He's upping the ante and daring the Democrats, the media, and the public to defy him.
He's won that way so far, and if they / we don't fight, he wins again. It will have the effect of annulling the recent election.
The Republican "elder statesmen" are out of action, except for Kissinger. They gave it their best shot, and Bush's answer was "Baker can return to his day job".
No. The Consulate of Iran in Iraq is extraterritorial but it remains the sovereign territory of Iraq.
The report I heard on NPR indicated that the Kurds are irate about this, and that, given Bush's plan to have Kurdish troops deploy to the dicier parts of Iraq, the timing really makes no sense at all. The report cited an armed standoff between US and Kurdish forces.
Er, what I meant to say is, Freedom: on the march!
He's upping the ante and daring the Democrats, the media, and the public to defy him.
Yup. The Democrats really have to stand up to rein him in (God knows if it will work, but they have to try before we can start reasonably talking about stronger measures like impeachment). I suppose we should all be writing letters to Congress to support the Kennedy/whoever bill to block funding for the surge. It's a step.
What 2 said.
Still, this isn't just accidentally hitting the Iranian consulate with a stray bomb.
2: right, but still, there's the whole inviolability of embassies thing. So not an unambiguous attack on Iranian territory, but still a pretty big violation of international legal norms (surprise!).
It's just payback for 1979. 9/11 changed everything about the '70s.
Wait, if an embassy isn't sovereign territory of the country it represents, then why was Jack Bauer handed over to the Chinese?
but still, there's the whole inviolability of embassies thing
It's going to be pretty amusing though if Ahmadijenad of all people trots out the "inviolability of embassies" thing.
10: Yeah, for exactly the same reason that it's so wildly comic when police beat criminals to death. Everyone knows that the first principle of law is that lawbreakers are outlawed, and receive no legal protections whatsoever.
Honestly, gswift.
gswift's point is solid, LB. The irony would be delicious.
We've certainly violated Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations:
Article 22
1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
2. The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.
3. The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.
I'm actually encouraged by how the coverage I've heard/seen this morning is all about disagreement, doubt, opposition. Perhaps I didn't really expect another chorus of "God Bless America" from the Capital steps—the place, not the group—but I'm pleasantly surprised by how "out there" the opposition is. It's not like they didn't see it coming.
As long as you're updating the post, it's probably worth pointing out that what we raided was a consulate, not an embassy, and as such was established under a different treaty.
I give the over-under on war with Iran 10 months, and take the under.
But we're not the receiving state, Iraq is. Show me the article where it says an occupying army can't invade an embassy, smart girl.
I didn't know this: "In Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the Iraqi and Swiss ambassadors and 'demanded an explanation' about the incident. Switzerland represents American interests in Iran, where there is no U.S. Embassy."
Someone posted elsewhere that a Kurdish representative was on the BBC saying they considered this an act of war against Kurdistan by the United States.
Things sure are getting entertaining.
That is, I knew we didn't have an embassy, but Switzerland represents us? Interesting.
I've been wondering whether the speech and this raid might not represent a slight tilting away from the Kurds.
The bullet-point form of Bush's speech released yesterday morning mentioned a crackdown on the PKK as well as a bunch of other items that were clearly bones for Turkey.
I don't understand the Iranian relationship with the separatist Iraqi Kurds--I thought it was antagonistic--but, hey.
Come on people, a little embassy storming humor can be good times.
But really this is yet another demonstration that Ahmadijenad is much smarter than the Bushies. My bet is that the Iranians set up that consulate completely on the up and up, in the middle of the territory of our one real ally in Iraq, knowing we couldn't resist doing something stupid.
Oh yeah, apo. It's really childish: since we refuse to recognise or deal with Iran, we run all messages through the Swiss and have been for at least five years. Even stupider: when the Swiss passed along that big Iranian reconciliation plan in 2003, Bush administration representatives yelled at the Swiss.
According to Hersh, at least.
16: Dammit, this is why I shouldn't post fast. But it does seem to come to the same thing: under Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations:
Article 31
Inviolability of the consular premises
1.Consular premises shall be inviolable to the extent provided in this article.
2.The authorities of the receiving State shall not enter that part of the consular premises which is used exclusively for the purpose of the work of the consular post except with the consent of the head ofthe consular post or of his designee or of the head of the diplomatic mission of the sending State. The consent of the head of the consular post may, however, be assumed in case of fire or other disaster requiring prompt protective action.
3.Subject to the provisions of paragraph 2 of this article, the receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the consular premises against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the consular post or impairment of its dignity.
4.The consular premises, their furnishings, the property of the consular post and its means of transport shall be immune from any form of requisition for purposes of national defence or public utility. If expropriation is necessary for such purposes, all possible steps shall be taken to avoid impeding the performance of consular functions, and prompt, adequate and effective compensation shall be paid to the sending State.
Slightly less absolute, but comes to the same under these circumstances.
"Etzi, tell Mahmoud I'm not speaking to him."
