The Huckabee “Difference”: Blaming America First Candidate Distorts Bush Approach towards Iran

Family Security Matters ^ | 24 December 2007 | Joel Himelfarb

[K-oneTexas]

Published: December 24, 2007

The Huckabee “Difference”: Blaming America First

Candidate Distorts Bush Approach towards Iran

By Joel Himelfarb

  

Look carefully at the foreign policy positions of the top five contenders for the Republican presidential nomination and you find a huge difference between those of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and the other four: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; Sen. John McCain; and former Sen. Fred Thompson – particularly when it comes to the usefulness (or lack of usefulness) of sitting down to negotiate with Iran.

  

Broadly speaking, the “other four” appear to understand that the United States is in a long-term struggle against the forces of radical Jihad, represented by terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and backed by state sponsors of terrorism led by Iran. They understand that, dating back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter, specifically January 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini and his fellow Islamists overthrew the Shah, Tehran has been waging war against the United States, whether we realized it or not. This war has taken many forms: taking American diplomats hostage; sponsoring terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad; encouraging such organizations to stage murderous attacks such as the October 1983 bombing of  the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut; the June 1996 bombing of a housing complex for American servicemen in Saudi Arabia; and roadside bomb attacks in Iraq that have killed and maimed American troops are just some of the methods used.

   

The other Republicans get this. But Huckabee, particularly when it comes to Iran, sounds like he is either: 1) attempting to triangulate by finding a “third way” between the position of his fellow Republicans and leading Democrats who blame President Bush for poor U.S. relations with Iran; or 2) a political ingénue who knows little about the reality of U.S.-Iranian relations for the past 28-plus years – specifically the way Tehran has spurned and sabotaged U.S. efforts to improve ties.

  

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Huckabee says he agrees with the Bush Administration’s statement that it will not take the military option off the table for dealing with Iran.

 

The candidate says he supports the administration’s new sanctions against Iran and calls Democrats, who snipe at Bush’s sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for supporting terrorism, “deluded.”

  

He adds that “we cannot allow Iran to push its theocracy into Iraq.” All of this makes sense. But how do we make this a reality? That’s where Huckabee begins to get into trouble. Washington has “valuable incentives to offer Iran: trade and economic assistance, full diplomatic relations and security guarantees,” he says.

    

Now, to be honest, I consider myself to be a hardliner when it comes to dealing with the current regime in Tehran. Nonetheless, I would seriously consider offering that bunch some or all of the things Huckabee talks about if I thought there were a realistic opportunity to get Iran out of the nuclear weapons and terrorism business. But judging from what Huckabee has said and written on the subject to date, he doesn’t have a clue about how to actually achieve this. He suggests that Washington’s problems with Tehran are analogous to a bitter disagreement in which friends or family members stop talking to one another.

  

“We have not had diplomatic relations with Iran in almost 30 years,” he writes in Foreign Affairs. “The U.S. government usually communicates with the Iranian government through the Swiss embassy in Tehran. When one stops talking to a parent or friend, differences cannot be resolved and relationships cannot move forward. The same is true for countries. The reestablishment of diplomatic ties will not occur automatically or without the Iranians making concessions that serve to create a less hostile relationship.” Huckabee adds that “Tehran wanted to join us against al Qaeda. The CIA and the State Department supported this partnership, but some in the White House and Pentagon did not. After President Bush included Iran in the ‘axis of evil’ [in his 2002 State of the Union address], everything went downhill fast.”

   

It would be difficult to imagine a more grotesque misrepresentation – something straight out of the Clintonista/Obama/Edwards Democrat Party playbook – of what actually happened between Washington and Tehran after September 11. Although Tehran initially did cooperate with the United States against al Qaeda and the Taliban, things did indeed begin hurtling downhill in January 2002 – not because of the evil machinations of some in the Bush Administration, as Huckabee suggests, but because of Israel’s apprehension that month of the Karine-A, a ship carrying 50 tons of Iranian-supplied weapons to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority - an event which took place just a few weeks before Bush’s “axis of evil” speech. Had that weaponry reached Arafat’s Fatah organization and other Palestinian terrorist groups, it would have sabotaged the Bush Administration’s efforts to bring an end to Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.

