In response to the Iranian regime’s violence, the Green Movement protests have grown bolder. The regime now seems stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle, in which almost every action it takes in response to the protests seems to only further erode its standing among Iranians and strengthen the opposition.

And this is at the heart of what the protesters are seeking to do – delegitimize the regime until it simply can’t stand. In an attempt to break out of this trap, the regime today ginned up counterrevolutionary protests – ordering people to attend and offering free metro transit. In a similar vein, the regime has sought to paint the protests as a Western-inspired plot. So what we are seeing is a struggle for legitimacy – for the hearts and minds of the average Iranian.

Yet as Iran erupts, the far-right in the US wants to lend the regime a lifeline. John Bolton said yesterday:

I would say that mere rhetorical support for the demonstrators, for the opposition is not enough. …If we’re going to support them, we should support them tangibly, with financial support, communications, perhaps other support, as well…Will some of the guns go to the side of the demonstrators? If they do, there’s a chance the regime could fall. If they don’t, I think the disparity in power between the government and the opposition is simple too great, and so the most likely outcome is Ahmadinejad and the regime stay in power.

The best way to undermine the movement is to do exactly what Bolton is advocating. It is true that no matter what the regime will claim the protests are part of a western plot – the regime is already doing this – but this claim while perhaps persuading a few, doesn’t appear to be all that persuasive given the breadth of the protests. Yet if Obama were to read a speech from the John Bolton playbook, the regime’s claims all of a sudden become a lot more persuasive. While the regime is not going to loop on state-television a clip of Obama saying the crackdown is brutal, it sure would loop a statement of Obama saying the US is going to work to forcefully support the Green Movement. Such a statement would be music to the regime’s ears and would allow them to regain the nationalist mantel that is slipping out of their grasp.

But Bolton’s statement at its core also exposes a totally ignorant view of power and democratic change. To Bolton, and his colleagues like John McCain on the right, legitimacy is all about military force. The protests are therefore doomed because they don’t have the guns. In this simplistic view, the only thing that the US can do to support the doomed Green Movement is to somehow get guns in the hands of the protesters or to take the regime out by force before they take out the protesters.

But this completely ignores how most democratic transitions have occurred in the last half-century. What we see right now in Iran looks a lot like democratic movements that swept in democratic governments throughout much of the world. Importantly, most of these movements replaced authoritarian regimes – often brutal military dictatorships that were desperate to hold onto power – through inexhaustible mass protests that eroded any support of the sitting government and eventually forced the regime to cave. This was the case with Franco’s regime in Spain, Argentina’s military junta, the Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe, among many others. Violence often took place during these transitions, but the primary factors that brought on the collapse was not a military rebellion led by an insurgent force that suddenly storms the capital, but as result of gradual erosion of support by mass movements. This is why the regime is so paranoid about losing legitimacy, they have seen how this movie ends in countless other countries.

No one knows how or when things are going to end in Iran. In transitions to democracy, there is no magic formula, no set timeframe, and no assurance that a regime will ever capitulate even if its legitimacy is completely lost. But what we are witnessing is a regime in a tailspin, where every action it takes in reaction to a broad popular movement only further erodes its standing and strengthens that movement. Instead, of getting in the way of this vicious cycle and shifting the focus away from the regime and toward the United States we should simply get out of the way. As even Pat Buchanan argued last summer:

When your adversary is making a fool of himself, get out of the way… U.S. fulminations will change nothing in Tehran. But they would enable the regime to divert attention to U.S. meddling in Iran’s affairs.

Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon takes to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to argue that the West Bank, where numerous aspects of Palestinian life continue to be proscribed by Israeli military law, as they have been for over forty years, is not really occupied. Ayalon complains that “little appears to be truly understood about Israel’s rights to what are generally called the ‘occupied territories’ but what really are ‘disputed territories.’”

That’s because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered “occupied” in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel’s conquest. [...]

After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose. However, [U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Eugene V.] Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors.” There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since.

And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it.

On it’s face, this is a laughably tendentious argument, the sort that one would find in the pages of Commentary but that’s not taken particularly seriously by actual legal scholars or historians. Unfortunately, given that the Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel has taken it up, it has to be taken seriously, at least in as much as it indicates the extreme irredentist views of the current Israeli government.

Leaving aside the appeals to the authority of the British Mandate — the right of European colonial powers to carve up and give away their subjects’ land in the first place is, let’s just say, not uncontroversial — Ayalon’s quoting of Rostow is very selective. Rostow recognized in no uncertain terms (in the very same piece that Ayalon references, in fact) that the West Bank was occupied territory.

As did former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, decidedly not a Palestinian nationalist, who admirably cut through the bull in 2003 and acknowledged the bare fact: “You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation — to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians.” Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, also affirmed this view, noting in reference to the resentment and hatred created by Israel’s military control of over 3 million Palestinians that “We see the occupation as problematic.”

As to the notion that the previous status of the territories as Jordanian-administered somehow absolved Israel from its commitments under the Geneva Conventions, this argument was actually made and rejected by the Israeli foreign ministry’s own legal counsel before the first settlement brick was even laid. As recounted by Israeli journalist and historian Gershom Gorenberg — whose history of the settlements “The Accidental Empire” is well worth reading — “the legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, was asked whether international law allowed settlement in the newly conquered land.”

In a memo marked “Top Secret,” Mr. Meron wrote unequivocally, “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

In the detailed opinion that accompanied that note, Mr. Meron explained that the Convention — to which Israel was a signatory — forbade an occupying power from moving part of its population to occupied territory. [...]

Mr. Meron took note of Israel’s diplomatic argument that the West Bank was not “normal” occupied territory, because the land’s status was uncertain. The prewar border with Jordan had been a mere armistice line, and Jordan had annexed the West Bank unilaterally.

But he rejected that argument for two reasons. The first was diplomatic: the international community would not accept it and would regard settlement as showing “intent to annex the West Bank to Israel.” The second was legal, he wrote: “In truth, certain Israeli actions are inconsistent with the claim that the West Bank is not occupied territory.” For instance, he noted, a military decree issued on the third day of the war in June said that military courts must apply the Geneva Conventions in the West Bank.

