West Bank Attacks -- The Spoiler's Gambit Posted by David Shorr

In order to demonstrate their opposition to the reopened Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Hamas is murdering Israeli settlers. At one level, this week's terrorist attacks are inhuman and merciless. At another level, the killings are calculated in their petulance, and I think it's worth pondering Hamas' aspirations as spoilers of peace.

One thought is that when you see Hamas as obstructionist rivals to the Palestinian Authority's Fatah government, they don't look like shock troops of World War IV. Obviously they are a threat to the security of Israelis, which is a constant concern for Israel's security services (which had jurisdiction over the site of the Tuesday attack) and a quandary for the peace process itself. But the threat of attacks on Israeli citizens isn't the same as a strategic threat to the state of Israel. My point is a narrow one: that it's one thing to take the threat from terrorists seriously, and another to ascribe capabilities wildly beyond what they actually have. I'll also stress that in making this point, I have in mind the domestic politics here in the US as much as the situation in Israel.

The other thought regards Hamas' opposition not just to Israel, but to peace. We often tend to focus on the you-can't-make-peace-with-those-people political stance in the conflict, and gloss over the stakes in the status quo. Hamas is attacking this week because peace would be bad for Hamas. For them, the current situation of one state and two fiefdoms is preferable to two states. The talks therefore pose a threat.

And then finally, a serious question of political analysis. As we know, President Obama's decision to jump into Middle East peace with both feet put some of his political capital on the line. We've seen eloquent arguments from Steve Clemons (pro) and Aaron David Miller (con) over the wisdom of this move. My question is about Netanyahu. Obviously he'll be under a lot of pressure from his political base to not succeed in reaching an agreement. I'd like to know whether his optimistic statements about the prospects represent a real investment of his credibility, or whether he can always walk away political cost-free.

You Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee Posted by Eric Martin

While I initially opposed the Iraq invasion, whatever position one held as to the wisdom of that decision at the time, and whatever one thinks of the costs vs. benefits in retrospect (though I tend to agree with my colleague Michael Cohen, as well as Matt Duss, that the costs have far, far outweighed the benefits), there should be less disagreement over the suggestion that we, collectively, owe the Iraqi people what respite and solace we can provide, within reasonable means.

In that light, it was quite disturbing to read Saurabh Sanghvi's Op-Ed detailing the dysfunctional process attendant to granting visas to those Iraqis that have cooperated with U.S government forces and, thus, have legitimate fears of retribution up to and including death (this process is an adjunct to other visa programs that are, in theory, available to displaced Iraqis more generally speaking).  Sanghvi highlights some of the truly labyrinthine bureaucratic obstacles encountered by those trying to secure a visa - a confounding process that has resulted in relatively few successful applications: 

Given such obstacles, it’s no surprise that relatively few people have successfully used the program: an Aug. 12 letter to the administration by 22 members of Congress noted that only 2,145 visas have been issued, even though the program has 15,000 available slots.

While some hurdles should remain in order to prevent fraud, Sanghvi offers commonsense tweaks that would do much to facilitate the process.  Regardless, if we are to err on one side, it should probably be letting in more Iraqis than fewer. Even if some of the Iraqi's gain entry "fraudulently," is there little doubt that conditions in Iraq, even post-Surge, are still quite horrific (with hundreds of civilians still dying each month in political violence) and, thus, that they are justified in seeking shelter abroad?

Granted that Americans can and do have good faith disagreements over the form and nature of any continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, and whether our nation can afford certain of the proposed prolonged commitments, these visa grants are a relatively affordable, and morally sound, offer of assistance to just a handful of the citizens of Iraq that have suffered so much over the past 7+ years. 

It is the least we can do. 

(hat tip to Andrea Nill)

Lessons of Iraq - The Two Andrews Version UPDATE Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at TNR, the always upbeat Andrew Bacevich has an smart post arguing that the United States has learned nothing from the war in Iraq:

The Americans are bowing out, having achieved few of the ambitious goals articulated in the heady aftermath of Baghdad’s fall. The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation, and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget. 

Back in Iraq, meanwhile, nothing has been resolved and nothing settled. Round one of the Iraq war produced a great upheaval that round two served only to exacerbate. As the convoys of U.S. armored vehicles trundle south toward Kuwait and then home, they leave the stage set for round three. 

. . . As U.S. forces have withdrawn, they have done so in an orderly fashion. In their own eyes, they remain unbeaten and unbeatable. As the troops pull out, the American people are already moving on: Even now, Afghans have displaced Iraqis as the beneficiaries of Washington’s care and ministrations. Oddly, even disturbingly, most of us—our memories short, our innocence intact—seem content with the outcome. The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing.

He's right. But as I noted the other day, the dangerous lesson of Iraq is that we've convinced ourselves that the US can stabilize war-torn environments, we get counter-insurgency and our tactical decision-making can be determinative in ending insurgencies. All of this is poppycock of course, as we are seeing in Afghanistan. And right on cue, Andrew Exum makes the following observation:

I think we have learned a lot, tactically, operationally, and strategically, and I think the American people will in the future be more wary of the kind of military adventurism that led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Bacevich should take heart in this. 

And Andrew wonders why Bacevich is cranky.

Let's put aside for one moment the obvious fact that Iraq has hardly made policymakers, virtually the entire DC foreign policy establishment and the "American people" less reluctant to engage in military adventurism. You don't believe me: cast your gaze over to the 100,000 troops fighting a local Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan in a war that literally could not be more tangential to US interests and national security. Even if Exum is technically correct that we won't invade and occupy another country any time soon (which I'll get to in a second), that's hardly Bacevich's point. It's that we choose to believe in the sanctity of our decisions to go war and overestimate the capabilities of our military to advance US interests (this is not to mention the fact that we consistently overinflate those interests and chose to further our interests almost always with the sharp end of the spear).

Bacevich is right: we've basically learned nothing from Iraq. In fact, we've learned less than nothing, because the lessons we are taking from Iraq - pithily rounded-up in Exum's quote - are negative and dangerous lessons about the proper uses of American military power that are likely to lead to more not less adventurism in the future.

And as for the notion that the American people have turned their back on "military adventurism"; that's even worse. You could have made that argument after Vietnam; you could have made it in the 1990s when we fought wars in the most limited manner manageable; hell you could have made that argument on September 10, 2001.

Then 19 guys kill 3,000 Americans and guess what: we're fighting two foreign wars at a cost of a trillion dollars in direct violation of pretty much every principle that drove the use of US military power for the previous 20 years.

So much for lessons learned.

UPDATE: Over at Thinking Strategically, Aaron Ellis has read this post and drawn an interpretation that is . . . well I'm not sure how to properly describe it. He says, "From reading his latest ‘Never again!’ piece, however, one can’t help think that Cohen believes using force can’t achieve anything."

I mean I suppose that is one interpretation; of course it's also completely wrong and I'm at a loss to see how Aaron gets there. For example, unlike many of my liberal brethren I'm fully supportive of the use of force, via drones, in NW Pakistan. The first Gulf War seems like a smart and effective use of American military power. Kosovo (ish). 

But here is a good example of an unwise use of force: invading and occupying a medium-sized Arab country that posed no significant threat to the United States or its vital interests. As I noted in earlier threads there were force packages that would have made sense in dealing with Saddam Hussein - invasion and occupation was not one of them. Believing that the Iraq War was a disastrous strategic decision is not the same thing as believing that wars can never achieve policy goals. I mean isn't that sort of obvious?

Here is another example of a bad strategic decision to go to war: sending 100,000 troops to Afghanistan to fight a counterinsurgency against an enemy that poses no threat to US security, particularly when other force packages (like the aforementioned drone war) would more effectively further US interests and at a much lower cost.

I suppose the takeaway here is that the use of force should be effectively calibrated so that it is commensurate with actual national interests. That was not the case in Iraq; it is, in my view, not the case today in Afghanistan.

I hope that clarifies things. 

Welcome Eric Martin to Democracy Arsenal Posted by The Editors

Dear Readers--

Please welcome our newest blogger, Eric Martin. Eric is the Senior Editor of The Progressive Realist, a metablog about American foreign policy. In addition, Eric is a regular blogger at www.americanfootprints.com, www.obsidianwings.org -- and now, DemocracyArsenal.org. Eric holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from New York University and a JD from Fordham University School of Law. You can follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/EricMartin24. (He's a Twitter newbie, so please excuse the lack of a picture, followers or Tweets. All of those things are surely forthcoming.)

