Larison, addressing some hawk making the inevitable Obama-is-Chamberlain comparison on the Iran nuclear deal:
It’s tempting to dismiss this as nonsense and leave it at that, but these sorts of arguments have a way of gaining traction if they aren’t answered. If we were to take these comparisons seriously, we would have to conclude that Stephens thinks that the interim nuclear deal will lead to something worse than the annexation of the Sudetenland or the fall of South Vietnam. […]
The notion that the U.S. has “betrayed” a “small country” in this deal is contemptible. Israel wasn’t a party to these negotiations, but if it had been it would have been on the side of several more powerful countries dictating terms to the weaker one. Israel remains far more powerful in military terms than Iran, and would remain so even if Iran had a few nuclear weapons. The idea that Israel’s security has ever been seriously threatened by Iran’s nuclear program is even harder to take seriously today than it was last week now that Iran’s nuclear program is set to be under even stricter international controls than it was before. If strong-arming a country’s regional rival into making concessions on a major issue is “betrayal,” more countries would like to be “betrayed” by the U.S. in such a fashion.
More here. After years of hearing the same shit on different days, I’ve given up thinking that the Iran war-mongers will recognize the fact that Americans have no stomach for another war in the Middle East.
catclub
Oh, that’s right. Larison is sane on many things. But then there is the Code of honor of the South thing, or whatever it is called. Traitors R us.
patroclus
The annexation of the Sudetenland destroyed Czeckoslovakia because it destroyed their nascent national identity, removed the mountains as their natural line of defense, effectively disbanded their military and extraordinarily weakened their political leadership – none of which has even remotely happened to Israel. Moreover, it was a “permanent” solution (at least in the view of Chamberlain and the appeasers) while the Iran deal is merely preliminary and only modestly reduces sanctions in advance of a more comprehensive deal that will heavily depend upon actual compliance by Iran for at least the next Friedman Unit. Further, it was trumpeted by Chamberlain as “peace in our time” while Obama and Kerry are merely looking at this preliminary deal as a possible first step in a long process of ongoing compliance. It’s a stupid analogy made by those who don’t understand the real lessons of Munich or the current situation with Iran. The Israelis know better.
feebog
Chris Hayes had the contemptible Paul Wolfiwitz on for an interview last night. Different decade, same old warmonger. All he could keep repeating is that we should tighten the sanctions. Beyond that, nada. No end game, no goals, just keep piling or more and more sanctions.
LanceThruster
I’m tired of the US being Israel’s vassal state.
Another Holocene Human
I dislike the “no stomach” notion. I mean, it’s true, on the other hand, it’s framing war as a matter of “guts”. Whereas from a place of pure practicality as well as human decency (head and heart) it’s a fucking terrible idea. Not going to war is not purely a matter of a white liver. Honestly, these people.
Napoleon
Now if this was Doug J’s thread I assume he would have lead with Rolling Stones lyrics:
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Another Holocene Human: “No stomach” to me means the very thought of doing something makes them nauseous – they are sick and fed up with it. It has nothing to do with guts, as far as I’m concerned. That poll is a 2-1 majority endorsing this deal.
Mike Furlan
@catclub:
Why would Larison belong to an organization that gives out a Nathan Bedford Forrest award?
Why would anyone?
“Matthew Heimbach, a recipient of the League of the South’s Nathan Bedford Forrest Award, recently appeared on the Brutha Dawah show. Heimbach believes black and white nationalists can work together to separate.”
http://smashingreader.com/Warren_Throckmorton_s63426_p6
And why do people keep quoting him?
MattF
The point, to repeat: What the hawks want is war. They have their reasons, ranging from neo-Straussian ‘War distracts the lower classes and lets the superior classes rule unmolested’ to a bitter recognition that their current course is fatal, so just smashing things up might be an improvement.
One thing to bear in mind is that the notion that regime change in Iran would fix the problem is just a fantasy. Remember what happened to the Shah.
