Friday 26th of April 2024
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giving evil a bad name .....

giving evil a bad name .....

'I have been charged by the president with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with,' Vice President Cheney reportedly declared in a White House meeting on North Korea in December 2003. 'We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it.' 

Cheney's call to battle resounded last week as the Bush administration slammed former president Jimmy Carter for talking to Hamas, the extremist Palestinian group that now runs the Gaza Strip, and began to have its own second thoughts about closing a new nuclear deal with North Korea.  

But even as the powerful veep was excommunicating evildoers in his 2003 pronouncement, the Bush administration was cavorting with many of the world's biggest devils: negotiating with North Korea on its nuclear-arms program, with Iran on efforts against the Taliban in Afghanistan and with Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi on a historic new relationship.  

Washington sages are now debating whether to negotiate with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran or with Hamas; some are considering trying to reconcile with supposedly repentant Islamist insurgents in Iraq and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Contrary to Cheney's dictum, chest-thumping congressional resolutions and op-ed pieces, the United States almost always deals with devils at some point or another. There is no alternative if a president wants to test non-military solutions to the nastiest of problems.  

Forget the inevitable posturing. The real issue is not whether to talk to the bad guys but how, under which conditions, with which mix of pressure and conciliation, and with what degree of expectation that the bad guys will keep their word. When figuring out how to go about negotiating with devils, the questions get very basic.

Is it right to think of certain governments and groups as evil? 

Absolutely, unless you're a groupie of Third World nationalist movements or a professor of semantics. Like pornography, you do know real evil when you see it in world politics - Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, al-Qaeda and many more. 

How to Make Deals with Devils

Made in ...

“The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago,” Admiral Mullen said at a news briefing. “It’s plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way.”

The discovery of weapons caches in Iraq, with devices bearing stamps that indicate they were manufactured quite recently, run contrary to the Iranian promises not to interfere in Iraq, the admiral said. He conceded that he had “no smoking gun” to prove direct involvement by the very highest echelons in Tehran, but he said he found it hard to believe that all the top leaders were ignorant of recent developments.

The Pentagon is sufficiently concerned about Iran’s apparently deepening involvement in Iraq that it plans a briefing in the near future by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the United States commander in Iraq, to publicize the caches of weapons, some of which are believed to have been used against American troops in the recent fighting in Basra, in southern Iraq. Details of the weapons and the Pentagon’s concerns over them were disclosed Friday in The Wall Street Journal.

“I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability,” Admiral Mullen said.

Of particular concern to American military commanders are explosively formed penetrators, or E.E.P.s, which the Pentagon says are being made in Iran and shipped to Shiite militants in Iraq, where they are used to deadly effect against American forces trying to subdue extremist elements and bolster the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki

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Gus: I do not recall the Iranian government having ever admitted openly to having supplied weapons to the "extremists", the "resistance fighters", etc. So I find it suspicious here that the US is accusing the Iranian government in a way that implicates the Iranian government by suggesting "the Iranian government would not do it again". Furthermore it would be silly for the Iranian government to supply weapons with "made in Iran" markings or stickers at the same time as denying it... 

The weapons in the weapon caches found by US soldiers may be stolen stocks from the Iranians or possibly made in .... , another country, trying to implicate Iran in the Iraq war. who knows... Can we trust the USA on this? In my book, not much more than we can trust them on Saddam's WMDs...

but in the long term...

Joint Chiefs Chairman Says U.S. Preparing Military Options Against Iran

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 25, 2008; 1:51 PM

The nation's top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.

"It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

Still, Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the tensions with Iran and does not foresee any imminent military action. "I have no expectations that we're going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future," he said.

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Gus: immediate future?...today, tomorrow?  whenever...