Thread: Worse. Than. Carter.

similar to what we've been discussing.

Israel, Adept at War, Fails at Public Relations - Michael Hirsh - Newsweek.com

Israel’s PR Problem

Jan 5, 2010

Though he lacks all credibility—even in his own country these days—Western journalists never seem to tire of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The feeling is obviously mutual. As the '00s wound down, the Iranian president sat smugly for yet another series of interviews with America’s media big shots. As always, he appeared eager for a fresh round of "debate" over Israel's right to exist, 60-plus years after its founding. Featured on Larry King Live last fall, Ahmadinejad trotted out his favorite argument: even if the Holocaust happened—a fact he won't quite concede—it wasn't any justification for plunking down a Jewish state in the middle of Palestine in 1948. Why that place in particular, asked the former "university professor" (as Ahmadinejad referred to himself), sidestepping 4,000 years of history and the 1917 Balfour Declaration with a smirk. Still smiling, Ahmadinejad answered his own question: "Because the Holocaust happened, they said, and the Jewish people were oppressed, and the Jewish people need an independent government. And where in the world? In Palestine. And we're saying, well, what exactly does this have to do with Palestine?" Larry King's response? "Well, I understand that, intellectually understand that." On to the next subject, right after this break.

To be sure, few intelligent people have ever taken Ahmadinejad seriously. But by endlessly repeating such propaganda on prime time, courtesy of untutored TV anchors, high-profile enemies of Israel like the Iranian leader have been sowing seeds of existential doubt about Israel for far too long. And for far too long, Israel has been permitting this sort of nonsense to go unanswered in an effective way. It's not that Israelis don't respond to the propaganda; it is that Israelis tend to do so defensively and reluctantly, and therefore incompetently.

Even Benjamin Netanyahu, an eloquent English speaker who may be the most effective communicator ever to serve as Israeli prime minister, played into Ahmadinejad's agenda when he devoted most of his speech at the U.N. last fall to defending his country against the Iranian leader's "rants." Bandying accusations with Ahmadinejad, he waved a copy of recently acquired original blueprints for Auschwitz and the actual minutes of the infamous 1942 Wannsee Protocol, which detailed the Nazi plan for the Final Solution. "Is this protocol a lie?" he asked. The same sort of querulous defensiveness characterized Israel's response to the release of the U.N.'s Goldstone Report, which alleged atrocities by Israeli troops in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in late 2008. Israeli officials denounced the report as wrong and unfair but stinted on producing their own counterevidence of just how much effort their military put into avoiding the deaths of innocents in that extraordinarily difficult operation. (Among the evidence I've seen: video footage showing Hamas operatives snatching Palestinian children from the street and using them as shields to successfully prevent Israeli fire, thereby banking on the very humaneness that Israel's critics now deny existed.)

This won't do. To survive in the long run, Israel must get better at fighting for itself on the "new battlefield" of world opinion, as a just-released study calls it. The only way to do so is to develop a long-term strategy and to go on the offensive. Israel is fiercely effective at taking the offensive militarily as well as technologically—as Dan Senor and Saul Singer point out in their new book, Start-Up Nation—but somehow it remains chronically inept at promoting its interests aggressively. The Israeli government continues to see this issue as a secondary matter of little substance. Its attitude seems to be: Why bother? The world isn't with us anyway. Never will be.

Hence, during the 2006 Lebanon war, then-P.M. Ehud Olmert never bothered to hold a news conference explaining himself in English. And in the middle of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, when Israeli soldiers had to uproot whole towns of anguished Israeli citizens, the government failed to develop a PR campaign to win global sympathy. "When I asked them about their 'press strategy,' they just sort of looked at me. They didn't have one," says Senor, who served as communications strategist for the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq. "Whether it's tactics or strategy, they're terrible at it. Their attitude is, they're busy in a knife fight and don't have the time." On a recent trip to Israel, I heard exactly the same complaints about the government's lack of PR savvy—even from some Israelis.