   

In May 2003, Washington halted cooperation with Iran on Afghanistan after learning that Tehran was harboring al Qaeda terrorists – including some who were implicated in a bombing that occurred in Saudi Arabia that same month in which eight Americans were killed. Several years later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, responding to European calls for a dialogue with Iran, announced that Washington would among other things end its opposition to Iran’s admission to the World Trade Organization. This went nowhere, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has responded to these and other confidence-building gestures by calling repeatedly for the destruction of Israel and suggesting that the Holocaust didn’t occur. But Huckabee seems blissfully ignorant of all of this.

   

If the governor decides to go beyond the talking points, he would do well to educate himself about the history of U.S. efforts to negotiate with the Islamist regime in Iran; he would learn that similar problems have dogged practically every American president since Carter. For example, there was the Nov. 1, 1979, meeting that Carter’s national security advisor, Zbignew Brzezinski, had in Algiers with Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, a relatively powerless moderate, in a desperate effort to reach out to Tehran. In response, Iranian radicals with Khomeini’s support seized the American embassy in Tehran, beginning the Iranian hostage crisis that continued until Jan. 20, 1981, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.  Huckabee should bone up on the arms-for-hostages situation that cast a pall over President Reagan’s second term.

 

And finally, he may want to read The Persian Puzzle, written by Kenneth Pollack, a National Security Council member under President Clinton (and current advisor to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign) which details all of the Clinton Administration’s unsuccessful overtures to achieve a better relationship with Iran – which included waiving economic sanctions against the regime and apologizing for Washington’s role in the 1953 coup that brought the Shah to power.

   

But for now, Mike Huckabee seems perfectly content to recycle canards and the political Left’s talking points about the Bush Administration’s approach towards Iran. So long as he continues to spout such nonsense, he does not deserve to be taken seriously as a president capable of leading America’s struggle against Jihadist terror and its state sponsors.

# #
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Joel Himelfarb is the assistant editor of the editorial page of the Washington Times.
read full author bio here

[K-oneTexas]

Thought provoking ... in many ways.

[nckerr]

It is time we try a new approach to foreign policy. And I am a proud active duty Soldier for the past twelve years and still marching on. That is why Ron Paul is attracting votes and why Huckabee will win. Huckabee is not anti-war, but just a lot smarter than President Bush is in trying to deal with the issues of today. And even though McCain will never get my support, he is actually the one that has been dead on concerning this Iraq war all along. President Bush (according to Savage and many others) is the worst war fighting President in history. ( I am a Soldier, so my loyalty by law remains with my Commander in Chief as it unfortanately had to be when Clinton was PResident. I am merely voicing my PERSONAL and not professional opinions and quoting others in doing so. Legal Disclaimor over)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I believe President Bush is going to be up there with Lincoln , he saw the true nature of the attack and the danger it represented to this country and took action across a broad front to lay the ground for the coming,....and long battle....it's isn't close to being over.

The enemies at home are as big a danger as the enemies abroad...

**********************************************

There is a book (now available in paperback ):

***********************

Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left
(Hardcover)
by David Horowitz

********************************************************

And reviews:

****************************************

Editorial Reviews

Rich Lowry, Editor National Review

David Horowitz is synonymous with pyrotechnics. A historian and polemicist of the first order, he is paid the ultimate compliment --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Davis Hanson, Author, Ripples of Battle

An original look at those who want us to fail in the Middle East, both at home and abroad. The --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

