Ben Buckman.net

A few months ago, media pundits debated whether it was appropriate to host the G8 summit in Russia, with an increasingly authoritarian Vladimir Putin stalling action on Iran’s nuclear development. The response from the administration was essentially that we will never get the Russians onboard if we’re not nice to them. This answer was accepted with a “let’s see” approach and the controversy was forgotten.

Well, the G8 summit just ended, and I am hard-pressed to recall what was accomplished. Oh, yes – there were Bush’s open-mouth-chewing, blunt comments about Hizbullah to Tony Blair. What happened to the agenda being about Iran’s nuclear program? What a coincidence, its proxy militia provoked a regional crisis just in time. Teheran was undoubtedly on every leader’s mind, but I doubt there was much mention of nukes or sanctions. With Putin rumored to have turned on the microphone that caught the embarrassing remarks, the “let’s unite the world against tyranny by making Vladimir feel good” strategy has been another feather in President Bush’s cap of achievement.

As Congress debated whether Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, the man all our efforts have brought to power, should be allowed to speak in its halls, the president found himself in a straitjacket of his own policies. A diplomatically incompetent America is now straddling the divide between the Shia Muslim majority in Iraq and the Jewish state their ideological brethren are fighting in Lebanon. The geopolitical delusion of fallen dominoes rising from chaos into a perfect line of pro-American order – presented as the intellectual vision justifying the Iraq war – could not have burned more fiercely this week than all the American flags in Palestine. The figurative slogan, “the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad,” has proven true. It is merely loaded with shipments of Katyusha rockets.

In the next few days, the Senate is supposed to take up the confirmation of our ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, who was snuck through the back door of recess appointments a year ago. By all accounts, the warnings by his critics have proved true. His bullying threats to cut UN funding if reforms are not implemented have isolated him among potential allies and made the achievement of those reforms even more unlikely. In a time when the UN Security Council is central to the administration’s agenda for dealing with Iran, North Korea, Darfur and other urgent challenges, contempt for multilateralism is counter-productive at best. Yet his confirmation is expected to be a slam dunk for the administration.

Next on the Senate’s foreign policy agenda is the nuclear alliance with India that was off the public radar for so long (if it was ever on it in the first place). Foreign policy experts must be shaking their heads in perplexity at that one. At best it is a necessary evil to maintain old promises and counter Pakistan’s continuing nuclear buildup. More likely it is a dangerous hypocrisy that will make dealing with real nuclear threats more difficult than Bush has already made them. Either way it amazes me that so much strategic nuance went into getting that treaty crafted, yet the plan for stabilizing Iraq continues to be an intellectual vacuum of “stay the course” that wouldn’t pass as a high school political science thesis.

The only voluntary exchange resulting from the WTO global trade negotiations which collapsed last week was the blame exchanged with whiny rhetoric between the US and EU. With another administration one might wonder why so much emphasis is put on elections in the Arab world, yet free trade, the economic cornerstone of truly open societies, is allowed to stagnate. But really, there’s no need to wonder.

While Condoleeza Rice went on her Middle East tour promoting the strategy of doing nothing until NATO agrees to get bogged down in a new war in South Lebanon, our dear friend in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was on a tour of his own. From Belarus, where he formed a new strategic alliance involving weapons and oil, he went on to Russia and Iran, where we can safely assume support for America was not at the center of his discussions.

Meanwhile, the administration continues to insist it is right, everyone else is wrong, and public opinion at home and abroad be damned. An administration supporter might argue that we had many enemies in the Cold War, yet prevailed in our righteous cause. That (or any other argument supporting the president’s foreign policy) might hold some water, if the president actually led an Axis of Good marching in unity to counter all the Evil adversaries arising around the world.

But no such bloc exists. Tony Blair will be out of power soon and then our only European ally will likely join the ideological camp of its continental partners. With arms shipments to Israel coinciding with Iranian shipments to Hizbullah, and both countries deciding it’s easier to let others fight their war, Israel is more a proxy than a partner. The grand new idea for Iraq is an increased presence of American military policemen, making many wonder whether Al-Maliki is an adversary or a powerless puppet. The Romanian president was in the White House today, but I cannot even remember his name and I doubt I am the only one.

In short, the president has set in motion a chain of events that is bringing about the exact opposite of his grand long-term vision for the Middle East. He has lost every ally we had in a time when international unity is most critical, and the alternative, American unilateralism, has failed to achieve its basic objectives under his command. George Bush’s foreign policy has been ignorant in vision and incompetent in execution and there is no doubt the world is more dangerous as a result.

