Christopher Hitchens apparently didn’t get the memo that it’s no longer verboten to recognize that certain U.S. policies have, in some cases, exacerbated the very problem of Islamic extremism that they were intended to address. Responding to Robert Wright’s Sunday New York Times op-ed, in which Wright suggested that Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan and Little Rock shooter Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad were driven to violence in part by images of U.S. forces killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens fumes:

For a start, did Hasan or Muhammad ever say what “killing” of which “Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan” they had in mind? There isn’t a day goes by without the brutal slaughter of Muslims in both countries by al-Qaida or the Taliban. And that’s not just because most (though not all) civilians in both countries happen to be of the Islamic faith. The terrorists do not pause before deliberately blowing up the mosques and religious processions of those whose Muslim beliefs they deem insufficiently devout. Most of those now being tortured and raped and executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran are Muslim. All the women being scarred with acid and threatened with murder for the crime of going to school in Pakistan are Muslim. Many of those killed in London, Madrid, and New York were Muslim, and almost all the victims callously destroyed in similar atrocities in Istanbul, Cairo, Casablanca, and Algiers in the recent past were Muslim, too. It takes a true intellectual to survey this appalling picture and to say, as Wright does, that we invite attacks on our off-duty soldiers because “the hawkish war-on-terrorism strategy—a global anti-jihad that creates nonstop imagery of Americans killing Muslims—is so dubious.” Dubious? The only thing dubious here is his command of language. When did the U.S. Army ever do what the jihadists do every day: deliberately murder Muslim civilians and brag on video about the fact? For shame. The slippery slope—actually the slimy slope—is the one down which Wright is skidding.

It’s probably important to point out here the yawning chasm between saying that “we invite attacks on our off-duty soldiers” through a “hawkish war-on-terrorism strategy” — which Wright did not do — and saying that a “hawkish war-on-terrorism strategy” and its attendant right-wing propaganda has generated resentment which in turn fed Hasan’s and Muhammad’s extremism, which is was Wright does say. As a general point about radical extremism, I think it’s so obvious as to no longer be controversial. In specific regard to Hasan and Muhammad, I think the jury’s still out.

I find it hard to believe, though, that Hitchens hasn’t yet moved beyond this idea that saying “the terrorists are very bad!” and then detailing some of the very bad things that “the terrorists” do constitutes an actual argument. This sort of petulant sanctimony went out of style years ago. For the record: Yes, “the terrorists” are very bad. So are some of the consequences of our poorly thought out policies for dealing with them. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive.

At the Middle East Institute yesterday, John Limbert, who was recently appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, discussed his his new book Negotiating with Iran.

Limbert spent 33 years in the Foreign Service, serving in Algeria, Djibouti, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. From 2000-2003 he served as ambassador to Mauritania, and retired in 2006 with the rank of Minister-Counselor. In 1979, he was among those taken hostage by radical Iranian students at the American embassy in Tehran. As Politico reported, Limbert “is the recipient of the Department’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Award, as well as an Award for Valor for his more than a year as a hostage in Iran, months of it spent in solitary confinement.”

Though Limbert made clear that he was speaking yesterday as an author and not in his capacity as a State Department official, his comments do provide insight into the thinking of a key U.S. official dealing with Iran.

The important question of his book, Limbert said, “is not ‘should we or shouldn’t we’” negotiate with Iran. “The important question is, when we finally end our thirty year estrangement, how do we do it?” It is important to acknowledge, Limbert said, that “hostility and suspicion still run very deep, and they run deep on both sides.” The Iranian view is typified, Limbert said, “in a famous rhetorical question from Ayatollah Khomeini. When asked about negotiations with the United States, he [Khomeini] replied: ‘What for? What does the wolf have to negotiate with the sheep?’”

On the American side, Limbert said, “you find something similar.” There is an idea “that one could never have successful negotiations with leaders who do and say what Iran’s leaders do and say… Because they are too fanatical, too xenophobic, too suspicious, and too untrustworthy to deal with.” This view is alive and well in Washington, Limbert said, “and I’ve encountered it as recently as last week.” Limbert suggested that this view was simply a reverse of Khomeini’s view, asking instead “what do the rational have to negotiate with the crazies?”

