President Barack Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 failed to advance the promotion of human rights in the Muslim world, Human Rights Watch said today. In a much-anticipated address, Obama spoke bluntly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but kept to generalities when it came to the pressing need for human rights and democratic reforms in the region.

“If Obama wanted to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the US, he should have taken on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed, including his hosts,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt and others will interpret his bland generalities as a signal they have nothing to fear from their friends in Washington.”

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama addressed democracy as a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world. His choice of Cairo for this much-anticipated speech was controversial because of Egypt’s record of stifling the opposition, holding tainted elections, and imprisoning dissidents.

Only by 8:09 p.m., the group appeared to soft-peddle that message in a release entitled “Obama Mid-East Speech Supports Rights, Democracy: But U.S. Message Needs Stronger Message for Repressive Regional Allies”:

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated June 4, 2009, speech to the Muslim world avoided confronting authoritarian governments directly, but sent a welcome message that Washington would not let the prospect of empowering Islamist parties deter it from supporting democracy in the region, Human Rights Watch said today.

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama said the issue of democracy and human rights was a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world, in part because of the Bush administration’s use of democratic rhetoric to justify the war in Iraq. He pledged, however, that the United States would continue to support human rights and democratic principles in the region.

“For the US to regain credibility, it will have to follow through even when voters in the Middle East elect governments Washington doesn’t like,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “If Obama wants to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the United States, he should take on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed – including his hosts.”

Whitson’s comments, at least, are consistent between the two releases.

Ahmadinejad has discredited himself in the eyes of many Iranians. They are looking for change they can believe in. This is the target audience for Obama this Thursday. He needs to reach out to the democratic forces in that country and remind them that America is their ally.

To be able to say to the Iranian people that an American hand is outstretched to them if they’re willing to show that their corrupt leadership — which has remained relatively obstinate while official American attitudes to Iran are changing –  doesn’t speak for them would be a great thing. It would be arrogant and deluded to believe that U.S. posture to Iran would be determinative of an Iranian election. But the Obama administration can help remove a demagogic pretext for repression, and that’s part of what tomorrow’s Cairo speech is about.

That’s the whole post.

My first guess was Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who visited the West Bank in January 2006. But why stop there? In March 2005, a so-called CODEL traveled to Iraq, Jordan, Israel Lebanon and Egypt. On the trip were Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Darrel Issa (R- Calif.), George Miller (D-Calif.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), James McGovern (D- Mass.), and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.).

Those weren’t the only ones. Another March 2005 CODEL featured members taking a survey of Mideast democratization efforts. On that trip: Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.),  Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.), and then-Rep. E. Clay Shaw (R-Fla.). They went to the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus and two other countries I didn’t immediately identify.

Let’s continue. January 2006: a congressional delegation goes to Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Middle East enough? That one had then-Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.), Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.), Rep. Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.), Rep. Melissa Hart (R-Penn.), Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) and Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.).

Then there was a December 2006 senatorial CODEL to Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) brought back photos.

So that’s 27 members of Congress who could have been illegally surveilled by the NSA. I’m sure I’m missing some CODELs, so point them out in comments if you see them. But the broader point is that there’s no obvious reason at the moment why any of these members’ trips couldn’t have put them in contact with “persons of interest” to the National Security Agency and the Bush administration, thereby making them prima facie targets of a wideranging surveillance program.

But for Freeman’s detractors, a loss might still be a win. As Sullivan and others have documented, the controversy over Freeman is fundamentally a question of his views on Israel. Barring a bad report from the inspector general, Chas Freeman will survive and serve. But only because his appointment doesn’t require Senate confirmation. Few, however, will want to follow where he led. Freeman’s career will likely top out at Director of the NIC. That’s not a bad summit by any means. But for ambitious foreign policy thinkers who might one day aspire to serve in a confirmed capacity, the lesson is clear: Israel is off-limits.

If anything, this doesn’t go far enough.

It’s not just that Freeman is bloodied or that the NIC is the final stop in his career. It’s that now every time the NIC issues a report on god-knows-what — but particularly China or the Middle East — Freeman’s critics will opt to say Aha! The nefarious influence of Chas Freeman! or What can you expect with Chas Freeman in charge or some other-such dodge. That’s hardly his fault, but it’s the way these things go. Indeed, the smarter strategy for Freeman’s critics should be to ensure a weakened Freeman remains in charge of the NIC, so they can be spared having to grapple with a difficult analysis of, say, the prospects of a grand bargain with Iran or what would happen to U.S. interests in the Middle East if there isn’t an independent Palestinian state in ten years.  (By the way, National Intelligence Estimates on these topics would be written by the NIC officer for the Near East, not Freeman. But still.)