That dismissive attitude is no longer an option. Sometime in 2010 Israel may undertake the most sensitive military operation in its history—an attack on Iran—and if it does, it will need every ally it can get around the world. Beyond that, however, Israel's future fight for its existence is far more likely to take place in the realm of world politics than regional military threats, and it has to gear up. Setting aside the Iran nuclear issue, Israel is militarily secure; no rival nation's military can come close to challenging it, and the security fence as well as improved intelligence gathering in the West Bank have reduced suicide attacks to a new low. Politically, however, things are looking shakier than they have in a long time. With the Palestinians hopelessly divided, and Netanyahu resisting a total freeze on settlements, a negotiated two-state solution seems as remote as it ever has. Israel's unilateral efforts to promote a separate Palestinian state—the heart of the strategy that led to the Gaza pullout—have failed irretrievably with Hamas's violent takeover of the territory. U.S. envoy George Mitchell is headed back to the region shortly in a quixotic bid to restart talks with what remains of the Palestinian government. But in the absence of meaningful peace efforts, there is a new campaign emerging around the world to raise fundamental questions about Israel's legitimacy as a purely Jewish state.

As the dream of peace appears to be dying, in other words, the old question at the heart of the West Bank occupation is alive and healthier than ever: how can Israel retain its Jewish identity if it intends to rule territorially over millions of Palestinians into the indefinite future? "The recent assaults on the state's legitimacy threaten to push Israel towards the status of a pariah state and therefore pose a real threat," wrote Eram Shayshon of Tel Aviv's Reut Institute. The Israeli think tank has published a study concluding that Israel's hardest struggle may now come in a war of words. The battlefields, the study says, will be "hubs of delegitimization" based in such cities as London, Toronto, Brussels, and Madrid.

Ahmadinejad-like challenges to Israel's basic right to exist are beneath comment. But as long as all those Arabs and Palestinians remain in its midst, their political status unresolved, critics from all sides will keep questioning how long Israel can endure as both a Jewish state and a democracy. Why not organize a well-funded PR strategy, complete with eminent proxies (retired statesmen of the kind TV producers love to book), to begin to address those questions now? Go on the offensive: a case could be made that, as the only Mideast state actually approved by a vote of the U.N. General Assembly (Resolution 181 in November 1947, partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections; Jews embraced it, and Arabs went to war over it), Israel has the right under international law to retain its identity as a Jewish state. By contrast, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon were merely patched together by treaty bureaucrats at around the same time—hardly a global imprimatur.

Don't simply parry, in other words; thrust as well. Strike preemptively for hearts and minds. Develop long-term strategies. Lay the groundwork for future challenges so that you've got camera-ready allies in high places, and the Larry Kings of the world are gradually and subtly "educated" in how to respond to obvious misstatements of fact. Plan and organize a lot more tours and private briefings for journalists and think tanks—the kind that Jewish groups and U.S. senators and congressmen now routinely get, to great effect. Embed foreign journalists and others in more operations. Take the doubters down into the archeological tunnels well below the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem to show people, again and again, that the Jews were at the Western Wall first. You can then remind them that, for all the accusations of brutality and insensitivity hurled at Israel, Israelis still restrain themselves today from worshiping at the holiest site in Judaism—the "foundation stone" of the Ark of the Covenant 250 feet away from the wall—so as not to ruffle Muslim sensitivities (it sits underneath the more recently built Dome of the Rock).

Winning good will means an endless siege on world opinion, but Israel can no longer disdain the war that awaits it on this new battlefield. To survive, it must make better use of its talent and ingenuity to make its case.

Hanson, for JayTac:

2010: Our Year of Decision
By Victor Davis Hanson

Sometimes long-festering problems collide - and explode - in a single memorable year. We can go as far back as the fifth century B.C. to see this phenomenon - and we may see it again in 2010.

In 480 B.C., a decade of Aegean tension culminated in the Persian invasion of Greece. Nothing seemed able to stop the onslaught of King Xerxes as he broke through the pass of Thermopylae - until the Greeks under Themistocles rallied at the sea battle of Salamis and saved the West.

In A.D. 69, the Roman Empire was tottering on its very foundations. Rome had been rocked by decades of corruption, assassinations, coups and military revolts. By the end of 69, Vespasian - the fourth emperor that year! - had put an end to over a century of erratic Julio-Claudian rule when he brought sanity back to Roman government.

Fast-forward to the modern era. The rise of fascism erupted into war and conquest in 1939. That year, Franco's Nationalists won the civil war in Spain. The Soviet Union fought Japan in a border war - during which it signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact with Hitler's Germany. Weeks later, the Nazi invasion of Poland marked the start of the Second World War.

Events in 1939 alone did not cause the outbreak of the global conflict. Rather, it followed from years of bad ideas like serial appeasement of Hitler, the near-disarmament of Western democracies and flirtation with pacifism. This behavior had inadvertently sent a global message: Britain, France and the United States were unwilling and unable to meet the challenge of totalitarianism. And so dictators called their bluff in 1939 and began to move.

