Matthew Yglesias » Petraeus’ Road to Damascus

Oct 31st, 2008 at 12:44 am

Petraeus’ Road to Damascus

Don’t tell Bill Kristol, but it seems David Petraeus wanted to go to Syria to try some of the old ~~appeasement~~ diplomatic engagement and Bush told him “no.”

It’s a reminder that, ultimately, Petraeus’ tactics in Iraq have had a very hefty dose of “seeking pragmatic compromises with oft-unsavory adversaries” about them. In the particular context of Iraq, at the particular time he was put in charge, that was a tactical approach in service of a strategic concept that most liberals had lost faith in some time ago (I certainly had). But in Iraqi terms, it was roughly the strategy that liberals were urging us to adopt back in 2004 and more to the point, the general blueprint has a lot in common with the way liberals see the world and relatively little connection to the manichaeanism of the contemporary right.

Comments
26

Filed under: National Security, Syria,

26 Responses to “Petraeus’ Road to Damascus”

Thomas Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 12:58 am
yeah, liberals see the world the right way, and those evil conservatives have a manichaean worldview.

when you can’t even make it through a short comment without engaging in the supposed evil, it aint good.
Tyro Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 1:04 am
yeah, liberals see the world the right way, and those evil conservatives have a manichaean worldview.

MattY didn’t use the term “evil” anywhere in his post, you illiterate suck-up. Thomas, please, we know you’re a Republican, but show some personal pride instead of defending the doofuses at every turn. What is it about you that forces you to attack MattY and defend Republicans even when you know they’re wrong? There’s something almost dishonest about it when you see rightist partisans mindlessly flailing to defend their turf someone makes a rather valid observation about what’s wrong with them. Maybe if you weren’t so hypersensitive about criticism of what is a failed adminstration, you wouldn’t sound like such an idiot.
Richard Steven Hack Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 2:28 am
The real problem is that Petraeus – and most of the people in charge at this point – are going to try the same tactics in Afghanistan and Pakistan, i.e., make deals with the “moderates” and “isolate Al Qaeda”. Remains to be seen how that’s going to work out.

Also, in Iraq now, we hear that the Kurds and the Shia central government are getting close to starting a civil war – one from which the US military has decided to “step aside” if it occurs.

Remember how the US had to stay in Iraq forever to prevent a civil war? Well, this is how the US military sees it now – we’d rather “step aside” and let it happen.
Richard Steven Hack Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 2:35 am
And if you think Obama is going to engage in “diplomacy”, well, here it is directly from one him:

Rivals Split on U.S. Power, but Ideas Defy Labels
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/us/politics/23policy.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

For example, it is Mr. McCain — the man who amended the words of a Beach Boys song last year to joke about bombing Iran’s nuclear sites — who says he could imagine a situation in which Iran’s behavior changes so much that he would be willing “to consider” allowing Iran to enrich its own uranium, producing a fuel that could be used for nuclear power — but only under highly restrictive conditions that ensure it could never be used for weapons.

Mr. Obama, the candidate who has expressed far more willingness to sit down and negotiate with the Iranians, said in an e-mail message passed on by an aide that in any final deal he would not allow Iran to produce uranium on Iranian soil, the same hard-line view enunciated by the Bush administration.

Consider the delicate issue of Pakistan, where it is Mr. Obama who has been far more willing than Mr. McCain to threaten sending in American troops on ground raids. Mr. McCain, by contrast, argues that Pakistan must control its territory. “I don’t think the American people today are ready to commit troops to Waziristan,” he said, months before Mr. Bush signed secret orders this summer authorizing ground raids in Pakistan, including the violent sanctuaries of North and South Waziristan.

Mr. McCain, now the Republican nominee, agreed to an interview during the primary campaign. Obama aides answered questions at length, but Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, citing the pressures of time in the campaign, declined requests dating to June to be interviewed in detail on how he would handle potential confrontations beyond Iraq that could face the next president.

It is worth remembering that presidential campaigns are usually terrible predictors of presidential decision-making. John F. Kennedy said virtually nothing about building up troops in Vietnam in 1960, nor did Richard M. Nixon talk in 1968 about engineering an opening to China. George W. Bush, in an interview at his ranch 10 days before his first inaugural in 2001, lamented that sanctions against Saddam Hussein looked like “Swiss cheese” but did not appear, at that time, to be heading toward a military confrontation with him.