Looking at all this, I cannot help but ask the president: if you fail to achieve any of your goals, what good is being right?

Every Tuesday for the past three months, my Daily Free Press colleague Sufia Khalid has written a weekly critique of American culture, politics and media. It is the editorial policy of that newspaper not to allow responses from fellow columnists on their pages. But Ms. Khalid’s piece last Tuesday crossed every reasonable line of tact and editorial quality, and so, believing that a response to her and the problem she represents is both necessary and proper, along with refusal from the Free Press editors to publish this response, I resign from the Daily Free Press and am writing this outside its pages.

Ms. Khalid matters because, as an Arab-American who lived for many years in Saudi Arabia before coming to BU, she represents a very important segment of Middle Eastern society: upper-middle class, educated, relatively affluent Muslim Arabs. It is this demographic that speaks English, can afford American universities and is familiar with Western culture, and is therefore the group most likely to be the future liaisons between the United States and the Arab World. If cultural accord is ever to be achieved between East and West, people like Ms. Khalid will be at the forefront of its Arab side. In addition, she chose to be the Arab-Muslim voice of the BU student body newspaper, and so it is not I making her the poster girl for her demographic, but she.

In her eleven columns, Ms. Khalid has never once condemned terrorism. She called suicide bombings “disgusting” (like a dirty bathroom), but only as a qualifier for Palestinian suffering. She mocked the terrorist threat – “that Bin Laden dude,” January 31st; “9/11, terrorists, they're coming, aah!,” February 21st. She condemned the “crumbling” American society in every single column; she has condemned American women, college students, Bostonians, the media and of course the government. Yet she has never once condemned a single Arab or Muslim policy, leader or action; never acknowledged the threat of radical Islamic terrorism; never offered a single constructive idea for dealing with it.

And therein lies the problem in the Muslim world that Ms. Khalid represents: a self-righteous obsession with the West’s alleged decadence, ignorance and oppression of Muslims which justifies their refusal to self-criticize and condemn violence by their own people. By excusing terrorism and mocking every Western reaction to it, Ms. Khalid pardons violence with a deafening silence. The pen will only triumph over the sword in the Middle East when people like her stand up and say that there is evil in the world and it is not all caused by the United States government. So far they have failed the challenge repeatedly.

In her last column, she wrote, regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “Suicide bombings are disgusting, and Israelis do suffer. But Palestinians suffer much more frequently, and are ignored by the mainstream media.” This was one day after nine civilians were killed and over sixty wounded during holiday shopping in Tel Aviv by a suicide bomber, an attack condoned by the terrorist organization elected to run the Palestinian government.

Never mind that accurately counting and categorizing Palestinian deaths is impossible when the regime is accountable to no one (see www.seconddraft.org for an example of this). That is beside the point. It is also irrelevant to this discussion which side is “right” in the conflict. The real issue is Ms. Khalid’s mischaracterization of historical events – a reflection not only of her own ignorance but also of a broadly popular attitude. She writes, “Hamas officials have suggested that Palestine will recognize the state of Israel if Israeli leaders agree to respect the U.N. borders agreed upon in 1967. This means the burden now rests on Israel to recognize the state of Palestine – but I imagine Israel will continue to treat the idea of a Palestinian state as ridiculous.” Every single clause of that statement is factually incorrect. First, Hamas officials continue to demand the “right of return,” a de facto demographic destruction of Israel, so “recognizing” Israel on those terms is a farce. Second, there were no borders agreed upon by the U.N. in 1967; rather, the carefully worded U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 left the borders open to future negotiation. Third, the alleged burden on Israel to “recognize the state of Palestine” – there is not and never has been such a state. Except for a farcical declaration in 1988 – from Algiers, Tunisia – of a Palestinian state encompassing all of Israeli territory, the Palestinians have never declared a state, and for a very shrewd strategic reason: doing so implies an end to the conflict and a loss of their unrealistic dream. There is therefore no state for Israel to recognize; despite this, the last three Israeli prime ministers have stated publicly that they believe the Palestinians should have a state.

Where were the Ms. Khalid’s of the world when Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat a state at Camp David, only to have Arafat refuse and start an Intifada instead? Where was credit given when Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip to begin the process of establishing a Palestinian state? Why are they not condemning the Palestinian government now for squandering that opportunity and continuing instead to shoot rockets at towns and send suicide bombers into marketplaces?