Eric's first post will appear shortly. As always, thanks for reading.

- The Editors

Can We Get Some Straight Talk on Afghanistan? Posted by Michael Cohen

So I thought President Obama did a nice job in his Iraq speech last night - it sort of threaded the needle of praising the soldiers, while refusing to say that the war was somehow worth it. I was pleasantly surprised that Obama didn't concede to that usual DC refrain of trying to find something positive in even the worst of American behavior. 

But let's talk about Afghanistan, because as is too often the case his words fell woefully short:

Now, as we approach our 10th year of combat in Afghanistan, there are those who are understandably asking tough questions about our mission there. But we must never lose sight of what's at stake. As we speak, al Qaeda continues to plot against us, and its leadership remains anchored in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists. 

Why does Barack Obama keep saying this? First of all, some remnants of al Qaeda are in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan - but that region is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has not had a serious presence in Afghanistan for 8 years; Barack Obama knows this and the fact that he keeps fudging the point - well it's not good. And while al Qaeda may continue to plot against us does anyone really believe that this is a serious threat to US security - or certainly a threat worthy of a 100,000 man troop commitment? Even our own intelligence agencies see a greater AQ threat to the US emanating from Yemen then they do Pakistan. 

The President is really close to the line of just misleading the American people about the nature of the threat from al Qaeda and the nature of the current US war, which is almost exclusively predicated on fighting the Taliban.

But then there was this:

As was the case in Iraq, we cannot do for Afghans what they must ultimately do for themselves. That's why we are training Afghan Security Forces and supporting a political resolution to Afghanistan's problems. And, next July, we will begin a transition to Afghan responsibility. The pace of our troop reductions will be determined by conditions on the ground, and our support for Afghanistan will endure. But make no mistake: this transition will begin - because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people's.

You know what would be awesome - if we could get the President and this Petraeus guy in the same room to hash this thing out, because I detect some daylight between these words . . . and these: 

Petraeus said the commitment in Afghanistan will be enduring, and would not say how many U.S. troops will begin to leave under Obama's July 2011 transition timeline.

"It would premature to have any kind of assessment at this juncture as to about what we may or may not be able to transition," he said. But, he added, any troop movement will be based on the conditions on the ground.

Now I realize I am closely parsing here, but you have Petraeus raising suggestions that the transition to responsibility and even the withdrawal of US troops could be delayed. (That certainly is also the upshot from his Meet the Press appearance last month). Now I realize that it's only natural for the General to keep his options open, but the President is rather declarative here - the transition will begin next July. But it really does seem as though it is the Petraeus language - and not the President's -- that is operative. 

So why does Obama keep saying that the transition will begin next June? And look maybe it will; and maybe he says what he means. I really don't know; but you'd have a hard time finding anyone in Washington who believes that transition will be anything but token.

At some point, the President is going to have to level with the American people about the nature of the US commitment to Afghanistan; he's going to have to stop using misleading rhetoric to make the war in Afghanistan seem like a greater threat to US national security then it actually is; he's going to have to stop suggesting that the war in Afghanistan is about fighting al Qaeda when it's really about fighting the Taliban; his Administration needs to stop sending mixed signals on whether June 2011 means anything as far as a withdrawal of US troops; he's going to have to lay out what the US end game in Afghanistan looks like . . . because to date he hasn't done it.

You know, I'm a huge fan of the President. I think his record of domestic accomplishment is perhaps the most impressive since LBJ; and I generally like and trust the guy. But his record on Afghanistan is, for a lack of better word, abysmal and it's hardly befitting the awesome office that he holds. 

There are legitimate reasons to maintain a troop presence in Afghanistan; there are near-term goals there that are worth fighting for - but increasingly when I listen to the President describe them I feel like I'm listening to a used car salesman trying to sell me a lemon.

American Strength Can't Fly on Autopilot or Gauzy 'Victory' Posted by David Shorr

So I'm listening to Minority Leader Boehner this afternoon and President Obama tonight, trying to put my finger on the essential difference in approach. Here it is. One doesn't think Americans even need to ask what victory means in a war, or what it costs. For the other, American military, economic, strength and international influence are not preserved simply by proclaiming them and assuming the nation's assets are givens, fixed, threatened only by self-doubt. As I listened to the president, I heard an underlying theme of a country facing critical choices: where to draw the line for the American military mission in Iraq, where are the biggest threats to US national security, the steps needed to put our own house in order. 

In a nutshell, these decisions won't make themselves. Nor will America renew itself, Mr. Boehner, by clicking its heels and saying 'there's no place like the USA - there's no place like the USA.' We're actually going to have to do things, and stop doing some other things, and drop the fantasy that slashing taxes, regulation, and government will magically produce prosperity. Which makes these the most ironic and un-reality-based lines of Boehner's speech:

Using campaign promises as a yardstick to measure success in Iraq and Afghanistan runs the risk of triggering artificial victory laps and premature withdrawal dates unconnected to conditions on the ground.

After years of hard fighting – which has come at a high price – we cannot afford to underestimate the impact our domestic debates and political hedging have on decisions made by friend and foe alike.

When it comes down to it, this argument (and I use the term loosely) says that the United States must make limitless commitments, cast aside any questions about the results (or potential blowback), because of our darkest visions of those who want to harm us. Um, who isn't watching conditions on the ground??

There was one very direct point - counterpoint between Obama and Boehner -- their contrasting statements on support for the troops.

Boehner: When we support our troops, we support them all the way – there is no such thing as supporting our troops, but not their mission.

Obama: As we do, I’m mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home.  Here, too, it’s time to turn the page.  This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush.  It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset.  Yet no one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.  As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it.  And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis’ future.

Like I say, Boehner declares any question of the worthiness of a military mission null and void. Helluva a way to run a democracy. I've said it many times before, the real valor of military service is the willingness to do whatever the country asks of you. To say that the nation must take its orders from the service of men and women in uniform gets it kinda backwards.

 

Iraq Has Made Realists out of All of You... Posted by Patrick Barry

Or so it is said sometimes in my office (typically in reference to people of my generation.) 

Tonight the President attempted to give meaning to a war America has fought for the last seven years, a conflict that raged on the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah, but also in the corridors of public discourse. And frankly, it's impossible to reduce Iraq's complexities to a 15 minute address, though I credit Obama for the attempt and I understand why he made it.  However, there was one line that irked me a bit:

"And we must project a vision of the future that is based not just on our fears, but also on our hopes -a vision that recognizes the real dangers that exist around the world, but also the limitless possibility of our time."

C'mon, Barack! You should know better! 

And I suspect he does. Of course our time contains limitless possibilities, but what differentiates possibility from reality are the decisions we make. Decisions that carry consequences as much as benefits. 

I think Iraq has made everyone sensitive to trade-offs, to an extent. Anne Applebaum, an unabashed Iraq war supporter, wrote a column in yesterday's Post that dealt with the possibilities lost by the Iraq war with refreshing candor. But reading it, I also felt immensely dissatisfied. After all, wouldn't it have been nice to have that conversation before the war, instead of after it had begun to wind down? But of course, that's not the conversation we had.

This is what Obama meant when he said he wanted to "end the mindset" that got us into Iraq. He meant the mindset that described benefits in the rosiest terms, minimized costs, and absolutely ignored lost opportunities. I'm hopeful that the generation that came of age during the Iraq war has fully internalized this lesson. But judging from the way politicians and pundits so easily propose attacks on Iran, or demonize Muslims, or reduce counterterrorism to a game of global frogs and lilypads, all without even the slightest nod to the consequences, I'd say we still have a long way yet to go. 

The War In Iraq - Let's Never Do That Again Posted by Michael Cohen

So President Obama will tonight declare that the US war in Iraq has come to an end - more than 7 years after George Bush confidently declared "mission accomplished" and the end of US combat operations. Obama's words will, hopefully, close the chapter on what must be considered one of the most disastrous military conflicts in the history of US foreign policy.

