Gaza and After: An Interview with Paul Berman
michelle sieff | march 2009
PAUL BERMAN IS A writer on politics and literature, an editor at Dissent and The New Republic, a professor of Journalism at New York University, and a preeminent public intellectual. He has written or edited eight books, including, most recently, Carl Sandburg: Selected Poems, edited with an introduction, published by the Library of America in 2006.
Many of Berman's political writings have analyzed progressive political movements and their ideas as well as the political movements and ideologies that have challenged these ideas in the modern era. In two of his books - A Tale of Two Utopias, published in 1996 and Power and the Idealists, published in 2005 - Berman analyzed the intellectual evolution of the student radicals of 1968, both in the United States and Europe. In Terror and Liberalism, published in 2003, Berman examined the ideas which underpin radical Islamist political movements and illuminated the connections between Islamist and European totalitarian ideologies.
In the wake of Israel's war against Hamas, I sat down with Paul Berman to discuss the war, the Obama Administration and the Middle East, and the persistence of antisemitism in our own time.
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How have you judged Israel's actions against Hamas? Do you think Israel used disproportionate force against Hamas?
There is an obligation to live, which means that Israel has not just the right but the obligation to defend herself. Judging the proportionality of the Israeli actions runs into a complication, though - something of a logical bind.
It is now and then noted in the press that Hamas, in its charter, calls for the elimination of Israel - though, actually, the charter goes further yet, which is almost never noted. Article Seven of the charter, citing one of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, makes clear that Hamas acknowledges a religious duty to kill the Jews. It's all pretty explicit. Which Jews in particular must be killed, in order to bring about, as the charter puts it, the "Last Hour?" Article Seven merely stipulates "the Jews" - which leaves open the possibility, I would think, of killing all of the Jews, or at least (judging from other sections of the charter) the Jews who inhabit any place that is now or used to be Islamic. In any case, the Jews of Israel.
History has some experience with political movements that proclaim in their founding documents the intention of killing the Jews
What is Israel trying to fend off, then?
Two possibilities. First: it's not so hard to imagine that, if Hamas were allowed to prosper unimpeded, and if its allies and fellow-thinkers in Hezbollah and the Iranian government and its nuclear program likewise prospered, the goal announced in Article Seven could be largely achieved. History has some experience with political movements that proclaim in their founding documents the intention of killing the Jews. And so, a first possibility is that Israel is up against military enemies who have every intention of committing a genocide, and who might conceivably succeed. The possibility that Israel is defending itself against a genocide ought to lead any reasonable person to grant the Israelis a degree of latitude in judging what is a proportionate action - even if, as Michael Walzer points out, an invocation of genocidal dangers could also end up as a justification for doing too much.
However, a second possibility. The Hamas charter is full of wild language - not just the part about killing the Jews, but also the invocation of the Protocols of Zion and of an antisemitic theory of history. But maybe all of this stuff should be regarded merely as an overwrought cry of pain - an expression of powerlessness. Maybe there is a kind of pathos of victimhood and suffering in Hamas' ideas, and not much more.
I think that, around the world, a lot of people look at Hamas in that light. They see in Hamas the ugliness that clings to the powerless, and, out of compassion, they excuse the ugliness. Or they choose to overlook it, in the way that, out of courtesy, you might choose not even to notice a dreadful deformity on someone's face or body.
Now, if Hamas were, in fact, extremely weak and doomed to remain so - if Hamas were capable of nothing more than lobbing primitive rockets at Israel, which might kill a few people but not more than a few - well, the question of proportionality in Israel's military response would look a little different. Israel, in that case, would have acted just now in a grotesquely criminal way, like some deranged police force that, in its efforts to put down a street gang, has ended up leveling an entire city.
A lot of people...see in Hamas the ugliness that clings to the powerless, and, out of compassion, they excuse the ugliness
But which of these is the correct analysis - that Hamas poses a genocidal threat in the making? Or that Hamas expresses mostly the ugliness of the powerless, and poses a relatively small danger? Everything hangs on the answer to that question. People tend to assume that the proportionality of a military action should be measured against what has already taken place - that somebody who has been attacked has the right to counter-attack on roughly the same level. "The law of even-Steven," in Walzer's dismissive phrase. But it is the future that has to be taken into account.
Unfortunately, we cannot predict the future. We stand in the dark, and we make guesses. Those of us who look on the Gaza war from thousands of miles of away enjoy the luxury of speculating this way or that way. But if you were in the Israeli government, it wouldn't be so easy to gamble on the answer. So Israel is in a bind. No matter what the Israelis choose to do, they have to recognize that they might be tragically wrong - either in their failure to defend themselves, or in the suffering they inflict on other people.
One aspect of the proportionality debate has been pretty much ignored, and this has to do with the rest of the world, and not Israel - the rest of us. People ought to have noticed by now that any number of humanitarian catastrophes lie just over the horizon and are perfectly predictable - the catastrophes that will follow ineluctably from any future wars in Gaza or Lebanon, or from an attack that Israel, out of fear of the Iranian nuclear program, could conceivably launch on Iran.
No matter what the Israelis choose to do, they might be tragically wrong - either in their failure to defend themselves, or in the suffering they inflict on other people
Now, if the rest of the world really wants to worry and be upset over humanitarian disasters, there would be every reason to start worrying right now over the prospect of those future wars. A humanitarian logic ought to lead us to ask, how can those wars be stopped, pre-emptively, so to speak - instead of merely deploring them, after the fact. I know that a lot of people would say that, well, Israel ought to dismantle its West Bank settlements and do a thousand other things to allow their enemies to calm down. Me, I've never had any patience for West Bank settlements, and I can picture a lot of ways that Israel could improve.
Still, it would be disingenuous not to notice another obvious reality. An Iran without a nuclear program would be in no danger of Israeli attack. Here is an impending war that rests on a single variable. Why not alter the variable? Equally obvious: Israel is not going to launch a war against any of the groups on its own borders that remain at peace. Why not do everything possible to disarm those groups? Protests, moral pressures, diplomatic pressures, not to mention grand international alliances, not to mention human rights reports!. There are a lot of things that could be done. But it may be that, around the world, some of the people who weep over the sufferings caused by war would rather see still further wars than undertake even the simplest and most obvious steps to avoid the wars.
You laid out two interpretations of Hamas. Why do you think so many outside observers are wedded to the interpretation of Hamas as a weak, powerless organization?
It's human nature to believe that a political movement like Hamas is weak - or, if it is strong, that its wild language is merely blather, and not to be taken seriously.
Back in the 1930s, people used to assume that, once the Nazis had found their way into a position of responsibility for the well-being of Germany, they would stop saying wild things and would certainly think twice about putting their program into action. Power was supposed to sober the Nazis up. But maybe there is something about ideologies of group hatred that makes it hard to sober up.
Then again, I think that a certain number of people see nothing especially crazy or hateful in Hamas' arguments and goals. They see points that are fairly reasonable, even if Hamas' way of expressing those points seems a little crude. The Jews should not be killed, all reasonable people agree; but (so goes a very popular argument) neither do the Jews have a right to defend themselves. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not a sophisticated document; but Walt and Mearsheimer's book "The Israel Lobby" is (in some people's view) a sophisticated document. And the sophisticated document makes the unsophisticated one seem like it is on to something. By reasoning in this fashion, people end up concluding that Hamas' doctrines have a purchase on truth - something that quite a few people believe. But they choose not to say it because they don't want to look unsophisticated or coarse.
Power was supposed to sober the Nazis up. But maybe there is something about ideologies of group hatred that makes it hard to sober up
Anyway, history does not lack for genocides, and we have to assume that a lot of people have figured that, for one reason or another, genocide is a good idea. The people who think in this fashion are not just the fanatics who engage in the massacres, but also a larger public that gazes from the sidelines without objecting, and sometimes even applauds.
During the Gaza conflict, there were several anti-Israel protests where Israel was routinely demonized as a Nazi or Apartheid state. Why do you think so many activists, especially on the left, demonize Israel? Is it a sign of antisemitism?
Oh, as Irving Howe said, "There is no heart so warm that it doesn't have a cold spot for the Jews." We like to think of hatred of the Jews as a low, base sentiment that is entertained by nasty, ignorant people, wallowing in their own hatefulness. But normally it's not like that. Hatred for the Jews has generally taken the form of a lofty sentiment, instead of a lowly one - a noble feeling embraced by people who believe they stand for the highest and most admirable of moral views.
In the Middle Ages, Christians felt they were upholding the principles of universal redemption, and they looked on the Jews as terrible people because the Jews had refused the word of God - had insisted on remaining Jews. And so, the loftiest of religious sentiments led to hatred of the Jews.
In the 18th century, the Enlightenment philosophers looked on the Enlightenment itself as the loftiest form of thought - the truest of all possible guides to universal justice and happiness. The Enlightenment philosophers detested Christianity because it was a font of superstition and oppression. But this only led them to despise the Jews even more - no longer because the Jews had refused the message of Christianity, but because the Jews had engendered the message of Christianity. And the damnable Jews insisted on remaining Jews, instead of repudiating religion altogether.
As Irving Howe said, "There is no heart so warm that it doesn't have a cold spot for the Jews"
The religious wars wreaked all kinds of damage on Europe. But the Treaty of Westphalia came along in 1648 and put an end to religious wars by establishing a system of states with recognized borders, each state with its own religion. The new Westphalian system embodied yet another Enlightenment idea of lofty ideals - the grandest guarantee of universal peace and justice. But the Jews were scattered throughout Europe, instead of being gathered together in a single state. The new state system was supposed to be a comfortable shoe, and the Jews were a pebble. And they insisted on remaining Jews, instead of helpfully disappearing. So one hated the Jews for failing to conform to the new system of states.
Today we have arrived at yet another idea about how to bring about universal peace and justice - the loftiest, most advanced idea of our own time. Instead of looking on well-established states with solid borders to keep the peace, Westphalia-style, we look on states as a formula for oppression and war. Lofty opinion nowadays calls for post-state political systems, like the European Union. Unfortunately, nowadays the Jews possess a state. Thus one hates the Jews in the name of lofty opinion, no longer because the Jews lack a state but because, on the contrary, they have a state. They seem keen on keeping their state. And once again the Jews are seen to be affirming a principle that high-minded people used to uphold but have now rejected as antiquated.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people with advanced ideas began to look on Christian hatred of the Jews as a retrograde prejudice - and the advanced thinkers embraced, instead, the pseudo-science of racism. They no longer hated the Jews on religious grounds - they hated the Jews on racial grounds. The word "racism" originally applied to hatred of the Jews. Racial hatred seemed up to date. Today, however, racism itself has come to seem like a retrograde prejudice. And so, people with advanced opinions hate the Jews on anti-racist grounds, and they regard the Jews as the world's leading racists.
And so forth. The unstated assumption is always the same. To wit: the universal system for man's happiness has already arrived (namely, Christianity, or else Enlightenment anti-Christianity; the Westphalian state system, or else the post-modern system of international institutions; racial theory, or else the anti-racist doctrine in a certain interpretation). And the universal system for man's happiness would right now have achieved perfection - were it not for the Jews. The Jews are always standing in the way. The higher one's opinion of oneself, the more one detests the Jews.
The political left has always been of two minds on these matters. An opposition to anti-Semitism (and to all kinds of bigotry) did use to be one of the pillars of the modern left. But the left has always rested on more than one pillar, and some of those pillars are a little wobbly. And there is the left-wing conceit that, today at last, the system for universal justice and happiness has been discovered, and should be embraced by all advanced thinkers. The cosmopolitan abolition of states, let us say. And here are the Jews resisting it. In short, nothing leads more quickly to a disdain for the Jews than a feeling of smug loftiness.