The problem with the Palestinian cause and its benefactors such as Ms. Khalid is that a peaceful co-existence with Israel was never on the agenda. Arafat founded the PLO terrorist group in 1964 – three years before the occupation began – which over the next four decades hijacked airplanes, popularized suicide bombings, attempted to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, fomented civil war in Lebanon and killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. Violence has always been the dominant modus operandi.There has never been a Palestinian Ghandi with a positive and realistic vision for his people. The Palestinians suffer today because the leaders they have chosen through elections or tacit consent have never constructively pursued their interests, and the Arab voices that speak for them (Ms. Khalid’s being that voice in this university’s paper) have never condemned their own self-imposed destruction.

Jews criticize the Israeli government all the time, because Israel is a democracy with a free press that covers a broad spectrum of ideas. Yet similar self-reflection on the part of Arab voices seems non-existent or mute. Constructive thought does not consist of praising or excusing everything one side does and condemning everything the other side does, and ranting from a self-righteous bubble adds nothing to the debate. Critics like Ms. Khalid offer no constructive solutions to real threats such as the Iranian nuclear program, nor do they explain why they are in fact not threats. They merely mock the media for discussing it and dismiss it as part of the oppressive, delusional American system.

It is a shame that Sufia Khalid matters to this issue at all, a shame that her voice is not drowned out by sharper, wiser voices. But the cultural discord between East and West is not going away tomorrow or next Tuesday, and if the self-chosen representatives of moderate Islam continue to excuse terrorism, ignorantly mock Americans and refuse to offer any constructive alternatives, we will continue to have a very serious problem.

Congress took up the issue of illegal immigration this week. While I do not know the perfect solution to this issue, there is one aspect of the Sensenbrenner bill -- passed in the House in December and now being debated in the Senate -- that is very clear: The law would make every resident of this country not following legal immigration processes a felon. With the sweep of a pen, millions of people would become criminals, subject to arrest and imprisonment along with anyone who aids them. It is another case of congressional power run amok, and should be rejected not simply because it's a bad immigration policy, but because the mentality that drives this sort of legislation contradicts the basic principles of good governance.

An estimated 12 million illegal aliens live in this country, and presumably, the vast majority of them are gainfully employed at wages below what their American counterparts demand but above what their home countries' economies supply. So this bill, if passed, would take 12 million economically productive individuals out of the workforce. Twelve million new prison cells, 12 million mouths to feed, 12 million bodies to clothe by the federal taxpayer, 12 million jobs lost, 12 million stacks of legal paperwork for pro bono defense attorneys, 12 million court cases. President Bush had better start appointing new federal judges quickly!

That is, if this bill is serious. But I doubt there is any congressman who truly wants to arrest and deport 12 million people. So the bill is either a tactical stunt to shift the terms of the Senate debate to the far right, in which case the House passed a law it does not want to become law; or it is meant to be passed but not enforced, in which case, well ... why don't we give Congress some Monopoly money and Lego policemen and tell them to go play?

In fact, this is precisely the impression this bill creates of Congress. Legislators sit in their high chambers, devising fancy proposals that fill reams of legal jargon to keep the media busy. Votes for legislation are traded like baseball cards. Little things like the practicalities of enforcement are dismissed. Unintended consequences are ignored and the horizon of analysis ends at the next election cycle. It's all a board game, where the players can manipulate any piece for political advantage. With this kind of power it must be easy to forget that even the U.S. government does and must have limitations.

The problem is, while Congress plays SimCity, it is dealing with real money, real laws and real lives. Criminalizing millions of people is an absurd and frankly fascist way of thinking. It is not new, however. Prohibition made millions of people criminals by decree. The puritanical "War on Drugs" creates crime-infested cities by banning victimless behavior. The drinking age makes almost every college student in the country a criminal. A significant portion of the seven million people in the U.S. correctional system are criminals by definition, not by injurious action. In the case of illegal immigrants, those 12 million are criminals more for what they did not do -- wait in line for years -- than for what they did do. So politicians can say they're tough on crime, law enforcement can demand more funding and the public can rest with the illusion that the problem is solved.

It is little wonder that so many people are disenchanted from government when politicians treat them like playthings. The hatred for law enforcement expressed through rap music is fueled by laws that make decent people into criminals. This bill would simply create another second-class citizenry that hates policemen, and we'll be wishing we had 12 million people seeking employment just to fill all the law enforcement positions that will be needed. It is all the more hypocritical that the bill's stated goal is to end decades of disregard for unenforced laws.

