UPDATE 0915 GMT: Here is what, in today’s power politics, is what the rhetoric of “liberal intervention” props up. Thomas Ricks declares, alongside Friedman’s piece in The New York Times, “Leaders in [the US and Iraq] may come to recognize that the best way to deter a return to civil war is to find a way to keep 30,000 to 50,000 United States service members in Iraq for many years to come.”
Seven years after the 2003 war and the violence and disorder that followed, Iraq has moved on to other political conflicts and issues. Yet, for some, this will always be a case of returning to the scene to construct victory or to build the excuse for absolution. War must become liberation, crime must become justice, tragedy must become redemption.
One of those who persists is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. This morning Friedman, who used his “liberal” drum to bang loudly and incessantly for the 2003 invasion, opens his column:
From the very beginning of the U.S. intervention in Iraq and the effort to build some kind of democracy there, a simple but gnawing question has lurked in the background: Was Iraq the way Iraq was (a dictatorship) because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was — a collection of warring sects incapable of self-rule and only governable with an iron fist?
As we expected, the whipped-up controversy over the activities of the National Iranian American Committee — fuelled by the attack journalism in The Washington Times — has descended into further invective and allegations.
The Lake piece gave cover to the earlier exaggerations and distortions not only of The Weekly Standard, which is trying to blow apart any engagement with Iran, but also Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic:
A couple of weeks ago I retracted my assertion that Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, did “leg-work” for the Iranian regime. I was trying to suggest, in a not-so artful way, that Parsi is trying to build his organization into an Iranian version of AIPAC, but “leg-work” seemed, in retrospect, like too harsh a description for his activities.
But now I may have to retract my retraction….
Meanwhile, the counter-allegation is spreading that Hassan Daioleslam, who is the source of the allegations and who is being sued by Parsi for defamation, is a long-term member of Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO). The group has sought the overthrow of the Iranian regime since 1979, often through violence, bombings, and assassinations.
Josh Rogin of the Cable blog of Foreign Policy is writing that Daioleslam is well-connected with Washington neoconservatives who are challenging NIAC to undercut the Obama administration’s engagement strategy.
Rogin is posting emails between Daioleslam and Kenneth Timmerman, in which the two plot strategy and discuss the plans to leak documents to Eli Lake, who wrote the Washington Times story. Timmerman is a longtime advocate of regime change in Tehran, through platforms such as the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, which he co-founded in 1995 with Joshua Muravchik and the late Peter Rodman. He has accused Iran of a role both in the September 11 attacks and the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
On Thursday, speaking to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, claimed that an Iranian atomic bomb can “wipe Israel off the map in a matter of seconds.”
Oren did address the key immediate issue in US-Israeli relations: “The Israeli and American sides are working earnestly, ardently to try to find a compromise over the question of the degree to which construction can continue in settlements to accord what we call the normal life. And I am confident that we will find a solution for this.” Read the rest of this entry »
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared for 13 minutes on US television, speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press”. However, it is a remarkably tangential interview, with host David Gregory spending 12 1/2 minutes on Iran and 1/2 minute on Palestine. Given that the Obama Administration has made clear that Palestine and not Iran is the priority when it comes to US-Israeli relations, and given that issues on the next step with Iran are in suspension while the political crisis continues, Gregory’s interview was as useful as chat about the weather, baseball, or the Man in the Moon:
UPDATE 0915 GMT: Here is what, in today’s power politics, is what the rhetoric of “liberal intervention” props up. Thomas Ricks declares, alongside Friedman’s piece in The New York Times, “Leaders in [the US and Iraq] may come to recognize that the best way to deter a return to civil war is to find a way to keep 30,000 to 50,000 United States service members in Iraq for many years to come.”
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