Flawed By Design

Michael O'Hanlon suggests we undertake bad faith negotiations with Iran in order to "prove" that the Iranians are stubborn and thereby gain more support for hawkish policies. The pseudonymous Dr. Irack, who it would probably be more viable to quote if he used his real name, suggests that this may be O'Hanlon's audition for a job at the American Enterprise Institute. I would say it's more of a sign that his bridges to the Democratic Party are sufficiently burned that he's now looking for a post in the McCain administration.

This is, however, one reason I'm sort of glad that Bush rejected the Iraq Study Group's eminently reasonable advice that he seek a diplomatic settlement with Iran. A new diplomatic effort could, if undertaken in good faith, produce enormous gains for the United States. But bad faith diplomacy of the sort O'Hanlon suggests could be an effective political tool to trying to secure public and congressional support for disastrous escalation of the conflict.

Comments

That's an interesting point about O'Hanlon auditioning for AEI.

Remember, Soros made $3B last year, so maybe he's decided to buy back Brookings from Saban and the neocons...

Posted by RKU | April 22, 2008 9:05 AM

There's a precedent for this; remember James Baker's bad-faith diplomacy before Iraq War I, and Madeleine Albright's at Ramboulliet before the Kosovo War. In both cases the farce of "diplomatic efforts" helped convince public opinion that war was, if not necessary, inevitable.

Posted by Mark Zepezauer | April 22, 2008 9:22 AM

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2008/04/21/irack-iraq-and-iran/

Matt,
We've been talking to them for 30 years. Please read the link above. They've been offered everything and always turned it down. What makes you think Iran WANTS to reach and agreement with the West and what is it you think they do want?

None of what I am saying means an attack is necessary or a good idea, just that you are dead wrong about "talking" to Iran going to suddenly be fruitful when you show no evidence that they will act any different now than the past 3 decades.

Posted by Mark E | April 22, 2008 9:57 AM

Strictly speaking his suggestion is that we negotiate with them in good faith, but being that they are now more evil than ever, our good faith negotiations will necessarily fail.

Oddly his argument that they are more evil than ever turns on the fact that we have weakened ourselves and taken away the counterbalance to their regional ambitions. So it seems that the first step in dealing with Iran would be to stop listening to the people who thought it was a good idea to bog ourselves down in Iraq after removing the counterbalance to Iran.

Odd that he does not come to that conclusion given the evidence he musters. Instead he is hopeful that Iraqis suddenly start likeing us more than Iran. He doesn't seem to see the significance of the fact that that has not happened.

Posted by Lon | April 22, 2008 10:19 AM

Strictly speaking his suggestion is that we negotiate with them in good faith, but being that they are now more evil than ever, our good faith negotiations will necessarily fail.

Oddly his argument that they are more evil than ever turns on the fact that we have weakened ourselves and taken away the counterbalance to their regional ambitions. So it seems that the first step in dealing with Iran would be to stop listening to the people who thought it was a good idea to bog ourselves down in Iraq after removing the counterbalance to Iran.

Odd that he does not come to that conclusion given the evidence he musters. Instead he is hopeful that Iraqis suddenly start likeing us more than Iran. He doesn't seem to see the significance of the fact that that has not happened.

Posted by Lon | April 22, 2008 10:21 AM

Am I daft? O'Hanlon refers to Ahmadinejad as a mass murderer? When did Ahmadinejad commit mass murder? I thought he was Mayor of Tehran prior to being president?

Posted by the dude | April 22, 2008 12:09 PM

We've been talking to them for 30 years. Please read the link above. They've been offered everything and always turned it down. What makes you think Iran WANTS to reach and agreement with the West and what is it you think they do want?

Are you nuts? Iran has been making us all kinds of diplomatic offers to us for years now, and the Bush administration has consistently turned them down. Flynt Leverett, no liberal, quit the administration over this. And Iran showed its sincerity by helping us in Afghanistan.

Try learning the facts before you spout the propaganda, they are readily available:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=11539

Posted by mq | April 22, 2008 12:31 PM

How to be a wingnut blogwhore:

1) Be scared of any brown person. The professional wingnut will specialize in either Mexicans or Muslims, but not both. Being scared of both is mandatory, but an obsession is something you can only have one of at a time.

2) Put up a link to a bullshit argument at a site no one has heard of.

3) Make sure to put your website in the URL bar. It has to have a name that shows you're either crazy (LoneWacko) or a professional pants-shitter (Regime of Terror).

Posted by Reality Man | April 22, 2008 12:37 PM

As MQ pointed out, Mark E is seriously misguided regarding the history of U.S./Iran diplomatic relations. As Leverett has argued, it was the U.S. - not Iran - who rejected diplomatic engagement in 2003 of issues of great importance to both countries. Given the U.S.'s history of propping up the psychopathic Pahlavi regime in Iran and siccing Saddam on Iran in the '80's, the Iranians' willingness to talk to us at all is remarkable.

Let us recall that all of our hostages in Iran returned with their heads still attached to their bodies in 1980, despite our CIA's complicity in the brutalization of the Iranian people at the hands of the SAVAK for more than 25 years during the reign of the Shah.

Posted by amabo | April 22, 2008 1:44 PM

OTOH, it was nice of Mark E to let us know that captainsjournal.com is a fullash*t site from the start. We could have wasted time believing him.

Posted by Barry | April 22, 2008 2:26 PM

The U.S./Iranian relationship has definitely entered into one of its weirder moments. In the last week, evidently Iran sided with Maliki (meaning, basically, that the Ahmadinejad faction won) and got Sadr to surrender Basra. So the Iranians sided with the U.S. and the British. Now, of course, in the camera obscura of the U.S. media, where everything is upside down, this is considered (especially by the rightwingers) a victory by the U.S. over Iran. The fact that Iran is much closer to Maliki, and that the Badr brigade is an Iranian trained, armed and paid militia simply doesn't exist in that discourse. But since it does in reality, some interesting things are happening in reality in Iraq. Surely Maliki is closer to closing down the elections in October, and allowing the Badr brigade to do what it did in 2006 - operate as a paramilitary to kill any of its political opponents. I'm not so sure, however, Maliki will survive his success, which will pull Iraq even more apart. At the moment, he is window dressing for both the Iranians and the Americans.

I would love to be able to follow these events in, say, the New York Times. Unfortunately, the only reporting being done on what is happening in Sadr city is being done by Michael Gordon, a pretty well known liar by this point. A shame there isn't an american newsoutlet one can trust.

Posted by roger | April 22, 2008 3:15 PM

"No Balls Matt" continues to talk around the Iran situation.

He talks about a military confrontation with Iran as "disastrous" - but still won't answer my two questions about Iran.

Because if he did, he'd blow his "liberal internationalist" crap - and his book - out of the water.

Matt has never made one single substantive post on Iran - and he never will.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 22, 2008 6:11 PM

neither have you, on anything at all.

Posted by merl | April 23, 2008 3:37 AM