Zbig Speak, You Listen

Some very smart stuff about Iraq from Zbigniew Brzezinski a man who's not without his flaws, but whose Iraq advice we certainly should have taken in 2002-2003 then again in most every single one of the intervening years. A couple of key points:

The contrast between the Democratic argument for ending the war and the Republican argument for continuing is sharp and dramatic. The case for terminating the war is based on its prohibitive and tangible costs, while the case for "staying the course" draws heavily on shadowy fears of the unknown and relies on worst-case scenarios. President Bush's and Sen. John McCain's forecasts of regional catastrophe are quite reminiscent of the predictions of "falling dominoes" that were used to justify continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Neither has provided any real evidence that ending the war would mean disaster, but their fear-mongering makes prolonging it easier.

I was thinking about this the other day as I found myself reading something about the tragic Lyndon Johnson administration. And it's really worth focusing on. The right has made a lot of hay out of the fact that some anti-war types to some extent understated the extent to which a North Vietnamese victory would be a humanitarian problem for many South Vietnamese people. Much less hay has been made out of the fact that the hawks had been quite literally arguing that there was a straight line between the Communistification of Vietnam and then the inevitable spread of Communism to Malaysia, Indonesia, all of Asia, and soon enough the United States itself. The argument really was that we had to fact them over there or else we'd be fending them off from our very shores.

And it was ridiculous and remains so today. And yet the essence of the case for staying in Iraq indefinitely really does hinge crucially on these lurid worst-case scenarios. And it's true -- if we leave Iraq in the most irresponsible manner possible and we suffer from a lot of bad luck and everything that could go wrong does go wrong and we don't respond to events intelligently, then these terrible outcomes might happen. But that's no reason to stay in Iraq forever -- if we stay and everything goes wrong, that'll be terrible, too.

Now as Zbig says, a serious effort to get out of Iraq is going to require a political and diplomatic component as well as the mere absence of U.S. troops. One of the good things about the Responsible Plan for Iraq from Darcy Burner and other House challengers is precisely its recommendation of the need for this kind of diplomatic engagement, which really is crucial to trying to minimize the inevitable fallout from the United States doing what needs to be done in military terms. I would note that on the diplomatic front, it's probably easier to get Iraq's neighbors to contribute constructively to stability in Iraq once we've decisively decided not to run together "stability in Iraq" with "Iraq becomes base for U.S. power projection and mad schemes to overthrow all the governments in the region."

Comments

Nonsense on stilts.

First and most obviously, Iraq is not South Vietnam. The latter was a poor, mostly illiterate country of forested mountains with no particular natural resources, no really significant strategic importance, no legitimate government, and the only UN Resolutions in place were being violated by us. We killed about 4 million people there, including nearly 60,000 GI's, with no remotely plausible vital national interests at stake beyond the ones we damaged by losing the war.

Iraq, on the other hand, became the first test of a post-Cold War international security architecture, and was in defiance of seventeen (17) Chapter VII Security Council Resolutions; it is the key state in the region producing most of the oil and most of the terrorism; it's immediate neighbors are perhaps the world's most strategically important and sensitive at the moment; the Persian Gulf is the world's most important trade route, and etc.

Moreover, Iraq has the most representative and legitimate government in the Arab world, and this government has requested our assistance in overcoming various factions trying to shoot their way into power. This government was elected at great personal risk by many, many Iraqis to whom we owe a significant obligation to leave the place better than we found it.

Posted by robert powell | March 29, 2008 7:23 AM

Well said Matt.

Unlike robert powell's assertions, Iraq produces virtually no terrorism at all (exportable), is questionable about representative and is definitely not the most legitimate government in the Arab world, has nothing to do with the post-Cold War international security structure, and becomes of immense importance regarding the oil situation if we get out of there in a responsible way.

Only when we get out is there really a chance for some peace and stabilty in the region. However, there is a chance for it all to blow up, but unlike the predictions of McCain and most of the right, there is as much of a chance, if handled competently, a word the right is unfamiliar with, that our leaving will actually benefit all concerned.

When we invaded Iraq, we removed the biggest factor in creating stability in the ME and we still don't know what to do about it. Leaving responsibly, working with the entire region, can mean something.

Posted by john m | March 29, 2008 7:50 AM

Yeah, never mind that the Lebanese system is probably more democratic than Iraq's. Never mind that if the Iraqis held a popular referendum on our presence, just about everyone except the Kurds would want us gone. Never mind that turnout was low in Sunni areas in the first place. Never mind that the current PM isn't even the guy voted in in the first place. The propaganda matters more because it helps you keep your ego afloat.