New Look at Engagement

With the endgame slowly playing out in Iraq, the potential confrontation over neighboring Iran and its nuclear program has emerged as the No. 1 case study in how Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain would use diplomacy and the threat of military force against a hostile state. Based on their careers and their statements, Mr. McCain’s threshold for pre-emptive military action seems lower than Mr. Obama’s.

For each candidate, the debate over Iran has been somewhat treacherous. Mr. Obama knew his interest in pursuing diplomacy could leave him vulnerable to criticism as a potential appeaser; Mr. McCain, known for his “Bomb Iran” ditty, had to demonstrate that he would not be trigger-happy.

In the end, both men have proved more comfortable in declaring that they would never allow Iran to become a nuclear weapons state than in explaining how they would obtain the leverage to stop Iran’s nuclear program peacefully. And neither has dealt publicly with the harder question of what to do if Iran assembles all the fuel and components needed for a weapon but stops just short of actually making one.

Mr. Obama’s declaration that he would engage Iranian leaders without preconditions has dominated the debate and opened him to Mr. McCain’s accusation that he is a naïf, willing to give legitimacy to the Iranian regime. Mr. Obama has backtracked a bit, arguing that he never suggested that the first meetings would be at the presidential level, and that preconditions are less important than “careful preparations.”

When pressed, Mr. Obama has said that “we will never take military options off the table” and that he would not give the United Nations “veto power” over deciding to strike nuclear facilities.

The harder question is how to force Iran to give up its uranium enrichment quickly, before it produces enough material to build a weapon — a threshold American and European intelligence officials say may be crossed fairly early in the next presidential term. Mr. McCain has been more vociferous in emphasizing that “we have to do whatever’s necessary” to stop Iran from obtaining a weapon. In 1994, when North Korea was at a similar stage in its nuclear weapons program, Mr. McCain said on “Meet the Press” on NBC that if diplomacy failed to shut down the country’s production facilities within months, “then yes, military air strikes would be called for.”

Questions to both campaigns in the past few weeks have yielded another example of role reversal. While Mr. McCain seems willing to consider that Iran might someday be trusted to produce its own nuclear fuel, Mr. Obama does not. The director of foreign policy for the McCain campaign, Randy Scheunemann, said that if Iran was in compliance with United Nations resolutions, “it would be appropriate to consider” letting it produce uranium under inspection, which Iran has said is its right.

Mr. Obama’s position is closer to the zero-tolerance approach adopted by the Bush administration. “I do not believe Iran should be enriching uranium or keeping centrifuges,” he said in an e-mail message passed on by aides.

Mr. Obama does seem more willing to dangle in front of the Iranians a “grand bargain” that would spell out benefits — diplomatic recognition, an end to sanctions — as a reward for halting its enrichment of uranium and allowing full inspections of the country. Richard J. Danzig, considered a candidate to be secretary of defense in an Obama administration, said Mr. Obama was willing to “put out a more positive side to the agenda to lead the Iranians toward making the right choices here.”

But Mr. Obama has also been more specific in describing the kind of sanctions he might reach for if the Iranians continue on the current path. “If we can prevent them from importing the gasoline that they need, and the refined petroleum products, that starts changing their cost-benefit analysis,” he said.

Some experts have counseled caution about such an approach, one that the Bush administration has stopped short of taking. A blockade, however, could constitute an act of war, and most experts believe Iran could respond in kind by cutting off oil exports, increasing prices and leading to shortages.

In short, Obama will do the exact same thing Bush has done – make threats, engage in acts of war, and if none of them work – which they will not because, once again, Iran can not and will not suspend enrichment for their nuclear energy program – Obama will be forced to either attack Iran – WITHOUT UN sanction, exactly like George W. Bush in Iraq – or push the problem on to the next administration – exactly like George W. Bush today.
Josh Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 3:27 am
it seems David Petraeus wanted to go to Syria to try some of the old appeasement diplomatic engagement and Bush told him “no.”

Joshua Landis has a source who’s telling him that it was actually Cheney who blocked the move, not Bush. If only I didn’t have that SNL sketch in my head already…
novakant Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 5:21 am
the general blueprint has a lot in common with the way liberals see the world

No, thanks. If you want to go back to the good old days of Kissinger “seeking pragmatic compromises with oft-unsavory adversaries” in the name of the “national interest”, I’m afraid you’ll have to go down that slippery slope without me.
Human rights are my top priority and, as a liberal, they should be yours too.
JoeyJoJo Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 5:57 am
The only thing we need to know is: was he going to sit down with them with, or without, preconditions?
James Robertson Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 6:37 am
To be fair Matt, back in 2004, liberals were advocating for immediate withdrawal. Which isn’t like what Petraeus wanted (or wants now) at all.
rea Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 6:57 am
back in 2004, liberals were advocating for immediate withdrawal.

