John Kerry

Pardon My Postmodernese, Fella, But This Here Sure Does Resemble A Lynch Mob

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Witch hunt this Sunday!

Clearly many of these peasants are expressing complex emotions in a fluidly dynamic space, reinforcing community standards and exploring boundaries of empathetic inclusion.

Who are you to resist the heat of bodies juxtaposed here, reshaping meta-narratives of dominant and historical power-relationships?

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The need for meaning and ritual abounds, and when violence erupts in the name of such need, it’s less of a surprise these days, but no less unacceptable for a free society:

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Be careful on Twitter, now.

Perhaps a digital bulletin board with no cost to entry and anonymous handles, governed by unclear standards and what seems to me rather politically biased management, just might amplify the sound and fury of outraged fools.

Should you thank God, or the Watchmaker-God, or the Nothingness, or the Oneness-connecting-all-living-things, or Xenu, or (P)rogress, you’d damned well better resist the Devil, or the devil-take-the-hindmost:

Roger Scruton on the lynch-mobs of social media:

‘What is to be done about this? I have a couple of suggestions. The first is to set up an institution call it the Ministry of Truth in some legally insulated country (oddly enough, Russia springs to mind) devoted to tweeting malicious stories about everyone who is anyone. If everyone becomes a victim of this inherent malice people will begin to see Twitter for what it is,as a tool that easily into the Devil’s hands.’

Addition:  The Devil?

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I thought human nature was basically good, made bad by ‘historical forces,’ and ‘systems of oppression’?  Perhaps institutions are only as good as their ideas and the people within them?

You know, concerts like the below make a fella wonder if we’re in good hands.

Fundamental differences of religion, law, ideas and government resulting in murder and civilizational-type clashes?

Bring in James Taylor!:

Dead girls at a pop-concert? Coldplay performing a moving twilight cover of Oasis ought to cover it.  Some sing to remember, some sing to forget.

How are the institutions in the West actually performing?

Much of this may come down to your views on human nature, and from there, which kinds of ideas guide the people within our institutions.  For it is these institutions which shape those people and have serious implications for the rest of us (shaping us too):

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On that note, many folks invoking the truth of faith and the necessity of Christian doctrine are in a smaller minority these days, and have some important things to say.  Personally, I’m not clear what is absolutely true and necessary in order to maintain a decent moral life, truth and institutional integrity.

I’d prefer a rebuttal to Pinker’s arguments.

Rod Dreher on Patrick Dineen’s book, and the ever-needy Andrew Sullivan.  The doom that awaits:

‘The reason the brilliant Steven Pinker can’t understand why there is so much unhappiness is because he is a materialist. Patrick Deneen, Andrew Sullivan, and people like us understand otherwise. There is no replacement for the company of other people.’

Related On This Site: Maybe if you’re defending the current conservative position, you don’t want to bring up the ‘aristocratic radical’ : Repost-Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy..

A return to Straussian neo-classicism?: From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’…Harvey Mansfield At Defining Ideas: ‘Democracy Without Politics?’

Neo-neo conservatism, new atheism and post socialism for the ’68ers? Via Youtube: Christopher Hitchens On Faith And Virtue…

Stanley Fish At The NY Times Blog: ‘The Last Professors: The Corporate Professors And The Fate Of The Humanities’…From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’,,

Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment

From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘The Evolution of Mind and Mathematics: Dehaene Versus Plantinga and Nagel’…

From Edward Feser: ‘Nagel And His Critics Part IV’

John Gray Reviews Jonathan Haidt’s New Book At The New Republic: ‘The Knowns And The Unknowns’

Steven Pinker somewhat focused on the idea of freedom from violence, which tends to be libertarian. Yet, he’s also skeptical of the more liberal human rights and also religious natural rights. What about a World Leviathan?: At Bloggingheads Steven Pinker Discusses War And Thomas Hobbes…From Reason.TV Via YouTube: ‘Steven Pinker on The Decline of Violence & “The Better Angels of Our Nature”‘…Simon Blackburn Reviews Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature” Via the University Of Cambridge Philosophy Department

Russian Hackers, A Link On el-Sisi’s Egypt & A Little Less Mephistopheles For This Kindergarten

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This blog believes fundamental conflicts within the West, fermenting within our institutions, foaming-over into our politics, invite the calculated meddling of those who think differently.