Closer to the present, 1979 was another climactic year. Jimmy Carter's prior years of sermonizing about American bad habits had convinced many of the world's bad actors that it was time to press forward their regional agendas without fear of American reaction.

Once theater aggression began, there was little way to stop it. President Carter's whiny "crisis of confidence" speech in which he confessed to a collective American malaise only made things worse.

What a year 1979 proved to be! Daniel Ortega's Sandinistas took control of Nicaragua. The Iranian Revolution triggered an oil panic. A global energy crisis followed. Islamic terrorists took American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. About seven weeks later, the Soviet Union's Red Army entered Afghanistan. China earlier in the year had invaded Vietnam.

2010 may turn out to be a similar year of destiny. In 2009, the United States gave Iran at least four deadlines to stop its nuclear program. All were ignored. Does an emboldened theocracy believe this now is the year to become nuclear and change the entire strategic makeup of the Middle East?

For much of 2009, the Obama administration boasted that it would shut down the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility, despite having no final idea of where or what to do with all the detainees - many from terror-infested Yemen.

We renounced prior notions of a "war on terror." We reiterated that the now-quiet Iraq war had been a mistake. We apologized to the Islamic world for purported past American sins, while inflating Muslim achievements.

After months of hesitation, in Janus-fashion we both announced we were sending more troops to Afghanistan and promised to start soon bringing them home. We reached out to Putin's Russia at the expense of our democratic Eastern European allies.

All of this has not been lost on Islamists. In general, al-Qaida interprets our outreach as a sign of moral weakness. Since 9/11, more than one-third of all terrorism-related incidents in the United States occurred in 2009 alone. Maj. Nidal Hasan's murderous rampage at Ford Hood, and al-Qaida's foiled Christmas Day effort to blow up a jet over Detroit are just precursors of what to expect this year.

Meanwhile, the cash-flush Chinese have not been idle. This year they will continue to use their vast budget surpluses to expand their armed forces - as skyrocketing debts in the years ahead force us to curtail our own.

With America engaged in two wars, and drowning in trillions in debt, our Asian allies are already starting to take their respective measures of Barack Obama and the Communist cadre in Beijing. Expect allies like Japan, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan to begin to make regional accommodations with a rising China - while distancing themselves from a floundering and confused U.S.

In 2010, our year of decision, events may come to a head and overwhelm the existing American-led global order unless President Obama can galvanize Western allies to meet the mounting danger.

sorry, victor hanson is a good historian but a crappy foreign policy read.

Expect allies like Japan, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan to begin to make regional accommodations with a rising China - while distancing themselves from a floundering and confused U.S.

i know from my work that -this- particular statement is pretty much all BS, and in fact, is working in the other direction.

hanson's analysis is weak because he implies causality in the various historical events he lists without actually, you know, proving it.

Originally Posted by JayTac

At any rate Obama has increased our presence in Afghanistan twice now and whether or not you believe he dithered on making the decision the fact still remains that Gen. McChrystal will receive the additional troops he requested by his set deadline.

Actually, no, he won't. He requested between 80-40K. This tells me that Obama is between 40 and 85% committed to victory.

Actually, much less than that, because it's not so much about force levels (important), but about TIME. And the Commander-in-Chief seems utterly clueless about that. And it's CRUCIAL.

blues,

Actually, no, he won't. He requested between 80-40K

and everyone, OSD/JS included, recognized that the 80K figure was a throwaway and was not meant seriously by the COCOM. notice mcchrystal never pushed for that figure, not even within the confines of the military.

but about TIME. And the Commander-in-Chief seems utterly clueless about that. And it's CRUCIAL.

so does that mean the SOFA signed by pres bush showed that he was utterly clueless? obviously there is a balance that needs to be made between showing commitment and creating moral hazard.

the problem is not as simple as you make it out to be, and the difficulties faced within the DoD alone in creating its inputs to this problem should tell you that it's not an issue of commitment to victory.

also notice that everyone, White House included, has been deliberately vague about what the supposed deadline means.

Obama Administration Says 2011 Afghan Withdrawal Timeline May Slip - ABC News

Originally Posted by astralis

also notice that everyone, White House included, has been deliberately vague about what the supposed deadline means.

Obama Administration Says 2011 Afghan Withdrawal Timeline May Slip - ABC News

You mean disingenuous don't you Astralis?

Creating a false expectation of a pullout that he does not intend to follow through on, for purely short term political benefits, does not make Obama a good CIC.