As has been long chronicled here at DA, the toll of the war has been steep: more than a trillion dollars in direct and indirect costs to the United States, enormous repetitional damage to America's image in the world and attention diverted from other more important and solvable domestic and international challenges. Above all, there is the human toll and the more than 4,000 American soldiers killed and tens of thousands wounded both physically and psychologically.  For Iraqis, the costs have been far more severe: an estimated 100,000 Iraqis have died in violence since March 2003 and millions more have seen their lives disrupted and dislodged. Even today, while terrorist and sectarian violence has declined it remains a frightening fact of life for ordinary Iraqis. While the invasion of Iraq has been a disaster for the United States, for the Iraqi people it has been a calamity of unparalleled proportions.

Matt Duss over at Wonk Room has more on this here.

Not surprisingly, most Americans have come to the determination that the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake. For policymakers and national security analysts one would imagine they would take away from the war a recognition that avoiding the strategic mistakes that led to the war must be paramount.

But of course that has not been the case. Among policymakers and the uniformed military the lessons derived from this conflict have been focused on on a far different set of conclusions: the failure of military tactics. As the argument often goes, the US armed forces were hamstrung by a lack of resources and manpower utilized, a mishandled post-war military occupation and, in particular, a failure to more effectively utilize counter-insurgency COIN tactics. 

Indeed, counter-insurgency advocates have used the supposed "success" of COIN tactics in 2007 and 2008 in stabilizing Iraq (which coincided with a surge of 30,000 troops) to assert that the military "gets" COIN and can ably transfer the lessons learned in Iraq to other theaters of war - like Afghanistan

But this is a dubious and dangerous narrative. First, it tends to place agency for stabilization in Iraq on the shoulders of the US army and not the Iraqi people themselves. While the surge and COIN tactics effectively coincided with changes already occurring in Iraq, it is highly misleading to argue that a change in US tactics saved the day. Indeed, had the US adopted counter-insurgency tactics two years earlier - at the height of horrific sectarian cleansing in which an estimated 3,000 Iraqis were being killed a month - does anyone really think it would have "worked" then.

Second, to argue that the surge saved the day is akin to congratulate oneself for closing the barn door long after the horse has escaped and the barn has burned to the ground. Yes, Iraq stabilized in 2007 and 2008, but what matters more then what happened at the end of the war is what happened at the beginning. 

Indeed, a focus on military tactics glosses over what should be the incontestable lesson to be derived from the war in Iraq - that the US must, at all costs, avoid fighting any similar sort of war in the future.  The central problem with the Iraq War is not how the United States chose to fight it, but rather that the United States chose to fight it at all. 

The insistence that there was a “right way” to invade and occupy Iraq is perhaps an issue of importance for military tacticians, but for policymakers in Congress and the executive branch it is a distraction from focusing on the disastrous strategic judgments that led America down the path to war - virtually all of which were made before one US soldier stepped foot into Iraq. 

These include the rosy assumptions that American troops would be welcomed by a already fractured and ethnically divided Iraqi society as "liberators"; the failure to consider worst case scenarios or the potential consequences of military invasion; the lack of a clear political objective for the conflict; the notion that America could go it alone in Iraq without strong support of key Allies and the American people; and perhaps above all an overestimation of US military prowess in nation-building and the political will among Americans to see such a fight through to the end.   The war in Iraq ignored the fundamental Clausewitzian idea that "No one starts a war -- or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so -- without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war, and how he intends to conduct it."

What unites all these mistakes is not a failure of tactics - but a failure to address the strategic question of what was the US national interest vis-a-vis Iraq and whether other diplomatic or more limited military force packages would have been effective at advancing those interests. A war fought to intimidate future enemies via the use of American military power has ended up having the exact opposite effect - demonstrating the inherent limitations of US power. 

At virtually no point in pre-war planning did the Bush Administration consider other measures to invasion and occupation of Iraq - and among Democrats and the national security community not nearly enough effort was expended in offering alternatives to war.

The historical record suggests that the Bush Administration had no interest in debating these issues at the time - and in fact when to great lengths to obscure them during pre-war planning. But for future policymakers the importance of considering other means of judging and advancing US interests - and weighing alternatives to the use of force - should be the most important takeaway from the war in Iraq.

Yet far too little of the public dialogue about Iraq has addressed this essential question: it's a phenomenon being repeated in Afghanistan where last year's Presidential review focused not on escalation vs. de-escalation, but basically accepted the latter as a fait accompli. The notion, oft expressed by Barack Obama on the campaign trail, that the US must devote more resources to the "good fight" in Iraq has revolved largely around a singular element and tool of American power - it's armed forces.

The Afghanistan debate has dwelled on the issue of military tactics (counter-insurgency vs. counter-terrorism) and the behavior of the US military in the latter half of the war; rather than the misjudgments made at the beginning of war, namely whether the US military could actually achieve the ambitious goals of political leaders - or even if the national interest demanded it. 

These are the precisely the sort of questions that should define the use of American military power - and the war in Iraq provides a searing example as to why. 

If there is one lesson that President Obama, members of Congress and the American people should keep in mind, as the last US combat troops leave Iraq - it is that America must never make the same mistake again.

"Missing Imam" Breaks Silence on Park51 Controversy Posted by Shadi Hamid

I will be blogging throughout the week on the Park51 "mosque" controversy. My first post can be seen here.

People across America have been asking themselves, usually with baffled looks on their faces: where in the world is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf? One of the oddities of the Park 51 controversy is that the one person best positioned to explain and defend the mosque is the one person who appears intent on not only not speaking, but also not even being in the country to coordinate the project's message.

He has now broken his silence and granted an interview to The National. If anything should cast doubt on Imam Rauf's leadership qualities, it is his apparent inability to say something even mildly interesting about one of the more scary but oddly fascinating episodes in recent memory, one that he happens to be at the center of.

He has managed, instead, to give a remarkably sedate interview, consisting of little more than a string of platitudes (radicalism is bad; moderation is good; trust in the wisdom of the American people). American Muslims - the vast majority of whom knew nothing about this project three weeks ago - shouldn't have to pay the price for his, or anyone else's, inability to articulate a clear message regarding the vision for Park 51. As it turns out, Park 51 has presided over one of the most mismanaged media campaigns that I can remember. The project still has no spokesman. Its twitter account has been a study in how not to run a twitter account.

And despite repeated calls for him to return and lead, Imam Rauf refused to cut short a U.S. State Department tour in the Middle East, where he was speaking to audiences about - what else - how Islam and Muslims are thriving in America. Many of us had heard last week, when Imam Rauf gave a Friday sermon in Doha, that he was considering canceling the Dubai leg of his trip and returning home. He hasn't. The "missing Imam" is still missing.

The National Security Implications of Park51 Posted by Shadi Hamid

Over the course of the week, I'll be offering some thoughts and reflections on the Park51 “mosque” controversy here at Democracy Arsenal. I’ll also continue tweeting my less formed observations here, which I did, for example, when I had the rare privilege of seeing Imam Rauf speak in the flesh the other day. The “missing Imam” had finally appeared. In this post, I’d like to delve deeper into the national security implications of the debate.

As I’ve mentioned previously, many of my liberal colleagues are making the case that failing to build the mosque will empower extremists. When I first started hearing this argument, I found it a bit odd. After all, we do a lot of things that, either indirectly or directly, empower extremists in the Muslim world, but rarely do we let that stop us.

The things we do that really undermine “moderates” – sadly becoming one of the most misused words in the American political lexicon – rarely garner headlines. No one in the U.S., for example, really seems to care about the upcoming, critical Jordanian elections, although the result of that, if it goes as expected, will almost certainly have a more pronounced effect on radicalization (at least in Jordan) than the anti-mosque movement could ever hope to have.

That said, I was perhaps too quick to dismiss arguments such this one from Jonathan Chait:

The key fact is that we are fighting a war for the hearts and minds of non-radical Muslims, and the Park 51 uproar is helping drive potential allies into the arms of the enemy.

Yes, a narrative is being built. And while the narrative - that America is at war with Muslims - was already there, there’s something particularly disconcerting about this episode. One of the few remaining arguments I still have left in my rapidly depleted defend-the-U.S-arsenal is that Muslims arguably have more freedom to practice their religion in America than perhaps anywhere else in the world. I guess that one’s not gonna work anymore.

