Cheney Defeat: Negroponte is Not Eric Edelman
Negroponte is taking the deputy job at Foggy Bottom. One precarious but potentially interesting way to understand the meaning of the Negroponte shift is to ask who didn’t get the deputy job. Back in 2004, Al Kamen at the Washington Post spread the rumor that Cheney wanted to put his National Security deputy Eric Edelman in the number two slot:
The latest name du jour for deputy secretary of state is Eric S. Edelman, now ambassador to Turkey, who is seen as someone — perhaps the only one on the planet — who can comfortably straddle all the relevant political worlds. He’s a career foreign service officer, a former ambassador to Finland who also worked for then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz and for Clinton Ambassador-at-Large Strobe Talbott.
But he also worked for Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney from 1990 to 1993 and for Vice President Cheney from 2001 to 2003 and with Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice frequently when he represented Cheney at top-level meetings. Edelman was sworn in to his current job by, of course, Cheney.
Helene Cooper at the New York Times suggests that Cheney has wanted to get Edelman a spot at State since Rice’s arrival.
Vice President Dick Cheney wanted her to appoint his former deputy national security adviser, Eric S. Edelman, as her political director; she balked and instead chose R. Nicholas Burns, a friend who had worked for her at the security council during the administration of the first President Bush.
No dice. Rest assured, Edelman found a home at the Pentagon where he replaced Douglas Feith as the number three civilian. Gates has made no move to dump Edelman.
Edelman’s “failure” to get the nod from Rice surely seems to mark a loss for Cheney.
Cheney Defeat: Khalilzad is Not Victoria Nulan
News reports suggest that Zalmay Khalilzad will replace John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations.
Al Kamen’s rumor mill had spread the word that Victoria Nuland was a leading candidate for that post.
At the United Nations, where there is no U.S. ambassador, idle chatterers are talking about Victoria Nuland, now ambassador to NATO, as a possible choice to succeed John R. Bolton. Nuland, who is a career Foreign Service officer and is married to Robert Kagan, a contributor to the Washington Post op-ed page, was top foreign policy adviser to Vice President Cheney and before that an aide to Clinton confidante Strobe Talbott when he was deputy secretary of state. Well, the bases can’t get more covered than that.
If Kamen’s idle chatter means anything, then the Khalilzad appointment might also be coded as a loss for Cheney.
Cheney Defeat: Ryan Crocker is Not… A Neocon
Word of Khalilzad’s move out of Iraq has been rumored for some time, as has his replacement by Ryan Crocker.
When Crocker was appointed to the Coalition Provisional Authority back in 2002, the Middle East Economic Digest (â€Revealed–The Seven Men Who Will Run Iraq,†June 6, 2003) described Crocker as “A career US foreign service official and Arabist.â€
Right Zionist Michael Rubin had this to say about Crocker in May 2004:
Of the first 18 senior advisers deployed to Baghdad, none were from the Defense Department; perhaps half were State Department bureau of Near Eastern affairs ambassadors or policy-planning staff members…
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker became both Garner and Bremer’s governance director. He handpicked the political team, staffing it almost exclusively with career Near Eastern Affairs diplomats and members of the Policy Planning Staff.
Back in 2003, Crocker had been rumored to be the leading candidate to serve as US Ambassador to Iraq. This brought howls of protest from Right Zionists. In an article entitled “State Department Giving Baghdad to House of Saud?,†Joel Mowbray had nothing kind to say about Crocker:
State is already placing—or attempting to place—pro-Saudi individuals in important positions in a post-Saddam Iraq:… State’s top pick for ambassador to the post-Saddam Iraq is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ryan Crocker… Crocker will undoubtedly run into opposition from the White House, where the President’s vision of a democratic Iraq is diametrically opposed to Crocker’s view of the Arab world.
There are no public signs of tension between Crocker and Cheney, nor does it seem that Cheney allies ever publicly floated an alternative. Nevertheless, it is probably worth noting: Crocker is no friend of Cheney’s Neocons.
Neocons: Did Petraeus Betray Us?
Lieutenant General David Petraeus has been tapped to serve as the top US commander in Iraq.
Petraeus is going to be very popular with lots of folks, but not Neocons and counterinsurgency hawks.
Right Zionist Michael Rubin has concerns about Petraeus:
Petraeus is highly-respected and media-savvy. However, his record is uncertain. While it is be important to win the support of the local population, it is also important to differentiate between what the local population wants, and what the squeaky wheels demand. Empowering extremists is not a good strategy. By reintegrating Islamists and Baathists into sensitive positions in Mosul, Petraeus bought short-term stability to his area of operation at the expense of long-term security. He also championed outreach to Syria, at one point bragging to a visiting delegation about the increase of cross-border trade. Such trust backfired. That said, his work getting the Iraqi army training program off-the-ground was impressive.
Ralph Peters at the New York Post offers up some similar criticism.
Regaining control of Baghdad – after we threw it away – will require the defiant use of force. Negotiations won’t do it. Cultural awareness isn’t going to turn this situation around (we need to stop pandering to our enemies and defeat them, thanks). We insist it’s all about politics and try to placate everybody, while terrorists, insurgents and militias slaughter the innocent in the name of their god and their tribe…
In my contacts with Petraeus, we’ve sometimes agreed and sometimes argued. But we diverged profoundly on one point: The counterinsurgency doctrine produced under his direction remains far too mired in failed 20th-century models. Winning hearts and minds sounds great, but it’s useless when those hearts and minds turn up dead the next morning.
Cheney Down for the Count?
So, if all of this “personnel politics” runs against the grain of Cheney’s agenda, does that mean the Vice President has lost control of the ship of state?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Nice roundup of changes in the works.
I’ve had this funny feeling about the Saddam execution, that latent in the execution of the execution, was a bait and switch scheme that allowed the Sadrists to profile themselves as “extremists” by their own hand, and by implication the Maliki government, who additionally at the least, was made to look utterly incompetent. And then also the whirl-wind anti-Shiite reaction across the Sunni world.
Now this could all be the result of an accident or the incompetence we’re all used to, but for the weird contradictory statements givin by Iraqi security advisor Mowaffak Al-Rubaie aka Mr Cellophane, known CIA operative — gives me the impression of perhaps an inside job. One that follows in the footsteps of the Hadley memo. And now coupled with new appointees regarded as “arabists”, and highlighted with the sudden “surge” in troops strength requested and we have the makings of a reversal of course and maybe that government of “national salvation” will finally make its anticipated debut.