What our presence does is 1) help inflame much of the anger in the first place and 2) end up with us just playing a bunch of people off each other and then switching sides in a game of shifting goal posts. We are backing right now the same side as Iran, who actually seem to be doing a better job stabilizing Iraq than us because they understand the country better than we do (wow, who would guess we probably now more about Canadian culture than the Iranians?) and have the loyalty of much of the leadership. Meanwhile, the most stable part of Iraq, Kurdistan, has under our watch been the base of operations for Kurdish separatist terrorists who have killed civilians in terrorist attacks in Turkey, which has led to Turkish strikes, which over the long-term we don't yet know the full consequences of.

We are as much a part of the problems as part of the solution. We are like a snake eating itself tail first to fend off starvation.

This post also seems to be a bit typo-laden even for MY. Is he drunk?

Posted by Reality Man | March 29, 2008 8:01 AM

1) I think it's a waste of time to take seriously Bush's Stated reasons for our 5 year occupation of Iraq -- because the man's a pathological liar.

2) re Iraq, it's about grabbing the oil. Just as South Vietnam was larging about buying time so we could extract the tungsten from that mine in Thailand --because our Cold War munitions industry desperately needed tungsten and Thailand was one of the few sources outside Commie China and Russia.

3)Why is it that no one in politics will inform the American people that the President is a bald-faced liar?

Posted by Don Williams | March 29, 2008 8:38 AM

1) Come to think of it, why does no one on the Left stand up and denounce Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck,etc? For using the public airwaves to run the functional equivalent of malign con games on US citizens.

2) Why does the right get away with having those deceitful, raving lunatics and the left says nothing?

3) This is the Democrats' biggest problem -- our public persona is that of being pathetic cowards.

4) The most our leaders do is put out awkward, carefully opaque little snarks that sound like the whispered, small aleck remarks that a bully's victim makes on the playground --after the bully has walked away beyond earshot.

Posted by Don Williams | March 29, 2008 8:48 AM

the most representative and legitimate government in the Arab world

Isn't that like being the world's tallest midget?

Posted by matt foley | March 29, 2008 9:29 AM

I would note that on the diplomatic front, it's probably easier to get Iraq's neighbors to contribute constructively to stability in Iraq once we've decisively decided not to run together "stability in Iraq" with "Iraq becomes base for U.S. power projection and mad schemes to overthrow all the governments in the region."

That's not the best way to describe what the US runs together.

The US runs together "stability in Iraq" with "a government in Iraq that does not pursue policies unacceptable to the US"

"Policies unacceptable to the US" is a set that includes a lot of things any reasonably representative government of Iraq would have no problem with.

Allow Iran to ground ship supplies to Syria? Iraq's people have no problem with that.

Allow technological goods to be smuggled or shipped across the border to Iran despite any current or future sanctions? Iraq's people have no problem with that.

Make nominal or significant contributions to Palestinian groups the US wants to isolate? Iraq's people have no problem with that.

Put its diplomatic weight against that of other US clients, for example by strongly condemning Israeli actions when Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are muted or preventing Syria's isolation in Arab forums? Iraq's people have no problem with that.

Hussein's government provided stability in Iraq. Iraq was not invaded to provide stability. A government of Iraqi nationalists would act more vigorously and effectively against US/Israeli regional preferences than Hussein did. So a government of Iraqi nationalists is to be prevented.

The current situation, where the US has been actively and continuously working to weaken Sadr politically in favor of less nationalist parties a) is necessary to prevent the type of Iraq the US does not want to see and b) requires a substantial amount of US troops because Iraqi troops for several reasons will not and cannot on their own reliably and effectively oppose Iraqi nationalists.

Agreeing with the larger point of the original post, a public US commitment to pull out is the same as a public US decision to tolerate an Iraqi nationalist government, and accept the resulting defeat in the project of producing a pro-US/Israel Iraq.

I'm very skeptical of the US' ability to pull out, and thereby to demonstrate that it will tolerate a relatively anti-US/Israel democracy in the region. If the US could tolerate that, there would be a lot more pressure on Egypt and Jordan.

When Olmert came to the US and said the US occupation of Iraq provides a great amount of regional stability, that's what he meant.

Are several hundred dead US troops a year plus a whole lot of money an acceptable exchange to the US for preventing Iraq from effectively joining Iran and Syria's anti-Zionist alliance? Olmert says it is, pulling out would be the US saying it isn't.

I have strong doubts that the US is capable of saying that.

Posted by Arnold Evans | March 29, 2008 9:36 AM

Well, you've certainly got the basic premise of the Vietnam War right.