Unfortunately, the Israeli government ignored Meron’s legal advice, and developed a series of shifting legal rationales to justify the annexation and colonization of the occupied land, which has helped to create the exceedingly difficult and volatile situation we have today.

Attempts at arriving at an internationally recognized legal dispensation for the land of Israel-Palestine have been based on the understanding that the land is legitimately claimed by two peoples, and that neither of those two peoples are going to get all of what they want. Mr. Ayalon’s argument turns this understanding on its head. Israel currently controls around 75% of what was Palestine — land on which Israel recognizes no Palestinian claim, and indeed which the current Israeli government insists the Palestinians must relinquish any claim even before negotiations.

At the same time, the current Israeli government now also insists that Israel’s own claims on the remaining 25% must be taken into account. Yet, in rejecting this frame-up, we’re apparently supposed to believe that it’s the Palestinians who aren’t being reasonable.

Always looking to score the cheap point, NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez cherry-picks a quote from an interview with Iranian dissident Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar:

Kadivar: Perhaps Western countries should stop treating Ahmadinejad’s government as the legitimate government of Iran.

Lopez: I hope the White House is reading that.

Here’s Kadivar’s full answer to the question of whether the West can do anything to support a democratic reform process:

Kadivar: The tightening of sanctions is not the right path ahead. They affect the people more than the government. A military attack is something I categorically reject. Perhaps Western countries should stop treating Ahmadinejad’s government as the legitimate government of Iran. Otherwise, I think the reforms must be pushed forward from inside the country.

I hope the Green movement’s fake American friends are reading that.

The full interview with Kadivar is well worth reading. A protege of the recently deceased Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, the Green movement’s most prominent clerical supporter, Kadivar has a very rich body of scholarly work critically examining various theories of the State in Shiite jurisprudence, and the appropriate role of clerics in governance. One of the most significant aspects of the current protests in Iran, and the most threatening to the regime, is the way that a long-suppressed religious critique of the Iranian system of velayet-e faqih (rule of the clerics) has found a vehicle in the Green movement, and given calls for reform even greater force and legitimacy.

There’s little appreciation of this in evidence at National Review, of course. Indeed, scroll down a few posts from Lopez’s and you’ve got NRO’s resident “Muslim Peril”-ologists Mark Steyn and John Derbyshire debating “whether Islam itself is the problem.” This as Iranians are protesting their government with calls of “Allahu Akbar” from the rooftops every night. It’s amazing that it’s almost 2010 and this is still the state of the discourse among conservative blogs.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has been taking heat for his comments on Fox News yesterday about how we need to “act preemptively” against extremist networks in Yemen. While it’s almost always safe to assume that Lieberman, like his comrade-in-tinny-bravado Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), is in favor of new wars, in this case I think treating Lieberman’s comments as advocating a preemptive U.S. invasion of Yemen actually obscures how wrong Lieberman really is. Here’s the offending passage:

LIEBERMAN: Yemen now becomes one of the centers of that fight [against Islamic extremism]. I was in Yemen in August. And we have a growing presence there, and we have to, of Special Operations, Green Berets, intelligence. We’re working well with the government of President Saleh there.

I leave you with this thought that somebody in our government said to me in the Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the danger we face.

Iraq, Afghanistan… Yemen. That’s a really careless formulation, but I think it’s fairly clear that he’s not calling for an invasion of Yemen, but something more along the lines of what we’ve got going in Pakistan. But, as Gregg Carlstrom writes, that’s a huge problem:

The U.S. spent most of this decade propping up the Musharraf government: He received a lot of military aid, a lesser amount of civilian aid, and a great deal of support on the world stage. And it was a totally counterproductive strategy: Pakistan is more unstable than ever, and America’s public image is tarnished, perhaps irreparably, in the eyes of a whole generation of Pakistanis.

Supporting the Saleh government will produce the same outcome. The U.S. has very little leverage over Saleh; it cannot impel him to approve political reforms and focus on economic development. So Yemen’s government will go on being violent and oppressive, and the U.S. — in exchange for a massive aid package — will get a limited amount of counterterrorism assistance.

This is the kind of crudely transactional international relations that infuriates people in the Muslim world. And it’s ultimately counterproductive, because it leaves in place the root causes that allow countries to become “breeding grounds” for terrorism.

As in Pakistan, last week’s U.S.-assisted air strikes in Yemen killed a number of civilians (while failing to kill their main target), which in turn fuels hatred of the government, and of the government’s U.S. sponsor, and resulting in sympathy, if not outright support, for extremists and insurgents. These bad effects will fast outweigh and overshadow any of the good effects of U.S. aid, especially if that aid is not accompanied by more responsible, less corrupt and oppressive governance.

It’s also very much worth noting that the ranks of Yemen’s Islamic extremist insurgency have been fed by fighters returning from Iraq, bringing with them tactics and experience gained in one of the previous wars that Joe Lieberman supported. Unfortunately, the nature of our national security debate is such that militaristic voices like Lieberman’s will always be treated as “serious,” even when the problems they’re proposing to solve have only been made worse by their previous harebrained militarism.

Discussing President Obama’s foreign policy approach on Meet The Press, host David Gregory asked Newt Gingrich whether “pragmatism” was appropriate in the face of threats faced by the United States. Gingrich responded “Pragmatism assumes you know what the facts are. To be pragmatic is to be in touch with reality.” Gingrich then went on to describe the president’s “two enormous challenges”:

GINGRICH: The president has two enormous challenges, and this goes back to self-deception. The first is Iran. It’s very clear the Iranians have been lying consistently, it’s very clear the Iranians want to get nuclear weapons, it’s pretty clear the Iranians — this current dictatorship — will use them. This is a much deeper crisis than anything that happened in the last decade.