In the world of Statecraft, I’d prefer cold-eyed realism and calculated bastardry, when necessary, in the pursuit of American interests (ideally attached to decent human beings with checked, limited powers).  Overreach and hubris is easy.  Humility and good strategy is hard.

It’d be nice if Russia wasn’t being run as a kleptocracy by an ex-KGB agent, incentivizing a lot of bright hackers with little economic opportunity into the service of State propaganda and espionage…but:

C.S. Dickey:  ‘Putin Outfoxes Obama, Lies In Wait For Trump‘

Populist steam seems to be translating directly into policy these days.  Maybe it’s a kind of passive-aggressive placation of outrage in the service of ‘optics’.

That would be short-sighted and petty.

Link from a reader:  The Deep State in Egypt has been controlled by the military for a long time…’Egypt’s Failed Revolution.’

Many Westerners will probably go ahead and double-down on certain radical/semi-radical Western ideals just as those ideals are failing to translate into effective strategy by an exiting American administration.

Better keep James Taylor handy.

From Abu Muqawama: ‘Mubarak And Me’…From Michael Totten: ‘The New Egyptian Underground’…Michael Totten At The American Interest: “A Leaner, Meaner Brotherhood”

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Gore Vidal had a line that stuck with me in his review of Italo Calvino.

‘For the last year, Calvino had been looking forward to his fall and winter at Harvard. He even began to bone up on “literary theory.” He knew perfectly well what a mephitic kindergarten our English departments have become.

Well, that might be a little much.

Personally, I like to read people who don’t really think like me, especially when they satirize bureaucratic bloat and puffery as they find them.

I like folks on the outside looking in…tracing the shape of something.

Why do we have so many administrators, regulators, and overseers within our institutions?:

Incentives matter. A vigorous freedom and skeptical citizenry is hard to maintain, but vital nonetheless.

Climb aboard and hang-on, dazzled as you may be by the thrill of the thing.

F-30 Moving Carousel -1

Beauty is no quality in things themselves, it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

–David Hume

Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution On The Iran Deal

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The classical liberal/libertarian law and economics thinker is not on board.  In fact, the title of his piece is: ‘Obama’s Disastrous Iran Deal.’

As I see it, what much opposition to the Iran deal boils down to is this:  The Iranian regime is full of people so untrustworthy that good faith dealing with them is nearly impossible, if not actually impossible.  This was a supremely difficult task with a LOT of downside risk involved and opportunity costs to boot.

The Obama administration’s claim has heretofore been:  It’s this deal or war.  A kind of determined, defiant, activist peace-dealing has reigned, along with the usual political rhetoric and freezing-out of people who think differently.

Many people with dogs in the hunt are not on board with the deal.  The major ones being a Republican-controlled Congress, many Americans keen to our security interests, a vast majority of Israelis, as well as most all of the Saudi kingdom (Sunni, oil-rich, and which funds its own Wahhabi terrorism, and which is right next door to its bitter foe).

The devil is in the details, and if the details don’t sufficiently address why a nuclear-armed Iran is so bad, why lifted sanctions empower a laundry-list of anti-American and anti-Western security interests (Putin especially, and the old Moscow-Tehran-Damascus alliance), Hizbollah and Hamas terrorists, destabilizing Shia militias and Revolutionary Guard activity, then the deal won’t achieve what it claims to be able to achieve.

The logic has pretty much remained the same and this is why I’m generally in the opposition:  Short of maintaining sanctions, threats of force or other punishment, short of war or some other potential confrontation, the Iranian regime and many of its people will likely get deliverable nukes, and nearly no outcome of this fact will likely lead to greater peace, cooperation, and stability in a volatile region, nor in the world.