And you've done as well for Islamophobe justification for "staying the course" in Iraq.

Now ask Zbig what he thinks of a US withdrawal from Korea, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East.

He'll tell you we have to stay there forever.

How come?

Either for somebody else's good or because any emerging conflicts there would really be directed at us here.

Globalismo presupposes lunatic altruism or world-wide paranoia.

Either we have to commit the neighbor's kids to die to save Estonia for the good of Estonians, or we have to claim that after the Russians gobble up Estonia they're coming for us.

If you reject both, then why are we still in NATO?

And why the heck are we pushing it always further East, into the faces of the Russians?

It was the architects of the Cold War who insisted on calling the containment line they drew around Russia and, later, China, the US's own defensive perimeter.

It was they who insisted a Communist attack on pretty much anybody, pretty much anywhere, was really an attack on the US or a step closer to it, and then came as close as they could to ensuring it would be so by allying ourselves with all those faraway potential targets of Communist aggression or conquest.

Now our vast, far-flung military establishment all around the world, the outer structure of the military industrial complex, needs a new raison d'etre.

Enter Osama and his Al-Qaeda players, dramatizing a whole new global and protracted conflict, exactly when one was needed.

Add Iranians ticked off at Zionists, Chinese lusting for Taiwan after 60 years of patience, and Russians made increasingly grumpy by our gratuitous provocations and soon the MIC will have all the enemnies it needs!

Posted by Gaius Gracchus | March 29, 2008 9:37 AM

Much less hay has been made out of the fact that the hawks had been quite literally arguing that there was a straight line between the Communistification of Vietnam and then the inevitable spread of Communism to Malaysia, Indonesia, all of Asia, and soon enough the United States itself.

Oh, please. Where does one obtain all that straw? And "soon enough to the US itself"? Uh huh. Did Matthew ever consider that we had strategic interests threatened by communism that ran beyond keeping our own country non-communist? I suppose not.

In any case, the theory ran that failure to fight the North Vietnamese would lead to other Southeast Asian countries turning communist. Luckily, countries like South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia proved that incorrect... oh, right.

But certainly, when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs, we should listen to the guy who got us into this whole mess in the first place. Riiiight. Maybe he's got some more hostages to give to Iran.

Posted by Al | March 29, 2008 9:53 AM

Re Brzezinski

But we are assured by Spencer Ackerman that Prof. Brzezinski is not a top adviser to Senator Obama. If true, then of what consequence is the good professors' advice since certainly the other two candidates aren't listening to him?

Posted by SLC | March 29, 2008 10:12 AM

Al: It was precisely by bombing and carpet bombing the Cambodians for nearly a decade that pushed the rural population into the hands of the lunatic fringe guerrilla Khmer Rouge. It was not by any 'lack' of fighting against either the North Vietnamese government nor the South Vietnamese civilians.

The Khmer Rouge takeover was, in fact, a direct by-product of the U.S. war there, and neither the President or the CIA or any screaming right wingers produced the slightest possible scenario by which the U.S. could have removed those maniacs once they achieved power.

So stop blaming the end of a U.S. war against North Vietnam and against South Vietnamese civilians for what was caused by that war.

Posted by El Cid | March 29, 2008 10:28 AM

Incidentally, it was those dreaded Vietnamese Communists who _ended_ the Cambodian genocide. It was they who struck probably the biggest single blow for human rights since the American, British and Soviet troops ended the Holocaust. They deserve a medal.

Posted by Hector | March 29, 2008 10:30 AM

As a preventive medication, this debate over the Cambodian genocide and the role of U.S. bombing has been explored in great detail on this blog before. Whatever your view of it, it is likely to have been fully represented (in Yglesias blog commentary form) on the thread back when Matt was talking about Pete Seeger being a 'hard core' Stalinist, and there's no reason to turn this entire thread into a repeat, no matter with whom you do or do not agree.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/07/pete_seeger_stalinist.php

