Of Qaddafi and Kim Kardashian
Last week on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, President Obama discussed the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the 2012 Republican presidential field, and ubiquitous Hollywood socialite, Kim Kardashian. But the conversation got really interesting when it veered to the recent intervention in Libya.
Obama said that with the arrival of the Arab Spring, the late Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi had an opportunity “to finally loosen his grip on power and peacefully transition to democracy. We gave him ample opportunity and he wouldn’t do it.” On the former leader’s killing, Obama said, “There’s a reason after [Osama] bin Laden was killed, for example, we didn’t release the photograph. I think that there’s a certain decorum with which you treat the dead even if it’s somebody who’s done terrible things.”
Hmmm, decorum. To some in the Beltway it may seem tired and trite to hear that U.S. foreign policy is flagrantly hypocritical when it comes to the subject of human rights. But it’s nonetheless noteworthy to hear prominent American leaders openly advocate intervening abroad in places like Libya in advance of the universal human aspiration to be free while continuing to support Middle East client states that repress their own people. Sadly, President Obama and other American leaders, especially in the wake of the momentous Arab Spring, are often perceived as liberty’s worst emissaries.
For numerous strategic and historical reasons, no American government has intervened militarily in countries such as Algeria, Jordan, or Yemen in defense of human rights. In Saudi Arabia, a long-time U.S. partner, homosexuals, apostates, and drug smugglers can be sentenced to execution, sometimes by beheading. In extreme cases, the convict’s body is crucified in public. And yet, the same U.S. government that offers unflinching support to the Saudi Kingdom led from behind for an intervention in Libya to stop an alleged massacre in Benghazi. In neighboring Egypt, meanwhile, for 29 years the U.S. government showered former President Hosni Mubarak with praise, despite his widespread use of torture and systematic repression of political prisoners. Washington also continues to support and arm the regime in Bahrain, which deliberately kills unarmed protesters and oppresses its people.
To promote human rights in Libya while supporting some of the world’s most heinous tyrannies may reflect America’s geopolitical preferences, but it makes a mockery of human rights and reveals an enormous discrepancy between what America claims to be doing and what it actually does. As much as Obama and his defenders want to strut around and promote their triumph over Moammar Qaddafi, people in the Middle East and around the world are well aware of this discrepancy. Such policies are not only abhorrent but also detrimental to America’s long-term interests. Advancing liberty is a painful and arduous process, but it can be done, and often independent of U.S. government efforts.
Cillizza on Cain and Know-Nothing Foreign Policy
Asked on Meet the Press this weekend whether the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador was an act of war, Herman Cain gave the following response:
After I looked at all of the information provided by the intelligence community, the military, then I could make that decision. I can’t make that decision because I’m not privy to all of that information… I’m not going to say it was an act of war based upon news reports, with all due respect. I would hope that the president and all of his advisers are considering all of the factors in determining just how much, how much the Iranians participated in this.
That struck me as a refreshingly reasonable position. Yet the Washington Post‘s election handicapper, Chris Cillizza, decided to make that quote the centerpiece of an article on Cain’s “know-nothing foreign policy.” He then presents a poll showing that Republicans don’t care much about foreign policy this year, only to conclude that foreign-policy ignorance could be a fatal handicap for Cain. His evidence for that conclusion is a quote from Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, who specializes in arguing for wars and imperialism. Boot, as it happens, just wrote a blog post for Commentary titled, “Iran Plot Goes Straight to the Top,” where he attacks those willing to question the evidence against Iran’s leaders and vaguely supports attacking them.
Cillizza’s article makes clear that foreign-policy ignorance is far preferable to the Washington Post‘s idea of expertise. The worst part is that Cain, who claims not to know what neoconservatives are, seems likely to become one, call Boot for advice, and win the Post‘s respect.
Tehran v. Riyadh
The alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, has served to underscore that Washington and Riyadh view Tehran as a common enemy. This plot has already heightened both parties’ persisting anxieties over Iran, but the U.S.-Saudi partnership has often tended to reinforce, rather than diminish, each side’s most hawkish tendencies.
After the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Iran developed far greater influence among its allies and co-religionists in Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, and the Gulf States. Demonstrating the fear that Iran’s expanded Shia influence has inspired among Saudi leaders, in February 2007 Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal encouraged the United States to strengthen its naval presence in the Persian Gulf, telling a U.S. diplomat that the Saudis would supply the logic for America’s deployment if Washington supplied the pressure.
