"This deal will make America and the world safer and more secure."

You know, Mr.President, what the repugs, for all their worship of Churchill will never understand, that Jaw-Jaw is always better than War-War.



Full transcript here.

Just Say No: to the Entire Middle East

Yes, the Iran deal is a huge accomplishment and should be an irrefutable proof that diplomacy works and war doesn't.

But the truth is that peace is not indigenous to the Middle East and has never thrived there. Even if our own repugs were not slavering for more permanent war.

Enough.

Kai Bird at The Nation:

Disengagement should now be our policy with both Israel and the Arab world. We Americans should urge our government to end all arms sales to any Arab nation ruled by a general, dictator or king. We need to isolate and diplomatically contain any Arab regime that has demonstrably killed unarmed protesters, as in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. We should also close our military installations in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

Such a dramatic, categorical and evenhanded withdrawal of American arms and treasure would deal a bracing shock to the region’s ruling elites. But it would be a good and decent thing for all concerned. The so-called experts, our TV talking heads, will be quick to object that such a withdrawal would only open the gates to the barbaric head-choppers. These experts are wrong: the Salafist nihilists operating under the black flag of a farcical caliphate have bitter enemies all around them. They have no real future in the twenty-first century. And in any case, these sectarian wars are not ours—and our government has no business sacrificing young American men and women in such an ephemeral mission.

The experts will call disengagement quixotic. They will speak in Kissingeresque bass tones about America’s “strategic” interests in Arabian oil. But I don’t care about oil, a fungible commodity that will be sold in any event on the global market by any regime that controls such carbon resources—especially since, given our climate peril, we should be focusing on renewable and sustainable energy. And I don’t care about the “strategic” consequences: they cannot be worse than the Middle East we have mismanaged.

We Americans must have a lower profile in the Middle East. Of course we can provide humanitarian assistance. But the Arabs are weary of our shallow promises of security and democracy, and all our flaccid diplomatic efforts to sustain the “peace process” in reality seem only to sustain a dead-end status quo. Enough.

Dangerous as Hell

Digby: 

But the dreams of All American omnipotence and glory are hardwired into the right and very strong in the culture at large. And it's dangerous as hell. Everyone should want to negotiate peace as the default position. If there's anything on earth that should be avoided unless there is absolutely no other choice, it's war. You'd think that would be common sense but this rather silly belief in America's godlike military power is leading a whole lot of people to take us into some very dangerous territory.

"Tough, principled diplomacy"

Because as the man who fought three wars said: To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. Well done, Mr. President.  Way to tell the chicken hawks and war mongers to fuck off and die.



Full transcript here.

Obama's "Secret" Diplomacy Success Over Iran

Gee, why isn't this all over Fox News?

Digby:

Iran has neutralized most of its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium that could be turned quickly into the core of a nuclear weapon, the U.N. nuclear agency said Friday, leaving the country with only about a fifth of what it would need for such a purpose. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a in a quarterly report that Iran now has less than 90 pounds of the material. The report also said Tehran was meeting all other obligations under an agreement reached four months ago in Geneva that serves as a prelude to a comprehensive deal now being negotiated.

Andrew Sullivan wonders why such news wouldn't make the front pages. Good question. But then, as he points out, nobody thinks this sign of successful diplomacy will change anything. Which is just ... depressing.

But just yesterday, President Obama made the point.

Kevin Drum:

President Obama today: (Wednesday)

To say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution. Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences, without building international support and legitimacy for our action, without leveling with the American people about the sacrifices required. Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans. As General Eisenhower, someone with hard-earned knowledge on this subject, said at this ceremony in 1947, “War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”

....America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership. But U.S. military action cannot be the only, or even primary, component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

It's nice to hear Obama say this so directly. Oh, the usual suspects will howl, but no one who has paid even the slightest attention to the history of the past 50 or 60 years can really question this. Our world isn't yet beyond the need for war, but for war to be an effective instrument of policy it needs to be used judiciously. It needs to be used when core interests are at stake and, equally importantly, it needs to be used only when it's likely to succeed on its own terms. If we don't know how to win, or if we have unrealistic ideas of what it even means to win—both of which were the case in Afghanistan and Iraq—then we shouldn't fight. This isn't a matter of deep foreign policy thinking, it's just common sense. Like it or not, there are lots of problems in the world that US military force can't solve.

