Mondoweiss
The omnipresent hawks-in-waiting of the Clinton administration
US Politics
James North and Philip Weiss on August 19, 2016 12 Comments
Retired admiral James Stavridis is now a dean of international school at Tufts
and a neoconservative darling
Have you noticed the distressing pattern in the media these days? Hawkish
voices are dominating the discussion of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Russia, Iran and
Syria. As everyone who’s anybody gets ready for the inevitable Clinton
administration, these experts are being given a platform that allows them to
shout down both the Obama administration’s officials who are guiding our policy
in Syria and also all the non-hawkish experts who disagree with them. And the
greasiest part of this is, Some of these hawks are using that platform to
audition for jobs under Clinton.
Syria is a problem that we can’t claim to solve. One thing we are sure of,
though, is that the American people have a right to a wide-open discussion of
that policy. Just 14 years after a similar chorus of no-doubters got the
country into Iraq, shattering the Middle East, why is National Public Radio
opening its doors to folks like Dennis Ross? Ross has gotten a microphone twice
in the last two weeks.
In that vein, yesterday National Public Radio interviewed retired Admiral James
Stavridis, who has been spoken of as a top foreign policy aide if Hillary
Clinton becomes president, and Stavridis made the case for intervention in
Syria with a lot of familiar talking points.
He and host David Greene agreed that President Obama’s policy in Syria had
failed then lamented Russia’s use of an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in
Syria. Stavridis described the Russians as bad actors across Eastern Europe,
and deprecated the likelihood of a political solution in Syria, saying a
solution would have to be imposed from the outside.
Dennis Ross is also surely auditioning for a role in the Clinton administration
(and trying to live down the fact that in June he called on American Jews to be
advocates for Israel, in what he thought was a private audience at a New York
temple). His first appearance on NPR was August 6, when he explained to weekend
host Scott Simon why he’d co-authored an op-ed in the Times calling for bombing
Syria, regime change by another name:
I understand the fear [of getting into war]. There’s good reason for that. We
have effectively been at war, in one way or the other, since 2001 in the Middle
East, and none of those conflicts have come out very well . . . What I’m
suggesting is think about how you use the threat of force as a lever to try to
get a political process. Because right now, that political process isn’t
working.
Then just a couple days ago, Ross got a callback from host Ari Shapiro, and he
said the Russians don’t want a political solution.
[T]he Russians are focused right now not on attacking ISIS. They’re focused
right now on carrying out strikes against the opposition, the Syrian opposition
in the Aleppo area. If in fact the agreement with us is supposed to change
what’s going on in Syria, reduce the level of violence in Syria and produce a
political process in Syria, strengthening Assad’s hold, choking off the
opposition in the Aleppo area is actually sending a signal that suggests that
the Russians are more interested in cementing Assad’s hold than they are in
reducing the level of violence in Syria . . . I don’t see how it can get us
closer to that. Assad has produced so much blood in Syria that the idea that he
would be the one who remains in power and you could put together some kind of
political settlement in Syria I think is a complete illusion.
NPR is surely reflecting the establishment consensus, which anticipates a
Clinton administration and seems to want a revival of the cold war. Former CIA
chief Mike Morell, for instance, called for killing Russians in Syria even as
he endorsed Clinton. Nicholas Kristof has repeatedly called for military
intervention in Syria in the Times, and in his latest used the word “genocide”
or “genocidal” seven times in one article.
We are not knowledgeable enough about Syria to confidently offer comprehensive
solutions of our own, other than the anti-interventionist instinct that less
violence is preferable to more violence and that Obama’s restraint has been
wise. What concerns us is the unanimity of these predictably interventionist
voices. It is also troubling that these experts, eager to ramp up the Clinton
administration in waiting, are seeking to undermine Obama administration
efforts to talk to the Russians and work out a deal in Syria. Every night on
MSNBC, commentators say that Donald Trump or his aides are bought and paid for
by the Russians. Do they really want to have dogfights between US and Russian
warplanes over Damascus? That’s no answer.
Right on time, today NPR has another piece on Russia treating it as a fait
accompli, but without offering any hard evidence, that Russia hacked the
Democratic National Committee emails, in order to influence our election.
