Iran: Does Bush Administration Know What It's Doing?

One of the reason I'm hard on Condoleezza Rice is that people in foreign policy have a responsibility to make sure a president understands what's happening and Dr. Rice has fallen down on her job not once, not twice, but on several occassions. All too often we have heard Condi Rice say she didn't know about something, or something had not come to her attention. It's become a tiresome excuse. There have been earlier diplomatic overtures from Iran and Rice has claimed not to know about or remember them. Here's the story by Spencer Ackerman from TPM Muckraker on the 2003 potential overture from Iran:

Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that she doesn't remember if she saw a fax detailing an Iranian diplomatic overture in 2003. Today, Michael Hirsch of Newsweek has something that should jog her memory: the fax itself.

(snip)

Through a Swiss intermediary, the Iranian regime proposed the basis for comprehensive discussions. If accepted, it would have meant the Iranians would have put on the table ending its support for Palestinian terrorist groups; "action" on transforming Hezbollah into a "mere political organization within Lebanon"; "transparency" that Iran isn't trying to develop WMD; and "enhanced action against Al Qaida members in Iran." In return, the U.S. would ultimately lift all sanctions on Iran; ensure "full access" to nuclear technology (!); and provide, in general, a "halt in hostile U.S. behavior," to include action against "anti-Iranian" terrorist groups.

It's of course worth noting that the sincerity of the offer is not something to accept at face value. But that would have been the point: to create a diplomatic mechanism to find out how serious the Iranians actually were about reaching a modus vivendi with the U.S., and to determine if the price for that was acceptable.

The fax was an opportunity that should not have been ignored by Bush or Condi Rice. Most of the time, diplomacy begins by finding out what's possible; it almost never arrives fully packaged and signed like a gift out of the blue—you have to work for it to make successful diplomacy happen. There have been some useless PR stunts by the White House where a couple of quick phone calls are called diplomacy or a short trip is called extensive diplomacy. It doesn't wash.

One of the big issues that is overlooked by the media is that the Bush Administration is clearly losing the initiative and even losing control of its own foreign policy. We have an administration that has not understood from day one that while a strong military can be useful, an actual war is a failure of diplomacy, not an instrument of diplomacy. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia lately have been aggressively trying to influence American policy and it's not always in our best interest. Here's the story by Richard Boudreaux of the Los Angeles Times:

...Israeli officials have begun an unusually open campaign to muster international political and economic pressures against Iran. They warn that time is growing short and hint that they will resort to force if those pressures fail to prevent Iran's development of an atomic weapon.

Israeli leaders fear that an Iranian bomb would undermine their nation's security even if Tehran never detonated it. That Israel has its own nuclear arsenal would not counteract the psychological and strategic blow, they believe.

Israel began secretly preparing in the early 1990s for a possible air raid on Iran's then-nascent nuclear facilities and has been making oblique public statements about such planning for three years.

What is new is Israel's abandonment of quiet diplomacy to rally others to its side. Until a few months ago, Israeli leaders worried that high-profile lobbying would backfire and provoke accusations that they were trying to drag the United States and its allies into a war.

The Israelis are not the only ones trying to drag the United States into a war. We have a chorus of neoconservatives who don't seem to know any better. Not since the 1920s have we had a White House so lacking in imagination or so unwilling to engage in serious diplomacy that would clearly be in our national interest.

Condoleezza Rice Job Report

In terms of sheer ability, Colin Powell was much more capable of being Secretary of State than Condoleezza Rice but he blew it when he threw in with the biggest strategic failure in American history. In the period 2002-2003, he had to know that Condoleezza Rice was a lightweight. That meant if Bush's foreign policy was to make any sense, he was the one who had to put the brakes on Bush's reckless rush to war in Iraq or resign while making his reasons clear to the public. He did neither; I give him a generous C-, largely for recognizing his blunder afterwards and for cleaning up some brushfires, the biggest being potential problems concerning Pakistan. Colin Powell might have been a great secretary of state, but he signed up with the wrong president.

The Raw Story carries a Bloomberg article on the fading star of Condi Rice:

In February 2005, Rice, already the star of the Bush cabinet, described for reporters on her maiden cross-Atlantic trip as secretary ``the tremendous opportunities ahead of us,'' including spreading ``freedom and liberty to places they've never been.''

Two years later, few of those goals have been realized. Iraq, and possibly Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, are sliding into civil war, Iran is pursuing its nuclear ambitions unchecked, Russia is ignoring demands for political and economic openness, and China is building ties with U.S. adversaries.

Rice's public approval rating is slipping, and she is getting more of the flak for the prosecution of the Iraq war than ever before.

(snip)

There has been an exodus of high-level officials. Among the most prominent departures was Robert Zoellick, who resigned as deputy secretary of state in June. Rice's counselor, Philip Zelikow, who provided many of the ideas on North Korea, returned to academia, and her communications strategist, Jim Wilkinson, left for the Treasury Department.

