Consequence Free Detention Policy? Posted by Patrick Barry

Something I forgot to mention before is that one of the other bothersome aspects of Elizabeth Bumiller piece, is that it deals rather one-sidedly with the consequences of a change in the U.S.' methods for detaining suspected terrorists. It's true that a portion of released detainees ending up as extremists is bad.  (It's also, I might add, pretty unsurprising)  There's every indication that the Obama administration is aware of just how bad it is. They're so aware that they've actually taken steps to avoid it happening in the future.

But it's also true that the alternative of maintaining the Bush system for detention carries repercussions.  It obviously does.  Part of the administration's rationale for abandoning the status quo was because it had become clear that the cost of continuing it was quite high. By not presenting the repercussions of the Bush administration choosing to use Guantanamo (damaged prestige, boon to Al Qaeda recruiting, American deaths), the article makes it seem as if continuing with the current system is consequence free, when it's pretty clear that's not the case. 

Guantanamania in the House of Bush Posted by Patrick Barry

News that about 1 in 5 of the detainees released from Guantanamo are associated or suspected to be associated with some form of extremist activity is likely to aid certain opportunists bent on hemming in the President's efforts to remove the motivating factors that lead to terrorism.  What's so vexing about that is that the story itself has almost nothing to do with the Obama administration.  Read this portion:

"Mr. Obama inherited 242 detainees at Guantánamo when he took office, and so far he has released or transferred 44. Of the 198 remaining, about 92 are from Yemen. Of those, just under 40 have been cleared for release.

An administration official said Wednesday that the White House had 'been presented with no information that suggests that any of the detainees transferred by this administration have returned to the fight.'"

It's been a long time since I've done any maths, but doesn't that amount to..0% of the detainees released under Obama? Greg Sargent sure thinks so. It seems like the headline could easily have been "1 in 5 Bush Administration Detainees Return to Extremism" or better yet, "No Detainees Released Under Obama Return to Battlefield."

So why is the Obama administration so good at keeping detainees hardened by years of terrible treatment at Guantanamo from sliding into terrorism? Well according to the official quoted in Sargent's coverage, it's because Obama took the wildly unusual step of creating the Guantanamo Review Task Force, which reviews the record of each detainee held at Guantanamo.  And why was the Bush administration so bad at keeping detainees from becoming terrorists after their release? Well, because they didn't do anything like that.  One of the other things the Bush administration didn't do was keep comprehensive files on many of the detainees located at Guantanamo. That must have made for a pretty topsy turvy environment. With everything so discombobulated, It should not surprise anyone that a guy like Said Ali al-Shihri - who became the deputy commander of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which planned the underpants bombing - managed to go free.  

A Thought Experiment Posted by Michael Cohen

Andrew Exum thinks that I have overstated the seriousness of the recent release of a new report from our military intelligence head in Afghanistan about the failure of military intelligence in Afghanistan. To be clear, I don't think this episode is indicative of a crisis in civil-military relations. I mean there certainly IS a crisis in civil-military relations in this country; and our military has become dangerously politicized, but that was happening long before this report was issued.

But ask yourself a question. Can you imagine what would happen if someone on the civilian side issued a report like this - through an independent think tank - and outside the normal chain of command, criticizing Afghan reconstruction or drug interdiction efforts? Do you think they would keep their job?

But putting aside that issue for a second. I find myself tripped up, in reading the report, on something that is written on the first page:

The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, out intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade.

Then Flynn quotes General McChrystal as saying this:

Our senior leaders - the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, Congress and the President of the United States - are not getting the right information to make decisions with. 

FWIW, I absolutely agree with this and in fact I noted back in September that this seemed to be a huge problem in the McChrystal review:

The report says that "communities make deliberate choices to resist, support or allow insurgent influence" which is almost certainly true. But then the report makes no effort to describe which people, which communities, which ethnic groups choose to support or resist insurgent influence. . . Clearly the motivations of the "people" in  Kandahar is different from those in Kabul or Kunduz - and also quite clearly, they can't be solved by good governance alone. The report seems to presuppose that governance is the key to bringing the people to the side of the government as if ethnicity or tribal affiliation plays little role.

