Mathematical Impossibility
Charles Krauthammer flays the treachery of the French and their duplicity on the ceasefire in Lebanon that they helped craft. It is , he says, mathematically impossible to overestimate French perfidy. He starts out commenting on when allies are good to have - and why.
The cowboy has been retired. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is king. That's the conventional wisdom about George W. Bush's second term: Under the influence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the administration has finally embraced "the allies."
This is considered a radical change of course. It is not. Even the most ardent unilateralist always prefers multilateral support under one of two conditions: (1) There is something the allies will actually help accomplish or (2) there is nothing to be done anyway, so multilateralism gives you the cover of appearing to do something.
North Korea, is an example of of the second case. Failing to do something to stop the demented dwarf of Pyongyang while Clinton (or Bush 41) was in office was a major mistake. Now nukes are the only thing that make the NK's mini-me relevant in the world - and he really won't give those up. But Iran could still be stopped.
But we underestimated French perfidy. (Overestimating it is mathematically impossible.) Once the resolution was passed, France announced that instead of the expected 5,000 troops, it would be sending 200. The French defense minister explained that France was not going to send out soldiers under a limited mandate and weak rules of engagement — precisely the mandate and rules of engagement that the French had just gotten us to agree to.
This breathtaking duplicity — payback for the Louisiana Purchase? — left the State Department red-faced. (It was offset somewhat when, last night, France agreed to send an additional 1,600 troops.) But the setback was minor compared with what we now face with Iran. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is a major irritant, but a nuclear Iran is a major strategic threat.
It is, of course, popular on the left to blame everything on Bush. Which is really an insidious form of elitism at work, actually. The meme goes that Bush destabilized everything by invading Iraq. Bush caused the Mullahs to pull the strings of their puppets in Iraq and Lebanon. It's all America's fault, you see.
Total bull, of course. Iran has been, by their own admission, the sworn enemy of the US for decades. They have attacked the US over and over through proxies. To blame the situation completely on America and Bush is to denigrate and ignore the Iranian government's actions. They are not motivated by what the US does. They are motivated by a sworn oath to destroy America.
Realistically speaking, the point of this multilateral exercise cannot be to stop Iran's nuclear program by diplomacy. That has always been a fantasy. It will take military means. There would be terrible consequences from an attack. These must be weighed against the terrible consequences of allowing an openly apocalyptic Iranian leadership to acquire weapons of genocide.
The point of the current elaborate exercise in multilateral diplomacy is to slightly alter that future calculation. By demonstrating extraordinary forbearance and accommodation, perhaps we will have purchased the acquiescence of our closest allies — Britain, Germany and, yes, France — to a military strike on that fateful day when diplomacy has run its course.
Unless the world can get it's collective act together, war is coming. The actions of the left in Europe and America are making it more, not less, likely.
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The Right Nation — August 26, 2006 @ 8:30 am
By maha, August 26, 2006 @ 4:34 am
It is true that Iran has been an enemy of the U.S. since the late 1970s. However, what you’re ignoring about our invasion of Iraq is that it’s the best thing that’s happened to Iran since the Shah got sick. We deposed Iran’s enemy, Saddam Hussein, and made it possible for the Shiite majority to gain power. So now Iranian armed and trained Shiite militias are responsible for most of the violence in Iraq today, and Iran also has been helping Shiite candidates get elected to the Iraqi government. Iraq is rapidly turning into a satellite of Iran, thanks to us.
Oh, and if you want to know the truth about why the nukes of North Korea are George Bush’s fault — of course you don’t, but maybe someone else does — you can start here:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.kaplan.html
More here:
http://www.mahablog.com/oldsite/id34.html
“Unless the world can get it’s collective act together, war is coming. The actions of the left in Europe and America are making it more, not less, likely.”
The biggest reason war is coming is that the U.S. government is being run by a far-right, extremist faction of whackjobs, and this faction been running the farce known as the “U.S. foreign policy” for more than five years now. We lefties try to warn them every time they make another wrong turn, but they don’t listen to us. So to those of you who lack the moral courage to admit you were and are and always will be wrong, and like babies try to blame us for the Right’s mistakes — kiss my ass.