What might Russia hope to gain from influencing the American vote?
[Investigative journalist Andrei] Soldatov says President Vladimir Putin
believes Clinton is a Russia-hater who was behind anti-government
demonstrations that took place in Russia in 2011 and 2012.
American readers, and influential American ones at that, are being fed a line
without any counter-narrative. And the pity is that a counter-narrative is
available, from leftists, realists, and libertarians, but the mainstream media
is indifferent as it warms the beds for Clintonite hawks.
Why isn’t the Times running pieces by Stephen F. Cohen, who is publishing at
the Nation? He describes the “factional” war inside the administration over
Syrian policy in an audio piece The Nation summarizes:
Factional politics were even clearer regarding Syria, where Obama had proposed
military cooperation with Russia against the Islamic State — in effect, finally
accepting Putin’s longstanding proposal — along with important agreements that
would reduce the danger of nuclear war. The Wall Street Journal and The
Washington Post had reported strong factional opposition to both of Obama’s
initiatives — in effect, a kind of détente with Russia — and both have been
halted, though whether temporarily or permanently is unclear.
Cohen thinks we will soon know, because Putin needs a decision by Obama now as
the crucial battle for Aleppo intensifies. Under his own pressure at home,
Putin seems resolved to end the Islamic State’s occupation of Syria, Aleppo
being a strategic site, without or with US cooperation, which he would prefer
to have.
Cohen, a distinguished historian who is the top expert on Russia in the United
States, goes further in saying that the New York Times is running a McCarthyite
campaign against Trump-Putin, almost out of whole cloth:
[The Times is] discarding its own longstanding journalistic standards in the
service of US policy in the new Cold War and now on behalf of the Clinton
presidential campaign, which is trying to run against “Trump-Putin.” In the
latter connection, the Times had already published what can only be viewed as a
number of neo-McCarthyite articles against Trump and his associates, labeling
them Putin’s “agents.”
Why doesn’t the mainstream also listen to Charles Glass, an accomplished
journalist with decades of experience in the Middle East, who has reported on
the ground from Syria in recent years? His recent, short, and valuable book,
Syria Burning, makes a number of essential points, including arguing that the
anti-Assad rebels may have been misled into turning to armed uprising in 2011
by the Western intervention in Libya.
The rebels calculated that, as in Libya, NATO would ensure their swift victory.
The US decided that the regime was so unpopular that the rebels would overthrow
it without NATO help. Both were wrong.
(At the time, we both [cautiously and not] supported the West’s intervention in
Libya, but Glass’s argument about its impact in Syria is one more reminder
about the danger of unintended consequences.)
Juan Cole offers a similar, realist analysis of why Russia is doing what it’s
doing on his site; Russia and Iran are combining to take on ISIS in eastern
Syria and to counter Israel’s saber-rattling.
From an Iranian point of view, closer military relations with the Russian
Federation at this juncture have advantages. They are some protection from the
belligerence toward Tehran of Binyamin Netanyahu’s far-right, expansionist
Israeli government, and of the new and reckless Saudi government, which is
bombing Yemen, supporting Salafi extremists in Syria, and rattling sabers at
Iran.
Asked about the Russian basing, Ali Shamkhani, the head of Iran’s National
Security Council, said that it was a matter of strategic cooperation against
terrorism – given the importance of defeating ISIL.
A. Trevor Thrall at Cato Institute says that overall the Obama administration’s
efforts have reflected a clear-headed reading of the situation. And not
“Obama’s worst mistake,” as Kristof contends:
Kristof joins a bipartisan choir in accusing Obama of wrongly believing there
is nothing the United States can do to make things better in Syria. Among his
suggestions: implementing a no-fly zone, creating safe zones for civilians, and
grounding the Syrian government’s air force. . .
On a practical level, American intervention would be dangerous on multiple
levels. Thanks to Russia’s support for Assad, trying to enforce no-fly zones
and humanitarian corridors would increase tensions with Russia and risk
confrontation between U.S. and Russian aircraft. Beyond that the United States
would need ground troops to manage humanitarian corridors and the safe movement
of civilians, raising the likelihood of American casualties.
