The Tehran Holocaust Conference: It's Implications

A friend asked me to post my views on the long-term effects of the Holocaust deniers conference in Tehran.
My response falls into two parts. (1) I believe that the conference will have no impact whatsoever on scholarly opinion in the West regarding the historicity of the Holocaust, though some scholars may find it useful to rebut the most outrageous assertions made in Tehran. For the most part (except as I will explain below), I believe the impact on Western public opinion will be negligible. (2) However, the effects in the Islamic world are likely to be more complicated and potentially dangerous. There's already an element of Holocaust denial in Arab propaganda, and the proceedings of the Tehran conference will provide ammunition to use for propaganda purposes. Moreover, it seems to me quite possible, even probable, that what was said at Tehran will find its way into the curriculum of Islamist schools and might even be accorded some respectability in "intellectual circles" in the Muslim world. This may find an echo in Muslim communities in the West, especially in Europe, and will also provide quotable material for Skinheads, neo-Nazis and White Supremacists whose websites occupy a certain niche on the Internet.

I don't have any basis for guessing how it will affect public opinion in countries like Japan and Argentina where anti-Semitism (without Jews in the case of Japan) already has a troublesome audience. Thus, at one level, the Tehran conference merely confirms what "we" already know about the Iranian regime. However, at a deeper level, we do need to be concerned about the audience the conference might reach.

One hopes therefore that Holocaust scholars in the West will take the Tehran conference seriously enough to formulate a succinct response that could be jointly signed by a number of well-known Holocaust scholars and published jointly by -- for example -- the principal Holocaust museums in the world, including the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Yad Va'Shem in Israel. And since there are countries in Europe where Holocaust denial is a crime, one hopes that the Iranian president might actually be indicted for his role in setting up the conference and for the assertions he has repeatedly made.

One side note: We are all familiar with the ridiculous (but quite serious) assertions that some Islamic scholars have made regarding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem -- denying that there was ever a Jewish Temple on that site, denying that the Jews have any historic connection to a site which Muslims also claim as holy. That ought to serve as a reminder that assertions you and I dismiss as absurd can have serious consequences in communities that adopt a different historical narrative than we do in the West.

More on the Baker-Hamilton Report

I read every word in the Baker-Hamilton report this weekend and what struck me above all was how many of the recommendations were of the "wave of the wand" variety -- i.e., policies that might make sense if they could be accomplished magically but that are utterly unachievable under present circumstances. A very large percentage of the recommendations, well over 50 percent in my opinion, were of this kind. For all the publicity the report received and despite its bipartisan unanimity, the report in its totality is a wish list, not a strategy. The message this conveyed to me is that Baker, Hamilton and their colleagues really don't know how to save the situation in Iraq. They did not say so directly, of course, but I felt after reading the report that the members of the Commission believe that war in Iraq is already lost. Just as the White House and the Pentagon can be faulted for failing to plan what to do after "victory," the failing of the Baker-Hamilton Commission is that it does not say how the United States should deal with the situation in the Middle East now that we have failed to achieve our objectives in Iraq.

Jimmy Carter's New Book

Until George W. Bush came along, I thought Jimmy Carter was the worst president in my lifetime -- yes, worse than Richard Nixon who opened the door to China, managed the economy well and approved major environmental legislation. Of course, he engaged in illegal acts that were the product of his paranoia. Strange bird, Nixon. I knew him slightly while he was vice president. Carter's redeeming qualities as president were few. He presided over the worst period of inflation in recent history, accomplished next to nothing and received credit he was not due for the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. People have conveniently forgotten that when Anwar Sadat suggested bilateral negotiations between Israel and Egypt, the first reaction of the Carter Administration was to oppose them. Carter and his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezsinski, wanted multilateral negotiations that would have brought Russia to the table. Egypt, of course, was struggling hard under Sadat to escape the Soviet orbit, and Sadat understood, though Carter/Brzezinski did not, that including Russia would have been a dreadful mistake. It is true, to pay the Georgia simpleton his due, that once Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat began talking, he played a useful mediating role. But Carter (and Brzezinski) never understood Israel's problems, and Carter's current book demonstrates conclusively that he has no grasp whatsoever of the situation upon which he so freely pronounces. Of all the outrages in this book, the worst is his assertion that he knows better than Bill Clinton what went on in the three-way discussions between Arafat, Barak and Clinton. Dennis Ross, who was in the middle of the negotiations, has conclusively rebutted Carter's assertions. Carter has an undeserved reputation as a statesman. It is certainly true that he is a better ex-president than he was as president -- and I have sometimes been willing to concede that he is well-meaning. But in this case, he is neither informed nor well-meaning. His notions about the situation between Israel and its Arab neighbors are both ill-informed and, in my view, malicious.

