Okay, back in November 1968 when the White Album came out (if you’re old enough, you remember what a big deal that was), many us thought the opening track on the first of the two vinyl discs was odd – ironic and subversive, but odd. Of course that was Back in the USSR – that Chuck Berry parody with the embedded satire of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” must have meant something. We all pretended to know what, even if we didn’t. That song just must have been jammed full of layers of ironic insight – everything was in those days. We smiled knowingly.
Well, maybe you had to be there. One of the crew drove into Columbus the day the double album was released – November 22 – so we’d miss nothing. He drove back to campus like a bat out of hell and we all sat down and… ah, the Beatles and the sixties are hard to explain. And that first track was puzzling – but it made us feel like open-minded rebels in a world of hung-up blindly anti-communist Nixon fans, in the middle of a pointless and brutal war that some of us would soon, more than likely, be called upon to join, whatever we thought. Was that song an ironic riposte to everything from Joseph McCarthy and his hearings to the Domino Theory that if we didn’t stop the Commies in Vietnam they’d soon be in Fresno (and have all our raisins, or something)? Who knows? It would do –
Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the west behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia’s always on my mi-mi-mi-mi-mind –
Take that, fascist pigs! Yeah, well… you had to be there.
Much later, when the Paul McCartney actually performed the song in Red Square, most of the irony was gone. That was in 2003 – the Beatles were long gone, the Vietnam War was long gone, the Soviet Union was gone. Things had changed.
But irony lives on. It’s now October 2007 and Greg Djerejian, a considerable expert of foreign affairs, is pointing out some odd things –
We have a singularly powerful Vice-President (compared to any of his predecessors) - openly quite enamored by the tactics employed by the Soviet Union - our former arch-foe whose human rights standards we derided. Indeed, we fought a decades-long Cold War so that Western style constitutional freedoms would trump Soviet authoritarianism. But yes, from this Sovietophile posture, use of torture and black-sites and detention without habeas corpus protections makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it? Because we have a Vice-President all but openly emulating and cheer-leading the tactics of the KGB, not in the wilds of Wyoming, but to a soi disant sophisticated audience in Washington DC. Put differently, he is very proud of his world-view, indeed eager to share it with Beltway “elites.”
Say what? What would make Djerejian think that?
Well, some of it has to do with Bernard Lewis, the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, the fellow who specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. The key thinkers in the current administration lean on his stuff a lot – he’s the “go to” guy, the academic who proves them right. Of course Noam Chomsky claimed that Bernard Lewis, in his writings on the Middle East, omitted any reference to any policy we have ever had in the area that folks there didn’t like, and other evidence of Western responsibility for failures in the region. Chomsky doesn’t think much of the guy – “Now, until Bernard Lewis tells us that, and that’s only one piece of a long story, we know that he’s just a vulgar propagandist and not a scholar.” Well, Dick Cheney doesn’t think much of Noam Chomsky.
And now, Vice-President Cheney, in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, just released by the White House, seems to be saying some odd things -
Dr. Bernard Lewis explained the terrorists’ reasoning this way: “During the Cold War,” Dr. Lewis wrote, “two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: ‘What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?’” End quote.
We should be more like the Russians? Has Cheney been listening to the White Album? Did he not get the joke?
Matthew Yglesias comments –
I’ve heard this before, and always thought it was a good reason to decide that whatever the merits of Lewis’ academic scholarship, his political judgment is terrible. After all, the Soviet Union was (a) vicious and horrible, and (b) spectacularly unsuccessful. The United States, after all, won the Cold War.
Why would you conclude that the United States ought to emulate the Soviet Union? Because our practices have failed to render the country 100 percent immune to terrorist violence? Even from a 9/12 vantage point, as bad as 9/11 was for the United States, the Soviet imperial adventure in Afghanistan was much worse for the Russians. But in keeping with this bizarre mentality, Lewis and his fans like Cheney went on to advocate an imperial adventure in Iraq that, like the Soviet policy initiatives they admire so much, has dealt a more severe blow to the United States than al-Qaeda ever would have been able to pull off on its own.
Hey, he’s just calling for a war on Iran. Well, he is –
Across the Middle East, further progress will depend on responsible conduct by regional governments; respect for the sovereignty of neighbors; compliance with international agreements; peaceful words, and peaceful actions. And if you apply all these measures, it becomes immediately clear that the government of Iran falls far short, and is a growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Given the recent appearance by the Iranian President in New York City, no one can fail to understand the nature of the regime this man represents. He has called repeatedly for the destruction of Israel; has spoken of his yearning for a world without the United States. Under their current rulers, the people of Iran live in a climate of fear and intimidation, with secret police, arbitrary detentions, and a hint of violence in the air. In the space of a generation, the regime has solidified its grip on the country and grown ever more arrogant and brutal toward the Iranian people. Journalists are intimidated. Religious minorities are persecuted. A good many dissidents and freedom advocates have been murdered, or have simply disappeared. Visiting scholars who’ve done nothing wrong have been seized and jailed.
Then he takes us back to 1979 and the hostages and quotes General Petraeus saying Iran’s Quds Force is trying to set up a “Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and to fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.” At the same time, of course, Iran is “responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and, in some cases, the direction for operations that have indeed killed US soldiers.” The proof is thin, but the general did say those things, and no one has ever suggested that General Petraeus has turned himself into a partisan hack. No, wait. Never mind.
In any event, we finally get this –
The Iranian regime’s efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power is a matter of record. And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran’s nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. The world knows this. The Security Council has twice imposed sanctions on Iran and called on the regime to cease enriching uranium. Yet the regime continues to do so, and continues to practice delay and deception in an obvious attempt to buy time.
Given the nature of Iran’s rulers, the declarations of the Iranian President, and the trouble the regime is causing throughout the region - including direct involvement in the killing of Americans - our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions. (Applause.)
The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)
Djerejian – “Make no mistake; Dick Cheney is directly threatening war against Iran.”
Djerejian says he’s always done this sort of “serious consequences” thing. See this speech to the Heritage Foundation in 2003 –
Twelve years of diplomacy, more than a dozen Security Council resolutions, hundreds of U.N. weapons inspectors, thousands of flights to enforce the no-fly zones, and even strikes against military targets in Iraq - all of these measures were tried to compel Saddam Hussein’s compliance with the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire. All of these measures failed. Last October, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Last November, the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences in the event Saddam Hussein did not fully and immediately comply. When Saddam Hussein failed even then to comply, our coalition acted to deliver those serious consequences. In that effort, the American military acted with speed and precision and skill. Once again, our men and women in uniform have served with honor, reflecting great credit on themselves and on the United States of America.
And Djerejian cites Cheney, on Meet the Press back in March of 2003 threatening “serious consequences.” Same old, same old – and now we get another dose. More of the same now –
There are other examples, but the upshot is clear, we must brace ourselves for the real possibility that this Administration will launch massive airstrikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran, with untold consequences. And while these threats apparently garnered applause among the audience at the Washington Institute, I find myself less impressed by such reckless jingoism. Hopefully the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense will issue similar cautionary notes to the President, because we can now be surer than ever that the Vice-President will try to goad his nominal superior into a conflict with Iran. He caught the “fever,” all right, and men who previously collaborated with him during the Bush 41 years reasonably well (think Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell) I strongly suspect in private view him now as a genuinely dangerous national security player.
Djerejian has a question –
Who will clear this dangerous rot out of Washington and help us restore our good name? The stakes are high, that is, the preservation of the American democratic model as a leading force for moderation and rule of law on the world stage.
Those days are gone. That odd bald man took the Beatles seriously. We have become the Soviet Union.