The Jews are always standing in the way. The higher one's opinion of oneself, the more one detests the Jews
To be sure, lofty disdain comes in different versions. In its respectable version, lofty disdain right now adopts a position of long-faced sadness over Israel for being such a reprehensible place, for existing at a moment when states ought to fade away, for being racist, for perpetuating religion, for being an example of European imperialism, and so forth. One shakes one's head in sorrowful regret that the Israelis are the way they are.
But the disdain takes another shape, too, which is cruder, though it follows more or less from the first version. In the cruder version, the Jews are not just regrettable for being retrograde. Much worse: the Jews have done something really terrible. By forming their state and standing by it, they have set out actively to oppose the principle of universal justice and happiness - the principle that decrees that a people like the Jews should not have a state.
So, yes, the comparisons to apartheid - or, more radically and these days more typically, to the Nazis. The comparison to the Nazis began to emerge in the 1970s in Western Europe and also in the Arab world, and by now it is pretty much everywhere you look.
It's a remarkable comparison in all kinds of ways, but I'll point out just one aspect. The Nazis are generally regarded as the worst, most evil political movement in all of history - a political movement that not only committed crimes but stood for the principle of crime. By comparing Israel to the Nazis, people mean to suggest that Israel is likewise one of the worst, most evil political institutions that could possibly exist. The accusation is cosmically huge. And the cosmically huge accusation makes perfect sense - if you keep in mind the venerable idea that the Jews stand in the way of mankind's achievement of a perfected system of universal justice and happiness.
From the standpoint of the venerable idea, Israel's problems with its borders and its neighbors do not resemble the difficulties that other states have with their own borders and neighbors. There is no point in making statistical comparisons - the comparisons that might show how many people have been killed in Israel's wars, or how many people have been displaced from their homes by Israel, compared to the number of people killed and displaced by other wars and other states around the world. The statistics, if you looked at them, would reflect the fact that Israel is a small place, and its borders none too large, and its wars and disasters are not among the hugest that have taken place in the last sixty years, or even the last six years.
In the end, [antisemitism] is the grand accusation against the Jews, in ever newer versions: the Jews as cosmic enemy of the universal good
But the statistics, as I say, are irrelevant, given the peculiar philosophical light that people shine on Israel. Israel's struggle puts it at odds with the entire principle of universal justice and happiness, as people imagine it - no matter how they choose to define the principle. Other countries commit relative crimes, which can be measured and compared. But Israel commits an absolute crime. In the end, it is the grand accusation against the Jews, in ever newer versions: the Jews as cosmic enemy of the universal good.
You sound like you might be talking about human rights activists. Are you suggesting that human rights activists are now acting in the service of an antisemitic agenda?
In the service of an antisemitic agenda? No, no, the phrase is wrong. The only conscious program in the human rights movement is a good program. I hugely respect the Israeli human rights activists. To try to keep track of what has taken place during the Gaza war and may still be taking place - this is totally necessary. We know very well that the IDF has done terrible things in Gaza - perhaps by not taking judicious care, or by falling into the temptations of blind hatred, but mostly because any kind of warfare at all is what it is. But how will we ever learn what exactly has been done, if the human rights groups don't work up their reports?
There is a human value merely in recording what has taken place. If I myself had suffered in Gaza, I would definitely want human rights groups to come record what I had been through. Anyway, the Israeli human rights groups help keep the IDF honest. And so forth with other human rights organizations - at least in principle, even if there is a lot to say about the practise.
Still, even those of us who think of ourselves as the friends and champions of the human rights movement - even we ought to be able to look around and, in a spirit of lucidity, notice a couple of peculiarities. I do think that, in some of the human rights reports on Israeli military action in the past, you could see a kind of in-built analytic distortion. The human rights investigators work up analyses of what they ascertain to be facts; but their notion of facts excludes political motivations. And yet, if you ignore the political reasoning behind certain kinds of violent acts, you really cannot account for what has happened. Once you have ruled out making an examination of political motivations, you are absolutely guaranteed to conclude that Israel has acted with disproportionate force. It's predictable in advance.
The human-rights investigators work up analyses of what they ascertain to be facts; but their notion of facts excludes political motivations
A further problem: the human rights groups make their reports or accusations - and, somehow or another, the reports and accusations end up resonating all over the world. During the Gaza war, the front page of every major newspaper in the world was filled with reports and photos of Israeli violence, which became, not for the first time, a world-wide controversy. The same thing will happen, on a smaller scale, when the human rights reports come out with their accusations of Israeli war crimes, in a few weeks or months. It is as if all the news organizations of the world have agreed that, if a major problem with human rights exists anywhere in the Middle East, it comes from the one country in the region that most obviously cares about human rights. The greater is someone's high-mindedness about this kind of thing, the more that person is likely to end up singling out Israel for its assault on human rights. Statistics make up a big part of the human rights picture of reality; and yet, judged statistically, something has got to be very odd in the repeated emphatic focus on a single place. These are the peculiarities of the human rights movement right now.
Some of the most serious criticisms of Israel and Zionism come from Jews themselves. How do you interpret this response?
Well, sometimes the criticisms are rightly made. But, yes, a very curious phenomenon does pop up now and then. An old phenomenon. Back in the time of the European ghettos, most of the Jews were stuck behind the walls, and were despised for being there. But some of the Jews got out, and they did their best to blend into the majority population, and they even did their best to highlight the difference between themselves and their despised ghetto brethren. I happen just now to be reading Bernard Lewis on Lessing, the German writer.
I quote Bernard Lewis: "Lessing, perhaps the greatest of European philosemites, subtly realizes this attitude. In one of his plays, a vulgar and loud-mouthed antisemitic servant, suddenly discovering that his revered master is a Jew, tries to atone for his previously hostile remarks by observing in defense of the Jews that 'there are Jews who are not at all Jewish.' Some Jews responded to this kind of defense and implied invitation with eager enthusiasm, others with outrage. Both kinds of responses can still be found among Jews in the present day."
Lessing lived in the 18th century, and Lewis wrote the lines I've just quoted in the 1980s, in his book Semites & Anti-Semites. But it's really about our own moment, isn't it? There do seem to be a fair number of Jews who are tremendously eager to show how innocent they are - unlike the other Jews, the guilty ones.
What does the election of Barack Obama mean for America? Do you think that American support for Israel will continue under his Administration?
I'm enthused by Obama. And, in my enthusiasm, I find myself thinking: this election has been the most inspiring event in American history. The American Revolution was inspiring, and the Civil War and Lincoln likewise, and Franklin Roosevelt and the victory over fascism, and all that - inspiring events because they signaled big forward steps for democracy. But there has always been something wrong with America, and the claim to be democratic has always contained an extra clause. And so, each of those big successes in the American past has been accompanied by a small, unobtrusive asterisk, which leads your eye to the bottom of the page, where you find the extra clause, which says: "Democracy is fine and good for most people, and yet, for various unfortunate reasons, one part of the American population is hereby excluded." The asterisk has meant that America is living a lie. Even at America's grandest moments. But no longer! Not on this one point, anyway. The election just now is the first large event in American history that can be recorded without an asterisk.
[T]his election has been the most inspiring event in American history
The old-fashioned antisemitic right-wing is completely on the outs, for now. As for the anti-Zionist left in America: The Nation magazine, the Answer movement, the professors who want to boycott Israel (now, that's an interesting phenomenon!) - these kinds of tendencies are pretty marginal, in America. The views of The Nation magazine on the Middle East are represented in the degree of about five percent in the Obama administration. We have every reason to believe that President Obama will be totally sympathetic to Israel's principle policy, namely, the policy of continuing to exist. I don't know everything that Obama will do - but he won't adopt his measures on the basis of an unstated antipathy to Israel.
Now, if the new administration were capable of taking a wider view of the problem in the Middle East than the Israelis themselves are sometimes capable of taking - would that be bad? It's good that Obama has expressed a compassion for the Israelis who have lately suffered - but also for the Palestinians.
As for the anti-Zionist left in America: "The Nation" magazine, the Answer movement... these kinds of tendencies are pretty marginal
There is every reason to weep for Gaza, even if we can understand why the government of Israel is not awash right now in those particular tears. And there is every reason for the United States to do whatever can be done to help the Palestinians to a better life, liberated from these pathological ideologies whose adherents keep condemning their fellow Palestinians to ever lower rungs of suffering and sorrow. I don't know how much the United States can do to help the Palestinians throw off Hamas and a number of other groups, but, however much it is, I hope that Obama does it. To be pro-Israel is good - but the United States should show herself to be pro-Palestinian, too, in the simple belief that, in the long run, a pro-Israel position has to be pro-Palestinian, too, and vice versa.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Flotilla Thriller (not mine)
J. E. Dyer - 06.14.2010 - 2:59 PM
This summer promises events that will thoroughly eclipse the diplomatic flurry over the recent Gaza flotilla. What few would have expected is the maritime character of the drama to which we have to look forward. And in a manner reminiscent of some seemingly minor operational decisions during the Cold War, Obama’s response to the challenge will be the most important security signal sent by his administration to date.
The distant drumbeat of the impending climax has been sounding for some time; Iran and Hezbollah have repeatedly threatened shipping in, respectively, the Strait of Hormuz and the waters off Lebanon and Israel, near the northern approach to the Suez Canal. Hezbollah’s most recent threat was issued in May, shortly before the deadly flotilla incident. Both Iran and Hezbollah are actively preparing to make good on their threats. This is not a theoretical menace. A complacent dismissal of their activities would be very dangerous.
Moreover, they are about to get help from — and take direct advantage of — the chaotic maritime situation brewing with the follow-on flotillas now in planning. Avram Rimon at Examiner.com had a good summary of them this weekend: they include a Gaza flotilla sponsored by German Jews; a counter-flotilla of Israelis hoping to bring aid to Cyprus, the Turkish Kurds, and Armenia (the latter under a Turkish blockade for more than 16 years); the Turkish flotilla for which Tayyip Erdogan has promised his own presence and a naval escort; and the flotilla being mounted by Iran, which is scheduled to leave Iran for Gaza on June 18.
The U.S. can do one of two things about these proliferating flotillas. We can organize NATO overtly to monitor and control eruptions in the Eastern Mediterranean, or we can simply leave it all for Israel to handle. Doing the latter will guarantee the early involvement of Hezbollah and Hamas in enlarging the scope of this maritime challenge. A hands-off approach by the Western nations makes it more likely that the terrorists, along with Iran and Turkey, will seek to precipitate crises — which may involve innocent commercial shipping — and press situational advantages. On the other hand, a declaration that the U.S. and NATO will prevent destabilizing eruptions, accompanied by obvious readiness to impose order if necessary, would be a salutary and effective signal. None of this need be done in a bellicose manner: quiet but unyielding is the appropriate demeanor.
Turkey’s involvement in the recent flotilla should already have resulted in a moment of reckoning with its NATO allies, if only behind closed doors. The West’s lackadaisical approach to its core alliance is on borrowed time. If the impending parade of flotillas produces only disorganized posturing from NATO, while allowing Israel’s enemies to create havoc at sea and score propaganda points against Israel, the next challenge is likely to emerge almost automatically in the Persian Gulf. Iran has threatened to begin stopping ships in the Strait of Hormuz if the inspection clause of the June 9 UN sanctions is actually applied against Iran-bound cargo. Tehran’s willingness to carry through on this will depend on the U.S. posture, which governs what the Iranians think they can get away with.