The Baker/Hamilton Report

It comes as no surprise that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has again been thrust into the center of how to deal with the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. That is, of course, a central thesis of the wing of Middle Eastern studies associated with the name of Edward Said and completely opposite to the views expressed by Bernard Lewis and his disciples. The problem with the Baker-Hamilton thesis is that the obvious outcome -- a two-state solution, renunciation of the "right of return" by the descendants of the Palestinians who fled in 1948, and adjustments of the 1948 armistice line to reflect changes on the ground -- is unacceptable by the rejectionists, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Jihadists headquartered in Syria. Jimmy Carter has (unfortunately, but not unexpectedly) joined the ranks of those willing to place the blame on Israel. But until the international community is prepared to acknowledge straight-forwardedly and without condition Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, none of this advances the ball one inch. Indeed, it impairs the likelihood of a satisfactory settlement. [For those who came at this this issue without much background, it is necessary to understand that Jimmy Carter's reputation for having engineered the peace treaty between Israel and Eygpt is completely undeserved. The undeniable fact is that Carter and his principal foreign policy aide, Brzezinski, were taken aback by Anwar Sadat's desire for bilateral negotiations with Israel. Carter/Brzezinksi wanted multilateral negotiations (including the Soviets) which would have been a disaster. Once their notion was blasted out of the water by both Sadat and Begin, it's true that Carter played a useful role in mediating between Sadat and Begin during negotiation of final terms on the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt -- but it's important to remember that his initial instinctions (and Brzezinski's) were entirely wrong.] Neither Carter, nor Jim Baker, nor Lee Hamilton fully understands the dynamic of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. As a result, their prescriptions are quite wrong -- and dangerously so.

"Can the Neocons Get Their Groove Back?" A response

In the Washington Post's Outlook section on Sunday, November 19, my friend Joshua Muravchick published an essay under the above title to which I felt compelled to respond. I have done so privately. This is part of what I said:

Having been, to a small degree, in at the birth of the neo-con movement and having shared its position on the Cold War, I agree that the movement performed a great service during that period. However, contrary to your position, I now hope that the neo-con movement is dead with a stake through its heart. It died or should have died of hubris and unwillingness to engage or even to tolerate differing opinions.

We invaded Iraq is large part because of neo-con influence and the purpose of the invasion was, I believe, never publicly stated by the Bush Administration. The invasion had nothing to do with 9/11. Evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden was not just flimsy; it was laughable. Yes, everyone thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction but that was not the issue. The issue was whether Saddam Hussein's assumed possession of WMD constituted an imminent danger to the U.S. or whether there was time to push for more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and to seek aggressive sanctions against Iraq through the U.N. Security Council if Iraq failed to cooperate with the IAEA. My view is that the Bush Administration wanted to act preemptively, avoiding the diplomatic track, avoiding the need to assemble a sizable military coalition that might have complicated matters unnecessarily (from the Administration's standpoint). Finally, I don't believe that invading Iraq had anything to do with Saddam's brutality toward his own people -- and I doubt seriously that hope of establishing "democracy" in Iraq was anything but a rhetorical flourish. If anyone in the Bush Administration or in the neo-con cheering section actually believed that democracy was a realistic possibility in Iraq, then they were even less firmly anchored in reality than I thought.

The real purpose of invading Iraq was to change the dynamic in the Middle East, putting pressure on Iran and Syria, stablizing the position of the Gulf States (and preserving access to their oil supplies) and improving Israel's security. That was the concept inherent in the famous letter that Bill Krystal initiated, and I heard it articulated in October 2000, prior to the election, by someone who later played a key role in the decision to invade. The concept was so "brilliant" that no one dared speak about it publicly because Congress and the American people would have rejected it decisively as a reason to go to war. Its proponents were convinced that the outcome they wished was so much of a sure thing that independent experts on Iraq were not consulted and no one was allowed to think about, much less plan, for the day after "mission accomplished."