Of course it is the Kingdom that is alarmed by the possibility of an Iranian SCUD missile attack on Saudi oil facilities; it is the Kingdom that is petrified by the possibility of Iran’s nuclear program posing a threat to the House of Saud’s regional prestige; and it is the Kingdom that has claimed that Shia-Persian Iran has been stage-managing the massive, popular uprisings sweeping the region in order to undermine Sunni Arab regimes. If the United States moves to increase the scope of its political, economic, and military sticks against Iran, it will only serve to invite further Iranian and Saudi intrigues. It may also encourage Iran and other states like it to seek a nuclear deterrent. Responding swiftly to this alleged plot, as some political pundits have encouraged, will further entangle the United States in an intra-Islamic, Shia-Sunni, Arab-Persian rivalry divorced from America’s vital interests.
As an aside, to shed some new light on the scorn currently being heaped on Iran’s odious regime, let us remember that it is America’s strategic ally—the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—that remains one of the most oppressive regimes in the Middle East. And as much as folks are fulminating over Tehran’s support for terrorism, in reality it is donors in Saudi Arabia who constitute the most significant source of funding to terrorist groups worldwide.
Friday Links
- When is an entitlement not an entitlement, but a command? When a federal judge contradicts herself, of course.
- As the Arab League’s influence over its own member states wanes, of course they support the creation of an international no-fly zone over Libya.
- Of course, there’s really no such thing as a “Social Security trust fund.”
- Should the United States and Saudi Arabia remain allies? Of course—but Washington should probably re-think the terms of the partnership.
- Of course, when George W. Bush was president, you couldn’t go anywhere in Washington without seeing an anti-war protest. Where have they all gone?
Isn’t ‘Seven Years of War’ a Distortion?
Since President Obama announced his plan to address the nation on Iraq, the news media and pundits have been buzzing about the “Iraq War” — the lives lost and the money spent over the past seven years. Seven? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to note that the Iraq War has been closer to 20 years? After all, combat operations have been pretty continuous.
The first phase of the War might be called the Kuwait or Gulf Operation. Wiki says Operation Desert Shield “began on 7 August 1990 when U.S. troops were sent to Saudi Arabia.” What if one started counting expenditures from 7 August 1990?
The second phase of the Iraq War might be called the No-Fly Zone Operations. Wiki says: “American and British aircraft continuously maintained the integrity of the NFZ, receiving anti-aircraft fire from Iraqi forces almost daily.” Here’s a snippet from when President Bill Clinton addressed the country from the oval office in December of 1998:
Earlier today, I ordered America’ s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.
Read the whole thing. Clearly there was no peaceful interlude during the Clinton years.
The third phase might be called the 2003 invasion.
It would be interesting to find out how much money has been expended over the course of the twenty year war. And then, of course, consider the lives lost and the number of persons injured. Wouldn’t that be a more fair-minded way of assessing the wisdom of American policy toward Iraq?
Obama on Human Rights in America
I’ve just sent a short post to ”The Corner” at NRO on the Obama State Department’s new report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on human rights conditions in the U.S. In a word, we’ve got problems, especially concerning women, minorities, etc., but we’re trying to live up to the expectations of other human rights exemplars on the council — Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba.
Read and weep.
When Do We Go to War in Yemen?
That is the question posed at the National Journal‘s National Security experts blog.
My response:
We shouldn’t even be contemplating war in Yemen, but we should also understand that the proposed expansion of security assistance to the government there is likely to pay only meager dividends.
Steven Metz gets at the nub of this problem in his two thoughtful posts (here and here). We have an unreliable ally. We have minimal capacity for making them more reliable. Neither of these observations are unique to Yemen. The same could be said of many other countries. Accordingly, we should concentrate our limited resources in a proactive and strategic – as opposed to a reactive and haphazard — way.
Contrast that with Jim Carafano’s invocation of a new “axis of evil” and the implication that we have no choice but to deepen our involvement in Yemen (and Saudi Arabia and Somalia) while continuing to fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Oh, and let’s not forget that there are still about 110,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
To wit: “Sorry we have to fight on so many fronts….but it beats battling them on the Tarmac in Detroit.”
Sorry, but that just doesn’t fly.