A strong stance in the Eastern Mediterranean is the lowest-cost, highest-payoff method of deterring Iran from the outset. Maintaining stability at sea and control of the world’s key chokepoints is an American naval task so basic we rarely think about it, but the impact from breaches of that order is immediate and far-reaching. Doing nothing is courting crisis; we should be working to head this one off at the pass. That approach would be far less costly than reacting to a series of crises
This summer promises events that will thoroughly eclipse the diplomatic flurry over the recent Gaza flotilla. What few would have expected is the maritime character of the drama to which we have to look forward. And in a manner reminiscent of some seemingly minor operational decisions during the Cold War, Obama’s response to the challenge will be the most important security signal sent by his administration to date.
The distant drumbeat of the impending climax has been sounding for some time; Iran and Hezbollah have repeatedly threatened shipping in, respectively, the Strait of Hormuz and the waters off Lebanon and Israel, near the northern approach to the Suez Canal. Hezbollah’s most recent threat was issued in May, shortly before the deadly flotilla incident. Both Iran and Hezbollah are actively preparing to make good on their threats. This is not a theoretical menace. A complacent dismissal of their activities would be very dangerous.
Moreover, they are about to get help from — and take direct advantage of — the chaotic maritime situation brewing with the follow-on flotillas now in planning. Avram Rimon at Examiner.com had a good summary of them this weekend: they include a Gaza flotilla sponsored by German Jews; a counter-flotilla of Israelis hoping to bring aid to Cyprus, the Turkish Kurds, and Armenia (the latter under a Turkish blockade for more than 16 years); the Turkish flotilla for which Tayyip Erdogan has promised his own presence and a naval escort; and the flotilla being mounted by Iran, which is scheduled to leave Iran for Gaza on June 18.
The U.S. can do one of two things about these proliferating flotillas. We can organize NATO overtly to monitor and control eruptions in the Eastern Mediterranean, or we can simply leave it all for Israel to handle. Doing the latter will guarantee the early involvement of Hezbollah and Hamas in enlarging the scope of this maritime challenge. A hands-off approach by the Western nations makes it more likely that the terrorists, along with Iran and Turkey, will seek to precipitate crises — which may involve innocent commercial shipping — and press situational advantages. On the other hand, a declaration that the U.S. and NATO will prevent destabilizing eruptions, accompanied by obvious readiness to impose order if necessary, would be a salutary and effective signal. None of this need be done in a bellicose manner: quiet but unyielding is the appropriate demeanor.
Turkey’s involvement in the recent flotilla should already have resulted in a moment of reckoning with its NATO allies, if only behind closed doors. The West’s lackadaisical approach to its core alliance is on borrowed time. If the impending parade of flotillas produces only disorganized posturing from NATO, while allowing Israel’s enemies to create havoc at sea and score propaganda points against Israel, the next challenge is likely to emerge almost automatically in the Persian Gulf. Iran has threatened to begin stopping ships in the Strait of Hormuz if the inspection clause of the June 9 UN sanctions is actually applied against Iran-bound cargo. Tehran’s willingness to carry through on this will depend on the U.S. posture, which governs what the Iranians think they can get away with.
A strong stance in the Eastern Mediterranean is the lowest-cost, highest-payoff method of deterring Iran from the outset. Maintaining stability at sea and control of the world’s key chokepoints is an American naval task so basic we rarely think about it, but the impact from breaches of that order is immediate and far-reaching. Doing nothing is courting crisis; we should be working to head this one off at the pass. That approach would be far less costly than reacting to a series of crises
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Great Piece by the Kraut
Krauthammer: Those troublesome Jews
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 4, 2010; A19
The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.
But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.
In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.
Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.
Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?
But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.
(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.
Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.
But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.
Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.
(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.
The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.
(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.
But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?
Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.
What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.
The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 4, 2010; A19
The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.
But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.
In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.
Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.
Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?
But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.
(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.
Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.
But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.
Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.
(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.
The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.
(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.
But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?
Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.
What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.
The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.
Barry Rubin Today on U.S Aid to Gaza and (the Lack of) American Policy
By Barry Rubin
...President Barack Obama has announced an additional $400 million in aid for housing, school construction and business development in Gaza and West Bank in his meeting with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Calling the status quo in Gaza unsustainable, Obama said he was talking with Europeans, Egypt, Israel, and the PA on how to have a better approach that takes into account the security concerns of Israel and the needs of people in Gaza.
He also urged the need to rush ahead on a peace process which has no chance of success, calling this situation, too, unsustainable. It is in fact Obama's policy which is unsustainable.
Obama said, "As part of the United Nations Security Council, we were very clear in condemning the acts that led to this crisis and have called for a full investigation." What does this mean? Which acts? The acts of provocation and attacks on Israeli soldiers or is he blaming Israel? Who knows? The president of the United States is not supposed to be inscrutable.
Moreover, the president of the United States shouldn't hide behind the UN. What is his policy? Where is the leadership?
And then he repeated something he has done before--claimed that Israelis backed his policy-- which is blatantly untrue as polls show. ""What we also know is that the situation in Gaza is unsustainable. I think increasingly you're seeing debates within Israel, recognizing the problems with the status quo." The truth is that Obama understands nothing about Israel. He should leave the choice of Israel's government to its people and the setting of policies to its government.
Aside from all this, Obama displays no strategic sense. He should make clear that the United States does not want an Iranian client, a revolutionary jihadists Taliban-like regime on the Mediterranean Sea. It should be the goal of U.S. policy to avoid this. Instead he deals with this as a “humanitarian” issue and makes no effort to get across what should be the main point.
And so Obama said:
"We agree that Israelis have the right to prevent arms from entering into Gaza that can be used to launch attacks into Israeli territory. But we also think that it is important for us to explore new mechanisms so that we can have goods and services, and economic development, and the ability of people to start their own businesses, and to grow the economy and provide opportunity within Gaza."
He and his advisors have no comprehension of what makes Hamas and its leaders tick. So he wants a prosperous Gaza Strip under Hamas leadership? Money will be pouring in, jobs will be created. Of course, only until Hamas decides to start the next war. What does he envision is going to happen under his strategy? That the lean and hungry leaders of Hamas will sell out to the infidels and open a chain of fast-food restaurants?
Nor does he have the slightest clue about Palestinian politics. Just as he misstates Israeli thinking, Obama has no conception that Fatah is full of radicals and is in competition with Hamas to prove itself more militant. He keeps repeating the idea that the Palestinians are suffering so much that they are eager for a deal, the same error made--with more justification to be sure--by the Clinton Administration in 2000. And as long as the Palestinian Authority has no control over almost half the people it purports to rule, and Hamas uses its power to sabotage any agreement or stability, how could there possibly be progress on peace?
Remember the U.S. policy up until now has been to help the Palestinian Authority to become more stable and prosperous so that Gazans would contrast their situation with it and say, "Moderation is certainly better than extremism!" Now they and many others will say, "Extremism is certainly better than moderation! You still get Western support, they protect you from being overthrown, and you don't have to moderte or sell out at all!"
Who's really making the Middle East unsustainable? Barack Obama is with a policy of weaken your friends and help your enemies get stronger.
Note that Obama did not mention the conditions for easing the blockade--that Hamas abandon terrorism and accept Israel's existence--nor did he say that anything the Palestinian Authority or Hamas is doing is "unsustainable." Only Western and Israeli policy are said to be unsustainable. In effect, Obama is saying that the policies of Hamas, Iran, Hizballah, and Syria, among others, are infinitely sustainable, especially because of his reluctance to do things to make them unsustainable.
And thus in Middle East terms, he's saying: Your intransigence has won. We couldn't move you so our policy has failed. We must give in.
Let's be clear here. The assessment in this article is a harsh one but the policy of this administration is a disastrous one. To condemn it has nothing to do with party or ideology. Unfortuntely, though, this administration has taken leave of any sense of national interests' policy, has substituted Feelgoodpolitik for Realpolitik.
Obama may honestly believe that pumping money into specific projects in Gaza like houses, schools, and businesses is not a subsidy for Hamas. But of course that is what it will be. Anyone should be able to understand this:
--Schools. That means classrooms were Hamas can indoctrinate children into thinking that they should grow up to be terrorists, Israel must be wiped off the map, peace with Israel is unacceptable, the Jews must be murdered, America is evil and its influence should be driven out of the region, and all existing Arab states except for Syria should be overthrown.
If I was a cartoonist I'd draw a picture of a classroom. On the wall is a plaque saying: Paid for by the American people. The teacher is telling the kiddies: "And so you must all grow up to be holy warriors and wipe out the Zionist pigs and imperialist dogs." That is no exaggeration.
----Construction. Yes it would be nice if Gazans had jobs and nicer places to live. But no body in a Palestinian refugee camp (except perhaps if they bribe someone) will get a new apartment since they must continue to suffer until they can presumably return in triumph to take over housing recently vacated by murdered Israelis. Apartments will be given first by the Hamas government to its supporters and thus used to recruit people and bind them to the movement. Some of the concrete and other equipment will be siphoned off for building bunkers or rockets to fire at Israel.
If I were a cartoonist I'd draw a picture of an apartment building with a sign saying, "Gift of the American people" in front of it and with a Hamas official saying to a man: "And if you become a suicide bomber you not only get to go to heaven but your family will receive a two-bedroom apartment with a nice view of the beach." That, too, is no exaggeration.
Remember the United States has no one on the ground in the Gaza Strip to supervise these projects and prevent Hamas from stealing money, materials, and products. I'd prefer all the money be given for aid to the West Bank than have any funds go to the Gaza Strip.
And what happens when Hamas attacks Israel again? I can see the media coverage now, complaining that Israel is damaging all those beautiful U.S.-financed buildings, which are being used as rocket-launching sites and bunkers by Hamas.
Can’t the U.S. government figure this stuff out for itself? The president is not the head of a foundation providing grants to community organizers. So the money will be taken by Hamas and other Islamists as “blood money” to pay compensation for the blockade or as tribute from a frightened America. It will win no friends and do no good strategically or politically.
Here's the bottom line:
The president of the United States has just announced that his country must give in to the defiance of a dictatorship with about 1.2 million people. The chief executive of the greatest power in the world (even if he doesn't think that's true) is changing his policy because a few dozen radical Islamists picked up iron bars, hit Israeli soldiers, and forced a confrontation. How do you think that lesson will be absorbed by others in the world, especiallyAmerica's enemies, and what do you think that will motivate them to do?
And so now President Obama is going to subsidize and stabilize a genocidal-intentioned, antisemitic, terrorist regime allied to Iran for no material gain to U.S. interests....
...President Barack Obama has announced an additional $400 million in aid for housing, school construction and business development in Gaza and West Bank in his meeting with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Calling the status quo in Gaza unsustainable, Obama said he was talking with Europeans, Egypt, Israel, and the PA on how to have a better approach that takes into account the security concerns of Israel and the needs of people in Gaza.
He also urged the need to rush ahead on a peace process which has no chance of success, calling this situation, too, unsustainable. It is in fact Obama's policy which is unsustainable.
Obama said, "As part of the United Nations Security Council, we were very clear in condemning the acts that led to this crisis and have called for a full investigation." What does this mean? Which acts? The acts of provocation and attacks on Israeli soldiers or is he blaming Israel? Who knows? The president of the United States is not supposed to be inscrutable.
Moreover, the president of the United States shouldn't hide behind the UN. What is his policy? Where is the leadership?
And then he repeated something he has done before--claimed that Israelis backed his policy-- which is blatantly untrue as polls show. ""What we also know is that the situation in Gaza is unsustainable. I think increasingly you're seeing debates within Israel, recognizing the problems with the status quo." The truth is that Obama understands nothing about Israel. He should leave the choice of Israel's government to its people and the setting of policies to its government.