The second is the very nature of the threat we have. We don’t even have a language that will allow — I would describe the irreconcilable wing of Islam, some of my friends would describe “Islamists.” In large parts of our political culture that’s politically incorrect. So if I said to you normally, “tell me what distinguishes the murderer at Fort Hood, the people we arrested in Denver and Detroit and New York, and the five people who were just picked up in Pakistan?” You could say “well, they weren’t Rotarians,” but it would be politically incorrect to describe the one common characteristic they have, which is they all belong to an irreconcilable wing of Islam which wants to destroy our civilization.

Watch it:

While it’s funny to hear one of the most prominent promoters of electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) alarmism talk about being “in touch with reality,” there’s nothing amusing about Gingrich passing off unsubstantiated assertions about Iranian nuclear intentions as “facts.” While it’s clear that the Iranians have misled the international community and concealed elements of their nuclear program, there is no conclusive evidence that the Iran regime is determined to obtain a nuclear weapon. And there is no evidence at all that, in the event that they did obtain such a weapon, that they would use one. Indeed, Iran’s past behavior points the other way. The embattled and divided Tehran regime is and has been concerned primarily with its own survival; it’s unclear how inviting the destruction that would almost certainly occur in the event of a Iranian nuclear attack serves that goal. That’s not to suggest that we should be sanguine about the prospect of deterring and containing a nuclear-capable Iran, just that there is no reason to think that the people who currently rule Iran have any intention of committing suicide.

As for Newt’s tiresome whining about “political correctness,” it’s not so much politically incorrect to say that we’re at “war” with Islamists who want to “destroy our civilization” as much as it is just incorrect. And strategically unwise. Positing the fight against Islamic extremism as a global war of civilizations, as Newt would apparently prefer, and as was done by the Bush-Cheney administration, proved to be an excellent way to reinforce the propaganda of Islamic extremists; they, too, believe that they are locked in an existential battle with the West, and they would like other Muslims to believe it as well.

One of the important lessons of the Iraq war (other than we shouldn’t have started the Iraq war) was that it’s not smart to lump all of the people fighting us at any given time — foreign extremists, anti-occupation insurgents, opportunistic criminals, guys looking to make some money to feed their families — together under one banner. The goal should be to find potential points of division among our enemies and exploit them, not bolster their numbers by affirming the pathetically grandiose claims of a tiny faction.

So I think Newt’s real problem is not that we aren’t able to have a conversation about our enemies. It’s that we’ve been having one, and Newt’s side is losing.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday this morning, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) used the recent failed attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up an airliner at the Detroit airport as an opportunity to attack the Obama administration for “appeasement,” as well as to attack unions and collective bargaining.

Asked by host Chris Wallace whether he was concerned that “the Obama administration has not done as good a job as it should have in connecting the dots,” DeMint replied “Chris, I am concerned, because it’s related to another issue that we’re dealing with now in the Senate. The administration is intent on unionizing and submitting our airport security to union bosses’ collective bargaining”:

DEMINT: And this is at a time, as Senator Lieberman said, that we’ve got to use our imaginations, we’ve got to be constantly flexible, we have to out-think the terrorists. And when we formed the airport security system, we realized we could not use collective bargaining because of that need to be flexible. Yet that appears now to be the top priority of the administration. And this whole thing should remind us, Chris, that the soft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo, these things are not gonna appease the terrorists. They’re gonna keep coming after us, and we can’t have politics as usual in Washington, and I’m afraid that’s what we’ve got right now with airport security.

Watch it:

Actually, “politics as usual” is what we’ve got with Sen. DeMint’s blatant attempt to exploit a failed terrorist attack to go after two conservative bugaboos, “appeasement” and unions. But neither engagement nor closing Gitmo represent anything like “appeasement.” Obama’s engagement with Iran, while it hasn’t yet produced an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, has done a lot to forge the international unity that will be necessary if and when the administration chooses to go the sanctions route.

On Guantanamo, General David Petraeus, among others, has recognized that closing the detention center is a wise and necessary step in the ideological battle against extremism, one that “sends an important message to the world” regarding “the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.” DeMint’s deriding these measures as “soft talk” shows that he still subscribes to the failed Bush-Cheney policies that Americans rejected in 2008.

It’s unclear what, if anything, “union bosses’ collective bargaining” has to do with the failed airliner attack, other than that DeMint doesn’t like unions, and will use any excuse to attack them.

In his effort to politicize yesterday’s failed attempted terrorist attack, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) suggested the Obama administration has thus far failed to “connect the dots.” In a tweet last night, Hoekstra seemed to say that the Obama administration hasn’t paid enough attention to Yemen:

The suspect — 23 year old Nigerian Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab — claimed to be given orders from al Qaeda in Yemen and was given an explosive device by Yemeni operatives. Hoekstra is woefully uninformed if he thinks the Obama administration hasn’t “connected the dots” to Yemen.

Yemeni security forces carried out airstrikes and ground raids against suspected al Qaeda hide-outs over the past two weeks “with what American officials described as ‘intelligence and firepower’ supplied by the United States. The assaults were Yemen’s widest offensive against jihadists in years.” President Obama reportedly personally approved the use of “military hardware, intelligence and other support to Yemeni forces” in their assault on al Qaeda.

Moreover, both Obama and his homeland security adviser, John Brennan, have cited Yemen as a key concern. After a terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen last September, Obama said:

OBAMA: We must do more to strengthen the military, police, and intelligence capability in nations like Yemen that are on the front lines in the fight against terrorism.  We need a Shared Security Partnership Program to build the infrastructure to deliver effective counter-terrorism training, and to create a strong foundation for coordinated action against Al Qaeda and its affiliates. [9/17/09]

In his speech on the Afghanistan surge to West Point cadets earlier this month, Obama highlighted Yemen again:

OBAMA: We will have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power. Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold — whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere — they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships. [12/1/09]

Similarly, Brennan noted Yemen in August as a place from which the terrorist threat is emanating:

BRENNAN: Even as the President takes a more focused view of the threat, his approach includes a third element: a broader, more accurate understanding of the causes and conditions that help fuel violent extremism, be they in Pakistan and Afghanistan or Somalia and Yemen. [8/6/09]

Despite Hoekstra’s desire to make a political issue of the terrorist attack, the evidence is clear that the terrorist threat emanating from Yemen has been a focal point for the Obama administration.