Pretty strong language out in the public square from Epstein:

‘This agreement does not require detailed study to conclude that it is a dead loser. Nonetheless, the United States has put it forward in the United Nations for approval before Congress has spoken, and the President, incorrigible as ever, has announced that he will veto any Congressional legislation that seeks to block the treaty. Many members of his own party do not share the President’s unfailing instinct for self-destruction. They should join the Republicans to reject the treaty by veto-proof majorities in both houses before the President and his team can do any further harm. ‘

Any thoughts and comments are welcome.

Feel free to highlight my ignorance.

Henry Kissinger & George Schulz Via The WSJ: ‘The Iran Deal And Its Consequences’

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Piece here (link may return behind a paywall)

A good analysis, likely worth your time. ======================

This blog remains skeptical, and mostly critical (surprise me) of the potential Iran deal so far, because, as Richard Epstein has pointed out, without the threat of force, the deal doesn’t have the leverage needed to really put pressure where it’s needed:  Upon a throughly committed, anti-American incentivized group of mullahs and post-1979 revolutionaries running terrorism, militias, guns and money around the region (and sometimes further afield) to become as powerful as they can.

Deliverable nukes are not just a means for an authoritarian theocracy to keep repressing its own people (though there’s plenty of that) nor a way to quell Iranian hostility towards and isolation from international institutions (plenty of that, too), but also a way for deeper Persian, Shia, and national Iranian identity and pride to assert itself in a dangerous region under an authoritarian theocracy. The basic security issues are more than mullah-deep, and the basic security of the Saudis, Israelis, and other interested Sunni-led countries and parties leads one to conclude this could easily turn into an arms race.

This is very risky if you’d prefer peace, or fighting the wars that you need to fight for the security of yourself and your own people, for treaties, alliances and trade, basic human rights or whatever interest or ideal you’d like to see leading our policy in the world (I’d prefer to stay ahead of war in the first place). More details at the link:

‘Under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under temporary restriction and safeguard—amounting in many cases to a seal at the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites.’

The negotiations may yet do a lot of harm because they may not be capable of stopping the Iranian regime from buying time, nor ultimately getting deliverable nukes, nor changing nor constraining their activities enough for the possible opportunity costs involved. Our authors finish with:

If the world is to be spared even worse turmoil, the U.S. must develop a strategic doctrine for the region. Stability requires an active American role. For Iran to be a valuable member of the international community, the prerequisite is that it accepts restraint on its ability to destabilize the Middle East and challenge the broader international order. Until clarity on an American strategic political concept is reached, the projected nuclear agreement will reinforce, not resolve, the world’s challenges in the region. Rather than enabling American disengagement from the Middle East, the nuclear framework is more likely to necessitate deepening involvement there—on complex new terms. History will not do our work for us; it helps only those who seek to help themselves

Addition:  Richard Epstein ‘Barack vs. Bibi:’ takes the classical liberal, non anti-war libertarian position:

‘In the end, it is critical to understand that the current weaknesses in American foreign policy stem from the President’s adamant reluctance to commit to the use of American force in international relations, whether with Israel, Iran or with ISIS. Starting from that position, the President has to make huge unilateral concessions, and force his allies to do the same thing. Right now his only expertise is leading from behind.  The President has to learn to be tough in negotiations with his enemies. Right now, sadly, he has demonstrated that toughness only in his relationships with America’s friends and allies.’

Another Addition: Adam Garfinkle has a thoughtful piece on American political discourse and the Iran deal.

