Song Lyric of the Day (‘Eve of Destruction,’ on Returning From ‘Four Days in Space’)

“Ah, you may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it's the same old place
The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace.”—American rock ‘n’ roll songwriter P.F. Sloan (1945-2015), “Eve of Destruction” (1965), performed by Barry McGuire from the album of the same name

NASA’s successful launch of the Artemis II space program—marking America’s return to the moon for the first time in a half century—was rightly celebrated as a resumption of a scientific and technological marvel. 

But I was also struck by the conjunction of events in the above lyrics from Barry McGuire’s compelling protest song of the mid-Sixties, as well as a repetition of that today.

Even as the Gemini missions were taking the space program to another level six decades ago, tensions were rising in the Mideast, as Israel and its Arab neighbors confronted each other over control of water sources in the Jordan River drainage basin—or, as McGuire sang, “You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'?/And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'.”

Now, even as so many eyes are lifted to the skies, the focus of so much of the world remains on the Mideast, only this time shifting from the Jordan River to the Strait of Hormuz, where America’s current President is unabashedly engaging in “the poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace.”

Some may wonder if the current war actually represents “the Eve of Destruction.” But how else to interpret the current Oval Office occupant’s threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong”?

Quote of the Day (John Kenneth Galbraith, on an Ironclad Rule of Diplomacy)

“There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy, but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”—Canadian-American economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), “The American Ambassador,” Foreign Service Journal (June 1969)

In December 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy sounded out John Kenneth Galbraith on chairing the Council of Economic Advisors in the new administration. The Harvard professor rejected that offer ("I didn't wish to come every day to the same discussion of the same questions around the same table mostly with the same people, not all of whom I wish to see").

But another position intrigued him: US Ambassador to India, where he could see firsthand how the principles of international development he had taught for the past decade might work in an emerging nation. And so, 65 years ago today, the economist was appointed to the post.

I was all set to include a quote from Galbraith’s 1969 book Ambassador’s Journal about the embassy staff in India, as well as the Nehru government’s suspicions of the U.S. assistance program.

In addition to the diary entries and letters to JFK published in that volume, he was still passing on what he learned in his two years on the subcontinent in The Nature of Mass Poverty (1979), which cautioned that the international economy could inadvertently maintain large populations in conditions of want.

But as soon as I saw the above quote, it resonated with me, as I think it might with so many other Americans today.

Over the last month, the public has grown accustomed to the White House offering assessments of the Iranian War that—how shall I say this?—may be prematurely optimistic, including President Trump’s claim that “very good and productive” talks have been held with Tehran over at least ending the regime’s stoppage at the Strait of Hormuz, and maybe even bringing the conflict as a whole to a close.

More and more people are experiencing nightmares of long, inconclusive conflicts that drain American money and lives—the kind associated with Iraq, the kind that candidate Trump vowed never to begin.

Ambassador Galbraith was a caustic critic of such adventurism. Within a month of his appointment, he was explaining to JFK how the Bay of Pigs fiasco appeared to his Indian hosts (not good), and before long he was warning, in no uncertain terms, that conditions in Vietnam were "far more complex, far less controllable, far more varied in the factors involved, far more susceptible to misunderstanding" than his military advisers were saying.

It’s nice to think of a time when a President had the patience to read an adviser’s memos on matters like improving the US Information Service rather than emasculating it; why it would be a good idea to avoid military involvement in a land that posed no security threat to America; and how an administration would be more inclined to cajole and persuade other countries to our positions rather than bullying them, springing from what the Declaration of Independence called “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”

Quote of the Day (J. William Fulbright, on ‘The Arrogance of Power’)

“The ‘arrogance of power’…[is] a psychological need that nations seem to have to prove that they are bigger, better or stronger than other nations. Implicit in this drive is the assumption that the proof of superiority is force—that when a nation shows that it has the stronger army, it is also proving that it has better people, better institutions, better principles—and, in general, a better civilization.”—J. William Fulbright (1905-1995), U.S. Senator from Arkansas and chair, US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, “Address Delivered at Johns Hopkins University,” May 5, 1966

In 1966, unable to receive straight answers from the Johnson Administration about the course of the Vietnam War, J. William Fulbright helped give wide public currency to a phrase that had been gaining traction among Washington observers: a “credibility gap” covering the distance between what officials said and the reality on the ground.