There is simply no better way to undermine US credibility and weaken the country’s moral standing then fail to back up your words with actions: even when it may be occasionally appropriate to weigh American interests over American values. People around the world listen when US presidents speak and they can smell hypocrisy a mile away.

I’d add that it’s more than just a credibility issue. What the Bush administration failed to adequately take into account — and here I’m presuming good faith on its part when it comes to democracy promotion, just for the sake of argument — were the structural reasons why autocracies remain in place, and if the Obama administration doesn’t take those into account, it will likely fail, too.

Take a few examples: Over the last eight years, there was never an effort to, say, encourage the United States’ Persian Gulf-state clients to move away from a rentier-state model of governance reliant on oil revenue for their wealth, even though the political science literature on rentier states underscores oil wealth’s contribution to dysfunction, corruption and autocracy. Sticking with the Middle East for a moment, you can’t tell Egypt and Syria to liberalize on one hand and then rely on their security services for outsourcing your torture. A belated and then meager effort to actively mitigate and then resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, perhaps the single greatest source of multifaceted instability in the region and the cynical pretext for much Arab autocracy, doesn’t help either.

This isn’t to say that Michael’s wrong, because he’s not. It’s just to say that the issue is a lot deeper than rhetoric.

My worry is that the greatest danger in creating a society of resistance is that you might actually succeed. [Boston University professor Andrew] Bacevich may talk about American militarism, but I worry more about these non-state actors who build up armed conflict as their raison d’être. If peace in suddenly in your best interest a year or so down the road, for example, how are you going to tell these kids to stand down? Are they going to be happy working in a cell phone kiosk in Tyre?

That’s exactly right. The cynic will want to say that organizations like Hezbollah have no intention of standing down, and the society-of-resistance crap represents a fairly thorough strategy.

My guess is kind of a modified view of that: they’re building the equivalent of an ideological perpetual-motion-machine, where their raison d’etre might be the realization of specific, not metaphysical, goals — like gaining control of Lebanon or the reconquest of Israel or what-have-you — but their ethic or espirit d’corps is based around being implacable.

Call it a condition of permanent hysteria. Maybe it’s the case that in Year X, their best interests are to make peace. But they’re creating a mindset where they’ll never perceive peace as being in their interests in any long-term sense.

To paraphrase Chris Hedges, a culture of resistance is a force that gives us meaning. To return to a bourgeoise life, or to choose one — selling cellphones in Tyre, for example — is meant, I’d submit, to be a foreclosed option. The building of the society of resistance, says the recruiter to the youth-scout-in-training — now that is the honorable profession. There’s time enough to sell cell phones in paradise.

It’s almost as if these guys are bad people or something.

John Kerry was one of the first party leaders to endorse Barack Obama. (wdcpix)

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, has emerged as a leading candidate for secretary of state — should Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency Nov. 4.

Obama campaign advisers declined to comment on the record for this story. Nor would many Democratic foreign-policy experts who might join an Obama administration. But off the record, Obama aides made clear that Kerry’s name is on a very short list of contenders to become the country’s top diplomat. Another person talked up by the great mentioner is Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a Vietnam War veteran whose foreign-policy views align surprisingly well with Obama’s.

Kerry would bring strong credentials to an Obama administration. His Vietnam experience instilled in him a sense of the tragic and a gravity about committing U.S. forces to peripheral conflicts. He has a well-established place in the Senate as a foreign-policy expert, stemming from his seat on the Foreign Relations Committee. His first book, “The New War,” published in 1998, was a prescient look at threats to national security from non-state actors like terrorists and narco-traffickers.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Furthermore, longtime observers say, Kerry’s political instincts could be an asset. Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a grant-making foundation for non-proliferation studies, said Kerry’s experience in the Senate — and as a presidential nominee — taught him the importance of building domestic support for an administration’s foreign policy. “He combines foreign-policy expertise with political instincts,” Cirincione said. “He understands it’s not enough to have the right policy, but to deliver the policy and build support for that policy.”

