Banging around in the dark in Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia: the land between two rivers, the buffer between eastern and western empires, the perennial peripheral battle zone between Persia and her Western challengers. Today: Iraq.

Parthian Empire at its greatest extent. Credit: Keeby101- Wikimedia

Parthian Empire at its greatest extent. Credit: Keeby101- Wikimedia

The Republican Iraq policy of the past 12 years has been to stumble through a pitch-black room of broken hazards with no awareness of what’s behind, what’s nearby, or what’s ahead. But they triumphantly declare that we’re almost there and everyone else is an unpatriotic traitor who wants us to fail.

On the other side of the room, Iran — supposedly the Republicans’ greatest boogeyman since the Soviet Union and at least the second greatest since 1979 — is standing silently with night vision goggles and thousands of years of knowledge of what’s behind. If we get too close, it steps out of the way, but remains inside the room. It used to wait outside the room, in the darkened hallway, but then the Republicans opened the door by trying to get into the room, as if they had no idea Iran was even next to the room and that that closed door had been the only thing keeping Iran out.

I don’t have an instinctive, overriding opposition to Iran the way some do. But if the goal was to keep Iran from gaining influence over more territory, there had to be a counterbalancing force left in Iraq which was in opposition to Shia Iran. And that would have meant a minority-led dictatorship, statistically speaking. Which is not a reason to support the existence of such a thing (though we had managed to mitigate it without dismantling it by 2002). But their bumbling haste meant they didn’t even attempt to reconcile that their regional policy goals — taking out the Iraq regime and containing Iran — were at complete odds. Today they find themselves rallying to the Shia-aligned government whose biggest friends are in Tehran, condemning the President for not unquestioningly dumping money, bombs, and troops into the cause, even as they condemn his efforts to negotiate a nuclear solution with Tehran.

Worst of all: Still today they refuse to entertain the idea that the 2003 invasion was a mistake of vast and sweeping proportions on all possible fronts. A crippling, even rippling, disaster at home in our politics, economy, and budget; the elephant in the room on U.S. foreign policy for years to come; and a massive disruption that upended the delicate Middle Eastern balance and tore a fragile country apart into a bloodbath. At least most Democrats who supported it, despite how obviously bad an idea that it was at the time, have the decency to admit they screwed up.

The continued denial of reality on Iraq, let alone repentance, from Republicans right now makes me politically angry in a way I haven’t felt since George W. Bush was in office. Their genuinely — not even strategically or cynically — held belief that President Obama is to blame for what’s happening now is merely the infuriating cherry on top of a rage sundae.

AFD 65 – Iran, Central Africa, DOMA

Latest Episode:
“AFD 65 – Iran, Central Africa, DOMA”
Posted: Tues, 26 November 2013

Guest co-host Greg joins Bill to assess the Iranian nuclear deal, the chaos in Central African Republic, and recent developments on LGBT rights in America.

Relevant links:
Iran deal…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/world/middleeast/with-iran-accord-obama-opens-mideast-door.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/11/25/iran_nuclear_deal_will_saudi_arabia_now_seek_a_nuclear_program_of_its_own.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24823846

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_reckoning/2013/11/24/israeli_stock_market_reaches_record_high_share_prices_love_iranian_nuclear.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/11/24/israel_salls_iran_nuclear_deal_a_historic_failure.html

Central African Republic…
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/11/19/2940251/central-african-republic-chaos/

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/11/21/2981151/car-coup-tiring/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24986275

LGBT Rights in America…
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/11/19/2970531/oklahoma-national-guard/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/24/scott-walker-same-sex-marriage-ban-is-part-of-a-healthy-balance-of-lgbt-rights/

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/local/gov-jay-nixon-says-he-supports-legalizing-gay-marriage/article_6c271bde-4d72-11e3-92c7-001a4bcf6878.html

AFD 59: Health Reform History, UN News

Latest Episode:
“AFD 59 – Health Reform History, UN News”
Posted: Tues, 08 October 2013

Guest Luke Vargas reports from the United Nations. Then Bill examines the history of health reform in the U.S. and explains the Affordable Care Act and current shutdown.

