The Dreyfuss Report

Obey Issues A 'Vietnam' Warning

By Robert Dreyfuss

Representative David Obey, who chairs the House appropriations committee, is comparing the Afghanistan-Pakistan war to Vietnam:

There were new signs of uneasiness on Capitol Hill about United States involvement in the region. The Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee pronounced himself as "very doubtful" that Mr. Obama's plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan could succeed. The chairman, Representative David Obey, of Wisconsin, said he would allow only one year for the White House to show concrete results, and repeatedly likened Mr. Obama's approach to President Richard Nixon's plans for Vietnam in 1969.

And Obey is planning to attach conditions to aid that President Obama wants:

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May 5, 2009

Is It Clinton vs. Jones?

By Robert Dreyfuss

Is this the first crack in the we're-all-one-big-happy-family talk from the Obama adminstration when it comes to foreign policy? Is Hillary Clinton's State Department trying to undermine General James L. Jones at the National Security Council? And does it have anything to do with the coming May 18 showdown between President Obama and Israel's Bibi Netanyahu at the White House?

Maybe I'm sensitive to the emergence of a possible conflict between the State Department and the White House's NSC because I've just written a piece for Rolling Stone on the NSC, called "Obama's Chess Masters." In it, I pointed out that Obama's foreign policy is heavily "White House-centric," and that Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates will take a back seat to the White House, including General James Jones, the national security adviser. I wrote:

As soon as Obama was elected, there were questions about whether his plan to appoint a so-called "team of rivals" to key foreign-policy positions would lead to chaos and derail his agenda. Indeed, many of the strong-willed and sharp-elbowed officials at the top of the administration are more hawkish than the president himself --from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama's chief rival last year, to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a Republican who was appointed by George W. Bush, to Gen. David Petraeus, the politically ambitious commander of Centcom.

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May 4, 2009

Is Obama Fiddling While Iraq Burns?

By Robert Dreyfuss

It's too early to say that the Iraqi resistance is back, but the recent increase in violence -- including a series of horrific bomb attacks and a rise in small-scale attacks -- suggests that Iraq is not exactly a stable, post-civil war society. The question is: Is President Obama fiddling while Iraq burns?

Flashpoints include the Arab-Kurdish conflict over Kirkuk and other disputed areas, along with the still-simmering intra-Shiite conflicts. But the main fault line remains the divide between the mainly Shiite national government -- including Prime Minister Maliki's ruling bloc and various other pro-Iranian Shiite parties -- and the nationalist Sunni forces, including the now-disintegrating former Awakening (sahwa) movement, also known as the Sons of Iraq.

No one knows, for certain, who's behind the recent violence. But it seems likely that at least some of the former Awakening militiamen, who won American backing in 2006, have now fallen back into the underground resistance, perhaps linking up with unreconstructed Baathist partisans of Saddam Hussein and other ex-military and ex-intelligence officers.

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April 28, 2009

The Obama-Netanyahu Showdown

By Robert Dreyfuss

President Obama got some strongly worded advice yesterday on how to deal with Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who'll be making his first visit to the United States as Israel's new leader in mid-May. The Obama-Netanyahu meeting promises to be a showdown.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the veteran strategist and hardliner -- who was Jimmy Carter's national security adviser -- told a conference yesterday that in the history of US peacemaking in the Middle East, the United States has never once spelled out its own vision for what a two-state solution would look like. That, said Brzezinski, is exactly what President Obama needs to do. And fast.

Brzezinski was speaking at a conference on US-Saudi relations sponsored by the New America Foundation and Saudi Arabia's Committee on International Trade. Brzezinski, who advised Obama early in the presidential campaign, was exiled from Obamaland after his less-than-devout support for Israel made him a liability.

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April 28, 2009

Talking to Hamas

By Robert Dreyfuss

Given that the new Israeli government is an inflexible bunch of hardliners, the best area for the Obama administration to make progress in the Israel-Palestine conflict is for the United States to either encourage or accede to the creation of a Palestinian unity government.

