The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Iran

    By Flavius on Wed, 04/22/2015 - 12:56am |

    The Dagblog world has been essentially silent about the Laussane "agreement" and IMHO properly so. To some extent possibly because as always  the devil is in the details. But,perhaps even more,because in this case those of us who hang out here know that the remaining devil(s) may be lurking in the details that we don't know about because they haven't yet been agreed.

    Personally I've been waiting for one of the usual suspects :Friedman , Bruce or whomever to step up to the plate with an analysis  sufficiently comprehensive so that if I foolishly decide to respond I'm not open to the charge that there isn't any there, there.

    That, sufficiently comprehensive response has , now appered.The "May 5" edition of the New York Review of Books opens with "The New Deal"  by Jessica Mathews.which provides that "there". . So I could now applaud Ms. Matthews or criticize her.

    But I won't. I know that I'm simply not smart enough to take up the space to do that here at Dagblog.So I had decided I'd wait for one of the heavy guns to open up and then say "How could you?" or "Great Shot" as the case may be.

    One more or less stylistic comment.

    Mathews writes "  .......if other nations found America's reasons for rejecting a deal unreasonable support....would quickly erode......The question is whether (the opponents)  have diagnosed..fundamental weaknesses in the deal...or whether they are counting on both sides  walking away".....The fact that so many of them-emphatically including Netanyahu- trashed the  deal...........suggests that the insistence that the US "negotiate a better deal" is phony".

    Jessica : "emphatically" ? Hmn?. It makes no grammatical sense. You are the one who decided  to include Netanyahu among the list of opponents. If he was in your list he's in it. If out ,out. .There's no factual distinction between those who are just normally against the idea and others who are " emphatically" against it.

    A second reason. For most of those who opine about it,  Iran is an academic problem. An odd country far away. We try to get it right but if not "you win some , you lose some".

    For Netanyahu ,or any other leader of the Jewish State it's crucially important not to lose this one.Israel doesn't get a second chance if it get's this one wrong. Personally I can make a good case why he was wrong in this case. But I'm making it , in safety, from far away. For Netanyahu getting it wrong doesn't mean losing face. It means losing Tel Aviv.

     

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    Comments

    The gorilla in the room is that the Iranians have consistently shown they're not suicidal, that they don't ride their rhetoric to absurdity. Considering the number of countries - including us - who dash in, especially militarily, despite conditions being highly counter to our own best interest - I just find this minutia picking over Iran absurd. Our ally Saudi Arabia wiped out nearly 1000 in Yemen, but the dozens killed in Iran's election protests brought much more universal outrage. We pushed the rebels to try to overthrow the government in Syria, leading to huge additional deaths and inspiring the horrific ISIS uprising in the vacuum - guess we should recalculate our strategy - but we (at least the neocons, frequently the "adult" Democrats in the security scold side of the room) would rather double down, since we like losing at the blackjack table.*

    In light of our recent energy discussions, we should note: containment is an excellent strategy. The importance of the Mideast will only decrease, and we basically need 30 years before it's irrelevant and we can just leave it alone (i.e. "just leave").

    *Jim White at Emptywheel notes our amazement that ISIS can actually run successful training programs, since all our billions poured into Petraeus' shitty efforts in Iraq & Afghanistan came up a porker, or worse, counterproductive arms-to-rebels/green-on-blue killings. Seems the definition of "success" is even rather dumbed down, such as "know how to carry water & extra food to the desert". More and more we do seem to be exceptional, and I mean that in the Gomer Pyle sense.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 04/22/2015 - 7:35am

    It's a tough league. Maybe to win in it you have to have the extra incentive of knowing that losing is too horrible to contemplate. Or it has to be a total commitment like WWII. If Steve Jobs had  been in charge instead of Petraeus maybe we'd have been able to train "our" side as well as ISIS.  


    by Flavius on Wed, 04/22/2015 - 7:49am

    That's too forgiving of Bush & Petraeus and the rest of the Keystone Kops. These guys wanted to lose, they wanted to make a mess of Iraq, they wanted to show that "government doesn't work", especially when that government is providing services for others, and they wanted to quickly strip all of Iraq's resources and sign long-term contracts for them so they could never get them back and their corporate & well-connected buddies would be set for life. The pallet-loads of missing cash were just to add insult to injury.

