Via Andrew Sullivan, I sure do like me this Attack Mode Joe Biden lighting into Rudy Giuliani:

Sure there is, but with these guys, he knows so little about foreign policy he confuses terrorists cells and organizations with countries. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before this war. Al-Qaeda became a Bush-fulfilling prophecy. It didn’t exist until Bush went to war. Even our own intelligence community says that. But these guys buy into this silliness that if you don’t fight them in Baghdad you’re going to fight them in Boston. Give me a break.

I know my man Ezra Klein’s been touting Biden as a potential Veep pick for his attack dogging skills, which seems like a pretty poor idea to me (one needs a VP who understands that the Presidential candidate is supposed to do the bulk of the talking…) but this is good stuff.

Peter Beinart pens a very smart analysis of why Barack Obama’s had trouble gaining traction with his foreign policy critique of Hillary Clinton: His arguments about forward-looking Iraq policy make him look “like he’s splitting hairs,” the Senate resolution on Iran Clinton voted for “was rewritten to avoid any suggestion of military force,” and most of all he “runs smack into America’s strange indifference to the past. Recent American history is littered with candidates who were right about war and weren’t rewarded at election time.”

But Beinart misses another problem with Obama’s strategy. When he tries to engage in an intra-party argument about foreign policy, people like Peter Beinart who’ve gone so far as to write a book about intra-Democratic disputes about foreign policy issues ignore what he’s arguing in favor of making arguments about why his arguments aren’t penetrating.

But that still leaves us with the question: Whether or not the voters care about a vote that happened five years ago, should they care? Not necessarily. But in combination with the fact that her posture toward Iran seems more aggressive, that she’s less optimistic about the possibility of achieving a “grand bargain” through diplomacy, that her forward-looking Iraq policy seems more focused on a continuing military role, that she’s been more cautious on America’s nuclear arsenal, that she’s attacked her primary opponents from the right on foreign policy issues, that seems to have a more hawkish cadre of advisors, and that has every incentive at the moment to minimize the appearance of a difference between her and Obama, I think all the evidence points in one direction: Obama would pursue a more restrained foreign policy, more inflected by the strains of realism and internationalism that have come to predominate among the dovish camp in American politics whereas Clinton would pursue a more militarily expansive one, more in line with the thinking of the establishmentarians who got us into war with Iraq and have since come to kinda sorta regret but don’t really think they were wrong.

Can I say with 100 percent certainty what that’ll amount to at the end of the day? No. Presidents have a habit of re-evaluating their foreign policy approach while in office. But it seems to me that the role of a journalist who’s attuned to the small ins-and-outs of these debates is precisely to convey to readers things they might not otherwise pick up on, not to merely explain that people aren’t picking up on stuff. And there’s the rub, the differences in the positions Clinton and Obama have staked out have been subtle, but the differences keep lining up the same way.

Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf is stepping down from his post as head of the army, ready for a new civilian life as a . . . well, dictator. But a civilian dictator. General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani will take over as head of the military, and he’s someone who’s liked in American defense circles since he went to Fort Leavenworth, etc., and “has played a prominent role in cooperating with the United States in the fight against terrorism in Pakistan and is expected to continue that policy.”

This sounds a bit like meet the old boss, same as the old boss, but wearing a slightly different uniform, but what do I know….

I’d stopped reading Roger Cohen, but Marty Peretz’s denunciations of Cohen’s latest column made it sound . . . insightful! And, indeed, it’s really good:

His best hope in Annapolis may be the Texas connection. If Bush gets behind Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister who attended the University of Texas, things may move. But he has to stick with him. [...] Fayyad is right. A return to the 1967 lines, plus or minus agreed swaps, is the only basis for a two-state accord. An Israeli settlement freeze is the first step to a Palestinian buy-in. A timetable is the anchor all the talking needs.

Meanwhile, if I read him correctly, Peretz’s view is that Israel shouldn’t reach an accommodation with the Palestinians, because the Palestinians might break the agreement: “Does he really want Israel to give up the West Bank on the wager that rockets will not be aimed at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as they are — daily — from Gaza onto Sderot?” A Palestinian who reads this kind of “pro-Israel” political commentary is going to have to reach the conclusion that there’s no point in conducting talks with Israelis about a two-state solution. Their mentality is that the existence of any kind of Palestinian state is an intolerable threat, since such a state could be used as a launching pad for rockets. That Palestinian is going to reach the conclusion that the only possibility for his people to achieve their national aspirations is going to be through the destruction of Israel.