Hal
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the rights primary motivation to side with Israel no matter what the belief that Israel is the promised land? Plenty of right wingers are not worried about yet another long, drawn out middle eastern war because sooner or later they are all going to be spirited away to heaven while everyone else is left behind.
fuzz
A deal with Iran can finally allow us to get some distance between ourselves and the Saudis.
RP
Israel is always portrayed as this delicate flower, always on the verge of being trampled underfoot by the Moo-Zlim hordes. Should Iran / Iraq / Libya / anybody else in the region get a nuke, that will be the end of Israel.
The only problem with this narrative is that Israel has the only nuclear arsenal in the region, some 200 warheads by most accounts I’ve seen. Israel also possesses the means to deliver the weapons.
How is it that an aspirational, at best, Iranian nuclear weapon poses a mortal threat to Israel? Iran lobs one nuke at Israel and Israel releases the nuclear Kraken in response.
PS – The irrational, suicidal, madman with a nuke theory doesn’t count.
fuzz
@Hal:
Not entirely. Israel is seen as ‘western’ and the Palestinian and other Arabs are not. Israelis (the Ahkenazis at least) look like us, they speak great English, they watch US tv shows and movies and we obviously have a religious connection with the Jewish population here. Arabs have their own culture and it’s different than ours in ways that the Israeli Jews’ are not. People look at Israelis and see the old settlers surrounded by barbaric hordes.
Really though, if these people had ever been to Israel they’d realize how wrong they are. Most Israelis are not Ashkenazi (they are 25% of population there but have been 100% of the PMs), they’re Sephardic or from Arab countries, and then you have the Arabs and the Russian immigrants. They don’t realize that though.
Another Holocene Human
@Mike Furlan: Sounds like somebody lacks a fucking dram of an ounce of a clue what Black Nationalism even is.
jl
@Another Holocene Human:
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
I agree with AHH. I think dpm has a decent response, but if we are going to get into the subtext, the ‘no guts’ analogy misses an important point, namely, that there should, ought to be, it is desirable, to have ‘no guts; for embarking on a stupid reckless and dangerous policy.
In this case, the warmongers need to respond to a follow-up question, which is “After the bombing campaign, the drone strikes, what then?”
In this case, in the short to medium term, we have to deal with the legacy of Bush II’s disastrous policy on Iraq, where it was made quite clear that the U.S. can elect leaders who will go apeshit and commit stupid, immoral and disastrous policy, and continue that policy beyond any reason, simply because it feels like it. Iran and North Korea took notice and developed programs that can survive a strike, or at least robust enough so it will be very difficult to determine whether they can continue a nuclear program and make bombs until it is too late.
So, what is the outcome of military action? Presumably the warmongers are using the Dick Cheney type 99.99% or whatever six sigma logic on national security. Well, in this case, that logic would lead to ground invasion, regime change and long term occupation and counterproductive and futile attempts at nation building to achieve the level of safety the war advocates want. In this case, there is some reason and logic behind the ‘no guts’. And I think that point should always be made whenever the ‘no guts’ analogy is rolled out.
MattF
@Hal: There’s the Jerusalem Syndrome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_syndrome
but I’d hesitate to cite that as a motivation for international policy.
Another Holocene Human
@fuzz: This. It was, and is, in many ways, a European colony. Not just colonialism, but straight up mass migration and settlement. Plus the other nasty side of colonialism.
So yeah, there’s some knee-jerk support of that. IN ADDITION TO the crazy-gelical Armageddon notions from the stay-stay cray-cray 27%ers. (And those folks, far from perceiving Israeli Jews as the neo-cons do, are pretty rabid Anti-Semites when you get down to it.)
