Here’s a sooper-genius proposal for dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions:

We propose that Iran’s efforts to produce enriched uranium and other related nuclear activities be conducted on a multilateral basis, that is to say jointly managed and operated on Iranian soil by a consortium including Iran and other governments. This proposal provides a realistic, workable solution to the US – Iranian nuclear standoff. Turning Iran’s sensitive nuclear activities into a multinational program will reduce the risk of proliferation and create the basis for a broader discussion not only of our disagreements but of our common interests as well.

OK, people – did you learn anything from Oil-For-Palaces? When hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, people cheat. And to expect the Russian, Chinese, and European ‘partners’ in Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle to act strategically when immediate financial rewards are at stake is – well, it’s kind of Captain Renault-ish.

And let’s train and educate the Iranian scientists so they can be more efficient at making enriched uranium…say, in parallel programs that we’re so good at detecting.

And let’s invest millions in an infrastructure on Iranian soil, so the Iranians can simply come by one day and decide to treat it – well, with all the sanctity of an embassy. The genius authors of this correctly dismiss the notion of building the plant in Russia for strategic reasons; people, why not put it in Germany? (if you’re going to ship the fissile materials anyway…).

And as a cherry on top of this steaming cow pie, they suggest that the main reason to do this is because Ahmadinejad is in trouble with his own people, and needs a political lifeline. Because?

If you haven’t seen this video – you should.

So let’s revisit – we’re creating a management structure that is designed to be corrupted, to improve the ability of the Iranian regime to cheat, and to create an immensely valuable asset for them. The defense is that it will improve our enemies’ standing with his people (who are starting to hate him., in part because our policies are working), it will create a ‘bright line,’ crossing which will mean the regime will “certainly” face military action (hey – all the liberal commentators who say things like this – will you sign, in blood, please a memorandum fully supporting bombing raids and the inevitable civilian casualties and diplomatic fallout if Iran does, like cheat us on something like this? I’d take you much more seriously if you did).

The authors of this foolishness are ostensibly grownups, and my betters in the world of international affairs:

William Luers is the president of the United Nations Association-USA and was formerly US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Venezuela.

Thomas Pickering is Co-Chair of the United Nations Association-USA, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and former US Ambassador to Russia, Israel, India, Jordan, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the UN.

Jim Walsh, a Research Associate at MIT, was previously Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

I’ll have to go look through Gaddis’ book “The Cold War” for the quote on why diplomacy didn’t work to end the Cold War; as I recall it in essence, because the diplomats were totally invested in the idea of stability, and in essence because invested in the balance of power between the two sides – regardless of which side they were on.

Here’s a perfect example of that. Where do we get such men?

Here’s an interesting transcript of Obama on Middle Eastern issues.

I’ll be seeing Samantha Power tomorrow night & will have more comments then.

…and he’s hip enough to have an iPhone.

He’s as smart as you’d imagine him to be. And it’s interesting: I had a friend in college who’d bet you when you went shopping that he could tell you the starting and end points of the California highway with the number of the cents in the bill. Rove has that kind of detailed, visceral sense of American geography.

And what comes across is a deep sincerity and love for the country, and respect for the people who elect it’s leaders.

He listed 31 principles of running a Presidential campaign; many of them centered on the fact that over a long and grueling campaign season, you can’t hide who you are or what you believe. I started to take notes on my Treo, but fell hopelessly behind and gave up. But he was smart, funny, self-depricating, and had one of the clearest understandings of the mechanics of American politics that I’ve ever heard expressed.

And the audience – almost 3,000 people at the American Jewish University lecture series, that was equally divided between Democrats and Republicans (or what the guy who introduced Rove explained Rove would call “a clear plurality”). I was primed for outbursts or at minimum boos at the end – there were some gasps in the face of his strong defense of Iraq – but at the end the entire audience broke int owarm applause. He was that good.

The newsworthy part is his statement that Dana Jill Simpson – the woman who links him to the Spiegelman case on 60 Minutes – is flat-out lying.