Marc Lynch, in this post, gets us closer to understanding of how the whole thing is playing in the Arab media. It’s certainly something to keep an eye on. Just because our image in the Middle East is perilously negative – the U.S. has lower favorability ratings under Obama than it did during Bush’s final year – does not mean we should let it become even more so. 

But I think the greater worry should be directed a bit closer to home. The anti-mosque hysteria may, in fact, undermine moderates and moderation abroad, but it is more likely to do so at home, where American Muslims, at least up until now, have been uniquely well-integrated. What’s so troubling about the developments of this summer is that they are casting doubt, in a rather striking way, on the argument – and the reality – that American Muslims have, for the most part, escaped the problems of their European counterparts.

Carnage in Congo -- A Long-Range Witness' Recollections Posted by David Shorr

A front-page piece by Howard French in today's New York Times triggered memory banks from an earlier life. For French, covering the new UN report on the history of atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a return to the story's bloody 1996-97 climax, which he covered for the Times. In the mid- to late-1990s, the protracted crisis in Central Africa's Great Lakes region was a big focus of my job -- first with Search for Common Ground and then with Refugees International (RI) -- so I figure I should similarly go back in time.

First a little background. During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the exiled fighters of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) swept through the country, halted the killing of fellow Tutsis, and took control of the capital. RPF leader Paul Kagame has been president of Rwanda for ten years and its primary power figure for longer. In the genocide's aftermath, the surviving Hutu perpetrators fled to neighboring Congo and Tanzania, along with hundreds of thousands of their ethnic compatriots and faimly. For the next two and a half years, the massive refugee camps were a source of continued violence and instability, with the Hutu genocidaires using the camps as a rear base for operations against the new Rwandan government and a populace off of which they could feed parasitically.

Given the international community's failure to find a solution to the problem, the Rwandan Army (RPA) had good reason to cross into Congo and forcibly break up the camps, which it did in November 1996. If the RPA had limited its aims to disrupting the genocidaire forces (Interahamwe and ex-FAR) and draining the resevoir of instability on their border, neither the UN, nor Howard French, nor I would be writing about them today. Which brings us to the part of the story where my recollections come in.

Washington-based Refugees International has a long history of rapidly getting its staff to the scene of humanitarian crises and using its real-time findings to press for life-saving action by the US and other governments and UN agencies. Under RI's then leaders Lionel Rosenblatt and Dennis Grace, RI made the Rwandan refugees our priority focus in 1996-97. As the UN report details, the Rwandan army and Congolese rebels who overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko did a lot more than break up the refugee camps. The November 1996 operation was just the beginning of a vengeful drive that indiscriminately chased and massacred Hutu militia and civilians alike over the course of many months and hundreds of miles.

At RI, we did what we could to make sure the refugees were not forgotten, even as they became more widely dispersed and more remote and difficult to reach. We kept signs posted in our office that counted the weeks since the RPA operation against the camps. My colleagues Paula Ghedini and Kirpatrick Day travelled to the region during the height of the crisis and told us the tragic things they saw. In the spring of the following year, Kirk caught up with many of the refugees in Kisangani, far from Congo's eastern border where they started their harrowing trek. We colleagues back in the office then helped convey their reports to people in Washington, New York, or Geneva who were in a position to do something about it (I still have a small archive of our work). Legendary UN official Sergio Vieira de Mello was an ally at UNHCR, along with his aide Augustine Mahiga. As I remarked upon her death, Alison DesForges not only was the primary documenter of the genocide, but was equally tenacious when the Rwandan heroes turned into villains.

Which is a long way of saying that a lot of the substance being brought to light by the UN investigation was known at the time, at least in outline. And reported by the news media. In addition to Howard French, there was his Times colleague Nick Kristof as well as the Washington Post's John Pomfret, leading shit hole reporters of their day (like Christiane Amanpour, but for newspapers). One of the most chilling reports came from Kristof and began as follows:

As he strode confidently down the red-clay road that parted the jungle, the young rebel soldier was perfectly candid about his mission. ``We're capturing the Rwandan refugees,'' he said placidly. ``We're catching them and killing them.'' Asked to repeat that, he elaborated without embarrassment. ``Every day we kill them,'' he said with a shrug. ``They fled, so they must be bad people. So we catch them and take them back to our commander, and then we kill them.''

There's the essence of it: collective guilt and summary justice. My main recollection of that time is about the difficulty for the United States government and the rest of the international community to keep a fixed gaze on terrible events taking place so far away. I'll never forget one meeting I attended between NGOs and US officials just after the RPA operation against the camps had been initiated. Everyone in the room knew there were two halves to the story of what had just happened. At one end of the string of camps, Goma to the north of Lake Kivu, a stream of refugees were driven back into Rwanda to be reintegrated into their homeland, a good thing basically. At Bukavu to the South, there was no such gateway for repatriation, and the refugees were at the mercy of the RPA and its Congolese allies. The tone of the meeting, unfortunately, was more relief over the former than worry over the latter.

Who's Being Insensitive About the Ground Zero Mosque Debate? Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at AOL News, it's all Cordoba House/Ground Zero Mosque all the time. In today's piece, I point out the folly in arguing that Muslims are being insensitive by placing an Islamic Cultural Center two blocks from Ground Zero:

Over the past few weeks as the furor over the Cordoba House project near ground zero has grown, opponents of the plan have seized on a novel argument to avoid the charge that they're seeking to constrain the religious freedom of American Muslims.They argue that while religious groups have the right to build a place of worship anywhere they please -- and the government can't lawfully block such an effort -- the project shouldn't go forward because it rubs raw the sensitivities of the families of 9/11 victims.

Case in point is a recent op-ed by, of all people, Karen Hughes, who not only served in the Bush administration State Department with a special responsibility to conduct outreach to the Muslim world, but also sent the imam behind the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, overseas to tell the Islamic world what it was like to be a Muslim living in the United States.

Nonetheless, Hughes argues that "I believe that most Americans who oppose locating a mosque near Ground Zero are neither anti-freedom nor anti-Muslim; they just don't believe it's respectful, given what happened there."

On the surface, this all seems very reasonable. Build the center, just away from ground zero, out of respect for the victims' families. But dig a little deeper and an uglier truth emerges.

Hughes' argument is predicated on the notion that American Muslims somehow bear collective responsibility for the behavior of the 19 Muslim men who carried out the 9/11 attacks and the relative handful of al-Qaida operatives who helped conceive and support the plan.

Read the whole thing here.

Build the Mosque; Help Defeat Al Qaeda Posted by The Editors

This post is by Matthew Alexander and originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

The debate over the mosque in lower Manhattan has caused our country’s political volcano to erupt.  Republicans and Democrats, among them Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have argued that the designated site for the Cordoba House, a Muslim community center and mosque, is too close to hallowed ground.  President Obama defended the mosque supporters’ Constitutional right to build it where they choose.

But there is a much larger rationale for building a Muslim community center near the former site of the Twin Towers:  It can be used as a weapon to defeat al Qaeda.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, our counterterrorism strategy has focused on stopping terrorist attacks.  That’s an important goal, but only part of the equation. A comprehensive strategy should include a greater focus on removing the root causes of terrorism. The only way to deliver a sustainable defeat to al Qaeda is to both destroy its leadership and cut off its ability to recruit.

Building a Muslim community center near the site of Ground Zero will bolster our ability to do the latter.  Imagine an al Qaeda recruiter attempting to sway a potential charge by citing an imaginary American war against Muslims but having to face the counterargument that Americans built a Muslim community center near the site of the Twin Towers.

The Cordoba House would be a powerful symbol of U.S. tolerance and freedom that will stand in direct contradiction to al Qaeda’s narrative that Americans hate Muslims.  As a symbol, its construction demonstrates that the U.S. is not at war with Islam and that Muslims are welcome in America.  It communicates a message of moderation that stands in stark contrast to al Qaeda’s bankrupt ideology.

As I discovered as a high-level interrogator of al Qaeda members in Iraq, symbols like this matter.  Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the policy of torture and abuse handed al Qaeda its number one recruiting tool. Those who think al Qaeda will not be able to spin this controversy to their advantage are disastrously mistaken – but it can be a victory for America as well.