Over this year, Kerry has developed a close relationship with Obama. In January, he lent high-profile support to the Illinois senator in the Democratic primary, endorsing him immediately after Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses. At a time when many leading party figures were still withholding endorsements, Kerry intended his support to help Obama win the New Hampshire primary and end Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) front-runner bid for the nomination.

While that didn’t happen, Kerry still remained active as an Obama surrogate on the campaign trail. Aides who do not wish to be quoted said that Kerry often implored Obama to draw sharp distinctions with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on foreign policy — a lesson perhaps born of Kerry’s own reluctance in 2004 to renounce the invasion of Iraq.

“John Kerry has consistently pursued liberal internationalist positions in the Senate, which are in accord with expectations about an Obama administration foreign policy,” said Robert Farley, a national-security professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, in an email. “Notably, Sen. Kerry spearheaded initiatives to engage with two nations viewed as hostile to the United States. In 1985, Kerry visited Nicaragua and met with President [Daniel] Ortega, then under heavy pressure from the United States and its Contra proxies. In the early 1990s, Kerry (along with Sen. John McCain) worked to lay the ground for normalization of relations with Vietnam, including hearings that put to rest the idea that Vietnam continued to hold U.S. POWs. To the extent that a President Obama would seek engagement with Iran, North Korea or other nations hostile to the United States, Kerry would seem an ideal choice for secretary of state.”

During the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Kerry gave one of the most forceful speeches, directly attacking McCain on his perceived foreign-policy strengths. “When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, ‘Next up, Baghdad!’” Kerry said, “Barack Obama saw, even then, an occupation of ‘undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences’ that would ‘only fan the flames of the Middle East.’ Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.”

Kerry, of course, famously offered McCain a place on the 2004 Democratic ticket.

Since losing the presidency in 2004, Kerry’s foreign-policy positions have assumed a bolder cast. He repudiated the Iraq war in 2005; opposed President George W. Bush’s 2007 troop surge with vigor and set to work overturning the media caricature of him as a politician without convictions.

In an off-the-cuff talk in Denver just before his convention speech, Kerry argued for vigorous U.S. re-engagement to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace; an end to the Iraq war that includes a negotiated reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites; and reframing the war on terrorism as a “global counterinsurgency” requiring a fundamental “rethink” of U.S. strategy. In a July Op-Ed for the Financial Times, the Massachusetts senator argued for making “a nuclear-free world” a central goal of U.S. foreign policy.

“Kerry would be a great secretary of state,” said Cirincione. “One of the best things that ever happened to him was to realize he’s not going to be president. It freed him up, and let Kerry be Kerry. His insights and statements over the last couple of years are some of the best work he’s ever done.”

Bob Mackey, a recently-retired Army officer, agreed. “Given his views on Iraq and the war on terror, [Kerry] would be of substantial benefit to the U.S. image overseas,” Mackey said. “Few, if any, senior leaders in the U.S. would do a better job. Many would do a lot worse.”

Rachel Kleinfeld, executive director of the Truman National Security Project, an organization advising progressive candidates on foreign policy, called Kerry’s foreign-policy instincts “excellent” but pointed out that a successful secretary of state had to be “someone close enough to Sen. Obama to make that department stronger.”

Advisers caution that Kerry isn’t a certainty to be Obama’s pick for Foggy Bottom. For one thing, his skill set as a senator with extensive foreign-policy experience and a perch on the Foreign Relations Committee matches that of Joe Biden, the vice-presidential nominee. For another, Kerry is running for his fifth term in the Senate, and if Biden wins the vice-presidency, the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be open.

In addition, other members on the short list for secretary of state offer their own strengths: Hagel, for one, would allow Obama a high-profile gesture to moderate Republicans.

Aides to Kerry did not return requests for comment. Similarly, many Democratic foreign-policy hands were reluctant to comment for publication. “People don’t want to do anything to hurt their chances of getting an appointment,” Cirincione observed. “This is Washington, man, everybody except for maybe four or five people wants to go into the administration. And I’m one of them — so I’m talking to you.”

Edward Djerejian is a longtime diplomat and confidant of James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and consigliere to George H.W. Bush. Djerejian was an outsized figure in GOP foreign-policy circles in its pre-neocon days, having been the only U.S. diplomat to serve as ambassador to both Syria and Israel. After leaving government service in the Clinton administration, he became the founding director of Baker’s institute at Rice University, and Colin Powell briefly recalled him to chair a State Dept. panel on public diplomacy during George W. Bush’s first term. In other words, he’s a grownup.