AFD 58 – Yet Another Shutdown Showdown

Latest Episode:
“AFD 58 – Yet Another Shutdown Showdown”
Posted: Tues, 23 September 2013

Bill and guest host Sarah discuss health insurance exchanges, government shutdown, default, John Boehner, and Ted Cruz. Then we look at New Mexico’s legal battles over marriage equality. Finally, Bill argues in favor of diplomacy with Iran.

Sudan & China arms appearing in Syria war

This is astonishing: Sudan — an ally of Iran and China — is selling Sudanese-made and Chinese-made weapons to Qatar, the major supplier of rebel weapons in Syria for use against the Syrian government, which is strongly backed by Iran and China. The New York Times did some hyper-intensive journalistic digging to piece together the story:

Mr. Ahmad, the Sudanese presidential spokesman, suggested that if Sudan’s weapons were seen with Syria’s rebels, perhaps Libya had provided them.

Sudan, he said, has admitted sending arms during the 2011 war to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Libya’s new leaders have publicly thanked Sudan. Libya has since been a busy supplier of the weapons to rebels in Syria.

However, that would not explain the Sudanese-made 7.62×39-millimeter ammunition documented by The New York Times this year in rebel possession near the Syrian city of Idlib.

The ammunition, according to its stamped markings, was made in Sudan in 2012 — after the war in Libya had ended. It was used by Soquor al-Sham, an Islamist group that recognizes the Western-supported Syrian National Coalition’s military command.

When told that the newly produced Sudanese cartridges were photographed with Syrian rebels, Mr. Saad, the Sudanese military spokesman, was dismissive. “Pictures can be fabricated,” he said. “That is not evidence.”

 
Granted, it’s not so astonishing in the context that Sudan’s regime historically supports Sunni Islamist movements and also needs money badly after South Sudan got the oil fields in the divorce. But still. Crossing Iran & China is a big step for Omar al-Bashir.

Op-Ed: Rohani’s Presidential Pulpit

This op-ed originally appeared in The Globalist.

Any Iranian president is limited in his capacity to enact reforms. Why? Because all policies are ultimately approved or denied by the country’s religious authorities.

But the presidential bully pulpit is still more powerful than it seems at first glance.

Outgoing conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, no matter how powerless he became at home, proved that a determined Iranian president could still make a splash on the world stage.

While policy is under the purview of the theocrats in Tehran, the power of words, when wielded by a compelling orator, can still outmaneuver the nominal boundary lines of power.

Ahmadinejad was an incompetent leader domestically and given to wildly overblown rhetoric worldwide, but he made a lasting impression. He became the embodiment of the boogeyman that Iran’s biggest enemies had long warned of.

Words have power. Regardless of Iran’s actual military capacities, infamous comments from the president like those about wiping Israel “off the map” were the gift that kept on giving for the Bomb-Iran-Now lobby in Jerusalem and Washington throughout his eight years in office.

In fact, such comments were one reason Ahmadinejad became persona non grata at home with the true power center of the regime. His over-reaching threats went beyond the ruling clerics’ wishes and backed Iran into a corner.

While bombs did not rain down, economic sanctions did. Ahmadinejad was defeating Iran’s regime himself.

These sanctions have brought the Iranian economy to a breaking point.

This has severely undermined the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic in the eyes of its citizens and helped strengthen the reform movement that put Hassan Rohani over the top in this month’s election.

There’s a key disjunction between the reality and Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, of course.

The bravado of Iran’s president painted the nation as a constant, existential threat to its Arab neighbors, to Israel, to southern Europe and even to Iran’s own friends — regardless of real capacity.

We don’t know for sure how close Iran is to being able to make and deploy a nuclear weapon, but for nearly eight years, the advocates of bombing Iran have never really had to make this case. They merely had to point to the fighting words of Iran’s own president.

Clearly, since Iran still doesn’t have the bomb now, it’s not as if Tel Aviv had been just weeks away from a mushroom cloud, say, five years ago. But one would have thought so between the Israeli and U.S. hawks and Ahmadinejad’s bluster.

Which brings us to Iran’s next president, Hassan Rohani.

Aside from his reform leanings on the home front, which may never come to pass, he’s best known for being Iran’s top nuclear program negotiator in the reform administration of Mohammad Khatami.