Most of us were actually on two tracks–we didn’t want the war at all, and we thought that it was being fought ineptly.
strasmangelo jones Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 9:22 am
we didn’t want the war at all, and we thought that it was being fought ineptly.

Right, and 2004-vintage Yglesias rightly dubbed that second track “the incompetence dodge.” Now that Yglesias has become an incompetence dodger himself on Afghanistan, though, he’s stopped citing his older, better work.
SLC Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 10:01 am
What’s really going on here is that the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are in favor of regime change in Syria. Thus far, they haven’t been able to convinced Israel and Turkey that it’s a good idea, as evidenced by the indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria via Turkish mediators. The reason that Israel and Turkey are leery is that they fear the replacement will be an Islamist government that will be worse then the Alawite kleptocracy currently in power. Better the devil you know then the devil you know not.
Hector Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 10:14 am
SLC,

Amen to that. Israel is very right to be suspicious of ‘democratization’ in Syria. A ‘democratic’ government in Syria (or Egypt) would be one run by the Muslim Brotherhood, which would launch a full-fledged war on the Jewish state, probably equipped with nuclear weapons borrowed from China.

The thing that can save the Middle East is generals with iron fists who will crush the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and the rest of that crew, once and for all. Not some liberal pap about ‘democratization’ and ‘human rights’.
joe from Lowell Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 10:34 am
Right, and 2004-vintage Yglesias rightly dubbed that second track “the incompetence dodge.”

No, he dubbed advocating ONLY that track, while arguing that it was right to support the initial invasion, “the incompetence dodge.”
witless chum Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 10:58 am
Amen to that. Israel is very right to be suspicious of ‘democratization’ in Syria. A ‘democratic’ government in Syria (or Egypt) would be one run by the Muslim Brotherhood, which would launch a full-fledged war on the Jewish state, probably equipped with nuclear weapons borrowed from China.

It’s very odd that the Muslim Brotherhood governments in waiting in Egypt and Syria plan national suicide at the hands of the Israeli nuclear arsenal for their countries. And double odd that China is loaning (I hope they ask for a heavy deposit) nuclear weapons to people.

They must all be very strange people.
Hector Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 11:07 am
Witless Chum,

I was using ‘borrowed’ in the metaphorical sense. ‘Sold’, if you prefer.

The Muslim Brotherhood does not care about national suicide. Remember their credo: “Dying in the service of God is our greatest hope.” They want to ‘liberate’ Palestine, and are prepared to die in order to do it.
Richard Cownie Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 11:30 am
I don’t like Petraeus, but he’s a) smart, b) not insane, and c) has practically been canonized by the pundits and politicians. If he decides to take off his uniform and go into politics, he could be the best chance to get the Republican party back on track towards sanity. Which I’d kinda like to see, given that the political institutions of the USA make elections such a crapshoot – I want the Democrats to win for the foreseeable future, but want the Republican party to have leadership that wouldn’t blow up the economy, restart the Cold War, or bomb Iran, if by some chance they scrape into power.

Following the EV simulations at 538.com, it’s just desperately scary that an incompetent maniac like McCain, with deeply unpopular policies and having run a crappy campaign, could still apparently have about a 4% chance of winning the WH.
We need to improve the electoral system. But in the meantime we need responsible leaders of *both* parties, just in case some combination of bad luck, butterfly ballots, vote suppression, and whatever sticks us with another W (or worse).
Richard Steven Hack Says:
October 31st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Hector is an idiot. Nobody in the Middle East is going to get nuclear weapons from anybody outside the Middle East (except possibly North Korea and they don’t have any to spare) and nobody is going to use them to attack Israel which has an estimated 200-250 nuclear weapons of its own.

Hector is also an idiot for believing that any bunch of Muslims who are capable to seizing power in a country are at all likely to immediately decide to suicide themselves just to kill Jews.

Bottom line: Hector is just an idiot.
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Matt Yglesias

Petraeus’ Road to Damascus

26 Responses to “Petraeus’ Road to Damascus”

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