Djerejian doesn’t have much patience with the ultras who drove U.S. foreign policy off a cliff during the younger Bush’s term. I haven’t read his new book, “Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador’s Journey Through the Middle East,” but according to a press release I have read, Djerejian reaches over to the right-wing kiddie table and brandishes a switch he cut off the backyard oak tree:

Djerejian backs a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East from conflict management to conflict resolution.

“The road to Arab-Israeli peace does not go through Baghdad or Tehran as the neocons advocated. I think that is a wrong-headed policy, and I think the results of that have been rather disastrous,” Djerejian said.
…

While supporting moves to spread democracy in the Arab and Muslim world, Djerejian cautioned against a “fixation on elections.” He relayed an anecdote from his time as ambassador in Damascus. Then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad had just been reelected with 99.44 percent of the vote. Djerejian said he congratulated Assad on his overwhelming victory and then asked him who were the .56 percent who had voted against him. “I have all their names,” Assad assured Djerejian. The point of the anecdote, Djerejian said, is that “elections alone do not make democracy.”

Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz better get out the ointment before that leaves a mark. Djerejian’s book appears to be an unsubtle rebuke of George W. Bush’s approach to the Middle East and a way of saying the U.S. has a chance to start over. Is Djerejian even bothering to back Sen. John McCain this election cycle? Hmmm.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Wikimedia)

Just in time for a presidential election in which the economy has overshadowed foreign policy, two former Bush administration aides are calling for a “grand bargain” with Iran.

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, a married couple who served as Iran experts at the National Security Council during George W. Bush’s first term, have issued a call for “thorough-going strategic rapprochement” with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is still on the State Dept.’s list of sponsors of terrorism.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Under the auspices of the New America Foundation, a Washington policy organization where Flynt Leverett is now a scholar in residence, the two former NSC staff members contend that only by “clarifying America’s willingness to have normal relations with the Islamic Republic and recognizing a legitimate regional and international role for Iran” can Washington resolve its concerns about Iran’s terrorism connections and nuclear-energy production.

The Leveretts’ proposal comes as Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are continuing their arguments about the proper place for negotiations with Tehran. Last year, Obama offered to negotiate with the Iranians “without preconditions.” In an interview with the New York Times, he clarified his position, saying that he would use “aggressive personal diplomacy,” combined with economic inducements, to address the sources of U.S.-Iranian antagonism.

McCain has regularly portrayed Obama’s approach as naive. Negotiating with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, McCain said in the Sept. 26 presidential debate, would “give a propaganda platform to a person that is espousing the extermination of the state of Israel, and therefore then giving them more credence in the world arena.”

Ahmadinejad, by any measure an anti-Semite, has been repeatedly misquoted by conservatives and never called for the extermination of Israel. McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has claimed, without evidence, that Iran seeks a “second Holocaust” for the Jews.

In any case, McCain added that he would “sit down with anybody, but there’s got to be pre-conditions,” suggesting that his approach to the Islamic Republic might go beyond his infamous “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” joke.

The Leveretts pitch their proposal as transcending liberal or conservative perspectives. Their key point is that the approach adopted by Democratic and Republican administrations for 30 years — “isolation and economic pressure” matched with “thinly veiled threats of regime change,” to use Flynt Leverett’s phrase — “is not working by any definition of ‘working’ you could care to employ,” he said.

Other experts seem to agree.

The Khomeini Mausoleum in Tehran (Wikimedia)

“The only real posture we can have that will, in any way, be more likely to be effective is to do two things,” said Hooman Majd, author of “The Ayatollah Begs To Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran”: “one, eliminate military threats and the regime-change policy, and two, to indicate that we are perfectly willing to sit down and discuss our problems and our areas of mutual interest.”

Last year, an influential Iran scholar, Ray Takeyh, published a call for “detente” with Iran in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. He called for a similar but less far-reaching strategic shift.

“Washington must eschew superficially appealing military options, the prospect of conditional talks and its policy of containing Iran in favor of a new policy of détente,” Takeyh wrote. “In particular, it should offer pragmatists in Tehran a chance to resume diplomatic and economic relations.”

Alex Rossmiller, a former intelligence analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, also supports this approach. “It’s hard to overstate the importance of engaging in comprehensive dialogue with Iran,” Rossmiller said.