Bob In Portland
Bring back the draft. That will slow down the war-mongers.
scav
@patroclus: Could you be a little more precise about the nascent national identity of the Czech? Certainly, the between-the-wars state of Czechoslovakia was young and a little thrown together (Ruthenians and Bohemians? They certainly share foodstuffs, but the pirogi / kolachky belt is broad). But the Bohemians generally had their national identity down, they’d been a kingdom, they had their language and golly did their US based children go-on around the beginning of WWI. Bohemian (Czech) hopes and aspirations; (1916). Moravians too, I think had a past kingdom under their belt as a nucleus (I’ve no clue about the Rus or the Slovak). So, again, Czechs, maybe, yeah, more likely, but that wasn’t exactly an ‘organic’ nation state, more sort of a job-lot of geographically continuous bits of the Empire tossed under a single flag after WWI. Even all the forced togetherness under Soviet control couldn’t keep the the sub-units Bohemians + Moravian + Slovaks + Silesia together, I’m not seeing the magic addition of the Sudetenland helping much. Was it somehow different between the wars?
beltane
@RP: Also, while not in the Middle East, Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is about as Mooslim-y a country as they come.
Bill Arnold
@RP:
I think it’s stronger than that. There is always the subtext of the “samson option”, real or not, in response to any nuclear explosion on Israeli territory, whether or not it can be tracked back to a culprit. If it cannot be tracked back, then there is the fear that the response would be broad and indiscriminate.
Professor
Testing
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: As I see it, the formation of a national identity as Czechoslovakians became more difficult when one group/area can suddenly sliced off and declared part of another country based on their ethnicity. That reinforces an ethnic as opposed to national orientation on the rest of the population.
Burnspbesq
@catclub:
I’m still waiting for someone to show a single instance of Larisom’s membership in the League of the South having an adverse effect on his judgement on foreign policy issues.
It’s no more relevant than Krugman liking some bands that suck.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: Possibly as a general rule, but this part of the Austrian Empire already had the different identities down, long before Czechoslovakia was formed. Czechs and Germans (defined linguistically) living side by side voted in different elections for different diets under the Austrians, and I think that was part of a reform package.
ETA, plus there was the whole Greater and lesser Germany thing in the background, (Austria as a whole going with lesser) and the simmering Slav issue (again, multi-national).
Napoleon
@patroclus:
I have been reading up on various histories of the era, although basically not war histories, but its impossible to discuss pre-soviet entry into a war in the east with the Germans without discussing war related matters, and I was surprised that not only was Czechoslovakia a pretty strong country industrially, but it had a strong military and pre-partitian a strong geographic base of defense. The German military really feared having to take them on at Hitler’s orders. If history played out a little differant they could have bloodied up the Germans every bit as much as the Finns did to the USSR in the run up to the wider war in the east.
Waspuppet
I really wish more people on our side of the aisle realized this. Conservatives are wrong on every issue and always have been, but they understand how to argue, which American political history over the past 35 years should tell us is kind of important.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: I would guess that all of that was why patroclus used “nascent” in the comment that started this. Of course the various ethnic groups had their own identities, but there were also starting to develop another identity as Czechoslovakians. Much like in the early years of the US, Virginians, etc., also started to develop an identity as Americans.
Richard Fox
Seems more like Peace of Westphalia to me, but hey I’m not as savvy as the republican history mavens. Munich, Congress of Vienna, surrender at Yorktown..it’s all good
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: I was kind of hoping for a development of that. I’ve only really gotten into the Austrian period and have small information on the inter-war CZ. But the loss of the Sudetenland seemed a little too simple an explanation for the long-simmering national tensions running about that part of the world.
agrippa
When all else fails, yell “Hitler”
Reductio ad Hitlerum.
I am not a kook (Supreme Thought Leader)
@Burnspbesq: Yes, liking some bands is EXACTLY the equivalent to the belief that some hues of human pigmentation are superior to others. I had fierce differences of opinion with my friends about the relative merits of some bands when I was 15, but not quite at that level. Lack of passion and conviction of my superior sense of culture, I guess.
Supporting a racist organization by membership (in 2013!) does indeed make me question someone’s judgment in general. Understanding world politics and the actors and their motivations is pretty hard when you’re blinkered enough to support an organization that gives out a “Nathan Bedford Forrest” award. It shows that you don’t even understand your own multi-ethnic country.
Opposing an invasion now and then doesn’t make you a foreign policy sage, no matter how much the front pagers here fap on the altar of Larison.
agrippa
It is a good agreement; there is very little wrong with it.
For folks like Krauthammer and Wolfowitz, I say this:
No thank you. I am not buying what you are selling.