In Chinese, we'd call this political "小动作", little meaningless acts that are too clever by half.

If we meet success in Afghanistan it will not be because of Obama's "deliberation". It will be because the folks on the ground have once again figured out how to do it right.

Meanwhile Obama continues to treat Tehran and Moscow with starry eyed naivety as he begins another round of UN sanctions negotiations while trying to conclude a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. What will he give away this time in order to "win" another meaningless Russian non-gesture?

Originally Posted by citanon

You mean disingenuous don't you Astralis?

Creating a false expectation of a pullout that he does not intend to follow through on, for purely short term political benefits, does not make Obama a good CIC.

In Chinese, we'd call this political "小动作", little meaningless acts that are too clever by half.

If we meet success in Afghanistan it will not be because of Obama's "deliberation". It will be because the folks on the ground have once again figured out how to do it right.

Meanwhile Obama continues to treat Tehran and Moscow with starry eyed naivety as he begins another round of UN sanctions negotiations while trying to conclude a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. What will he give away this time in order to "win" another meaningless Russian non-gesture?

From Daily Dish

Did Cheney Understand We Were At War?

Dick Cheney is the former vice-president whose national security expertise was central to his appeal in 2000 as Bush's running mate. Yet within nine months, Cheney presided over the worst attack on American soil in US history, failed to capture its perpetrators, failed to bring any of its plotters to justice, made convicting them much harder because he secretly and illegally authorized their brutal torture, and recruited a new and young wave of Jihadists by the exposure of the barbarism at Gitmo, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Camp Nama and the various black torture sites he helped set up across the globe. For good measure, Cheney also lost the war in Afghanistan and his closest confidant Don Rumsfeld lost the war in Iraq (the success of the subsequent "surge" will be tested this year as troops withdraw). Under Cheney, for good measure, both Iran and North Korea made huge strides toward getting nukes.
Not only did Cheney allow bin Laden to escape in Tora Bora, he also helped radicalize many actually innocent prisoners (three quarters of those thrown into the torture camp at Gitmo were innocent of any charges), and then set many of these radicalized new Jihadists free to wreak further terror on the US and the world.
In fact, an Obama administration official has asserted that all the former Gitmo prisoners who have become Jihadists upon release were set free by Bush and Cheney. Just as Cheney had bin Laden in his grasp and allowed his fathomless incompetence to lose him, he has actually helped create and then unleash Jihadists across the world.

He is a bit defeatist for me. opening a land route into Afghanistan is not a meaningless gesture

Originally Posted by Roosveltrepub

From Daily Dish

He is a bit defeatist for me. opening a land route into Afghanistan is not a meaningless gesture

Heaping setbacks, real and imagined, on shoulders of Cheney without logical support does not make Obama seem wise.

Getting the Russian land route came at the cost ceding central Asia to greater Russian influence and giving Russia more leverage over US policy.

Other options were available and Russian consent lured the US away from urgently exploiting them. Thus, it prevented an surge in US influence in Russia's back yard.

This was not something that needed to be purchased with concessions. The Russians were probably patting themselves on the back for that one.

So what's next then? What's the next thing we are going to give the Russians, in exchange for something they would have done anyways?

I mean, if deficit spending on building new restroom facilities is good for the economy, then surely giving away strategic capabilities for nothing in return is going could also improve our international position.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...hipments_N.htm

U.S. to route Afghan shipments through Russia

MOSCOW (AP) — The shipment of U.S. military supplies for Afghanistan through Russia will begin soon, news agencies quoted Russia's foreign minister as saying Saturday.

"The transit will take place literally within days," Sergey Lavrov told TV Tsentr, according to the Interfax, ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti agencies.

Foreign Ministry officials could not be reached for comment late Saturday, and the reports did not say whether the supplies would transit Russia by land or air. However, Russia announced last week that it would allow U.S. shipments of non-lethal military supplies to Afghanistan.

Supply routes to Afghanistan for the U.S.-led international military operation have become an increasingly critical issue in recent months amid growing militant attacks on the land routes through Pakistan that carry about 75% of U.S. supplies.

The U.S. plans to send around 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan this year.

Concerns rose further this month when Kyrgyzstan's president announced that the Central Asian country intends to evict a U.S. military base that is an important transit point for Afghanistan-bound troops and supplies. The base also is home to tanker planes that refuel military aircraft over Afghanistan.

The planned closure — which still must be approved by the Kyrgyz parliament — was announced shortly after Russia announced an aid package totaling more than $2 billion for the impoverished country. The timing led to wide speculation that the aid and the base closure were linked.

