The Perry Way of defamation

Ever since he first strutted stiff-spined onto the presidential candidates' stage, Rick Perry has struck me as a danger to democracy  -- the purest thug in that confederacy of charlatans, demagogues and ideologues that constitute the GOP field. Time after time, I've felt compelled to point out the pattern of his verbal aggression: escalate a garden-variety policy difference or critique with the most inflammatory of slurs, and justify the slur by insisting that since there is some criticism to be leveled at the target, any insult will do.  Social Security is a "criminal enterprise" because its funding may need to be tweaked; Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is "almost treasonous" because his policies may help Obama; Obama is opposed to the country's founding ideals because Perry is pleased to label his mainstream Democratic policies "socialist."

The latest target of Perry's signature mode of verbal assault is Turkey. In last night's debate in South Carolina, asked whether Turkey, having allegedly "embraced" Hamas and "threatened military force against Israel and Cypress, still belongs in NATO, Perry called Turkey "a country that is being ruled by, what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists." Note, for starters, the recourse to vaguely defined authority: "what many would perceive." That's a typical Perry dodge: his trademark slur for Social Security is okay because "calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme has been used for years. I don’t think people should be surprised that terminology would be used." 

Today, after Turkey's foreign minister condemned the slur, both Perry and his spox Victoria Coates defended it in Perry's usual terms. That is: because some criticism of Turkey might be legitimate, the most inflammatory insult is legitimate.  Coates had recourse to that 'other people say' dodge:  

Israel's 'sigh of relief' over sanctions pursuit

Massimo Calibrisi's long account of conflict and partial rapprochement between Obama and Netanyahu, this parting tidbit caught my eye:

On Iran, Obama's latest push for sanctions has Israelis breathing a sigh of relief that his promises to get tough on Tehran's nuclear program are not just for show.

To what extent does palliating Israel explain the Obama Administration's curt rebuff of the nuclear fuel swap deal with Iran brokered by Brazil and Turkey  --  whose presidents claim that Obama encouraged them to pursue the negotiation?

Trouble with China as Euro depreciates?

Michael Pettis sees trouble for the U.S. and a heightening of international tension in the depreciation of the Euro and China's corresponding likely reluctance to let the yuan appreciate as much as recently anticipated:

Most policymakers around the world – while publicly excoriating the US for its spendthrift habits – are intentionally or unintentionally putting into place polices that require even greater US trade deficits.

This cannot be expected to happen without a great deal of anger and resistance in the US.  The idea that suffering countries should regain growth by exporting more to the world, and that rapidly growing surplus countries should not absorb much of this burden, will only force the US into even greater deficits as US unemployment rises to reduce unemployment pressure in Europe, China, Japan and elsewhere.

I would be surprised if the US accepted this with equanimity.  On the contrary, I expect it will only exacerbate trade tensions and ensure that next year the dispute will become nastier than ever.

On the (implicit) plus side, Pettis notes (quoting Bloomberg, in italics below) that the U.S. has natural allies in the developing world vis-a-vis the trade surplus of China at least:

[India’s Finance Minister, Pranab] Mukherjee, who served as the foreign and defense minister in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet before being appointed as the finance minister, is under pressure from local exporters to use the Group of 20 platform to campaign against China’s currency policy.

As Mukherjee’s comments suggest, pressure continues growing from a number of countries, especially in Asia, for a Chinese revaluation, and for a while it seemed pretty obvious that China was going to begin revaluing very soon.

The Obama Administration has indicated a readiness to multilateralize its efforts to get the Chinese to take measures to reduce their trade surplus.  We're going to need all the allies we can get. On that front, perhaps the patronizing dismissal of Brazil and Turkey's brokerage of a fuel swap deal with Iran was not the most long-sighted of diplomatic maneuvers.

2006 flashback: the enrichment of Iran's Revolutionary Guards

UPDATE: Iran said today that it would be willing to swap nuclear material with the West in Turkey, as opposed to Russia. Cf. Ray Takeyh, 12/21, below: "In Tehran, no deal ever dies. So it's entirely possible that the LEU export proposition could be resurrected..."
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In the wake of Iran's stolen election last June, observers including Gary Sick and the Times' Neil MacFarquhar  brought attention to a stealth militarist takeover of Iran's religious establishment over the past several years, emphasizing that Ahmadinejad had packed key government posts with Revolutionary Guard officers and veterans.

In Today's Times, Michael Slackman cites "the rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as the most powerful decision-making bloc in the country" while reporting that Iran's intransigence on the nuclear issue has reached a new level, as the post-election crackdown has "made it nearly impossible for anyone to support nuclear cooperation without being accused of capitulating to the West." Ironically, on this issue Ahmadinejad has reportedly been more pragmatic and conciliatory than political opponents inside and out of power, including Mousavi.

The militarization of Iran's theocracy is not a new story. Ray Takeyh's account of the Guards' economic empowerment in  The Hidden Iran, published in 2006, sounds very like reports that have reached the newspapers in recent months -- and would have provided a basis to forecast the regime's reaction to the outbreak of demand for reform that crested so suddenly in the runup to the June election: