Bloggingheads has just posted a segment in which Jacob Heilbrunn and I discuss my new book, U.S. vs. Them. If you stop by, you can watch Jacob and me argue about the irrationality of the Iranian regime, the futility of arms control, and whether we're more likely to be nuked now than we were at the beginning of the Bush presidency. Enjoy!

Hi! I'm Peter's research assistant, Barron YoungSmith. I was intimately involved with the book for quite some time, and now I work at The New Republic. I'll be guest-blogging here, often cross-posting book related items from The Plank. Nice to meet you too.

--Barron YoungSmith

Charles Krauthammer has been taking the Bush administration to task over Iran. His recent National Review piece began, "It is time to admit the truth: The Bush administration's attempt to halt Iran's nuclear program has failed. Utterly."

Simply put, he's angry Bush hasn't overturned the Iranian regime with strong enough sanctions, nor hit Iran with air strikes. Because we've failed so disastrously on these counts, Krauthammer says, the only thing to do is adopt a "Holocaust Declaration" promising massive retaliation against Iran in response to any nuclear attack on Israel.

I admire his determination to secure the United States and Israel, but I can't help but think his position utterly absurd. Why? Because Krauthammer has backed the Bush administration's position from the start--the very same 'utterly failed' approach that has resulted in Iran continuing to enrich uranium, unimpeded.

Check out this Eye on Books audio interview with Peter and find out how he really feels.

--Staff

We're slamming Phyllis Schlafly for her role in the culture wars, but she was arguably more destructive during the 1950s, '60s and '70s--decades she spent facilitating Barry Goldwater's rise (authoring A Choice, Not An Echo), while agitating against arms control and "appeasement" of China and the Soviet Union.

While it was a bit choppy, I'd have to say Obama's speech today was an epochal stride towards dismantling the conservative advantage on foreign policy--attacking its rhetorical substructure in way Democrats have not done before.

Bush, McCain and other conservatives are on the wrong side of history when they dismiss Obama's foreign policy.

By J. Peter Scoblic

Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2008

In a speech to the Israeli parliament Thursday, President Bush took a swipe at Barack Obama for his willingness to negotiate with evil regimes.

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

But if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight.

And it's not just that he doesn't wear a moustache.

Never Mind the ‘Neo’
May 25, 2008
by Nicholas Confessore (link)

As the occupation of Iraq grinds through its sixth year, many who view American involvement there as a disaster are content to blame the neoconservatives, those operatives and intellectuals inside and outside the Bush administration who once believed they could democratize the Middle East at the point of a gun. Even some right-leaning critics have declared that the neoconservative project in Iraq was both utopian and imprudent, and therefore at odds with basic conservative principles.

Not so fast, says J. Peter Scoblic. In “U.S. vs. Them,” Scoblic, the executive editor of The New Republic, argues persuasively that neoconservatism isn’t the problem — plain old conservatism is. For Scoblic, the Bush administration’s habits of foreign affairs — its distrust of international institutions, its conviction that “good” and “evil” nations cannot coexist in the world — are part of an inglorious tradition of bad ideas that dates to the years of the cold war, when Barry Goldwater lobbied against building a Moscow-Washington hot line.