Another Addition: Israel, Iran, & Peace: Andrew Sullivan Responds To Charges Of Potential Anti-Semitism…Some Saturday Links On Iran-Skepticism, To Say The Least George Shultz & Henry Kissinger At The Hoover Institution: ‘What A Final Iran Deal Must Do’ So what are our interests and how do we secure them as the fires in the Middle-East rage?  Michael Totten makes a case here in Why We Can’t Leave The Middle-East.’  He gets push-back in the comments

Democracy as we envision it requires people to constrain themselves within laws and institutions that maintain democracy…through Mill’s utilitarianism?: Thursday Quotation: Jeane Kirkpatrick – J.S. Mill  Is Bernhard Henri-Levy actually influencing U.S. policy decisions..? From New York Magazine: ‘European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator’…Bernhard Henri-Levy At The Daily Beast: ‘A Moral Tipping Point’
Do we try and invest in global institutions as flawed as they are…upon a Kantian raft of perpetual peace?:  Daniel Deudney On YouTube Responding to Robert Kagan: Liberal Democracy Vs. Autocracy

Two Reactions To Netanyahu’s Speech To Congress

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Walter Russell Mead At The American Interest ‘The Prime Minister’s Speech:’

The whole of Obama’s foreign policy comes under scrutiny, including backsliding away from the tougher line on Iran at the beginning of the p5 + 1 negotiations, into what is now only a ten-year time-line.

Mead:

‘So the Moderate Islamist strategy, essentially the only strategy that is un-horrible enough for liberal strategists to contemplate without self-loathing, is, while not totally useless, incapable of stabilizing the region or of making the terror madness go away—or even of keeping the threat within some kind of marginally acceptable bounds.

Even so, the proponents of this strategy can’t bear to let it go. The alternatives are so ugly and dispiriting, and so deeply unwelcome to the Democratic base, that the Obama wing of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy establishment can’t bear to think about them, much less conduct American foreign policy on different and more realistic lines. (Camp Clinton, by the way, seems somewhat less inhibited.) As a result, the deeper the Obama administration’s Islamist strategy runs into the mud, the more bitter its proponents become about what they increasingly see as the Israeli millstone around the neck of American foreign policy. This is when high minded liberals and progressives find themselves tempted to echo the arguments of the anti-Israel paleocons, and when fantasies of an all-powerful, unpatriotic Israel Lobby begin to loom in their minds.’

Oh, there’s always someone to blame.

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Notice Dan Drezner doesn’t focus on Obama’s overall policy achievements, but rather on the little that Netanyahu’s speech may have achieved relative to its stated aims; his inability to sway the people actually making Obama, and Americas,’  foreign policy .

Which is true, as far as it goes:

‘Meanwhile, the GOP leadership in Congress, when they’re not busy disagreeing with each other over strategy, can take solace that they one-upped Obama in the war of foreign policy trolling.

And since the American public still supports cutting a deal with Iran, the Obama administration can be confident that their message of “let’s continue to make a good faith effort on negotiations” will be well-received at home.’

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As for me, I’d still like more realism, and think that there perhaps was a window for dealing with the mullahs in Iran, but that such a window has likely passed as the deal appears to get worse as the expectations get lower.

I don’t find much in common with Obama’s team and his pro-peace, activist base, and find little to recommend them from the consequences of his Middle-East policies in action so far.  I think he’s got many wrong ideas and remain skeptical about how our leverage is being used in negotiating with such dangerous people.

Witnessing party Democrat reactions to the speech is sad enough, as is the grumbling and confusion over at the GOP and my general distaste for the political class at the moment.  Such seems to be life in D.C., a two-party town, when it comes to dealing with Iran.

These are the people we’ve got.

***Addition-I’m assured by an emailer that the people in Iran who don’t favor the mullahs and may not favor deliverable nukes (for the glory of Persepolis, by Jove), are very ‘moderate’ indeed.  Just like all those moderates in the Muslim Brotherhood, the moderates in Syria and Iraq, Egypt, Palestine and even Libya, they are about to burst into pure democratic social justice awareness and peaceful democratic self-governance.

Short of that, the global trans-national peace raft and coalition of concerned institutions has TOTALLY got ISIS, the mullahs, the Wahhabis, the Israelis, al Shabaab, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, the House of Saud, Hamas, Hizbollah, the King of Jordan etc…under control.

This is what global progress looks like, and if you disagree, you’re pretty clearly a warmonger.

Thanks emailer!