The political uproar over the Cordoba project, and in particular the use of harmful, bigoted rhetoric by some opportunists, leaves America facing a choice.  It can project one of two symbols: One of integration, acceptance and positive affirmation of American values; or one of intolerance, rejection, and animosity.  The former will work to undermine al Qaeda as part of a long-term strategy to defeat them. The latter will bolster Islamic extremists’ arguments that America is an intolerant country hell-bent on war with Islam, aid recruitment efforts and add support for more terrorist attacks.

The choice is obvious.  Let’s build the Cordoba House.

Matthew Alexander is a former senior military interrogator who led the interrogations that located Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. He is the author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.

New Brookings Policy Brief on Radicalization of Islamist Groups Posted by Shadi Hamid

I have a new Brookings policy brief suggestively titled "The Islamist Response to Repression: Are Mainstream Islamist Groups Radicalizing?" You can read it here (PDF). While the Obama administration tries to resolve conflicts and crises in Iran, Palestine, and Iraq, there are some troubling developments taking place in Egypt and Jordan, two of our most strategically vital Arab allies. Egypt, for one, might be on the brink. And, well, Jordan might also be on the brink, though of what no one can be sure. Both countries have critical parliamentary elections coming up at the end of the year.

So what's the problem? Over the last 15-20 years, and particularly since 9/11, mainstream Islamist groups have moderated their policies and rhetoric. But just as they've been adopting democratic precepts and modernizing their election platforms, they've found themselves facing mounting legal restrictions, widespread electoral fraud, and mass arrest. If we want to persuade Islamists to channel their grievances through peaceful, democratic means, this may serve as the most useful encouragement. Any number of studies have warned that the marginalization of nonviolent Islamists can have a radicalizing effect. But has it?

In the paper, I try to gauge how Islamists are responding to these new, unprecedented challenges while exploring implications for U.S. foreign policy and regional security. Here is the relevant section for U.S. policymakers, who, one hopes, are keeping a close eye on developments in both countries:

With much-anticipated elections in both countries scheduled for 2010 and 2011, the Obama administration as well as the U.S. Congress have the opportunity to weigh in and address the question of Islamist participation, something they have so far avoided doing. Doing nothing has consequences, as evidenced by Jordanian Islamists’ announcement in early August that they would boycott the November parliamentary polls due to the likelihood of fraud. The briefing concludes with several practicable steps the United States should take, including:

• Publicly affirm the right of all opposition actors, including Islamists, to participate in upcoming elections. The Obama administration should begin by clarifying U.S. policy toward political Islam by clearly affirming the right of all nonviolent political groups to participate in the electoral process. This should be coupled by a consistent American policy of opposing not just the arrests of secular activists but Islamist ones as well. By treating both groups equally, the United States can counter the (largely accurate) claim that its support for Arab democrats is selective. In Jordan, the United States should pressure the government to reach out to opposition groups and issue guarantees to that the elections will be relatively free.

• Empower U.S. embassies to begin substantive engagement with Islamist groups. The Obama administration has emphasized its belief in engaging a diverse range of actors. Yet it has failed to reach out to many of the largest, most influential groups in the region. As Islamist groups work to reassess their strategy and resolve internal divisions, American officials need to be aware of how such developments might affect broader regional interests. At a later stage, open channels of dialogue may allow the United States some influence over strategies Islamists adopt, particularly regarding participation in elections.

As they say, go read the whole thing. 

Will Moving the Park 51 "Mosque" Empower Extremists? Posted by Shadi Hamid

Some liberals are arguing that failing to build the Park 51 "mosque" will somehow empower extremists. Jon Chait's coverage of the "ground zero mosque" controversy has been excellent. But I'm not really sure what to make of this claim of his:

The key fact is that we are fighting a war for the hearts and minds of non-radical Muslims, and the Park 51 uproar is helping drive potential allies into the arms of the enemy. It is madness.

Elsewhere, Ruth Massie, a supporter of Park51, puts it this way:

It would be giving in to bigotry and intolerance to demand that it be moved and I think in the end, it makes us less safe because we need to show the world that we are a tolerant, open society.

I don't really understand this. Will the mosque/community center send a powerful message that America is a land of freedom for Muslims, even 2.5 blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks? There are good arguments in support of Park51. This, I suspect, is not one of them. No one ever decided to join a terrorist group in Egypt because they were reading New York Times articles about civil liberties abuses against Muslims in Alabama. If this is about helping diffuse Muslim anger abroad, then I wish supporters of this odd hypothesis would clarify the causal mechanisms involved. Arabs aren't angry at us because American Muslims get racially profiled in airports. They're angry at us because our policies in the region, um, are pretty bad. 

So let's not pretend that we can build a better relationship with the Muslim world by "cultivating moderates" like Imam Rauf, or that America can lead by example by peppering fuzzy mosques all over Manhattan. Arabs aren't concerned about our lack of freedom in America. They're concerned about the lack of freedom in their own societies, something which we haven't been particularly helpful with.

How's That Whole Afghanistan Strategy Going? Posted by Michael Cohen

Today we have several fresh reminders of how increasingly FUBAR our mission in Afghanistan actually is.

First, Dexter Filkins piece on how the Pakistanis used the arrest of Mullah Baradar last February to continue playing their own game in Afghanistan - one that is very different from the strategy underpinning US efforts:

They (Pakistani officials) say they set out to capture Mr. Baradar, and used the C.I.A. to help them do it, because they wanted to shut down secret peace talks that Mr. Baradar had been conducting with the Afghan government that excluded Pakistan, the Taliban’s longtime backer.

In the weeks after Mr. Baradar’s capture, Pakistani security officials detained as many as 23 Taliban leaders, many of whom had been enjoying the protection of the Pakistani government for years. The talks came to an end.

. . . "We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” said a Pakistani security official. “We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians.”

The Pakistanis even seem comfortable taking cheap shots at the CIA:

The Pakistanis refused to allow the C.I.A. to interrogate Mr. Baradar or even to be present when they spoke. Another Pakistani official said Mr. Baradar was taken to a safe house in Islamabad, where he was debriefed. It was only several days later that the C.I.A. learned of his identity and were allowed to question him.

The Pakistani official even joked about the C.I.A.’s naïveté. “They are so innocent,” he said.

The thing about this story is that even if isn't true and even if, as one US official claims, the Pakistanis are "trying to rewrite history to make themselves appear more influential" the very tone of this article is basically a screw you to the United States.  But considering the obvious duplicity of the Pakistanis in not going after al Qaeda and in tacitly supporting the Afghan Taliban's insurgency in Afghanistan, which stretches back to 2001, none of this should be a surprise.  How many times are the Pakistanis going to be keep moving the football (a la Lucy) and we fall flat on our ass (Charlie Brown) before we realize that they do not have the same goals that we do in Afghanistan? As long as the Pakistanis are supporting the Afghan Taliban - and providing them with sanctuary across the border - we're just not going to make much progress in a counter-insurgency fight.

Now speaking of unreliable allies - how about Hamid Karzai and his efforts clamp down on corruption in Afghanistan? Well first it turns out that he intervened personally to free a high level aide accused of corruption; next he is establishing new rules to restrict the power of two US-backed anti-corruption agencies and now, according to his spokesman, Waheed Omer the real corruption problem in Afghanistan lies not with the Karzai government, but with foreigners:

Mr. Omer said that much of Afghanistan’s corruption was the fault of foreign contractors spending Western reconstruction money, and called on the international community to do more to help Afghanistan combat the problem, which he depicted as more serious than the problem of Afghan official corruption.

. . . Mr. Omer insisted that the Afghan government remained committed to combating corruption, but that most official corruption was petty, such as bribes to provide services or licenses.

There is even this precious quote from an unnamed US official reflecting on Karzai, "In the end, we’re hoping he’ll do the right thing.”

I tell you, we Americans are adorable - I mean just adorable. Look, even if Karzai does the "right thing" how much more obvious could it be that he has little actual interest in curbing corruption in his government. If it takes another round of US arm-twisting to get him to come around that only puts a band-aid on a gushing wound.