***********************************************************

See all Editorial Reviews

Fascinating Analysis of Leftist Goals, August 13, 2006

Reviewer: N. Sincerity - See all my reviews

A former 1960s radical, Horowitz is well-acquainted with the Leftist mindset. In this book, he strives to explain the modern alliance between left wing progressivists and radical Islamofascists. He argues that this alliance is based on a common desire to destroy Western capitalism. Leftist sympathy with Islamofascist ideas makes no sense from an intellectual point of view, given that countries ruled by radical Islamists are among the most racist, sexist, theocratic states in the world today. However, Leftists have recognized that they can benefit politically from destructive terrorist attacks on the Western world. A West under attack can be made to turn on its leaders in fear and desperation (as they did in Spain after the Madrid train bombings). Only once people reject current government structures can the Left execute its anti-capitalist revolution and build a new reality that mirrors the Leftist view of utopia.

The complete and utter idealogical hypocrisy of the Islamofascist-Leftist alliance is distressing, but as Horowitz reminds us,

Leftists radicals truly believe the ends justify the means.

***************************************

[Tigen]

“The Huckabee “Difference”

(Huchabee) Issues
National Security/Foreign Policy: War On Terror

I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. This war is not a conventional war, and these terrorists are not a conventional enemy.
The top priority of the President as Commander in Chief is first and foremost protecting our own citizens.
With a focus on renewed diplomacy and inclusion, we can accomplish the goals of our nation without having to go it alone.
During the Cold War, we had hawks and doves, but this new war requires us to be a phoenix, rising reborn to meet each new challenge and seize each new opportunity.
As President, I will fight this war hard, but I will also fight it smart, using all our political, economic, diplomatic, and intelligence weapons as well as our military might.
The terrorists train in small, scattered groups. We can accomplish a great deal with swift, surgical air strikes and commando raids by our elite units.
We have to get tough with President Musharaff who has allowed Al Qaeda and the Taliban to have bases in Waziristan.
We don’t have a dog in the fight between Sunnis and Shiites - our enemy is Islamic extremism in all its guises.
The long-term solution is to empower moderates in the region by attacking the underlying conditions that breed terror.
Part of winning the war on terror is achieving energy independence.
I believe in the Powell Doctrine of using overwhelming force to accomplish a mission.
I have the executive and crisis management experience, the judgment and the temperament to be an effective commander in chief.
I will expand the army and increase the defense budget.

I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life. They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society, all in the name of a perversion of religion and an impersonal god. We go to great extremes to save lives, they go to great extremes to take them. This war is not a conventional war, and these terrorists are not a conventional enemy. I will fight the war on terror with the intensity and single-mindedness that it deserves.

The top priority of the president as Commander in Chief is first and foremost protecting our own citizens. While we live in a neighborhood of nations and must strive to be good neighbors, as President, I will ensure the peace, safety, and well-being of American citizens at home and abroad.

While I prefer America to be safe and secure within her own borders rather than loved and appreciated abroad, I believe we can accomplish both goals. We can resurrect relationships with our allies and neighbors. With a focus on renewed diplomacy and inclusion, we can accomplish the goals of our nation without having to go it alone.

When the sun rose on September 11, we were the only superpower in the world; when the sun set that day, we were still the only superpower, but how different the world looked. During the Cold War, you were a hawk or a dove, but this new world requires us to be a phoenix, to rise from the ashes of the twin towers with a whole new game plan for this very different enemy. Being a phoenix means constantly reinventing ourselves, dying to mistakes and miscalculations, changing tactics and strategies, rising reborn to meet each new challenge and seize each new opportunity.

As president, I will fight this war hard, but I will also fight it smart, using all our political, economic, diplomatic, and intelligence weapons as well as our military might. The terrorists unfortunately have a great many sympathizers all over the world, folks who are happy to show up and be filmed shouting “Death to America,” but the actual number of those willing to blow themselves up is relatively few, and they train and plot in small, scattered groups.

It’s an enemy conducive to being tracked down and eliminated by using the CIA and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command. We can accomplish a great deal, we can achieve tremendous bang for the buck, with swift, surgical air strikes and commando raids by our elite units, working with friendly governments, as we’ve done with the Ethiopians in Somalia. These operations are impossible without first-rate intelligence. When the Cold War ended, we cut back on our human intelligence, just as we cut back on our armed forces, and both have come back to haunt us. As President, I will beef up our human intelligence capacity, both the operatives who gather information and the analysts who figure out what it means.

