The American Conservative

(originally published at Antiwar.com)

CORRECTIONS BELOW*

Contrary to what some outsiders might believe, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference is not a big happy tent for conservatives. Rather, think of the vaunted “CPAC” as a veritable planet of partisan uniformity, to which its predominantly college-age participants instinctively flock each year, their behavior, language and dress code all working off the same operating system they would be the first to proudly brand, Reagan 4.0.

Take gay Republicans. In year’s past, the gay rights group GOProud was a sponsor and had a booth and a tolerated, albeit strained, presence in the conversation. The American Conservative Union, which built CPAC over its 39-year existence, took GOProud’s sponsor fees gladly, as part of the full spectrum of Republican interests within the movement. But when the whining in the hive hit media saturation point last year, the ACU responded by shoving GOProud back into the closet, disinviting the group for the 2012 confab. No more debate about whether free speech and equality means gay Republicans at CPAC anymore. Door closed.

A lot of folks would like to see the same fate for the anti-interventionist strain of their conservative kin at CPAC. Especially those who can’t seem to get their heads or their backsides out of 2001. For them, the recession is just another justification to armor-up and keep the war machine humming forever, not to mention rattling the sabers at Iran and Syria and against what one CPAC panelist called an “Iranian Revolution 2.0” across the Arab world.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, the same think tank that has hosted hawks Richard Perle, Fred and Kimberly Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Rubin, Danielle Pletka and Bill Kristol, spent her opening remarks on a CPAC panel whining that there were conservatives in their midst who actually want to cut defense spending. The horror!

“If there was a liberal political action conference — let’s just call it ‘LPAC’ — I doubt there would be a panel discussing ‘Social Security cuts, bad or good for America,’” Mackenzie lamented, referring to the faint beat of dissent among the war drums at this year’s CPAC (that’s exactly five panels and/or speakers sponsored by the Committee for the Republic about reining in spending and intervention, out of the nearly 200 other events scheduled at the three-day conference.)

“We’re at war with ourselves on this issue,” she charged. “It’s one thing we need to be aware about as a family — a family of conservatives,” she added portentously, as though it were time for some Corleone-style tough love against their wayward kin, presumably those who read The American Conservative and Antiwar.com and support Ron Paul and just plain don’t “get it.”

According to a source who has his ear to the ground on these matters, CPAC organizers felt their social conservative base had been losing control over the conference in recent years (read: gays and Ron Paulites). They may have had a point — with the infusion of hundreds if not thousands of students bused-in by* supporting Campaign for Liberty and other libertarian groups, Ron Paul not only won the much-anticipated straw poll in 2010 and 2011, but last year his supporters were able to boo, shout, heckle and rattle both Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld as they took the main stage together. It was an unprecedented moment, taking place a day before Paul made a rousing speech, where he called for an end to overseas interventions.

This year, Paul came in fourth in the straw poll. Campaign for Liberty was noticeably absent, their usual full-of-hipster-swag presence leaving a huge gap in the libertarian element that kicked up all the dust in recent years. Seems they wanted to pour all their energies into Paul’s primary campaign* (a Campaign for Liberty reader tells us it did not skip CPAC to support the Paul campaign, but to put “all its resources into federal and state legislative fights and educational efforts, as well as to plan for the next LPAC”). Paul, who has not won a primary so far, skipped, too, citing his busy travel schedule, though the campaign trail didn’t stop the other Republican hopefuls still left from speaking at CPAC on Friday. Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, Paul’s son, delivered remarks on Thursday, but he generally kept away from defense issues and instead focused on supplying the usual anti-Obama red meat.

So what was left? One could say a very unsophisticated, if not completely hackneyed, supercilious approach to foreign policy and national security harkening back to the old post-9/11 days. Here the muscular meets the fear-mongering, leaving little by the way of constructive conversation struggling for oxygen somewhere in everyone’s afterthoughts. Evidence of this could be seen in the straw poll, where national security issues were so low on voters’ priorities they barely registered.

I asked Christopher Lawton, a self-described Paul supporter, if he felt out-numbered this year in his non-interventionist views. He was manning a booth in the cavernous basement exhibit halls at CPAC (nearby, The American Conservative and Committee for the Republic bravely competed with rows and rows of slick corporate kiosks and tables draped by scrubbed-faced twentysomethings hawking military prowess and American exceptionalism). Read More…

Our War Party has been temporarily diverted from its clamor for war on Iran by the insurrection against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Estimates of the dead since the Syrian uprising began a year ago approach 6,000. And responsibility for the carnage is being laid at the feet of the president who succeeded his dictator-father Hafez al-Assad, who ruled from 1971 until his death in 2000.

Unlike Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak who buckled, broke and departed after three weeks of protests, Bashar is not going quietly.

And, predictably, with the death toll rising, those champions of world democratic revolution — John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham — have begun beating the drums for U.S. aid to a “Free Syrian Army.”

Last week, the three senators jointly declared:

“In Libya, the threat of imminent atrocities in Benghazi mobilized the world to act. Such atrocities are now a reality in Homs and other cities all across Syria. … We must consider … providing opposition groups inside Syria, both political and military, with better means to … defend themselves, and to fight back against Assad’s forces.”

“The end of Assad’s rule would … be a moral and humanitarian victory for the Syrian people” and “a strategic defeat for the Iranian regime.” Read More…

The New York Times strikes again.  In an article basically discussing the possible timing for attacking Iran Mark Landler and David Sanger  state that Washington wants to “give the latest sanctions a chance to inflict enough pain on the Iranian leadership to force it back to the negotiating table.”  In reality, it is the US that has been absent from the negotiating table, not Iran.  They then go on to give the Israeli position, i.e. to attack soon, some credibility due to that nation’s proximity to Iran, describing the Jewish state as “a neighbor whose very existence the leaders in Tehran have pledged to eradicate.”  One might well question Israel’s neighborliness given its nearly daily propensity to threaten to attack Iran, but one thing that actual speakers of Farsi agree on is that Iran has never actually pledged to “eradicate” or attack Israel.  In fact, Iran has attacked no one since the seventeenth century.

Today the President signed an executive order freezing all Iranian government assets held or traded in the U.S. This order is the latest in a series of sanctions that have been placed on Iran by the European community and the U.S. The new sanctions include blocks on the Iranian central bank. The move comes quickly after the President said that Israel and the U.S. were “in lockstep” regarding their policies on Iran. These sanctions are an unwise move that will serve only to encourage anti-western rhetoric in Iran, and will damage an already suffering Iranian economy.

The animosity between Iran and the west is escalating. The assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist (almost certainly carried out by Israeli intelligence), economic sanctions from Europe and the U.S., British and American Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, and unconfirmed reports that Israel will strike Iran as soon as April are all kindling to the neoconservatives’ fire.

What seems to be constantly overlooked is the fact that economic sanctions and assassinations will only unite a country that has a legitimate opposition. As has been noted here at TAC before, if there is one issue that will dilute the political opposition in Iran, it is foreign intervention. The backlash against a pre-emptive western strike against Iran would be severe enough without the economic hardship which our sanctions are placing on the country.

The President in his State of the Union said that no option was off the table in regards to Iran, and we should believe that he means what he says. It is a shame that the President who campaigned so heavily on the follies of the Iraq war is now engaging in eerily familiar rhetoric.

Image: Shutterstock/yui

After his fourth-place showing in Florida, Ron Paul, by then in Nevada, told supporters he had been advised by friends that he would do better if only he dumped his foreign policy views, which have been derided as isolationism.

Not going to do it, said Dr. Paul to cheers. And why should he?

Observing developments in U.S. foreign and defense policy, Paul’s views seem as far out in front of where America is heading as John McCain’s seem to belong to yesterday’s Bush-era bellicosity.

Consider. In December, the last U.S. troops left Iraq. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta now says that all U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan will end in 18 months.

The strategic outposts of empire are being abandoned.

The defense budget for 2013 is $525 billion, down $6 billion from 2012. The Army is to be cut by 75,000 troops; the Marine Corps by 20,000. Where Ronald Reagan sought a 600-ship Navy, the Navy will fall from 285 ships today to 250. U.S. combat aircraft are to be reduced by six fighter squadrons and 130 transport aircraft.

Republicans say this will reduce our ability to fight and win two land wars at once — say, in Iran and Korea. Undeniably true.

Why, then, is Ron Paul winning the argument? Read More…

Here’s a beauty.  “Iran…willing to attack on US soil, US intelligence report finds” screams a headline for an article on the front page of the Washington Post.

But para 3 begins “US officials said they have seen no intelligence to indicated that Iran is actively plotting attacks on US soil.”  The article then goes on to cite the alleged Iranian-Mexican drug dealer plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in Washington – which has been outside the government regarded almost universally as a fabrication – as evidence that “some Iranian officials…are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States…”

Yes indeed, the threat from Iran will be, like Matthew 26:11’s observation about the poor, always with us.

European foreign ministers have approved an oil embargo against Iran. The sanctions ban any new oil contracts with Iran, while existing contracts will be honored until July 1st. While this might seem like a good way to way to stall Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it will only serve to unite the Iranian people and worsen the already fragile diplomatic relations the west has with Iran.