I hate to sound like a broken record on this, but no matter how much the US military thinks it "gets" COIN there are far more important factors that determine success in a counter-insurgency fight.

Strike one is not having strong or even legitimate host country support. Strike 2 is when your insurgent opponent has an unmolested safe haven.

And strike three is when six out of ten of your own citizens oppose the war you're fighting.

The very fact that General Petraeus is talking about extending the US presence and pushing back withdrawals to after June 2011 is mind-boggling. It's like Vietnam all over again. At what point do US policymakers wake up and realize our strategy in Afghanistan simply isn't working?

That is no way to make America safer Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

Stephen Rademaker has a point.  The debate in the Senate over the New START Treaty has been devoid of long, detailed discussions about formal Senate procedures. 

Other than the obvious explanation—it’s dull, boring and painful so no one wants to talk about it— there’s another glaring explanation:  New START is a no-brainer. 

The Secretary of Defense didn’t testify that he would support New START if the U.S. goes back to the Russians and chats some more about missile defense.  No, Bob Gates said, unequivocally, "The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leadership."

James Schlesinger, the GOP’s nuclear yoda, didn’t say that the Senate should ratify New START after we’ve gotten some things off our chest about our long-range conventional strike capabilities.  No, James Schlesinger said that it is “obligatory” for the Senate to ratify New START.  Full stop.   

Seven former commanders of U.S. Strategic Command didn’t say that they would support New START provided the administration coughs up some more money for our nuclear complex.  No, the men who used to be in charge of all of our nation’s inter-continental ballistic missiles assured Senators, "We strongly endorse its early ratification and entry into force."

Over 70 of our nation’s leading military and national security experts, from both sides of the aisle, have voiced their support for New START and they have done so without setting conditions or recommending that the U.S. go run a few things past the Russians before moving forward. 

After 20 hearings, 3 classified briefings and the submission of nearly 800 questions for the record, Senators have honorably upheld their Constitutional duty to thoroughly review this treaty.  In addition to hearing from a multitude of current administration officials, Senators heard from high-ranking officials from the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43 administrations as well as six former secretaries of state, five former secretaries of defense, the chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, and numerous other distinguished Americans.  The record that has been established throughout this process is truly impressive. 

On top of all of this support, the leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—the committee that is responsible for reporting to the full Senate when treaties are being considered— has been extremely respectful and sensitive to the concerns of its members.  After pushing back the Committee vote to give members additional time to review all of the materials that were submitted along with the treaty, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John Kerry told the Washington Post, "If we forced a vote today, I would have won. But I would have angered some people and made them feel they weren't being included," Kerry said. "I think it's important to build a broader consensus."

What’s more, Sen. Kerry wrote to committee members before the August recess and specifically asked for suggestions for the draft resolution of ratification.  “The Committee is currently drafting a resolution of advice and consent, and members who wish to suggest language for inclusion should do so during recess…Your input is welcome as we work to craft a resolution that can enjoy broad support.”

Funny that Mr. Rademaker didn’t mention that.  He also seemed to conveniently gloss over the fact that the person who was most adamantly calling for a committee vote was Sen. Richard Lugar, the committee’s Ranking Republican.  On the day that Chairman Kerry announced he would delay the vote, Sen. Lugar told the Cable, "We ought to vote now and let the chips fall where they may. It's that important."  Aware of the tight floor schedule and of the need to quickly ratify the treaty, Sen. Lugar urged the full Senate to take up the treaty as soon as possible.  "If not [before the election], then whether it works out in December or not is no longer a matter of parliamentary debate, it's a matter of national security," he said, citing the fact that U.S. inspectors have not been able to verify Russian behavior regarding nuclear weapons deployment since the original START agreement expired late last year.

Ultimately, this is where Mr. Rademaker falls short.  Formal Senate procedures are to be respected and utilized properly, but they should not be used as a delay tactic or a political tool, particularly when our national security is on the line. 

Let’s face it, that is no way to make America safer.

The Left's Selective Praise Posted by Michael Cohen

The other day, my blogmate Shadi Hamid raised a point on his Twitter feed that's been gnawing at me as well; "Why do liberals get excited when politicians defend things that are pretty basic & should be beyond question - like, um, the 1st amendment?"

Shadi was of course referring to President Obama's speech last Friday defending the Ground Zero Mosque and the glowing, initial response it received in the liberal blogosphere.

Glenn Greenwald called it an act "that deserves pure praise"; Mark Kleiman says Obama's remarks made him "proud to be an American citizen" and Greg Sargent said it was one of the "finest moments" of Obama's presidency. And there was even more where that came from.

Call me and Shadi cynics, but "meh." It's not that I'm unpleased by what Obama said, but jeez this is what Presidents are supposed to do. Hell, George Bush stood up for American Muslims repeatedly - and, to some extent, in language more forceful than that used by Obama. I understand that the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque doesn't exactly have a great deal of support among the American people, but upholding basic American principles like religious freedom sort of comes with the job description of being President of the United States.

But what I find striking about all this momentary praise from the left is that it seems a bit more effusive than the praise that Barack Obama has received from these same allies for his actual legislative accomplishments. (And in no way do I mean I to focus these comments exclusively on Greenwald, Kleiman and Sargent).

Now I realize that the health care bill didn't contain a public option, which of course invalidated the entire effort (#sarcasm). However, it seems to me that ensuring guaranteed health care for 30 million Americans is a pretty significant progressive accomplishment - in fact, it's a heck of a lot more momentous, and more difficult to achieve, than simply delivering a speech extolling the virtues of religious freedom.

Now granted the health care bill is not perfect and there are legitimate areas for criticism in the final legislation. But for tens of millions of working class and middle class Americans (you know the people that liberals are nominally supposed to be fighting for) this bill is a critical step forward in ameliorating America's growing inequality gap and could literally make the difference between life and death for many of them. In short, it is precisely the sort of landmark, incremental and yet initially imperfect social legislation that has come to define significant progressive, legislative accomplishments throughout American history.

So there is something that tends to rub the wrong way about such unconditional praise for Obama's speech in support of religious freedom, but tepid praise - even anger - for legislation that fulfills what has basically been the policy lodestar of modern progressivism for six decades. Of course, this isn't even to mention the president's efforts to pass various pieces of legislation that improves regulation of Wall Street - including the creation of a consumer protection agency - revamps the student lending program and puts more resources into education reform, public transportation and other progressive priorities.  (And to be sure, praise for these efforts has little to do with Barack Obama; it has to do with consolidating support and mobilizing public opinion so that Congress will not only maintain support for these programs but build upon them. To paraphrase Clemenceau, legislating is too important to be left to politicians.)

Along these lines, in a smart piece in this week's Nation Theda Skocpol makes a good argument about nature of liberal disappointment in Obama's significant policy accomplishments:

Since the 1960s, progressives in the United States have often been more interested in racial, gender, foreign policy, cultural and environmental issues, and not so concerned about socioeconomic redistribution. So it is perhaps understandable that for many upper-middle-class progressives, who cluster on the East and West Coasts, the past two years just look like failure.

This isn't to say that cultural, environmental and foreign policy issues are unimportant (after writing for more than a year about our failed Afghanistan policy the importance I place on these issues should speak for itself). And this isn't to suggest that the left should stop focusing on "unpopular" issues like torture and rule of law abuses where the president needs to have his feet held to the fire. But liberals do great harm to the causes they care most deeply about if they ignores the bread and butter issues that not only animate American politics, but matter so much to lower and middle class Americans for whom progressivism must speak. Because after all, if we don't, who will?

The left should and must applaud the President when he speaks up for religious freedom and against the bigotry and intolerance directed at Muslims that is an all too prevalent part of our national discourse. But when he accomplishes the more difficult task of bringing social justice to millions upon millions of Americans shouldn't the praise from his nominal supporters be even greater and more enduring? 

I fear sometimes that my progressives compatriots lose touch with what it is exactly we're fighting for.

Historical Hypocrisy: Paula DeSutter Talks Verification Posted by Kelsey Hartigan

Puh-lease.  Paula DeSutter’s attempted criticism of the verification measures in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is hypocritical, untrue, and in clear contradiction to her not-so-stellar track record when it comes to verification.

As Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI), Paula DeSutter was the Bush administration’s go-to person for all things verifiable—which makes her sudden concern for stringent verification measures seem just a teensie bit disingenuous.   

First, her assertion that the Obama administration “could have extended the START treaty,” is well, a lie.  In 2007, it was DeSutter who announced that the United States would not seek to extend the START Treaty.  Check this out:  

While the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or START "has been important and for the most part has done its job," Assistant Secretary of State Paula DeSutter told Reuters the pact is cumbersome and its complicated reporting standards have outlived their usefulness.

In the post-Cold war era, many provisions of the 1991 START accord, which mandated deep nuclear weapons cuts, "are no longer necessary. We don't believe we're in a place where we need have to have the detailed lists (of weapons) and verification measures," added DeSutter.

As someone who thought all of those boring details and provisions in START were “cumbersome” and “no longer necessary” it’s quite ironic that DeSutter is now going after the Obama administration for allegedly agreeing to “gut the monitoring and verification measures and limitations necessary to render [New START] effectively verifiable.” How odd. 

Multiple military and national security experts from both sides of the aisle have testified before Congress that New START—and its strong verification regime— is essential to our national security.  After 18 hearings, three classified briefings, the submission of nearly 800 questions for the record, and an extended review period, DeSutter’s accusation that the administration is seeking to “ram New START through the Senate with minimal examination…” is once again, a bit disingenuous.  Especially when compared to the review process for the 2002 Moscow Treaty (trust me…I’ll get to that in a second) which passed on a 95-0 vote, after just six hearings.   

Finally, let’s not forget that DeSutter has a track record when it comes to verification and arms control treaties.  And it ain’t pretty.  The Bush administration, for whom DeSutter served, repeatedly took long-standing verification measures, threw them out the window, and flipped them the bird as a final farewell.  This much is clear in at least three major instances:   

Strike one:  Verification and the Biological Weapons Convention

Courtesy of my friends at ACA, this little nugget sums it all up:  “Beginning in 1995, states-parties to the BWC began negotiations to fashion a legally binding protocol of verification measures, including on-site inspections, for the instrument…Six months after taking office, the Bush administration announced its opposition to the proposed protocol, sinking it.”

Strike two:  Verification and a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty

Washington had subscribed since 1995 to negotiating an effectively verifiable FMCT, but the Bush administration reversed course in July 2004 and announced that it no longer thought an FMCT could be effectively verified, a reversal that once again, sank any hope for progress. 

Strike three, you’re out:  Verification (or lack thereof) and the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

Perhaps the number one reason why Paula DeSutter has absolutely no authority to speak on New START’s verification regime is the fact that in 2002, the Bush administration—for whom she served—negotiated a three-page treaty with Russia that contained no verification provisions, no definitions, and frankly, no real substance.  Commonly called the “SORT-of-a-treaty,” the pact relied on the verification provisions of START 1, which as we all know, expired on December 5, 2009. 

DeSutter openly admitted that SORT is not effectively verifiable, but said that mattered little because of the friendlier U.S.-Russian relationship.

So this all begs the question—why, given DeSutter’s flagrant disregard for verification measures in the past, is she suddenly so concerned with telemetry exchanges, re-entry vehicle on-site inspections, limits on the number of re-entry vehicles that can be loaded on ballistic missiles—and all of that other “cumbersome” crap that as of 2007, she said was “no longer necessary?”  

Sure beats me.

UPDATE:  Kingston Reif over at Nukes of Hazard reminds us of all of the lovely things conservatives said about the "simplicity and brevity" of SORT.  Greg Thielmann has also weighed in on DeSutter's commentary in his new piece for ACA. 

9-11 -- Then and Now Posted by David Shorr

Of the many disorienting things on 9/11/01, it was particularly strange to find myself living 1,000 miles away from the two cities where, up to then, I'd spent all but one of my years. As we know, New Yorkers are famous for not being very attuned to the rest of the country. Of course that has been a two-way avenue, too, with plenty of suspicion from beyond the Hudson River looking at New York City as a kind of foreign land (not to mention the nation's capital). That sense of distance may have narrowed during the years since, but as a then-newly transplanted Midwesterner the solidarity was palpable and appreciated.

Fast-forward to the current political circus over a neighborhood I'll always remember as the site of my first job after college. Which prompts a new version of the question about the relationship between "The City" (sorry) and the country. How much first-hand knowledge do these people have of Lower Manhattan, with their passionate views about its real estate should be zoned?  I don't mean this as a question of what gives someone the standing to have an opinion about the mosque. Instead my point is about the relationship between all this intense symbolism and an actual place where people work and live. What do those streets really represent? What should they? As I point out in a post over at TMPCafe, the poet Andrei Codrescu addressed these issues much more eloquently (not to say presciently) back in September 2002.

[Update: There was more to say about the Cordoba opponents' slippery relationship with basic constitutional rights and religious liberty.]

Politics of National Security: Five Juicy Stories We're NOT Following Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Instead of Newt Gingrich comparing American Muslims to Nazis, here are five stories that meet the August demand for tabloid-style reporting AND are of profound significance to our national security (ok, yeah, Newt is of profound significance to our security, but in the same way hurricanes are.)

How 'Bout those North Koreans?  A shadowy new candidate to succeed Kim Jong Il.  Nuclear weapons, Kremlinology, and weird personal habits... doesn't get much better than that.

Where In the World Is Hosni Mubarak?  Speaking of father-son transitions, we give you the healthwatch on one of the US' longest-lived allies in the Middle East.  Egypt's President is finding new ribbons to cut every day, as his health is rumored to be poor and his son rumored to be ready to assume the presidency.  

The General Petraeus Show.  'Nuf said.  With added bonus report that General Stan "he said what?" McChrystal will be lecturing at Yale next year.  Maybe he'll help out with labor disputes, too.

Related item: The Secretary Gates Show.  "Sometime in 2011," he tells Fred Kaplan, but not very convincingly.

And, oh yeah, then there's China's growing economy.  I guess I should be glad that's not being subjected to Ground Zero-style demagoguery.  So never mind, nothing to see here.

Why I Miss George Bush Posted by Michael Cohen

Honestly, these are words that I never thought it possible for me to type. But in my latest column for AOL, I argue that as America slowly descends into a vicious spiral of bigotry and fear over the fact that Americans Muslims want to build a cultural center near Ground Zero . . . I kind of miss the guy's rhetorical defense of religious tolerance:

Now to be clear I don't really miss the George Bush who "won" the 2000 election; who plunged our country into the worst foreign policy disaster in American history in Iraq; who sanctioned the use of torture and other rule-of-law abuses; who believed in intelligent design but not the science behind climate change; and who largely fiddled while the U.S. economy burned. Him, I don't miss all that much.

 . . . But, for all of Bush's faults; one of the good things he did as president was to ensure that the country did not engage in a witch hunt against American Muslims, simply because it was a radical Islamic group that attacked America on 9/11. As president, Bush spoke consistently and effectively about the importance of respecting religious differences in American society and not turning hatred of al-Qaida into a broad-based attack against all Muslims. And for the most part, other Republicans begrudgingly followed his lead.

Just a few days ago when President Barack Obama spoke up in support of the basic notion that religious freedom for Muslim-Americans is an unimpeachable American ideal he was, ironically, following in post-9/11 rhetorical footsteps first trod by Bush.

If only we had a Republican Party today that could live up to the example set by Bush. There is literally no one in a position of power within the GOP willing to stand up for the ideal of religious freedom in America and against the naked bigotry that defines the opposition to the ground zero mosque.

Read the whole thing here!

The Craziest Thing I've Read In A Very Long Time Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at the Atlantic Council blog there is a wrap-up of Stephen Biddle's recent trip to Afghanistan - and it features this utterly head scratching quote from Biddle:

Now, the threat if the worst-case scenario unfolds is pretty serious. I mean, you may or may not have worried about nuclear weapons in Soviet hands during the Cold War. But bin Laden would probably use the things if he got them. And if an American administration that could reasonably have waged this war with some prospect of success instead decided to withdraw -- if that scenario played out, Pakistan collapsed, and bin Laden got a nuclear weapon and used it on the United States, it would be regarded by generations of historians as the single biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of the nation.