While impeding al Qaeda’s ability to carry out major terrorist attacks has and will entail multiple fronts in many countries, it is not obvious how this fight should be conducted, nor is it obvious that the fronts in Yemen and Somalia and Saudi Arabia (or Afghanistan and Pakistan, even) are instrumental to success or failure. Safe havens exist in many places, including stable democratic countries. Are we really committed to preventing any country from providing a safe haven? Does the concept of a physical safe haven even make sense in the virtual world of globalized communications and the Internet?
Leaving aside the dubious safe haven argument, Carfano’s either/or proposition (fight them there or fight them here) is equally flawed. We should think of security in layers. A man from Nigeria who trained in Yemen and attempted to detonate his underwear bomb in Detroit was thwarted by his own incompetence and the alertness of the airliner’s passengers. Too close for comfort, to be sure, and we have since learned of numerous points along the way where his travels could have been interdicted. But what we’ve learned about this failed attack doesn’t confirm that our only option is to focus on the one layer (Yemen = terrorist training ground) at the expense of the other layers. An equally compelling case could be made for ignoring Yemen, per se, and focusing on other means of interdicting terrorists that are not so heavily dependent upon unwilling and duplicitous allies, or that burden our overtaxed military with an open-ended mission in yet another failed state.
Executed for Sorcery? In 2009?
A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a Lebanese television host to death for the crime of “sorcery.” Apparently Ali Hussein Sibat was recognized by Saudi religious police as he made a pilgrimage to Mecca. On his show, he gave advice to callers and made predictions about their future. He could be executed any day now. In an article in the Daily Star of Lebanon, the leading English-language newspaper in the Middle East, Cato senior fellow Tom G. Palmer and University of Chicago dean Raja Kamal call on King Abdullah to face down the religious police and release Ali Hussein Sabat to Lebanon:
This case illustrates the tremendous power of the religious police in Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah faces an uphill battle in his struggle against extremists; not only the Al-Qaeda terrorists who kill innocent people, but the religious police and judiciary, who kill innocents as well….
The king and his supporters need to act decisively to eliminate the power of the extremists to carry out improper arrests, level false charges, coerce testimony, and conduct unjust trials, especially those culminating in murder. Sibat and others in his situation are being made into human sacrifices by the extremists in order to maintain their own power….
Lebanon also has a responsibility to speak up for and to protect its own citizens. The government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri has a special relationship with the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. That’s why the government needs to show that, as the representative of a democratic Arab country with a strong broadcasting industry, it will support freedom of expression – particularly that of Ali Hussein Sibat and others who broadcast from Lebanon.
The Jurisprudence of Detention: Definitions and Cases
Almost a year has passed since the Supreme Court’s decision to extend habeas rights to Guantanamo in Boumediene. Detention policy is currently under review by interagency task forces; it is worth looking at what the developing body of detention rulings say about the future of detention.
Taking prisoners is an unavoidable part of military action. Telling our troops that they can engage identified enemies with lethal force but cannot detain them puts them in an impossible position.
But who can we hold? The Taliban foot soldier is an easy case, but as we move away from the battlefield things get a little fuzzy. A chronological review of the decisions regarding detainee status gives some insight.
Egypt Crosses Critical Line in the Arab Sands, Labels Hezbollah ‘Terrorist’
The designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist group by Egypt highlights a fault line developing in the Middle East over relations with Israel and the United States.
On the one hand, there are those who favor negotiations to resolve the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. These countries include, most prominently, Egypt and Jordan, which both have signed treaties with Israel. Saudi Arabia also has promoted a negotiated solution.
Iran and Hezbollah, on the other hand, have emphasized what they call “resistance,” which means the use of arms to wrest territory from Israel ‘s control. The admission by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, that one of the people Egypt arrested was supplying arms to Hamas on Hezbollah’s behalf indicates that Hezbollah’s “resistance” is not limited to Lebanese sovereign territory.
Although Egypt’s action is directed against Hezbollah (and, by extension, Iran), it also carries a warning for the United States and Israel. The “resistance” argument is gaining ground in the Middle East. If it is to be successfully countered, negotiations need to deliver something tangible for the Palestinians—and soon. Otherwise, the regional governments who favor negotiation will find their arguments undercut, which could not only jeopardize hopes for Middle East peace, but might also threaten their own stability.
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