Geographic boundaries are part of the definition of a sovereign state, and this country has every right to define the terms of citizenship, control the borders and regulate immigration. But laws are supposed to have reasonable and unambiguous power, and passing unenforceable and counterproductive laws like the Sensenbrenner bill would make a mockery of the system. The Senate has an opportunity in the coming weeks to come up with something better: a rational, workable, comprehensive policy -- something like the Kennedy-McCain bill -- that would fix a truly broken system. We'll see if they're up to the task.

Twenty-seven years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, a showdown over the country's nuclear program and continued hostility between Iran and the United States seem inevitable. U.S. forces on four borders and the effective nuclear deterrent of North Korea make nuclear weapons a strategic interest of the Iranian regime and a matter of national pride. For Americans, the war on terror and the phony election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the high pulpit of fundamentalist rhetoric perpetuate the image of a fanatical regime that must be stopped. But too many cards are stacked in Iran's favor, and none of the options on the table for deterring the nuclear threat is likely to succeed. A radically different option that could constructively reorient troubled American foreign policy in the region must therefore be considered: normalizing relations with Iran.

The current track of multilateral diplomacy is backed by the threat of eventual imposition of economic sanctions by the U.N. Security Council. But Iran pumps more oil than strategic reserves can compensate for, so a cut in its oil exports, caused either by sanctions or a voluntary tactical maneuver, would wreak havoc with global markets. The Security Council member states - especially China, whose strategic oil reserve won't be active until 2008 - as well as the ayatollahs all know this well.

The military options for destroying Iran's nuclear capability are likewise problematic. The experience in Iraq is a warning against overreaching American military power, and the neoconservative vision of geopolitical engineering has been discredited. NATO lacks both the troops necessary for a ground invasion of a state three times the size of Iraq and the desire to face the resulting insurgency. An air campaign would at best delay the inevitable for a few years, at worst expedite nuclear development at unknown locations. Targeting the regime would merely play into the hands of Islamic revolutionaries - of whom there would be no shortage to fill the power vacuum - so the government could simply live through an air campaign to fight another day. Similarly, an internal coup is as likely to be led by jihadists as by reformers, and the latter are in no position to pull off another revolution.

Should military action or sanctions replace failed diplomacy, Iran has many ways to retaliate. Its proxy militias could escalate the sectarian wars in Iraq, forcing the United States either to pick sides and suffer further casualties or withdraw in humiliation. Its Revolutionary Guards, long affiliated with global terrorism, could unleash an unprecedented campaign of terror and escalate already tense relations between Islamic states and the West. The notion that Iran could be brought down on its knees without inflicting tremendous harm on its adversaries is a dangerous fantasy.

However, there is an alternative to the Bush administration's strategy for dealing with this potential crisis. It relies on the assumption that the regime could be persuaded that the pride and righteousness it now gains from hostility would be far outweighed by the gains of coexistence. Specifically, the United States could offer Iran a formal pledge of non-aggression and normal diplomatic and economic relations. In exchange, Iran would end its military nuclear development under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Association; it would turn over information and suspects related to global terrorism; and would, in accordance with the American goal for all the nations of that region, recognize Israel following an eventual settlement with the Palestinians. It would be fully accepted into the global community, with all the benefits that entails.

An ideologically cold but practically constructive relationship would then develop, similar to the American alliances with Iran's Arab neighbors. The flow of information would be opened and any chance for democracy in Iran would be encouraged. The global economy would benefit from more stable oil markets, and the enormous unemployed population in Iran would gradually benefit from foreign capital. Libya recently adopted this path voluntarily, and stands as an example of a terror-sponsoring state that chose to stand down with dignity.

The long-term vision that President Nixon foresaw for China - global recognition leading to economic liberalization and possible governmental reform - was prudent in its time and would be a similarly controversial but wise strategy for Iran. Nixon's initiative also established a precedent: that coexistence, if at all possible, should trump ideological antagonism; and that the United States should live and let live, if only because the cost of remaking the entire world in our image is too high. This principle has served the world well enough for many years, and refusal even to consider normal relations with Iran is hypocritical.

How much time is left before the situation reaches a breaking point is unknown, but time is not on our side. Likewise, the obvious questions of whether Iran would accept such a proposal in the first place, or be sufficiently trustworthy to follow it, remain unclear. But President Bush's doctrine of liberalizing the Middle East to support democracy and open markets will never gain a foothold if the United States is constantly in a state of hostility with the strongest regional powers. While many would dismiss normalizing relations with Iran as a foolhardy scenario, the alternatives are too dire and the potential benefits too great to reject it out of hand.