    You don't need a Steve Jobs or other organizational genius. You need people to just follow normal rules and have a reasonable desire to succeed rather than pass on kleptomaniac / cronyist rifling of the whole occupied zone. You can even drown Democracy in a bathtub if you hold it at gunpoint and shove its head under water for 20 minutes - don't even have to do that shrinking diet that Norquist keeps talking about. We elected a monster, and we foisted it on the Mideast especially. And we'll pay the rewards of this crime for years to come - especially if we don't digest the lessons it should have taught us.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 04/22/2015 - 11:01am

    What you said.

    You don't think his paintings in any way redeem the monster? Or were you referring to his side kick?


    by Oxy Mora on Wed, 04/22/2015 - 2:26pm

    "A chimp walks into a bar with a 7 foot hunchback Albino in tow..." - tell me how this joke ends

    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 12:32am

    The bartender says, "My lucky day...I've already had an escapee from Bellevue, two Jehovah Witnesses and now the U.S. government."

    Right, says Cheney, "Two beers".

    "You guys just taking a break?", asks the bartender.

     

     

     


    by Oxy Mora on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 10:32am

    "two beers" says Cheney.  "and for the chimp?" asks the bartender. "he don't drink", says the gimp, "he just come here cause ain't got nothin else ta do - his ol' man stuck me with him". "in that case, I"m gonna have to ask you two to leave". "No can do", says Cheney with a scowl - "only pussy ass liberals come in with an exit plan - me I intend to stay here till my barstool sinks into the floor". And that's exactly what he did.

    Oh, the punch line? There wasn't one. Funny, eh? "Tell me 'bout the rabbits, Dick - tell me 'bout the rabbits". "well you see, George, one day we'll invade Iraq and we'll live off the fatta da land." "and the oil wells? I get to tend the oil wells?" "that's right, George - you'll be the biggest wildcatter in teh Mideast." "Oh boy, Dick, won't Poppy be proud?" "sure, kid, sure." ('proud as long as you don't shoot yourself in the 9's", mutters to himself, and takes a whiff of the spittoon just for spite)

     


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 04/24/2015 - 9:24am

    "Monster" seems too  strong.  Cleatrly W was an incompetent president. A good example of someone  "often wrong but never in doubt". At least that was how he appeared.. Maybe he was actually much better. Whatever. The results were abysmal whatever his personal qualities..


    by Flavius on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 8:23am

    To my astonishment I find myself again agreeing with PP. {I'm sure it's because he's been reading my posts and I've brought him around.}  Iran may be a supporter of terrorism, they may even support suicide bombers. But the country is run by people who decided to not put on a suicide vest.

    Let's not forget that this is not America's deal with Iran. There are several countries involved. America is constrained not just by what Iran will agree to but what the other countries will insist or not insist be included. In some articles I've read so called "reliable sources" claim France has actually been the hardest negotiator against Iran in crafting this deal. If the other countries decided this was the best deal that they could get what happens to the sanctions if America rejects it? The sanctions only work if most of the world powers agree to enact them.

    And yeah, sorry Israel, but you only have yourself to blame. When you decided to stockpile nuclear weapons it was inevitable that sooner or later one or more of your opponents would get them too. You could have relied on the American nuclear shield but you chose to start an arms race. If you want to be a bit player in the game of mutually assured destruction by pointing bombs out the "mutually" part of the equation is bombs pointed in, at Tel Aviv for example.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 2:02am

    I disagree that Israel could have relied on the American nuclear shield..

    The holocaust taught them that that doesn't work.

    I disagree with Israel's settlement  policies but not with its belief that at the end of the day it can't permit its existence to  depend upon whom the US voters happen to choose.  


    by Flavius on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 9:20pm

    I have faith that the Jewish people will learn to balance paranoia with sane defense. Perhaps not in our lifetime. I do disagree that they can rely on American nukes or more it's fickle pandering political system (which at the moment favore them but tomorrow who knows), but then they should be able to figure out after 2 decades they're being sold a bill of goods on Iran. But yeah, I'm studying up on OceanKat - the nuke proposition has been way overrated for a long time.

    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 12:15pm

    I don't know whether this deal will work out or not, and I think if people are honest, they will admit that they don't know either.


    by Aaron Carine on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 11:22am

    Yes, no one knows. We can all make our guess. My guess will always be that eventually it will turn out that the game isn't Who Gets There First Wins but Mutually Assured Destruction. India discovered that when Pakistan eventually got the bomb. Israel will eventually discover the same thing sooner or later.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 04/23/2015 - 5:15pm

    Depends on the definition of "work". My guess is that there will be a deal probably not by July1. And will last for at least a couple of years. After that depends on whatever., in particular whatever Netanyahu decides to do.


    by Flavius on Fri, 04/24/2015 - 10:37pm