Now, a variety of bad things have to happen in sequence for that worst case to play itself out. That is why I think this is a close call, rather than an obvious one. But, especially with respect to the guy in the Oval Office who has to bear the responsibility for this, I suspect that worst case looms fairly large. But all indications are that the president is pretty ambivalent about this, in part because I suspect he sees the costs and benefits as being closer on the margin than one would, in some ways, like.

I read things like this and I really start to believe that the entire foreign policy community has completely lost its mind. Stephen Biddle is a smart guy - and I simply can't fathom the notion that he actually believes this (except of course for the fact that he said basically the same thing last year). 

Ignoring the fact that the notion of Pakistan collapsing is deeply far-fetched; does Biddle really think that a cratered al Qaeda, on the run in NW Pakistan, with about 200 key operatives has a snowball's chance in hell of getting a nuclear weapon. And even if they did, that they would be able to transport it to the United States with no one finding out - and then exploding it. This isn't the one percent doctrine. It's the 0.000001 doctrine.

Now granted Biddle sees this as a close call (which is itself gobsmacking) and actually criticizes the Obama Administration for not being more concerned about it. As for how our leaving Afghanistan makes this one in billion scenario a bit more possible . . . well your guess is as good as mine. But the very notion that we need to keep 100,000 troops in Afghanistan to guard against this remote possibility (and I use the word "possibility" guardedly) is . . . well words fail to describe how insane this actually is.

Statements like these are perhaps further evidence that we have lost any and all perspective on the actual threats facing this country - and that there are practically no discernible limits applied by members of our foreign policy elite on when and how we utilize our armed forces to "protect" American security.  (The nuclear bogeyman, notwithstanding, it's insane enough already that we are maintaining a 100,000 troop presence in Afghanistan just to combat al Qaeda.)

The very fact that $100 billion a year wars can be justified on this sort of microscopically thin reed while far more significant challenges - like catastrophic climate change basically go ignored by our elected leaders- is as clear a sign as imaginable that the US isn't just entering a period of imperial decline. We're in complete free fall.

Another COIN Myth - "We Get COIN" Posted by Michael Cohen

So a few weeks ago I wrote a post titled the Afghanistan Exist Strategy Watch about how I was beginning to believe that the US was turning the corner in Afghanistan - away from trying to win there to preparing to get out. 

Um . . . never mind:

American military officials are building a case to minimize the planned withdrawal of some troops from Afghanistan starting next summer, in an effort to counter growing pressure on President Obama from inside his own party to begin winding the war down quickly.

With the administration unable yet to point to much tangible evidence of progress, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who assumed command in Afghanistan last month from Gen.Stanley A. McChrystal, is taking several steps to emphasize hopeful signs on the ground that, he will argue, would make a rapid withdrawal unwise. Meanwhile, a rising generation of young officers, who have become experts over the past nine years in the art of counterinsurgency, have begun quietly telling administration officials that they need time to get their work done.

“Their argument,” said one senior administration official, who would not speak for attribution about the internal policy discussions, “is that while we’ve been in Afghanistan for nine years, only in the past 12 months or so have we started doing this right, and we need to give it some time and think about what our long-term presence in Afghanistan should look like.”

"Only in the past 12 months or so have we started doing this right" is such a laughable quote that the senior Administration official who recounted should have started guffawing afterward.  

It's one of the essential COIN myths that the military didn't "get" counter-insurgency in Afghanistan until 12 months ago; just as it's an essential COIN myth that we weren't doing counter-insurgency in Iraq before the surge and that once we did, everything turned around there. As a friend said to me last night. "It's the Better War Part 2: Even Betterer!"

But in reality we've been doing some variation of these policies since 2003 and actually after 2007 what we were doing in Iraq looked very little like what is popularly described as COIN today. The turnaround in Iraq had far less to do with the surge and a change in US tactics than it did specific events on the ground (in particular Sunni militias turning on AQI and a general decline in the ethnic slaughter that had defined the country in 2005 and 2006).

The conceptual problem with the "we get COIN" argument is that it presupposes what the American military does from a tactical perspective actually matters - and that the enemy and our allies has little actual agency. For example, let's say that in Iraq every military officer memorized FM 3-24 in 2003 (an impossibility I know but work with me). It wouldn't have made things any easier as far as stabilizing the country then - because the challenge in stabilizing Iraq went far beyond what the US military was possibly able to accomplish on a tactical level. In other words, a COIN-led surge in 2004 would not have succeeded. 

Same goes for Afghanistan today. It doesn't matter if we've started doing COIN right in the last 12 months or the last 12 years. What influences the long-term effectiveness of the mission there has to do with a set of factors completely out of the control of the American military: things like the performance of the Afghan military and police, the inclination of the Afghan government to crack down on corruption, the continued presence of Afghan Taliban safe havens in Pakistan, the level of political and popular support in the United States and yes, even the ability of the Taliban to adapt to US and NATO's tactical changes.

Whether the US gets COIN or doesn't get COIN is not relevant to the much larger question of whether the US mission - as currently formulated - can hope to succeed. And if the last year has taught us anything it is that it cannot. That's the question that the White House needs to be addressing; not the silly proclamations of military officers that they suddenly get counter-insurgency.

Of course, it would help if the President would actually address these issues and make clear to his national security team what he believes the the US commitment to Afghanistan should be and what is his timetable for achieving US goals.

It's something that he continues to fail to do. With such questions seemingly remaining open-ended it's small wonder that military officials are doing what they always try to do - ask for more troops and more time. It's up to the Commander-in-Chief to set limits; so how about it Mr. President?

Another COIN Myth Exposed - Protecting the Population Posted by Michael Cohen

One of the more pernicious myths of the modern COIN fad is the focus on protecting civilians as an end goal in itself for COIN operations. As the argument goes, by protecting civilians counter-insurgents are able to shift the balance of popular support toward the government and away from the insurgent forces. The more people feel protected, the better chance they will reject the insurgent force and ally themselves with the government. The population is the center of gravity we are told.

For example, last spring here is how General McChrystal defined the fight in Afghanistan: 

“Central to counterinsurgency is protecting the people,” he said. . . Effectiveness is measured in “the number of Afghans shielded from violence.” 

The New York Times endorsed this view, making the argument:

Protecting Afghan civilians, and expanding the secure space in which they can safely go about their lives and livelihoods must now become the central purpose of American military operations in Afghanistan.

According to a new UN report, more than a year later, things are not working out too well:

In its midyear report, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said the number of civilians wounded and killed had increased by nearly a third in the first six months of the year, as coalition forces raised the level of military action against insurgents. In that period, 1,271 civilians were killed and 1,997 wounded, the report said, with more than three-quarters attributable to what it called “antigovernment elements.”

So what we have here is compelling evidence that our COIN strategy has been an dramatic failure; the US has largely been unable to protect Afghan civilians. In fact, their lives are now at greater risk than before we began to carry out a policy specifically geared toward protecting them.

None of this should be a huge surprise. As I noted last year, "By making civilian body counts the top metric you are waging war on the enemy's terms - and you are allowing them to dictate how you judge the success of your operation. If anything, you are actually giving incentive to the Taliban to kill more civilians."

This isn't to say that the Taliban are purposely targeting civilians, but it does suggest that the Taliban can easily undermine US strategy by placing civilians at greater risk. Indeed, violence against civilians has a multiplier effect because it cedes fear and uncertainty among the civilian population and convinces them not to take sides in a conflict.

The simple truth is that we have a fairly good sense - from studying COIN history - how you protect civilians from insurgents: you forcibly separate them. A tactic used to great success in Malaya and Kenya and to a different degree in Iraq. The current US strategy in Afghanistan of using a carrot, rather than a stick is not the path to success. In fact, if anything it seems to be causing more harm than good. 

None of this, of course, is to suggest that protecting the population is a bad thing or should be discouraged. Instead the experience of waging so-called population centric COIN in Afghanistan provides compelling evidence that military escalation, in general, is a poor means of achieving that goal. 

One would hope that the consistent failure of COIN theory when it is put in practice would lead the military to shelve the pseudo-science and unsupported arguments underpinning modern COIN doctrine, as described in FM 3-24. But to be honest, I'm not holding my breath.