Aside from all this, Obama displays no strategic sense. He should make clear that the United States does not want an Iranian client, a revolutionary jihadists Taliban-like regime on the Mediterranean Sea. It should be the goal of U.S. policy to avoid this. Instead he deals with this as a “humanitarian” issue and makes no effort to get across what should be the main point.
And so Obama said:
"We agree that Israelis have the right to prevent arms from entering into Gaza that can be used to launch attacks into Israeli territory. But we also think that it is important for us to explore new mechanisms so that we can have goods and services, and economic development, and the ability of people to start their own businesses, and to grow the economy and provide opportunity within Gaza."
He and his advisors have no comprehension of what makes Hamas and its leaders tick. So he wants a prosperous Gaza Strip under Hamas leadership? Money will be pouring in, jobs will be created. Of course, only until Hamas decides to start the next war. What does he envision is going to happen under his strategy? That the lean and hungry leaders of Hamas will sell out to the infidels and open a chain of fast-food restaurants?
Nor does he have the slightest clue about Palestinian politics. Just as he misstates Israeli thinking, Obama has no conception that Fatah is full of radicals and is in competition with Hamas to prove itself more militant. He keeps repeating the idea that the Palestinians are suffering so much that they are eager for a deal, the same error made--with more justification to be sure--by the Clinton Administration in 2000. And as long as the Palestinian Authority has no control over almost half the people it purports to rule, and Hamas uses its power to sabotage any agreement or stability, how could there possibly be progress on peace?
Remember the U.S. policy up until now has been to help the Palestinian Authority to become more stable and prosperous so that Gazans would contrast their situation with it and say, "Moderation is certainly better than extremism!" Now they and many others will say, "Extremism is certainly better than moderation! You still get Western support, they protect you from being overthrown, and you don't have to moderte or sell out at all!"
Who's really making the Middle East unsustainable? Barack Obama is with a policy of weaken your friends and help your enemies get stronger.
Note that Obama did not mention the conditions for easing the blockade--that Hamas abandon terrorism and accept Israel's existence--nor did he say that anything the Palestinian Authority or Hamas is doing is "unsustainable." Only Western and Israeli policy are said to be unsustainable. In effect, Obama is saying that the policies of Hamas, Iran, Hizballah, and Syria, among others, are infinitely sustainable, especially because of his reluctance to do things to make them unsustainable.
And thus in Middle East terms, he's saying: Your intransigence has won. We couldn't move you so our policy has failed. We must give in.
Let's be clear here. The assessment in this article is a harsh one but the policy of this administration is a disastrous one. To condemn it has nothing to do with party or ideology. Unfortuntely, though, this administration has taken leave of any sense of national interests' policy, has substituted Feelgoodpolitik for Realpolitik.
Obama may honestly believe that pumping money into specific projects in Gaza like houses, schools, and businesses is not a subsidy for Hamas. But of course that is what it will be. Anyone should be able to understand this:
--Schools. That means classrooms were Hamas can indoctrinate children into thinking that they should grow up to be terrorists, Israel must be wiped off the map, peace with Israel is unacceptable, the Jews must be murdered, America is evil and its influence should be driven out of the region, and all existing Arab states except for Syria should be overthrown.
If I was a cartoonist I'd draw a picture of a classroom. On the wall is a plaque saying: Paid for by the American people. The teacher is telling the kiddies: "And so you must all grow up to be holy warriors and wipe out the Zionist pigs and imperialist dogs." That is no exaggeration.
----Construction. Yes it would be nice if Gazans had jobs and nicer places to live. But no body in a Palestinian refugee camp (except perhaps if they bribe someone) will get a new apartment since they must continue to suffer until they can presumably return in triumph to take over housing recently vacated by murdered Israelis. Apartments will be given first by the Hamas government to its supporters and thus used to recruit people and bind them to the movement. Some of the concrete and other equipment will be siphoned off for building bunkers or rockets to fire at Israel.
If I were a cartoonist I'd draw a picture of an apartment building with a sign saying, "Gift of the American people" in front of it and with a Hamas official saying to a man: "And if you become a suicide bomber you not only get to go to heaven but your family will receive a two-bedroom apartment with a nice view of the beach." That, too, is no exaggeration.
Remember the United States has no one on the ground in the Gaza Strip to supervise these projects and prevent Hamas from stealing money, materials, and products. I'd prefer all the money be given for aid to the West Bank than have any funds go to the Gaza Strip.
And what happens when Hamas attacks Israel again? I can see the media coverage now, complaining that Israel is damaging all those beautiful U.S.-financed buildings, which are being used as rocket-launching sites and bunkers by Hamas.
Can’t the U.S. government figure this stuff out for itself? The president is not the head of a foundation providing grants to community organizers. So the money will be taken by Hamas and other Islamists as “blood money” to pay compensation for the blockade or as tribute from a frightened America. It will win no friends and do no good strategically or politically.
Here's the bottom line:
The president of the United States has just announced that his country must give in to the defiance of a dictatorship with about 1.2 million people. The chief executive of the greatest power in the world (even if he doesn't think that's true) is changing his policy because a few dozen radical Islamists picked up iron bars, hit Israeli soldiers, and forced a confrontation. How do you think that lesson will be absorbed by others in the world, especiallyAmerica's enemies, and what do you think that will motivate them to do?
And so now President Obama is going to subsidize and stabilize a genocidal-intentioned, antisemitic, terrorist regime allied to Iran for no material gain to U.S. interests....
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Barry Rubin Interviewed: June 9, 2010 (from Rbin Reports)
Vice-President Joe Biden has visited Cairo. Do you think his summit with President Husni Mubarak could be useful for solving the Gaza crisis? Is Egypt a strong voice inside Palestinian world?
No, in fact the Egyptians have given up in disgust as they have failed. They worked hard for years to bring Hamas and the Palestinian Authority together and Hamas rejected their efforts. Incidentally, they were just as frustrated trying to move Yasir Arafat toward peace in the 1990s.
Remember that Egypt has a blockade on the Gaza Strip just as much as Israel does. And their reason for doing so is self-interest. They know Hamas is a revolutionary Islamist group close to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. A Jihadi state in Gaza will subvert Egypt, becoming a base for propaganda and terrorism. Moreover, Egypt’s government knows that Iran is an increasing threat to itself, and an Islamist state in Gaza accepted by the world and free to function is also a base for Tehran on the Mediterranean.
Incidentally, Egyptian soldiers regularly shoot and kill refugees trying to cross the border and have opened fire on Palestinians from Gaza on a number of occasions but the world is indifferent to such things since the obsession is to condemn only Israel.
Do you consider the Gaza crisis a possible new reason for tensions between Israel and the United States? Their relationship is getting worst till the beginning of this year. Is there any solution?
So far the U.S. government position has not been good in the sense of actually supporting an ally whose previous handling of the Gaza issue has been approved by Washington. At the same time, it has not been as bad as many think on this crisis. The U.S. stance seems to be that the blockade should be eased, but in ways that are likely to be acceptable to Israel.
This means that Israel will transport into Gaza, after inspection, goods delivered by volunteer flotillas and will ease the rules on what can be sent into the Gaza Strip. Israel has already agreed on the first point and has constantly been revising those rules. A key question will be the U.S. attitude toward an investigation. It is hard for Israelis to believe that any UN investigation will be fair.
Incidentally, according to the Pechter poll, seventy one percent of Israeli Jews dislike U.S. President Barak Obama with more than half, forty seven percent say they strongly dislike him. In all, sixty-three percent of those polled are dissatisfied with the U.S. government's reaction to the incident.
What about the Israeli public opinion? Are they conscious that there isn’t any possibility except for giving more concessions to the PA, regarding the settlements, and ending the embargo of Gaza?
The idea that Israel must give in does not seem either realistic or necessary to Israelis. I agree. Just because others panic and draw their own conclusions does not mean Israel has to make unilateral concessions that damage its security. In addition, people should understand that Israelis have a long experience of making such concessions only to have them be quickly forgotten and more demanded. Among these, of course, was Israel's complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, from which came not peace or quiet but a Hamas takeover; frequent terrorist, mortar, and rocket attacks; and now this current situation.
In my opinion, this current crisis will not change the facts on the ground very much. Western countries are not going to normalize relations with Hamas or demand an end to the embargo. Public opinion and media coverage is important but it is not the same as national policy decisions. Government leaders understand the reality enough to know that Hamas is a very destabilizing and deadly organization.
But let’s look at Israeli public opinion, based on a Pechter poll released today. Of those Israeli Jews interviewed, 39 percent said that not enough force was used, 46 percent said the right amount. Only 8 percent said Israel used too much force. These people understand, by the way, that the Israeli soldiers were attacked, taken hostage, and had to fight their way out.
Sixty one percent felt that Israel should not adjust its tactics to elicit a more favorable international reaction. And fifty-six percent indicated that Israel should not agree to an international inquiry committee to investigate the incident.
Do you look at the Netanyahu government and its majority in the Knesset as a strong influence on the country? Is there any risk of it falling?
According to the poll cited above, fifty three percent (53%) were satisfied with the job Prime Minister Netanyahu did while only forty one percent (41%) were satisfied with Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s performance. Remember that those not satisfied in many cases felt that the tactics of the operation were not handled well, which is one reason for the gap between Netanyahu and Barak in the poll.
It is important to understand three things:
--Israelis are acting on the basis of their knowledge and experience. Some people abroad write in bewilderment as if Israelis are paranoid or don’t know what the world thinks. They know very well what the world thinks. They also know that several thousand Israeli lives were sacrificed on the belief in the 1990s that the Palestinians and Syrians were ready to make peace and also that the world would support Israel if it took risks for peace. They also know the nature of Hamas, as well as Hizballah and Iran.
Incidentally, no people in world history have tried longer and harder the approach of apologizing, conceding, avoiding violent responses even while being slaughtered, trying to prove their worthiness as citizens (or even to be allowed to live), depending on logical arguments to persuade those who hate them, and throwing themselves on the mercy of others than have the Jewish people. Having tried such things for centuries, and within living memory, Israelis are understandably skeptical about the utility of such methods, despite more of the same constantly being recommended to them.
--Israelis know that when people are lying about them and slandering their country the response is not to blame their leaders but to give low credibility to their critics or those who claim to know better how they can obtain security. Just as revolutionary Islamists are being taught by Western reaction that being intransigent and violent produces gains, Israelis are being taught that making concessions ultimately means greater dangers, no compensation, and even more criticism.
I always think here of an essay written by Ahad ha-Am, the great essayist who lived much of his life in Tel Aviv. A century ago, he wrote along these lines: How do we know that we are right and our critics are wrong? Because we know ourselves and we know that we don’t use the blood of little children to make matzos. The same situation applies today.
By the way, lest you think the above is archaic, today at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, the Syrian representative, Rania al-Rifaiy claimed:
“Israel…is a state that is built on hatred…Let me quote a song that a group of children on a school bus in Israel sing merrily as they go to school and I quote 'With my teeth I will rip your flesh. With my mouth I will suck your blood.'"
It was one hundred and seventy years ago that a major blood libel case erupted in Damascus. Apparently not much has changed since then. And, by the way, no Western representative protested this statement. Where, by the way, do we hear songs somewhat resembling this one? From Hamas and Palestinian Authority official media, that's where. In fact, here is such a song actually sung on PA television's morning show by children in the last few days:
"And tomorrow, when the war starts,I won't care about you [my enemy], or about the West. And tomorrow when the war starts,I won't care about you [my enemy], or about the West. And we shall strike Israel, we shall strike Israel, And return you [to us], land of my ancestors;And return you [to us], land of my ancestors."