In the decades since then, presidents and their advisers have certainly trimmed the truth. But aside, perhaps, from the Watergate era, I’m not sure that “credibility gap” has been used much. It is certainly time to bring that phrase back, as well as another one that Senator Fulbright popularized: “the arrogance of power.”

In Lyndon Johnson’s college days, biographer Robert Caro revealed, the future President’s friends nicknamed him “Bull Johnson” because, as one classmate said, he “just could not tell the truth.” But LBJ’s mendacity has been exceeded thoroughly by Donald Trump, who can barely move his lips without uttering an untruth.

Trump’s secret sauce as a liar? Lie so fast, so often, so much, without fear that one day’s statement might contradict an earlier one, that it will be impossible to keep up and eventually inure the public to what he says.

Trump voters could console themselves, based on the lack of new military commitments abroad in his first term, that his deceptions were at least not putting service personnel at risk. That assurance is now gone.

Trump’s credibility gap is a necessary precondition for aggrandizing not just America’s power but his personal sway. He couldn’t get the correct synonym for the invasion of Iraq (it’s “incursion”), but for him it might as well be an “excursion,” a holiday from history and truth.

Throughout these first few weeks of the war, it’s been bad enough that he hasn’t been able to offer a consistent rationale for the invasion, but he simply lied about the nature of the threat posed by Iraq. While it was true that Iraq’s stockpile of weaponry posed a threat to Israel, it in no way endangered the United States.

The “arrogance of power” and “the credibility gap” have particular consequences in matters of war and peace, not only because of lives endangered but also because of violations of international law that endanger order between and even within nations through shredding human rights. 

(See, for instance, Marc Weller’s mid-January analysis for the London-based think tank Chatham House, which explains why, despite Trump’s second-term disregard for the concept, without international law, “The aim of predictable and stable relations, and clear pathways for international transactions, would be destroyed.”)

In his book The Arrogance of Power, Fulbright offered a defense of international law that has, sadly, been forgotten over the past decade:

Law is the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in international relations. As a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations. Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations. When we violate the law ourselves, whatever short-term advantage may be gained, we are obviously encouraging others to violate the law; we thus encourage disorder and instability and thereby do incalculable damage to our own long-term interests.

Quote of the Day (Bruce F. Murphy, on the Miscalculations of Dictating to Other Nations)

"Neither international law nor the United Nations charter allows for a country to export its political system to others, and certainly not through war. It may be reassuring to some Americans to think of our country as above the community of nations and beyond the footling machinations of minor states. But the tendency to think we can ignore history and the feelings of others leads to gross miscalculations, like the failure to anticipate Iraqi resentment of American occupation. [Neoconservative thinker Robert] Kagan may be right that ‘it is reasonable to assume that we have only just entered a long era of American hegemony.’ It is also reasonable to conclude that the rest of the world will fight this hegemony tooth-and-nail—at the UN, on the Internet, in the vastly expanded media, and, unfortunately, through violence. Other people may accept, under duress, that the United States is the most powerful nation. But it is unlikely that they will accept the premise that we are the best nation that has ever existed, with a providential right to dictate to others.”—American essayist, poet, and freelance writer Bruce F. Murphy, “The Last, Best Hope? The Perils of American Exceptionalism,” Commonweal, Oct. 8, 2004

Clearly, in targeting Iran a generation after we thought we could shift the power dynamics of the Mideast for the better, this country did not learn a major lesson of the Iraq War: the folly of what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called replacing “a policy that aimed at peace through the prevention of war by a policy aimed at peace through preventive war.”