So here's my question, if McChrystal and Flynn acknowledge that we don't understand the center of gravity in Afghanistan, i.e the people then why are they arguing that the only way for dealing with the Taliban insurgency is through a counter-insurgency strategy focused on said people? Doesn't that put the proverbial cart before the horse? If we don't know for example how different communities in Afghanistan respond to US occupation; if we unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US troops operate, why would we pre-suppose that a tactical focus on "the people" will be successful? How do we even know that the "people" will respond positively to US occupation and assistance? Or how will we know if people in Kandahar respond to the US the same way people do in Khost or Herat. One would think that understanding ethnic and regional differences would be crucial to the success of a population centric approach; and yet Flynn suggests that we don't have that sort of information right now.

And what's more if we've failed for the past 8 years in understanding the people - which as we are told is crucial to the success of counter-insurgency - why do we think that things will turn around in the near future; or turn around fast enough to deeply influence our near-term status in Afghanistan? Doesn't the very fact that Flynn issued his report outside the chain of command suggest that his suggested population centric approach to intelligence gathering is getting pushback - and is unlikely to be implemented any time soon? 

It almost feels like we decided to do population centric counter-insurgency in Afghanistan before we actually figured out whether that would be an effective tactical approach. (Tongue planted firmly in cheek).

Re: This Post Is Not About Yemen Posted by Michael Cohen

I can't tell below if Pat Barry is being provocative or if he's just mischaracterizing my words. He claims that I grievously attacked Exum and Fontaine for the "audacious suggestion that the U.S. could “attempt to mitigate the worst of the coming challenges that will plague Yemen,” by 'combin[ing] security assistance with mediation efforts, development, regional engagement and an effective communications approach'  Some people might look at that and conclude it was a prudent set of suggestions."

Huh? That is some selective reading right there. What I did in fact suggest was that:

• Ex and Fontaine were biting off a bit more than the US could chew with the suggestion that "The goal of U.S. foreign policy toward Yemen should be for the country to emerge as a stable, functioning state, one that presents no sanctuary for transnational terrorist groups."  
• The notion we should devote more resources to Yemen was a knee jerk reaction and was not taking into full account whether such a move would backfire against US interests - particularly since Yemen is not exactly a Jeffersonian democracy and their current president is not exactly George Washington
• Perhaps our response to a failed terrorist attack by a lone individual should be focused less on Yemen and more on US homeland security and better inter-agency intelligence sharing  
• Maybe America's reaction to every international incident should not be how can the US become more involved in places where we have marginal interests. Or perhaps we should assess our interests - and capabilities - in a more comprehensive manner before jumping in feet first.

Now Pat argues that this reflects a "growing frustration among progressives with the way in which the fear of a terrorist attack has lowered the threshold for determining when America should act abroad." But he is looking at this too narrowly. 

The threshold is low no matter what the incident. Consider Russia's invasion of George last summer as great example of this phenomenon or even the response to pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran this past summer (where somehow the muted US response stifled the hope of pro-democracy forces. Please!) 

Or we tend to take credit for things because we imagine a world where all governments make decisions based on what America does. Libya giving up its nuclear weapons program (because of the war in Iraq); or the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (because George W Bush talked about democracy in his inaugural speech). Even in Iraq we seem to believe that the dip in civilian casualties was all because of the US military and had nothing to do with the Iraqis themselves.

The fixation on Yemen is yet another example of our policymakers - and their cheerleaders - believing that there are no limitations on US interests and power; that through US engagement we can solve every problem and that every minor threat of challenge to American power is a major problem. These are the false and dangerous notions that we need to get beyond.

This post is not about Yemen Posted by Patrick Barry

…At least not directly.  It is about the various reactions which Yemen’s sudden (or not so sudden) relevance has provoked, and in particular what the reactions from the left reveal about their growing anxiety with certain trends in American foreign policy discourse. 

What I find most striking about the commentary is the degree to which what I presumed were temperate recommendations for what U.S. policy toward Yemen should look like have been deemed unsatisfactory, both by the right and left.  The right’s response is fairly easy to explain.  In their view Yemen is just another front in the war on terror. Given the dire threat it poses to American’s security, anything less than a swift and tough response would, as Joe Lieberman suggested, result in Yemen turning into the next war. Though it’s difficult to see how averting a war requires taking immediate and aggressive action, conservatives say things like that all the time, so it shouldn't come as a surprise.