Such a government would include both Fatah and Hamas. Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have tried in the past to secure a Fatah-Hamas accord. Under President Bush, the United States said it would not deal with any government that includes Hamas. In 2007, President Bush sabotaged a nascent Fatah-Hamas deal brokered by Saudi Arabia. So the question is: is the Obama administration showing any willingness to finesse the ban on Hamas?

For the Israelis, and the Israel lobby, any US-Hamas detente crosses a red line.

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April 23, 2009

Freudian Waterboarding

By Robert Dreyfuss

Speaking aboard Air Force One, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today made a rather funny Freudian slip.

Asked to explain the president's policy on the issue of CIA-led interrogations, the release of the torture memos, and whether those responsible for the policy ought to be held to account, Gibbs said:

MR. GIBBS While no one is above the law, those that worked within the four corners of the legal advice they were given, and those that acted in good faith based on the advice they were provided should not be subject to interrogation.

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April 22, 2009

Talibanistan in Pakistan

By Robert Dreyfuss

The real crisis in central and south Asia -- the one in Pakistan -- is going from really bad to much, much worse.

Let's review some of the more recent reports from Pakistan.

Earlier this month, in a terrifying analysis of the situation in Pakistan, the New York Times reported:

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April 21, 2009

Spy Story: Harman, Saban, and AIPAC

By Robert Dreyfuss

The trial on espionage-related charges for two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee starts this summer, unless -- as the Washington Post has demanded -- the Justice Department drops the charges.

Now we know, thanks to Jeff Stein of CQ, that a reported offer from Rep. Jane Harman to intervene in the case on behalf of AIPAC -- to "waddle into" it, as she put it -- was caught on tape on a court-ordered (and court-sanctioned) wiretap. According to Stein, perhaps Washington's very best reporter on intelligence, an FBI probe of Harman's pledge to run interference for AIPAC was dropped on orders from Alberto Gonzalez, President Bush's attorney general, who wanted Harman's cooperation to protect the secret (and illegal) domestic surveillance program.

What an ugly story.

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April 20, 2009

Can We Forget About Pirates, Please?

By Robert Dreyfuss

There are two ways to read this, from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

"I am confident that we will be spending a lot of time in the situation room over the next few weeks trying to figure out what in the world to do about this problem."

By "this problem," Gates was referring to piracy on the high seas off the coast of Somalia. I don't know about you, but I'd put it like this: the recent death of eight-year-old Sandra Cantu in a small town in northern California was a horrific tragedy, and like the dozens of other stories like that -- say, the murder of the little beauty queen in Colorado a few years back -- the story riveted media attention for days. In the big picture, however, such stories are unimportant and, like the O.J. Simpson case, are sensationalized by the media (especially cable news channels) for their obvious value in attracting mindless viewers who want to cluck-cluck about the latest atrocity.

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April 14, 2009

Is Iran 'Demonic,' Ask Dennis Ross

By Robert Dreyfuss

Does Dennis Ross believe that Iran is a "demonic" nation? Apparently so, at least according to the latest report from the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.

Readers of The Nation may already have seen my thumbnail profile of Dennis Ross, Hillary Clinton's special envoy for "the Gulf and Southwest Asia," i.e., Iran. A smooth talking but hawkish diplomat who spent most of the past decade at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel thinktank in Washington, Ross is at best a controversial choice for an administration dedicated to opening a dialogue with Iran. Among other things, during his trenure at WINEP, Ross expressed skepticism about the value of talks with Iran.

Here's an addendum to that profile: until his recent appointment, Ross served as chairman of the board for the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI), an Israel-based organization that, according to its web site, "makes an annual presentation to the Israeli Cabinet as a whole on main developments in the Jewish world, offering its assessments and policy recommendations."

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April 12, 2009