Jay Reding.com

Sen. Joe Biden (in an response to Sen. Lieberman’s must-read piece on Democrats and the war) writes on his critique of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy. His arguments are reasonable, but the problem is that the world he describes has little to do with the world in which we all actually live. For example:

At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the “war on terrorism” that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

The problem with Biden’s analysis is that all those problems are being dealt with: the Bush Administration has been the most progressive administration in this century in terms of Africa policy. We were the first on the scene for the Indonesian tsunami. We’ve been in the lead on trying to get aid into Burma. The list could go on.

What Biden is trying to do is downplay the reality that terrorism is the central problem we face. Terrorism is one of the factors making our energy supply uncertain, it perpetuates poverty in places like Iraq, and it feeds of failed states. That doesn’t mean that terrorism is the sole problem, but it is the most significant, and a focus on terrorism is by necessity a focus on doing things like preventing failed states.

Al-Qaeda wasn’t turned into a monster by President Bush. They launched the first significant attack on continental America since 1812. They massively destabilized our economy and our way of life. And they would just love to do so again. The confluence of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction is the greatest foreign policy threat we face—not the phantom menace of “a rapidly warming planet.”

And what would Sen. Biden do? The same policies that failed the Carter Administration:

Last week, John McCain was very clear. He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Barack Obama was “naïve and inexperienced” for advocating engagement; “What is it he wants to talk about?” he asked.

Well, for a start, Iran’s nuclear program, its support for Shiite militias in Iraq, and its patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

And exactly what leverage to we have to get Iran to change, Senator? Exactly what would talking achieve. Does anyone believe that Ahmadinejad or Khameini is going to agree to a deal in which Iran stops developing nuclear weapons? Are they going to stop spreading their influence because we ask nice?

That is the central, failed conceit of current Democratic foreign policy: it is hopelessly naïve. The Iranians cannot be negotiated out of supporting Hamas and Hizb’Allah. Why should they stop, unless we have a credible threat of force to back us up. Should a President Obama go to Tehran, does anyone really think that the mullahs would give a damn about what he said? They would have no reason to—they know damned well that he would never use force against them, so why would they bother to hold themselves to their own promises?

We tried this approach with North Korea. It didn’t work there, it’s still not working, and it won’t work with Tehran. At best, talking delays the inevitable. Teddy Roosevelt said we should talk softly and carry a big stick. The Democrats want us to go into Tehran, but they also want us to put away the stick.

Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we’re stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control.

Except talking doesn’t work. We may not have any choice but to go to war, but we’re not at that point yet. Sen. Biden misses another option: making the costs involved in challenging us too high to countenance.

We need a Machiavellian foreign policy, and the Democrats want us to act like Barney the Dinosaur and pretend that we’re all friends. You want to make Tehran not develop nuclear weapons? You make sure that the costs of doing so are high. We defeated the Soviet Union not through talks, but by making it very clear to the Soviets that if talking failed, we were perfectly willing to wipe them off the face of the globe.

Biden’s arguments on Iran don’t get any better:

It also requires a much more sophisticated understanding than Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain seem to possess that by publicly engaging Iran – including through direct talks – we can exploit cracks within the ruling elite, and between Iran’s rulers and its people, who are struggling economically and stifled politically.

Iran’s people need to know that their government, not the U.S., is choosing confrontation over cooperation. Our allies and partners need to know that the U.S. will go the extra diplomatic mile – if we do, they are much more likely to stand with us if diplomacy fails and force proves necessary.

The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran’s pockets.

What is the alternative? It’s clear that talking is not going to help. The world community is not going to turn against Iran. Russia will not. China will not. Even Europe would balk.

A foreign policy based on meaningless words back with no credible threat of force is a foreign policy damned to fail—just as it did when Jimmy Carter did it. Under his watch, the Iranian regime was founded. We cannot afford such a disaster again.

We have to deal with Iran, but pretending that talk will solve anything is futile. Iran, like the rest of the Middle East, respects strength and laughs at the weak. The Democrats continue to advocate for a foreign policy of weakness in which a servile United States goes to our enemies and begs them to play nice.

Americans don’t beg, we lead from strength. That is how Reagan led this country to the end of the Cold War and how a President McCain will help lead this country to an end to the War on Islamic Terrorism.