Posted by El Cid | March 29, 2008 10:55 AM

I'm glad to see that Brzezinski is stating the obvious. Debating the detail about getting out of Iraq should, actually, have been the consequence of a strong, cohesive Democratic push last January to defund the war. We need a timetable, and we need to jettison our previous structure for dominating the Middle East, a cold war leftover. We can't dominate the Middle East any longer - that was a tacit pre9/11 truth, and now it is an overt one. We can cause infinite misery there, however, which will eventually redound on ourselves. So detente with Iran is essential; aid to Syria, which at the moment is demonstrating the stupidity of summing up states in one word (it is both a dictatorship and the most humanitarian country in the Middle East, as it hosts almost a million Iraqi refugees - a task that the U.S. would certainly not take on); withdrawal of the American proposals for disposing of Iraqi's main resource, oil, by carving out the main stream of profits for oil companies while using the side streams to bribe and debauch Iraqi politicians. Those are a pretty good start. Finally, the last thing we can do, which would actually be the best thing we can do for Iraq, is call for another conference to abolish Iraq's debts to Kuwait (which are absurd - Iraq should not pay another penny of war reparations) and to Saudi Arabia. Once these debts are taken off the table, all of them accrued under Saddam, Iraq has the capacity to borrow large sums for itself in the international markets to develop its oil industry, repair its infrastructure, etc. Far better for Iraq to do this itself than to rely on a corruption-hobbled process of American "aid", which aid is merely corporate welfare in disguise.

Posted by roger | March 29, 2008 10:57 AM

Al, don't embarass yourself by pretending to knowledge of history that you don't possess. do you honestly think that the current round of right-wingers were the first to come up with "we need to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here?"

otherwise, refer to El Cid and Hector.

meanwhile, it's almost unimaginable that at this late date people like robert powell are still talking about UN resolutions as the causus belli in iraq: that's where i stopped reading him.

as for matthew and history, i've been trying, for 10 minutes, to come up with who the "some" antiwar types were who "understated" the extent to which a north vietnamese victory would cause "humanitarian" problems in the south. i can't recall a single one.

the antiwar argument was precisely the same as matthew's current argument: the costs of the war in vietnam in no way are commensurate with any us national strategic gain. the issue in vietnam is essentially a post-colonial civil war issue and our backing a corrupt government in the south over the authoritarian patriots in the north is pointless. meanwhile, we are producing a humanitarian disaster through our extensive bombing of the north, use of defoliants, and the disaster that was our incursion into cambodia. we should leave and allow the vietnamese to settle this on their own terms.

there were new lefties who fetishized mao, so it's not like new lefties (which i'm using here as a proxy for the most extreme elements of the antiwar movement) were immune to overlooking humanitarian disasters but don't let the phony history the right wing has written of vietnam (the one that leads Al to embarass himself) convince you of crap.

Posted by howard | March 29, 2008 10:59 AM

Yeah, Zbig's always great!

And I'd feel much better about Saint Obama if he hadn't claimed that he'd barely ever met Zbig and had absolutely no real connection to him the moment some of the neocons started pressuring him on Zbig.

The difference is that Zbig has some backbone, but Obama has...speechifying...

I still bet that Matt ends up as a junior speechwriter to O'Hanlon in an Obama Administration, while Zbig and his friends are meanwhile consigned to the "outer darkness" in DC and we stay in Iraq until our economy collapses or we get kicked out.

Posted by RKU | March 29, 2008 11:00 AM

every conversation about U.S. strategy in Iraq should be prefaced with the statement "IRAQ IS NOT VIETNAM" in big bold letters. there is no cogent comparison. no matter where you stand on withdrawal, diplomacy, force levels, or anything else; that much at least is incontrovertible for anyone who understands the situation clearly.

we cannot, therefore, use our lessons in Vietnam as a cut and paste guide for the problem in Iraq (no matter how intellectually convenient that might be).

Posted by BA | March 29, 2008 11:02 AM

Re Al's comment "Where does one obtain all that straw? And "soon enough to the US itself"? Uh huh."
--------------
Yeah. But fortunately, we had George W Bush flying patrols in Texas to ward off Ho Chi Minh's massive air force.

Or should I say "one patrol"?

Fortunately , we had brave George W there to protect us.

Because the other 10,000 Air National Guard pilots had skipped out to the safe haven of Vietnam:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W_Bush#Childhood_to_mid-life

Posted by Don Williams | March 29, 2008 11:03 AM

"The argument really was that we had to fact them over there

We have to fact-check them over there, or we'll end up having to fact-check them over here!

The battle for spellchecking, it seems, is already lost. (Or more specifically, the battle for proofreading and against a hapless reliance on wp spellchecking . . .)

But at least no one dies when Matt makes a typo.

(Well, except possibly for a particularly passionate pedant or two with blood pressure problems . . .)

I assumed powell was a parody troll.

I mean, all that nonsense about mobile labs and such.

Oh, and robert powell, too.

"robert powell: Nonsense on stilts."

Hey, that sums it up pretty well!

Posted by Dan S. | March 29, 2008 11:45 AM

On March 29, 2008 at 10:59 AM, Howard wrote:

...the issue in vietnam is essentially a post-colonial civil war issue and our backing a corrupt government in the south over the authoritarian patriots in the north is pointless.