In essence, the Leveretts’ proposal is an attempt to settle all areas of U.S.-Iranian conflict — from Iranian rejection of Arab-Israeli peace, for example, to periodic U.S. threats against the Iranian government.

The couple rejects an incremental approach in favor of putting “all [issues] on the table at the same time,” Flynt Leverett said in an address at the New America Foundation last Tuesday. “That’s the only way relations will improve.”

The result sought by the Leveretts is “a normal relationship” between Washington and Tehran, according to Flynt Leverett, with the U.S. accepting “a legitimate role” for Iran in the Middle East.

Yet when asked by The Washington Independent what sort of role they envisioned, neither author entirely answered the question.

For example, Iran offers financial and military support for Hamas and Hezbollah, two leading extremist organizations that reject normalized relations with Israel. Flynt Leverett said that demanding “no contact” with Hamas and Hezbollah would be unrealistic. Instead, he said that Washington could successfully negotiate “what kind of relationship” would be acceptable to the U.S. and Israel for Iran to maintain with both radical entities.

He did not offer his own definition of what kind of relationship would satisfy Iranian, U.S. and Israeli interests.

Hillary Mann Leverett, now affiliated with the Stratega consulting firm, argued at the New America address last week that the Iranians, at high levels, strongly desire the end to U.S.-Iranian animosity. She said she “participated for two years in almost monthly meetings with Amb. Ryan Crocker to coordinate” U.S.-Iranian counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan after 9/11, before hard-line Bush administration officials canceled them in favor of a more aggressive approach.

During those talks, she said, “Rafsanjani, Khatami and Ahmadinejad officials told us that they hoped [the talks] would lead to a broader strategic opening” — referring to previous and current Iranian governments.

“It may be frustrating to contemplate offering carrots to Iran,” noted Rossmiller, “but as we’ve seen in countries such as North Korea and Libya, comprehensive negotiation is vital for our security goals — goals that will not be achieved by further belligerence and refusal to engage.”

For the Iranians, the Leveretts contend, the overriding strategic concern is to keep the Islamic Republic alive against outside threats. Currently, U.S. forces are in adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq, and U.S. warships patrol the Persian Gulf to its south.

Other experts agree. “Ayatollah Khamenei’s No. 1 priority is the preservation of the fruit of the Iranian revolution — he views the continued existence of the Islamic Republic as an Islamic Republic as a first-order goal — to which all other goals can be subordinated,” said Matt Duss, a fellow at the Center for American Progress.

In addition, Hillary Mann Leverett said, Iranian diplomats and military officers told her that they fear hostile relations from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two key U.S. allies, as well as the weight of the Sunni Arab states to its west. Its neighbors “are all strategic adversaries,” she said, leaving the Iranians with “nowhere to go.”

The Iranians view better relations with Washington as key to achieving a lasting reduction of tensions with its neighbors. Tehran was reportedly shocked when Washington rejected its post-9/11 overtures for peace, leading to the increased Iranian hostility of the past five years.

It is unclear, of course, whether U.S.-Iranian talks could result in the grand bargain that the Leveretts propose. The history between the two nations creates fertile ground for skepticism. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency assisted the British in overthrowing an Iranian government that opposed British oil interests, a coup that many Iranians still consider an affront to their national pride.

Washington, meanwhile, vividly recalls the 1979 occupation of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, in which Iranian revolutionaries held 52 U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days.

“It doesn’t mean that we can reach a ‘grand bargain’ very soon,” Majd said.

“The critical point is to recognize that Iran has a set of legitimate interests, and that any bargain has to take those interests into account,” said Robert Farley, a national security professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, in an email.  “In some cases those interests run counter to ours, but a grand bargain isn’t about giving the Iranians everything they want. Rather, it’s about figuring out where and how the United States and Iran can compromise, such that they can enjoy the benefits of a cordial (if not friendly) relationship.  Those benefits are immense on both the security and the economic sides.”

Majd added that there was a path forward for fruitful negotiation. “The Iranians have made it crystal clear that they are willing to meet with the U.S. and negotiate — as long as pre-conditions are not attached,” Majd said.

“Pre-conditions, to the Iranians, are insulting, plain and simple.” Majd continued. “It’s as if they are being treated as second-rate. And their overriding concerns are to be treated with respect as a sovereign nation, and to maintain the stability of the regime. They fully understand that the second part, maintaining the stability, requires full engagement with the West. And that includes the U.S.”