Dogfights over Damascus. And no end in sight.
Most fundamentally, the political interests of those engaged in the civil war
far outweigh America’s humanitarian interests in Syria. Calling Syria ‘Obama’s
mistake’ both misdirects moral responsibility for the conflict and obscures the
fact that the combatants are far more motivated than the United States. Both
the Assad regime and the rebels have suffered incredible losses; all sides are
clearly in it for the long haul.
Against such motivation the United States can certainly bring overwhelming
military force. But as we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq, military superiority
does not always translate to peace and stability.
Christopher Preble and Emma Ashford of Cato attack Clinton’s interventionist
ideas:
She continues to call for the creation of a “safe space” or no-fly zone inside
Syria, a decision that could escalate into imposing regime change, as it did in
Libya, or even bring U.S. forces into direct conflict with Russia. More
broadly, she advocates more intervention around the world when the American
people want to focus on problems closer to home.
Clinton’s approach — the idea that America must meddle in every global dispute
— has already been tried and has proven costly, dangerous, and unnecessary.
These voices ought to be in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. We
knock the establishment all the time on this site; and this pattern of
inclusion and exclusion shows why we are right. “Too much of the media seems
hot for turf & favor in an ever more plausible & unashamed American
public-private state-steered press,” Walter Kirn says. With their keen sense
for who is in and who is out, establishment media have unified around a group
of leading experts who appear likely to have high position in a few months’
time. When they ought to reflect on the lessons of Iraq, and let some air into
the room.
P.S. Ari Shapiro told listeners on NPR that Dennis Ross’s latest book is titled
Doomed to Succeed, thereby leaving out the subtitle, “The U.S. Israel
Relationship from Truman to Obama.” An omission similar to Scott Simon’s, when
he left out the fact that Ross and his co-author of that Bomb Syria Now piece
are fellows at a spinoff of the Israel lobby group, AIPAC — the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy. Here are the rules: It’s absolutely fine for
the media to talk up Russia’s supposed influence in American politics. But no
one can say a word about Israel’s demonstrable presence.
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The omnipresent hawks-in-waiting of the Clinton administration
US Politics
James North and Philip Weiss on August 19, 2016 12 Comments
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valid.
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valid.
• Adjust Font Size
Retired admiral James Stavridis is now a dean of international school at Tufts
and a neoconservative darling
Have you noticed the distressing pattern in the media these days? Hawkish
voices are dominating the discussion of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Russia, Iran and
Syria. As everyone who’s anybody gets ready for the inevitable Clinton
administration, these experts are being given a platform that allows them to
shout down both the Obama administration’s officials who are guiding our policy
in Syria and also all the non-hawkish experts who disagree with them. And the
greasiest part of this is, Some of these hawks are using that platform to
audition for jobs under Clinton.
Syria is a problem that we can’t claim to solve. One thing we are sure of,
though, is that the American people have a right to a wide-open discussion of
that policy. Just 14 years after a similar chorus of no-doubters got the
country into Iraq, shattering the Middle East, why is National Public Radio
opening its doors to folks like Dennis Ross? Ross has gotten a microphone twice
in the last two weeks.
In that vein, yesterday National Public Radio interviewed retired Admiral James
Stavridis, who has been spoken of as a top foreign policy aide if Hillary
Clinton becomes president, and Stavridis made the case for intervention in
Syria with a lot of familiar talking points.
He and host David Greene agreed that President Obama’s policy in Syria had
failed then lamented Russia’s use of an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in
Syria. Stavridis described the Russians as bad actors across Eastern Europe,
and deprecated the likelihood of a political solution in Syria, saying a
solution would have to be imposed from the outside.
Dennis Ross is also surely auditioning for a role in the Clinton administration
(and trying to live down the fact that in June he called on American Jews to be
advocates for Israel, in what he thought was a private audience at a New York
temple). His first appearance on NPR was August 6, when he explained to weekend
host Scott Simon why he’d co-authored an op-ed in the Times calling for bombing
Syria, regime change by another name:
I understand the fear [of getting into war]. There’s good reason for that. We
have effectively been at war, in one way or the other, since 2001 in the Middle
East, and none of those conflicts have come out very well . . . What I’m
suggesting is think about how you use the threat of force as a lever to try to
get a political process. Because right now, that political process isn’t
working.