Right after September 11, with wounds fresh and emotions running high, President Bush declared that all other countries were either for us or they were for the terrorists. Such a black-and-white stance doesn’t work in the Arab and Muslim worlds, where there are more shades of gray than you’ll find at Sherwin-Williams. Is President Musharaff of Pakistan for us 100%? No, since September 11, he’s been playing both ends in the middle to survive. At the moment he’s pulled too far away from us. While we have been focused on Iraq, Al Qaeda and the Taliban have expanded their training camps in the Waziristan region of Pakistan with impunity. This bodes ominously not just for Afghanistan, but also for Al Qaeda’s plotting and training for more attacks all over the world, including here in the United States. This is the direct result of an ill-conceived autonomy agreement President Musharaff made with Waziristan’s tribal leaders. In fact the tribal leader Musharaff has praised for fighting foreign terrorists, Mullah Nazir, recently said that he would protect Osama bin Laden! We have to get tough with Mursharaff and re-calibrate the carrots and sticks we use with him. Pakistan is the fifth largest recipient of American aid, and right now we’re not getting real good value. We’re in a game of chicken with this military dictator: he warns us not to pursue terrorists across the border with Afghanistan, not to strike their bases on his territory because it could cause his government to fall and an even less friendly figure to take his job. But we have to make clear to him that he is of no use to us if he allows the Taliban and Al Qaeda to use his territory with impunity. The current situation highlights that, despite our generous aid, both the Taliban and Al Qaeda enjoy a disturbing degree of popularity in Pakistan. Ultimately it is this popularity contest, this war of ideas, that we have to win. Creativity and flexibility are Musharaff’s keys to retaining power.

Creativity and flexibility are our keys to dealing with him and other Muslim leaders. Instead of asking if someone is for us, instead of demanding that every ally be at the level of Great Britain, I will ask if we should be for them, if they can be useful in any way, however limited, however temporary.

The terrorists have succeeded in dividing us over how to fight them, but we are not taking full advantage of their divisions and of the broader divisions in the region. For example, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah are all terrorist groups, but Hamas and Al Qaeda are Sunni and hate Hezbollah, which is Shiite, as much as they hate us. We are worried about the Iranians extending their sphere of influence west, but so are the Sunni Arabs in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, who dislike the Iranians not just because they are Shiites, but because they are Persians. Fighting smart means learning the neighborhood, achieving a level of political, religious, and cultural sophistication about the Arab and Islamic worlds that will pay huge dividends for us. We have to know the cast of characters, not just the national political leaders and their leading opponents, but the clerics, the tribal and clan leaders. We get criticized for our arrogance, but it’s our ignorance that’s killing us.

As for the underlying dispute between Sunnis and Shiites that’s been going on for fourteen hundred years, we don’t have a dog in that fight. Our enemy is Islamic extremism in all its guises. The Saudis want us to support extremist Sunni groups to counter growing Iranian influence. The Saudis assure us that they can control these groups and keep them from turning against us. We saw how well that turned out with Al Qaeda. I will support moderates, not extremists, with no favoring of Sunnis or Shiites.

The long-term solution to terror is to empower moderates in the region. My goal in the Middle and Near East is to correctly calibrate a course between maintaining stability and promoting democracy. It’s self-defeating to try to accomplish too much too soon, you just have elections where extremists win, but it’s equally self-defeating to do nothing. First, we have to destroy the terrorists who already exist, then we have to attack the underlying conditions that breed terror, by creating schools that offer an alternative to the extremist madrassas that take impressionable children and turn them into killers, by creating jobs and opportunity and hope, by encouraging a free press and other institutions that promote democracy. The recent rising appeal of Al Qaeda across North Africa - Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia - shows why we have to do better in the war of ideas - and soon.

