by Jim Lobe

As Republican lawmakers and Fox News have been claiming that the Benghazi “cover-up” scandal will prove even bigger than the Iran-Contra and Watergate scandals combined, Elliott Abrams – who, faced with a slew of felony charges by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor while serving as Assistant Secretary [...]]]> via Lobe Log

by Jim Lobe

As Republican lawmakers and Fox News have been claiming that the Benghazi “cover-up” scandal will prove even bigger than the Iran-Contra and Watergate scandals combined, Elliott Abrams – who, faced with a slew of felony charges by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor while serving as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs (1985-89), quickly pled guilty to two counts of misleading Congress — seemed to be a particularly poor choice by the Wall Street Journal to comment on this week’s hearings by the House Oversight Committee and decry the partisanship and viciousness of “Washington politics.”

It’s not just that Abrams has a rather dubious reputation for truth-telling dating back to even before Iran-Contra, to his service as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights (1981-5), when his efforts to downplay or cover up serious human rights atrocities (some of which certainly match or even exceed the worst attributed to Assad’s forces in Syria) committed by “friendly authoritarians” in South and Central America were routinely denounced by human-rights activists and their supporters in Congress. As for his lying about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, it’s quite something when a lawmaker as gentle and bipartisan as former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Claiborne Pell threatens to eject you from a hearing room if you even try to testify because of your performance at previous hearings. (During one exchange in Dec 1986, after Iran-Contra hit the headlines after it had become clear that Abrams had lied to Congress about his role in fund-raising for the Contras, Sen. Tom Eagleton ended an exchange with Abrams by saying “I’ve heard [your testimony], and I want to puke.”)

It’s also that if you’re going to complain about the “vicious political culture of Washington,” your own contribution to that culture and its conventions should somehow be acknowledged. It was Abrams, after all, who repeatedly argued recently that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was an anti-Semite (or, more precisely, has “a thing about ‘the Jews’”). During the Reagan administration, he, like Jeane Kirkpatrick, was not shy about accusing human-rights activists, pro-poor clerics, and sympathetic Democratic lawmakers with whom he clashed on Central America of being fellow-travelers or dupes. As noted by Jefferson Morley back in 1987, he also adopted a more-sophisticated PR strategy designed to

dominate the conventions of Washington debate — epitomized on talk shows with speakers pro and con. Knowing these shows need federal officials, Abrams regularly refused to appear with selected opponents of Administration policy. He usually got his way. In declining to appear, Abrams labeled his critics, including respected diplomats, as ‘vipers’ beyond ‘the borders of responsible criticism.’

“Vipers” was also a word he reportedly used to describe foreign service officers who he felt were insufficiently loyal to the Reagan administration’s policies. Which brings me to the passage that really stuck out in Abram’s op-ed in the Journal, entitled “Benghazi Truths vs. Washington Politics.” The article concluded:

This hearing did not ascertain where the buck should stop, but it was a step forward in getting the facts. And it was a reminder that in Washington we should not permit people with political motives to blight the careers of civil servants and blame them for failures of management and policy at the top.

Of course, I personally couldn’t agree more with this appeal. But I find Abram’s invocation of it particularly ironic (not only because of the fact that neo-conservatives, including Abrams, and other hawks who marched the U.S. to war in Iraq are now finding it ever-so-convenient to blame the intelligence agencies for what was the worst debacle in U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War). It was also ironic because, during the Reagan administration, Abrams did not hesitate to retaliate against career officers who, in his opinion, failed to align their views with his own political interests. Consider these excerpts from a March 7, 1987, New York Times article, entitled “Abrams Under Fire at Senate Hearing.”

Just before [Abrams] was questioned, the subcommittee heard testimony from Francis J. McNeil, a former Ambassador to Costa Rica and 31-year-veteran of the State Department, who acknowledged under questioning that he quit his job because he was ”fed up” with being undermined by Mr. Abrams.

Mr. McNeil said that when as Deputy Director of Intelligence he gave discouraging assessments of the ability of the Nicaraguan rebels, Mr. Abrams translated that into ”not being on the team.” He said Mr. Abrams then made clear his belief that ”I was untrustworthy and a leaker.”

He said that Department investigators cleared him of the charge that he leaked a document to The Washington Post and that on resigning he wrote Mr. Abrams saying he had conducted an ”exercise in McCarthyism.”

When Mr. Abrams replaced Mr. McNeil at the witness chair, he appeared to try to face him as if to nod in recognition. But Mr. McNeil sought to avoid that by walking away with his head averted.

Under questioning from Senator Paul Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, Mr. Abrams acknowledged that the investigators were unable to show that Mr. McNeil had leaked any documents. ”Well, they never discovered any leaker,” Mr. Abrams said.

