Another useless exercise in smartough diplomacy

There were, of course, two illicit nuclear projects stopped during that period, though the U.N. had nothing to do with it. One was Libya's clandestine nuclear kit, which al-Qaddafi--spooked by the fate of Saddam--agreed to hand over to the U.S. in late 2003. The other was Syria's North Korea-abetted secret reactor. That was destroyed in 2007, not by a U.N. resolution, but by an Israeli air strike.

clipped from www.defenddemocracy.org America has "re-engaged the United Nations," said President Barack Obama in his maiden speech Wednesday to the U.N. General Assembly. Yes, it has, and within hours both Libya's Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had gone far to illustrate what a terrible idea that reengagement is. But Obama is certainly correct that Bush did not enjoy anything like Obama's welcome at the U.N. Obama is indeed ringing in a different era, including new promises and a new gift list. He came to the U.N.'s headquarters in New York with an agenda of three jam-packed days, starting with an address on climate change and culminating with plans to chair a summit-level meeting of the Security Council, focused on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

This is what smartough diplomacy gets you

Don't we need a cowboy to enhance the national security of this cowboy nation? Yuppie smartoughness doesn't cut it with the likes of Ahmadinejad and Putin.

clipped from blogs.law.harvard.edu Russia, America, and Iran—Again Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s most recent statement that the Holocaust is a myth and denouncing Israel is an indication that he does not see U.S. President Obama’s call for dialogue and improved relations with Iran as desirable from his perspective. Tehran is undoubtedly focusing on the Obama administration’s plan to instead deploy sea-based ballistic missile defenses closer to Iran. Ahmadinejad is highly likely to see this not only as more threatening to Iran than the Poland/Czech Republic option, but also to see the Obama administration’s foregoing the latter as an attempt to curry favor with Moscow in the hope of enlisting its cooperation against Tehran. Moscow, though, is making it clear that the Obama administration’s abandoning the Poland/Czech Republic BMD deployment plan will not result in a quid pro quo from Russia vis-à-vis Tehran.

Twenty-seven dead in drug rehab massacres

This article gives a unique Mexican twist to a pair of horrendous massacres.

Government-run drug rehab clinics are used as distribution centers by the narco and as infiltration points by police.

This fact makes the week's massacres at least intelligible to non Mexicans.

clipped from www.stratfor.com Another Juarez Rehab Attack At approximately 10:50 p.m. local time on Sept. 16, an unknown number of gunmen entered the Anexo de Vida drug rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, and opened fire on a group of patients, killing ten and wounding two others. This was the second attack on a drug rehabilitation center in Juarez in recent weeks. (A previous attack saw 17 dead and five injured.) After the Sept. 16 attack, 10 drug rehabilitation centers in Juarez closed their doors out of fears of further attacks. Juarez is hands-down the most violent city in Mexico, with the more than 1,600 organized-crime related deaths this year already surpassing the city’s 2008 total. According to one Mexican government source, some of these clinics have become a point of contention between the police — who use the centers as a location to spy on cartel activities — and cartels, which use the facilities as distribution points.

Justice begins at home

The main thing to keep in mind here is that Goldstone is not lying. Everything he says is true.

It should be obvious to anyone who has followed this situation that the IDF's so-called "serious violations" of the laws of war are truly nothing of the kind. Even if one hasn't been following the situation, simple rhetorical analysis will show then the utter fallacy that underlies Goldstone's sentence: notwithstanding his pro forma nods to Hamas violations, he's obviously telling only one side of the story, Hamas's side.

His version implies that the IDF was indiscriminately bombarding hospitals, schools and other typical civilian sites to sow terror as part of a campaign to subdue the Resistance. This is just a fairy tale.

For example, ask yourself why Israel attacked the civilian structures. It was because they couldn't fairly be considered civilian if they were being used as firebases by Hamas.

But the essential point is this: there would have been no IDF attacks whatsoever,
on anything in Gaza if Hamas had not provoked it by years of truly indiscriminate attacks themselves.
Therefore, Hamas bears the blame for all of the civilian casualties and deaths in the war: Israeli as well as Palestinian. Nobody had to die if Hamas didn't promote its intolerant rejectionist policy.
Some made the analogy to WWII: Germans bear the blame for all of the death and destruction simply because they started it. I don't see how anyone could possibly object to such logic and it was the basis for all the postwar treaties.

Why is this same logic not on display here, in the Palestine/Israel conflict, especially by such eminent personalities as the head of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, Richard Goldstone?

clipped from www.nytimes.com Justice in Gaza In the fighting in Gaza, all sides flouted that fundamental principle. Many civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt. In Israel, three civilians were killed and hundreds wounded by rockets from Gaza fired by Hamas and other groups. Two Palestinian girls also lost their lives when these rockets misfired. In Gaza, hundreds of civilians died. They died from disproportionate attacks on legitimate military targets and from attacks on hospitals and other civilian structures. They died from precision weapons like missiles from aerial drones as well as from heavy artillery. Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require. Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy.

This doesn't look too good for smartough diplomacy

Could it be possible that he just went into this blind, with no previous quid pro quo agreement with the Russians? Would he set himself up for such a humiliation for nothing? It's hard to believe, but, according to Stratfor, it looks like it's true. What happened to the smartough world charmer whose "face," (Andrew Sullivan dixit) was going to change the world?
If this turns out to be true, then it just fits the same sad-sack pattern of all of Obama's diplomacy so far: "engagement" and appeasement as a tradeoff for rebuffs and humiliation. Maybe world powers don't want to negotiate and engage. Maybe they want to get as much power and wealth as they can, while they can. Maybe negotiation and engagement are just playing into their hands, then.