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hizballah has declared a state of open warfare against the Lebanese government. In Beirut, Hezballah terrorists have already engaged in two days of fighting with Lebanese troops.

Tony Badran, blogging at Michael Totten’s site offers some trenchant analysis as to what this all means:

“What this has done is lay bare all the charades of the last two years that Hezbollah’s is a “national” opposition, etc. What we saw yesterday is that Christians didn’t budge (Aounists that is), in any region. And so, what you have here is Hezbollah vs. the rest, and Hezbollah vs. the state. Politically this is very bad for them, and obviously for Aoun. In that sense it was a shrewd political move by March 14, because it hit them on a point that they can’t get sympathizers for outside their thugs (i.e., they have no allies, and they’re fighting the state!). Second, it puts them in a corner: they either force the government to capitulate, or they lose themselves. Nasrallah is against the wall.”

Hizballah, even though politically isolated, is a grave danger to the future of a free and democratic Lebanon. With both Syria and Iran providing Hizballah with money and weapons, they could outfight the Lebanese military and potentially take down the Lebanese government.

The Lebanese also have a stake in what happens here in the U.S.:

Second, as Tony conjectures, the Lebanese are watching closely a the US presidential campaign unfolds and are likely concerned what an Obama presidency represents for March 14, especially if Hezbollah starts a war with Israel: it means the pillar of the international alliance supporting a democratic Lebanon is apt to go hat in hand to Hezbollah’s patrons in Tehran and Damascus looking to “engage.” If there is another war, the US impulse will likely be to go over March 14’s head and sue for peace with Iran and Syria, which is precisely what Bush resisted.

“Engagement” with Iran and Syria is futile—they have no intention of giving up their efforts to gain influence in Lebanon and the U.S. offers them nothing that would make them change their mind on that account. There is a good reason why Hamas has endorsed Obama. Obama’s foreign policy team is the same as Jimmy Carter’s, and there is every reason to believe that an Obama Presidency will be as weak on foreign affairs as Carter’s was. His love of meaningless “engagement” presages a U.S. policy of compromise that would allow Damascus and Teheran to take the initiative. The progress that has been made by the Franco-American alliance in the U.N. woule end up stalled as the Obama team naively assumes that they can trust the word of tyrants.

This is a critical time for Lebanon. The world community must unite in support of the democratic Lebanese government and against the thuggery of Hassan Nasrallah. If that means putting diplomatic, political, and even military pressure on Iran and Syria then so be it. The people of Lebanon have suffered enough under the domination of Syria and their Hezballah puppets. It is time for the world to unite to put an end to Hezballah’s games. The great question is whether the U.S. and France will be able to get enough of a coalition together to do something or whether once again the world will fiddle while Beirut burns.

Ed Morrisey has a good synopsis of the declassified National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. (The document itself is available here.) It’s conclusions are quite interesting:

We assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons.

Glenn Reynolds puts it best: “Well, that’s convenient.” Indeed, it’s quite interesting to note when Tehran apparently stopped working on their nuclear program. We know that Mohammar Qadafi stopped Libya’s nuclear program in response to the removal of the Hussein regime. Now it appears that the national intelligence community finds the same pattern of behavior in Iran.

It would appear that the war in Iraq had a greater deterrent effect than we had thought previously and made the calculus in developing weapons of mass destruction less desirable than before. For years now we’ve heard the opposite argument be made: that rogue regimes would rush to develop nuclear weapons to avoid being attacked by the US. North Korea’s attempt at nuclear blackmail didn’t even get them to force the US into bilateral talks instead of multilateral ones, and the destruction of a suspected Syrian nuclear facility has only highlighted just how seriously the US and its allies take nuclear proliferation.

There is another explanation, but one which changes the Iraq War from a direct cause to an indirect one: it was in the fall of 2003 that the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network was destroyed. Without that assistance, it’s possible that the Iranians couldn’t develop a workable weapon on their own or judged it too difficult to be useful. Still, the A.Q. Khan network was removed because of Libya’s choice to dismantle their nuclear program, which in turn was inspired by the war in Iraq. In either way, Iran’s decision-making was influenced by the destruction of the Hussein regime.