Responses from the left have not been quite what you would expect. Rather than confining their criticism to unfounded hysteria over Yemen’s imminent collapse or inflated threats of military occupation, some progressives have also directed a healthy amount of ire at those calling for more moderate, but still proactive shifts in U.S. policy.  Take Michael’s post from Monday, where he kind of goes after Exum and Fontaine for the wildly outlandish suggestion that the U.S. could “attempt to mitigate the worst of the coming challenges that will plague Yemen,” by “combin[ing] security assistance with mediation efforts, development, regional engagement and an effective communications approach.”  Some people might look at that and conclude it was a prudent set of suggestions.  Michael looks at it and screams, WHY?? HOW??

Yglesias is similarly exasperated by Charles Krauthammer’s willingess to look at cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Jordan as a means of containing instability in Yemen, despite Krauthammer's rather explicit, and unprecedented acknowledgment that Yemen is “not a place we want to go and invade.”  In a rare show of restraint, Krauthammer advises the U.S. to do…pretty much what it’s already doing, that is “have our weaponry in place, like the predators, gather intelligence, give intelligence, and work with the unreliable central government.”  Yglesias rightfully nails Krauthammer for reverting back to his old self and blithely tossing around an idea that could result in proxy war, but there’s still a larger picture here, which finds progressives pitting themselves not just against hawks, but those with ostensibly moderate outlooks. 

So what’s going on? Why are all these progressives attacking seemingly reasonable suggestions? What I think these reactions convey is a growing frustration among with the way in which the fear of a terrorist attack has dramatically lowered the threshold for determining when America should act abroad.  In this paradigm, discussions about whether to take action or not no longer happen as much, and instead, the choice most often facing policymakers is between different ideas on how to respond.  As Marc Lynch and others have so skillfully explained, the obvious problem with this paradigm is that when policymakers don’t have to go through the exercise of prioritizing and analyzing trade-offs, they tend to overreach.   So long as the ideas are good, overreach can still yield some preferable outcomes, at least in the short term. But in the long-term, it's just unsustainable.

Afghanistan Cluster&%$! Watch Posted by Michael Cohen

Now that everyone and their brother is fixated on Yemen, Afghanistan has pretty much fallen off the map. After all the President announced his new policy in December - so clearly nothing to see here; let's move on to the next crisis du jour.

But here's the problem - things aren't going well in Afghanistan. With the help of Juan Cole's exhaustive list from a few days ago, let me count the ways.

First on the Pakistani front. In the days after the President's speech, the Administration got tough - leaking to the NYT and WP that the Pakistanis were going to have to go after Afghan Taliban safe havens in the Quetta Shura and that the US might even consider sending drones and snatch teams into the area if they didn't. How did that Pakistanis respond - they got all Killing In the Name Of (check out the final chorus) . . . on the United States. Bottom line; they're interested in killing Pakistan Taliban; Afghan Taliban . . not so much.

Second, how about the Afghan government? Things aren't going so well there either. First came word back in December that Kabul's reconciliation programs are going nowhere quickly and actually putting Taliban deserters in harm's way; then this week the Afghan Parliament rejected 17 of 24 Cabinet officers named by the Karzai government, demonstrating how politically weakened Karzai has become - and how ineffectual the Afghan government will remain. And as I've mentioned several times; without host country support from the Afghan government a robust counter-insurgency effort is going to have a very hard time succeeding.

Third, according to a new Pentagon report, the Afghan Army is staggeringly dysfunctional and simply unprepared to support the US military effort there. Here is a brief synopsis from NBC News:

The 25-page study obtained by NBC News says senior Afghan commanders are, quote, "not at war. Many ANA leaders work short days, are often absent and place personal gain above national survival." The report says Afghan troops simply aren’t leading the fight, but remain dependent on US forces, and show few signs of wanting to take off the training wheels.

The report’s section on the Afghan army’s personnel says, "Corruption, nepotism and untrained, unmotivated personnel make success all but impossible . . .  the assessment said it will take time to expand and rehabilitate Afghan forces. The report said it "cannot take a year to fix this problem."

Lest we forget, building up the Afghan Army as a reputable fighting force is the crux of the military strategy in Afghanistan. Yet, amazingly Admiral Mullen actually told Congress that there would be 170,000 Afghan Army troops by July 2011 - and Gates wants to have 130,000 by December 2010. These numbers not only seem insane, but if this Pentagon report is any indication what kind of troops do we think we're going to be getting?