Not only did we back a corrupt government, we first created it out of whole cloth. On paper, actually, in the preamble to the 1954 SEATO Treaty—in direct contradiction of the statement we signed pledging to abide by the Geneva Peace Treaty negotiated the same year. We created an artificial construct called “South Vietnam,” then used the SEATO Treaty’s pledge of mutual defense to create binding commitments among the signatories to prop up said construct militarily. So much for being asked by the “South Vietnamese.” Essentially, we’ve done something very similar in Iraq. First we overthrew the existing government (murderously wretched as it was), then instituted national elections. The latter was a great and important thing, in the abstract, but preposterous in a country whose entire infrastructure had been destroyed and whose government, regardless of the election outcome, would necessarily be (and has been) utterly powerless without and therefore universally regarded as entirely dependent on U.S. military support. The utter haplessness of the al-Maliki regime has been demonstrated clearly by the current upsurge in violence in Iraq. Whether al-Maliki chose to inaugurate conflict with the forces of Muqtada Sadr or was pushed to do so by the U.S., the result on the ground has so far been largely in favor of Sadr’s forces and has necessitated involvement of U.S. forces in the fighting. This further reinforces the widespread sense that al-Maliki’s regime lacks legitimacy in the sense that his government lacks a monopoly of force. Once again, the U.S. has marched into a country of whose history and culture we are almost completely ignorant, simply pasted a government on top and declared it a democracy. At this point, it’s not clear that Iraq, an artificial construct created by Britain in the Sykes-Picot Treaty during WW I and held together by force ever since, is really a country at all.

But Robert Powell, the unavoidable Al, and John McCain are right—we’d better stay there forever. After all, if we denied ourselves the opportunity to get our troops blown up by suicide bombers and assorted other insurgents (while the Iraqis continued to fight each other amidst continued conniving for influence among the neighbors) for the next 100 years, SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAPPEN .

Btw, El Cid and Hector are right on point vis a vis the parade of horribles offered up by right wingers in favor of the argument that we should have stayed in Vietnam. But then logic and evidence never seem to influence the warmonger crowd, do they?

Posted by signSansSignified | March 29, 2008 12:03 PM

Al's got a point. Ever since South Vietnam, Cambodia, and the fearsome Laos went red, it's been apparent to every American that they and their nation's security has been greatly reduced.

And certainly our security has been improved now that Iran is a major influence in Iraq, and Iraq has become a training ground for terrorists.

Posted by Terrified | March 29, 2008 12:11 PM

Re roger

Yessir, that Syria is one humanitarian country. Just ask the folks in Hama, 20,000 of whom had their tickets canceled over a two day period by Basher Assads' old man in 1982.

Re RKU

The fact that an Israeli-bashing fucktard like Mr. RKU thinks so highly of Prof. Brzezinski certainly is a stirring endorsement.

Posted by SLC | March 29, 2008 12:14 PM

SLC,

You do realize that the people that Assad quashed at Hama were the Muslim Brotherhood, who would be if anything _more_ hostile towards Israel than Nasser or Assad.

Syria is certainly a decent country to be a religious minority in...better than most other countries in the region.

Posted by Hector | March 29, 2008 12:36 PM

as for matthew and history, i've been trying, for 10 minutes, to come up with who the "some" antiwar types were who "understated" the extent to which a north vietnamese victory would cause "humanitarian" problems in the south. i can't recall a single one.

*************************************************

Come now - can't recall the opinion of a recent presidential candidate:

MR. KERRY:I think that it's really kind of a baiting argument. There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw

John Kerry - June 30, 1971

Posted by Campesino | March 29, 2008 12:42 PM

The most salient parallel between Vietnam and Iraq is simply this: in both cases we acted based on massive ignorance of the part of the world we were dealing with.

In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh was not only a communist (which we knew) but a nationalist with a deep mistrust of the Chinese (whether communist or not). But we assumed that as a communist he must be joined to the Chinese at the hip, and based our opposition to him on that. In fact, his economic philosophy notwithstanding, Ho might well have been more pro-American than not -- even though we had supported the French against him.

In Iraq, we assumed that all the Iraqis must be just like us (non-sectarian, democratic, etc.), except for being under Saddam. And we also assumed that, for all that he was determinedly secular, since Saddam opposed us he must be in league with the religious fanatics who had attacked us. Another case a seeing everything in the most simplistic for-us-or-against-us terms.

If we actually want to learn something from history here, the lesson is plain: try to actually learn something about the rest of the world. Or at least take some advice from people who have done so. (No, learning about Europe isn't sufficient. But even that would be a start.)