Then just a couple days ago, Ross got a callback from host Ari Shapiro, and he
said the Russians don’t want a political solution.
[T]he Russians are focused right now not on attacking ISIS. They’re focused
right now on carrying out strikes against the opposition, the Syrian opposition
in the Aleppo area. If in fact the agreement with us is supposed to change
what’s going on in Syria, reduce the level of violence in Syria and produce a
political process in Syria, strengthening Assad’s hold, choking off the
opposition in the Aleppo area is actually sending a signal that suggests that
the Russians are more interested in cementing Assad’s hold than they are in
reducing the level of violence in Syria . . . I don’t see how it can get us
closer to that. Assad has produced so much blood in Syria that the idea that he
would be the one who remains in power and you could put together some kind of
political settlement in Syria I think is a complete illusion.
NPR is surely reflecting the establishment consensus, which anticipates a
Clinton administration and seems to want a revival of the cold war. Former CIA
chief Mike Morell, for instance, called for killing Russians in Syria even as
he endorsed Clinton. Nicholas Kristof has repeatedly called for military
intervention in Syria in the Times, and in his latest used the word “genocide”
or “genocidal” seven times in one article.
We are not knowledgeable enough about Syria to confidently offer comprehensive
solutions of our own, other than the anti-interventionist instinct that less
violence is preferable to more violence and that Obama’s restraint has been
wise. What concerns us is the unanimity of these predictably interventionist
voices. It is also troubling that these experts, eager to ramp up the Clinton
administration in waiting, are seeking to undermine Obama administration
efforts to talk to the Russians and work out a deal in Syria. Every night on
MSNBC, commentators say that Donald Trump or his aides are bought and paid for
by the Russians. Do they really want to have dogfights between US and Russian
warplanes over Damascus? That’s no answer.
Right on time, today NPR has another piece on Russia treating it as a fait
accompli, but without offering any hard evidence, that Russia hacked the
Democratic National Committee emails, in order to influence our election.
What might Russia hope to gain from influencing the American vote?
[Investigative journalist Andrei] Soldatov says President Vladimir Putin
believes Clinton is a Russia-hater who was behind anti-government
demonstrations that took place in Russia in 2011 and 2012.
American readers, and influential American ones at that, are being fed a line
without any counter-narrative. And the pity is that a counter-narrative is
available, from leftists, realists, and libertarians, but the mainstream media
is indifferent as it warms the beds for Clintonite hawks.
Why isn’t the Times running pieces by Stephen F. Cohen, who is publishing at
the Nation? He describes the “factional” war inside the administration over
Syrian policy in an audio piece The Nation summarizes:
Factional politics were even clearer regarding Syria, where Obama had proposed
military cooperation with Russia against the Islamic State — in effect, finally
accepting Putin’s longstanding proposal — along with important agreements that
would reduce the danger of nuclear war. The Wall Street Journal and The
Washington Post had reported strong factional opposition to both of Obama’s
initiatives — in effect, a kind of détente with Russia — and both have been
halted, though whether temporarily or permanently is unclear.
Cohen thinks we will soon know, because Putin needs a decision by Obama now as
the crucial battle for Aleppo intensifies. Under his own pressure at home,
Putin seems resolved to end the Islamic State’s occupation of Syria, Aleppo
being a strategic site, without or with US cooperation, which he would prefer
to have.
Cohen, a distinguished historian who is the top expert on Russia in the United
States, goes further in saying that the New York Times is running a McCarthyite
campaign against Trump-Putin, almost out of whole cloth:
[The Times is] discarding its own longstanding journalistic standards in the
service of US policy in the new Cold War and now on behalf of the Clinton
presidential campaign, which is trying to run against “Trump-Putin.” In the
latter connection, the Times had already published what can only be viewed as a
number of neo-McCarthyite articles against Trump and his associates, labeling
them Putin’s “agents.”
