Carl Levin: Take Action against Syria and Iran
Red State reports that Carl Levin, speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, said that action should be taken against both Syria and Iran:
“I think we ought to take action on all fronts including Syria and any other source of weapons coming in, obviously Iran is the focus – but it shouldn’t be the sole focus.”
The exchange:
SEN CARL LEVIN (D-MI): “Now, in terms of the weapons coming in from Syria, those weapons that you’ve described as coming in from Syria and perhaps other Sunni neighbors are killing our troops. Do we have a plan to address the Syrian weapon source — of killings of our troops?â€?
JOHN MCCONNELL, Director of National Intelligence: “Sir, I know the military is working that border area to close it down from not only weapons but also jihadists coming in –â€?
LEVIN: “It’s more than just — we’re trying to close down the Iranian border area too. The problem is that these weapons are coming from a state which is — doesn’t recognize Israel either, just like Iran doesn’t. We’ve got to try to stop weapons coming into Iraq from any source that are killing our troops. I agree with the comments about trying to stop them coming in from Iran, I think we have to try stop them that are going to the Sunni insurgents as well as to the Shia. I was just wondering, does the military have a plan to, if necessary, to go into Syria to go to the source of any weapons coming from Syria? That are going to Sunni insurgents? That are killing our troops? … I think we ought to take action on all fronts including Syria and any other source of weapons coming in, obviously Iran is the focus – but it shouldn’t be the sole focus.â€? (Armed Services Committee, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 02/27/07)
Red State also has the video of the exchange up.
My view on this is quite similar to that of James Joyner: if a conservative hawk would have said what Levin said, I would have interpreted it as a call for military action. Considering the source, however, I’m not so sure. As James puts it:
My impression–and it may well be prejudiced by my view of Levin’s politics–from the intonation is that by “we ought to take action on all fronts� he means something other than “go in with guns blazing.� Perhaps he means that we need more and better planning than we had for Phase IV in Iraq. It’s not totally clear to me, though.
Kim Priestap believes that Levin is calling for military action, same goes for LawHawk. More at QandO and Sister Toldjah.
Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey has an interesting post up about a significant change in U.S. policy towards Iran: the U.S. will talk with Syria and Iran in the hope of improving the situation in Iraq. Ed – in my opinion correctly – notes that it seems as if Rice is gaining and Cheney is losing influence.
Somehow, that view [ed. that the U.S. should not negotiate with Iran] has changed, and it could mean something significant in the balance of power in the Bush administration. It seems like Condoleezza Rice may have prevailed over the Vice President, whose influence appears to be waning in the last two years of the Bush presidency. The abrupt replacement of Donald Rumsfeld and the questionable resolution of the Korean crisis indicates a softening of the approach taken by the administration, at least in tone.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were the two leading hawks in the Bush administration. Together they had tremendous influence on U.S. policies – I always compared them privately to the two grumpy old men in The Muppet Show. With Rumsfeld gone and Cheney now, personally losing influence… people like Rice take over. Rice has more faith in diplomacy than Cheney and Rumsfeld have (although less than Powell). We will most likely see more policy changes in the near future.
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17 Responses to “Carl Levin: Take Action against Syria and Iran”
Add Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to that list, Levin. We know you hate Iran and Syria (we all do to an extent, and they hate you and us) but don’t limit yourself so you can feel better and skirt the OTHER countries who are funnelling weapons and money up into Iraq.