Mr. Abrams characterized Mr. McNeil’s letter of resignation as ”character assassination” and said he did not respond because ‘I consider it to be a nasty note of a personal nature.”

He acknowledged interceding to prevent Mr. McNeil from being named Ambassador to Peru. He said that when assistant secretaries take such actions, Foreign Service officers object. ”They hate our guts,” he said.

I don’t know if Abrams’ views of foreign service officers and other career civil servants have changed since then, although the neo-conservative disregard for — not to say hatred of — “Arabists” in the State Department and the intelligence community was certainly evident during the Bush administration in which Abrams served as the senior Near East staffer on the National Security Council. Who can forget Pat Lang’s retelling of his interview with Doug Feith, an Abrams protege, to head up the Pentagon’s Office of Special Operations?

So, it’s especially ironic to read Abrams’ denunciation of the “chasm between the culture of career civil servants ready to risk their lives and the vicious political culture of Washington” to which he has contributed so much over the past several decades.

But for more on what Abrams’ really thinks about the relationship between politics and the career civil service (and their feeding and care), you should read his recent essay, “The Prince of the White House.“

There’s a lot of information packed [...]]]> Col. Pat Lang, a former intel officer who blogs at Sic Semper Tyrannis, has a guest post by someone named simply “Harper.” This Harper was recently in touch with an American source who visited Israel and met with senior officials there, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There’s a lot of information packed into the post: French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s support for Netanyahu’s determination to attack Iran; the politics of the February 2011 change of Israel’s army Chief of Staff; Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s plan to depart the U.S. administration before an attack; and Israel’s calculus of blowback from airstrikes and what to do about them — i.e. attack Southern Lebanon and Gaza just as planes take off for Iran.

But, after all that, the post ends with bang —  a discussion of the determination of Israel to attack Iran and the possible timeframe of such an assault.

Here’s Harper, on Lang’s blog:

When might such an operation be launched? My source believes that, if it does not happen before December 10, it will next be on the table for March or April 2011.

Netanyahu is considering, but has not finalized in his mind, to order strikes in late November 2010. All IDF vacations have been suspended as of this week; and IDF officers studying abroad have been summoned home temporarily. The line circulating around is: “No repeat of the Yom Kippur War when Israel was caught by surprise.” END”  Harper

Will we have an Israeli strike — without a U.S. greenlight — by this upcoming spring? Doubtful.

An Israeli friend informs me that his military-connected sources have heard nothing about an imminent strike and that a massive cancellation of leave never materialized. However, it does appears that some weekend leave was cancelled on the weekend when Iran did it’s own massive military exercises aimed at preparing for such an aerial attack.

His take was that results were mixed, but it’s the responses to his query — addressing the pressure to attack, what is the threat of Iran and what the [...]]]> National Journal‘s Senior Editor Richard H.P. Sia recently asked “Will Sabre Rattling and Sanctions Work Against Iran?” on the publication’s National Security Expert Blog:

His take was that results were mixed, but it’s the responses to his query — addressing the pressure to attack, what is the threat of Iran and what the U.S. should do next — that are of note.

“No, of course not,” Steven Metz answered. “Does this mean that the United States should launch military strikes when sanctions and political pressure fail? Absolutely not. It is hard to imagine a greater strategic folly. There is no reason to believe that a nuclear armed Iran cannot be deterred in the same way the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China were.”

In a later response, Metz writes, “One should either kill a dangerous animal or leave it alone–wounding it is normally the worst available option” — though he notes that the “kill” option here (full-scale invasion and regime change) is unlikely.

Col. Pat Lang, who keeps the excellent Sic Semper Tyrannis blog, wonders if, once Iran gets the bomb (in the cards), whether it can be deterred. “This remains an open question,” writes Lang,

but the argument that Iran’s revolution has entered a phase in which the country now answers to state interests and the particular interests of the nomenklatura has great appeal. If that hopeful view has merit, then the eventual Iranian nuclear force will be unusable and will merely serve to make Iran a major player in international geopolitics.

And that, friends and neighbors is what the Israelis really fear.

In a follow-up entry, Lang riffs on Metz’s animal analogy:

Before we decide to slay the dragon, we should understand what the dragon is. Is the dragon merely the Iranian state nuclear program or is the dragon really a herd of dragons, unknown in number, and located across all the parts of the world in which Muslims live?

He goes on to rip neocons for pushing a simplistic view of Gulf Arab support for an attack on Iran. He warns of another potential dire consequence: Pakistan, already upset over U.S. strikes on its soil, may join Iran in retaliation.