We judge with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years. (Because of intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in this Estimate, however, DOE and the NIC assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program.)

In other words, we don’t know if Tehran has really stopped weapons production now. Given that the Iranians are admitting to building thousands of centrifuges, it is quite likely that Iran has not halted their entire nuclear weapons program, but are creating a “just-in-time” system that would give them both weaponized nuclear material and a working device that could be combined as needed. There’s some risk that the resulting device wouldn’t work, but even if it just sprays the uranium around the Iranians have a perfectly workable “dirty bomb.”

We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

Intelligence is always fuzzy, but policymakers should not blindly hope for the best. If there’s any reasonable chance that Tehran will develop a bomb it makes sense to ensure that the costs of doing so are untenably high.

We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.

The fact that they’re not absolutely sure that they don’t should scare the hell out of everyone. Fortunately, it’s unlikely that they do, but the risks of a nuclear-armed Iran are too great to be countenanced.

Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

That is a bit of good news, but the question is how long the West will be willing to keep the pressure up. The costs of building a nuclear weapon need to be far higher than any possible benefit: and even that assumes that the people who have the bomb are subject to such a rational calculus. If a nuclear weapon fell into the hands of terrorists, it’s not clear whether they’d care whether the US launched a nuclear response. For that matter, who would we attack if al-Qaeda launched a nuclear attack on a major American city? The country where they got the nuke? What if they weren’t directly responsible for the lapse in security? The country that hosted the terrorists? Again, what if al-Qaeda was not there at the behest of that government?

The conventional doctrines of mutually assured destruction and retaliation don’t work in the context of nuclear terrorism: which is why the risk of a terrorist group getting their hands on a nuke is a nightmare scenario for the United States. If we miscalculate the intentions of the Iranian regime and they do think that they can give a nuke to terrorists and claim plausible deniability, what would our move be? There is a huge amount of risk in a policy of containment, and if there’s any reasonable chance of it failing then policymakers have to follow a different path.

We cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and we have a lot of ambiguity as to what Iran’s intentions and capabilities are. We need more intelligence on the ground in Iran so that we have some warning before Iran goes nuclear. The fact that we know so little now should be deeply disturbing: the last thing we need is for our lack of intelligence to lead to another atrocity.

Don Surber lays it on the line: we’re winning in Iraq, and the Democrats are stuck in the past:

The New York Times devoted a huge hunk of its Page One on Tuesday to the good news of the return to more normal times in Iraq. The story was illustrated with a photo of a wedding scene on the streets of Baghdad.

Violence has been cut in half. And while the nation is far from the tranquil democracy that many of us hoped for in April 2003, it also is a far cry from the chaotic mess it was just six months ago.

We are winning in Iraq.

Will someone please inform the Democrats?

He’s right: the signs are unmistakable. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been routed. Without the support of Iraq’s Sunni population, they have no hiding place. There’s nowhere for them to run in Iraq, and they can’t pull the same trick they did before and retreat back into the periphery around the major cities. The “Awakening” movements are everywhere and the Iraqis are no longer willing to tolerate terrorist oppressors in their midst.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq can still cause problems, but in a real tactical sense, they’ve been defeated.

The Shi’ite death squads such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army are similarly skating on thin ice. Moqtada al-Sadr is a tool of Iran, funded and armed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces. Yet now al-Sadr’s organization is being rolled up—at least those whose radicalism doesn’t allow them to follow his “cease fire.” Those are the ones most likely to cause problems. Getting rid of them diminishes the ability for al-Sadr to cause problems in the future. Al-Sadr is a thug, but even he has realized that attacking the Iraqi government has gotten him nowhere. His cease fire order is a political calculation—it’s no longer expedient for him to play the part of the revolutionary leader. That alone should say something about the conditions in Iraq.

So why don’t the Democrats get it? Why are they still trying to play politics over the war? If even The New York Times can see that things are getting better, why can’t they find a change in strategy?

The simple answer is that’s all they have.

The Democratic Congress has failed to achieve any significant legislative achievements. The most they’ve gotten is a minor increase in the minimum wage that has little effect, and most of the effect it will have will be negative. They’re playing to their base as a defensive posture: they think that by “ending the war” people will ignore their inability to get anything done.