Fourth, the problems are not restricted to the Afghans and Pakistanis. According to Rajiv Chandrasekaren, "Nearly a month after Obama unveiled his revised Afghanistan strategy, military and civilian leaders have come away with differing views of several fundamental aspects of the President's new approach."

Of course, this is basically the same problem we were dealing with in April of last year - the civilian and military decision-makers not being on the same page. And yet amazingly it is continuing. Indeed, these two quotes in the story tell us all we need to know about the inherent disconnect that has defined US-Afghan policy in the Obama Administration from day one:

"This is not a COIN strategy," Vice President Biden said on MSNBC last week, using the military's shorthand for counterinsurgency. "This is not 'go out and occupy the whole country.' "

McChrystal's plan, the senior Pentagon official said, "is still counterinsurgency, regardless of the various agendas people are trying to spin." 

How reassuring!

Fifth, it seems that problems aren't restricted to civ-mil relations; how about mil-intel relations. The top military intelligence official in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn has put out a new paper basically arguing that intelligence gathering Afghanistan . . . ain't too good. He says of intel officials in Afghanistan," are ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced ... and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers"

Flynn basically argues that the intel community is spending too much time worrying about the enemy and not enough about the population. Considering the incorporation of COIN thinking into all elements of the military this is hardly surprising. It did however, seem in bad taste, that the report was released days after 7 CIA operatives were killed in Khost by an al Qaeda double agent. But here's the best part, this wasn't some leaked report - Flynn published it under his own name via CNAS an outside think-tank. And guess what the Pentagon is pissed:

"I think it struck everybody as a little bit curious, yes ... My sense is that this was an anomaly and that we probably won't see that (in the future)," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman."”It was an unusual and irregular way to publish a document of this nature."

What the hell is going on here? How does a report like this get released without going through the chain of command and blindsiding civilian leaders? It's almost like leaking a major strategic review in order to force the President's hand on military decision-making . . . But the ever astute Judah Grunstein gets to the heart of the issue; namely that Flynn's suggestions could risk further militarizing development efforts.

Oh and also the anti-narcotics effort is not going well because the State Department is doing a poor job overseeing contractors and working with the military; the President's assertion/hope that the US surge would be in Afghanistan by the middle of 2010 is going to be off by several months; and the Afghan people are really pissed because even though protecting civilians is the number one priority of the US military in Afghanistan . . . the US military in Afghanistan keeps killing civilians. In fact there were two incidents in one week; first in Kunar and then in Helmand. And now there are public rallies of Afghans condemning the foreign forces.

On a possibly positive note; the military seems to be upping its attention to counter-terrorism efforts against Taliban leaders and operatives. Of course in a vacuum this isn't a long-term recipe for success - and I'm really not clear how to square this news with the supposedly population-centric focus of our efforts in Afghanistan. 

And I haven't really mentioned the strategically incoherent offensive in Helmand back in early December, which seems to run even more counter to the approach outlined in the President's West Point speech.

Here's the most important point: these aren't these isolated incidents - they are actually connected in the sense that they are indicative of how disconnected our war plans are for Afghanistan (as outlined in the President's speech) and the reality on the ground.

We don't have buy-in from the Pakistanis to go after Afghan Taliban safe havens; we don't have support or even capacity in the Afghan government to support our efforts; the Afghan Army is nowhere close to being up to speed; our own military appears to have different tactical objectives than the civilian side; military intelligence is not serving the mission appropriately and top military intel officials are going outside the chain of command to make their concerns known; our enemy appears far more formidable than we seem willing to acknowledge; our additional troops are a long way from being on the ground in Afghanistan; our military is being asked to wage pointless battles in sparsely populated areas where we have no hope of holding territory in the near-term and it's not even clear that we're actually doing population centric counter-insurgency - and if we are doing it; we're not doing a great job of it.

Oh and the latest terrorist attack against the United States came from Yemen - even though we will have, by next year, 100,000 troops fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Keep in mind, all of what I describe here has happened - or been revealed - in the mere 5 weeks since the President's speech! I hate to keep being the proverbial you know what in the punch bowl on Afghanistan, but there is a lot of reason for concern about our policy and the war effort.  Juan Cole calls them a series of catastrophes; and I'm not so sure he's wrong. For anyone who believes that Afghanistan will be anywhere near stable by 2011 so that American troops can start being withdrawn . . . think again.