Chalabi and his friends were consulted, of course, but they expected to inherit the country. Outside experts, if asked, could have told anyone prepared to listen that Iraq was a fragile construct left behind by the British when they withdrew from the area and that ruthlessness and brutality were all that held the Sunnis, the Shi'as and the Kurds together against the will of both the Shi'as and the Kurds. Except that Iraq's geography and distribution of oil resources isn't very neat, Peter Galbraith's idea of dividing Iraq along national and confessional lines would be a credible solution (if there is a solution).

While I never studied comparative politics in graduate school, my perception is that the sine qua non of democracy is not elections, not even "free" elections, but a commitment to the "rule of law." Countries we all acknowledge as democracies come in many different shapes and sizes: parliamentary and presidential systems, Constitutional monarchies, presidents that function as head of state but not as head of government, two-party systems, multi-party systems, majority rule, plurality rule, so many parties that coalition governments are compulsory, etc., etc. The one thing they all share is the "rule of law" whether embodied in a Constitution enforced by an independent judiciary, an unwritten constitution established over centures of tug and haul, or fundamental laws forming a non-existent constitution that is somehow interpreted and enforced by a High Court that is regularly assailed but nevertheless obeyed. Germany and Japan became democracies under the management of occupying powers which in Germany's case revived laws and institutions which the Nazis had abolished and in Japan's case mandated a Constitution and the rule of law under a Constitutional Monarchy which the Japanese accepted because they were accustomed to following orders.

I believe that Institutions must be established and firmly grounded in basic laws before democracy can begin to develop. And in addition to the "rule of law" there must be certain identifiable "rights" which the State simply may not breach -- rights similar to, though not necessarily identical to, those embodied in the First Amendment. Iraq never had the makings of a democracy. It's not clear that it has the makings of a viable government of any description.

On the larger issue of what is feasible in the Middle East, Josh Muravchick identified several countries -- Morocco and certain of the Gulf principalities and he might have added Jordan -- in which space for public discourse has widened. (He should not have included Egypt in that list. Things have gotten worse there, not better, since the last "free election.) But space for public discourse is a tiny step, and the road to democracy is very, very long. If it becomes possible to talk about guaranteed space for public discourse and rights of individuals which are enforceable under the law, then it is possible, barely possible, that democracy can begin to develop. Not very long ago, we were congratulating ourselves on the "growth of democracy" in Latin America but events have shown how quickly democracy can be made to disappear unless undergirded by Institutions and rights that do not yet exist in most of Latin America.

As I explained to Josh, I once considered myself a neo-con or at least a "fellow traveler" of the neo-con movement. I abandoned it largely because its leading practitioners veered toward the extremes and practiced a form of debate in which even the mildest form of dissent was greeted with withering contempt. They were absolutely certain of their position down to the smallest detail. When I was in graduate school, I was led to (or might have stumbled across) a famous intellectual battle between Max Eastman and Sidney Hook which generated hundreds of pages of argument and counter-argument with nary a concession that the other guy might actually have a point worth considering. I found the debate fascinating at first and nauseating by the end. Neo-con debates remind me of Eastman versus Hook. Never admit doubt, never concede a point to the other side.

Too many of the neo-cons hold absolute convictions and are utterly unwilling to engage in the give-and-take of genuine intellectual exploration. It's been alternately amusing and disgusting to watch some of them swim furiously away from the sinking ship of Administration policies in Iraq which they helped formulate and cheered wildly until things began to go wrong. If only they'd done what I told them to do but "they" wouldn't listen.

The neo-con position began as a rejection of the McGovern movement by disillusioned Democrats -- a rejection of Democratic extremism. One of our number used to assert: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me." I feel the same same about neo-conservatism. The neo-cons veered toward the extreme -- as ideologues are wont to do -- and they've left me where I have been ever since I grew up, in the moderate middle.