Russian officials have denied any linkage, but the Kremlin is clearly uncomfortable with a U.S. military presence in the ex-Soviet republic that it regards as part of its traditional sphere of influence.

But Russia recently has shown renewed willingness to help the international forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Russia also has responded favorably to President Barack Obama's go-slow approach on a proposed U.S. missile shield in Europe and recent signs of U.S. accord with Moscow.

After agreeing this month to the transit of non-lethal U.S. supplies to Afghanistan, Lavrov raised the prospect that Russia could also agree to allow the transshipment of U.S. armaments — presumably in exchange for U.S. concessions such as backing off from support for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and from the proposals to put elements of a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Kremlin last year signed a framework deal with NATO for transit of non-lethal cargo for coalition forces in Afghanistan and has allowed some alliance members, including Germany, France and Spain, to move supplies across its territory.

Ground routes through Russia would likely cross into Kazakhstan and then Uzbekistan before entering northern Afghanistan.

The U.S. has reached a preliminary deal with Kazakhstan to use its territory, and officials have said they are considering resuming military cooperation with Uzbekistan, which neighbors Afghanistan.

That option is problematic for Washington: Uzbekistan kicked U.S. forces out of a base there after sharp U.S. criticism of the country's human rights record and the government's brutal quashing of a 2005 uprising.

Renewing those ties would also open the United States to new accusations it is working with an authoritarian government that tortures its citizens. Uzbekistan also has in the past faced a low-level insurgency from Islamic radicals, though a government crackdown has quelled much of it.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

citanon,

You mean disingenuous don't you Astralis?

Creating a false expectation of a pullout that he does not intend to follow through on, for purely short term political benefits, does not make Obama a good CIC.

ah, i see; in other words, if obama does withdraw, it's politicized, if he doesn't withdraw, it's also politicized. tails i win, heads you lose, eh?

note that all obama says is:

Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

being vague gives DOD flexibility in what needs to be done.

If we meet success in Afghanistan it will not be because of Obama's "deliberation". It will be because the folks on the ground have once again figured out how to do it right.

sorry, strategy, let alone war aims, are not the province of those "on the ground". given that obama sent 21,000 troops into afghanistan at the beginning of his administration, only to see conditions further deteriorate, there is the expectation-- rather, the obligation-- on part of the CINC to determine what's gone wrong and where to go from there.

by the way, do re-call that the famed surge in iraq was made possible because the POTUS then called for a strategy review (finally)-- and proceeded to give orders to the military, including enacting a surge that the uniformed brass were not pleased with, with the exception of petraeus.

Originally Posted by astralis

citanon,

ah, i see; in other words, if obama does withdraw, it's politicized, if he doesn't withdraw, it's also politicized. tails i win, heads you lose, eh?

note that all obama says is:

Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

being vague gives DOD flexibility in what needs to be done.

If the aim was to give flexibility than "adjustment" was the right word, not "withdrawal".

"Withdrawal" gives a slight political cushion and creates constant pressure to, you guessed it, withdrawal. I don't see how this gives the DoD flexibility.

The move has been politicized because Obama made it into a political move.

sorry, strategy, let alone war aims, are not the province of those "on the ground". given that obama sent 21,000 troops into afghanistan at the beginning of his administration, only to see conditions further deteriorate, there is the expectation-- rather, the obligation-- on part of the CINC to determine what's gone wrong and where to go from there.
by the way, do re-call that the famed surge in iraq was made possible because the POTUS then called for a strategy review (finally)-- and proceeded to give orders to the military, including enacting a surge that the uniformed brass were not pleased with, with the exception of petraeus.

I don't think even Bush himself would claim credit for coming up with the plan. The decision to adopt the plan and support its developers, yes, but people on the ground had to figure out what to do.

Thus far, what Obama has done is to not chose the route that would obviously lead to defeat and accept a set of plans developed by McChrystal and co, while working in some wiggle room in his support. In my eyes this shows that he is not as daft as Joe Biden (who has been politically invaluable as a foil), but does he deserve credit as a good CINC? Hardly. Obama's decision making process and the way he chose to announce it managed to confuse all
and sundry. His apparently half hearted support gives no comfort to our troops, whom he's supposed to lead, and it hasn't really even won him much political capital.

Perhaps he's following the strategy of confusing the enemy to give ourselves more flexibility (another neat CCP saying), but wait, aren't we all supposed to be on the same side in this war?