OK. First, good point about the other countires. Something that MVG doesn’t address (it’s a tough problem that can’t be cured by endless bombing runs) that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and China and any number of other countires will, at times, work against what the U.S. feels is in it’s interest. But that doesn’t mean we send a rain of terror down upon those countries…at least we didn’t used to do that…
But I disagree with the ‘they hate us we hate them’. Leaders of countires play to their base. Geroge W plays to the southern, white, Christians who want to pray in school and not pay taxes (a bit of a simplicity, but not really when you study what he says and how he says it). Other leaders do the same thing. They sometimes make statements that are meant to intimidate and offend. But buying it all off as ‘they hate us, we hate them’ is a pretty bad way to go about making peace in the world. It dehumanizes (to some extent) and helps people like Levin make outlandish and, well I hate to say it, but stupid statements. (I say that because you aren’t going to change 3,000 years of history and relationships. Iran and Iraq and Syra will never have a ‘closed’ border. Hell, we can’t even keep the Mexican border closed tight. How do you think tons of cocain and drugs get into this country each month? If closing borders isn’t easy here, how do you do it in a war zone where we have few, if any allies (that has to do with how many people we keep killing)
The issue is, and I’d love to see more folks on the conservative side comment on this, the U.S. is not the police force of the world. We can’t afford to be. I don’t want our kids blood running all over teh world – unless we have NO choice and our country is in danger. And we can’t make the whole world like us. That’s why the war in Iraq will never have a victory. Protect this country – not what vested interest say is our ‘national’ interest.
How can they protect Iraq’s borders when our own borders can’t be protected? I would love to see an honest answer on this.
I have absolutely no faith in diplomacy with dictatorships. I think what the president is doing is providing cover for when the time comes when we inevitably have to take military action against Iran. At least Bush can say we exhausted all avenues, and only responded militarily as a last resort. In that sense this may be a smart move. I don’t think the administration really believes diplomacy with the Iranian mullahs will amount to anything.
m, On both sides of the US political spectrum, you have people calling for the US to be the world’s policeman. The difference is that on the conservative side, those calls tend to be for the US to act when there’s a national interest at stake (and when this conflates with a humanitarian interest, then all the more reason to act) while those on the left call for us to be the cops in pure humanitarian situations where there isn’t a real national interest of the US. And then of course you also have some people who are more internationalists, calling for the international community as a whole (usually under the auspices of the UN) to act, and I’ll agree that most such people are on the liberal side of the aisle. Personally although I am a conservative and I do have a tendency to favor strong soveriegnty, I feel that my opinion would change if I felt that there was a better organization for internationalism to work. I feel that if progress is ever to be made toward world order, peace and justice, the international community has to define human rights standards and have a systematic way of dealing with violaters.
So no, the US should not have to be the world’s police force…but if we don’t do it, who will?
If we didn’t install the Shah via Operation Ajax there would be no mullahs in Iran today. How quickly we forget, Laura, in politics, ever action has an equal and opposite reaction…and the opposite reaction to a hard-line dictatorship is a religious fundamentalist state. Recognized that fact.
CS- Would you be willing to accept enforcement from international organizations when WE were the violators? Because, Imo, that is one of the reasons that would never work. Remember Bushs’ refusal to have US agents subject to decisions by the International Criminal Court? Many of our own actions over the past 50 years or so have violated international law- first covertly, in the last 5 years openly.
Kim,
I think that kind of trust would have to be built up over time as the system evolved, and yes, I think it’s likely that there would always be covert illegal operations by the US and other powerful countries, and that this would be a problem. But part of the reason that we’ve always turned a blind eye to covert ops, even when we know they wouldn’t pass muster against international law, is that we know that there isn’t a legitimate way in many cases to ensure our national interests. Like I said, that is a process that would have to build over time; if there were legal channels for handling things, then the US public would put more pressure on future administrations to handle our affairs in a legal and transparent manner. Right now it’s a bit like vigilantism or the Wild West; we don’t think of some of those acts as criminal but rather as aggressive means of self-defense.
But they’re acts of war if other countries commit them, right? Why is it ok for us to participate in covert ops in Iran, but not ok for Iran to be in Iraq?? Aren’t they only defending their national interest?
I guess our policy is realism cloaked in idealism— the Wild West —covered up by rhetoric about freedom, human rights and democracy. I think we interfere a lot more than we actually have to to defend our national interest. We may have had to during the Cold War, but haven’t taken the necessary steps to avoid having to intervene now. I for one would rather be told we’re invading for oil, than hear all of that Cr*p about spreading democracy. Less morally ambiguous that way.
Kim,
Do you really not believe that there has been a growing threat of Islamist extremism? Have you read The Looming Tower, for example? I’m always surprised at the degree to which the threat is being minimized because if anything, I think we are more directly threatened by Islamism than we were by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. These are people who don’t believe in borders or nations, and they have found creative ways to wage war on us without a standing army. It’s actually a lot harder to contain a threat like that.