That kind of political posturing doesn’t mean anything. The Democrats have become so invested in a narrative of failure that they can’t even perceive of anything different. They’re absolutely fixated on this one issue.

The more the disparity grows between the reality of Iraq and the Democrat’s defeatist rhetoric, the more desperate and out-of-touch the Democrats look. Right now, all the juvenile political games the Democrats are playing in Congress only makes them look even less like leaders and more like squabbling children. Attaching more conditions to war funding is a maneuver designed for nothing more than partisan politics. It hurts our troops, and if the Democrats keep playing these games they’ll only hurt the local economies around military bases when the Defense Department has to start firing support staff to keep in operation. If that happens, the Democrats will be in real political trouble.

The Democrats have been painting themselves in a corner for years now. That strategy has worked when Iraq has been on a downslide, but now that things are getting better, they have nowhere to go. They’re pretending like the situation in Iraq is the same as it was in 2006 because that’s when their strategy was successful. Yet the circumstances have changed, and the Democrats have not.

The Democrats are invested in a narrative, and their narrative is increasingly disconnected from the facts. (Not that it ever was.) Sooner or later, the American people are going to start to question why the Democrats seem to be so invested in American defeat in Iraq, especially when the situation seems to be stabilized. If the Democrats were smart they’d start changing their narrative to say that they were the ones who pushed Bush into conceding that the strategy of 2003–2006 had failed. Indeed, that’s precisely what Sen. John McCain is already doing. Yet to do that would be to alienate the hardcore antiwar constituency that has a chokehold on the Democratic Party.

The situation is getting better in Iraq, but the narrative in Washington remains the same. As our troops and their Iraqi allies rack up more and more victories against terrorism in Iraq, the Democrats keep wanting to pull the rug out from under them. It’s one thing to advocate for surrender in a war that’s going badly—it’s entirely another to do the same in a war that’s being won. The fact that the Democrats can’t seem to understand that demonstrates just how much the narrative has overwhelmed their common sense.

UPDATE: Michael Yon offers a note of caution. He’s right: even an enemy that’s been largely defeated can still cause plenty of trouble. All that it takes is a lucky strike in a crowded market with a car bomb for the old narrative to re-emerge. The story of counterinsurgency and democratization is often a story of two steps forward and one and a half steps back. Iraq has taken a giant step forward in recent months, but that doesn’t mean that they’re out of the woods quite yet.

The Financial Times takes a skeptical look at claims that there’s an imminent plan to retaliate against Iran. They examine the political and military difficulties of such a strike and find that it’s unlikely to happen.

At the same time, Barry Rubin reiterates why it is we should be worried about Iran’s nuclear program. Even though the military option isn’t going to be played out soon, the time for the diplomatic option is running out. We don’t know when Iran might be able to produce a nuclear bomb. It could be as soon as 2009. We do know that its in nobody’s interest for that to happen. If diplomacy fails, then and only then will the military option become truly viable—and even then we can’t be sure whether it would be effective or not.

All the furor on Capitol Hill over the mere possibility of an attack paradoxically makes such an attack more likely. If Iran knows that the United States would not hesitate to massively retaliate against an Iranian nuclear test or against Iran’s nuclear program should we even suspect they have a bomb, that creates a powerful incentive not to take that final step. However, if they think that the US will roll over and let them obtain nuclear weapons, they will do so. In a time when we need to present a united diplomatic front that makes it clear that Iranian nukes are unacceptable, Democrats are playing politics. This is another key example of why the majority of the Democratic Party still can’t be trusted on national security issues—a party so willing to sacrifice the broad national interest for partisan gain is not sufficiently responsible to lead.

We cannot allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons. An unstable regime with that kind of power is a threat to everyone’s security. The world has a choice: either stand united or face worse consequences down the road. There is a slim chance that diplomatic and political pressure can stall Tehran’s run towards the bomb. So long as that chance remains, it’s unlikely that either the US or Israel will risk an attack. However, if Tehran remains intransigent, the clock will eventually run down and we’ll have no choice.

We have one last chance to prevent the necessity of attacking Iran. However, we can’t do that in an environment where our own politicians are preemptively rolling over to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. We have to be strong and united on this issue to forestall a war: and when partisan politics is trumping national security it only makes the necessity of military conflict that much greater.