Why doesn’t the mainstream also listen to Charles Glass, an accomplished
journalist with decades of experience in the Middle East, who has reported on
the ground from Syria in recent years? His recent, short, and valuable book,
Syria Burning, makes a number of essential points, including arguing that the
anti-Assad rebels may have been misled into turning to armed uprising in 2011
by the Western intervention in Libya.
The rebels calculated that, as in Libya, NATO would ensure their swift victory.
The US decided that the regime was so unpopular that the rebels would overthrow
it without NATO help. Both were wrong.
(At the time, we both [cautiously and not] supported the West’s intervention in
Libya, but Glass’s argument about its impact in Syria is one more reminder
about the danger of unintended consequences.)
Juan Cole offers a similar, realist analysis of why Russia is doing what it’s
doing on his site; Russia and Iran are combining to take on ISIS in eastern
Syria and to counter Israel’s saber-rattling.
From an Iranian point of view, closer military relations with the Russian
Federation at this juncture have advantages. They are some protection from the
belligerence toward Tehran of Binyamin Netanyahu’s far-right, expansionist
Israeli government, and of the new and reckless Saudi government, which is
bombing Yemen, supporting Salafi extremists in Syria, and rattling sabers at
Iran.
Asked about the Russian basing, Ali Shamkhani, the head of Iran’s National
Security Council, said that it was a matter of strategic cooperation against
terrorism – given the importance of defeating ISIL.
A. Trevor Thrall at Cato Institute says that overall the Obama administration’s
efforts have reflected a clear-headed reading of the situation. And not
“Obama’s worst mistake,” as Kristof contends:
Kristof joins a bipartisan choir in accusing Obama of wrongly believing there
is nothing the United States can do to make things better in Syria. Among his
suggestions: implementing a no-fly zone, creating safe zones for civilians, and
grounding the Syrian government’s air force. . .
On a practical level, American intervention would be dangerous on multiple
levels. Thanks to Russia’s support for Assad, trying to enforce no-fly zones
and humanitarian corridors would increase tensions with Russia and risk
confrontation between U.S. and Russian aircraft. Beyond that the United States
would need ground troops to manage humanitarian corridors and the safe movement
of civilians, raising the likelihood of American casualties.
Dogfights over Damascus. And no end in sight.
Most fundamentally, the political interests of those engaged in the civil war
far outweigh America’s humanitarian interests in Syria. Calling Syria ‘Obama’s
mistake’ both misdirects moral responsibility for the conflict and obscures the
fact that the combatants are far more motivated than the United States. Both
the Assad regime and the rebels have suffered incredible losses; all sides are
clearly in it for the long haul.
Against such motivation the United States can certainly bring overwhelming
military force. But as we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq, military superiority
does not always translate to peace and stability.
Christopher Preble and Emma Ashford of Cato attack Clinton’s interventionist
ideas:
She continues to call for the creation of a “safe space” or no-fly zone inside
Syria, a decision that could escalate into imposing regime change, as it did in
Libya, or even bring U.S. forces into direct conflict with Russia. More
broadly, she advocates more intervention around the world when the American
people want to focus on problems closer to home.
Clinton’s approach — the idea that America must meddle in every global dispute
— has already been tried and has proven costly, dangerous, and unnecessary.
These voices ought to be in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. We
knock the establishment all the time on this site; and this pattern of
inclusion and exclusion shows why we are right. “Too much of the media seems
hot for turf & favor in an ever more plausible & unashamed American
public-private state-steered press,” Walter Kirn says. With their keen sense
for who is in and who is out, establishment media have unified around a group
of leading experts who appear likely to have high position in a few months’
time. When they ought to reflect on the lessons of Iraq, and let some air into
the room.
P.S. Ari Shapiro told listeners on NPR that Dennis Ross’s latest book is titled
Doomed to Succeed, thereby leaving out the subtitle, “The U.S. Israel
Relationship from Truman to Obama.” An omission similar to Scott Simon’s, when
he left out the fact that Ross and his co-author of that Bomb Syria Now piece
are fellows at a spinoff of the Israel lobby group, AIPAC — the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy. Here are the rules: It’s absolutely fine for
the media to talk up Russia’s supposed influence in American politics. But no
one can say a word about Israel’s demonstrable presence.
