This week's National Journal poll of top political bloggers asked for performance grades thus far for various components of the Obama team. Regarding the White House staff, the Left/Right gap was fairly small, with the Left collectively assigning a B-, while the Right gave a C. I gave the staff a B, and wrote: "Although it's hard to tell from the outside, the staff seems to be working together well in managing the administration."
Bloggers were also asked to grade the Economic Team and the National Security Team. The Left gave the Econ Team a C+, and the National Security Team a B-. The Right gave an F in Econ, and a D in National Security. I voted for a D in both, and wrote: "Out-of-control spending, with massive debt financed by a radical expansion in the money supply. Timid on Iran, aggressive against Israel, self-deluded on the Palestinian desire for peace, and miserable handling of relationships with European governments."
Left/Right Bloggers in accord on grades for Obama WH staff, but not for his Econ. and Nat. Security Teams:
The left is unhappy because Obama didn't go hard enough left fast enough, while the right thinks he's going too far left too fast, so seemingly similar ratings are caused by diametrically opposed concerns.
Cue someone asking you why you are a Democrat in 3, 2, 1...
Obama - B/C
McCain theoretical - C/D (I'm being generous, it may have been absolutely chaotic in a McCain WH.)
Economic team:
Obama - F
McCain theoretical - F (They'd both be doing the same stupidity.)
National Security:
Obama - Incomplete (but showing decent potential)
McCain theoretical - Incomplete (who the heck knows what this guy would be doing right now)
Oh I don't know, he might want to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.
Let's give the actual Iranians a chance to make their own positive changes. They've proven they will not take the election issues lying down; they don't need our interference. I for once am glad for the lack of parochial colonialism attitudes that our meddling will make it better for them. Every instance of meddling in the past has done nothing but hand ammo to our ideological enemies and weaken the moderates.
Is there anything substantive in here at all?
This oft repeated historical characterization is misleading. It's true that the CIA did bring back the Shah, but he was forced from his legal position. The CIA arranged not a coup, but a counter coup in 1953. The Shah's restoration did not change the government. The CIA did not convert Iran from a democracy into a dictatorship. However in 1975 the Shah became an autocrat making Iran into a one-party state. By leaving out the time line and the details, we get a misleading impression. Wikipedia used to have the full story, but the leftists have hacked up the entries to conform to their orthodoxy.
For example we have more suspicious IG firings.
I've asked that before and didn't receive an answer. It wasn't a snarky question, it was sincere -- his stances seem always to match with the Republicans, though there may be plenty of counterexamples I'm just not aware of. So I was curious -- why would someone who so rarely (if ever) seems to agree with the Democrats self-identify as a Democrat? He has every right to, and perhaps good reasons to -- they're just not readily apparent.
You put in credence in the apparent consensus that its best not to be seen as meddling in Iran's business? It seems to have support across the political spectrum.
Do you remember that old airline advertisement featuring the Shah and the Concorde jets he bought? He left a "let them eat cake" flavor to his rule, instead of the Western democratic freedom of press, defense of the individual, and love of due process that should be the hallmarks of Western intervention and post-colonialism.
Again, the bigger point here is that we should butt out and let them fix their own country. The marches and peaceful protests prove they are not bloodthirsty savages that need to be added to our Western burden, but capable politically-minded citizens who want to advance their nation, such as it is. If Obama gets an "F" for staying out of someone else's fight, I'm not sure what an "A" would look like - a glass parking lot for a McDonald's?
I agree that many people on the left fault Pres. Obama for not abandoning Pres. Bush's foreign and domestic policies quickly or thoroughly enough, and that many on the right dislike Pres. Obama's instincts and methods (and are bothered by the disarray of the Republican Party).
I sense that relatively few people of any stripe, however, are pining for a return to strategery.
What consensus? I just hear the usual suspects making the usual noises.
Reliable hawk's want broad denunciations of the current Iranian regime coupled with action to try and topple same. Reliable doves want vague "evenhanded" denunciations of violence and nothing more. Professional diplomats demand diplomatic language. Reliable isolationists want the White house to do and say nothing because its none of our business. And reliable presidential sycophants have pronounced the White House's response so far to be pitch perfect.
One can hardly blame Obama for approaching Iran and everything associated with it gingerly. That country has been the graveyard of White House foreign policy ambitions for over 30 years. The one thing Obama can be certain of when he receives advice about Iran is that the source knows little more about the country and its politics than he does.
I think I agree with most of the other grades that Rosetta has listed. I really did not see a single candidate who understood the econ issue and provided a workable solution. Fact is, I can't say that I've seen a consensus from any experts or politicians about what would make sense to pick up the pieces, not on the left or the right. But if he did nothing and things failed, you better believe he'd suffer politically from midterm election all the way to the next prez election.