Robert Joseph, undersecretary for arms control and international security, and John Hillen, the assistant secretary for political-military affairs who was just starting a Persian Gulf security initiative, also have quit. Neither publicly gave a reason for leaving.

In areas beyond Iraq, Rice has struggled to achieve foreign- policy objectives.

If anything, the Bloomberg article is too generous. Condi Rice will most be remembered for ignoring problems until it was too late; her performance before 9/11 was not her shining moment. She still has a small chance of redeeming herself with negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians but no one expects much. Talks with North Korea are back on track but we are simply trying to get back to where we were before Bush called North Korea part of the axis of evil. The big challenge for Condi Rice is whether she can gain ascendancy over Dick Cheney, avoid facilitating an expanding war and get some real diplomatic work done, particularly in regard to Iran. The reality is that Condi Rice has accomplished little since the beginning of the Bush Administration and she has often been eclipsed by Cheney and Rumsfeld. If she accomplishes anything from here to January 2009, she will exceed expectations. If we include her time as national security adviser, her performance over the last six years earns a generous D-, but only because Bush is particularly deserving of an F; in the end, Rice's final grade depends on what happens in the next 23 months.

Criticism of Condoleezza Rice Growing

The policy blunders of the Bush Administration are many and the consequences of those blunders continue to compound the failures, making Bush's last two years difficult unless he makes serious changes. To turn things around will not only require making policies changes, it will require a good foreign policy team fully capable of negotiations and implementing a real foreign policy. Bush does not have such a team.

The president's national security adviser Stephen Hadley is more a right wing policy wonk than a serious implementer of rational national security policy; in other words, he's largely ineffectual. Condoleezza Rice was not an effective national security adviser and has been disappointing as secretary of state. And John Bolton's abrasive style as our UN ambassador did not gain us much. If Bush does not beef up his foreign policy team and if he continues to believe that our problems can largely be solved with military force and more photo ops, we are in for a long two years. Diplomacy and political solutions are the best route to mitigate his strategic errors in Iraq.

Of course, some argue that we've been seeing Cheney's foreign policy and that he's still in charge (along with his mysterious foreign policy/national security team), but, however great his influence happens to be, his dark vision and empire nonsense over the last six years are a disaster and if he really is in charge, it is unlikely that he will change. Bush, however, is the president. Bush has the ultimate responsibility, not Cheney. Changes can take place if Bush so chooses to make them. Being president is not exclusively a public relations job though Bush has often behaved as such during the last six years. I wouldn't mind Congress finding a way to remind President Bush of that fact.

Here's an article on Yahoo by David Millikin who reviews Condi Rice's first two years (hat tip to The Huffington Post):

The violence in Iraq, and the Bush administration's refusal to bring rivals Syria and Iran into efforts to stabilize the country, are widely blamed for the broader failure of US policy in the Middle East -- where Lebanon teeters on the brink of civil war and Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts languish.

Elsewhere, Rice's globe-trotting -- 37 overseas trips totalling nearly 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) -- has yielded little concrete success, with her few diplomatic victories clouded by poor or no follow-up.

(snip)

US foreign policy experts said Rice must shoulder much of the blame for the lackluster diplomacy.

"Great secretaries of state have compelling views of the world and/or are effective negotiators -- Secretary Rice has so far demonstrated neither," said Aaron Miller, who advised six secretaries of state before joining the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

Even staunch supporters acknowledge that Rice, weighed down by the failed policy in Iraq, has little that is positive to show for her work so far.

"I don't know that there have been concrete advances" under Rice's diplomacy, said Joshua Muravchik of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, though he nevertheless went on to give her "high grades" for faithfully implementing Bush's policy agenda.

Hmmm. Muravchick can't think of any accomplishments but gives Rice high grades for implementing Bush's strategic blunders? Of course, the American Enterprise Institute have fired people for talking rationally about the shortcomings of the Bush Administration.

In the real universe, here's where we're at: if Bush begins to understand that his public relations games aren't working anymore and that his talk of 'surge' is wasting everyone's time, and if he decides that he cannot continue on the same disastrous course he's been pursuing for over three years, and if, in the process of evaluating how to get back to a real foreign policy, he decides to keep Condi Rice, he at the very least needs to bring in some big name help for her foreign policy team. Yeah, I know, that's a lot of ifs. So here's the question: can our nation afford two more years of incompetence and foreign policy drift? We may soon know the answer.

The Secretary of State: Competence, Incompetence and a Dose of Hypocrisy

It's interesting to watch the various figures of the Bush Administration continue to talk as if anyone still talks their nonsense seriously. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group (5 Republicans, 5 Democrats) led by Republican James Baker has shattered any remaining illusions that we're winning in Iraq or that 'staying the course' is somehow going to work. 'Staying the course' has been repackaged so many times by the Bush team that everyone now recognizes it as the clunker it so obviously is. And every time Bush comes up with a new reason why we're in Iraq, after the latest reason has fallen apart, it just makes everybody's eyes roll.