“They Don’t Believe Our Threats,” replies Loren Thompson, the head of the Lexington Institute. Thompson takes a much more hawkish path. He observes that even after watching Saddam Hussein’s defiance and eventual downfall, Iranian leaders seem unbowed. “The fact they aren’t tells you America is not feared in Teheran, and we either need to walk away or do something more concrete — something more military — to get their attention,” he recommends.

But the most succinct answer to the question comes from Joseph Collins, a professor at the National War College:

Neither sabre rattling nor sabre cuts will work on Iran. The Iranian nuclear program is not stoppable by sanction or military action. Sanctions are too weak and military efforts are likely to be technically ineffective and politically dysfunctional.

[...]

In the end, we can’t stop Iran from going nuclear, but we can deter its use of a nuclear weapon. Iran is unlikely to give a nuclear device to a terrorist movement, esp. a sunni group like Al Qaeda. Like most nuclear powers, Iran will learn that a nuclear weapon might add to your deterrent, but that it can’t create legitimacy or cure massive unemployment.

Col. Pat Lang has written two informative blog posts about the arms sale.  In the first, Lang reminds his readers that the sale is a commercial transaction, not foreign aid. And on attempts to put the arms sale in the context of the “Iranian threat,” Lang quips, “The Iranian threat? [...]]]> *UPDATE*

Col. Pat Lang has written two informative blog posts about the arms sale.  In the first, Lang reminds his readers that the sale is a commercial transaction, not foreign aid. And on attempts to put the arms sale in the context of the “Iranian threat,” Lang quips, “The Iranian threat?  Oh, yes, of course…  Somehow I think this has much to do with ‘commissions’ passed around in the royal family/courtier crowd.  5% of 90 billion plus will go a long way.”

In his second post, Lang addresses the codependent U.S.-Saudi relationship.

The US and SA align themselves more or less on parallel courses in the ME because the two countries have quite a few parallel interests, even though in many ways their philosophies are at odds.  The same thing is true of Pakistan and the US, as well as quite a few other places.

And, we need the money.

***

The $60 billion arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia—which, if completed, would be the largest single foreign arms deal in history—has drawn its fair share of media attention.

The sale includes 70 upgraded F-15s, 70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawk helicopters and 36 Little Bird helicopters. By all accounts, this would significantly boost Saudi Arabia’s ability to defend itself against a conventional, land-based attack and would give the kingdom considerable power projection beyond its borders.

David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, offered his analysis of what the arms sale means for Washington’s Iran policy.

On his Foreign Policy blog, Rothkopf writes:

This deal is the latest example of behavior suggesting that the nuclearization of Iran is all over but for the bomb building in the eyes of U.S. and regional strategists. As soon as it became clear that the United States and its allies would play along with Iranian stalling games, and as it appeared less and less likely to all concerned that the Obama administration would actually take military action to stop the Iranian program, the mindset shifted.

And

Of course, the result [of the arms deal] is a much closer relationship between the U.S. and the Saudis which has significant implications for other U.S. relationships in the region, e.g. with Israel. And certainly much of our future planning with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to be oriented toward maintaining the kind of presence that will enable us to use posts there as part of the larger Iran containment strategy.

Rothkopf warns the containment and deterrence policy could result in a conventional or even nuclear arms race, noting the irony that the U.S. “seems on the verge of okaying the biggest arms deal in American history to the country that provided fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, much of the critical funding for al Qaeda and was home to Osama bin Laden.” Rothkopf believes the Obama administration’s policy on Iran’s nuclear program has shifted and is now focused on containment and balancing against a increasingly powerful Tehran. He also argues that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only postpone Tehran’s construction of a nuclear weapon.

This analysis fits with Washington’s long-standing policy of deterrence and containment. Arms sales to Taiwan and South Korea could be seen in the much the same light.

Conversely the authors of the Contentions blog, hosted by the neoconservative Commentary Magazine, see the shift to containment as a death-blow to their attempts to urge the U.S. or Israel into a military confrontation with Iran.

J.E. Dyer writes that while news outlets are covering the arms sale as a sign of Washington shifting to a containment strategy with Iran, the sale is really no such thing.

Dyer concludes the analysts have it all wrong and are focusing on the wrong upcoming war:

Western analysts tend to miss the fact that Iran’s moves against Israel constitute a plan to effectively occupy territory that the Arab nations consider theirs to fight for. The concerns on both sides are more than ethnic and historical: they involve competing eschatological ideas.

The resurgence of Turkey, erstwhile Ottoman ruler, only accelerates the sense of powerful regional rivals polishing up their designs on the Levant. The Saudis’ military shopping list doesn’t match their defensive requirements against Iran, but if the strategic driver is a race to Jerusalem, it contains exactly what they need. Congress should take a critical look at the numbers involved – and the U.S. should take one at our disjointed and increasingly passive approach to the region.