[This is what appears on the television of the "pro-Western" "moderate" PA. What has been put onto Hamas children's shows is much worse. The words about Israel don't surprise me. What does surprise me is the open hostility to the West, the people mainly funding the PA.]
Presumably, few in the West will hear about either the Syrian statement or the PA song. So they can be excused for thinking that Israel overestimates the radicalism and hostility it faces.
--There is no viable alternative. No matter how many people talk about how easy it would be to make a compromise peace or to make radical, openly genocidal Islamists moderate, Israelis know from observation and experience that these things aren’t true. They also know what is said in Arabic in places like official Palestinian Authority and Hamas media but never translated by the Western media into English.
It is interesting to note that the opposition has not been able to come up with a single persuasive option for a different policy. Indeed, outside the farther left, even opposition voters generally share in the national consensus outlined above. The basic Israeli view is this: We are ready for a two-state solution, we are ready to turn almost all of the West Bank over to a Palestinian state. But we don’t believe there is a real partner for such an agreement.
This government, by the way, is not a right-wing government but a national unity government that includes the main party of the left, Labour. The religious parties are at about the weakest point in power that they’ve been in Israeli history. And even Avigdor Lieberman, whatever his shortcomings, is not a stereotypical rightist and he does favor a two-state solution.
So this government is very solidly in power and will certainly serve until next year. If elections were to be held today it would win. Indeed, when one sees how unfair and misinformed a lot of the foreign criticism is, and how these same places constantly make demands for concessions and then don’t keep their promises, this only solidifies the national consensus supporting the government and understanding the need for continuing—albeit with reasonable changes—the current policy.
No, in fact the Egyptians have given up in disgust as they have failed. They worked hard for years to bring Hamas and the Palestinian Authority together and Hamas rejected their efforts. Incidentally, they were just as frustrated trying to move Yasir Arafat toward peace in the 1990s.
Remember that Egypt has a blockade on the Gaza Strip just as much as Israel does. And their reason for doing so is self-interest. They know Hamas is a revolutionary Islamist group close to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. A Jihadi state in Gaza will subvert Egypt, becoming a base for propaganda and terrorism. Moreover, Egypt’s government knows that Iran is an increasing threat to itself, and an Islamist state in Gaza accepted by the world and free to function is also a base for Tehran on the Mediterranean.
Incidentally, Egyptian soldiers regularly shoot and kill refugees trying to cross the border and have opened fire on Palestinians from Gaza on a number of occasions but the world is indifferent to such things since the obsession is to condemn only Israel.
Do you consider the Gaza crisis a possible new reason for tensions between Israel and the United States? Their relationship is getting worst till the beginning of this year. Is there any solution?
So far the U.S. government position has not been good in the sense of actually supporting an ally whose previous handling of the Gaza issue has been approved by Washington. At the same time, it has not been as bad as many think on this crisis. The U.S. stance seems to be that the blockade should be eased, but in ways that are likely to be acceptable to Israel.
This means that Israel will transport into Gaza, after inspection, goods delivered by volunteer flotillas and will ease the rules on what can be sent into the Gaza Strip. Israel has already agreed on the first point and has constantly been revising those rules. A key question will be the U.S. attitude toward an investigation. It is hard for Israelis to believe that any UN investigation will be fair.
Incidentally, according to the Pechter poll, seventy one percent of Israeli Jews dislike U.S. President Barak Obama with more than half, forty seven percent say they strongly dislike him. In all, sixty-three percent of those polled are dissatisfied with the U.S. government's reaction to the incident.
What about the Israeli public opinion? Are they conscious that there isn’t any possibility except for giving more concessions to the PA, regarding the settlements, and ending the embargo of Gaza?
The idea that Israel must give in does not seem either realistic or necessary to Israelis. I agree. Just because others panic and draw their own conclusions does not mean Israel has to make unilateral concessions that damage its security. In addition, people should understand that Israelis have a long experience of making such concessions only to have them be quickly forgotten and more demanded. Among these, of course, was Israel's complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, from which came not peace or quiet but a Hamas takeover; frequent terrorist, mortar, and rocket attacks; and now this current situation.
In my opinion, this current crisis will not change the facts on the ground very much. Western countries are not going to normalize relations with Hamas or demand an end to the embargo. Public opinion and media coverage is important but it is not the same as national policy decisions. Government leaders understand the reality enough to know that Hamas is a very destabilizing and deadly organization.
But let’s look at Israeli public opinion, based on a Pechter poll released today. Of those Israeli Jews interviewed, 39 percent said that not enough force was used, 46 percent said the right amount. Only 8 percent said Israel used too much force. These people understand, by the way, that the Israeli soldiers were attacked, taken hostage, and had to fight their way out.
Sixty one percent felt that Israel should not adjust its tactics to elicit a more favorable international reaction. And fifty-six percent indicated that Israel should not agree to an international inquiry committee to investigate the incident.
Do you look at the Netanyahu government and its majority in the Knesset as a strong influence on the country? Is there any risk of it falling?
According to the poll cited above, fifty three percent (53%) were satisfied with the job Prime Minister Netanyahu did while only forty one percent (41%) were satisfied with Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s performance. Remember that those not satisfied in many cases felt that the tactics of the operation were not handled well, which is one reason for the gap between Netanyahu and Barak in the poll.
It is important to understand three things:
--Israelis are acting on the basis of their knowledge and experience. Some people abroad write in bewilderment as if Israelis are paranoid or don’t know what the world thinks. They know very well what the world thinks. They also know that several thousand Israeli lives were sacrificed on the belief in the 1990s that the Palestinians and Syrians were ready to make peace and also that the world would support Israel if it took risks for peace. They also know the nature of Hamas, as well as Hizballah and Iran.
Incidentally, no people in world history have tried longer and harder the approach of apologizing, conceding, avoiding violent responses even while being slaughtered, trying to prove their worthiness as citizens (or even to be allowed to live), depending on logical arguments to persuade those who hate them, and throwing themselves on the mercy of others than have the Jewish people. Having tried such things for centuries, and within living memory, Israelis are understandably skeptical about the utility of such methods, despite more of the same constantly being recommended to them.
--Israelis know that when people are lying about them and slandering their country the response is not to blame their leaders but to give low credibility to their critics or those who claim to know better how they can obtain security. Just as revolutionary Islamists are being taught by Western reaction that being intransigent and violent produces gains, Israelis are being taught that making concessions ultimately means greater dangers, no compensation, and even more criticism.
I always think here of an essay written by Ahad ha-Am, the great essayist who lived much of his life in Tel Aviv. A century ago, he wrote along these lines: How do we know that we are right and our critics are wrong? Because we know ourselves and we know that we don’t use the blood of little children to make matzos. The same situation applies today.
By the way, lest you think the above is archaic, today at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, the Syrian representative, Rania al-Rifaiy claimed:
“Israel…is a state that is built on hatred…Let me quote a song that a group of children on a school bus in Israel sing merrily as they go to school and I quote 'With my teeth I will rip your flesh. With my mouth I will suck your blood.'"
It was one hundred and seventy years ago that a major blood libel case erupted in Damascus. Apparently not much has changed since then. And, by the way, no Western representative protested this statement. Where, by the way, do we hear songs somewhat resembling this one? From Hamas and Palestinian Authority official media, that's where. In fact, here is such a song actually sung on PA television's morning show by children in the last few days:
"And tomorrow, when the war starts,I won't care about you [my enemy], or about the West. And tomorrow when the war starts,I won't care about you [my enemy], or about the West. And we shall strike Israel, we shall strike Israel, And return you [to us], land of my ancestors;And return you [to us], land of my ancestors."
[This is what appears on the television of the "pro-Western" "moderate" PA. What has been put onto Hamas children's shows is much worse. The words about Israel don't surprise me. What does surprise me is the open hostility to the West, the people mainly funding the PA.]
Presumably, few in the West will hear about either the Syrian statement or the PA song. So they can be excused for thinking that Israel overestimates the radicalism and hostility it faces.
--There is no viable alternative. No matter how many people talk about how easy it would be to make a compromise peace or to make radical, openly genocidal Islamists moderate, Israelis know from observation and experience that these things aren’t true. They also know what is said in Arabic in places like official Palestinian Authority and Hamas media but never translated by the Western media into English.
It is interesting to note that the opposition has not been able to come up with a single persuasive option for a different policy. Indeed, outside the farther left, even opposition voters generally share in the national consensus outlined above. The basic Israeli view is this: We are ready for a two-state solution, we are ready to turn almost all of the West Bank over to a Palestinian state. But we don’t believe there is a real partner for such an agreement.
This government, by the way, is not a right-wing government but a national unity government that includes the main party of the left, Labour. The religious parties are at about the weakest point in power that they’ve been in Israeli history. And even Avigdor Lieberman, whatever his shortcomings, is not a stereotypical rightist and he does favor a two-state solution.
So this government is very solidly in power and will certainly serve until next year. If elections were to be held today it would win. Indeed, when one sees how unfair and misinformed a lot of the foreign criticism is, and how these same places constantly make demands for concessions and then don’t keep their promises, this only solidifies the national consensus supporting the government and understanding the need for continuing—albeit with reasonable changes—the current policy.
Plan B and Save a Lot of Money
May 14, 2010
Plan B: Skip College
By JACQUES STEINBERG
WHAT’S the key to success in the United States?
Short of becoming a reality TV star, the answer is rote and, some would argue, rather knee-jerk: Earn a college degree.
The idea that four years of higher education will translate into a better job, higher earnings and a happier life — a refrain sure to be repeated this month at graduation ceremonies across the country — has been pounded into the heads of schoolchildren, parents and educators. But there’s an underside to that conventional wisdom. Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.)
For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree.
That can be a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it.
A small but influential group of economists and educators is pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. It’s time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so.
Whether everyone in college needs to be there is not a new question; the subject has been hashed out in books and dissertations for years. But the economic crisis has sharpened that focus, as financially struggling states cut aid to higher education.
Among those calling for such alternatives are the economists Richard K. Vedder of Ohio University and Robert I. Lerman of American University, the political scientist Charles Murray, and James E. Rosenbaum, an education professor at Northwestern. They would steer some students toward intensive, short-term vocational and career training, through expanded high school programs and corporate apprenticeships.
“It is true that we need more nanosurgeons than we did 10 to 15 years ago,” said Professor Vedder, founder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a research nonprofit in Washington. “But the numbers are still relatively small compared to the numbers of nurses’ aides we’re going to need. We will need hundreds of thousands of them over the next decade.”
And much of their training, he added, might be feasible outside the college setting.
College degrees are simply not necessary for many jobs. Of the 30 jobs projected to grow at the fastest rate over the next decade in the United States, only seven typically require a bachelor’s degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among the top 10 growing job categories, two require college degrees: accounting (a bachelor’s) and postsecondary teachers (a doctorate). But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store clerks. None of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.
Professor Vedder likes to ask why 15 percent of mail carriers have bachelor’s degrees, according to a 1999 federal study.
“Some of them could have bought a house for what they spent on their education,” he said.
Professor Lerman, the American University economist, said some high school graduates would be better served by being taught how to behave and communicate in the workplace.
Such skills are ranked among the most desired — even ahead of educational attainment — in many surveys of employers. In one 2008 survey of more than 2,000 businesses in Washington State, employers said entry-level workers appeared to be most deficient in being able to “solve problems and make decisions,” “resolve conflict and negotiate,” “cooperate with others” and “listen actively.”
Yet despite the need, vocational programs, which might teach such skills, have been one casualty in the push for national education standards, which has been focused on preparing students for college.