Yesterday, the White House announced that there had been “an attempted act of terrorism” aboard a trans-Atlantic Northwest Airlines flight arriving from Amsterdam as it was preparing to land in Detroit. The suspect — identified as a 23-year old Nigerian man named Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab — “certainly thought he was trying to take down the plane,” according to a White House official. 

The suspect reportedly had explosive powder taped to his leg and tried to light it on fire. He told investigators he was given the device by al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. “This guy claims he is tied to al Qaeda, specifically in Yemen,” the official said. “He claims he was on orders from al Qaeda in Yemen. Who knows if that’s true?”

Two passengers aboard the plane noticed the attempted attack, and “a third person jumped on the man and subdued him, an airline official told NBC News.” Flight attendants ran to get the fire extinguisher and the fire was soon doused. One passenger, Syed Jafry, remarked, “It was the time to be proud to be an American for sure.”

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee and current candidate for governor of Michigan, saw an opportunity to score quick political points:

“It’s not surprising,” U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Holland Republican, said of the alleged terrorist attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit. … “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” Hoekstra said. [...]

Hoekstra hadn’t yet been briefed on the incident but said he is already calling or the Obama administration to meet with Intelligence Committee members to fully inform them about the alleged terrorism attempt at the Detroit airport.

In an effort to try to prove his case for why the Obama administration is failing to “connect the dots,” Hoekstra issued this condemnatory tweet last night:

While Hoekstra hadn’t been briefed, his colleague Rep. Peter King (R-NY) was. And King — the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee — wasted no time alerting the media to much of what he was told. King rushed to Fox and CNN last night to begin issuing blame against security officials who allowed the suspect to board. “His name was in a database indicating significant terrorist connections,” King said, adding, “I’m not trying to be a Monday morning quarterback here…but let’s see what was missed.”

The Obama administration announced that “additional security measures are being taken in response to the incident, without raising the airline threat level.”

As millions of Americans celebrate Christmas with their loved ones today, one group of people will commemorate the holiday in a state of virtual “siege.” Palestinian Christians in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, are living under an occupation that is squeezing the city’s only hope for economic recovery — tourism.

The Israeli “security fence” — a sometimes 8-meter tall barrier that contains guard towers and barbed-wire fortifications that the World Court has ruled is illegal — cuts deep into the Palestinian city, and severely restricts travel and supplies. The United Nations estimates that between 50 to 70 percent of the agricultural land used by the citizens of Bethlehem has been confiscated by the building of Israel’s fence and settlement expansion. As a result of the occupation, fewer than 30 percent of visitors choose to spend the night there. ”When tourists see the wall, they think they are going into a war zone,” Adnan Suboh, a souvenir shop owner told the press. ”They are afraid.”

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have let few Christians from the Gaza Strip travel to Bethlehem to make pilgrimages for Christmas. While the Strip has nearly 3,500 Christians, the Israeli government has only offered travel permits to those below the age of 16 or above the age of 35, and “only 200 Christians from Gaza” have been allowed to make the trip.

Al Jazeera English filed this report from the city, noting that it is virtually “under siege” during Christmas. Watch it:

As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss notes, the Israeli government oftentimes disregards the human rights of its Palestinian neighbors. He suggests that threatening to suspend aid to Israel “is the only thing likely to change Israel’s behavior.”

(HT: Juan Cole)

Today, Iran’s leading daily newspaper featured an op-ed by a conservative Iranian university professor insisting that there is only one way to deter the American war on Iran that all serious Iranian analysts believe is coming: A massive wave of guerrilla attacks on American military facilities.

This tells us a lot about Iran. They really are a bunch of crazies intent on blowing up the Middle East. Look at what they publish their leading newspapers!

Oh, wait — the op-ed is actually in this morning’s New York Times, and it’s written by an American conservative, Alan Kuperman, who argues that there’s “only one way to stop Iran”: by bombing them. Trotting out the most overworked noun in the conservative foreign policy vocabulary, Kuperman writes “in the face of failed diplomacy, eschewing force is tantamount to appeasement.”

We have reached the point where air strikes are the only plausible option with any prospect of preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Postponing military action merely provides Iran a window to expand, disperse and harden its nuclear facilities against attack. The sooner the United States takes action, the better.

Kuperman doesn’t bother to mount an argument about Iran’s intentions or capabilities — he simply presupposes that Iran wants a weapon, will get one soon, and that nothing short of military action can change this:

Incentives and sanctions will not work, but air strikes could degrade and deter Iran’s bomb program at relatively little cost or risk, and therefore are worth a try. They should be precision attacks, aimed only at nuclear facilities, to remind Iran of the many other valuable sites that could be bombed if it were foolish enough to retaliate.

Ah, yes, “precision attacks” that wonderful salve for the modern, sophisticated warmonger’s conscience. This paragraph, by itself, should have disqualified Kuperman’s op-ed from running in any serious publication. The amount of work that “relatively” is doing is here is pretty staggering. One can argue that the benefits of a strike outweigh the risks and costs. I think that’s clearly wrong, but one could argue it. But stating that those costs and risks would be “little” — even “relatively” — is a flat out, bald-faced admission that you just haven’t bothered to do the work.

Kuperman uses Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility as an example of a strike that worked to delay a regime’s nuclear program. He says nothing about the fact that the Osirak example is one of the reasons that Iran has dispersed and buried its nuclear facilities around the country, though he does suggest that “Iran’s atomic sites might need to be bombed more than once to persuade Tehran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Considering the consequences of such a strike for American troops and allies in the region, and for Iran’s domestic opposition, Kuperman’s argument amounts to: “Hey, the worst might not happen!” In Kuperman’s defense, he’s not alone here. I have yet to hear any advocate of an Iran strike do better.

