Richard Perle is in high dudgeon over the antics of Condoleeza Rice (via the Op-ed page of Sunday’s Washington Post). How dare she get President Bush to back off his plans to attack Iran! How dare she actually suggest giving diplomacy a chance. The nerve of some people!
Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi)
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran knows what he wants: nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; suppression of freedom at home and the spread of terrorism abroad; and the “shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.”
President Bush, too, knows what he wants: an irreversible end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the “expansion of freedom in all the world” and victory in the war on terrorism.
The State Department and its European counterparts know what they want: negotiations.[…]
… And now, on May 31, the administration offered to join talks with Iran on its nuclear program.
How is it that Bush, who vowed that on his watch “the worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands,” has chosen to beat such an ignominious retreat?
You should read the whole thing. Perle is literally frothing at the mouth as he inveighs against Bush’s “weakness” (his word) on Iran, and by implication the success of Condoleeza Rice in getting the President to actually try diplomacy, rather than just talk about it.
(cont. below)
It’s quite amusing in a schandenfreude kind of way. He even brings up Ronald Reagan’s “economic and moral assault” on the Soviet Union by way of comparison, conveniently forgetting that it was Reagan’s acceptance of the olive branch offered by Gorbachev, and his willingness to negotiate a reduction in nuclear weapons with the “Evil Empire,” that was the true defining moment of Reagan’s presidency.
It’s not surprising the Perle is upset, nor is it surprising that the “liberal” Washington Post has given him precious space on its Op-ed page to rant and rage against Condi’s success. No, what’s truly surprising is that someone within this administration has set Perle loose, and is employing him as their attack dog against the Secretary of State.
I can only assume that Cheney and/or Rumsfeld are using Perle as their stalking horse to call into question the diplomatic strategy Ms. Rice and the State Department have managed to get the Dunce-in-Chief to adopt regarding Iran’s nuclear program. For the first time in this Presidency someone other than the Neocon warmongers’ cabal has the upper hand with respect to foreign policy, and they don’t like it one bit.
Secretary Rice, possibly with the support of some military leaders, must have the upper hand for the moment with respect to how we should deal with Iran. Otherwise why would Perle have been let off his leash to blast President Bush so vociferously? This is the type of invective they usually reserve for Democrats, like John Kerry or Wes Clark, or their biggest bogeywoman of all, Hillary.
Perle indulges in so much hand wringing about his poor expatriate Iranian buddies being deprived of their chance to replicate Adnan Chalabi’s success in Iraq, that I literally laughed out loud at his crocodile tears. I confess: it is a pleasure watching them fume and sputter in impotent rage because, for a change, Bush took away the keys to the family car from them and handed them to Condi.
Does this mean we are out of the woods regarding an attack on Iran? Hardly. Condi probably only has a limited time to make some progress with Iran (i.e., something Karl Rove can trumpet as a success during the Fall campaign) before Cheney and Rummy are given another chance to implement their dreams of regime change. At a minimum, she must succeed in getting Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment before the end of August. If that doesn’t happen, all bets are off, and no doubt Rice will be kicked ignominiously to the curb. If that happens, expect the war talk with Iran to be ratcheted up to a fever pitch again, no matter how reluctant the Generals at the Pentagon are to actually carry out another aerial blitzkrieg against an oil rich state in the Middle East.
In the meantime, though let’s pray for Ms. Rice and her European allies to succeed (I know, hard to believe I wrote those words, isn’t it?), and sit back and enjoy the discomfiture of the Neocons like Mr. Perle. It may not last, but damn if it doesn’t feel good watching them bitch and moan about Bush for a change.
Cross-posted in Orange
After reading the whole article, my question for Perle would be – what is it you want Rice and Bush to do? The closest he comes to an alternative is:
to give moral and political support to the regime’s opponents.
And how would we give them that moral and political support? By bombing them? Worked real well for us in Iraq didn’t it? What an idiot!!
He wants what he got in Iraq. Some people never learn.
That’s exactly right. That is what he wants.
Please.
1-Do NOT refer to Bush as if he has any say in any matters other than perhaps which tie he wears when he leaves his cages. And even THAT is doubtful. He does not have any appreciable power whatsoever. He is a sockpuppet.
2-Of COURSE “it”…BushCo…is backing down. The military (overt AND covert) has finally gotten through to it…quite probably at the point of threat…that the U.S. simply does not have the resources to open another front in this ongoing Blood For Oil War.