Donald Trump distinguished himself from the rest of the Republican candidates for President in the 2016 primaries by declaring the Iraq War a disaster. Many of those who voted for him in the next three fall Presidential elections assumed that he would keep the nation out of future conflicts.

But after his nearly half a century in the public eye, could anyone reasonably assume that a personality so bellicose in dealing with others would not sometime, somewhere resort to an actual war putting lives at risk? 

And can anyone now assume that, after he loudly dissed our allies since January 20, 2025, we will be strong enough to go it alone and never need their support again?

Quote of the Day (Mike Royko, on an Earlier War Over an Oil-Rich Mideast Nation)

“In two or three years, Kuwait will be close to looking as it did before Iraq looted and plundered it. But I guarantee that the West Side of Chicago, much of the Bronx, and the slums of Newark, Gary, New Orleans, and other American cities will be the same mess they are now. That’s because Kuwait sits atop an ocean of liquid gold. It can hire the giant Bechtel corporation and other globe-hopping companies to perform a miraculous rehab job. Unfortunately, nobody is drilling gushers on the West Side of Chicago or in Detroit or the Bronx. And Bechtel doesn't take our IOUs.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Mike Royko (1932-1997), “Kuwait’s Future Brighter Than Ours,” originally published in the Chicago Tribune, Mar. 12, 1991, reprinted in One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko (1999)

Operation Desert Storm concluded 35 years ago this past Saturday. The outcome made a national hero of General Norman Schwarzkopf, briefly boosted President George H.W. Bush’s approval rating, and even now retains something of a retrospective glow: a conflict with comparatively few American casualties, with a limited objective—Saddam Hussein’s occupation forces thrust out of Kuwait.

But every war has unintended, often deleterious, consequences, and the 1990-91 Gulf War was no different. To ensure that Saddam would not threaten a key oil-rich ally, Bush stationed American forces in Saudi Arabia, which Osama bin Laden saw as an “infidel” offense against Islam’s holiest sites. He launched al Qaeda in an attempt to drive them out.

Right on the anniversary of that first Gulf War, another Mideast war of choice was launched. Already there are casualties, and sites have been hit not only in Iran, but elsewhere in the Mideast.

Even if the war concludes with an outcome that President Trump proclaims favorable, we won’t know for years—as also with the replacement of a prior leader with the Shah of Iran in 1953—whether this will be in long-term American interests.

The region has a long memory, and you can bet it’ll remember that Trump told The New York Times back in 2016 how his policy for fighting the Islamic States would differ from Barack Obama’s: “I’ve been saying it for years: Take the oil.” It’s impossible to ascribe good motives to a country that’s elected a leader who so unashamedly proclaims self-interest.

I wish Mike Royko were alive to comment on all this. Long ago, when Trump was only a tabloid fixture, the columnist, in a hilarious February 1990 piece, informed readers, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, that Marla Maples was not the aspiring mogul’s mistress but, according to “a very high-ranking source in the Trump Organization,” his personal laundress:

“And that, pure and simple, is the reason Mr. Trump kept her nearby, in a hotel room one floor below his, and brought her to Aspen and took her on his yacht and had her accompany him to parties and other social events.”

But in this “Quote of the Day,” Royko got serious, pointing out what remain American problems: neglect at home while millions are spent on foreign conflicts. 

(Though progress has been made in some neighborhoods in the areas mentioned, too many remain symbols of urban decay. And before long, the pain spread beyond the inner city: from 1980 to 2016, the Great Lakes region lost ground economically, with Michigan, Wisconsin, and western Pennsylvania performing particularly badly, according to Indermit Gil’s 2019 analysis for the Brookings Institution.)

Much like “Make America Great Again,” the notion of “America First” was a chimera, a propaganda slogan conceived to create a scapegoat—aid going to foreign governments or, worse still, foreigners coming to this country—for this nation’s underinvestment in its own material and human resources.

Don’t imagine for a moment that this situation will be redressed in that den of scorpions, the Middle East. Even the quick takeover of Venezuela ended up costing $3 billion for its late August-to-early February military buildup, according to Becca Wasser, a military strategy expert at the Centre for a New American Security, a think-tank.

