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Chronic Failure and a Resignation at State
In his highly publicized letter of resignation, State Department official Josh Paul expressly denounced Hamas terrorist acts but expressed his belief that the Israeli response is the wrong policy and that the USA should not have supplied weapons to aid that approach. I respect the sincerity of the letter and the expression of moral and practical concerns. However, for the last 11 years, this fellow has been in the section of the US government that supplies arms all over the world, and this is the first time he has moral reservations about his job? And if not to prosecute this military campaign in Gaza, what exactly are Israel’s alternatives?
I admit to holding a long-standing prejudice that State Department groupthink is often defective, especially about the Middle East.
Years ago, a former career military man of my acquaintance (a man with serious policy credentials) once lectured me from an adjacent barstool about his contempt for Foggy Bottom that, on the one hand, they think military intervention is like cash or some other material resource that can be called up without any awareness of the inherent messiness and aftereffects of killing people and breaking things. On the other hand, when a situation clearly calls for a military response, they insist on futile diplomacy because they think they are surrendering political turf to the military if diplomacy has to end. (The latter point calls to mind the feckless Cyrus Vance insisting on the pre-emptive surrender of the use of force while he pursued futile — threat-free! — diplomacy for over a year while his own people were held captive in Tehran.)
It is telling that the single greatest diplomatic triumph in recent US diplomatic history (the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Saudis) was effected by Jared Kushner and entirely contrary to established Expert Doctrine that the sheer impossibility of such a thing was why the US should simply accede to Iranian hegemony in the region and leave Israel on its own.
I greatly admire US embassy staff who put themselves at personal risk to serve US interests and protect Americans abroad. However, there is a permanent whiff of hubris (among other odors) emanating from Foggy Bottom that is considerably less admirable.
It may be unfair, but I have long suspected that the absurd deference to Yassir Arafat was driven in significant part by the fact that professional diplomats wanted a Middle Eastern Peace Accord line item in their resume and did not care how lousy the treaty was so long as they had a signed photo suitable for framing. We sent large checks to Arafat in the certain knowledge that terrorist acts would persist, that he would claim to be helpless to prevent them unless further concessions were made and that he would then ask which five-star hotel would be booked for the next round.
It would be wonderful if there were some responsible Muslim state that could be persuaded by diplomacy to rein in Hamas and selectively punish those who perpetrated this atrocity, thus reducing the need for and scope of Israel’s response. But the opposite is the case. A powerful Islamic state is encouraging and arming the perpetrators, the same Islamic state the bulk of experts in the State Department believe to be entitled to deference, conciliation, and lots of cash. Seems to me that a hell of a lot of long overdue State Department resignations would be more fitting than that of Mr. Paul.
Published in Foreign Policy
One of the newest discipline in economics is public choice economics which addresses the irrationalities of human behavior in running the gouvernement. I’ll be someone in that field has addressed the issues raised in the post.
I saw a Xeet this morning
https://x.com/AkbarSAhmed/status/1715137995613852055?s=20
That claims that there is a mutiny brewing at State against the Biden policy in re Israel/Gaza. My first thought was, good, but then I read the article, and it’s the opposite of good. It seems that some at State think that we are supporting the wrong side and should be supporting Hamas instead. Ugh.
On the other hand, perhaps getting these individuals to out themselves would be a good idea.
There’s a built-in, always present conflict between the public and the State Department. The State Department’s job is to maintain relationships and communication with all other countries. In so doing, they make friends.
We benefit from this department’s work because it gives us intelligence and “back channels.”
But in order for them to do this work successfully, they have to empathize strongly with the people they are talking to. They become advocates.
Their knowledge usually helps us reach informed decisions. But they have extreme biases.
We hope the State Department can prevent war by doing a really great job. But when they fail, the football goes to the military.
My first reaction to anything this guy had to say would be, “If your knowledge were based on an accurate reading of the situation, we wouldn’t be at Def Con 2.”
POTUS’s job is to set his administration’s policy. The job of the State Department staffers in regard to POTUS is to give him advice and to faithfully carry out POTUS’s policies. If the staffers can’t do the latter they should resign.
Agreed.
Obama/Biden have filled the government with commies/Marxists/anti-Semites. There is a red-green alliance that we must defeat and purge. Trump failed to purge these anti-Americans. Red=commie/Marxist and Green=eco-fascist/Islamist.
Here is a PBS interview of Mr. Paul, about 6 minutes, in which he explains his resignation. If I understand him correctly, he worked to ensure compliance with various rules relating to weapons transfers to other countries, which seek to keep such weapons out of the hands of those who would misuse them. His essential point is that, over the years, the concerns raised by staff over Israel’s actions were ignored by top managers. Finally, an internal memo about the present conflict did not even generate a response.
This pattern complements what RINO’s and thinking Democrats (a lot of elected Democrats don’t have thinking tools) do as I said on another post:
‘The Communist/Fascist-oriented Obama progressive leaders in the Biden Administration and their global consultants wind some very convoluted strategies to induce what amounts to cooperative behaviors from elected RINOs in Congress who have held leadership positions in both Houses for some time now. These very convoluted and complex strategies then facilitate suggesting anyone who sees through them as being ‘conspiracy theorists’ who should be disregarded. Most of those RINOs have not figured out exactly how badly they are being used in bringing about the downfall of America. They got a good chance to re-examine it for four years but failed to see and understand. Now we are in greater desperation.’