EconWatcher
Engaging with Iran means rewarding and empowering its moderate elements. But the neocons think [email protected]I am not a kook (Supreme Thought Leader):
I don’t get the Larison fandom at all. I usually agree with his stuff on foreign policy, but I haven’t found it particularly original or perceptive; people seem to love it just because they read what sound like conventional liberal points on a website called The American Conservative. Yeah, that was kinda novel at first. But get over it.
Does his membership in the League of the South taint his views on other things? Well, if I recall, Daivd Duke was a big opponent of the Iraq War–does that make Duke a foreign policy sage we want to quote for support around here? And hey, Duke is a PhD too (he got one from a university in Ukraine for some kind of antisemitic dissertation).
And really, comparing Larison to Duke might be a little tough, but not fundamentally unfair. Sure, Larison has better table manners. But in the end, they both seem to be white supremacists.
Or does someone on this blog want to argue that the League of the South is about “heritage, not hate”?
rdldot
I think quoting Larison is our side’s version of the ‘even the liberal, yada, yada whoever’ that gets quoted by conservatives. Larison is an isolationist and he lines up occasionally with liberal ideas, and he makes logical arguments as to why. Most of the people quoting him don’t know his motivations, however.
Winnie
Aside from Larison,(who I suspect is a bigot, but may be a bigot with a realistic view of foreign policy) though, the point remains; there’s NO downside to the U.S. for this treaty, Huge potential to disarm the nuclear threat, and the Neocon vision of war with Iran is absolute insanity. The LAST thing this country wants or needs is another war in the Middle East and everyone rational knows it. The bloodlust and macho posturing from the ‘real men’ who want to go to Tehran, (and who they themselves personally will NEVER ever go,) is as bewildering as is frightening.
I. Just. Don’t. Get. It.
I am not a kook (Supreme Thought Leader)
@EconWatcher: Yes, going to Larison for supporting arguments on foreign policy or some Republican insanity du jour just smells wrong to me. You don’t trust your own reasoning (and the reasons for your reasoning!) well enough, so you have to go get succor from the Big Conservative Daddy? Well, eff that. If some lefties/liberals/Democrats can’t come up with coherent arguments for their views without coddling some old racist, they’re Doin It Rong and should really rethink their approach.
I am not a kook (Supreme Thought Leader)
@Winnie: Larison is a “realist” on foreign policy only if you think the only worthy actor in world politics is the United States, and only American points of view and context are relevant. This is admittedly a view shared by 97.54%* of Americans. Most recently demonstrated by idiot Republican congresspeople in accusing the Iran deal as a cover for healthcare.gov problems, but a view that comes up for example here on this blog over and over again.
*source: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, And Blog Comments, by anonymous, 2013.
I am not a kook (Supreme Thought Leader)
@Winnie: BTW, I absolutely agree on your comment as a whole, previous nit picking excluded.
Jay C
@scav:
Well, the “national tensions” in Mitteleuropa stem in no small part from a couple of salient, and inescapable demographic facts:
1) Each “country” was, in general, only partly an “ethnic nation-state”: virtually everyone (Poles, Czechs, Germans, Slovaks, etc.) had some enclaves of “others” living in their countries, and, usually, exclaves of “their” people living outside their borders. Which were almost always a source of tension.
2) Said borders had usually been drawn by outsiders – either imperial powers like Austria-Hungary, or, post-WWI, by the Allies at Versailles – in a polyglot Empire with a lot of local authority, boundaries were less important: in a region of separate “countries”, not so trivial.
and 3) the larger states weren’t loath to use force to correct any perceived “injustices” stemming from points 1) and 2).
liberal
@Burnspbesq:
Agreed. Arguing otherwise is getting into the ad hominem fallacy.
liberal
@EconWatcher:
Frankly, apart from deep insights into local history, most foreign policy issues are actually pretty easy to understand, so one could claim lack of originality/perceptiveness/etc for almost anyone.
Larison, however, tends to put things well and (AFAICT) is quite principled.
As a contrasting example, Zbig is often, these days perhaps usually, right, but he’s just unreadable and inconsistent on anything related to Russia. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that with Larison.