The Iranian campaign is already longer than that, even beyond the walkover stage, courtesy of an administration equally lacking competence and conscience. We’d better hope that this conflict won’t devolve into the quagmire that the Second Gulf War became under George W. Bush.

This Day in Literary History (Fatwa Placed on Rushdie)

February 14, 1989—Salman Rushdie received the astonishing news that Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa (sentence of death) on him in a phone call from a BBC journalist, just as he was heading out to attend the funeral of friend Bruce Chatwin. The coming years in hiding, moving from one safe house to another, must surely have made the novelist wonder whether, at a not-so-distant future, people would be memorializing him, too. That is, if they dared: for Khomeini had not only laid down his edict against the author of The Satanic Verses for blaspheming "Islam, the Prophet and the Quran," but also on “all those involved in the publication who were aware of its contents."

The fatwa was more than Khomeini’s antithesis of a Valentine’s Day message: an incitement to mass hatred rather than individual love. It also represented a marker in militant Islam’s encounter with modernity. No longer would a terrorist group not officially affiliated with a formal government simply strike out against innocents, as happened in the Munich Olympics in summer 1972. Nor would a regime hewing strictly to fundamentalist Islamic tenets confine itself to hostage-taking within its own borders, as Khomeini-inspired “students” had done in Iran in seizing American diplomats during the Carter Administration.

No, now a regime had ordered every follower of Islam, anywhere on the globe, to strike out against a blasphemer—one not even an Iranian--and all those connected to the publication of his book. They would be rewarded for an act of murder--financially, if they succeeded, sexually (in the form of virgins in paradise) if they didn't. The edict became a wedge for those practicing a fringe element of a religion of peace to ward off all criticism of their policies—and an open invitation for those easily gulled by fanatics to take violent offense against easily manufactured outrages.

Khomeini may well have had another motive for issuing the murderous decree: as a distraction from his (and his nation’s) humiliation in signing a peace treaty with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, after vowing that he would never make such a deal to end a war that may have cost over a million lives. That motive might also account for why the fatwa wasn’t lifted when the murderous mullah died four months after the edict…why the regime didn’t lift it for another nine years…and  why, a year and a half ago, another Iranian ayatollah, Hassan Sanei, had re-issued the fatwa, using as a pretext the film Innocence of Muslims, which, he claimed, would not have been made if Satanic Verses hadn’t been published.

Longtime readers of this blog know my low opinion of Margaret Thatcher. (See, for instance, my post, “A Thatcher Depreciation” from nearly a year ago.) Yet, in this instance, let’s give credit where credit is due: Even though the very book that provoked the fatwa also included a far-from-subtle jab against “Mrs. Torture,” the Iron Lady made sure that Rushdie had round-the-clock protection against those intent on ending his life.

For all his brilliance as a master of literary wordplay (see, for instance, this eloquent account in Vanity Fair from his friend, the late Christopher Hitchens), not to mention his frequent prior brushes with controversy over provocative statements and incidents in his books, Rushdie was stunned that Muslims could be offended by a feverish dream sequence in his novel in which prostitutes bear the same names as Mohammad’s wives. 

Rushdie’s years of hiding, in fact, did not bring much in the way of wisdom—his libidinous, preening streak only seemed to stand out all the more every time he dared to break out of his safe houses and attempt to lead a normal social life. (Zoe Heller’s analysis of Rushdie’s recent memoir, Joseph Anton, in The New York Review of Books wryly notes that the years in hiding “had no sobering effect on Rushdie’s magisterial amour propre.”)

Yet freedom of expression—even very much including freedom to offend—needs to be defended, even when the person one mounts the barricades for is pompous. Until the incident that changed his life, Rushdie’s fiction (including the prize-winning Midnight’s Children) had been taken up with cultural displacement. Now, his own life had added a decided twist on this theme. The frequent critic of the capitalist West now found himself beholden to it for saving his life.