Kuperman has a history of providing intellectual cover for policy choices that result in huge numbers of deaths. In a 2000 Foreign Affairs essay, he argued that humanitarian intervention in Rwanda would’ve just made things worse. In 2006 op-ed, he suggested that Darfur’s victims kind of had it coming. It is utterly unsurprising that he should now apply his brand of human bean-counting to the thousands of Iranian (and American, and Iraqi, and Israeli) casualties that would very likely result from the action he advocates.

It is, however, deeply discouraging that the New York Times would choose to run it. The Weekly Standard and National Review already exist for promoting this sort of harebrained militarism. The Washington Post’s editorial page, too, has, at least in regard to foreign policy, long since devolved into a neoconservative rat’s nest. If we’re not to repeat the tragic mistakes of the very recent past, then the Times needs to start insisting on quite a bit more intellectual rigor from its guest opinionators.

Here’s an easy way to tell where someone stands on the Iran question: If they constantly refer to “the mullahs” (religious leaders) who rule Iran, then you’re most likely dealing with someone who is disdainful of U.S.-Iran engagement, who thinks that the only problem with the Bush administration’s 2003-06 hardline approach was that it wasn’t hard enough, and who buys the nonsensical “Islamofascist” construct that powered the “Global War on Terror.” You’re probably also dealing with someone who either hasn’t been following, or would like to ignore, the way that the Iranian system has been changing, especially in the wake of the June 12 elections, from one controlled primarily by “the mullahs” into one that, though still presided over by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and furnished with a fading veneer of religious legitimacy by a cadre of extremist clerics, is increasingly a military dictatorship controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

While using “the mullahs” in such a pejorative fashion may allow certain commentators to communicate their prejudices in a marginally acceptable way and stoke fear of scary guys in robes and turbans, it also elides one of the most important aspects of the current situation in Iran: The role of the mullahs in confronting “the mullahs.”

Flipping through the TV channels late last night, I landed on the 700 Club just as Pat Robertson was offering his, err, “analysis” of Iran. Suppressing with great difficulty the urge to turn away from the stupid, I watched as Pat assured his viewers that the Iranian people “hate those mullahs,” but then noted that the latest anti-government demonstrations had occurred at the funeral of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Montazeri, “one of the better-liked mullahs.” I could see on Pat’s face that he realized that he’d just kind of clowned himself, but this is the situation that a lot of conservatives find themselves in now. Having fulminated for years against “the mullahs,” they’re unsure how to react to an Iranian opposition movement powered in considerable part by mullahs.

And not just mullahs, but Islamist mullahs, such as Montazeri himself, who even though he had turned against what the Iranian Islamic Republic had become, remained a firm believer in the principles of the Iranian revolution, in the idea of an Islamic Republic, and in the appropriateness of Islam as the organizing force in society.

Noting Montazeri’s passing, neoconservative analyst Michael Rubin (who, though an occasional “mullah”-baiter himself, has also been very clear-eyed about the costs of a military strike on Iran, unlike many other neocons) gets part of the way there:

While the media focuses on popular protests in Iran, such as those which occurred in Iran after this summer’s flawed elections, the real Achilles Heel to the Iranian regime is Shi’ism. Simply put, it is hard for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to claim ultimate political and religious authority when he is outranked by many clerics who oppose him and his philosophy of government.

Rubin’s right: Shi’ism supplies a powerful anti-authoritarian critique, and Khamenei’s meager religious credentials make it difficult for him to convincingly push back against it (the fact that his government has been murdering people in the streets certainly doesn’t make it easier). It’s very important to recognize, however, that these critiques are not just being generated from within Shi’ism, but also from within Islamist Shi’ism of the same sort that enlivened the 1979 Iranian revolution. Having ceaselessly condemned Islamism as inherently inhumane and undemocratic, many conservatives are now simply unable to appreciate the manner in which Islamist arguments have been redeployed against the Iranian regime’s inhumane and undemocratic behavior.

Given the resonance of Islamist arguments, in both their Shia and Sunni variants, to significant numbers of Muslims throughout the world, developing a more nuanced view of the various trends that have too often been carelessly grouped under the scare-term “Islamist” is essential in order to cultivate a more serious and rigorous U.S. policy discussion about political reform not only in Iran, but in the broader region. We shouldn’t have any illusions that Islamists are our allies, but neither should we presume that they’re all necessarily our enemies. As events in Iran show, moderate Islamists can be an important source of religious legitimacy for the forces of reform.

According to a report published by Jacqueline Stevens in this week’s The Nation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is confining an unknown number of people in 186 secret, unmarked, and unlisted subfield offices. Since the subfield offices are designed to hold detainees in transit, they are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. As a result, Stevens claims ICE has essentially been able to hold individuals charged with a civil infraction in “conditions approaching those no longer authorized for accused terrorists.”

Stevens describes B-18, a Los Angeles storage space converted into an ICE sub-field office, as an “irrationally revolving stockroom that would shuttle the same people briefly to the local jails, sometimes from 1 to 5 am, and then bring them back, shackled to one another, stooped and crouching in overpacked vans.” In 2008, former ICE Director James Pendergraph boasted that, “If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” For one B-18 detainee, the worst part of her experience wasn’t the dirt, bugs, or clogged, stinking toilet — it was not knowing how long she would be held in a place where no one in the outside world could find her. B-18 detainees have also been left at the office overnight and forced to sleep on benches or the concrete floor without showers, heat, drinking water, soap, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, mail, attorneys or legal information.

ICE apparently “fixed the situation” after Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder were named in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and National Immigration Law Center this year. Though the lawsuit was settled and the government promptly took steps to correct many of the problems, it’s still unclear whether the improved B-18 facility represents the norm, or just one of the few exceptions amongst the clandestine network of ICE sub-field offices.

According to an October report by Dora Shriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, subfield offices represent three percent of the average daily detained population and 84 percent of all book-ins. Following Shriro’s report, DHS announced a series of reforms aimed at reining in the web of federal centers, state and county lockups, and for-profit prisons that constitute a multi billion dollar “patchwork” of detention cells created by the Bush administration. However, some critics pointed out that many of the reforms are “so fundamental that you have to wonder what they are replacing.” ICE refused Stevens’ request for an interview and offered no explanation for the lack of public disclosure of subfield office locations and phone numbers.