And through such logic, conflicts would never end. Among other things, Israel would still be threatened by a hostile Egypt at its door and vice-versa. But, really, no compromise and no diplomacy would ever be possible. In the real world, though, there’s nobody to make peace with but your enemies. And there’s nothing to be gained unless you’re willing to at least not rule out in advance the possibility that negotiations might produce a mutually beneficial agreement.

Marc Ambinder flags a press account of Bill Clinton claiming to have been against the invasion of Iraq:

“Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning,” said Clinton, “I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers.” Clinton has long been critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and called it a “big mistake” as far back as November of 2005.

Marc notes that this is likely to muddy Hillary Clinton’s message. Nor does it seem, um, accurate to me. Probably the best example of Bill’s contemporaneous thinking on Iraq is his March 18, 2003 Guardian op-ed “Trust Tony’s Judgment.” Here, Clinton makes it clear that he sees Blair as having spent the past year navigating a wise middle course between regime change hawks in the US and die-hard anti-war types on the continent. Blair, with great finesse, had used threats of force to move the inspections ball down the road until we reached the point of mid-March. Clinton paid no note to the fact that the inspectors were on the ground saying there was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Indeed, Clinton contributed to some extent to the smokescreen of war by clouding this issue, writing “Saddam has destroyed some missiles but beyond that he has done only what he thinks is necessary to keep the UN divided on the use of force. The really important issues relating to chemical and biological weapons remain unresolved.”

Thus the central plank of the argument for war — that it was necessary to invade in order to halt Saddam’s advance nuclear weapons program — was swept under the rug at just the point where it was becoming clear that this talking point was false. Clinton regret the outbreak of war, but put the blame for it squarely on the shoulders of France, Russia, and Germany, arguing that “if a majority of the security council had adopted the Blair approach, Saddam would have had no room for further evasion and he still might have disarmed without invasion and bloodshed. Now, it appears that force will be used to disarm and depose him.” Clinton endorsed the view that Saddam’s alleged WMD arsenal was a terrorism threat, “There is, too, as both Britain and America agree, some risk of Saddam using or transferring his weapons to terrorists.” Then he concluded:

I wish that Russia and France had supported Blair’s resolution. Then, Hans Blix and his inspectors would have been given more time and supprt for their work. But that’s not where we are. Blair is in a position not of his own making, because Iraq and other nations were unwilling to follow the logic of 1441.

In the post-cold war world, America and Britain have been in tough positions before: in 1998, when others wanted to lift sanctions on Iraq and we said no; in 1999 when we went into Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing. In each case, there were voices of dissent. But the British-American partnership and the progress of the world were preserved. Now in another difficult spot, Prime Minister Blair will have to do what he believes to be right. I trust him to do that and hope that Labor MPs and the British people will too.

What Blair believed was right was, of course, invading Iraq. Obviously, it’s possible that Clinton wrote a March 18 op-ed urging blind faith in Tony Blair’s leadership, then when Blair invaded Iraq a few days later was shocked to see him make such a mistake, but then decided he better not say anything about the wisdom of the invasion until years later, but it’s not very plausible. For all intents and purposes, Clinton’s public statements on the Iraq issue (like those of Colin Powell and Tony Blair) were part of the push to round up “moderate” support for the war. I remember this stuff. I was one of the millions of Americans who thought that, sure, George W. Bush must be a maniac but if Bill and Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright (and other Clinton-era officials like Ken Pollack) and Joe Biden and so on and so forth think it’s a good idea, maybe I should have some more confidence. Obviously, that was a stupid, stupid mistake. But I find it really offensive that people who abused the trust of citizens who admired them by selling us on this mess now want to turn around and do it again by pretending that never happened.

It’s hard to know what to make of the new that Hillary Clinton is telling people she’d like to appoint Colin Powell to do something or other related to improving America’s standing in the world. Powell’s obviously a knowledgeable, experienced guy and I suppose it would make sense for a new President to talk to him and get his perspective on things. Maybe even send the message that it’s not just Democrats who think the country’s taken a totally messed-up course over the past few years.

But then again, if Clinton’s looking to assuage people’s doubts about her foreign policy judgment, this seems like a terrible way to do it. A lot of Clinton’s pro-invasion advisors are too obscure for most people to recognize. But Powell was the public face of the Iraq sales pitch. He’s also a man who did have enough independence from his commander-in-chief to undermine her husbands efforts to bring gay equality to the military when Bull Clinton was president and Powell was in uniform. But as Secretary of State he raised some skeptical questions about the war, heard some answers, and then not only hopped on the bandwagon, but used his leverage as someone with a reputation for skepticism to make the sales pitch all the more effective.