Posted by wj | March 29, 2008 12:44 PM

Campesino,

There were no 'massacres' in Vietnam after the communists took over. There were executions of officials and soldiers of the former regime, a fair number of them. There were an even greater number sent to re-education centers, and a lot of them were treated cruelly, and some died from overwork and harsh conditions. (although unlike the Stalinist labor camps in Siberia, death was never the _point_ of their being sent there.) You can fairly criticize both of those practices, but neither of them qualifies as a 'massacre' in my book. Kerry was quite correct.

Posted by Hector | March 29, 2008 12:59 PM

jeez, hector, you hardly give a guy a chance to mount his own defense, so i'm just going to outsource any further responses to you....

Posted by howard | March 29, 2008 1:06 PM

Re Hector

Excuse me, Hafaz Assads' men didn't go house to house searching out the Islamic extremists and wasting them. He surrounded the town with several hundred artillery pieces and bombarded it for two days. Most of the 20,000+ people killed therein had nothing to do with the Islamic extremists who were the subject of the exercise. I'm surprised that a right to lifer like Mr. Hector would defend such actions.

Re wj

It should also be pointed out that Ho Chi Minh also was an American ally during WW 2, much like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were allied with the US during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Sometimes allies turn around and bite their handlers after the war is over.

Posted by SLC | March 29, 2008 1:09 PM

SLC - interesting that you simply avoided totally addressing the refugee problem. Hmmm, now, what other country in the middle east has displaced millions refugees and refuses to face the refugee problem? I think it begins with I.

Posted by roger | March 29, 2008 1:12 PM

Re roger

How about the Jewish refugees who were displaced from Arab countries which they had lived in for centuries at the same time the Palestinians were displaced from what became Israel? Of course, to Israel bashers like Mr. roger, they don't count because they're Jewish. Just for the information of Mr. roger, those Jews who were kicked out of countries like Iraq had lived there far longer then most of the so-called Palestinians had lived in Palestine.

Posted by SLC | March 29, 2008 1:21 PM

SLC, I see, its the moral equivalence theory. So, how long do you figure the Sunnis living in Baghdad were living there to count, so that their being killed and dispossessed is wrong? I guess they don't just fit into the SLC universal moral schema, which is a bunch of equivocation to show how fine and dandy Israel is.

Actually, though, to address the side point about the Jews kicked out from Morocco to Yemen (although not from Iran, the only Islamic majority state in the Middle East to have Jewish legislators), I've always taken that as evidence that Israel is a legitimate Middle Eastern state - it was recognized, de facto, by the ethnic cleansing committed by those Middle Eastern states.

So it is as a legitimate state that Israel committed a massive crime by dispossessing the Palestinians. Just as the U.S. committed a crime by countenancing slavery and Jim Crow. Crimes don't abolish nations, but eventually their consequences have to be dealt with, justice must be restored, or the consequence - endless violence - will, practically, abolish the nation. The narrow, tit for tat thinking of your type, SLC, is the sure path to disaster for Israel.

Now, to the main point: Syria and Jordan and Iran, at the moment, are surely the most humanitarian states in the region for their willingness to take in Iraqi refugees. The U.S., which set in train those events that caused the situation, should pay those states billions of dollars - in a better world. In this one, the U.S. simply needs to ameliorate its ties to Syria by dropping any economic obstacles it has in place on the country, and to fully recognize Iran. This is simple.

Posted by roger | March 29, 2008 2:34 PM

Refugees? You want refugees? How about the tens of millions of Germans, Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, Tartars, and others who were expelled at about the same time as the relatively tiny number of "Palestinian" Arabs? They had to pull up their socks and adjust. Any discussion of a "right of return" was likely to result in a one-way ticket to Siberia or a bullet in the neck. Or both.
Eastern Europe is perhaps more peaceful than it has ever been, while the Middle East is still a cauldron of conflict largely because Arab states have found it convenient to manipulate and exploit their brothers.

I'm all for a "political and diplomatic component". But if Zbig, Matt, or anyone else thinks that's likely to produce any results minus a robust American presence in the region, they're really not being serious.

We didn't just land in Iraq by chance or political misrepresentation, and won't be able to bail out that way either.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 29, 2008 2:57 PM

SLC: "How about the Jewish refugees who were displaced from Arab countries which they had lived in for centuries at the same time the Palestinians were displaced from what became Israel?"

What's wrong with this picture?

A bunch of Zionists barge into Palestine, declare their goal to turn it into a Zionist state with preferential treatment for Jews, then when the occupants resist start using terrorism against them and the British until the UN, pressured by Britain and the US, decides to hand over half the country to these clowns (with no legal authority to do so, BTW). So then these clowns decide to throw out most of the original occupants and seize the other half of the country. So the other Arab countries, pissed off by this, throw out their Jews in retaliation.