He says: “She claims to have met with me in 2001 – when I was in the White House. Where are the records of the meeting? I’ve never taken a meeting with that woman. I have no idea who she is.”

He was absolutely certain in saying that.

And it was a brilliant piece of political jujitsu.

Because if you read the account she is sharing, her claim is that she “swears she heard a top G.O.P. operative in the state say that Rove “had spoken with the Department of Justice” about “pursuing” Siegelman, with help from two of Alabama’s U.S. attorneys.”

…so she’s not claiming Rove spoke with her, but with William Canary.

Ouch. Sincerity – once you learn to fake that, you can fake anything, I guess…

I stepped to the front of the stage and started speaking:

“In the beginning was the bet, and the bet was good, because [the other guy] lost…”

But I was wearing a hard hat when I said those words, so obviously this year…we lost. We performed as the Village People in front of an audience of fifty or so of our friends (and some somewhat stunned civilians). The picture is below, because I figure it’ll be all over the Internet tubes soon, anyway…

But there’s a light at the bottom of every bushel, because a) the guy in the sumo diaper (technically a mawashi) actually won the bet this year, until he foolishly made a side bet with me; and b) the drunk couple in the bar after we performed asked the bartender if “that band is coming back on”. We also passed the hard hat and raised almost $500 for Riders for Health, a pretty good charity.

Year before last, four friends made a bet against a fifth friend on the MotoGP motorcycle roadracing championship and won – American Nicky Hayden defeated Italian superstar Valentino Rossi.

Last year, we started talking terms on the bet and one of the four of us – hint, he had to dress as the Indian – accepted prematurely (he didn’t get points), and we bet on Nicky again. Sadly, Nicky was rewarded for his championship when Honda unveiled the motorcycle he had to ride this last season, and it was designed for his diminutive and humorless teammate, Dani Pedrosa instead of him, Vale beat Nicky, but I managed to get a side bet in on young Australian Casey Stoner, riding the Ducati.

And Stoner was flawless all season; technically superb, committed, and psychologically unflappable by master gamesman Rossi.

We’ve started negotiating the terms of the new bet…

(Yes, we did Y.M.C.A. We even rehearsed and had choreography and stuff. When we pay up, we pay up.)

I did a post criticizing Big Tent Democrat over at TalkLeft, and commenter Coldtype questioned how I could possibly disagree with his deep wisdom.In the comments thread below the post I criticize, a commenter pretty clearly summed up the Netroots position, quoting what I assume is a diary on Kos (searched, couldn’t find it, links welcome):

“Intuitively, you are saying to yourself, “How can we expand our party by kicking people out.” Sometimes logic is counterintuitive. It’s very simple. These DLC types represent 1-2% of the American people. That’s 3-6 million individuals and yes their votes count. But if we kick these 3-6 milllion people out and show the American people that we will not tolerate bad Democrats who sell out the middle class to special interests, we’ll gain 40 million new voters.”

In a nutshell, that’s the Netroots fantasy – on the Right as well as the Left, I must say. That if only the party can be more pure, if only they will be more left (or more right), the masses alienated from current dirty, impure politics will rise up and back them.

It’s an electoral version of the Vanguard fantasy.

Now let’s go to recent American political history, and see where this has actually worked.

I can pick three elections.

Paul Wellstone, 1990
Jesse Ventura, 1998
Arnold Schwatrzenegger, 2003

Can you think of any others?

Now each of them has particular features that make it different from the others.

But you know, a 66% chance that the mass of alienated voters will break center-right (which is the only way I can describe Ventura and Wellstone Ahnold) as opposed to a 33% chance that they will break left seems like a mediocre bet.

Now I agree wholly that many people are alienated from politics, and I’ll even agree with many of the commentators as to why.

But it is simply and completely a fantasy that if they all came into politics, they’d be standing behind the banner of progressivism (or radical conservatism). There isn’t any evidence at all in the polls that that’s the case.

