Neocons Can’t Stop Spinning
Neocons Can’t Stop Spinning
In a column in this morning’s LA Times, Commentary magazine essayist Gabriel Schoenfeld (who we last saw here, misunderstanding Al Qaeda’s use of media), attacks widely respected arms control expert Joe Cirincione for Cirincione’s skepticism of a Syrian nuclear weapons threat. Schoenfeld writes:
Interviewed by Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker after the [September 2007] Israeli raid, Cirincione was emphatic: “Syria does not have the technical, industrial or financial ability to support a nuclear weapons program. I’ve been following this issue for 15 years, and every once in awhile a suspicion arises and we investigate and there’s nothing. There was and is no nuclear weapons threat from Syria.” [...]
Cirincione has admitted that he got it wrong, explaining that the evidence “seems strong” that Syria was building a reactor and that no one can bat 1,000.
The way Schoenfeld writes it, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there actually was a nuclear weapons threat from Syria. And, of course, that’s the point. This is the sort of alarmism in which Schoenfeld regularly trafficks. But the thing is, Joe Cirincione is right: There was and is no nuclear weapons threat from Syria. In late April, the Bush administration revealed intelligence indicating that Syria was “within weeks or months” of completing a nuclear reactor. And a nuclear reactor is not a nuclear weapon. The Washington Post’s William Arkin pointed out that “Even if Syria managed to complete a plutonium production reactor, and then managed to operate it for the months would be needed to manufacture the materials it needed, and then managed to machine that plutonium, and then design and fabricate a nuclear weapon, many months if not years would go by. Such a program would be detected, proven and probably thwarted by the international community.”
A new report from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies was also “dismissive of Syria’s nuclear prospects, [and] said it made little sense for the country to secretly build nukes when it already had an arsenal of chemical weapons.”
This is not to downplay the threat of nuclear proliferation. But those interested in dealing seriously and productively with the problem (as opposed to, ahem, laying the groundwork for a war with Iran) should understand that the record of the Bush administration on proliferation has been, like the rest of Bush’s foreign policy, disastrous. As Joe Cirincione himself wrote in May 2006:
The [Bush] administration’s counter-proliferation strategy has made these [nuclear] dangers grow, not shrink. Proliferation problems over the past five years have gotten worse, not better. Most of the construction and development of Iran’s nuclear program has occurred since 2000. The same is true in North Korea. In the past three years, while we have been bogged down in Iraq, North Korea has pulled out of the agreement that had frozen its plutonium program, gone from enough material for perhaps two bombs to an estimated ten bombs worth, withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and declared itself a nuclear-weapon state. U.S. policy has completely failed to stop either country’s efforts.
The unfortunate reality is that the sort of complicated diplomatic work involved in protecting America from loose nukes is generally irrelevant to conservatives’ conception of national security, which is more about identifying new enemies, and then bombing them, and later, attacking liberals for having been right about what a stupid plan that was.
While it’s gratifying to see some of our conservative friends develop, at long last, an interest in accuracy, if Gabe Schoenfeld is truly interested in sounding the alarm on experts who have been proven repeatedly and monumentally wrong, he could probably start with his fellow Commentarian Max Boot, who — after warning of Saddam Hussein’s “top-of-the-line weapons of mass destruction” — has been declaring victory in Iraq since December 2003. Then Schoenfeld can stop by Norman Podhoretz’s office and see if Norm’s figured out what a Kurd is. Then Schoenfeld can move on to the various experts employed by the network of conservative think tanks, magazines, and vanity publications — many of whom, like Boot, now work as advisers to John McCain’s presidential campaign — whose countless distortions and deceptions helped to get the United States into Iraq, and now endeavor to keep us there.
But that’s only if Schoenfeld is genuinely interested in accuracy, and not just talking trash.
3 Responses to “Neocons Can’t Stop Spinning”
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Matt,
Cirincione was also accusing neocons of making up intelligence about the Syrian reactor that he claimed was a box in the dessert. This is what Hersh also said. It is what the “reality based community” insisted was true. You now concede that it was a nuclear reactor. Hence Cirincione’s charges were false. Also Cirincione, Hersch and others in the alleged RBC have said for more than 2 years now that any day now Bush is going to bomb Iran. None of that has happened either. Two days ago you speculated based on one AP story, since debunked, that Sistani had laid the verbal groundwork for a new Shiia intifadah. I admire the fighting spirit and all. But maybe it’s deep breath time.
Eli
May 25th, 2008 at 12:05 pmEli,
I think harping on the fact that Cirincione got something wrong is missing the point here. He admitted he was wrong on this one, but one mistake does not discredit an entire career. As far as Schoenfeld goes, with all the mistakes he makes, it is incredible he is published at all.
Also, did you stop to think that perhaps one reason the Bush administration has not made any move on Iran is because Cirincione and others like him – those with level headed approaches to foreign policy – have been working, successfully, to block such an action (or at least point out how stupid it would be and thus making the option unattractive to the administration)?
May 25th, 2008 at 5:20 pmFrom what I’ve read it takes about 4-5 years to build a reactor and 5 years more to develop a production facility for practical amounts of fissile material. Development of an appropriate delivery system also seems to take a similar amount of time—even with “off the shelf’ components. All of this costs a sizeable amount of money though if the need is determined the money is invariably found whether the nation can “afford” such a program or not.
Assuming the Syrian facility in question was a reactor under construction it would arguably have been 10 years from now that Syria would be able to test a weapon. Theoretically Israel would have done better to wait until the facility was closer to completion before attacking it (apparently at the time the facility lacked the support infrastructure a reactor requires) because the loss to Syria would have been that much greater, in money and program development.
I’d also assume that if Israel had a legitimate case against Syria, they would have made their charges public and immediately offered some proof to support their actions, but they did not. Only after being pressed the evidence they have since supplied has been extremely scant and decidedly weak (no appropriate infrastructure at the site, no release of radioactivity detected to indicate even the presence of nuclear material, let alone a even a functioning facility).
Conversely Syria should have made a major public case that the facility was not nuclear (whether it was or not), but they kept remarkably quiet also. The fact that the IAF was able to pass through the entire Syrian Air Defense system without incident might explain the Syrian’s near-silence on the matter; the facility was not the issue as much as Syria’s demonstrable vulnerability. Israel’s strike was an Act of War, but Syria was demonstrably in no position to respond militarily—so a diplomatic complaint was there only option.
That Syria’s complaint was so weak suggests that they were up to something ‘provocative’ but whatever it was as far as I can tell even it was a nuclear facility it was so nascent as to be practically unrecognizable as such. That’s a far cry from Bush’s claims that Syria was “within weeks or months of completing a nuclear reactor” which even if true, would still place Syria up to a decade from producing a viable weapon which as William Arkin points out would be subject to considerable interference from the international community.
“The unfortunate reality is that [the] conservatives’ conception of national security (…) is more about identifying new enemies, and then bombing them, and later, attacking liberals for having been right about what a stupid plan that was.”
Quite so, Mr Duss.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:10 am