"Hawks make a call to arms in the Middle East" -- article

[Matt Holcomb]

The following article is from major Australian newspaper, The Age:

Hawks make a call to arms in the Middle East

By Michael Gawenda
July 24, 2006

Days after Israel began bombing Lebanon and Hezbollah's missiles began landing on Israel's northern cities, Washington-based political magazine The Weekly Standard ran an editorial by editor William Kristol, headlined "It's our war".

Kristol is a leading neoconservative and The Weekly Standard's list of contributing editors is a virtual who's who of the movement's leading thinkers and proselytisers, many of them with close ties to the Bush Administration and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington's most influential conservative foreign policy think tank.

Kristol is also a regular commentator on Fox Cable News, which, like The Standard, is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Fox, in the main, has been a cheerleader for the Administration's foreign policy.

The Kristol editorial was both a belligerent response to those who reckon the neoconservative "moment" has passed, consigned to wherever it is that failed foreign policy doctrines end up, and an exhortation to the Administration to resist descending further into the sort of confused multilateralism and useless diplomacy that has marked its dealings with those two "axis of evil" states, North Korea and, especially, Iran.

Neoconservatives don't do nuance. Kristol's position is crystal clear: what is happening in the Middle East now is an Islamist-Israeli war, part of the wider war between Islamist totalitarianism and liberal democracy and moderate Islam. To fight this war, the US has to confront not just terror networks but the states that sponsor them.

Israel is dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah: America should be going after Syria and Iran.

And, according to Kristol, the Bush Administration has done a poor job in recent times standing up to Iran and Syria. It has been too weak, and weakness in the war against radical Islamism is "provocative".

There is no room for ifs and buts in Kristol's conclusion: The US should, as soon as possible, launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, which would weaken the regime and put the country on the road to regime change. At the same time, the US should send extra troops to Iraq and Afghanistan to bolster the democratically elected but besieged governments in those countries.

There are two things to be said about Kristol's editorial. It represents the views of most neoconservatives, who are more convinced than ever that only unilateral action by the US - including the threat and use of force - is the key to fighting the war against global radical Islamism. The European focus on "soft power' is just a cover for appeasement and weakness.

And, the neoconservatives and other conservative hawks are almost in despair over what they see as the Administration's almost total retreat from the foreign policy proclaimed by Bush in his State of the Union address in 2003, in which he labelled Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis of evil' and asserted America's right to act pre-emptively against states that harbour and support terrorists or threaten to develop weapons of mass destruction that could be passed on to terrorists.

The despair is justified. There is virtually no chance that Bush or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will pay much heed to Kristol's plea for extra US forces for Iraq or for a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. This may be a "moment of clarity", as Kristol describes the Israeli action against Hezbollah, an opening for the US to act, but there is no chance that America will attack Iran's nuclear facilities any time soon. As for Iraq, even as the country slips closer to sectarian civil war, the political imperative for Bush is to draw down US forces as soon as possible.

Up to a point, this is a chastened Administration. The Iraq war has clearly been a sobering reality check, even for a man with as few self-doubts and as unreflective as Bush. Rice, for the time being, has sidelined Vice-President Dick Cheney as the key driver of US foreign policy, and it was Rice who persuaded Bush to take the diplomacy route with Iran and even with North Korea. In the end, after Israel has done what it can to seriously weaken Hezbollah, Bush and Rice will work with America's allies to find a way to implement the Security Council resolution that calls for the disarming of Hezbollah and for the Lebanese army to take control of southern Lebanon.

This may not be a moment of clarity, but it is a moment of opportunity. The Bush Administration, however reluctantly, has implicitly acknowledged that there are limits to its power. It may not have great faith in international institutions like the United Nations or even in its allies in the European Union, but for now, Bush is committed to what he describes as "slow, difficult diplomacy" when it comes to dealing with Iran or North Korea.

This is a moment of opportunity for all those who have been scathing in their criticism of what they say has been the Administration's unilateralism, its disdain for international institutions and its know-nothing arrogance.

For those who fervently believe in the efficacy of diplomacy and the value of international institutions to solve threats to global security, diplomacy's moment has arrived. How long that moment of opportunity will last is unclear.

But if it is missed, if in the end, diplomacy fails, especially on Iran, expect the "old" Bush - and the sidelined Cheney - to return. Bush and Cheney have a clear red line on Iran: it must not be allowed to build nuclear weapons. If diplomacy fails, the despairing hawks may yet get their way.

Michael Gawenda is United States correspondent.

[fastpat]

William Kristol, Irving Kristol (the father), and the whole gang at the American Enterprise Institute should be required to register as agents of a foreign government; Israel's.

America Held Hostage

[fintstone]

Only when you register as an agent of Al Qaeda.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by fintstone
Only when you register as an agent of Al Qaeda.

Why would I do that, I've never supported government support for that group.

Whereas, the Kristol's routinely asked for American troop commitments on Israel's behalf.

Get your facts straight before you answer, you'll reduce your "fool" quotient be quite a bit if you do that.