Sorry about the typo re Schwartzengegger/Wellstone…they did look a lot alike, so I’m sure it’s understandable…

Big Tent Democrat (You know, that pseudonym…’Big Tent’…I do not think it means what you think it means.) on the DLC (and, I guess, people like me) supporting Obama:

This is sad and hilarious because not for one moment can Kagro imagine WHY the DLC and Dan Gerstein might support Barack Obama. He can not imagine that Obama’s Unity Schtick is precisely what the DLC and Joe Lieberman have been preaching for decades and that the progressive blogs were supposed to be fighting AGAINST.

Excuse me, but has anyone in the progressive blogs actually been paying attention to what Obama has been saying? Probably not, too busy slamming Hillary Clinton.

I can’t add much to that this morning. But give me a day or two…

Here’s a critical article at abu muqawma that gave me a forehead-slapping moment – “I can’t believe we’re not doing this…”

Kip believes the US military has been way behind in understanding the power and uses of text messaging. SMS offers the ability to do everything from effective information operations, to paying Iraqi or Afghan police in ways that are more difficult to corrupt (if you’re interested in this, look into the CelPay disarmament program in Democratic Republic of Congo), to secure and simple communications between members of a third world army, to tips hotlines where insurgent movement can be reported at little risk to the informant.

Damn, this is so obvious even I assumed it was being done. We need both to be using SMS ourselves proactively in Iraq and Afghanistan, but compromising the SMS gateways so we can keep tabs on traffic there (assuming the OK of the local governments).

Someone kick someone at the Pentagon for me on this, will you?

I was playing chess with Littlest Guy, and missed the debate.

But I’ve been reading the blogs and news about it, and the reaction that resonated with me was Stephen Green’s:

I never thought I’d say this, but Hillary Clinton is too stupid, dependent, and timid to be President of the United States of America. A year ago, even a couple months ago, I might have said that Clinton was too shrewd, shrill, and bellicose to be President. But not anymore. Not after tonight.

…read the whole thing…

Brian Leiter, from the cushy chair he occupies at UT Austin, weighs in to defend Bertram’s air kiss to Castro:

Political philosopher Chris Bertram (Bristol) offers some sensible observations about Cuba on the occasion of Castro’s retirement, observations that wouldn’t be remotely controversial in most of the world. But since Professor Bertram’s blog also interacts, in some measure, with the right-wing American blogosphere, the reactions from the undereducated and suitably indoctrinated has been predictable.

Golly, I’m sure feeling bad about being edukated by people like Wolin, Schaar and Rittel – whose books Leiter isn’t fit to dust. Because as much as they maintained radical views of the American project, they had a very strong sense of what they believed in and who they were. As opposed to simply defining themselves as a teenager does by who they are not.

Leiter isn’t brave enough to have have comments, but here’s what I would have asked him:

Exactly what do you object to when I say “If the price of universal literacy is prison camps for writers, count me out”?

Chris Bertram on Cuba and Castro (entire post):

I haven’t looked yet, but I’ve no doubt that there’ll be lots of posts in the blogosphere saying “good riddance” to Fidel Castro (especially from “left” US bloggers like Brad DeLong who never miss the chance to distance themselves). And, of course, Castro ran a dictatorship that has, since 1959, committed its fair share of crimes, repressions, denials of democratic rights etc. Still, I’m reminded of A.J.P. Taylor writing somewhere or other (reference please, dear readers?) that what the capitalists and their lackeys really really hated about Soviet Russia was not its tyrannical nature but the fact that there was a whole chunk of the earth’s surface where they were no longer able to operate. Ditto Cuba, for a much smaller chunk. So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let’s hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre!

You know that whole thing about the values of the Left having eroded into simple anti-Western Imperialism? There may be something to that, you know…

…and that’s a Left I’m happy never to have been a part of, and never to be a part of. If the price of universal literacy is prison camps for writers, count me out. If the price of “decent standards of health care” is lavish living for the Party cadres and grinding poverty for everyone else, count me out. If the price of resisting apartheid is brutalizing and murdering your own citizenry – in essence creating a contest between two brutally repressive governments – count me out.

How, exactly, does Bertram keep any claim to moral authority after writing this?

Welcome visitors from The Leiter Report; please note my reply here.