Bush planned a state dinner for Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah for mid-April but now the word comes to Washington that he won't be able to make it, with no real plausible reason given for the brush-off. To top that, Hoagland says:
Jordan's King Abdullah, who has spent more time in George W. Bush's Washington than any other foreign leader, has let the White House know that he can't make that state visit discussed for September.[...]
...one more warning sign that the Bush administration's downward spiral at home is undermining its ability to achieve its policy objectives abroad.
A few months ago, Bandar [the Saudi national security adviser] was championing the confrontational "realignment" approach in Saudi family councils: Iran's power would be broken, the Syrians would have to give up hegemonic designs on Lebanon, etc., etc. Now the Saudi prince visits Tehran and Moscow regularly. He helped set the stage for the Palestinians' Mecca accord, which has caused Israel to reduce what little cooperation it felt it could extend to Abbas.
In Hoagland's words, this doesn't seem to bode well for the Isreali/Palestinian "deadlock" and "the deadly morass of Iraq."
Do we have any friends left in the world? Not surprisingly, it doesn't seem we do. This is a very chilling situation. Where do we go from here?
But if a strike on Iran, as the below poster tell us, then can we wait the two years until the Decider is replaced?
I wish I could say that this Administration isn't so nuts that it would ignore the wishes of the American people and take into account that our military is on the brink of collapse and that the world would oppose (again!) our actions, but we are talking Bush/Cheney. These people are scaring the stuffing out of me.
Here is a bit more from a comment posted earlier across the margin in Lowell's blog on last evening's 50-48 vote in the Senate. The comment is probably more pertinent to this thread. I apologize for cross-posting.
Here is an Indian journalist who reports that Sheik Khalifa of the UAE has just assured Iran that the UAE would not permit attacks to be launched from UAE territory against Iran. The UAE, by the way, is where the U.S. runs a theater air operations center out of Al Dhafra Air Base.
In the swirl of self-serving propaganda spewing from all sides, it is difficult for us mere citizens to puzzle our way through the chaff to make judgments. But such signals as the ones above do seem to demonstrate that our Boys in the Bunker are frightening the entire planet, including erstwhile "friends." The only lingering support for the Boys in the Bunker seems to be among their obedient Republican apparatchiks serving in the House and Senate.
I would feel a lot better if there were some sign of adult supervision emanating from the bunker, but there is none. And each day both Bush and Cheney seem, in speech and appearance, to disintegrate further before our very eyes.
The only thing standing between us and an accelerating geopolitical death spiral may be Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Although Gates carries some baggage as an ideologue not above "fitting the facts to the policy" and as a loyal Bush family retainer, he does seem to be tethered to reality. He seems even now, as he operates under constraints imposed on him by the Boys in the Bunker, to reflect the reality-based GOP faction of Brent Scowcroft and James Baker.
Scrutinize every word Gates utters in coming days. Carefully.
My mother was at the CIA for over 32 years and I still know a few of her old acquaintances from there. What I've heard from them is that Gates's big weakness at the CIA was his tendency to a bit of paranoia about the Soviet Union, but I would find that comforting here. Gates would not want us to do anything which would tend to push the Arab world closer to Russia and Russia's influence. If he sees that us going into Iran would do just that you can bet he'll have problems with it.
You make an excellent point. I have been wondering for a while now about the degree of intelligence cooperation between Iran and Russia. Here is a link to a BBC article about a Russian launch of an Iranian satellite in October, 2005:
As you can see, the Iranian satellite appears to have a "camera." If so, the Iranians may already have at least a rudimentary satellite photoreconnaissance capability. They would surely be keeping close watch on the exact geocoordinates of the two U.S. carrier strike forces currently deployed in the Gulf and on any others that may be approaching the Arabian Sea.
I also wonder whether the Russians may directly be helping the Iranians to keep track of U.S. carrier deployments and military chatter, just as the U.S. helped Saddam Hussein keep track of Iranian troop deployments and activities during the Iraq-Iran war.
As you can see from this link, the Russians have supplied a number of batteries of Tor SA-15 (Gauntlet) SAM systems to Iran.
It may be that the Russians through such assistance wish to help the Iranians inflict detectable pain on the U.S. fleet and at least some losses on U.S. aircraft if the U.S. decides to launch another "splendid little war"--this time against Iran. A massive U.S. air strike would likely first target Iran's SAM installations just before targetting suspected nuclear facilities and key infrastructure and communications targets. But the Iranians, with their anti-ship missiles cocked and ready, might be able to fire off a few salvos at our fleet at the very onset of hostilities. They are not likely to hunker down and just absorb a beating, day after day, as the Iraqis did.
The Russians have not forgotten our introduction of shoulder-fired Stinger SAMs into Afghanistan in 1986. The Red Army and its Afghan clients were actually doing rather well against the Afghan insurgency at that point, and the Stinger missiles served as the catalyst to turn that conflict around and ultimately send the Russians packing across the border, their mission unaccomplished. I suspect that Putin and many in his inner circle blame the U.S., the Stingers, and that Afghan war for being the proximate catalyst for the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. Perhaps they see a coming conflict between the U.S. and Iran as an opportunity for payback: a proximate catalyst for the dissolution of American global hegemony.
Another net geopolitical setback or outright debacle for the U.S. would be another net geopolitical gain for the Russians, and at minimal cost to them.
What does a hair-trigger look like? Pretty much like what we have now in the Gulf.
Even if the Boys in the Bunker are clueless, Robert Gates is smart enough to figure this out.
Well, er, sort of.
Condi's doctoral dissertation for her PH.D. in Political Science at the University of Denver, certainly not one of our leading Soviet (in those days) or Russian Area Studies institutions, was: "The Politics of Client Command: Party-military Relations in Czechoslovakia: 1948-1975." I have not tracked it down to read it, but I did find an early academic review (long before Condi was famous) that thoroughly dismantled the dissertation as a piece of hack work with multiple errors of fact and historical understanding. Condi's adviser for the dissertation was Jonathan R. Adelman, sort of a neocon before they called themselves neocons.
My guess is that any junior analyst with an M.A. in Russian Studies from a reasonably good school and who currently works at CIA, DIA, or INR at State would have a better handle on Russian history, culture, and geopolitical reality than does Condi.
Richard Clarke in his "Against All Enemies" is fairly dismissive of Cond's capacity to perceive reality and of the general level of her ability to focus on what is important. As National Security Adviser, she may have been the most inept occupant of that post in memory. Rumsfeld and Cheney simply rolled over her (as they did Colin Powell, as well).
IMHO, Condi has not improved her performance by moving over to be SecState. Donald Trump's description of her M.O. (and yes, I, as doubtless do you, consider Trump to be a despicable human being), was laughably bang-on. It went something like: "She walks up the steps of the plane. She smiles. She waves. She flies away. She meets some foreign official. She flies back and walks down the steps of the plane. She smiles, She waves. And she never cuts a deal."
Have to say that Donald pretty much nailed it that time.
Condi is window dressing at the asylum. And she is pretty much as much of a neocon ideologue as the rest of the inmates.
FMA, you're a fountain of knowledge and I really enjoy reading your posts. Keep posting!
Thanks for the kind word.
You no doubt noticed the reporting late last night and today that at the Arab League summit in Riyadh, Saudi King Abdullah has criticized the U.S. presence in Iraq as an "illegitimate occupation."
So our supportive ally list is now down to the UK, Israel, and perhaps Poland. Think the Boys in the Bunker can continue to imagine that they can rule the world this way?