Andrew Natsios, US envoy for the Sudan conflict, says the US has an “extremely aggressive” plan B if the Sudanese government doesn’t end the bloodshed in Darfur.
Complimenting Anthony Shadid’s work is almost redundant. But he’s got a wonderful piece about a not very wonderful subject in tomorrow’s Post: the growing Iranian ascendence in the Middle East. In the US at present we tend to think of the ‘Iran’ issue in terms of Iranian influence (or ‘infiltration’ — take your pick) on Shia militias and political factions within Iraq. But we need to pull back the frame of reference and see that before 2001 Iran was bordered on the east and west by hostile or at least unfriendly countries — Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran almost went to war with the Taliban government in the 1990s, Shadid notes.
Over the last five years we’ve overthrown both governments and in each case, though to differing degrees, created a power vacuum into which the Iranians have been free to extend themselves. Read Shadid’s narrative of events and you see that if the US government were in the pay of Iranian agents they would have been hard-pressed to find a series of actions and policies better crafted to increase Iranian prestige and power in the region and decrease ours. We took out hostile powers to their east and west and then took the regional hegemonic power — i.e., us — and weakened it dramatically, greatly enhancing, at least in relative terms, their power.
As a Saudi writer told Shadid: “The United States is the first to be blamed for the rise of Iranian influence in the Middle East. There is one thing important about the ascendance of Iran here. It does not reflect a real change in Iranian capabilities, economic or political. It’s more a reflection of the failures on the part of the U.S. and its Arab allies in the region.”
Not that it’s all peaches and cream for the Iranians. They also feel themselves under acute threat, which of course, they are. There’s the nuclear power, Israel, to the west, the newly nuclear Pakistan over to the east and the global superpower America with occupying armies on either border.
And here we come back to the recurring theme of the Bush presidency: the president’s perverse effort to be the beneficiary of his own incompetence and policy disasters.
Think back over this young year. How much have you heard about Iraq and how much have you heard about Iran? From where I’m sitting news of tits for tats with Iran, skirmishes between Iranian and American personnel, Cheney-heralded naval deployments are the order of the day. If you listen to these things closely everything is now turning toward Iran. Iraq, though central to everything, is also becoming old news.
And Iran’s power is waxing. And we’re supposed to rely on the approach of the White House, the guys who created the terrible situation in the first place, to solve the consequences of their latest screw up. It’s like a perpetual motion machine of calamity and self-justification.
It’s like Iraq only writ small (or writ large, I can’t tell): Don’t tell me about how stupid I was to get us into this situation. Now that I’ve created a disaster this big, what’s your policy to deal with it? Sort of takes your breath away.
Pull our troops out? How’s that gonna work now that we’ve unleashed a civil war there?
You may remember quite a bit earlier in our long national nightmare the White House and its toadies and acolytes were very big on the so-called ‘fly-paper’ theory of the Iraq War. All the bombings and killings were a sign that the policy was working. Rather than have the terrorists hitting us in America or other spots around the world we had created a terrorist killing field in Iraq where we could wipe them out on our own terms, right where we wanted them. That and create a democracy there too.
I still remember one really clever TPM Reader writing in and telling me: that’s brilliant. Sort of like by creating a really dirty hospital, we’re going to create a place where we can fight the germs on our own terms!
I don’t know about you but sometimes I feel like we’re in this eerie afterburn of our four long years of disaster. The public has rendered its verdict. Every thinking person has rendered their verdict. But the administration is still going on more or less as though nothing’s happened. Serious thinking in Washington of The Note variety is still on a sort of mental autopilot. The story’s over. All the real arguments are settled. But as of yet the car is still in drive rather than reverse.
Like the line says, first do no harm. And for the United States as a country, right now, that means doing everything constitutionally, legally and politically possible to limit the president’s and even more Vice President Cheney’s free hand to shape and execute American foreign policy. Sift it all out and it’s that simple. Stop them from doing any more damage. All the rest is commentary and elaboration.
The subject line I just got from the Brownback for President email list: “A President who will not rest until Roe v. Wade is overturned.”
Today’s Must Read: Bush’s bid to make the world safe for corporations.
Negroponte: new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to be delivered to Congress next week.
What do you think it says about increasing the U.S. troop levels in Iraq?
Where’d they stun him?
A high school lunch period was disrupted Monday by a greased, naked student who ran around screaming and flailing his arms until police twice used a stun gun on him, authorities said.
Taylor Killian, 18, had rubbed his body with grapeseed oil to keep from being caught, and got up after the first time he was shocked to continue running toward a group of frightened students huddled in a corner at Westerville North High School, Lt. Jeff Gaylor said.
“That prank went a little farther than he intended, I guess,” Gaylor said.
Sens. Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) ask the Decider to explain his views on the war powers of Congress.