This week, news outlets reported on a controversial new policy that threatens women soldiers on active duty who become pregnant — and the men who impregnate them — with jailtime. Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo issued the new rule, which took effect on Nov. 4, “because he said he was losing too many women with critical skills” and needed the threat of jail and a court martial as an “extra deterrent.”

Since the news of the directive came out, Cucolo has faced strong criticism from women’s rights advocates. The National Organization for Women (NOW) called it “ridiculous.” Four women Democratic U.S. senators — Barbara Boxer (CA), Barbara Mikulski (MD), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) — wrote a letter to Cucolo urging him to rescind the policy, saying they could “think of no greater deterrent to women contemplating a military career than the image of a pregnant woman being severely punished simply for conceiving a child.”

Yesterday, Cucolo clarified the directive, saying he has no plans to court-martial pregnant women:

While violation of any of the rules in “General Order Number 1″ could lead to court-martial, Cucolo said he never intended such a drastic punishment for pregnancy.

“I believe that I can handle violations of this aspect with lesser degrees of punishment,” Cucolo told reporters. “I have not ever considered court-martial for this. I do not ever see myself putting a soldier in jail for this.”

The general said he alone would decide on each case based on the individual circumstances.

So far, there have been “eight cases of women getting pregnant while deployed under his command. Four were given letters of reprimand that were put in their local files, which means they would not end up in their permanent files and they would not be a factor in being considered for promotions. The four other women found out they were pregnant soon after they deployed; because they were not impregnated while deployed, no disciplinary action was taken.” Watch an ABC News report that aired last night on the controversy:

Even though women under Cucolo’s command may not be jailed for becoming pregnant, pregnancies are still strongly discouraged. However, Cucolo said that he has no plans to expand soldiers’ access to emergency contraception (Plan B). “We do not provide any abortive services to our soldiers,” he told reporters yesterday. “There’s nothing like that here.” Military physicians are currently barred from performing abortions on bases overseas, but Plan B has nothing to do with having an abortion. Emergency contraception is often hard to find at U.S. military bases around the world, since health facilities are “allowed to stock contraception but aren’t required to.” Sens. Al Franken (D-MN) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) recently introduced legislation that would require them to stock the contraceptives.

There is a common perception that by moving to put in place sanctions against Iran, the Obama administration is, as a result, ending its policy of engagement. In other words, we tried diplomacy now we are ready to “move on” to sanctions. This is a misperception and assumes that sanctions and engagement are contradictory. They are not. Any sanctions that are put in place must go hand in hand with a continuous effort to engage Iran.

Those who view sanctions as a substitute for diplomacy insist that for sanctions to be successful they must be so devastating to the country that they force the Iranian regime to simply capitulate. This approach is particularly prevalent on the Hill with the IRPSA sanctions bills and was articulated by Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) who asserted that the nuclear standoff could end “without a shot being fired.” In this approach, the US should put sanctions in place and simply wait for the capitulation to come – a sort of Ron Popeil vision for sanctions: “set it and forget it” and in 45 minutes it’s all done.

However, the idea that Iran will just capitulate because of sanctions is fanciful. Authoritarian regimes have shown again and again (see Iraq and Cuba) tremendous staying power in the face of comprehensive sanctions, as they are able to simply transfer the costs of these sanctions to the people and use the sanctions as a scapegoat for the regime’s failings. As Matt Duss has pointed out, the IRPSA sanctions will backfire precisely for these reasons.

Therefore, for sanctions to have any chance of success they must not only be highly targeted to prevent the regime from using them as a nationalist rallying cry, but they must go hand in hand with continued diplomatic engagement. The logic behind targeted international sanctions is that they should focus like a laser on applying costs to the regime itself, thereby preventing them from being used as a nationalist rallying cry. Once in place, the removal of these sanctions becomes a major carrot that the international community can use to lure the Iranians to make concessions. In this view, sanctions are in themselves a tool for negotiations, not a replacement for them.

This has been the approach the Administration has applied to sanctions on North Korea and it appears to be working. Effective international sanctions combined with a willingness on the part of the Obama administration to engage the North Koreans, as seen by Obama’s letter and his Special Envoy’s visit, has pushed Pyongyang to climb down and consent to restart the six-party talks. It is in this vein that Senator Kerry’s offer to visit Tehran, as reported by the Cable on Friday, should be seriously considered by the White House. Kerry apparently pitched this idea to the White House, which it is thinking it over. The Administration has also signaled that is open to further talks, in today’s briefing State Department spokesman PJ Crowley confirmed that “the offer for engagement is still there.”

There shouldn’t be any expectation that sanctions are a silver bullet for the situation in Iran and North Korea and in fact even targeted sanctions may backfire. But if sanctions are to be honestly pursued as a means to stop Iran from getting the bomb, then continuous engagement much continue. Diplomacy does not, and should not, end with sanctions.

In his West Point speech announcing his 30,000 troop escalation in Afghanistan, President Obama declared that he was committed to addressing the ongoing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “openly and honestly.” Though he did not get into specifics, Obama said he would “work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit.”

Some Democrats, such as Rep. David Obey (D-WI), have suggested a war surtax to pay for the estimated $30 billion it will cost to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But the Obama administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have rejected a tax. In a new report from the Center for American Progress, Lawrence Korb, Sean Duggan, Laura Conley, and Jacob Stokes recommend that the administration “look to the base defense budget” to pay for the escalation:

Rather than allow the supplemental and additional costs of the escalation for FY2011 to add to the large and growing national deficit, the Obama administration should look to the base defense budget for programs and weapons platforms that can be eliminated or scaled back without jeopardizing our national defense strategy or capabilities. Our allies in Great Britain have adopted such a policy. In order to pay for the cost of sending an additional 500 troops and supporting equipment to the front lines in Afghanistan, the British government is currently “reprioritizing” existing Ministry of Defense spending, including domestic cuts in civilian staff, and a commitment to improve procurement.