I’ve concluded that what we saw during the Covid pandemic, intentional disinformation and censorship imposed directly on the people by our government, has existed in other parts of our government for a long time without really getting our attention like the so-called Covid crises did.
I have some ideas on why and how this is happening independently in various places and forms that I must formulate into words.
One of the best things Jimmy Carter did was to end blank check auto-accident immunity for all foreign embassy personnel. They were a local menace. A GW professor was paralyzed in a hit-and-run by an embassy car which seemed like the last straw at the time. I recall with amusement that the insurance agent who was on his way to our house to inform us why his company was about to heavily jack up our rates after I had a minor fender-bender as a teen was himself smacked by a Turkish embassy vehicle while trying to avoid others double and triple parked around the traffic circle in from of the ambassador’s residence–and he knew there was no way to recover any damages.
The State Department vigorously opposed the change on the grounds that American embassy personnel might be similarly accountable or that foreigners would be offended by having to carry liability insurance.
Well, actually… this was the topic my senior seminar paper in the fall of 1994. First, what it boils down to is the DoP (Declaration of Principles) wasn’t a treaty at all, but a framework for ongoing talks. Second, the only professional diplomat involved in the breakthrough was a deputy minister from Norway, no other professionals. Israel’s representatives were two college professors, armed with a letter from the Israeli government that authorized them to engage in the talks. The Israelis didn’t take it seriously at first, but the PLO showed up and they all figured something out.
After they figured it out, the professionals swooped in and nearly derailed it. Then they claimed credit for it.
Of course, it was all less than genuine on the PLO’s part, but at the time they were boxed in and had little choice. Every time a little trust is given, they throw it away. There is no rational reason to think more chances will yield a different result.
Arafat couldn’t have actually made peace, because he would wake up dead soon after. And he certainly knew that. They’ve created a monster that they can’t control, but they seem unwilling to let it die out over time either.
It ain’t the Palestinian doctors who live in the big houses in Gaza. The whole thing pays off for someone.
Yes, when I first saw a headline about the resignation I thought, “Oh, good, finally someone is complaining about Biden support for Iran/Hamas.” But, no, as I read the resignation letter it was as stated in OP — don’t let Israel solve the problem, and certainly don’t provide them the critical military materiel to do so. (sigh)
Scan resumes for connections to the Obama cohort. Presume that those employees and appointees do not have America’s best interests at heart unless there is strong evidence to the contrary.
It sounds like those who, when they say they don’t approve of Biden, it’s because they don’t think he’s leftist ENOUGH.
Josh Paul says outright, in the video clip above, that two days after the attack, he wrote to his seniors in the State Department, paraphrasing, “Before we rush to arm the Israelis, can we think about what we’re doing?”
He is not balanced. He is pro-Hamas.
I read the resignation letter and it just blows my mind that people in such high places can be so naive, uninformed, and utterly lacking in human character insight. As a lefty, he of course speaks in mostly broad generalities with few specifics that can be analyzed, such as this paragraph:
That’s just a bunch of feel-good pablum that makes no specific charges. It sounds like a stump-speech excerpt from a politician. The few times he does get specific, he is just plain wrong:
Israel, more than any other country in the world, does not do “collective punishment,” “ethnic cleansing,” nor “Apartheid.” Maybe you can call them “occupiers” in some sense. Like Bathos said, this guy was okay with giving arms to every other country that the U.S. has supplied, except Israel (and that would include Saudi Arabia and Turkey). He even mentions how deserved it is to be giving arms to Ukraine against Russia’s aggression, quite unaware of the huge imbalance of Israels delicate dance to avoid civilian casualties vs. Ukraine’s more heavy-handed assaults on the enemy (which by the way, I am okay with).
Perhaps one of the telltale signs of his mental immaturity is this line:
Obviously, this guy has never been in a physical fight in his life, nor in combat or other life-threatening situations. He probably cannot comprehend any of the real-world consequences of his errant military assessments.
Thank goodness the administration ignored him.
That was the same as with the leftists in the 90s who’d tell me, “You don’t understand how much we hate the Clintons.”
This guy and Pete Buttigieg must have gone to school together.
There are tens of thousands of these Foggy Bottom feeders tinkering, cajoling, cutting deals, making promises and supposedly managing our enemies with threats and doggy treats.
The Middle-East peace process is testament to their effectiveness for at no point since they began helping has Israel enjoyed peace.
America is the best friend Israel has ever had. Whenever they’ve been bombed we’ve been right there telling them to not make waves.
I think the dogmatic policy in the middle east has been wrong going back 50 years. The main problem in the middle east is not the Palestine question. Thats a minor irritant and not central to the Arab states.
The real problem in the middle east (ironically) is wealth disparity. So many of the masses are so poor, while the revenues from everything from oil to foreign aide are marshaled into a few families at the center of each nationalist society. These elites are using the Palestine conflict as red meat to distract the masses away from reforms that could actually improve the conditions for themselves…
What the Arab world really needs is trade. They’ve got plenty of labor, some resources, but lack the will to develop their economies. IF they could jump start trade, the impoverished masses could experience some upward mobility and would become more focused on their own lives and mobility rather than conflicts that if, when or how they’re resolved would have almost no bearing on their lives.