Have You No Sense of History, Sir?

Now that the initial furor over President Bush's recent 'appeasement' remarks in Israel has died down a bit, perhaps a rational spin can be put on it. Accepting President Bush's remarks as accurate for a moment, it becomes necessary to map out an alternative to talking with Iran which will elicit the desired results. It is easy to bluster about the folly of conversation, but is inevitably hollow without a suitable plan with which to substitute it.

One alternative, and the one on which the administration seems most keen, is regime change by force. One need not gaze too far back into the abyss of history to imagine how that scenario might play out. In fact, only as far as the present day. It would be quite a feat for anyone to offer compelling evidence why any future conditions in Iran after invasion would vary substantially from those of present-day Iraq. Especially if Iran is seen as the main purveyor of unrest in Iraq. The validity of the previous sentence is immaterial to the point, since those that would invade Iran believe it fully, and, as such, must apply it to their reasoning.

Another alternative, offered by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, is the tried-and-true method of economic sanctions and forced isolation. Again, Iraq need be the only model here. Economic sanctions there surely hampered Saddam's military capacity, but also deprived the general population of much more. The thought that if faced with a slighter influx of cash, a despotic regime will allow itself to be deprived in equal proportion with its subjects is farcical.

But what Morris and McGann see is not a slow bleed, but a regime change from within:

Without subsidies, the Iranian people, half of whom are under 30 and only 40 percent of whom are ethnically Farsi, will become restive and resentful. Already, many complain that Ahmadinejad’s policies have led to global isolation of Iran and stymied economic growth and social upward mobility. While opinion surveys in Iran indicate that the people support the nuclear aspirations of the regime, they are not willing to pay a price of international isolation.

If a President Obama were to meet with President Ahmadinejad, it would send a signal to the Iranian people that they are not isolated but that the rest of the world has come to respect them and to have to deal with them. The leading argument for toppling the current regime will have been fatally undermined.

The authors seem here to be engaging in willful ignorance both of the mechanics of tyranny and the datum of history. Sanctions and isolation surely bred resentment in Saddam's Iraq, but part was surely directed outward (UN/US), and that which was directed inward was ineffectual (such is the case in tyranny). 12 years of wishing for regime change and starving (with the help of a corrupt dictator, to be sure) Iraqi children through sanctions didn't effect the end sought in Iraq. Why should it be any different in Iran?

Morris and McGann make two other common mistakes: First, they assign to the Iranian population all the traits of Ahmadinejad, and treat them as one in the same. Second, they assume that the power to lead Iran lies with Ahmadinejad when, in fact, it lies with the Supreme Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei.

The West's fight with Ahmadinejad is not a battle with a Hitler or Stalin, both of whom held absolute power and control of a sizable military apparatus. Ahmadinejad is more like the bully's scrawny friend who gets to taunt the bully's prey only while in his orbit. Ahmadinejad, apart from not being the supreme lawmaker of Iran, is not even the commander-in-chief of the Iranian forces.

But it is because of his provocative remarks, like denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, that the United States and Europe have never known quite how to handle the firebrand president, say politicians, officials and experts in Iran.

In demonizing Ahmadinejad, they say, the West has served him well, elevating his status at home and across the region at a time when he is increasingly isolated politically because of his go-it-alone style and ineffective economic policies.

Like Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad has been propelled to cult status precisely because of, and not in spite of, the West's constant denunciations and focus. I am not suggesting for a moment that the man is anything less than a buffoon, but some perspective is needed on his real place within Iran's power structure.

One can debate whether to talk with leaders like the Iranian charlatan or give them the cold shoulder. What is irrational and illogical, though, is to suppose--as Morris and McGann have--that the history of but 5 years ago will not serve as a guide.

The lesson of history can be taken in the first. Or it can be learned upon repetition. The US seems to be aiming at the latter.

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Down Is the New Up

Doug Feith, everyone's favorite revisionist historian, took the opportunity on Hugh Hewitt's show to claim, "We took an extremely strongly pro-Geneva Convention position in the Pentagon." An interesting take on historical record, indeed, considering the well-documented steps Feith and the rest of the Justice Department took in the overt aim of subverting the Geneva Conventions. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. And so on.

In Feith's conversations with Phillippe Sands, one might mistakenly construe that just the opposite is true.

With the war in Afghanistan under way, lawyers in Washington understood that they needed a uniform view on the constraints, if any, imposed by Geneva. Addington, Haynes, and Gonzales all objected to Geneva. Indeed, Haynes in December 2001 told the CentCom admiral in charge of detainees in Afghanistan “to ‘take the gloves off’ and ask whatever he wanted” in the questioning of John Walker Lindh.

[...]

On January 25, Alberto Gonzales put his name to a memo to the president supporting Haynes and Rumsfeld over Powell and Taft. This memo, which is believed to have been written by Addington, presented a “new paradigm” and described Geneva’s “strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners” as “obsolete.”

As to Feith's own opinion:

Douglas Feith had a long-standing intellectual interest in Geneva, and for many years had opposed legal protections for terrorists under international law. He referred me to an article he had written in 1985, in The National Interest, setting out his basic view. Geneva provided incentives to play by the rules; those who chose not to follow the rules, he argued, shouldn’t be allowed to rely on them, or else the whole Geneva structure would collapse. The only way to protect Geneva, in other words, was sometimes to limit its scope. To uphold Geneva’s protections, you might have to cast them aside.

[...]

As he saw it, either you were a detainee to whom Geneva didn’t apply or you were a detainee to whom Geneva applied but whose rights you couldn’t invoke.

Feith seems to be in a constant state of schizophrenic flux, not sure if he's settling on the storyline that he played an immense role in the administration or whether he was merely swept along unwittingly by the "idiots" that surrounded him.

Whatever narrative he chooses, the historical record enjoys no such fluctuation, always landing on the precise opposite of Feith's ludicrous claim to the Pentagon being "pro-Geneva."

There is enough in the public record now to firmly conclude, without an ounce of doubt, that the Bush Administration, both the Departments of Justice and Defense, actively sought a legal apparatus to eliminate the need for adherence to the Geneva Conventions. Far from being pro-Geneva, the Administration sought to render it useless and inapplicable.

As far back as 2004, around the time of Abu Ghraib, it was clear to nearly everyone that Feith had a long-standing, personal opposition to Geneva.

It was Feith who devised the legal solution for getting around the Geneva Conventions' prohibition on physically or psychologically coercing prisoners of war into talking. As a Pentagon official in the 1980s, Feith had laid out the argument that terrorists didn't deserve protection under the Geneva Conventions. Once the war on terrorism started, all he had to do was implement it. And even more damning than his legal rule-making is Feith's reported reaction to complaints by military Judge Advocate General lawyers about the new, looser interrogation rules. "They said he had a dismissive, if not derisive, attitude toward the Geneva Conventions," Scott Horton, a lawyer who was approached by six outraged JAG officers last year, told the Chicago Tribune. "One of them said he calls it 'law in the service of terror.'"

Whatever the Defense Department's outlook, it is clear that Feith has held a grudge against the Geneva Conventions for a long time, and most certainly would never have been confused with someone who was "pro-Geneva." It is fairly clear by any standard that the US is bound by not only the Geneva Conventions but numerous other treaties and mandates entered into of its own volition and prohibited from engaging in the torturous interrogations Feith and his cohorts actively supported.

Far from saying Feith supported Geneva, one could easily make the case that Feith acted as a pro-torture activist.

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