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From: Samii Shahla
Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2006 20:29:23 -0400
Subject: The sheriff is plum out of moral ammunition

The sheriff is plum out of moral ammunition

Bruce Wolpe
July 1, 2006

WHILE Iraq is everything – in terms of whether the insurgents will be beaten there, whether America’s war of choice will be adjudged by history to have been worth it, whether President George Bush’s immediate political standing at home, and America’s in the world, is rehabilitated – there are, unfortunately, other nasty issues of unavoidable urgency: North Korea, Iran and Palestine.

The view from here among foreign policy experts, on both sides of the political divide, is one of gloom. As Senator John McCain, purportedly quoting Mao Zedong, quipped at the glittering US State Department dinner for this year’s Australian American Leadership Dialogue meeting last week: “It is always darkest just before it goes totally black.”

Take North Korea. It has broken every agreement it has made since the 1990s to abjure development of a nuclear weapon. And it has six to eight nuclear weapons and is enriching uranium like there is no tomorrow. The six-party talks, which include China, Russia and Japan, are stalled, which is a nice way of saying they are on the brink of failure because of an inability to finally conclude North Korea’s signed pledge from last September to agree to put on an N-patch and go cold turkey. A ballistic missile capable of reaching America and Australia is sitting on a launch pad with gas in the tank, prepped for fireworks.

The determination of American officials is insistent, unremitting and unambiguous. We will have to defend ourselves, they say. We cannot afford to ignore this. At the end of the day, we will make their lives miserable. We do not have the option of walking away from this because it is so dangerous.

So how bad is it? It is so bad the diplomats and analysts in Washington are rationalising that if North Korea tests the missile, it will be so provocative that Russia and China will get so alarmed they will finally agree to sanctions harsh enough to really punish it and bring it to heel – as if you can rationally bring to heel a tyrant and despot who starves his people and engages in narcotics trafficking and counterfeiting to finance his arsenal.

And take Iran, where the whiz-bang blender of creative diplomatic juices is churning out the same framework of multiparty talks, again with Russia and China, to get Iran into a negotiation to give up its nuclear weapons program and its program of enriching uranium like there is no tomorrow.

The managers of US diplomacy are rationalising that it is likely to succeed as long as all options – read that as military attack – are on the table. Ultra-senior officials here loudly declaim that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, is a frightening individual. If the Iranians don’t accept the carrots proffered by the sextet, then the allies will go to the UN to get sanctions harsh enough to really punish Iran and bring it to heel – as if you can rationally bring to heel a tyrant and despot who wants to wipe Israel off the map and denies the occurrence of the Holocaust.

And take Palestine. Israel withdraws from every inch of Gaza, and in response, Hamas wins the election and makes missile war against Israel and civil war against the Palestinian Authority’s chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, instead of building Palestinian society in a homeland of its own which no one wants to take away from it.

What is going on here? Why are the words so strong and the consequences so weak, the energy expended so enormous and the returns so paltry?

It’s all about political capital – America’s political capital. America has run out, because of the quagmire that is Iraq today. With Bush’s political stocks so low as a result, how much authority, credibility and power can the President, and the United States, project?

Not enough. America has the strongest capital markets in the world, and the weakest political capital as a superpower.

Two commentators in Washington, Jewish and Muslim, said it best, right after Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, visited Bush. A former US ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, observed, “I just wonder whether or not the Administration believes it has the capital, both at home and abroad, to take any kind of bold moves in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.”

Khalil Jashan, of the National Association of Arab Americans, agreed: “What is missing really is the political and a moral will, not just creativity.”

The White House believes firmly – and correctly – that to lose in Iraq would be an absolute disaster for tomorrow. But as Tom Friedman wrote recently in The New York Times, “President Bush may have moral clarity when speaking about freedom and democracy in the Arab world, but he has no moral authority.”

And Iran and North Korea know it all too well.

In Washington, the sun is high and the days are long, but baby, it’s dark outside.

Bruce Wolpe is the director of corporate affairs for Fairfax, publisher of the Herald, and is on the board of the foundation that sponsors the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. He visited Washington for its meeting.

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URL: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/the-sheriff-is-plum-out-of-moral-ammunition/2006/06/30/1151174392248.html

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