The same ironic reversal held for the novelist’s prior critics. Writing in a blog post for the conservative National Review—a journal unlikely to have much sympathy with Rushdie’s longtime leftist politics—Daniel Pipes refers now to “the Rushdie Rules”: i..e., constraint  on “the ability of Westerners freely to discuss Islam and topics related to it.”

(Photo of Salman Rushdie taken in Warsaw, Poland, October 2006, by Mariusz Kubik)

This Day in Presidential History (Reagan Aides Circle Wagons Over “Iranamok”)

November 25, 1986—Only a dozen years after a Republican President was forced out of office because of scandal, the possibility became a live one again when Attorney General Edwin Meese not only admitted that Ronald Reagan had authorized arms for hostages, but broke the news that at least one member of the National Security Council had used at least proceeds from the weapons shipments to fund the contras opposing the Marxist government of Daniel Ortega.

History has dubbed the scandal that consumed the attention of the nation for the following nine months Iran-contra—a clumsy name whose sole virtue might be that it attempted to capture the wide-ranging nature of an astonishing series of events. But there’s another name for the scandal, coined by the liberal magazine The New Republic, that is pithy while conveying the insane quality of the whole affair: “Iranamok.”

At a reading of Democracy at New York’s 92^nd Street Y a year or two after the scandal broke, Joan Didion remarked that one plot element in her novel was a what-if scenario—i.e., what if Lee Hart and General Richard Secord had an affair? Both these names have faded from the public consciousness, but Secord is one of many names in Iran-contra that should not be forgotten, even as the nation has turned its attention to recent events considered more momentous (the War on Terror) and trivial (Herman Cain’s confusion about President Obama’s Libya policy—and his own position on the matter).

Iranamok was built on an entire network of deceit, starting with the Reagan administration’s blithe assurances that they were complying with Congress’ Boland Amendment restricting CIA and Defense Department support of the opposition contra forces in Nicaragua. But perhaps none reached the level of the claim by Lt. Colonel OliverNorth (self-confessed liar turned preposterous American folk hero) that as he moved outside the realm of accountability to the American public, he had to balance “lies versus lives.”

In a word, no. Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever analyzed how the statement, already dubious when first expressed, has become more dubious with each passing day. The threat that the Reagan Administration saw was not in the Mideast but in Central America, which, in their fevered version, was in danger of seeing Nicaragua become another Cuban-style center for Marxism.

But the idea that Nicaragua ever posed a threat to the U.S. was ludicrous. Say what you want about about the Patriot Act, but it was passed in an environment in which several thousand Americans had died in an unprovoked terror attack and there was every possibility that another would occur sooner rather than later. Not only did the Communists of Nicaragua never launch such an attack, but nobody in his right mind ever believed it would. Even Ortega’s opportunity to create mischief around Latin America was becoming increasingly limited. For all the resources that the Reagan administration was pouring into the CIA, the news never really seemed to move up the ladder that the U.S.S.R. was being undermined from within by the costs of its involvement in Afghanistan and the struggle to keep its own restless republics in line. (Maybe this intelligence never went up the line because it contradicted everything they had believed for 40 years.) The U.S.S.R., under these circumstances, was finding it harder and harder to export Marxism into the region.

Instead, Americans looking at their newscasts 25 years ago were astounded to find that the President who spoke about “standing tall” against foreign threats--including famously, in the 1980 election, vowing not to negotiate with terrorists--had made a deal with hostage-takers and state sponsors of terrorism in Iran. Following the arms shipment, the three hostages released were immediately followed by another three taken. Secretary of State George Schultz, who had opposed the deal, was correct in calling it “a hostage bazaar.”

