“Realists Deny Reality,”…..
…."and embrace an ideology where talk is productive and governments are sincere." So writes Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute in today's Opinion Journal. His op-ed is a stark look at the inconsistency of the "progressives" and "realists". It is a harsh assessment.
On Dec. 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then Ronald Reagan's Middle East envoy, met Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. According to declassified documents, the Reagan administration sought to re-establish long-severed relations with Baghdad amid concern about growing Iranian influence. While U.S. intelligence had earlier confirmed Saddam's use of chemical weapons, Mr. Rumsfeld did not broach the subject. His handshake with Saddam, caught on film by Iraqi television, represented a triumph for diplomatic realism.
Iran and Iraq would fight for five more years, leaving hundreds of thousands dead on the battlefield. Then, two years after a ceasefire ended the war, Saddam invaded Kuwait. In subsequent years, he would subsidize waves of Palestinian suicide-bombers, effectively ending the Oslo peace process. Saddam's career is a model of realist blowback.
On Sept. 23, 2002, as Saddam defied international inspectors and U.N. sanctions crumbled under the greed of Paris, Moscow and Iraq's neighbors, Newsweek published a cover story, "How we Helped Create Saddam," that once again thrust the forgotten handshake into public consciousness. Across both the U.S. and Britain, the story provoked press outrage. NPR conducted interviews outlining how the Reagan administration allowed Saddam to acquire dual-use equipment. Mr. Rumsfeld "helped Iraq get chemical weapons," headlined London's Daily Mail. British columnist Robert Fisk concluded that the handshake was evidence of Mr. Rumsfeld's disdain for human rights, and Amy and David Goodman of "Democracy Now!" condemned Mr. Rumsfeld for enabling Saddam's "lethal shopping spree." While 20 years too late, progressives decried the cold, realist calculations that sent people across the third world to their graves in the cause of U.S. national interest.
What a difference a war makes. Today, progressives and liberals celebrate not only Mr. Rumsfeld's departure, but the resurrection of realists like Secretary of Defense-nominee Robert Gates and James Baker. Mr. Gates was the CIA's deputy director for intelligence at the time of Mr. Rumsfeld's infamous handshake, deputy director of Central Intelligence when Saddam gassed the Kurds, and deputy national security advisor when Saddam crushed the Shiite uprising. Mr. Baker was as central. He was White House chief of staff when Reagan dispatched Mr. Rumsfeld to Baghdad and, as secretary of state, ensured Saddam's grip on power after Iraqis heeded President George H.W. Bush's Feb. 15, 1991, call for "the Iraqi people \[to\] take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside." In the months that followed, Saddam massacred tens of thousands of civilians.
While Mr. Rumsfeld worked to right past wrongs, Messrs. Gates and Baker winked at the Iraqi dictator's continuing grip on power. For progressives, this is irrelevant. Today, progressivism places personal vendetta above principle. Mr. Rumsfeld is bad, Mr. Baker is good, and consistency irrelevant.
Read the whole thing. It captures something that all too many self-labeled progressives embrace. There are repeated condemnations from the left of past US mistakes, missteps or failures and at the same time calls to go right back to those failed policies that led to those problems. It happens here in comments over and over and over. It happens all over the media and the blogosphere.
By ajacksonian, Monday, 13 November , 2006 @ 9:30 am
I did a review of what Mr. Gates said last year at a Leon Panetta Institute gabfest: http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2006/11/gates-review-from-2005-gabfest-secdef.html
Simply put the man needs to stand by his words and MEAN them and repudiate the ISG and fight the Bush Rolodex Syndrome which makes him look like a pawn of Baker and the Elder Bush. If he does those things and stands by his words that we must STAY in Iraq until the Government is strong enough to ask us to leave… then he will have gone a long way towards quieting his critics. He must DO those things, however, to get the quietness and re-examination. I am more than willing to give a man a chance to stand by his words and demonstrate his Honor and make up for past mistakes.
Unlike Baker that I will never trust on anything, again. He and the entire gray-headed class of diplomats CAUSED this problem and will not fess up to it. And they deserve just venom for *that*.
By openmouthedfool, Monday, 13 November , 2006 @ 10:57 am
I have not seen all this celebration of the resurrection of the realists and calls to go back to Regan-era policies by progressives reported here and in Mr. Rubin’s article. Can anyone provide some examples?
By Progressive, Monday, 13 November , 2006 @ 2:43 pm
No progressives I know supported Reagan’s foreign policies, including the immoral policy of arming both sides during the Iran-Iraq war. Most progressives would say that NEITHER side should receive weapons, not both sides.
By Quilly Mammoth, Monday, 13 November , 2006 @ 5:58 pm
That may be the difference between Progressive and Liberal. Our conduct with Iraq and Iran and so many other countries before Bush is the result of the Diplomatic concept called “containment”. It is the favorite school of thought, in it’s various forms, of people as diverse as Baker and Zinni. It is…the very type of duiplomacy which got Rummie to shake Saddam’s hand…what so many are pushing for today. Such as Murtha.