It was ludicrous to hear Dick Cheney describe Donald Rumsfeld as the greatest Secretary of Defense ever and I intended to write about that until I came across a few things Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to say. Here's the story by Reuters on Yahoo News:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has rejected a bipartisan panel's recommendation that the Bush administration engage Syria and Iran in efforts to stabilize Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

The "compensation" required for any such deal might be too high, Rice told the paper in an interview.

Rice said she did not want to trade away Lebanese sovereignty to Syria or allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon as a price for peace in Iraq, the Post reported.

She also argued that neither Syria nor Iran should need incentives to help achieve stability in Iraq, the Post reported.

"If they have an interest in a stable Iraq, they will do it anyway," Rice said.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group included talks with Iran and Syria among its key recommendations it presented to the White House last week for dealing with the worsening chaos in Iraq.

Oh, where to begin! When Rice talks about the notions that Syria and Iran 'should not need incentives to help achieve stability in Iraq,' she omits that both countries sought to improve relations early in the Bush's first term and were actually helpful in dealing with al Qaida. But they were rebuffed by President Bush on more than one occassion early on.

In addition, Bush has vaguely threatened military action against Syria and Iran and Bush's friends on the far right have been even more vocal, even going so far as to call for the use of nuclear weapons against Iran; much of Bush's attitude seems based on an idea of Syria and Iran that goes back ten to thirty years instead of dealing in the terms of this era.

If Bush or Condi Rice are serious about real negotiations, they have to back off one or two steps from a threat posture and then knock off the phony preconditions for talks. In addition, Bush has yet to declare to the Iraqis that we do intend to leave, and sooner than later.

By sending more troops, Bush is likely to increase the tensions in the Middle East; he has sent more troops in the past without result and there is nothing to suggest that this time he has some answers to his fiasco. Just to be clear, let me be blunt for a moment: our military could kill 2 million Iraqis in the next year and it would not change the outcome; if anything, it would potentially lead to a broad regional war. Too many blunders have been made. At this point, we don't need a military solution so much as we need a political solution. Political solutions require talks. Political talks require the full use of all our foreign policy tools. Those tools have been neglected or poorly used in the past six years. There are dozens of qualified people, even qualified Republicans, who are waiting for their talents to be used. It's time for Bush and Condi Rice to utilize them.

The main problem I have with Condi Rice is her arrogant incompetence. As the national security adviser to Bush, she missed the terrorist threat from al Qaida and the broader stateless terrorism problem. And even before she became Secretary of State, she was personally doing a poor job of improving relations with Russia, an area she's supposed to be an expert on. Then, this last summer, instead of working hard and long to defuse the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, she went to the Middle East to give, of all things, a piano recital! Her blather about not giving away some of Lebanon's sovereignty is a ridiculous straw man as an objection to serious negotiations with Syria, and it's unhelpful that she even talks like that; but it's important to note that Bush's unwilling to defuse this summer's mini-war did far more serious damage to Lebanon than any concession regarding Lebanon that might conceivably be given to Syria, and the Lebanese are not happy about it.

I'm a Democrat with certain principles and I won't pretend that James Baker was perfect but he was a successful Secretary of State and was far more competent than Dr. Rice; for her to dismiss the analysis and advice of the Iraq Study Group suggests she's just as delusional as the president. When you're in trouble, when you have almost no accomplishments to your name, it's time to lose the arrogance. Rumsfeld may be gone but Republicans in Congress should think long and hard about continuing to support Bush, Cheney and Rice. The members of the Bush inner circle are in danger of going from reckless incompetence to a sullen ideological stubbornness that will continue to do enormous damage to our nation in the continued pursuit of a war that we all know was optional. The excuses, the posturing and the blame need to come to an end.

The voters sent a powerful message to Bush in November and it's not clear that he's gotten the message. As long as Bush has the veto, there is a limit to what Democrats can do in the next two years. Two years is a long time. Not many Americans fully understand it yet, but our nation is in crisis. Unless Bush changes course in a serious way instead of pursuing the same failed foreign policy, we're heading for a deeper crisis; instead of admitting their blunders, some neocons and right wingers are insisting on a broader war despite the fact they haven't been right about very much.

If you're up to your waist in quicksand, it's time to stop digging. Bush's foreign policy experiment is a failure. It's time to return to the more successful policies of the last sixty years, the policies in fact that made us the leader of the free world and therefore strong.

Condi Rice's loyalty to the president would be admirable if Bush were running a small company somewhere, but her loyalty is hurting the nation. If she can't face Bush's failures, she needs to resign. Or she needs to face the facts and talk to the president. Simply put, it's time for Bush to pull back from the abyss. If he won't do it, Congress must exert its constitutional responsibilities.