Apr 09 2007
Hostage Deal – Not Our Citizens
I heard on talk radio this morning some indications the US freed one Iranian diplomat they had in custody in Iraq at the bequest of Blair’s government as part of the deal to resolve the hostage situation. I cannot find any stories on this quickly, so it may not be as reported or may still be breaking news. As usual the talking heads were going off the deep end because they felt we violated our long standing position of no deals for hostages. Let’s assume the stories are true so I can try and educate some of these people who shoot-from-the-lip without engaging their minds.
First is the reminder that the Iraq “coalition” is a joint effort with the UK as a major, key partner. We the US do not ORDER the UK to do things they feel is not in the best interest of their people on the ground. We can debate and press, we do not dictate. If you want to know what happens when US commanders try and force the Brits to do something they do not agree with just review Gen Wesley Clark’s disasterous attempt at dictatorship in Kosov. We do not dictate our policies onto coalition partners. Since the Iranian diplomat ws held by “coalition” forces he was a coalition responsibility – which meant the US did not “own” him.
Second point: they 15 hostages were UK citizens, not US citizens. If the UK asked us to transfer a coalition prisoner to them as part of negotiations to save UK citizens we would not be good partners if we refused and tried to use UK citizens’ lives to make a political or strategic statement. The UK request would be honored when it dealt with UK lives – as it should.
The point is the US had no controlling interest in just about any of this incident, all we could do is support our ally and honor their requests. People who think otherwise are just demonstrating their ignorance of how military coalitions work together.
“I heard on talk radio this morning some indications the US freed one Iranian diplomat they had in custody in Iraq at the bequest of Blair’s government as part of the deal to resolve the hostage situation. ”
The US denies having control over this individual as does Iraq. It is an interesting case. I saw one report that stated that the US did have access to the individual for questioning but did not have custody of him. There are only a few possible alternatives. 1) The guy was being held by a militia friendly to us. 2) He was actually being held by the British or one of the other MNF-I allies (Poland?).
There is apparently some great desire on the part of the media to find a quid pro quo to further humiliate the Brits and especially the US if possible. They seem to need to find even the smallest shred of a rumor to blow up with speculation into some kind of “deal”.
Here’s “the deal” the way I see it. Blair evidently gave the Iranians 48 hours to resolve the problem. In public Blair said that the next 48 hours were crucial and after that a “harder” path would be taken. At the same time the US announced the dispatch of the Nimitz to the region. 24 hours later, the Brits were free.
I also note a great desire by the press today to fan the Najaf protest into some kind of bad news for the US. The front pages of most news sites have pictures of the protest and carry the words of al Sadr. The problem seems to be that al Sadr’s words carry more weight with the press than they apparently do with the Iraqis. Yes, there were protests, but there was no great surge of violence against the US. What we are actually seeing is the US taking the Mahdi Army apart and allowing SCIRI and their Badr Brigades to expand their influence.
“No deals for hostages” sounds like one of those “principles” the violation of which convinces some on the Right to drop former favorites like a hot rock. The trouble is that “principles” like these are often a bad idea in politics because you do have to be flexible, especially when dealing with people from other nations or other groups that you have to deal with for one reason or another: Such “principles” consist in taking certain actions utterly, totally, irrevocably, permanently off the table, which of course limits your options. Sometimes if you need the cooperation of another country and the price of cooperation from that country’s government is to free a guilty man, well, sometimes you have to weigh things and make a decision that will piss people off in the short run in order to avoid worse consequences in the long run.
This is not to say that all such principles are bad and should be jettisoned; “never start an unjust war” would be an example of a principle that should indeed never be violated. But it could be that some in our government are unjustly accused of being unprincipled when really they are just making the best of a bad choice, and if they’re doing that, and they’re working for our side, then maybe such people deserve the benefit of the doubt.
I think that was probably the dynamic behind, say, the Dubai Ports World deal — an awful lot of people who really ought to have known better just flew off the handle and decided that President Bush was selling us all up the river by putting America’s ports in the hands of terrorists [rolling my eyes] instead of checking out how the President might have come to the decision he did.
The people who are charged with making hard decisions these days need to be cut a little slack. I don’t mean abandon criticism; I mean check out the info that went into their decision before going on the attack. (And I wonder how long Fred Thompson [or whoever wins the GOP primary] will continue to be our fair-haired fellow before he makes the “wrong” decision and people decide he no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt.)
Aitch:
I had the same thought about Thompson, in fact I asked the same question on a site where they were talking about how he was the only guy with balls. I wonder how long that will last before they throw him under the bus like they do everybody else.
I like Fred just fine, but he is also not the guy who is making the decisions which makes chest poinding a whole lot easier.
I have noticed with real dismay the desire of people to trash the Brits, Blair, Bush and just about everyone else. The Iranians they trash as an after thought after they get done telling us how they themselves would gone out in a blaze of glory before they would have blah blah blah.
The Coalition has 300 Iranians in custody and chances are that sooner or later most of them will be released. I do not know if we let the Brits make some kind of trade, I doubt it, but if it happened I doubt seriously if the guy was worth hanging onto you. In other words there might well have been a calculation made that the sailors were worth more.
In truth the idea of the sailors being held for month and paraded in front of cameras daily with the Brits threatening military action would have been a nightmare. It reminds me of the attempts of the Israelis to get their people back. The world said their attack on Lebanon was over the top, innocent people were killed and in the end they still do not have their soldiers. And everyone agreed they were the injured party too, right up until they started dropping bombs on Lebanon.
That is not something the Brits would want to get into if they could accomplish this some other way.
The Iranians blinked and they will never admit that. They will never say they were wrong or act as if they were intimidated. That is not their nature. It would be nice if the right would remember that America needs all the friends she can get and going out of their way to trash one of our few allies is not helpful.