I don’t think that the Iraq war was either about oil or democracy, I think it was about both; and for that matter, I’d throw in Israel as well- not (of course) saying that Iraq was a direct existential threat to Israel, but that stability in the Middle East is important because Israel’s our ally. Even if we acheived energy independence, we can’t become isolationists. The whole world’s our neighborhood now.
And on this, Kim, I think that intent does matter. This is where the right and left in our country get into disagreements about moral equivalencies. Don’t you think that if the US wanted to engage in an Imperial adventure in Iraq, that we wouldn’t have gone in full force and not left things open to the mess that we have now? To a large degree it’s our restraint that has kept us from being more successful, but that restraint also says something about our intentions. If we were going to be a permanent occupier or set up a sham government, I think we could have easily accomplished that. But we didn’t want to establish another dictatorship or a colonial enterprise; we actually have tried to allow majority rule. That may prove to have been a mistake, but again, I’m just asking if you see my point about intent.
If you don’t accept that there are “good” governments and “bad” governements, then yes, our covert actions or military excursions are morally equivalent to Iran’s or any other nation that isn’t friendly to us. But have you seen how Iran handles dissenters, criminals, fornicators and gays? Is that really a government that is morally equivalent to our own?
It looks as if I am the only one absolutely astounded by Levin’s remarks. ‘Go into Syria’ means expanding the territories where we are fighting, and this is the direct opposite of what we need right now. Neither do we need to give more ammunition to those accusing us of being imperialistic. Syria is a sovereign country, whether we like it not, and crossing borders for military action is an extremely provocative move. Extremely.
Levin also dwelled on the theme of states who don’t recognize Iarael. This is certainly an important point to bring up, but put into the same box with recommending action, it looks suspiciously like an a priori justification for said ‘action’. That’s not a good way to go, in my opinion. Too many hot potatoes, for one thing. For another, military action is not likely to induce Syria to suddently change its position on Isral. In fact, quite the opposite backlash result may well occur.
That this would come from an anti war Democrat is also astounding.
I always thought Levin was a thoughtful and insightful man, and I’m nonplussed at this turn of events.
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The topic of our ‘national interests’ keeps cropping up, and I find this troublesome. Our national interests can extend to all the corners of the earth, as can every other nation’s. Basically, the term is too pliable to have any specific meaning. As such, it is dangerously amenable to being used as justification for any action at all anywhere.
In the pursuit of our ‘national interest’, whatever they might be said to be at a particular time, we have to pause to acknowledge the national interests of other countries. The devil is in the details of finding a resolution, when the national interests of different countries collide. Resolution does not automatically mean having it our way, though. In pursuing our national interests via the Iraq war, we affected the world, without so much as a by-your-leave.
According to Levin, we have to keep on this same blind alley course.
I don’t know if I understood Levin correctly or not, but my impression was that he was rhetorically calling for “action” against Syria in order to point out what he felt was the military (and administration’s) double standard. In other words, if we build the case to “do something” about Iran, don’t we also have to “do something” about Syria. Almost like putting this out there to say, where does it all end and how could we possibly sustain military action on all of those fronts.
That’s my guess anyway. It just doesn’t seem like he’d actually be calling for an escalation like that.
CS: “It just doesn’t seem like he’d actually be calling for an escalation like that”
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Levin definitedly called for going INTO Syria to get those who supply the arms. That would involve crossing the border. I can’t imagine any nation not objecting to such a violation of its sovereign space.
And -
I can’t imagine the suppliers handing over their stores without a fight. Thus, we expand our field of military action.
What I meant, domajot, is that I interpret the whole thing as though he was making the point that none of that is possible. Kind of like saying, “So what are you going to do next…is there a plan to nuke Tehran?” Do you see what I mean? That he may have been making statements like that because he thinks that things are going too far. I don’t know if that’s what he meant or not, and I have no motive to defend him, I’m just thinking it might be more plausible to interpret it that way.
CS-
It would be nice if you were right. He doesn’t share his inner thoughts with me, so I can’t be sure.
But I watched this exchange on C-Span, and I got the impression he meant exactly what he said.