[Peace-discuss] Obama adds another hack

Tue Feb 24 21:57:56 CST 2009

Jim Lobe's take on the goings-on:

Ross Gets An Appointment But Maybe Not Quite the One He Wanted

There will no doubt be a wealth of commentary about what precisely
this announcement will mean for Ross’s future authority and influence.
But, if you compare it with the way the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy (WINEP) advertised it to its Board of Trustees early last
month — Ross will be “ambassador-at-large” and “the secretary’s top
advisor on a wide range of Middle East issues, from the Arab-Israeli
peace process to Iran” — it seems to fall significantly short. Short,
that is, not just with respect to with the “topness” of his status as
Clinton’s adviser, but also short in terms of his geographical scope
since it appears his brief will be confined to the Gulf and Southwest
Asia — regions in which, contrary to the press release’s words, he has
very little, if any, direct experience.

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=230

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 9:17 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> http://washingtonindependent.com/31275/state-department-we-will-not-tell-you-what-dennis-ross-will-be-doing
>
>        State Department: We Will Not Tell You What Dennis Ross Will Be
> Doing!
>        By SPENCER ACKERMAN 2/24/09 4:00 PM
>
> Earlier today I wrote that Dennis Ross was finally getting made an Obama
> administration “envoy” to… uh… a country with a name that rhymes with
> Gee-Dan.
> (Or, if you’re fancy, Gee-DAWN.) Not so, says acting State Department
> spokesman
> Robert Wood! But what will his job actually be, then? Hard to say. You
> really
> have to read the full transcript from today’s State press briefing for the
> full
> measure of insanity over State’s unwillingness to explain what Ross will be
> doing.
>
> "Let me be clear, he’s not an envoy. He will not be negotiating. He’ll be
> working on regional issues. He will not be – in terms of negotiating, will
> not
> be involved in the peace process. But again, he is going to be advising the
> Secretary on long-term strategic issues across the region."
>
> Wood doesn’t even want to tell reporters which countries fall under the
> portfolio of the Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for The Gulf and
> Southwest Asia. (”I just – I don’t have the list to run off – you know,
> right
> off the top of my head here.”) While Ross won’t be negotiating, he will
> “meet
> with the leaders in the region” — only Wood won’t say what the region
> entails
> and when asked, Wood said:
>
> "Look, it’s more – he’s going to be providing advice to the Secretary on a
> number of regional issues, and I would not try to limit Dennis’s advice to,
> you
> know, just those regions. He may have other – you know, he may have advice
> that
> he wants to give the Secretary on other issues. I don’t think we’re trying
> to
> narrow it here."
>
> In other words, Dennis Ross is everywhere and nowhere, the Keyser Soze of
> the
> State Department. You could read the transcript and conclude that Ross is
> all-powerful, advising Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton — who basically
> ended a
> photo op today when a reporter asked about Ross — on all manner of issues.
> Or
> you could read it and conclude that Ross met a welter of bureaucratic
> resistance
> at the State Department to the prospect of him getting an envoyship, and
> Clinton
> required a face-saving way of shunting him aside. My very-helpful guess is
> that
> Ross’s role remains unsettled, at least until he and Richard Holbrooke meet
> in
> the Octagon.
>
>
> C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>> [I spoke too soon -- in speculating about a possible diplomatic revolution
>> in
>> the Mideast -- when I said that Obama had avoided employing the awful
>> pro-Israel hack Dennis Ross.  Maybe this was the (internal) USG price for
>> appointing former ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles W. Freeman to head
>> the
>> National Intelligence Council.  --CGE]
>>
>> Ross joins Obama team in Iran-related capacity By Ron Kampeas · February
>> 23,
>> 2009
>>
>> WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Dennis Ross joined the Obama administration in a
>> coordinating role on policy regarding Iran and its neighbors.
>>
>> Ross was named special adviser to the secretary of state for the Gulf and
>> Southwest Asia.
>>
>> "This is a region in which America is fighting two wars and facing
>> challenges
>> of ongoing conflict, terror, proliferation, access to energy, economic
>> development and strengthening democracy and the rule of law," said a
>> statement late Monday from Robert Wood, the spokesman for Secretary of
>> State
>> Hillary Rodham Clinton. "In this area, we must strive to build support for
>> U.S. goals and policies. To be successful, we will need to be able to
>> integrate our policy development and implementation across a broad range
>> of
>> offices and senior officials in the State Department, and in his role as
>> Special Advisor to the Secretary, Ambassador Ross will be asked to play
>> that
>> role."
>>
>> The geographical designations and the reference to "two wars" suggest that
>> Ross will focus on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan -- but not necessarily on
>> Israel-area crises, his area of expertise when he was top Middle East
>> negotiator in the first Bush and the Clinton administrations.
>>
>> President Obama already appointed former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell as an
>> envoy to the Israel-related Middle East peace process.
>>
>> Ross, the statement said, "will provide to the Secretary and senior State
>> Department officials strategic advice and perspective on the region; offer
>> assessments and also act to ensure effective policy integration throughout
>> the region; coordinate with senior officials in the development and
>> formulation of new policy approaches; and participate, at the request of
>> the
>> Secretary, in inter-agency activities related to the region."
>>
>> During the campaign, Ross outlined what he said was a
>> "sticks-then-carrots"
>> approach to engaging Iran: rallying the international community to tighten
>> sanctions before offering incentives to have the Islamic Republic stand
>> down
>> from its suspected nuclear weapons program.
>>
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-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org