Backfire

Via Greg Djerejian, Robin Wright reports that "More than two dozen Iranian American and human rights groups have launched an appeal to Congress to reduce or eliminate new financial support of up to $75 million aimed at promoting democracy inside Iran." Predictably, the Bush administration's efforts to co-opt the Iranian democracy movement and fold it into the American right's bizarre geopolitical schemes has tended to backfire and displease actual Iranians and human rights advocates.

Comments

Hmm maybe because a lot of that money supposedly goes to communist, Arab, Kurdish, and Balochi rebels in Iran, many of whom are on the State Department's terror lists?

Posted by Wurd | October 12, 2007 11:08 PM

Possibly. Certainly a fair amount of "black budget" money is likely going to anti-Iranian insurgent groups. Difficult to say if any of the "pro-democracy" money is going there - that would seem to be easier to track if it was - and that could backfire - if the neocons actually care about that.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 13, 2007 12:38 AM

If you don't know who Joseph Ralston is, then George Bush is likely very, very happy. Because Joseph Ralston is the former NATO Supreme Commander who was supposed to prevent America's exploding crisis with Turkey from happening.

Bush appointed the former NATO Supreme Commander Ralston to be his special mediator working with Turkish, Iraqi, US and Kurdish authorities to end PKK incursions into Iraq in May, 2006. . Ralston is retired and works for a high-powered firm that includes former Clinton defense officials. Ralston didn't make a dent in ending PKK terror in Iraq and Turkey. Seems General Ralston did sell a lot of Lockheed planes to Turkey about the same time.

Lockheed, of course, approached the Turkey sales job like professionals. Bush not so much...

How serious was Bush about ending the PKK threat? Not very.

According to some, the process had been doomed right from the beginning. Assuming his job last year Ralston, who lives in the distant Alaska state, had no constant office or staff directly reporting to him. In his part-time job, he had been working on an on-and-off basis with State Department and Pentagon officials who were already dealing with Turkish matters.

Ralston lasted longer than his Turkish counter-part

Oct 11, 2207
Ralston and his Turkish counterpart, retired General Edip Başer, met several times between last fall and March this year in an effort to develop an anti-PKK strategy of tripartite cooperation among Turkey, Iraq and the United States, but this mechanism has never become effective, causing frustration in Ankara.

The Ankara government fired Başer in May after he vocally expressed his frustration and replaced him with senior diplomat Rafet Akgünay. But Ralston and Akgünay never met face to face.

In his last public appearance in Washington in early July Ralston said he would resume his work after the Turkish general elections on July 22, but this did not happen.

Sources here said that Ralston had failed in his efforts to urge the Washington administration to apply larger pressure on Iraqi Kurds who control northern Iraq to take measures against the PKK.

Top Turkish military officials and diplomats in on-the-record remarks have accused Iraqi Kurds of providing the PKK with shelter, arms and logistics.

Fox buried the Ralston resignation story in a corner of a bigger article. Confronted by questions about Ralston State tried to pretend as recently as October 3rd that Ralston was still on the job.

Finally after much digging the real story emerges:

The United States, which considers the PKK a terrorist organization, has said repeatedly that it wants to help Ankara and Baghdad, as well as the Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq, to solve the problem.

The Bush administration appointed a special envoy to deal with the matter a little more than a year ago. But the envoy, retired Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, resigned last month, frustrated with the Iraqis' lack of will to act against the PKK. Colleagues say he was also troubled by Washington's reluctance to put more pressure on the Iraqis — especially the Kurdistan government, which is privately sympathetic to the PKK's goal of an independent Kurdish state.

"The argument that we have [too many] troubles in Iraq for our forces to start fighting the PKK is a valid one, but we don't have to fight them," the former senior U.S. official said. "We can help the government arrest people."

Why would Bush keep the PKK around?

...Washington has its own considerations in northern Iraq, where it has indirect links with Iranian Kurdish dissidents in the mountainous Iraq-Iran border area through the PKK. It would like to use the Iranian Kurds against the Tehran regime at the right time, and a Turkish operation in northern Iraq would seriously dent the alliance...

We do know Turkey isn't going to stand for it.

America's Top Negotiator with the Kurds, Turkey and the PKK quit working for Bush three months ago because he couldn't get his job done. Now the wheels are coming off. It's another story of greed and incompetence. No staff, no office, no support. Smoke and mirrors from Bushco. Ralston did, however, did secure an additional deal for Lockheed-Martin before walking away from the Bush mess.

We know Ralston wasn't the only unhappy military man working for Bush in Iraq. But the Ralston scandal is at the very center of the crisis. Nobody is saying squat.

Posted by kidneystones | October 13, 2007 6:48 AM