In that role, he was generally seen as far more conciliatory than the string of negotiators who followed under the Ahmadinejad administration — and certainly more so than the outgoing president himself.

The Iranian people and the hard-line theocrats alike support nuclear development as a matter of sovereignty and independence from Western interference.

But they also recognize that belligerency on the issue has brought only misery and the constant risk of attack.

Now would be a good time for a conciliatory approach and a fresh start in nuclear talks with the West.

Hassan Rohani seems to be the man for the job of resetting Iran’s foreign image and stance.

He can thread the high-stakes needle of being diplomatic and open to compromise while also standing firmly (but not aggressively) behind a civilian nuclear development program.

Rhetoric paired with reality is strongest, but rhetoric alone, even separated from reality, can be powerful too — especially if people still believe the two are linked.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s globetrotting, Holocaust-denying, nihilist ranting proved that. Ayatollah Khamenei and the Guardian Council could keep him away from real power at home, but they could never shut him up on the world stage.

Toward the end of his administration, he likely didn’t even have control over any actual strategic or tactical military decisions or other real foreign policy.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps, allied to the Supreme Leader and not the president, saw to that.

But to Iran’s enemies, whatever propaganda came from the president’s lips could be spun as accurate representations of Iran’s plans and capabilities beyond its borders.

This was a particularly easy sell given the murkiness of Iran’s inner workings for non-expert Americans watching Sunday morning news panels on TV.

If Rohani wants to have a big impact as Iran’s president, his best bet is to use the power of rhetoric to re-shape Iran’s global and regional posture. In doing so, he could ease the pressure of sanctions and spare Iran from war. That’s where he can make a big difference.

If a disempowered fanatical blowhard can, with the power of his speeches alone, make Iran appear to be an imminent horseman of the nuclear apocalypse, then a disempowered reformist who wants reconciliation with the West can use friendlier rhetoric to climb Iran back down off the ledge.

In a mosque, the minbar, or pulpit, is generally designed to raise the visibility of the person speaking and naturally amplify his voice for the audience.

Hassan Rohani may never have full policy control over Iran’s international affairs and he will very likely have little policy control at home, but he still has the power of the presidential bully pulpit if he chooses to use it.

Like a minbar, the Iranian presidency raises the holder’s profile and amplifies his message, even if it might have no other inherent authority.

What is done with that limited, but real, rhetorical power is up to the man in office and how good he is with words.

But seizing the metaphorical presidential pulpit to reset diplomatic relations — with or without the Supreme Leader — would be a fitting result from the only candidate in this year’s field who was actually also a cleric and knows his way around a real pulpit.

This op-ed originally appeared in The Globalist. It was moved here in November 2013.

Iraqi Kurds protest Iranian bombardment

The Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq (KRG) issued a press release on Friday protesting Iran’s bombardment of the border regions in their fight against Iranian Kurdish rebels in PJAK. According to the October 2nd press release, two sub-districts in the Kurdish Region of Iraq were subjected to heavy bombardment from Iran, most likely by shelling and Katyusha rockets, based on past strikes.

The KRG maintains some distance from groups like the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party, in Turkey) and PJAK because they are concerned about these such military actions, which they consider a violation of sovereignty. But the regional government also hasn’t taken particularly strong action against the rebels using their territory as a base of operations.

However, the statement doesn’t quite read as an accurate representation of the situation:

The Islamic Republic of Iran has severely bombarded the border areas of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq without any justification in clear violation of the sovereignty of Iraq and of the territory of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq.

 
If an armed terrorist organizations is attempting to bring down your government, you probably do feel like you have justification, whether or not it’s a violation of sovereignty.

The KRG still does have a legitimate complaint, and they’re in an awkward position of not wanting to antagonize either the neighboring countries or the other ethnic Kurdish groups, with whom they feel some solidarity, by rooting them out. But it’s probably unlikely that their request will be met:

Continued bombardment of such border areas is not in the interest of good neighbourly relations. Therefore, we urge the Islamic Republic of Iran to immediately cease the unjustified bombardment of the border area and respect the sovereignty of Iraq, international law, and the peaceful will of the people of the Kurdistan Region.

 
This post was originally published on Starboard Broadside.