Do we really need patriot missles to defend ourselves from the insurgents?
Good lord this post looks mangled with all the corrections. Working is hell on my blogging accuracy.
It could be argued that I have, mostly.
I've never quite understood the compulsion to make all edits to a post visible. My impulse would just be to rewrite the thing, and append a note that the original content was in error, and anyone interested in finding out how it was should read the comments thread where the errors are pointed out.
28.--Maybe put the original version below a fold?
18: This is true, but I'm fairly sure the general principle of inviolability partly articulated in the 1961 and 1963 Conventions are generally considered a customary principle of international law that does not need to be encoded in a treaty provision to have the force of law. (For whatever that's worth these days.) We don't necessarily have to have violated the letter of these Conventions to have violated international law.
Of course, a couple years ago, when we violated a different provision of the 1963 Convention, we simply withdrew from the protocol submitting us to International Court of Justice jurisdiction for disputes arising under it.
I think people do it this way as an incentive not to screw up, because this sort of thing does look idiotic.
From the AP report: Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told ... that the raid was "against a diplomatic mission" since the "presence of Iranian staffers in Irbil was legal."
At the Pentagon, a senior U.S. military official said the building was not a consulate and did not have any diplomatic status.
Right now, it seems the Iranians are claiming any building with their "legal" staffers in it on a "diplomatic mission" is a protected building and the US isn't buying that.
TBH I'm not very concerned if the Iranians get their thongs twanged re diplomatic niceties. It's the Israelis vs reactors that are more worrisome.
The BBC's reporting said it was a consulate -- possibly it will develop that it had no legal status, but it's not as if the Iranian position is unsupported.
True. If hassling a few Iranian consulate workers convinces the Israelis not to bomb the shit out of Iran itself, well, that's an okay trade-off. If it works.
I'm not getting how that would work: does this raid have something to do with forestalling an Israeli attack on Iran? (I suppose it might, I just don't know how.)
If it is true that this was regarded as hostile be the Kurds, it seems to mean that we have no strategy at all in Iraq and are just swinging wildly.
Yesterday, Larry Johnson at TPM cafe said that it's insane to go after Muqtada if we decided to work with the Shi'as, because he's the Shi'a who's least tied to our enemy Iran.
There's a conjecture going around that we're cutting a deal with Muqtada for a Shi'a state not allied with Iran. The Sunnis and (apparently) the Kurds would be out of luck. (Maybe Turkey finally got they 2 cents in). So we're going for a bit of ethnic cleansing (the Sunnis) and a dictatorship, in hopes of not getting a failed state.
But that's all conjecture. It's an awful outcome, but better than almost anything else imaginable. It vcertainly wasn't worht it.
I've never quite understood the compulsion to make all edits to a post visible.
Just a tradition of accountability for one's words, mostly. Editing can be abused, though I see this more commonly in message threads in forums, and I think blogging picked it up from there.
Plus, it makes sure the early comments make sense, so around comment 300 someone doesn't come in and go off on neil for reading in a subtext to neil's #2 because obviously LB doesn't say anything about declaring war on Iran.
38: I wasn't contending that hassling Iranian diplos would forestall the Israelis doing something really nasty with their nukes, but that is the scenario that most concerns me.
Tho' now that I think about it, fighting with the Kurds, Iranians, and probably the Martians might add to the "We're nuts so be very careful" policy we seem to be following. That sometimes works in bars, sometimes not if the other guy is even nuttier.
I think people do it this way as an incentive not to screw up
I haven't seen any evidence that it's a deterrent.
The irony would be delicious.
Magically delicious, even.
Tho' now that I think about it, fighting with the Kurds, Iranians, and probably the Martians might add to the "We're nuts so be very careful" policy we seem to be following.
That was the policy that helped Khrushchev win the Cold War, as I recall. It's very effective in convincing potential allies that you will one day suddenly decide to become their enemy.
Haven't read this thread yet so I don't know if it's been linked but Spackerman has an interesting story about this.
38.--As I perceive it, the Israelis have been quietly suggesting "you do something about Iran or we will" for some time now. It's not like invading a consulate and sending a carrier ship actually constitute "doing something," not yet at least, but it might hold off the Israelis for a while. This is like a hundred games of chicken all at once, with no real policy vision guiding any of them.
I seriously doubt if "allies" of any sort at any time consider their relations with other countries more than temporary and expedient, no matter how they phrase the BS.
This may have been an informal 'consulate' to the Kurdistan Regional Government as opposed to Iraq itself. I was under the impression that several countries have semi-official delegations to the Kurdish area distinct and separate from their official Iraqi delegations, in recognition of their near-independence.
According to the very article cited in the post,
Reports say the Iranian consulate there was set up last year under an agreement with the Kurdish regional government to facilitate cross-border visits.
Glenn Greenwald interprets yesterday's speech as a declaration of war on Iran, with nuclear war a possibility.
39: It sounds like there are a lot of people speculating on what Bush's "real" plan might be.