I suppose one could argue that Stephen Walt would serve as a reasonable replacement for Larison.
liberal
@rdldot:
Yawn. First, AFAICT he’s not an isolationist, unless you’re repeating the “non-interventionist = isolationist, or realist = isolationist” slur.
Second, people often don’t know each other’s motivations. While it’s useful to know, it’s not necessarily essential. In Larison’s case, his views as restricted to foreign policy appear both principled and consistent. (Contrast with Zbig, as I noted above.)
liberal
@I am not a kook (Supreme Thought Leader):
Incoherent.
liberal
@Jay C:
ISTR that this still persists; even now, one of the largest such groups in the world (well, maybe; I’ve heard it labeled such) is apparently Hungarians in Romania.
liberal
@Another Holocene Human:
Bbbbut eemom has pointed out that, as Americans with a history of genocide, we have no business criticizing the Israelis!
scav
@Jay C: Which, again, sounds a larger and more deep-seated issue than merely losing the Sudetenland and a larger, more generally inclusive middle-europe example of some of the things I was talking about specifically in the context of CZ. I get the tensions, I’m not getting the importance of the Sudetenland. Being used as a inanimate football to be carved at whim by the powers of Europe, that makes sense as a blow to even nascent national CZ pride, but that blow might just as well might pull peoples together to collectively say piss off UK.
smintheus
Wouldn’t Reagan qualify as the modern-day Chamberlain over Iran-Contra? That’s what I think of when I hear sentences that include the words ‘President’, ‘Iran’, and ‘betrayal’.
grandpa john
@Another Holocene Human: especially since all these warhawks have no intention of them or any of their family being within a thousand miles of any action and thus no danger of having to enter the military and being subjected to possible danger.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bill Arnold:
I speculate that at least on Israeli nuclear-tipped missile is targeted on the Kaaba in Mecca.
Just for shits and grins.
fuckwit
@jl: Making a deal– a hard one that takes years to negotiate– and sticking with it takes guts. Being a chickenhawk and howling for war does not take guts. Please do not buy into chickenhawk framing. Kthxbye.
Jay C
@liberal:
Absolutely right: and prior to WW2, the ethnic issue was “Romanians in Hungary”; now it’s the other way round…
@scav:
The “importance” of the Sudetenland – to Hitler’s thinking anyway – was, as far as historians have been able to parse out, less about the ethnic solidarity of the Sudeten Germans (and remember, Hitler’s Reich claimed suzerainty over ALL “Germans” everywhere: defined extremely broadly if there was any territory to be claimed/grabbed) as it was about Germany excercising its “Great Power” chops, and disposing of Czechoslovakia (seen as a French/British client state) as a possible roadblock to its expansionist plans. Which plan, sadly, the French and British went along with….
scav
@Jay C: But that’s its importance to the Germans (who of course were looking for reasons to move in), not to the nascent national identity of CZ, which was the original topic.
Mike Furlan
@smintheus:
Yes, Iran Contra was very bad, but what about Lebanon in ’83, get 241 marines killed for no good reason, and then confirm the operation had no good reason by immediately running away.
Carter’s Operation Eagle Claw was Napoleonic by comparison.
Dolly Llama
@catclub: Sweet Jesus. I knew someone would bring that nonsense up since it was Larison. Didn’t expect it to be the first comment though, from someone who clearly has a vague – and that’s being generous – notion of what the fuck they’re talking about.
Dolly Llama
@Burnspbesq: Exactly. I’ve never read a word of his on the topic, and damn little on domestic politics generally.
Mike Furlan
@Dolly Llama:
Hi Daniel Larison. Didn’t know “Dolly Llama” was one of your sock puppets. So, can you tell me if you needed to have your DNA tested before you were allowed to join the League of the South?
“What do I mean by “defenders of the blood?” I mean that we Southerners know who we are, where we come from, and what our people have accomplished for themselves and their posterity. We came from the Old World—Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the English Border Country, and the western and northern European continent”
http://dixienet.org/rights/2013/defense_of_our_blood.php