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. State is the cabinet department that must officially announce (or take formal action related to the [...]]]> via Lobe Log

By Wayne White

It is probably inaccurate to take the State Department to task in isolation as having made the decision to delist the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (MEK) from the US foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. State is the cabinet department that must officially announce (or take formal action related to the US court challenge), but that does not mean the State Department did in fact make this decision on its own. In fact, with a history of being a sort of weak sister in foreign policy decisions with some consistency since the Kennedy Administration (and at least two administrations prior to that in the 20th Century), most foreign policy decisions of any importance have been made by the White House, with other key players like the National Security Council, in some instances the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, as well as influential members of Congress often carrying more weight than — or at least as much as — State when all is said and done.

Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department surely has become a more important player than it was, say, when Colin Powell was so consistently bypassed or ignored under the first George W. Bush Administration. Still, the Administration (comprising a foreign policy team on which State frequently is but one voice) makes the final call on most important decisions, regardless of what bureaucratic mouthpiece must pronounce the result. So, it is often the White House where the proverbial buck stops. Indeed, burnt into my memory are plenty of times when I was in State/INR and the Department was being hammered by the media and various informed observers for making an unfortunate decision, when all around me — often all the way up to the Secretary’s suite on the 7th Floor — officials at State were seething over how their opinion to the contrary had been ignored by this or that Administration.

Second, this decision comes in the context of an especially hotly contested US presidential election campaign (often called by insiders — and for good reason in many instances — the foreign policy “silly season” because of statements and decisions that might have gone differently had campaign pressures been absent). Making decisions that appear in any way favorable to the Iranian regime are a hard sell in a political Washington flush with various powerful constituencies favorable to Israel or hostile to a regime perceived widely as aligned against the US and various US interests. But entering the last & most critical 6-7 weeks of the presidential election campaign (and the ongoing & controversial Iran/Nuclear standoff), there doubtless were some within the Administration worried about the potential adverse political blowback of sustaining the MEK listing. This blowback could include accusations from the Romney camp that the US was being “soft on Iran”, that the White House was allegedly “weak” in standing up to “terrorist threats” overall (in this case, the regime in Iran), and that it was blocking efforts by an anti-regime Iranian group.

I opposed this decision because of what I know about the MEK.  Nonetheless, I also can imagine how campaign-focused Administration officials might have imagined something like this being raised by Gov. Mitt Romney in next week’s presidential debate, knowing that in a time-compressed debate the President would have been hard put to argue the merits of the case once he had been accused of holding back what could be characterized by his opponents as a group opposed to Iran’s clerical regime — one that had supposedly gathered “valuable” intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. Most American voters haven’t a clue as to what the MEK is, let alone its many unsavory and violent activities (as well as its bizarre internal dynamics), and all they would pick up on are loaded phrases like “anti-regime Iranian group,” “soft on Iran” and so on.

Mind you, I am not making excuses for the Obama Administration concerning this decision, but let us also not neglect the pressures from other quarters — many of them hostile to the Administration politically — that might well have figured into a decision that almost certainly was to some degree “political” and not determined solely on the merits of the case.

- Wayne White is a Policy Expert with Washington’s Middle East Policy Council. He was formerly the Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia (INR/NESA) and senior regional analyst. Access Mr. White’s Lobe Log article archive here. 

In 2004 Haim Saban told a New York Times reporter: “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” That’s only important because Saban is a billionaire media mogul and generous political campaign donor who has contributed to individuals and lobbying organizations. Saban’s desire to influence US [...]]]> via Lobe Log

In 2004 Haim Saban told a New York Times reporter: “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” That’s only important because Saban is a billionaire media mogul and generous political campaign donor who has contributed to individuals and lobbying organizations. Saban’s desire to influence US foreign policy on Israel has been no secret either. He made his views and objectives clear in two long articles in the New York Times and the New Yorker, even listing for Connie Bruck “three ways to be influential” in US politics: “make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.” According to Bruck,  in “targeting media properties, Saban frankly acknowledges his political agenda” and “repeatedly” tried to buy the Los Angeles Times because he considered it pro-Palestinian. Saban’s donations to the prominent Brookings Institution also resulted in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which is frequently used as a resource by media professionals in search of expert quotables.

Bruck revealed in 2010 that Saban has maintained an enduring friendship with the Clintons and reportedly withheld from donating to Barak Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign after Obama failed to convince Saban that he would continue Clinton’s stated position on Israel and Iran:

For example, Saban continued, “Obama was asked the same question Hillary was asked—‘If Iran nukes Israel, what would be your reaction?’ Hillary said, ‘We will obliterate them.’ We . . . will . . . obliterate . . . them. Four words, it’s simple to understand. Obama said only three words. He would ‘take appropriate action.’ I don’t know what that means. A rogue state that is supporting killing our men and women in Iraq; that is a supporter of Hezbollah, which killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization; that is a supporter of Hamas, which shot twelve thousand rockets at Israel—that rogue state nukes a member of the United Nations, and we’re going to ‘take appropriate action’! ” His voice grew louder. “I need to understand what that means. So I had a list of questions like that. And Chicago”—Obama campaign headquarters—“could not organize that meeting. ‘Schedule, heavy schedule.’ I was ready and willing to be helpful, but ‘helpful’ is not to write a check for two thousand three hundred dollars. It’s to raise millions, which I am fully capable of doing. But Chicago wasn’t able to deliver the meeting, so I couldn’t get on board.”

But a little over 2 months before the 2012 presidential election, Saban explains in the Times that Mitt Romney’s unclear foreign policy simply doesn’t stand up to Obama’s firm support for Israel and that’s why he is endorsing and supporting the Obama campaign:

When he visited Israel as a candidate he saw firsthand how vulnerable Israeli villagers were to rocket attacks from Gaza. As president, he responded by providing full financing and technical assistance for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range anti-rocket defense system, which is now protecting those villagers. In July, he provided an additional $70 million to extend the Iron Dome system across southern Israel. That’s in addition to the $3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel that the president requests and that Congress routinely approves, assistance for which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed deep personal appreciation.

When the first President Bush had disagreements with Israel over its settlement policy, he threatened to withhold loan guarantees from Israel. Mr. Obama has had his own disagreements with Mr. Netanyahu over the settlers but has never taken such a step. To the contrary, he has increased aid to Israel and given it access to the most advanced military equipment, including the latest fighter aircraft.

Ask any senior Israeli official involved in national security, and he will tell you that the strategic relationship between the United States and Israel has never been stronger than under President Obama. “I can hardly remember a better period of American support and backing, and Israeli cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us,” the defense minister, Ehud Barak, said last year, “than what we have right now.”