November 8, 2007
Dept. of State Writes More US Foreign Policy [Dan Collins]

Well, maybe it will free up a few of them to go to Iraq: 

The former director of President Bush’s flagship democracy program for the Middle East is saying that the State Department has “effectively killed” a program to disburse millions of dollars to Iran’s liberal opposition.

In an interview yesterday, Scott Carpenter said a recent decision to move the $75 million annual aid program for Iranian democrats to the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs would effectively neuter an initiative the president had intended to spur democracy inside the Islamic Republic.

“In my view, this pretty much kills the Iran democracy program,” Mr. Carpenter said of the decision by the State Department to subsume the program. “There is not the expertise, there is not the energy for it. The Iran office is worried about the bilateral policy. I think they are not committed to this anymore.”

That’s Demockracy for you.

20 Comments  :::   Post a comment »

  1. Comment by Jeffersonian on 11/8 @ 7:49 am #

    Well, that settles it – we’re just going to have to bomb the shit out of them now. Well done, Foggy Bottom!

  2. Comment by Pablo on 11/8 @ 7:54 am #

    Back when it was more fashionable to proclaim that the stupid Bushies don’t know what they’re doing and they’re screwing Iran up with their money, the New Your Times had this to say:

    Now, a year after its unveiling and with the administration requesting an additional $75 million for 2008, the democracy fund faces criticism, not only from Iranian officials but also from some of the very people whose causes it aims to advance. Could this ambitious program actually be doing more harm than good?

    For the Iranian government, the democracy fund is just one more element in an elaborate Bush administration regime-change stratagem. (“Is there even a perception that the American government has democracy in mind?” Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, asked me recently in New York. “Except among a few dreamers in Eastern Europe?”) In recent months, Tehran has upped the pressure on any citizens who might conceivably be linked to the democracy fund and, by extension, on civil society at large, making the mere prospect of American support counterproductive, even reckless. As of this writing, two Iranian-American scholars, Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planner and consultant for the Open Society Institute, sit in solitary confinement in a hillside prison called Evin, Tehran’s Alcatraz, arrested on charges of spying for the United States. A Los Angeles-based peace activist named Ali Shakeri is also now in Evin — no charges have been announced — while Parnaz Azima, a dual national who works for the U.S.-financed Radio Farda, has been barred from leaving the country. She is charged with collaborating with a counterrevolutionary radio station.

  3. Comment by Hubris on 11/8 @ 8:17 am #

    Are you actually certain that a decision of this magnitude is being made contrary to the wishes of Rice, and by extension, those of Bush? Don’t make me link an org chart.

  4. Comment by happyfeet on 11/8 @ 8:19 am #

    No one can make State Department employees do anything they don’t want to do.

  5. Comment by Rob Crawford on 11/8 @ 8:40 am #

    In an interview yesterday, Scott Carpenter said a recent decision to move the $75 million annual aid program for Iranian democrats to the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs would effectively neuter an initiative the president had intended to spur democracy inside the Islamic Republic.

    Wait. So the “Office of Iranian Affairs” inside our State Department is effectively acting on behalf of the Iranian government? The same Iranian government that committed an act of war and held State Department employees hostage for nearly a year?

    Why can’t we get rid of the idiots like this? Is it that the “point to your country” test has lost its effectiveness?

  6. Comment by Hubris on 11/8 @ 8:42 am #

    Ah yes, a conspiracy so immense…

  7. Comment by eLarson on 11/8 @ 8:43 am #

    No one can make State Department employees do anything they don’t want to do.

    Word.

  8. Comment by JD on 11/8 @ 8:53 am #

    Hello, Hubris. Long time …

  9. Comment by Drumwaster on 11/8 @ 11:00 am #

    Conspiracies don’t need to be immense to accomplish goals. It only takes one small office (id est, “Office of Iranian Affairs”) among a minor section of an Executive Department to decide that their opinions outweigh the properly elected government’s policies, by simply refusing to follow policy, calling a press conference and then daring the Administration to reprimand them.

    If Bush/Rice were to fire these people for insubordination, the cries of outrage by liberals and the MSM (“Suppression of Speaking Truth To Power”) would echo off the moon. Witness the cries of protest over the firing of the Federal Attorneys – a perfectly legal act but the moonbats are claiming that it is an impeachment offense.

  10. Comment by Hubris on 11/8 @ 11:18 am #

    Drumwaster,

    But there’s no evidence that the department is refusing to follow the executive’s current policies. Also, here the “truth to power” guy is the former director who went to the press to complain about what the State Dept, i.e., an arm of the Bush administration, is now doing with the funds. But instead of the moonbats, it’s the Birchers issuing the criest of protest. Treason!

    P.S. Howdy JD

  11. Comment by David M on 11/8 @ 11:51 am #

    The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 11/08/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.

  12. Comment by Mikey NTH on 11/8 @ 12:03 pm #

    and some of the policy they write could be classified as very foreign policy.

  13. Comment by Dan Collins on 11/8 @ 12:26 pm #

    Thanks for running that up the flagpole, David.

  14. Comment by happyfeet on 11/8 @ 12:27 pm #

    That’s an idiom.

  15. Comment by Swen Swenson on 11/8 @ 2:17 pm #

    Sounds like the State Department is giving the Bush administration the ‘Steely Dan’*. I wouldn’t want to be in Condi’s shoes. While she works for Bush, she presides over a staff of tenured bureaucrats who pretty much can’t be disciplined or fired. They all belong to the government employees’ unions, and they probably run 90% Democratic with heavy socialist undertones. Sometimes it’s a wonder that a Republican administration can accomplish anything when all their minions are undercutting them at every opportunity.

    *Couldn’t help chuckling when I saw the Jason Rubenstein quote in the sidebar calling Jeff the Steely Dan of the blogosphere. ‘Cause I remember where the band got the name. Might be an insult, but I think I’d take it as a compliment regardless.

  16. Comment by andy on 11/8 @ 5:55 pm #

    75 million is all that we spend promoting democracy in Iran? And they took it away from Mr. Carpenter? and now he’s all mad? thats so sad.

  17. Comment by JD on 11/8 @ 6:26 pm #

    No matter how much money is spent on something, you can be sure that folks on the Left, like andy, will think that we are just not spending enough.

  18. Comment by mojo on 11/8 @ 7:15 pm #

    Jeeze, Dan – your cut-and-paste still has NYSun “related reference” embeds in it? That’s kinda skeery…

    Or was it intentional?

  19. Comment by Dan Collins on 11/8 @ 7:20 pm #

    I wants to make your flesh creep.

  20. Trackback by Making Policy In Europe on 11/17 @ 1:33 pm #

    Making Policy In Europe

    The Lisbon European Council of March 2000 set the objec

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