Another addition:  As posted, what worldview could help account for our current foreign policy?:

Well, this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius:

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Some Foreign Policy Links-Israel, Gaza, ISIS & ‘Peace’

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Walter Russell Mead links to two good pieces: ‘White House Blindsided By Israeli/Egyptian Relationship‘

Mead:

‘It is clear from the above account that the White House has been consistently behind the eight ball on shifting patterns in the Middle East, and that U.S. diplomacy was seriously hampered by its failure to grasp the consequences of the burgeoning Egyptian-Israeli relationship’

It seems no one in the region, perhaps not even Hamas, wanted the Israel/Gaza peace-deal as brokered by John Kerry. The Israeli and Egyptian leadership have responded without our lead and in their own rational interests, a move which seems to have taken the current administration by surprise, as it has been busy simultaneously withdrawing U.S. influence from the region while still trying to pursue its aims.

Say you’re a committed isolationist, and you’re tired of the being the ‘world’s policeman,’ or at least believe U.S. interests may well be unsustainably overextended.

But now also think about what’s important to you (I’ll try to find one that’s near and dear): Your safety and security here at home, a sustainable economy and energy prices, free trade and human flourishing, less dictatorship and human suffering under autocrats and some recourse for human rights, human freedom, and international law and order of one kind or another.

When we withdraw, other interests fill the void. We may not like what we get.

On that note, not only is ISIS an ideological coalition of savage, ahistorical true-believing Islamists, blowing up ancient tombs (just like the Taliban did with slave labor those Buddha statues in Bamiyan), ISIS is also on a campaign, as I write this, to exterminate Iraqi Christians:

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They’ve also driven a group of Yazidis from their homes into the surrounding mountains to starve and die or return and be butchered:

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Perhaps the administration feels burned by the time it pursued humanitarian intervention in Libya, which has turned into a disaster, and thus has since withdrawn into a peace cocoon.  Perhaps it’s still trying to bridge the Iran gap, and keep that deal alive.  Of course, this relies on us doing business with the Ayatollah at the end of the day, a man whose power derives from the Islamic revolution in Iran.

On that note, Dan Drezner notes in the WaPo that in order to get to this point in our diplomacy, the administration has been concentrating foreign-policy decision-making in the White House. I suspect this is how you arrive at youthful, earnest hashtag activism (the kinds of people most willing to work with Obama on campaigns and follow his lead).

Drezner:

‘But I’ve written before that the foreign policy process matters significantly, and while it’s good for the White House to be interested in foreign policy, this does seem like an over-concentration of authority.’

Here we are.

Four More Months-The White House & The Iranian Regime

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Secretary Of State John Kerry has announced a four month extension of the initial preliminary talks with Iran, stretching them until November 24th:

Claudia Rosett is unhappy with language coming from the White House, worried that we’ve already legitimized too much.

It’s tough to see what happens in the next four months that hasn’t happened already:

The phrase is absurd. Iran’s nuclear program is manifestly not about peace. If it were, there would have been no need for Iran’s collaboration with Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan nuclear network, no need for secretly built Iranian enrichment facilities, no need for Iran’s years of maneuvering under sanctions, no need for Iran’s work on long-range missiles to deliver nuclear weapons, no need for the whole vast elaborate web of deceits and dodges and ploys with which Iran has built its nuclear program. There would be no need now for months and months of multi-tiered haggling in Vienna with the U.S., Britain, France and Germany (and, nominally, with China and Russia — which have managed the trick of both supplying materiel to Iran’s nuclear program, and bargaining over the results). There would be no need for secrecy. There would be no need for any more Iranian nuclear program going forward. Iran’s regime could dismantle its entire nuclear kit, and amuse itself with developing the country’s vast wealth of oil and gas.’

Click through for more.

It’s hard to see from here how the divide gets bridged:  An Iran which sees nuclear enrichment and weapons as a right, a big stick, and a matter of national destiny, and a U.S. that sees an Iran with nuclear weapons as fundamentally unacceptable.

