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Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
WTF does the former Ambassador to the Soviet Union know about Iraq anyway?
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Most of the discussion here has focussed on the propriety of these former officials using their titles to advance their agendas. Wihtout getting into that, I would use NDD's question here to open a little discussion of the other aspect of this - the substance of their argument.
I don't know much about Amb. Hartman, but I do about Amb. Matlock. Matlock was Ambassador to the USSR from 1987 to 1991, the period when that regime collapsed. Matlock was one of the principle architects of the approach, made infamous in Pres. Bush's 1991 "Chicken Kiev" speech, that placed stability in the Soviet Union ahead of the aspirations for independence of the various republics.
The administration of the current President Bush has outlined a philosophy and a policy that says that the old policy of maintaining Middle Eastern "stability" by supporting various strongman regimes was a chimera. It did not bring real stability and became a breeding ground for the terrorist mentality we face today.
The preference for stability led us to support undemocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Imperial Iran and elsewhere in the region. It led us to tilt toward Iraq as a buffer against Iran. When allied forces expelled Iraq from Kuwait, rather than deal militarily with the regime in Baghdad at the time, or support the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings, we sought stability. We would have been perfectly happy with a military coup that put another, less Saddam-y strongman in power, but we couldn't tolerate instability (to be fair, there were prudent arguments for this - the threat of Iran filling the regional power vacuum being foremost - but prudence is often the enemy of justice).
These 26 officials represent the old school, and they don't like the new approach. They have many allies within the military and intelligence and diplomatic communities, too, so expect "unnamed sources" in State, the CIA and elsewhere to leak information in support of them.
Of course, the biggest irony of these people coming out of the woodwork now is that they are already winning the fight. The Administration seems to only be paying lip service to democracy-building in the Middle East and seems to be just looking for a face-saving way out of Iraq. The recent elevation of Iyad Allawi, the CIA's man in Baghdad, seems part of this, as does the ceding of so much power over the democratization process to a UN official not exactly known for his democratic credentials, Lakhdar Brahimi. The deal with Libya looks good on the short-term WMD threat front, but bad on the long-term front, as Western companies flood into Tripoli to make deals with a dictator who still supports terrorists. Even our Arabic-language radio station does more to promote Britney Spears than to promote democracy. And don't get me started on State's hostility to regime change in Iran.