While the latter may not be particularly defensible, it certainly is utterly understandable based on the actions of the Zionists.

Not to mention that this thread had nothing to do with Israel until this nitwit popped up with his "Hama rules" bullshit again.

Nobody cares what a Syrian dictator did years ago, you fucktard. Go blow yourself.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 29, 2008 3:03 PM

Powell, I don't really understand the point of your comment. Some refugee situations adjust, some don't, some have vile consequences, some can be handled this way, some can be handled that way. You rather omitted the reason for the refugee problem - every country that expelled populations had been, ta da, occupied by the Germans. Which simply shows that the logic of tit for tat should never be overlooked when, say, occupying a country .

Otherwise, there is no connection between a refugee situation in which Germans could go to Germany and find money and shelter, and Palestinians can go to no Palestinian country and find money and shelter. Hence, they live suspended between all countries. Hence, best have a country in which the Palestinians can find money and shelter, viz. Palestine.

On the other hand, because the tit for tat game is so popular when it comes to justifying keeping Palestinians in camps that all of the Middle East has heard this from Americans for forty years, we are going to watch the neo-cons undergo some amusing contortions in their course of a painful, lifetime addiction to hypocrisy as they explain why Kurds do deserve the right to return in Kirkuk. That will be fun. I wonder what clever reasons Podhoretz will come up with?

Posted by roger | March 29, 2008 3:17 PM

Re Richard Steven Hack

Mr. Hack, the convicted bank robber, ex-con, and endorser of the assassination of police officers weighs in with a pack of lies relative to the events of 1948.

1. The nascent State of Israel was attacked by the surrounding Arab states shortly after it declared itself an independent state, after agreeing to the UN partition agreement, which the so-called Palestinians did not.

2. As a result of the aggression of those surrounding Arab States, several hundred thousand Palestinians left their homes during the resulting hostilities. The State of Israel has no more reason to allow those Palestinians to resettle in Israel then the USA has to allow Native Americans to get back New York City or San Francisco.

3. The notion that the Arab World has always endorsed a Palestinian State is a lie. From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank was occupied by Jordan and there was no Palestinian State. The Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt and there was no Palestinian State. The Arab World had 19 years to establish a Palestinian State and failed to do so. Why, because they were too busy trying to eliminate the State of Israel. When their attempt to do so in 1968 failed, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Hights were occupied by Israel. Such is the wages of aggression.

As for Mr. Hacks' last statement, Mr. Hack is cordially invited to shove it up his ass.

Posted by SLC | March 29, 2008 3:24 PM

roger--
The point is, the "Palestinian" refugee crisis has been created primarily by the Arab states and their former Soviet patrons for their own purposes. Ask the former-East European Germans--if you launch an unprovoked war of aggression and lose, as the Arab states did in 1948, expect negative consequences. Only due to massive funding by the Saudis and the KGB via the Romanian Securitate does the current refugee crisis in "Palestine" exist. The Pals have been sold a bill of goods to the effect that they are uniquely disadvantaged, and deserving of a unique "justice".

You've got a point about the value of a country of last resort. That's basically the raison d'etat for Israel. In the case of the Arabs, those who stayed put have it better than their brothers in any Arab state. Those who took refuge in fraternal Arab states have been warehoused like livestock for use as cheap labor, bargaining chips, and terrorist recruits by their brothers.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 29, 2008 3:38 PM

Thankfully the comments have avoided being a regurgitation of right wing accusations about how ending the U.S.' direct role in Vietnam brought about the Khmer Rouge, and in exchange we got a return to the origins of the Arab / Israeli conflict.

Posted by El Cid | March 29, 2008 3:38 PM

El Cid--
Not so fast. The US "secret" bombing of Cambodia, and the "last straw" destabilization from our incursion, resulted directly in the rise of the Khmer Rouge. We officially recognized their regime through the period of genocide in deference to their Chinese allies with whom we were making detente. The Pol Pot reign of terror was ended by a humanitarian intervention by the communist Vietnamese, which we condemned at the time.

Now, back to "Palestine".

Posted by Robert Powell | March 29, 2008 3:48 PM

If you want to use a nickname for Zbigniew, use "Zbyszek", which is the common Polish nickname. Polish nicknames usually have the same number of syllables as the real name- the changes in the syllables just indicate more affection.

Posted by Joe | March 29, 2008 3:51 PM

Powell -- didn't I already say that upstream?