Noting that defense investment funds have “grown by approximately 75 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over the past decade,” they recommend adjustments to “nine costly and outmoded weapons platforms and programs and an across-the-board reduction in research, development, test and evaluation funding” that could save some $40 billion in the next fiscal year:

On Washington Journal this morning, Korb explained how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “are the first wars in our history” where Americans fiscally “haven’t been asked to make any sacrifices.” “Not only did we not raise taxes, we actually cut them and because of that we have this tremendous budget deficit,” said Korb. Watch it:

The large demonstrations that occurred at the funeral of dissident Iranian cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Montazeri indicate that the Green movement, for whom Montazeri was the most prominent source of religious support and legitimacy, remains a potent force in Iran six months after the post-election demonstrations were violently suppressed by the regime, and as thousands of Iranian demonstrators and dissidents have been imprisoned and tortured in the subsequent months.

Meanwhile, Spencer Ackerman reports that, as U.S.-Iran talks have not resulted in any significant progress on Iran’s nuclear program, “Obama administration officials and their international partners are preparing a package of economic sanctions against Iran for 2010.”

They prefer to work through the United Nations Security Council, but are prepared to work around it if necessary. Absent a major diplomatic breakthrough in the next few days,new sanctions are considered a near inevitability.

Two senior administration officials, Undersecretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey and Undersecretary of State William Burns, have for months quietly assembled working groups across the government to determine what a sanctions package might contain. The groups examine Iranian vulnerabilities across a variety of economic sectors, “everything from energy to IRGC [the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an influential and ideological branch of the Iranian military] to financial sector” activity, said a knowledgeable U.S. official who requested anonymity to discuss the unsettled contours of administration policy. The House of Representatives last week approved a bill giving Obama new authority to enact additional unilateral sanctions on Iran’s energy imports.

Finding creative ways to frustrate and slow Iran’s nuclear progress, while at the same working to create space for, or at the very least not injure or impair, Iran’s democratic opposition is a key challenge for the U.S. right now. As I wrote last week, Undersecretary Stuart Levey’s package of sanctions measures, which are aimed at garnering necessary international support and focus primarily on regime actors and various front companies used to skirt existing sanctions, not the Iranian people as a whole, probably have the best chance of working, if anything will. On the other hand, the blunt measures (IRPSA) passed by the House last week undermine both of those goals. The theory is that having ready a package of difficult-to-enforce unilateral sanctions that target Iran’s energy sector (and thus the Iranian people themselves, who will bear the brunt of these sanctions’ effects) will encourage more countries to get on board with multilateral sanctions. I’m skeptical of this theory.

Last week, Patrick Disney of the National Iranian American Council wrote of two other important bills that haven’t gotten a lot of attention. According to Disney, these bills — the Stand with the Iranian People Act (SWIPA), led by Rep. Keith Ellison, and the Iranian Digital Empowerment Act (IDEA), led by Rep. Jim Moran — “seek to redefine how Congress approaches the Iran issue“:

SWIPA removes damaging barriers in existing US law that block Americans and Iranians from working together on projects like building hospitals and schools in Iran or promoting human rights. It also places tough, targeted sanctions on human rights abusers within the Iranian government as well as on companies that provide the government with tools of repression.

Similarly, IDEA will enable Iranians to access instant messaging programs like Google Chat and Microsoft Messenger that the companies themselves have shut down in Iran due to US sanctions. It also clarifies that sanctions do not prohibit anti-censorship and anti-spying software to be sent out of the US to Iranians.

As it was during the Cold War, facilitating greater engagement at the NGO level is an important part of creating networks and cultivating solidarity between Iranian human rights activists and their supporters outside the country. And IDEA can be seen as the further implementation of Obama’s “Twitter intervention” during the post-election Iran protests, in which the Obama administration asked Twitter to delay a scheduled maintenance in order to give demonstrators uninterrupted access to the technology, which had proved a hugely important way both for demonstrators to communicate, and for getting information out of Iran: It provides people with access to tools of democracy-building, rather than attempting to directly coerce the government to behave more democratically.

And as all this is going on, the usual suspects are laying the groundwork for the next war. A new poll from the right-wing Israel Project — who were recently caught peddling a truckload of fake signatures in favor of unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran — suggests that a slight majority of Americans are in favor of bombing Iran in the event that Iran’s nuclear program is not brought to heel. This is unfortunate, as a strike on Iran, either by the U.S. or Israel, would be disastrous in a number of ways. In my view, the success of the Green movement is currently the best option for enhancing U.S., Israeli, and regional security — a recent poll showed that “two-thirds of Iranians would favor their government precluding the development of nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.” An Iranian system in which those voices are heard, then, is highly favorable. It could take a long time for the Green movement to succeed, and we shouldn’t have any illusions about the ability of outsiders to achieve that success for them, but bombing Iran, and ceaselessly talking about bombing Iran, is probably the best way to kill it.

Hailing Dick Cheney as “Conservative of the Year” in the current issue of Human Events, former ambassador John Bolton makes this transparently false claim in reference to Cheney’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute last May:

So, a major Cheney speech at AEI shortly after leaving the vice presidency was neither surprising nor aimed at the new Oval Office occupant. What was surprising, unprecedented and even unpresidential, however, was the Obama Administration’s reaction. Instead of leaving it to allies in Congress, Cabinet officers, or the media to debate the former Vice President, the White House scheduled a speech by the President himself on precisely the same topic.

The idea that Cheney’s speech was not “aimed at the new Oval Office occupant” doesn’t even pass the laugh test. AEI itself billed the speech in precisely that way, and conservative outlets promoted it as essentially an emergency intervention into President Obama’s dangerous refusal to embrace torture as a tool of American national security.

Or, alternatively, you could take Cheney’s word for it. Here’s what he says about the speech in the Human Events interview that ran along with Bolton’s fan letter:

Q: What pushed you into giving that speech [at AEI in May] and making the points you made on interrogations and gathering of intelligence?

