Yesterday, after touring an automotive transmission plant near Fredericksburg, Jim Webb talked to reporters and made some interesting points regarding allegations that Iran is arming anti-American insurgents in Iraq.First, with regards to possible Iranian weapons smuggling, Webb said, "that's something that you're going to want to address no matter who's doing it." In other words, it sounds like Senator Webb takes very seriously the possibility of Iranian "explosively formed penetrators" finding their way to people who kill American soldiers. As well he - and all of us - should.
Second, however, Webb made a great point:
There's not a weapon that was used against me in Vietnam that was not made in either China or Eastern Europe. That didn't cause us to decide we were going to declare war against China or the Soviet Union.
Exactly right. You don't go to war with every country that sells weapons to your enemies. Instead, you talk to them and don't even consider use of force until all other possibilities have been completely ruled out. And you do that even if you don't like the actors in question. To put it in Rumsfeldian terminology, "you negotiate with the countries you've got, not with the countries you might want or wish to have at a later time." Ha.
Anyway, it's obvious that Jim Webb understands something that the Bush Administration does not and maybe never will, that we need to calibrate our response to Iran (and to all countries, for that matter) with regard to a broader view of the bilateral relationship and of our broader interests in the region.
Maybe Webb's been reading Ray Takeyh's excellent new book, "Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic." Bush certainly hasn't been, that's for sure. In his book, Tayekh writes that "beneath the veneer of recriminations and accusations [Iran and the United States] actually have many interests in common [in Iraq]." Takeyh continues, "Tehran, like Washington, is keenly interested in avoiding a civil war and sustaining Iraq as a unitary state."
Flowing out of these assumptions, Takeyh recommends that the United States and Iran "join forces rather than compete for power," with U.S. "boots on the ground" benefiting from Iran's "soft power" - economic, cultural, religious - in Iraq. Of course, getting to that point would require the Bush Administration to sit down and talk to the Iranians, and that does not look likely anytime soon. But you never know, hell could freeze over some day.
In general, one of Takeyh's main conclusions is that "a subtle policy of selective engagement" with Iran is likely to work far better than the brute force approach. Takeyh writes that the Bush Administration "must accept that its threats and its hostile rhetoric have limited effect in altering Iran's path," but actually assists hardliners "within the theocracy." Instead, Takeyh recommends "peeling away important clerical power brokers" from President Ahmedinejad (about whom Takeyh writes, "his pathologies are immutable").
Speaking of immutable pathologies, that brings us back to the Bush Administration. For weeks now, Jim Webb has been trying to get an answer from Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, regarding "what authorization the administration believes it has to conduct unilateral military action against Iran without first coming to Congress." So far, Webb has not received an answer, and sadly, that's not a big surprise.
The fact is, although today's news about a possible deal with North Korea was encouraging, up until now, Bush et al. appear to have understood and appreciated only one thing in foreign policy - brute force. That's highly unfortunate, given the utility and relative cost-effectiveness of "soft power."
Sadly, this basic lesson of International Relations 101 appears to have gone completely over the head of the hapless Bush Administration, whose "faith-based foreign policy" holds that you don't offer "carrots" to countries that are "evil." As we all know, the Bush Administration foolishly lumped Iran into its "Axis of Evil" along with North Korea, with which it is now in the midst of cutting a deal. So maybe all the Bush bluster on Iran will end up the same way as it did with North Korea, in some sort of negotiated settlement. But personally, I'm about as optimistic on this score as I am that Jim Webb will receive a serious answer from Condi Rice. That is to say, I'm not very optimistic at all.
So let's invade Salzburg; we won't leave until every strudel is devoured
Seriously, who else did Austria sell these weapons to? I just assume arms flow in and out of countries like drugs -- untraceable. How do they know these were the exact weapons that went to Iran? Serial ##? Money back guarantee written in Farsi?
As for the idea that you don't sit down with evildoers --- one has to deal with realities, and with recognizing legitimate concerns. Countries don't exist in a vacuum. N. Korea had energy acquisition concerns and security concerns.
What Bush is good at is demonizing the foreign power, and reducing them to a caricature. Unfortunately, that's no foreign policy.
Seriously, though, if we were to hold the source of weapons responsible we should be invading ourselves. Remember a few months ago the scandal about the missing American-supplied weapons? Some of them are no doubt showing up on the battlefield.
Even assuming the Iranians are supplying insurgents with weapons, and I imagine elements in Iran are doing just that, it doesn't mean we should go to war. Time to sit down with them at the table and do some arm-twisting.
If we are to be incensed at Iran's meddling (which certainly is not as serious as America's meddling) then why not be incensed by Saudi Arabia's meddling? All this meddling only proves the reasonableness of Webb's approach, i.e., since Iraq's neighbors all have legitimate interests in the stability of the region, and since one way or another the neighbors are going to meddle, why not sit down at the table with these meddling neighbors, and negotiate?
I realize that ne-go-ti-ate is a new word for Bushites, but isn't it about time? Maybe we should have that requirement included in any resolutions that come out of Congress, using again the power of the purse to force it. If Condoleezza can actually ne-go-ti-ate with Korea, surely she can manage it with Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria
No wonder the media can't understand him... ;-)
On the other hand a lot of the weapons we have given the Iraq police have been either sold to or given to the "insurgents". I guess that means we have to invade our own country, right? Ha ha ha.