Obama's handling of the Iranian crisis is highly reminiscent of President Bush's policy towards the Ukrainian revolution. In both cases, the incumbent regime's trump card was to portray the opposition as an American puppet -- this is a trump card that Fidel Castro has repeatedly played to stifle change in Cuba. And in both cases, the U.S. president rightly chose to tread with a light touch.
We cannot be certain that the events in Iran will come to be known as the Green Revolution that ended the Islamic Republic -- although in recent days I think that outcome looks increasingly likely. But if Iran's endgame does look like the Ukranian Orange Revolution, the fact that the U.S. was wise enough to know that countries have to make certain choices *on their own* will have helped.
Your prescription would have the U.S. playing into the hands of the likes of Vladimir Putin for the simple satisfaction of singing a political Hallilujah Chorus. That is not merely unwise -- it is weak, weak, weak. Stop playing checkers, and start playing chess.
While I am most assuredly not an Obama supporter and agree with precious few of his policies, it seems to me he is playing this situation exactly right. I think this is not an opportunity building situation; rather it is a damage limitation situation. Relative silence is a good thing.
During the campaign, I was exceedingly worried that we were in for Carter II. I was worried, for instance, that we would see a human-rights centric foreign policy, which in the Carter years did little to promote human rights. I was worried that we would not see enough of a commitment to free trade. I was worried that Obama did not understand that we live in a world of great powers — his speechwriter saying that an Obama administration would focus on places like Djibouti.
Fortunately, what we have gotten is tremendous pragmatism, not ideology. I would love to have been a creepy, sneaky little fly on Samantha Power's wall when Obama decided not to push a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide — which was exactly the right decision, since Armenia and Turkey are making great strides towards reconciliation on the ground, and they don't need outside powers throwing a monkey wrench into the process.
One concern I do have is Obama's stated goal (again, similar to Reagan's) of abolishing all nuclear weapons, which would push us back to 1914. But in practice, this is likely to mean cuts to a few hundred warheads, which maintains the logic of deterrence while considerably reducing the chance of accidental launches, miscalculation, and so on. So I would view that as a positive outcome.
On trade, we have seen Obama endorse the South Korea and Colombia free trade agreements — two agreements I feared he would quietly bury. True, he hasn't (yet) called for fast track authority, but the administration has a lot on its plate with the financial crisis; I'm willing to accept that, at least for now.
On economic policy, I give Obama more mixed reviews. It's very difficult to see how a vast expansion of the money supply can do anything but lead to inflation, although I heard a very convincing presentation the other day arguing (contra Arthur Laffer) that it will be relatively easy for the Fed to contract M2 later this year, once we receive clear signals that the recession is ending.
The auto industry bailouts are going to lead the to any fundamental restructuring of the auto industry; if anything, they will hurt Ford, the one U.S. carmaker in relatively good shape. I am also deeply concerned that Obama's makeover of financial regulation is going to lead to a repeat of Sarbanes-Oxley: hasty regulatory overhauls in response to a crisis lead to bad policy.
We will have to see where all this goes, of course. The president isn't commander-in-chief of the economy.
"Shah became unpopular and was basically driven out by the Prime Minister Mossadeq, whereupon we used Operation Ajax to create unrest, get the PM booted, and reinstalled the Shah."
I agree that the CIA over reacted, but let's be clear that Mossadeq acted illegally and the restoration of the Shah was more in the nature of a counter-coup than a coup. The counter-coup did not change the Iranian government. Later, much later, the Shah went bad, but I don't see how the CIA could have predicted that 20 years in advance.
As to the larger point of non-interference, I'm generally in accord with you on that. Although I think Iran was better off with the Shah, bad as he was. Let's remember what FDR said about Samosa: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. A certain amount of Realpolitik is inevitable.
I don't give Obama an "F" on Iran, I give him an "F" for his lack of understanding of world affairs. This guy has no experience at anything and it shows.
That is true of the current institutional arrangements of the Islamic Republic. But it is also true that this could change on a dime.
If Ahmadinejad prevails, he could move to outflank Khamanei -- I suspect that Khamanei's fear of this explains his hardline speech today, which is clearly going to throw fuel onto the fire.
Similarly, if Mousavi prevails, we're now looking at a wholesale overhaul of politics in Iran -- quite possibly, the end of the Islamic Republic. This would not have been true had he prevailed a couple of weeks ago, but Iran has changed over the past week.
There is no reason to be fair to the british or the communuists if you are not going to be fair to the US, Ike's CIA did what they did to head off a very real threat from the soviets, I seriously doubt that at the time they were thinking of spreading democracy by instituting a monarchy.
Exactly. It would be the kiss of death for the reformers. Maybe that is what the neocons want. They would rather have a boogeyman..
At least until you realize that Moussave has always ben an islamist and still supports Iran's nuclear program, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
As the Christian Science Monitor reports,
What exactly would qualify for an F? I sincerely can't imagine anything legit that would be worse on the economy, and your characterization on foreign policy (which differs from mine) doesn't leave much to recommend it.
Who'd have thought it?
GWB: expulsion
If in the field of domestic politics, you are presumably concerned by problems such as regulatory capture, why do you have such confidence in the government's ability to adjudicate domestic conflicts?
Er, sorry, make that "civil conflicts."
Doesnt this just beg the question of whose land it is?
Mossadeq may have violated royalist Iranian law, but are we really in the business of upholding the divine rights of monarchs? Shouldn't the overthrow of a monarch by a popularly elected Prime Minister be exactly the sort of thing we get behind?
I really wonder about these polls. There's no reason to think that these bloggers generally have expertise in areas related to their votes. I think Mr. Kopel has significant expertise in some areas but not especially foreign policy. So it becomes just a popularity poll. But unlike any respectable poll, it is not a random sample. So what conclusion can you draw? I guess it would only be about the bloggers themselves, but that seems to be a little self-important.
I don't think it requires a resolution of the substantive ownership issues to conclude that the outpost-building, in particular, is illegal and a violation of property law. It's illegal under both Israeli and Palestinian law, and the outpost builders don't even pretend to own title to the land on which they're squatting. Pretty much the only way to defend their actions would be to revive an old-fashioned lefty view of squatters' rights.
Do you dispute that many Palestinian families had title to land seized for settlement building?
This is a bit silly. Boris Yeltsin was part of the communist system until 1987 or so. That didn't stop him from dismantling it.
Cheers,
Cheers,
"Even in 1973, when I was in college, the Shah was sending his SAVAK minders ..."
I picked that date because that's when the Shah abolished opposition parties. Even the highly compromised Wikipedia admits this.Obviously the Shah was on a trajectory to autocracy for some time.
"The Shah "forced" from his "legal" position?!?!?"
At that time Iran was a constitutional monarchy with the Shah as the head of state.
Historians do argue about whether his return was a coup or a counter-coup. They argue as to whether he fled or was illegally forced to leave by Mosaddeq. We have dueling authorities on the details and interpretation of what happened. But statement like this one by Dan De Luce in the Guardian, are simply misleading as the coup or counter-coup did not create a dictatorship-- that took 20 years.
You seem to think the books you linked to are the last word-- some of us disagree.
The very vast majority of the land was held by the crown - first the Ottomans, then the British in trust for the Jews, then seized by the Jordanians, and then left in a disputed state, with the Israelis having a claim as the successors to the Jordanians and the Palestinians having an expectancy of a future claim as the successors to the Israelis.
A tiny minority was taken from Palestinian families. Part of the problem, of course, is in the definition of "Palestinian." Before 1948, that term referred to the Jews, in which case your initial statement would be correct. But I'm pretty sure you didn't mean that. The PLO set out to reclaim the term after its founding in 1964. While some settlements were built on lands seized from Palestinian families, that was far from the common case.
He doesn't have the power to decide who wins, but whoever wins, we'll have a stronger hand to play because we have others behind us, or at least not working against us.
Bush and Cheney seemed to do everything they could to strengthen the most dangerous and most antisemitic leaders both internally and externally. Not only did they feed into the rhetoric of the nuttiest people, they took away a strong military enemy of the regime (Saddam) and made sure Europe and Russia would make sure sanctions were ineffective. Yeah, I know they didn't intend to strengthen the extremists in Iran, but it's what they did.
It's heartening to see some adult leadership in the White House for the first time in sixteen years.
You mean the consensus to condemn Iran's crackdown on protests as opposed to the Administration's "Troubling" rhetoric?
Disagree. The existential threat of Sadaam tended to strengthen the extremists in Iran, and his removal would tend to remove some legitimacy the extremists claim, as defenders of the nation. If the situation in Iraq continues to evolve positively next door, the Iranian people will not be blind to it... the absence of threat... and perhaps will notice societal disparities that they find unacceptable. Can't say as I support these nation-building exercises, but if there is an upside to them, this would be it.
I think Europe and Russia will make sure their pockets are being filled, as always.
I'm curious: while the Iran and I/P stuff is the usual boilerplate, why exactly do you think relationships with Europe have been "miserably" handled? What US-European issues are in dispute?
I have seen no evidence that the Obama administration has enabled extremists to direct policy concerning Iran, Cuba, Israel, Venezuela, or any of the other situations that have been magnets for extremists.
Which may be the reason some people are complaining.
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