While some educators propose a radical renovation of the community college system to teach work readiness, Professor Lerman advocates a significant national investment by government and employers in on-the-job apprenticeship training. He spoke with admiration, for example, about a program in the CVS pharmacy chain in which aspiring pharmacists’ assistants work as apprentices in hundreds of stores, with many going on to study to become full-fledged pharmacists themselves.
“The health field is an obvious case where the manpower situation is less than ideal,” he said. “I would try to work with some of the major employers to develop these kinds of programs to yield mastery in jobs that do demand high expertise.”
While no country has a perfect model for such programs, Professor Lerman pointed to a modest study of a German effort done last summer by an intern from that country. She found that of those who passed the Abitur, the exam that allows some Germans to attend college for almost no tuition, 40 percent chose to go into apprenticeships in trades, accounting, sales management, and computers.
“Some of the people coming out of those apprenticeships are in more demand than college graduates,” he said, “because they’ve actually managed things in the workplace.”
Still, by urging that some students be directed away from four-year colleges, academics like Professor Lerman are touching a third rail of the education system. At the very least, they could be accused of lowering expectations for some students. Some critics go further, suggesting that the approach amounts to educational redlining, since many of the students who drop out of college are black or non-white Hispanics.
Peggy Williams, a counselor at a high school in suburban New York City with a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, understands the argument for erring on the side of pushing more students toward college.
“If we’re telling kids, ‘You can’t cut the mustard, you shouldn’t go to college or university,’ then we’re shortchanging them from experiencing an environment in which they might grow,” she said.
But Ms. Williams said she would be more willing to counsel some students away from the precollege track if her school, Mount Vernon High School, had a better vocational education alternative. Over the last decade, she said, courses in culinary arts, nursing, dentistry and heating and ventilation system repair were eliminated. Perhaps 1 percent of this year’s graduates will complete a concentration in vocational courses, she said, compared with 40 percent a decade ago.
There is another rejoinder to the case against college: People with college and graduate degrees generally earn more than those without them, and face lower risks of unemployment, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Even those who experience a few years of college earn more money, on average, with less risk of unemployment, than those who merely graduate from high school, said Morton Schapiro, an economist who is the president of Northwestern University.
“You get some return even if you don’t get the sheepskin,” Mr. Schapiro said.
He warned against overlooking the intangible benefits of a college experience — even an incomplete experience — for those who might not apply what they learned directly to their chosen work.
“It’s not just about the economic return,” he said. “Some college, whether you complete it or not, contributes to aesthetic appreciation, better health and better voting behavior.”
Nonetheless, Professor Rosenbaum said, high school counselors and teachers are not doing enough to alert students unlikely to earn a college degree to the perilous road ahead.
“I’m not saying don’t get the B.A,” he said. “I’m saying, let’s get them some intervening credentials, some intervening milestones. Then, if they want to go further in their education, they can.”
Plan B: Skip College
By JACQUES STEINBERG
WHAT’S the key to success in the United States?
Short of becoming a reality TV star, the answer is rote and, some would argue, rather knee-jerk: Earn a college degree.
The idea that four years of higher education will translate into a better job, higher earnings and a happier life — a refrain sure to be repeated this month at graduation ceremonies across the country — has been pounded into the heads of schoolchildren, parents and educators. But there’s an underside to that conventional wisdom. Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.)
For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree.
That can be a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it.
A small but influential group of economists and educators is pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. It’s time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so.
Whether everyone in college needs to be there is not a new question; the subject has been hashed out in books and dissertations for years. But the economic crisis has sharpened that focus, as financially struggling states cut aid to higher education.
Among those calling for such alternatives are the economists Richard K. Vedder of Ohio University and Robert I. Lerman of American University, the political scientist Charles Murray, and James E. Rosenbaum, an education professor at Northwestern. They would steer some students toward intensive, short-term vocational and career training, through expanded high school programs and corporate apprenticeships.
“It is true that we need more nanosurgeons than we did 10 to 15 years ago,” said Professor Vedder, founder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, a research nonprofit in Washington. “But the numbers are still relatively small compared to the numbers of nurses’ aides we’re going to need. We will need hundreds of thousands of them over the next decade.”
And much of their training, he added, might be feasible outside the college setting.
College degrees are simply not necessary for many jobs. Of the 30 jobs projected to grow at the fastest rate over the next decade in the United States, only seven typically require a bachelor’s degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among the top 10 growing job categories, two require college degrees: accounting (a bachelor’s) and postsecondary teachers (a doctorate). But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store clerks. None of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.
Professor Vedder likes to ask why 15 percent of mail carriers have bachelor’s degrees, according to a 1999 federal study.
“Some of them could have bought a house for what they spent on their education,” he said.
Professor Lerman, the American University economist, said some high school graduates would be better served by being taught how to behave and communicate in the workplace.
Such skills are ranked among the most desired — even ahead of educational attainment — in many surveys of employers. In one 2008 survey of more than 2,000 businesses in Washington State, employers said entry-level workers appeared to be most deficient in being able to “solve problems and make decisions,” “resolve conflict and negotiate,” “cooperate with others” and “listen actively.”
Yet despite the need, vocational programs, which might teach such skills, have been one casualty in the push for national education standards, which has been focused on preparing students for college.
While some educators propose a radical renovation of the community college system to teach work readiness, Professor Lerman advocates a significant national investment by government and employers in on-the-job apprenticeship training. He spoke with admiration, for example, about a program in the CVS pharmacy chain in which aspiring pharmacists’ assistants work as apprentices in hundreds of stores, with many going on to study to become full-fledged pharmacists themselves.
“The health field is an obvious case where the manpower situation is less than ideal,” he said. “I would try to work with some of the major employers to develop these kinds of programs to yield mastery in jobs that do demand high expertise.”
While no country has a perfect model for such programs, Professor Lerman pointed to a modest study of a German effort done last summer by an intern from that country. She found that of those who passed the Abitur, the exam that allows some Germans to attend college for almost no tuition, 40 percent chose to go into apprenticeships in trades, accounting, sales management, and computers.
“Some of the people coming out of those apprenticeships are in more demand than college graduates,” he said, “because they’ve actually managed things in the workplace.”
Still, by urging that some students be directed away from four-year colleges, academics like Professor Lerman are touching a third rail of the education system. At the very least, they could be accused of lowering expectations for some students. Some critics go further, suggesting that the approach amounts to educational redlining, since many of the students who drop out of college are black or non-white Hispanics.
Peggy Williams, a counselor at a high school in suburban New York City with a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, understands the argument for erring on the side of pushing more students toward college.
“If we’re telling kids, ‘You can’t cut the mustard, you shouldn’t go to college or university,’ then we’re shortchanging them from experiencing an environment in which they might grow,” she said.
But Ms. Williams said she would be more willing to counsel some students away from the precollege track if her school, Mount Vernon High School, had a better vocational education alternative. Over the last decade, she said, courses in culinary arts, nursing, dentistry and heating and ventilation system repair were eliminated. Perhaps 1 percent of this year’s graduates will complete a concentration in vocational courses, she said, compared with 40 percent a decade ago.
There is another rejoinder to the case against college: People with college and graduate degrees generally earn more than those without them, and face lower risks of unemployment, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Even those who experience a few years of college earn more money, on average, with less risk of unemployment, than those who merely graduate from high school, said Morton Schapiro, an economist who is the president of Northwestern University.
“You get some return even if you don’t get the sheepskin,” Mr. Schapiro said.
He warned against overlooking the intangible benefits of a college experience — even an incomplete experience — for those who might not apply what they learned directly to their chosen work.
“It’s not just about the economic return,” he said. “Some college, whether you complete it or not, contributes to aesthetic appreciation, better health and better voting behavior.”
Nonetheless, Professor Rosenbaum said, high school counselors and teachers are not doing enough to alert students unlikely to earn a college degree to the perilous road ahead.
“I’m not saying don’t get the B.A,” he said. “I’m saying, let’s get them some intervening credentials, some intervening milestones. Then, if they want to go further in their education, they can.”
Benign as Malign: Peaceniks Don't Help Anything
Posted In: 2010s, History, Islam, Middle East, U.S. Foreign Policy
Walter Russell Mead
As the Security Council prepares to vote the next round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, I’m thinking of some old debates about how to handle difficult regimes. The thoughts aren’t consoling; too many voices in the debate over Iran hearken back to some of the worst ideas in American and European history.
Of all the mass murderers, genocidaires and enablers of the twentieth century, one group of collaborators does not get its fair share of condemnation and moral loathing. Unfortunately Americans have never really come to terms with the terrible things they did, we have never really named and shamed them, and we have never diagnosed and exposed the bad ideas that led to some of America’s most fateful and costly blunders. Until we do, our society is at risk of repeating these errors.
The people I have in mind are the ‘goo-goo genocidaires,’ the willfully blind reformers, civil society activists, clergy, students and others whose foolishness and ignorance was a necessary condition for tens of millions of deaths in the last hundred years. Unreflective, self-righteous ‘activists’ thought that to espouse peace was the same thing as to create or safeguard it. As a result, tens of millions died. Unless this kind of thinking is exposed and repudiated, it is likely to lead to as many or more deaths in the 21st.
We all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; this turns out to be particularly true when it comes to the road to foreign policy hell. Over the years good people or at least people who wanted to be good or thought they were, motivated by what seemed to them to be the highest of motives, have taken political stands and made policy proposals that helped mass murderers gain power in their own countries and launch themselves on international careers of conquest and mayhem. At other times, fortunately, they’ve failed to change policy; still, they wasted a lot of people’s time and made life significantly more difficult for those whose plans to help the world ultimately worked.
Paving the Road To Hell
The most notorious example is the peace movement of the 1920s and 1930s. This movement enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of college professors, idealistic students, respected journalists, the union movement, and the mainline clergy. If you didn’t join in, you were criticized as a warmonger, a throwback, someone lacking the broad social vision and high sense of ideals that modern times required.
It was an understandable error. A mass civil society movement of earnest reformers, veterans scarred by their experiences in the trench warfare of World War One and determined that their sons should be spared this experience, students wanting a to build a better world, and intellectuals convinced that there had to be a better way did everything in their power to keep the United States and the western democracies out of war. They failed; instead they disarmed the West, left China defenseless against Japan, and prepared the way both for Hitler’s domination of Europe and Stalin’s imposition of the Iron Curtain.
The American peace and disarmament movement almost destroyed human freedom. The peace movement gave intellectual and moral respectability to the cause of isolationism: the belief that the United States could safely ignore the unraveling of the world’s fragile economic and political order as British power waned after World War I. But these idealistic professors, students, preachers and general all-around-good-guys were naive, self-righteous, and smugly sure that arms cause war.
Armed with a set of wrong headed prejudices (they called them ‘convictions’ and ‘ideals) that made it impossible for them to recognize deadly dangers staring them right in the face, they minimized the difference between imperfect friends (like then-imperialist Britain and France) and flamingly wicked mass murdering thugs (like Stalin, Hitler and the militaristic governments of Japan). Worse, they used all their considerable intelligence, power and media access to prevent Franklin Roosevelt from taking effective action to support the western democracies and China until it was far too late to prevent World War Two, and almost too late to win it. Even then, because the pathetically and self-righteously foolish and irresponsible ‘peace activists’ of the 1930s let the Axis get so far, we could only beat Hitler with Stalin’s help; the oppression of central Europe and the Cold War were the fault of the clergy, professors and civil society activists of the 1930s as well.