He announces that he's sending 20,000 more troops, 16,000 into Baghdad itself, this time as a part of an Iraqi led effort to clear and hold the city, rather than simply to train Iraqi troops. He also says that no neighborhoods are off limits, a seeming reference to Sadr city and attacks an Iranian embassy.
This just looks like more of the same, so people wonder what Bush is really thinking. Is he going to attack Muqtada directly? Has he cut a deal with Muqtada? Is he invading Iran?
Isn't it simpler to assume that his plan is what he says it is? He's going to keep doing what he is doing because he doesn't know how to do anything else. In fact, nothing is going to change in the next six months.
re: 41
Plus the caveat that it only works if the seemingly nutty person looks hard. Whereas the idea that the current US military could do pretty much *anything* to anyone except air strikes would just raise a giggle.
I don't think that there's any reason to believe that US is trying to restrain Israel.
No, I don't think so either, John.
This really awful. At Raw Story, they're saying that Nogroponte was a good guy compared to his replacement.
Negroponte!
Negroponte, a good guy? Well, at least, a guy who is not singularly focused on war with Iran and willing to lie, cheat and steal to get it.
His replacement, not so much.
Murtha seems determined to fight this one. Good for him.
54-55: I am reminded of Jonathan Scharz's frequent claim that we have a choice between being ruled by sane evil people and crazy evil people, and we'd better root for the sane evil people. Nowadays, though, it seems like the best we can do is less crazy.
re: 57
That's a nice line that I hadn't heard before.
Why is a US attack on an Iranian target a declaration of war by us on them, but several years of Iranian-sponsored attacks on US targets in Iraq is not a declaration of war by them on us?
We're back in that fantasy land where our enemies can do whatever they want and it's all fine and dandy, but as soon as we hit back, it's WAR!!! And it's all our fault! Damn that evil Bush!
several years of Iranian-sponsored attacks
After the "everybody knows" arguments that preceded the Iraq invasion, I'd like a little more proof than Powerline and the Bush administration's word that the Iranian government is behind attacks in Iraq.
I'd like a little more proof than Powerline and the Bush administration's word that the Iranian government is behind attacks in Iraq.
Word. We keep getting told that Iran is shipping explosives and such, but really, have people forgotten the looting of the Al Qaqaa compound? 350 tons (tons!) of HMX and RDX disappeared. And that's only one facility. Who needs to import when the stuff's so readily available on the black market?
Why is a US attack on an Iranian target a declaration of war by us on them, but several years of Iranian-sponsored attacks on US targets in Iraq is not a declaration of war by them on us?
Probably because there's a difference between "Iranian-sponsored" and "Iranian." (Was the U.S. at war with the U.S.S.R. when they were fighting Afghanistan? Ehhhhh, I'd call it a stretch.)
That and the points made in 61 and 62. Sponsored how? Sponsored who? Why should I think so?
We're back in that fantasy land where our enemies can do whatever they want
Yup, that's us! Objectively pro-Iran, or whatever the expression is.
Official statement from the Kurdish government in Iraq:
The Presidency and the Kurdistan Regional Government express their dismay and condemnation of the American action against the official consulate of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The consulate was opened by agreement between the governments of Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and enjoys immunity and protection under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
Unlike other parts of Iraq, the Kurdistan Region enjoys safety, security, stability and the rule of law. The US action does not conform to the policy of attempting to spread security and stability throughout all of Iraq. No military action should be taken in the Kurdistan Region without consultations with security authorities here.
The people of the Kurdistan Region protest against and reject this action which violates our internal sovereignty. We do not accept that disputes with our neighbouring countries should be brought onto our soil. We call for the immediate release of those arrested.
Great. The only group in the region that likes us even a little and we've gone and pissed them off too.
I'm sure that whoever authorized this was assured that it was a 'slam dunk' that evidence seized at the consulate would prove that Iranian actions in Iraq have been directed at the US.
This is one of those times where we Americans really need to put the self-centeredness aside for a minute. We can leave Iraq whenever we want. Iran, on the other hand, has to live next door to Iraq for the rest of all time. It has and has always had serious and deep interests in who runs Iraq and how it's run -- and it hosted Iraqis on the outs with the prior Iraqi government (Talabani, iirc, and Hakim most prominently). Iran's involvement in Iraq is very likely not really about us at all -- yeah sure, we're there, and supporting people who have as one of their goals getting us out might look like an anti-US stance, but it seems to me that in giving that support, the group's position towards US isn't necessarily driving.
I've thought since 2004 that Iran is supporting -- with weapons, money, advisors, moles -- every faction in Iraq: those who are OK with our involvement (for now) and those actively against it. I've also thought that Iran is superior to the US in three critical aspects: (a) incentive to acheive a favorable outcome; (b) knowledge and understanding of the personalities involved; and (c) ability to execute policy without domestic accountability (eg, we could never send human waves). Our superiority in conventional firepower -- especially air power -- just doesn't seem to measure up, especially so long as the war is restricted to Iraq.