In Iran, you’ve got a theocratic, repressive regime which sponsors terrorism far beyond its borders, props up Assad and runs guns to Hamas and various others. This is a deep State largely controlled by an Islamic revolutionary security apparatus which squelches domestic political opposition, spies on its citizens, and has been known to murder and jail dissenters and opponents. There are some democratic elements, journalists, and many business interests in Iranian society, of course, bumping up against the Baseej, the Supreme Leader and the theocracy, but they don’t have too much control over their country.

It was argued that with newly elected Hassan Rouhani as President, this was the best chance for something to happen.

By and large, we’re out on a limb with a crafty, authoritarian regime at the end of the day, generally not to be taken at its word most of the time but which probably acts in what can be recognized as rational ways (aiming for regional domination and nuclear weapons as a matter of national destiny, for starters).

I keep putting this quote up from this piece over at the Atlantic: From The Atlantic: Samuel Huntington’s Death And Life’s Work

“Although the professional soldier accepts the reality of never-ending and limited conflict, “the liberal tendency,” Huntington explained, is “to absolutize and dichotomize war and peace.” Liberals will most readily support a war if they can turn it into a crusade for advancing humanistic ideals. That is why, he wrote, liberals seek to reduce the defense budget even as they periodically demand an adventurous foreign policy.”

What about an unadventurous foreign policy, but still very risky nonetheless?

-Dexter Filkins on Iran here.

-Scowcroft and Brzezinski may be offering plans: ‘George Shultz & Henry Kissinger At The Hoover Institution: ‘What A Final Iran Deal Must Do’

–Which Ideas Are Guiding Our Foreign Policy With Iran.’ Some Saturday Links On Iran-Peace At What Price?

–Israel, Iran, & Peace: Andrew Sullivan Responds To Charges Of Potential Anti-Semitism

Some Friday Ukraine Links

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Fareed Zakaria at The Washington Post: ‘Why (this time) Obama Must Lead:‘

Obama is still likely leaning on Russia for an exit out of AfPak, and as some kind of East Of Center geopolitical ‘ally’ for leverage in dealing with Damascus and Tehran as part of his global vision (empirical results may vary). He’s probably still aiming for that one-world thing.

I’d call Zakaria’s piece a likely liberal centrist/populist call to action with detailed consideration of the strategic realities:

‘Unlike many of the tragic ethnic and civil wars that have bubbled up over the past three decades, this one involves a great global power, Russia, and thus can and will have far-reaching consequences. And it involves a great global principle: whether national boundaries can be changed by brute force. If it becomes acceptable to do so, what will happen in Asia, where there are dozens of contested boundaries — and several great powers that want to remake them?

Obama must rally the world, push the Europeans and negotiate with the Russians. In this crisis, the United States truly is the indispensable nation.’

Andrew Wood at The American Interest: ‘Crying ‘Fascist’ On Ukraine‘

“Fascist” has indeed become a crude political insult, and the term can be used to cover states ranging from Peron’s Argentina to Nazi Germany. But the charge of fascism carries a particular force in the formerly Soviet space. World War II is the one sacral achievement that must not be questioned in Russia. To suggest that there are those in power in Ukraine who attack its accomplishments or indeed seek to reverse them is to plug into anger. Hence its value as a weapon to the Kremlin’

This reminds me of Christopher Hitchens passionately denying the ‘fascism’ charge, while often uncannily sniffing it out and confronting it (Hitchens interviews The Metzger White Nationalists).

Of course, I was hoping we in America could resist having only a bunch of military-right, ethnic-nationalists with fascistic tendencies on one side, and Socialist fascists on the other.  We’re not anywhere near that, I hope.

John Kerry threatens ‘serious steps‘ if Russia makes further movements into Crimea, violating both the sovereignty of Ukraine and international law.  No unified ‘international’ response seems forthcoming.