The European Union currently buys a significant amount of oil from Iran, about 20% of total exports. Iran’s economy is already suffering, with rising house and food prices. In order to avoid a worsening economic situation, the Iranians will have to find other buyers for 20% of their oil exports. China, Japan, and India are already major buyers of Iranian oil, and it is possible that exports to these countries could increase. If this does happen some of Europe’s major economic competitors will be benefiting from the sanctions while the negative effect on Iran’s economy will be minimized. This is the best outcome. Read More…

Is supporting war more important for evangelicals than their social values? Isn’t Ron Paul a social conservative? He opposes abortion, gay marriage and promiscuous sex, he has never been divorced and certainly supports family values, but he believes in limited government. Two of his brothers are ministers. Why then are evangelical leaders now opting for Santorum, and before him Gingrich? The one big area of disagreement with Ron Paul is war; foreign wars and the domestic one against drugs. For this they oppose him. Santorum supports unending war in Afghanistan, backing Israel without limit and a new war against Iran.

Earlier there was a major far leftist candidate who supported all the issues that evangelicals oppose, and was a vocal proponent for expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank and promoting the war on Iraq. He was overjoyed when open homosexuality became allowed in the military, he supports abortion, gay marriage and the leftist agenda for big, intrusive government; power to labor unions as well as expanded, unconstitutional police powers within the U.S. Evangelicals adore him and went all out to support him 2006, when he lost his primary race and ran as an independent for the Senate. He is Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

All this shows how evangelical leaders put support for wars ahead of their social values. Their support includes every new law giving Washington ever greater police powers over American citizens, such as the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act and the recent National Defense Authorization Act which tear asunder much of the Bill of Rights. Most also supported torture of prisoners of war (with the notable exception of Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship).  All this comes with their “social values.” Read More…

In the wake of the killing of four of its soldiers by an Afghan soldier, France has suspended all military operations in Afghanistan.

Today’s New York Times features an article entitled “Afghan Soldiers Step Up Killing of Allied Forces” that begins “American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report obtained by The New York Times. A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other…”

How can anyone read the above and still maintain that there is a good reason for staying in Afghanistan?  Who wants to be the last family in America to lose a son or daughter fighting in such a cause?  Cut a deal with the Taliban and get out.

 

At the most recent Fox debate Romney distanced himself from one of his former key foreign policy advisors, Mitchell Reiss, by denying that the Taliban should have a stake in peace negotiations in Afghanistan. “We should not negotiate with the Taliban,” he said, “we should defeat the Taliban.” Since the Afghan security forces would be unlikely to defeat them on their own, Romney is effectively endorsing the long-term deployment of troops in Afghanistan to defeat an enemy that is (or some of its factions are, at least) seeking a peace settlement.

For what it’s worth, the Karzai government supports the Taliban office’s opening in Qatar, and recognizes that any settlement will have to include them. On his blog at Foreign Policy, Reiss offered a rational, qualified endorsement of the negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban:

The United States still needs to determine: (1) whether the Taliban officials sitting across the negotiating table represent themselves, a small faction, or a broader constituency, (2) whether they have the authority to impose any agreement on the mujahedeen in the field, and (3) whether they have a genuine interest in a permanent halt to the conflict on terms that are agreeable to the United States and its Afghan partner (e.g., renouncing ties to al Qaeda, laying down their weapons and supporting the Afghan constitution).

Ben Smith points to Romney’s remarks and his recent endorsement by John Bolton as evidence of Romney’s shift from the “GOP’s Condoleezza Rice wing to its Dick Cheney wing.” He continues:

… people familiar with Romney’s circle of foreign policy advisers said [Reiss] has for months been a target from other, more conservative advisers — from Senor to allies of Bolton — who saw him as a bit soft on key issues of national defense.

It was, though, an attack from the left that led to Reiss’s quiet demotion from first among equals in 2008 to the status of one of many advisers this time: Salon reported that he had spoken out in support of the MEK, an anti-regime Iranian group viewed with suspicion by many but seen by some on the right as a valuable ally against Tehran. And while some of Romney’s other advisers might share his sympathies, his public speaking on behalf of the group represented an unacceptable breach of discipline for Romney’s tight inner circle.

First of all, it speaks volumes about the neoconservative policy elite that a person willing to work with a Islamist-collectivist cult known to have killed Americans for the purpose of destabilizing a foreign government is found to be “a bit soft.”

Significantly, back-benching Reiss isn’t a repudiation of the idea of U.S. cooperation with the MEK; at least two other advisors have advocated de-listing the group though Reiss has been the most vocal. Romney himself may have obliquely referred to the group at a debate appearance on November 12th when he said the United States should begin “working with” and “support[ing] insurgents within the country.” The presidential frontrunner has yet to explain which insurgents he’s talking about but there aren’t that many Iranian insurgent groups and the connection seems undeniable. So, to clarify, Romney is against negotiating with a quasi-governmental entity to end a 10-year war but in favor of working with terrorists to start a new one.