Knocking down some of the caricatures of Iran that tend to dominate U.S. media coverage, Limbert said “There’s much more to Iran — and much more to negotiating with Iran — than the absurdity of presidential statements coming out of Tehran and the nastiness of the current system.” Trained as an historian and fluent in Farsi, Limbert noted his great interest in Iran in the 14th century, a time in which he said “you had creative, vibrant artistic people living under rulers who, to put it bluntly, were thugs, fanatics, and bigots.” It was not incorrect, Limbert said, to notice “a similarity between conditions then and conditions now.”

Limbert was asked at what point the administration might say “enough is enough” and walk away from engagement. “I think you’re going to need a lot of patience,” he said. But “if it’s worth it — and I think from what I read and what I hear, this administration has decided that it is worth it, and knows that it will take a lot of patience. Thirty years of suspicion, thirty years of trading insults, thirty years of name-calling, and sometimes exchanges going beyond just rhetoric, that’s tough to overcome.”

Asked whether Iran’s current domestic politics would impact negotiations, Limbert replied “obviously it will,” and would likely make striking a deal more difficult. But, Limbert said, “if you wait for a good time” to try and change the relationship, “it will never come. It’s always going to be a bad time.”

Limbert said it was clear that “The system that’s been in place, where you have a ruling men’s club of about twenty five senior people” was passing away. “The core elite of the Islamic Republic… are getting old and departing the scene,” but more important, Limbert said, “the consensus which had existed among this group whose cohesion allowed the Islamic Republic to survive some horrific shocks…seems to be breaking down, and something different is coming out of it.” Limbert said that “the system to seems to be reverting to an earlier model of rule by the gun, and rule by force. Some of the features you see emerging now are reminiscent of what you saw under the Pahlavis.”

Asked whether human rights should be part of the negotiation, Limbert’s answer was direct: “Of course.” The Iranians deserve a far better government than they have, Limbert said. “Should it [human rights] be a matter for negotiation? Of course. Should it be the only matter for negotiation? I don’t think so. I would hope that we’re smart enough to deal with one issue at a time. And I think we are.”

Senate Republicans exposed their strategy to kill the new START treaty: procrastinate and then blame the other guys. The Cable reports that Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), are cynically preparing to unleash a wave of attacks that warn of the dangers that will occur when the original START treaty expires on December 5th.

Kyl claims to be shocked, shocked! – that the START treaty is about to expire. Kyl said in a floor statement this week (pdf):

Mr. President, I don’t say this lightly, but, this borders on malpractice.

Kyl goes on to argue that this will leave all the verification procedures up in the air and will allow the Russians to cheat on the treaty. But by making this argument Kyl has either miraculously seen the light on the value of arms control treaties or he is simply one of the biggest hypocrites in the Senate. After doing nothing for eight years to advance a new START treaty, it takes some real chutzpah for Kyl to attack the Administration for not getting a treaty done in eight months.

By warning of the dangers when the Treaty expires, Kyl is actually making an argument for ratifying a new START treaty right away. If the treaty expires and no new treaty is ratified in the Senate, the Russians will be able to do whatever they want with their nuclear arsenal. Yet, Kyl has not committed to supporting a new treaty and many conservatives like Kyl have consistently lambasted arms control treaties in general, arguing that they make us weaker by constraining our nuclear arsenal. So it is rather duplicitous that with START about to expire, Kyl suddenly finds enough religion on arms control to argue how unconscionable it will be if there is no treaty in place.

In fact, Kyl makes the amazing claim that:

only recently has verification gotten the attention it deserved all along.

This is pretty shocking coming from Kyl, since he never seemed to care much about verification before Obama was in the White House. During Bush administration negotiations over another arms control treaty – the 2002 SORT treaty – Senate Republicans expressed little concern that the treaty had few verification measures in place. Arms Control Today writing in 2005 explained that the Bush administration had a “casual” approach to verification and “did not negotiate any verification measures for the treaty because it claimed to have confidence that Moscow would limit its warheads by the treaty’s terms.” Kingston Rief added, “It’s telling that some of the same conservatives who supported the SORT approach are now accusing the Obama administration of being weak on verification.”

If the START treaty were to expire, it would allow the Russians to tinker and adjust their nuclear arsenal in violation of the spirit of the treaty. This is exactly why the Administration is in the midst of negotiating an interim bridging agreement.