Defeat is an orphan: Iraq

President John F. Kennedy famously said "victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan." The front page of today's Washington Post contains proof of that observation, as if any were needed. Several of the prominent neo-cons who clamored for the invasion of Iraq are now heaping scorn on the Bush Administration for the obvious failure of that enterprise.

Let's begin with some truths that are not widely understood. The invasion of Iraq was never about 9/11. It was not about creating democracy. It was not even about Saddam Hussein's assumed possession of weapons of mass destruction. (Everyone believed he did but the issue was whether they presented an "imminent danger" to the United States -- and most people, including those in Congress who voted for the war, understand that they did not.)

The invasion was always about changing the dynamic in the Middle East, eliminating Saddam Hussein, a force for instability, and replacing his rule with a friendlier government. The goal was simultaneously to put pressure on Iran and Syria, assure the safety of the Gulf States (and, of course, their oil resources) and eliminating a threat to Israel. How do I know that: because I heard it -- in October 2000, prior to George Bush's election -- from two people who subsequently became leading officials at the Defense Department.

They told a small gathering in which I happened to be present that Saddam Hussein would be ousted during George W. Bush's first term in office. The speakers had been in the administration of Bush I; and they were among many in that administration who regretted not having dismantled Saddam's dictatorship after the Iraqis were driven out of Kuwait and who were ashamed by the fact that Bush I had allowed an attempted coup to be quashed with the loss of many lives without the U.S. intervening.

They scorned what the Clinton Administration to contain Saddam Hussein by establishing "no fly" zones in the north and south. They ridiculed the International Atomic Energy Administration's efforts to locate the WMDs which they were certain existed. And they put no trust whatever in sanctions that might be imposed by the United Nations Security Council if Iraq refused to cooperate further with IAEA inspectors.

But those complaints were really beside the point. A group of intellectuals, mostly neo-Cons, had long since
called publicly for Saddam Hussein's ouster in an open letter signed by some people who became officials of the new Bush Administration -- Rumsfeld, Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, among others -- and some who never joined but formed an unofficial cheering section as war preparations got under way. It was going to be "a piece of cake" one of them (Ken Adelman, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.) declared when the war started. And he subsequently crowed about the accuracy of his prediction when U.S. forces "won the war" and George W. Bush claimed "mission accomplished."

None of the enthusiasts had a real understanding of Iraq, and Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and company never wanted to hear a single word from "experts" who might contradict their assumptions. Those experts might, for example, have told the Bush Administration stalwarts that Iraq was an artificial construct created by the British when they relinquished control of the area, that it was really three countries (at least) consisting of a Kurdish entity in the north, a Shi'a-controlled area in the south, and a Sunni minority to the west.

The ability to forge a workable government out of these conflicting elements was blithely assumed partly because that's what they were told by Iraqis in exile who expected to run the country once Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athists were deposed. It turned out to be not that simple. In fact, it has turned out not to be possible at all.

The cheerleaders were right about one thing: Saddam Hussein's ouster has certainly "changed the dynamic" in the Middle East -- all for the worse.

I'm no expert on Iraq. So I don't have a solution. But it looks to me as if the best that can be hoped for is a loose confederation in which considerable autonomy is granted to the three centers of power. And the worst -- which seems more likely -- is a continuation of sectarian violence with the Sunnis and the Shi'as continuing to take vengeance on one another, the Kurds in control of their own region thanks to their own militia, and the U.S. struggling to find a way to disengage while American casualties mount.

The people who were for the war and now heap blame on the Bush Administration national security team (and especially Rumsfeld) for botching it are half right. The Bush people certainly botched it. But the fathers of the war deserve a large share of the blame.

(Footnote: The quote that Kennedy made famous is said by the Columbia Encylopedia of quotations to have originated with an Italian fascist named Galeazzo Ciario who wrote it in his diary in 1942. There was one small difference between what he wrote and what Kennedy said. Ciario's version was "victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.")

Grateful for private comments but please...

A number of friends have commented to me privately about this blog, and I really do appreciate that. But my purpose in starting this blog was to initiate an exchange of ideas among anyone with views to share on the subjects I've raised. I don't enjoy talking to myself -- the blogosphere is not an asylum for people with that sort of problem -- and I like being challenged by people who don't fully agree with me.