When ‘Understanding’ Becomes Collaboration
Worse, some of the ‘good guys’ sympathized with and made excuses for the bad. Germany was resentful and bitter, they said, because the Treaty of Versailles was unfair. Let Adolf Hitler have his ‘reasonable’ goals of reuniting ethnic Germans under one roof, and Germany would become a peaceful and satisfied country, a bulwark of European order. This sounds crazy now, but it was the conventional wisdom among the intelligentsia and literati (except for the Communists and their closest sympathizers) during the 1930s; this is why voices warning of war like Churchill were so isolated. War was so destructive, argued the false prophets of fake enlightenment, that only a madman would start one. And while Hitler was alarming, the apparatus of the German state was sane. There were moderate Nazis, with limited goals; given western forbearance, wise concessions and enough time, the moderates would edge the Nazi radicals out of power.
That was the standard refrain about Germany from 1933 through 1939 and at every crisis or turning point academics and journalists stepped forward to plead for patience and to predict an imminent triumph of the ‘moderate’ Nazis over the ‘radicals’. In the meantime, anti-Nazi rhetoric and boycotts in the West only empowered Hitler and united German opinion behind him. Give him the Saar, Austria, yes and the Sudetenland: sooner or later he would calm down and the world would be at peace. When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich proclaiming that simply by giving Hitler the Sudentenland (the then-German speaking part of Czechoslovakia that happened to include the country’s mountainous border areas and natural defenses) he had won “peace in our time”, nobody was happier than the fatheaded peace clergy — unless it was the enlightened class of journalists and professors who set the tone for upper middle class enlightenment at the time.
It was the same thing with Stalin. Half of the peace movement was in love with Communism; the other half thought that poor Stalin had no choice but to be brutal and tough because he was surrounded by hostile states. Recognize Stalin, trade with him, stop calling him nasty names. Treat him with dignity and respect, they said, and everything will work out for the best. There had been plenty of sympathy for Stalin in the West during the thirties — even as he was carrying out mass murder on a scale that poor Pol Pot could only envy, Stalin never lacked for apologists and defenders among the chattering classes in those countries where they were still permitted to chat.
Understand and sympathize with their legitimate aspirations: that, the professors and preachers constantly told everyone else, was the sophisticated, modern and enlightened way to deal with these problems. Before the war it was the poor Germans, so shabbily treated by the Treaty of Versailles that Hitler represented a necessary phase of Germany’s search for self-respect. Before and after World War Two they said it about Stalin: communism was simply payback for the excesses and crimes of capitalist greed. Yes, they sometimes went too far: but surely that was ‘our’ fault for having permitted these terrible conditions to occur in the first place.
They weren’t completely wrong. The social upheavals and injustice of early industrialization did create sympathy for communism and popular anger; German suffering after World War One was a necessary (though not a sufficient) condition for the rise of Hitler. But what the earnestly intellectual and empathetic goo-goo genocidaires missed was the character of the political movements that had come to power on the basis of these feelings. Hitler and Stalin weren’t interested in justice; the parties they led were more like barbarian hordes organized for plunder than like groups of good folks who, once their legitimate grievances were addressed, would peaceably disassemble and go home. Addressing German grievances and working class poverty would have been very wise steps before Hitler and Stalin seized power; once they got in, the situation changed.
Fortunately the destructive doves weren’t able to fool FDR about the Nazis. “You can’t turn a tiger into a kitten by stroking it,” he once said — but the pious nincompoops and delusional intellectuals were persuasive enough here and abroad so that France, Britain and the United States were unable to step while Hitler was still weak and prevent World War Two by enforcing the peace. After the war, the chorus of goo-goo appeasers switched focus to trying to stop Truman and the West from opposing the spread of Stalin-dominated Communism in a war-devastated Europe. Poor, timid Stalin, said liberal Christian writers in magazines like Christian Century and their political leaders like Henry Wallace, has been so intimidated by American aggressiveness that he had no choice but to clamp down in Eastern Europe. The Marshall Plan wasn’t just attacked by isolationist nutballs on the right; it was attacked viciously and venomously by the so-called ‘peace’ movement and the Progressive Party.
If the Nazis and the Communists between them didn’t overrun the whole world in the terrible 1940s, it was not because the international peace movement didn’t do everything in its power to leave the democracies trembling and helpless before the totalitarian threat. Had these people wised up and supported moderate programs of rearmament in the early 1930s and insisted that the western democracies take a stand against Hitler early on, there would have been no Nuremberg Laws, no Holocaust, no mass terror bombings of European cities, no Stalinist occupation of central Europe — and no Cold War.
Morally of course this was nowhere near as bad as what the Nazis and Communists did. The peaceniks didn’t will the slaughter of millions of innocent people: out of ignorance and conceit they merely created the conditions which let it happen. But while the peace movement wasn’t as evil as the dictators, the dictators could never have achieved their goals without their sanctimonious and timorous enablers in the western world.
Name and Shame
These days we are pretty good at pillorying the bad guys in America’s history: Tories, slave owners, segregationists, opponents of womens’ right to vote all get nailed in our textbooks. But somehow the creeps and frauds of the peace movement get a free pass. “We are the folk song army,” the satirist Tom Lehrer once wrote, mocking the moral pretensions of ‘peace activists’; “Every one of us cares. We’re all against poverty, war and injustice — unlike the rest of you squares.”
It is just not true, historically speaking, that ‘peace movements’ lead to peace or, for that matter, support policies that will bring peace. More often than not, the opposite is true. Winston Churchill was a grizzled old British imperialist of the worst kind, but if Britain had listened to him instead of to its peace campaigners in the 1930s there most likely would never have been either a World War Two or Cold War. We can be very grateful that Ronald Reagan and the NATO leadership turned a deaf ear to the nuclear freeze movement; had those besotted idealists had their way the Soviet Union and the Cold War might be still with us today — along with nuclear arsenals much larger and much more dangerous than anything the US and Russia now have.
Not so long ago we had a word in our society for tiger-strokers: people who thought that if you soothed the savage passions of irrational dictators by treating them with respect and giving them treats then the dictators would become less dangerous.
We called them ‘appeasers’.
It’s a good word, and we could use it today.
I don’t say that reaching out to our enemies is always wrong. There are times when making a good deal with bad guys is the best you can do. Nixon’s opening to China came when that country was still in the throes of the violent and lawless Cultural Revolution. Opening the hot line to the Soviet Union so that the US president and the Soviet premier had a better chance of stopping an accidental nuclear war was also a good idea.
I think it was a good move on President Obama’s part to see if something couldn’t be done to improve relations with Russia — and with Iran. Now, after almost a year and a half, it’s become clear that Russia has responded, a little, while Iran has responded with new threats, new lies, and new shipments of weapons throughout the Middle East.
Broadly speaking, those who want to play “Let’s Make A Deal” with nasty foreign dictators aren’t always wrong. Some dictators like Franco just want to be left alone; others have a need to keep pushing. It’s a legitimate argument and subject for discussion about whether the Iranians are jerks like Franco who will settle down to peacefully hang homosexuals and torture dissidents at home if left to themselves or whether they are megalomaniacal nutcases who will interpret our forbearance as weakness — if we let them have Czechoslovakia they will start reaching for Poland.
Will Power Make Them Nice?
Maybe this is a sign of my entire unfitness to write about foreign policy, but it’s not easy for me to see why a nuclear Iran would be less pushy and demanding than what we have now. If the mullocracy is arming terrorists, interfering with neighbors, inflaming the Middle East and making intercontinental nuclear deals with the bad guys when Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, what makes us think that becoming less vulnerable to American countermeasures would make the Iranians settle down into responsible world citizens? If they blow off our threats and respond with contempt to our overtures when they are weak, why would they treat us with more respect as a nuclear power? Won’t getting nuclear weapons over our objections prove internally that the radicals were right while the moderates were vacillating, cowardly and wrong? And if we are unwilling to stand up to them effectively when they don’t have nuclear weapons, who on Planet Earth will think we will rediscover our backbones when they do?
Those who think we can reach a ‘grand bargain’ with Iran that would either stop the nuclear program or enable us to coexist peacefully with a nuclear Iran are, I fear, making the same failure that the 1930s and 1940s peace campaigners made about the Nazi and Soviet regimes. They are confusing the legitimacy of the grievances that helped the Iranian regime seize power with the aims of the regime once in place. This regime is, I fear, a tiger not a kitten. Concessions and consideration don’t make it more moderate; they tell it that you fear it, tell it that its tactics of pressure and threats work, and encourage it to raise its demands.
Now fortunately the Iranian regime doesn’t command a great power the way the Nazis had Germany and Stalin had the Soviet Union. But Iran’s strategic location gives it a power to harm US interests and the international system far in excess of its power potential by more conventional measurements. (If Iran somehow switched places with Australia, we could and would pay a lot less attention to its goals; location, not intrinsic power, is what makes Iran a big deal.) I don’t think we can ignore this regime and unless it substantially scales back its ambitions I don’t see how we can coexist with it peacefully much longer.
President Obama is going to have a tough time with this one. His current policy of seeking sanctions while gathering international support is less a policy than a way of marking time. There is no clear and obvious way forward, and Iran is doing everything it can (with Hamas, with Turkish and Brazilian diplomacy, with anything else it can gin up) to muddy the waters and throw the US off-track. As President Obama and Secretary Clinton try to make the agonizing decisions that almost inevitably lie ahead, I’m afraid the appeasers will be back. We can neither threaten Iran now nor seek regime change, they will say. It’s all our fault anyway because we outraged Iranian nationalism by our thoughtless acts in the past. If we can simply understand Iran’s legitimate concerns and give it what it rightfully wants then it will calm down. After all, it is only aggressive and hostile because the poor dears feel so threatened.
These arguments have led to millions of deaths and launched world wars in the past. Neither President Obama nor anybody else should listen to them this time unless those who make them show that they are aware of the disastrous results of this counsel in the former times and have prepared detailed and convincing arguments about why this time is different — and why this particular tiger is really a kitten who just needs to be loved.
Walter Russell Mead
As the Security Council prepares to vote the next round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, I’m thinking of some old debates about how to handle difficult regimes. The thoughts aren’t consoling; too many voices in the debate over Iran hearken back to some of the worst ideas in American and European history.
Of all the mass murderers, genocidaires and enablers of the twentieth century, one group of collaborators does not get its fair share of condemnation and moral loathing. Unfortunately Americans have never really come to terms with the terrible things they did, we have never really named and shamed them, and we have never diagnosed and exposed the bad ideas that led to some of America’s most fateful and costly blunders. Until we do, our society is at risk of repeating these errors.
The people I have in mind are the ‘goo-goo genocidaires,’ the willfully blind reformers, civil society activists, clergy, students and others whose foolishness and ignorance was a necessary condition for tens of millions of deaths in the last hundred years. Unreflective, self-righteous ‘activists’ thought that to espouse peace was the same thing as to create or safeguard it. As a result, tens of millions died. Unless this kind of thinking is exposed and repudiated, it is likely to lead to as many or more deaths in the 21st.
We all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; this turns out to be particularly true when it comes to the road to foreign policy hell. Over the years good people or at least people who wanted to be good or thought they were, motivated by what seemed to them to be the highest of motives, have taken political stands and made policy proposals that helped mass murderers gain power in their own countries and launch themselves on international careers of conquest and mayhem. At other times, fortunately, they’ve failed to change policy; still, they wasted a lot of people’s time and made life significantly more difficult for those whose plans to help the world ultimately worked.
Paving the Road To Hell
The most notorious example is the peace movement of the 1920s and 1930s. This movement enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of college professors, idealistic students, respected journalists, the union movement, and the mainline clergy. If you didn’t join in, you were criticized as a warmonger, a throwback, someone lacking the broad social vision and high sense of ideals that modern times required.