Peace Is Next In The Middle-East-Two Sunday Links

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Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest on John Kerry as Secretary Of State: ‘Overselling And (So Far) Underdelivering‘

‘So, back to the point, Secretary Kerry thinks he can depend on the Russians, who are cheating on one arms control agreement, to get the Syrians to stop cheating on another one, and also make life-threatening concessions to the rebel opposition at the same time. And the Russians are going to do this for us even as Kerry is fecklessly berating them over an issue (Ukraine) against which we have close to zero leverage, but they have, in their own view, vital national interests’

For some of the Left-liberal base I’ve talked to (I live in Seattle, mind you), Hillary Clinton is a bit of a sellout.  Kerry has street-cred because of his alignment with the Vietnam protest movement, but there can never be enough peace.  Amongst such a crowd, Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney’s warmongering shall never be forgiven.

On that note, the peace crowd can exhibit some quite un-peaceful behaviors, naturally.  Many true-believers can turn out to be the last to know.  As more of a skeptic, I mainly see a rather naive Left-Of-Center idealism at work, often just as sure of what it is against (the reality of conflict, the U.S. military, the establishment, the Right etc).

Let’s not forget that base in the abstractions of foreign policy discussions.

David Rohde At The Atlantic: ‘Is Syria Now A Direct Threat To The United States?’

How’s that Syria policy coming along?:

‘Over the last two weeks, Obama administration officials have signaled—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not—that a worst-case scenario is emerging in Syria.’

I suppose we’ll see.  What’s our strategy to best protect and secure our interests and freedoms?

Even some folks at NPR may be pining for the days of Clintonesque humanitarian intervention, as they bring in some analysts to compare the mess in Syria to the former Yugoslavia.

***A pretty damned good overview of Syria for the non-initiated, including what’s been going on since 2011 and the backstory at the thehowardbealeshow. Recommended. Really.

Related On This Site: More Syria-From Via Media: ‘Congress on Syria: Going In On A Wing and A Prayer’…From Slate: ‘In Aleppo, Syria, Mohamed Atta Thought He Could Build The Ideal Islamic City’

Michael Totten At World Affairs: ‘Syria’s Regime Not Worth Preserving’…A Few More Syria Links-’Unmitigated Clusterf**k?’…

Some Saturday Iran Links

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Stephen Schwartz, via the Center For Islamic Pluralism, is not happy about the deal nor the Syrian part of the equation:

The White House celebrates an Iranian “interim nuclear deal” that, like the Syrian chemical weapons deal, ignored Iran and Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria. Predictably, Al-Assad was thrilled by the outcome of Iran’s Geneva performance. Al-Assad, official Syrian media crowed, “saw that Iran’s achievement will reflect on Syria due to the strategic relation between the two countries. President [Hassan] Rouhani, for his part, reaffirmed Iran’s standing by Syria.”

Perhaps it’s safe to assume that Putin’s going to do what’s best for Putin, Assad for Assad, and Rouhani and the mullahs for Rouhani and the mullahs.  These are people with whom we can barely do business, if at all.

Walter Russell Mead and his staff remain skeptical.  Remember, this deal is a first tentative step in which the Iranian regime will be expected to meet many conditions.  What have they sacrificed so far?

‘As it stands, Iran looks to be emerging from the sanctions saga with the upper hand. Its influence is spreading and its clients succeeding, from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon. Foreign Minister Zarif is currently on a tour of the Gulf, looking to expand that clout by mending and strengthening financial links and touting Iranian diplomatic prestige. This is not the behavior of a country that has just ruefully acquiesced to western demands.’

One of the more positive pieces I could find comes from Foreign Affairs.   What needs to be done in the meantime if the deal’s going to survive?:

‘Washington must therefore convince the Gulf States that it is committed not only to halting Iran’s nuclear program but also to containing Iran’s principal means of projecting regional influence through asymmetric operations. This would likely take the form of intelligence collaboration and prosecutions that target the Gulf operations of Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and military units such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — both of which engage in violence, subversion, and terrorism outside Iran’

A lot of leadership, diplomacy, and engagement are required.

Addition:  It’s easy to envision many ways in which this will break-down into a much more volatile and difficult situation for our interests.