Preventing a “Hitler and the Eastern Front” minute at least for the time being.
3-Perle is nuts. He is an obsessed, Zionist fool…at BEST…and would quite happily take the entire world down rather than surrender his own obsessions.
Other than that…everything’s just fine.
Just fine!!!
AG
The advantage of the “opinion piece” is that no one need fact-check the bastard.
As to the rest, what comes to mind is “how the mighty have fallen”. He’s got the nuts to equate a forty-year “cold war” with the largest power bloc in the world, to a single, small-ish Near East nation more bluff than bluster. And in keeping with these neo-brained lunatic arguments, he cites the President of Iran, a leadership post one step removed (constitutionally) from the Supreme Council, which actually controls the Country.
Occurs to me that the one person enjoying the hell out of all this is Ahmadinejad. He speaks, then watches these idiots jump up and down. Then he goes back to the EU3+2, and they run videos of the Americans, and they all get a good laugh.
Can’t shake the image of Rumpelstilskin.
Since Cheney & his neocons swept into power in 2000 I’ve hoped a strong challenge both to their insane agenda and to their grip on the vapid mind of the Imbecile in Chief would materialize. I had hoped that Colin Powell’s State Dept. might prevail, but of course that didn’t happen and Powell ultimately, in my opinion, disgraced himself in the end.
More recently I’ve posited that the gang that used to run US foreign policy (Scowcroft, Baker, Carlucci and the rest of the big-money Carlyle Group types), have mounted such a serious challenge to regain that control by taking it back from the neocon usurpers who took it from them when Bush stole the White House in 2000.
It’s too soon to say what is driving Rice and who she may be taking direction from but it seems clear that, if nothing else, the neocon voices are not the only ones guiding her actions,, and I see this as a good thing. Even though I regard her as one of the arch-villains of the Bush regime, I never thought of her as a neocon fantasy ideologue, so much as I thought of her as a tool always in thrall to other, more powerful interests. I see her this way now, and it would seem that perhaps she is being used by others to neutralize the neocon power and push their lunatic agenda into the dustbin of history.
Admittedly the available choice between the neocons and the Carlyle Group types, (the so-called “foreign policy realists”), is an ugly one; definitely it is a “lesser of two evils” choice. But thwarting an actual military assault against Iran is very important and I suspect the Carlyle Gang vigorously oppose such an attack.
.
Propaganda statements from the fascist right influence within the AEI —
… she (Condi Rice) is now in the midst of — and increasingly represents — a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries.
The president knows that
During these three years, the Iranians have advanced steadily toward acquiring nuclear weapons, defiantly announcing milestones along the way. At the end of May, with Ahmadinejad stridently reiterating Iran’s “right” to enrich the uranium necessary for nuclear weapons, the administration blinked again.
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) tried two weeks ago to pass the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would have increased the administration’s too-little-too-late support for democracy and human rights in Iran. But the State Department opposed it, arguing that it “runs counter to our efforts … it would limit our diplomatic flexibility.”
The U.S. administration’s vacillation between reasonable patience and fits of hostility against Iran largely depends on who has the White House’s ear — the neo-conservatives from Vice President Dick Cheney’s and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s teams, or the “peacemakers” rallied around Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
IAEA
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Gosh sure is a good thing for our Clueless Nation that the ReThugs are together…marching in lockstep towards Freedom, fer corporate America…not like those ‘unruly’, ‘divided’ Democrats mentioned in the previous post. Before you guys get all lathered up about Kos and OrangeLand yer oughta take a look at how your site reads.
As to Perle he’s interested in one thing only and it ain’t protecting Murkkka. It’s watching out for Israel.
He is one of the ones spreading the lie that Amadinejad said that ‘Israel should be wiped from the face of the earth…’ not what the man said at all.
Perle is dangerous fascist scum and should be whipped from the commons to some distant desert so we don’t have to listen to his deranges spewing of hate for people he neither knows anything nor cares about.
That’s Americans I’m talking about.
Replace “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran” with “George W. Bush (or Cheney or Rove, or god, just about any of them)” and you get a much more easily supported statement.
I mean, take an especially close look at the bit about the “shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.” How could a neocon get bent out of shape about that? I mean, isn’t that one of the dearest goals of the Repub leadership these days? Seriously, I’m amazed that he wouldn’t have looked for a some sort of alternate phrasing there, given their discipline on language and whatall.