Stratfor Intelligence Guidance for today says,

Ballistic missile defense (BMD) as a military system had no significance for either Poland or the Czech Republic. It was not designed to defend them. Rather, its presence was a symbol to both countries that the United States was prepared to defend them, because it has a vital strategic asset in their countries. The shock in Poland and Czech Republic is about a symbolic shift from their point of view.

And furthermore,

The timing of the decision is clearly intended to induce Russian cooperation with the United States over Iran. The question is whether there was any prior understanding with Russia regarding this matter. Does the United States have some understanding of a quid pro quo with Russia? The Russian-U.S. tussle over the issue of BMD in Central Europe was never really about BMD. The system never gave Poland anything. It was about the future of U.S.-Polish military cooperation. This is what defines Russia’s view of its relationship with the United States.

It seems like they answered their own question below, “The Russians are letting the United States know they do not see the scrapping of the planned BMD system as a concession” that could get them to cooperate with us on Iran.

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clipped from www.stratfor.com U.S., Russia: Moscow's Response to Washington's Shift in BMD Plans Russia’s initial response to the United States’ scrapping its plan for ballistic missile defense (BMD) in Poland and the Czech Republic indicates that Russia is not convinced that the change in plans is any sort of concession. The Russians are letting the United States know they do not see the scrapping of the planned BMD system as a concession — and certainly not something that would spark a concession from Russia, such as Moscow ceasing its support for Tehran. Instead, Russia is linking the BMD move to the deal on Afghanistan. As far as the Russians are concerned, they owe the United States nothing until real concessions are made.

Smarttough diplomacy at work?

I certainly hope so. For the US to get Russian concessions on its support of Iran would practically mean that missile BMD would be superfluous.

I don't think we're abandoning allies like the Czechs and Poles either. We don't need BMD to be loyal to them.

At least, this is what I hope US authorities are assuring them today. It's not too much to expect that at least this much common sense is on display.

It's past time to push Iran into a corner. It's the key insurgency in the region. The Islamic movement had its first success there and it must end there for it to end at all.

If this is what it takes, then I say my hat's off to Obama. I'm changing my opinion 180 degrees. Bush would never have dared such a move.
Clipped from stratfor.com

U.S.: Backing Down on BMD Rumors are flying late Sept. 16 that the United States could be shelving its plans to build a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in Poland and Czech Republic. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reportedly will hold a news conference on the issue sometime Sept. 17 or Sept. 18 As the entire situation intensifies, a U.S. concession on BMD would be one of the first major steps in a Russian-U.S. deal — one which could see Iran’s greatest foreign backer flip sides. This means that Russian support to Iran in things like complicating military strikes through the sale of strategic air defense systems and blocking crippling sanctions could now come into question. But all of this is hinged on Washington’s following through with shelving the BMD plan — something STRATFOR will be closely watching for as rumors are intensifying that Washington may in fact be conceding to Russia on the BMD issue.

Obama's law-breaking style of diplomacy, or not

Commentary » Blog Archive » Breaking the Law to “Engage” Iran

Jonathan Tobin has a point here:

Liberals spent most of the past decade decrying what they never tired of describing as the “lawlessness” of the Bush administration. But today’s New York Times brings to its readers’ attention the fact that Obama’s team is just as willing to disregard legalities. But whereas Bush’s people showed a willingness to bend the rules to fight a war against Islamist terrorists, Obama’s minions will do the same in their quest to appease Islamists.

In this case, the Justice Department “has declared that President Obama can disregard a law forbidding State Department officials from attending United Nations meetings led by representatives of nations considered to be sponsors of terrorism.” Thus, rather than obeying laws passed by Congress to quarantine a nation like Iran, which ranks very high on that list of state sponsors of terror, Obama has sent State Department officials to take part in UN meetings chaired by Iran.

His point is of course the hypocrisy of leftists and their media. This is just the latest example of such a thing.

Crying about hypocrisy gets really old after a while. So both leftists and rightist and libertarians are hypocrites? What else is new? Someone once said that hypocrisy is the hallmark of civilization. With so many values to comply with, it's inevitable, after all. Thus, the most civilized cultures are the most hypocritical.

I find it hard to refute this idea. Is it just an excuse and/or a pretext for ethical laziness? Maybe, maybe not. Being ethically lazy, I'll never know.

On the other hand, on the narrow issue of legality, I can't really fault Obama for this.

As far as I know, the Constitution gives the president a free hand to conduct foreign relations in pursuit of his responsibilities as C in C. Therefore, he's entitled to negotiate with anyone he wants to, if it seems like it will enhance US national security. He was elected just for that reason: to use his best judgment to enhance US national security. That's just US-style democracy.

Tobin's conclusion  makes this point obliquely,

Don’t expect many of those who are ready to hang anyone who worked for Bush on any technicality they can find to express much anger over legalisms conjured up to advance the cause of appeasement. As the Times notes, “the new memorandum demonstrated that the Bush legal team’s approach was not as aberrational from other administrations as some critics contended.”

I'd go The Times one more:

“the new memorandum demonstrated that the Bush legal team’s approach was [completely in line with other administrations. No president will ever give up his constitutionally enumerated powers, nor should he. Our democracy is founded on just such a principle.”—ed.]