In the past, we’ve been constrained from helping some of the good guys because our dependence on oil has forced us to support repressive regimes, to conduct our foreign policy with one hand tied behind our back. It’s time, it’s past time, to untie that hand and reach out to the moderates with both hands. Oil has not just shaped our foreign policy, it has deformed it. When I make foreign policy, I want to be able to treat Saudi Arabia the same way I treat Sweden, and that requires us to be energy independent. These folks have had us over a barrel - literally - for way too long. The first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence. We will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term. We will explore, we will conserve, and we will pursue all avenues of alternative energy - nuclear, wind, solar, hydrogen, clean coal, biodiesel, and biomass.

If I ever have to undertake a large invasion, I will follow the Powell Doctrine and use overwhelming force. The notion of an “occupation with a light footprint” that was our paradigm for Iraq always struck me as a contradiction in terms. Liberating a country and occupying it are two different missions. Occupation inevitably demands a lot of boots on the ground. Instead of marginalizing General Shinseki when he said we needed several hundred thousand troops for Iraq, I would have met privately with him and carefully weighed his advice and his underlying analysis.

Our current armed forces aren’t large enough - we have been relying far too heavily on our National Guard and our Reserves, we have worn them out. When our enemies know that we are spread thin, they’re more apt to test us by provoking a crisis. Having a sizeable standing army actually makes it less likely that we’ll have to use it. So I will increase the defense budget. We have to be ready to fight both conventional and unconventional wars against both state and non-state enemies. Right now we spend about 3.9% of our GDP on defense, while we spent about 6% in 1986 under President Reagan. I would return to that 6% level. I believe we can do this without raising taxes. I will limit increases in other discretionary spending and rely on the normal increase in federal tax revenue that is generated annually as Americans’ incomes rise.

Crises arise suddenly and unpredictably, and no one has the database for every possible scenario. What we have to evaluate is the strength of a leader’s operating system, because if that’s sound, he can always add the data. I’ll be an effective commander in chief because I have executive experience and crisis management experience. My record as Governor shows that I’m intellectually curious, a quick study, and have sound judgment. I will get advice from a broad circle with differing perspectives and portfolios; encourage dissent and stay out of the bubble; refuse to wilt under criticism, but also be flexible and ready to change course if a policy isn’t working. I will communicate my rationale for our foreign and defense policies clearly and frequently to Congress and to the American people.

OK Now go look at the rest please

[no dems]

I did not appreciate Huckabee dissing the Prez. I’m beginning to think that Huckabee is “Ron Paul Light”.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Huck ? among conservatives, blaming America first does not get you votes, it might get your votes among the Liberals/Democrats/MSM .... but not with true conservatives.
Mike ? why don't you just more on over to the Democrat party, they will love you there.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I would agree....he is just another politician playing the angles...

[Tlaloc]

In truth, Huckabee's position on Iran is no different than Bush's. Huck said he will not rule out military action against Iran and said that he will not allow them to get nukes on his watch. Just like Bush.

When the national intelligence estimate said Iran wasn't working on nukes, some said it undermined the Bush administration. But who released the NIE? The Bush administration. Bush released a report to justify just what Bush is already doing about Iran. Not a damn thing.

[Coldwater Creek]

Thank you for you and your family’s sacrifice to keep this country safe.

[Coldwater Creek]

Ernest, I agree with 100% even though we are probably the only two on FR that thinks so.

[Kevmo]

Huckabee has surged because he won a couple of debates and he’s got evangelical support. If a quick rise can happen to the liberal pro-life evangelical Huckster, it can happen to the conservative pro-life evangelical Hunter.

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According to Intrade, the winner of the December 12th GOP debate was... Duncan Hunter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938773/posts

Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1926032/posts

In this poll Hunter is up 3% and even with Paul and Thompson.
http://www.wxyz.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=3481ef60-8195-46a9-af04-b87b907bcfdd

[Theo]

Looks like Huckabee was right about Pakistan.