The Tower Commission, appointed the day after Meese’s revelation of the diversion of funds from the arms sale to the contras, gave the Reagan administration a tremendous gift when it attributed the crisis to Reagan’s lax “management style.” The commission's report gave Americans still traumatized by the impeachment crisis of 1974 the opportunity to believe that laws were broken by a President not because of his criminality but because he was disengaged from the government he headed. The impression of disengagement (fostered by the President's own frequent jokes about his not-too-stringent work habits as well as his advanced age) enabled Reagan to escape the impeachment that doomed Richard Nixon on Capitol Hill. But, as Theodore Draper argued compellingly in his analysis of the labyrinthine scandal, A Very Thin Line, Reagan bears responsibility because of his twin obsession with freeing the hostages (even if it meant denying he was dealing with terrorists) and with keeping together the contras “body and soul.”

In a very real sense, a line can be drawn from Iran-contra to the disastrous chain of events that led the Bush II administration to beat the drums of war on the false premise that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. One of the forgotten but astonishing aspects of Iran-contra was the excessive dependence on a purported go-between to alleged Iranian moderates who failed 13 out of 15 questions on a polygraph test. Similarly, the Iraqi defector nicknamed “Curveball” concocted stories about mobile bioweapons trucks and secret factories to try to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime. In both the Iran-contra and weapons of mass destruction fiascoes, ideological fervor led policymakers to place too much credence in sources that clearly did not warrant the slightest trust.

One last thing: Iran-contra can not only be seen as yet another of the scandals to which modern American Presidents have found themselves inevitably drawn, but also as a marker in the Red-vs.-Blue State divide that has plagued our government in recent years. The tumultuous Bork confirmation hearings have often been cited as a milestone in the latter regard, but the Iran-contra investigation, occurring at roughly the same time, serves as an equally compelling example. To understand why the supercommittee has had super trouble taming the deficit, it doesn't hurt to look back here.

The House Judiciary Committee in 1974 would never have been able to form a critical mass of committee members against Richard Nixon if the panel’s conservative Southern Democrats and moderate Northern Republicans had not made common cause. By the time of Iran-contra, the Inouye select joint House-Senate committee charged with investigating Iran-contra had become far more starkly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

One of the key GOP members of the latter panel was Rep. Dick Cheney, who was so nakedly partisan that even fellow GOP member Warren Rudman observed that he was “more interested in protecting the president than in finding out what had happened.“ Cheney later claimed to be annoyed at how junior members of the Reagan administration were “left out to dry.” Years later, that anger would inform his wrongheaded urging of President George W. Bush to pardon Scooter Libby on the dubious grounds that abandoning him would be like leaving behind a soldier on the battlefield. (A most interesting metaphorical stretch, especially considering that Cheney never spent a day in the armed forces.) Furthermore, an additional aim while on the select committee--preserving Presidential prerogative--became one Cheney pursued perhaps even more ardently, and with equally disastrous results, while serving as Vice-President.

The Iran-contra investigation was a muddle that settled nothing and simply left lying around for later Presidential use the possibility of a secret government-within-a-government. No Democrat or Republican should permit the existence of such a principle that undermines the system of accountability.

Quote of the Day (Neda Agha-Soltan, Becoming the Martyr for the Iran Yet To Be)

"I'm burning, I'm burning!"—Neda Agha-Soltan, in her final words after being struck down by a bullet amid protests against the stolen Iranian elections

As President Obama indicated, the whole world is indeed watching what happens. Ms. Agha-Soltan, a largely apolitical woman, from all accounts, has become a most unlikely martyr, but that’s the way things go for revolutions.

Pray that her sacrifice will not be the start of far greater bloodshed—or that the unrest sparked by the mad mullahs will be crushed.

Pray, too, that this is not the Iranian equivalent of a political false spring, the kind that came over Czechoslovakia in 1968 or China in 1989. In each of the latter cases, it took another generation and more for that nation’s citizens to live under the yoke of tyranny. (In China, they still are.)

Regime opponents in Iran might not necessarily be as pro-Western as we imagine and certainly not as secularist, but they would be a distinct advance forward from a theocracy bent on the possession of nuclear weapons and viciously anti-women. (“The Stoning of Soroya M,” an independent film opening tomorrow in 10 major U.S. markets, details one particularly hideous example of the latter.)