CHENEY: When I left government, I did not plan to be active in any political sense of the word. I didn’t have a plan to go out and engage in controversy or make political speeches. What got me here was the notion that they [the Obama administration] were going to do two things: One was to investigate and possibly prosecute the CIA personnel who carried out our policies. And the other was to go after the attorneys in the Justice Department.[...]

And I thought it was just plain wrong not to stand up and defend them as well as to defend what we’d done. And it didn’t look to me like anybody was going to do it if I didn’t do it. And I was perfectly happy to do it.

So even Dick Cheney is completely out front that the speech was, in fact, “aimed at the new Oval Office occupant.” As to why Bolton would assert otherwise, it’s just a necessary part of his through-the-looking-glass argument that there has been nothing at all unusual or unprecedented about Cheney’s relentless attempts to publicly undermine the new president and his policies, and that the only unusual thing is Obama’s puzzling concern with rebutting Cheney’s brave, selfless, and totally-uninterested-in-repairing-his-own-disastrous-legacy “truthtelling” as it’s been relentlessly amplified by right-wing media over the past year.

A North Central Texas Fusion Center which provides homeland security intelligence is warning local officials about the dangers associated with the presence of foreign soccer teams at a local stadium. The threat assessment warns, “foreign soccer teams from all over the world play at Pizza Hut Park. They can bring their local gang and political issues with them. Hooliganism associated with sporting events has occurred in Brazil and Italy.”

The assessment is written by Bob Johnson, a former chief scientist for defense contractor Raytheon Co. and the chief architect and operator of the fusion system. Johnson believes that since there is “great enthusiasm” for soccer in Central and South American countries, then there’s a good chance cartel members will attend local soccer games. Johnson also tried to strengthen his case by erroneously claiming that one of Mexico’s soccer teams is owned by a drug cartel. The only evidence of cartel-owned soccer teams that Melissa del Bosque of the Texas Observer could confirm is a minor league soccer team potentially owned by Wenceslao Álvarez, a reputed leader of the “La Familia” drug gang. However, Álvarez probably hasn’t been attending any soccer games since he was sent to prison in 2008.

Soccer hooliganism, or unruly and destructive behavior, is usually sparked by fanatical supporters of rival teams and is often associated with the “reclaiming” of the game by the working classes. Ultimately, even if some drug cartel members are really big soccer fans, chances are they’re not going to risk blowing their cover over their favorite team, let alone in support of the proletariat.

A recent piece by Robert Valencia of the Center for American Progress has identified the growing popularity of soccer in the U.S. not as a security threat, but rather as “clear evidence that immigrants are acculturating to our society.” Valencia writes, “Soccer is a clear example of Hispanics’ many contributions to fostering unity…The ball of multicultural awareness and respect is in everybody’s court, and mutual prosperity should be our common goal.”

Del Bosque points out that Johnson and his wife have received $1.1 million in no-bid government contracts.

Reuters reports that despite growing “mainstream attention,” the Latin music industry is “enduring its worst downturn in recent memory.” The music industry as a whole has been struggling for many years, but that doesn’t explain why Latin music’s decline is outpacing that of the rest of the market. Numerous executives now believe immigration raids and hardline immigration policies are exacerbating the challenges posed by an economic recession:

The reasons for the drop-off cited by numerous executives echo the challenges facing the market as a whole, but their effect is magnified in a Latin marketplace that often occupies a place parallel to the mainstream. Many retailers report that sales of all Latin products — including books and other non-music-related merchandise — have suffered. Because so many Latins work in construction and service industries, they may be disproportionately affected by the economic downturn and also by harsher anti-immigration policies…

More than the economy, raids aimed at illegal immigrants have been “fatal” for business, the managing director of one Los Angeles-based Latin retailer says. “Ninety percent of our business came from immigrants. That’s gone now.”

While many in the Latin music industry are now looking at “revving up a digital marketplace” and expanding outreach to “mom-and-pop stores,” the “glaring omission” of public support for immigration reform amongst industry remains. A 2008 Reuters article pointed out that Latin acts have been more than willing to express “vocal support for a wide array of causes,” yet immigration reform has remained largely absent from their laundry list of political causes. Many industry figures say they favor immigration reform and sympathize with the plight of illegal immigrants, but few have organized broader efforts to back the cause and help “many of the people who support their music [and] are here illegally and under siege.”

Major General Anthony Cucolo, who is responsible for operations in northern Iraq, has issued a controversial new policy — which went into effect on Nov. 4 — that allows throwing women servicemembers on active duty in jail if they become pregnant:

Under the new policy, troops expecting a baby face court martial and a possible prison term – and so do the men who made them pregnant.
And the rule applies to married couples at war together, who are expected to make sure their love lives do not interfere with duty.

Usual US Army policy is to send pregnant soldiers home from combat zones within 14 days.

But Major General Anthony Cucolo, who runs US operations in northern Iraq, issued the new orders because he said he was losing too many women with critical skills. He needed the threat of court martial and jail time as an extra deterrent, he said.

All troops under his command are covered by the extension to the military’s legal code — the first time the US Army has made pregnancy a punishable offence.

Military staff judge advocates for the Army have reviewed and approved the policy. The policy is legal under military law, but it raises “a mare’s nest of legal, ethical and policy issues.” For example, while the policy does say that a man who impregnates a woman will receive equal punishment, it may be difficult to identify him unless the woman reveals who he is.

Additionally, it’s unclear what will happen to a woman who is raped and becomes pregnant. She would technically be eligible for jailtime, but if she is unable to identify her attacker(s), they may go free. Rape and other forms of sexual assault are severe problems in the military. In May, the Pentagon reported that it had “received 2,923 reports of sexual assault across the military in the 12 months ending Sept. 30 2008. That’s about a 9 percent increase over the totals reported the year before, but only a fraction of the crimes presumably being committed.”

With the military resorting to these extreme tactics to retain soldiers with “critical skills,” it’s another reminder about why the Obama administration needs to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.