Posted by El Cid | March 29, 2008 4:07 PM

Campesino,

There were no 'massacres' in Vietnam after the communists took over. There were executions of officials and soldiers of the former regime, a fair number of them. There were an even greater number sent to re-education centers, and a lot of them were treated cruelly, and some died from overwork and harsh conditions. (although unlike the Stalinist labor camps in Siberia, death was never the _point_ of their being sent there.) You can fairly criticize both of those practices, but neither of them qualifies as a 'massacre' in my book. Kerry was quite correct.

Posted by Hector | March 29, 2008 12:59 PM
*************************************************
They only shot them one at a time or worked them to death. So they weren't massacres? How abstruse are you?
*************************************************
To corroborate the experiences of refugees now living in Orange County, the Register interviewed dozens of former inmates and their families, both in the United States and Vietnam; analyzed hundreds of pages of documents, including testimony from more than 800 individuals sent to jail; and interviewed Southeast Asian scholars. The review found:

An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials.

165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe.

Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed.

Prisoners were incarcerated for as long as 17 years, according to the U.S. Department of State, with most terms ranging from three to 10 years.

At least 150 re-education prisons were built after Saigon fell 26 years ago.

One in three South Vietnamese families had a relative in a re-education camp.
*************************************************

How Clintonian a parsing of words! Only 165,000 people died but don't call it a massacre, no sir. Kerry knew nothing bad was going to happen

Posted by Campesino | March 29, 2008 5:55 PM

Yeah, I know El Cid. I just couldn't pass up the chance to emphasize the fact that there are at least SOME historical facts upon which we agree.

SE Asia offers very little in the way of useful comparisons with Iraq. Maybe the best is in the "how quickly they forget" category,i.e. the Powell Doctrine. It was about the only good thing to come out of Vietnam. Briefly, it stated that we should never commit US troops unless we were sure vital national interests were involved; that the action had the informed support of Congress and the public; that we had a clearly-defined, achievable goal and related exit strategy; and we were prepared to apply overwhelming force to achieve the goal.

There were massacres in Iraq before we invaded that were far worse than anything that's happened since 2003. If we just pull the plug and run away, it's entirely likely that there will be massacres after that are also far worse than anything that's happened so far. Matt's position seems to be "maybe things will get worse, but maybe not. Let's just bail out and see what happens..."

Posted by Robert Powell | March 30, 2008 2:37 AM

That is correct. The frightening number of deaths which have occurred in Iraq post-invasion & occupation have not been in the form of large-scale massacres, which marks it as quite different from the Saddam-era.

Thankfully Iraq is nothing like Vietnam where "we" did not have "a clearly-defined, achievable goal and related exit strategy", it's just simply that "If we just pull the plug and run away, it's entirely likely that there will be massacres after that are also far worse than anything that's happened so far." So we have to continue on with our clearly defined exit strategy which involves never mentioning any actual exit strategy and maybe involves staying for decades and decades. Nope, no lessons whatsoever.

Posted by El Cid | March 30, 2008 9:57 AM

SLC repeats all the usual Zionist lies.

"1. The nascent State of Israel was attacked by the surrounding Arab states shortly after it declared itself an independent state, after agreeing to the UN partition agreement, which the so-called Palestinians did not."

For good reason. Not that it mattered, since Ben-Gurion had already declared privately that Israel would seize the rest of Palestine eventually, regardless of the UN partitioning, which the Arabs well knew.

Not to mention that the UN had, according to its own commission set up to study the point, no legal authority to partition Palestine in any event. They only agreed to do so after Britain washed its hands of Palestine - as a result of Zionist terrorism.

"2. As a result of the aggression of those surrounding Arab States, several hundred thousand Palestinians left their homes during the resulting hostilities."

Bullshit. The Israelis drove them out using massacres and threats of further massacres. Even prominent Israeli historians now admit this.

"3. The notion that the Arab World has always endorsed a Palestinian State is a lie."

Which is relevant how? Nobody cares what the Arab states declare or not. The Palestinians occupied Palestine. They were driven out by scumbag Zionists who intended all along to do so. Even some prominent Zionists who became of this plan considered it immoral and self-defeating.

"The Arab World had 19 years to establish a Palestinian State and failed to do so."

Again, irrelevant. The fact that a parcel of territory has no state on just not justify a bunch of thieving scumbags coming in and seizing the land, driving out the inhabitants and establishing a racist, religiously-based state. The fact that the Europeans did that to the Native Americans just not justify Israel.

Israel is doomed to be destroyed in due time. Such indeed are the wages of aggression.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | March 30, 2008 11:27 PM