It was an understandable error. A mass civil society movement of earnest reformers, veterans scarred by their experiences in the trench warfare of World War One and determined that their sons should be spared this experience, students wanting a to build a better world, and intellectuals convinced that there had to be a better way did everything in their power to keep the United States and the western democracies out of war. They failed; instead they disarmed the West, left China defenseless against Japan, and prepared the way both for Hitler’s domination of Europe and Stalin’s imposition of the Iron Curtain.
The American peace and disarmament movement almost destroyed human freedom. The peace movement gave intellectual and moral respectability to the cause of isolationism: the belief that the United States could safely ignore the unraveling of the world’s fragile economic and political order as British power waned after World War I. But these idealistic professors, students, preachers and general all-around-good-guys were naive, self-righteous, and smugly sure that arms cause war.
Armed with a set of wrong headed prejudices (they called them ‘convictions’ and ‘ideals) that made it impossible for them to recognize deadly dangers staring them right in the face, they minimized the difference between imperfect friends (like then-imperialist Britain and France) and flamingly wicked mass murdering thugs (like Stalin, Hitler and the militaristic governments of Japan). Worse, they used all their considerable intelligence, power and media access to prevent Franklin Roosevelt from taking effective action to support the western democracies and China until it was far too late to prevent World War Two, and almost too late to win it. Even then, because the pathetically and self-righteously foolish and irresponsible ‘peace activists’ of the 1930s let the Axis get so far, we could only beat Hitler with Stalin’s help; the oppression of central Europe and the Cold War were the fault of the clergy, professors and civil society activists of the 1930s as well.
When ‘Understanding’ Becomes Collaboration
Worse, some of the ‘good guys’ sympathized with and made excuses for the bad. Germany was resentful and bitter, they said, because the Treaty of Versailles was unfair. Let Adolf Hitler have his ‘reasonable’ goals of reuniting ethnic Germans under one roof, and Germany would become a peaceful and satisfied country, a bulwark of European order. This sounds crazy now, but it was the conventional wisdom among the intelligentsia and literati (except for the Communists and their closest sympathizers) during the 1930s; this is why voices warning of war like Churchill were so isolated. War was so destructive, argued the false prophets of fake enlightenment, that only a madman would start one. And while Hitler was alarming, the apparatus of the German state was sane. There were moderate Nazis, with limited goals; given western forbearance, wise concessions and enough time, the moderates would edge the Nazi radicals out of power.
That was the standard refrain about Germany from 1933 through 1939 and at every crisis or turning point academics and journalists stepped forward to plead for patience and to predict an imminent triumph of the ‘moderate’ Nazis over the ‘radicals’. In the meantime, anti-Nazi rhetoric and boycotts in the West only empowered Hitler and united German opinion behind him. Give him the Saar, Austria, yes and the Sudetenland: sooner or later he would calm down and the world would be at peace. When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich proclaiming that simply by giving Hitler the Sudentenland (the then-German speaking part of Czechoslovakia that happened to include the country’s mountainous border areas and natural defenses) he had won “peace in our time”, nobody was happier than the fatheaded peace clergy — unless it was the enlightened class of journalists and professors who set the tone for upper middle class enlightenment at the time.
It was the same thing with Stalin. Half of the peace movement was in love with Communism; the other half thought that poor Stalin had no choice but to be brutal and tough because he was surrounded by hostile states. Recognize Stalin, trade with him, stop calling him nasty names. Treat him with dignity and respect, they said, and everything will work out for the best. There had been plenty of sympathy for Stalin in the West during the thirties — even as he was carrying out mass murder on a scale that poor Pol Pot could only envy, Stalin never lacked for apologists and defenders among the chattering classes in those countries where they were still permitted to chat.
Understand and sympathize with their legitimate aspirations: that, the professors and preachers constantly told everyone else, was the sophisticated, modern and enlightened way to deal with these problems. Before the war it was the poor Germans, so shabbily treated by the Treaty of Versailles that Hitler represented a necessary phase of Germany’s search for self-respect. Before and after World War Two they said it about Stalin: communism was simply payback for the excesses and crimes of capitalist greed. Yes, they sometimes went too far: but surely that was ‘our’ fault for having permitted these terrible conditions to occur in the first place.
They weren’t completely wrong. The social upheavals and injustice of early industrialization did create sympathy for communism and popular anger; German suffering after World War One was a necessary (though not a sufficient) condition for the rise of Hitler. But what the earnestly intellectual and empathetic goo-goo genocidaires missed was the character of the political movements that had come to power on the basis of these feelings. Hitler and Stalin weren’t interested in justice; the parties they led were more like barbarian hordes organized for plunder than like groups of good folks who, once their legitimate grievances were addressed, would peaceably disassemble and go home. Addressing German grievances and working class poverty would have been very wise steps before Hitler and Stalin seized power; once they got in, the situation changed.
Fortunately the destructive doves weren’t able to fool FDR about the Nazis. “You can’t turn a tiger into a kitten by stroking it,” he once said — but the pious nincompoops and delusional intellectuals were persuasive enough here and abroad so that France, Britain and the United States were unable to step while Hitler was still weak and prevent World War Two by enforcing the peace. After the war, the chorus of goo-goo appeasers switched focus to trying to stop Truman and the West from opposing the spread of Stalin-dominated Communism in a war-devastated Europe. Poor, timid Stalin, said liberal Christian writers in magazines like Christian Century and their political leaders like Henry Wallace, has been so intimidated by American aggressiveness that he had no choice but to clamp down in Eastern Europe. The Marshall Plan wasn’t just attacked by isolationist nutballs on the right; it was attacked viciously and venomously by the so-called ‘peace’ movement and the Progressive Party.
If the Nazis and the Communists between them didn’t overrun the whole world in the terrible 1940s, it was not because the international peace movement didn’t do everything in its power to leave the democracies trembling and helpless before the totalitarian threat. Had these people wised up and supported moderate programs of rearmament in the early 1930s and insisted that the western democracies take a stand against Hitler early on, there would have been no Nuremberg Laws, no Holocaust, no mass terror bombings of European cities, no Stalinist occupation of central Europe — and no Cold War.
Morally of course this was nowhere near as bad as what the Nazis and Communists did. The peaceniks didn’t will the slaughter of millions of innocent people: out of ignorance and conceit they merely created the conditions which let it happen. But while the peace movement wasn’t as evil as the dictators, the dictators could never have achieved their goals without their sanctimonious and timorous enablers in the western world.
Name and Shame
These days we are pretty good at pillorying the bad guys in America’s history: Tories, slave owners, segregationists, opponents of womens’ right to vote all get nailed in our textbooks. But somehow the creeps and frauds of the peace movement get a free pass. “We are the folk song army,” the satirist Tom Lehrer once wrote, mocking the moral pretensions of ‘peace activists’; “Every one of us cares. We’re all against poverty, war and injustice — unlike the rest of you squares.”
It is just not true, historically speaking, that ‘peace movements’ lead to peace or, for that matter, support policies that will bring peace. More often than not, the opposite is true. Winston Churchill was a grizzled old British imperialist of the worst kind, but if Britain had listened to him instead of to its peace campaigners in the 1930s there most likely would never have been either a World War Two or Cold War. We can be very grateful that Ronald Reagan and the NATO leadership turned a deaf ear to the nuclear freeze movement; had those besotted idealists had their way the Soviet Union and the Cold War might be still with us today — along with nuclear arsenals much larger and much more dangerous than anything the US and Russia now have.
Not so long ago we had a word in our society for tiger-strokers: people who thought that if you soothed the savage passions of irrational dictators by treating them with respect and giving them treats then the dictators would become less dangerous.
We called them ‘appeasers’.
It’s a good word, and we could use it today.
I don’t say that reaching out to our enemies is always wrong. There are times when making a good deal with bad guys is the best you can do. Nixon’s opening to China came when that country was still in the throes of the violent and lawless Cultural Revolution. Opening the hot line to the Soviet Union so that the US president and the Soviet premier had a better chance of stopping an accidental nuclear war was also a good idea.
I think it was a good move on President Obama’s part to see if something couldn’t be done to improve relations with Russia — and with Iran. Now, after almost a year and a half, it’s become clear that Russia has responded, a little, while Iran has responded with new threats, new lies, and new shipments of weapons throughout the Middle East.
Broadly speaking, those who want to play “Let’s Make A Deal” with nasty foreign dictators aren’t always wrong. Some dictators like Franco just want to be left alone; others have a need to keep pushing. It’s a legitimate argument and subject for discussion about whether the Iranians are jerks like Franco who will settle down to peacefully hang homosexuals and torture dissidents at home if left to themselves or whether they are megalomaniacal nutcases who will interpret our forbearance as weakness — if we let them have Czechoslovakia they will start reaching for Poland.
Will Power Make Them Nice?
Maybe this is a sign of my entire unfitness to write about foreign policy, but it’s not easy for me to see why a nuclear Iran would be less pushy and demanding than what we have now. If the mullocracy is arming terrorists, interfering with neighbors, inflaming the Middle East and making intercontinental nuclear deals with the bad guys when Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, what makes us think that becoming less vulnerable to American countermeasures would make the Iranians settle down into responsible world citizens? If they blow off our threats and respond with contempt to our overtures when they are weak, why would they treat us with more respect as a nuclear power? Won’t getting nuclear weapons over our objections prove internally that the radicals were right while the moderates were vacillating, cowardly and wrong? And if we are unwilling to stand up to them effectively when they don’t have nuclear weapons, who on Planet Earth will think we will rediscover our backbones when they do?
Those who think we can reach a ‘grand bargain’ with Iran that would either stop the nuclear program or enable us to coexist peacefully with a nuclear Iran are, I fear, making the same failure that the 1930s and 1940s peace campaigners made about the Nazi and Soviet regimes. They are confusing the legitimacy of the grievances that helped the Iranian regime seize power with the aims of the regime once in place. This regime is, I fear, a tiger not a kitten. Concessions and consideration don’t make it more moderate; they tell it that you fear it, tell it that its tactics of pressure and threats work, and encourage it to raise its demands.
Now fortunately the Iranian regime doesn’t command a great power the way the Nazis had Germany and Stalin had the Soviet Union. But Iran’s strategic location gives it a power to harm US interests and the international system far in excess of its power potential by more conventional measurements. (If Iran somehow switched places with Australia, we could and would pay a lot less attention to its goals; location, not intrinsic power, is what makes Iran a big deal.) I don’t think we can ignore this regime and unless it substantially scales back its ambitions I don’t see how we can coexist with it peacefully much longer.
President Obama is going to have a tough time with this one. His current policy of seeking sanctions while gathering international support is less a policy than a way of marking time. There is no clear and obvious way forward, and Iran is doing everything it can (with Hamas, with Turkish and Brazilian diplomacy, with anything else it can gin up) to muddy the waters and throw the US off-track. As President Obama and Secretary Clinton try to make the agonizing decisions that almost inevitably lie ahead, I’m afraid the appeasers will be back. We can neither threaten Iran now nor seek regime change, they will say. It’s all our fault anyway because we outraged Iranian nationalism by our thoughtless acts in the past. If we can simply understand Iran’s legitimate concerns and give it what it rightfully wants then it will calm down. After all, it is only aggressive and hostile because the poor dears feel so threatened.
These arguments have led to millions of deaths and launched world wars in the past. Neither President Obama nor anybody else should listen to them this time unless those who make them show that they are aware of the disastrous results of this counsel in the former times and have prepared detailed and convincing arguments about why this time is different — and why this particular tiger is really a kitten who just needs to be loved.
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