SOMEBODY SHOULD RESIGN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403570004-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: November 12, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403570004-2
WASHINGTON POST
12 November 1986
Charles Knauthammer
Somebody Should Resign
A few weeks after British Foreign Secretary
Lord Carrington resigned over the Argentine
takeover of the Falklands, a Reagan aide passed
around a piece of paper at a senior staff meeting.
Referring to Carrington, whom Alexander Haig.
at a private staff meeting, had once called a
"duplicitous bastard," the note read: "Duplicitous
Bastard Resigns on Principle: A Model."
In America, we cannot get even our sweetest
bumblers to resign. We have no model, no
tradition of principled resignation. Now, because
of the Iranian affair, there is talk of leave-taking.
But, as usual, we just cannot get it right. The
wrong man is thinking of resigning.
The wrong man is Secretary of State George
Shultz. Spear-carrier for the administration's anti-
terrorist policy, Shultz is embarrassed. He has
beaten up on the Europeans for making separate
peace with terrorist states. He' has assured the
Arab League that the United States was not
supporting Iran in its war with Iraq. All the while,
the National Security Council has been engaged
with Iran in an amts-for-hostages exchange.
The right man for resigning is NSC chief John
Poindexter. Poindexter now admits that he made
"a miscalculation" on whom he could trust in Iran.
(The mullahs have a way of driving Americans to
understatement. President Carter called the
Desert One fiasco an "incomplete success.") If
someone does resign, it shouldn't be the man
who pushed the right policy, but the man who
pushed the wrong one.
How wrong? Let me count the ways. Even if
you cave in and decide to buy hostages, how can
you possibly consent to buy them retail, one at a
time? When the Israelis made the worst hostage
trade in history, 1,150 terrorists for 3 soldiers,
at least they got all three of their boys.
The administration cover story is that the real
policy was not buying hostages, but buying friends.
The United States was not paying ransom. It was
pursuing a larger strategic objective: making alli-
ances with Iranian doves as an opening to a
P-Khomeini future. Goodness. Has there ever
been an appeasement policy that was not predicat-
ed on the notion of hawks and doves among our
enemies? We must offer wheat and credits and
perhaps pieces of Africa or Central America in
order to strengthen Soviet--or Sandinista or An-
golan, fill in the blanks--doves. Heard that one?
Whenever conservatives hear it, their instinctive,
and correct, response is ridicule.
Now we hear that there is a power struggle
taking place among Ayatollah Khomeini's suc.
cessors, and we have to help the doves. There is
a problem with this theory. True, there are
several factions vying for power. But.there is not
a shred of evidence that any one is any less
Islamic-fanatic or anti-Western than the other.
Nor, even if such a faction exists, that we know
which one it is. Nor, even if we know, that we
know how to help it. One would imagine that in
Khomeini-land, a connection to the Great Satan is
hardly a means to political advancement.
The president has been flying a seat-of-the-
pants foreign policy for some time now. (Reykja-
vik comes to mind.) It has now crash-landed.
Reagan likes to pilot listening to his gut, not
watching his radar. His gut-sympathy for hos-
tage families-told him to risk for the hostages.
He did. He risked America's antiterrorist policy.
He risked American credibility with the Gulf
states and Arab moderates. He risked his own
principle, enunciated during his first week in
office, that criminals, even if state-sponsored,
will not dictate American foreign policy. He
risked and he lost.
Reagan's advisers in the Whiite luck
his
House whose job it is were
tell him that he can't live on luck alone? Whose job
it is to watch the radar? Miscalculation is not a
hanging offense, but it is a resigning one.
An antiterrorism policy is extraordinarily difficult
to sustain because, like any policy of not doing (no
negotiation, no concessions), it is inherently fragile:
one significant slip and the policy evaporates. Right
now, the U.S. policy is about to evaporate.
It cannot easily be salvaged. But a principled
resignation is the first step on the road back. It
would demonstrate that the policy of trading arms,
and the American national interest, for hostages is
repudiated. That policy, not the choice of loose-
lipped Iranians as partners, is the miscalculation.
Carrington miscalculated Argentine intentions and
resigned Will the American miscalculator please
stand up and step down?
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403570004-2