Russia is Repugs' Fault

Believe me, I'm just as tired of calling out repugs for their lies and their obstruction and their venality and their hypocrisy and their war on women and their racism and on and on and on as you are of hearing it.
But the moment we stop catching them in every anti-democratic, anti-american word and act is the moment they win and we're fucked.
Rude Pundit:

Perhaps when speaking about Obama's muscle or fat on dealing with crises overseas, every so-called expert should put in a big, neon-glowing caveat: Anyone who can send a drone plane to missile murder the fuck out of someone any time he wants while most foreign leaders just roll their eyes over it is never truly weak on the world stage.
However, that said, what Republicans ought to be doing is crowing about how they weakened the president. For what was their goal in the last five years except to use obstruction, attack, and lying to degrade Obama and his presidency? Rather than get all pissy that Obama appears weak, do a fuckin' victory lap. Slap each other on the back. Have a celebratory Scotch and a circle jerk. You did it, GOP. You so weakened President Obama at home that it may well have weakened him when it comes to foreign policy.
See, Republicans love to say that Obama ultimately relenting on bombing Syria or refusing to admit that Benghazi is the worst thing that ever happened, worse than a dozen 9/11s covered in a Pearl Harbor sauce, demonstrates to Vladimir Putin that he's just a pushover, a pussy, a child when it comes to dealing with world powers. But they don't mention that the Senate GOP has prevented confirmation of dozens of officials in the State Department, that place that handles this part of the job. This follows years of filibustering of nominees. When she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton once told a Senate panel regarding the blocking of nominees to diplomatic positions, "It became harder and harder to explain to countries, particularly countries of significance, why we had nobody in position for them to interact with...their view does color whether the United States … is in a position going forward to demonstrate the kind of unity and strength and effectiveness that I think we have to in this very complex and dangerous world."
You know what emboldens foreign leaders to do shit without giving a damn what the United States might do? You know what weakens this country in the eyes of the world? When they see that the president can't get anything passed in the Congress. When they see that he can't even get a fucking ambassador confirmed by lawmakers. So take a fuckin' bow, Republicans, especially the ones who are bitching about Obama's "weakness." You did it. Own that shit.
Of course, Republicans never own what they've done. Because ultimately, if their talking point, their fiction, of a weak Obama is true, it's also because of the wreckage left behind by the last president, who was enabled by the very people who still, for some reason, are allowed to talk about what is good for the country.

"We'll keep working with the international community"

You know what would impress everybody and give the U.S. a real upper hand over both Assad and Putin? Spending a billion dollars to feed and shelter Syrian refugees and resettling the 100,000 most endangered here in the U.S. That would be exceptional.



Full transcript here.

In the Service of the Nation

One of the hallmarks of 21st-century republicanism is the eagerness to sacrifice those who perform public service - in uniform or out - on the altar of political expediency. It's bad enough when they sneer at teachers and custodians and firefighters as unnecessary  moochers who live large on the public dime.

 

But calling the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and his staff a "failure" is an insult that demeans every foreign service officer and embassy staff person around the globe.

 

Our diplomatic corps are not porcelein china dolls who must be kept wrapped in cotton wool and never exposed to the elements. They are as courageous and patriotic as any soldier, any Marine, any Seal.

 

Ambassador Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty died in the service of their country, knowing they took a risk by traveling openly through Libya but accepting the risk in hope of accomplishing much.

 

From Talking Points Memo:

TPM Reader EL takes things in a different (or perhaps deeper) direction entirely …

Regarding the Republicans and Benghazi, you write

“Imagine for a moment a different kind of investigation. What sort of security failures were involved in letting a US Ambassador get killed for the first time in 30 years? Not just any country but one that has been near the forefront of the US foreign policy agenda in the last two years. Whoever did what, the President is responsible for what happens on his watch. And when an Ambassador gets killed in the field, that’s a big failure by definition. Examining what’s happening could and probably would lead to some embarrassing lapses. More importantly, it might lead to improvements in how we operate in the future and prevent or limit the possibility of similar tragedies.”

Respectfully, I would say no—you need to go further. Your frame is still assumes the this tragedy is a “big failure” a priori, and then buys into the Washington conceit of pin the blame for the assumed “embarrassing lapses.” I would argue on the contrary that Ambassador Stevens was doing what an able foreign service officer representing a confident and subtle nation should be doing—living and travelling outside the fortified compound, engaging factions in the street, personally visiting regions and power brokers outside the capital.

What we had may simply have been a black swan—an irreducible tail risk that paid off by the laws of chance, giving us a really bad, tragic, awful day as a result. A really mature investigation by a confident nation would not focus on pinning the blame for a “big failure by definition,” but would ask subtle questions like:

1. What does the US gain and lose by forcing the foreign service to prioritize security vs. access and effectiveness?

2. Where do you strike a balance? Will this incident cause is to push the balance further in the direction of security?

3. Where do the foreign service professionals themselves think we should strike the balance?

4. Were there specific procedural issues or decisions that contributed to the death of Amb. Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, or—as I personally suspect is likely—were risks taken with forethought that were judged to be acceptable, that in retrospect still can be judged to be acceptable and necessary—though chance did not favor us on this bad day?

It goes without saying that this kind of conversation is quite impossible to have in official Washington at the moment. Maybe it never can be. But there is no reason we can’t hold ourselves to a higher standard, and try to drag the level of conversation upward by example.

"They represented the very best of our country."

As someone wrote this week, we send diplomats to places where we don't dare send military troops because it is too dangerous.



Full transcript here.