NSN Gets New Blogger; Wall Street Journal Recycles Misstatements Posted by Heather Hurlburt

We're happy to introduce NSN's newest policy staffer and blogger, Kelsey Hartigan; Kelsey comes to us from the Stimson Center, the Conference on Disarmament, and Purdue University. 

We're less happy for the occasion of her first blog post, co-authored with me on HuffingtonPost and here - or, I guess, because it is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, we should be grateful that its misstatments and irrational desire to cling to Cold War ways and weapons will keep her busy!

The new START Treaty cutting US and Russian nuclear arsenals, set to be concluded later this month, enjoys broad, bipartisan support from national security experts in the US and from America’s friends and allies around the world – but you’d never know that by reading the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.  Its January 5 editorial, “A False Nuclear Start,” makes no fewer than four false assertions about the state of the US nuclear deterrent.  Below, NSN marshals the work of bipartisan commissions and top nuclear experts to establish the facts:

• The US spends $30 billion per year to keep our nuclear deterrent safe, secure and reliable; the National Defense Act of 2010 commits to maintaining this funding and to modernizing the nuclear weapons complex – which manages the weapons.  The Act does not require, as the Journal asserts, modernizing the weapons themselves.  The Administration has pledged that the defense budget to be released next month will fund fully our nuclear labs, science and engineering base, and our nuclear stockpile.
• All of several recent bipartisan reports on the future of the US nuclear arsenal have concluded that the United States does not need new weapons or new nuclear capabilities.
• The new treaty will provide intrusive verification measures to monitor treaty limits; where surveillance of a specific Russian facility has recently been dropped, this was done with the prior agreement of the Bush Administration.
• The allies covered by our nuclear umbrella – Japan in particular – have expressed strong support, publicly and privately, for the treaty and for nuclear arms reductions.

 WSJ Claim:  The warning comes in a recent letter from 40 Republican Senators and Independent-Democrat Joe Lieberman reminding the President of his legal responsibility under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010 to present budget estimates for modernizing U.S. nuclear forces along with any new Start pact.

Fact:  The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) already continually refurbishes US nuclear warheads.  Every year, the Departments of Defense and Energy spend approximately $30 billion per year to ensure that the US nuclear arsenal is safe, secure, and reliable. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2010 commits the US to “modernizing “the nuclear weapons complex” and “infrastructure” (ie the labs, research and safety and security facilities) – not, as the Senators and the Journal assert, “weapons.” [National Defense Authorization Act for 2010, p. 394.]

WSJ Claim:  The Senators are following the suggestions of the important, but too little publicized, recommendations of last year's Perry-Schlesinger commission on the safety and operations of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The bipartisan report noted, among other things, that the U.S. needs new warheads and nuclear research facilities.

Fact:  The Perry-Schlesinger report made over 100 recommendations, none of which called for “new warheads.” Instead, the report states: As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States does not produce fissile materials and does not conduct nuclear explosive tests. Also the United States does not currently seek new weapons with new military characteristics. Within this framework, it should seek the possible benefits of improved safety, security, and reliability available to it.

A September 2009 report by the independent JASON group of science advisers  validated our ability to maintain existing warheads —“JASON finds no evidence that accumulation of changes incurred from aging and LEPs [Life Extension Programs] have increased risk to certification of today’s deployed nuclear warheads.”  The JASON report also noted that “Lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs to date.”

WSJ Claim:  Another issue is verification. With Start's expiration December 5, Russia has pulled inspectors from a factory that's building the next generation of Russian ICBMs…If the U.S. is going to reduce its missile and warhead numbers, we need to know what the Russians have in their arsenal.

Fact:  Negotiators in Geneva will ensure effective monitoring of the terms in the START follow-on agreement.  The U.S. has known about Russia’s plans to produce its new RS-24 road-mobile missile to replace its aging Cold War intercontinental ballistic missiles for years. It was the Bush administration that agreed in 2008 to suspend monitoring at Russia’s Votkinsk missile facility at the end of 2009 because it viewed these measures as unnecessary. [Carnegie Endowment, 12/03/09.]

WSJ Claim:  The stakes here aren't merely whether Mr. Obama can get his treaties ratified; they concern the credibility of the U.S. nuclear umbrella…Japan has already raised concerns…

Fact:  The US and Japan released a joint statement on November 13, 2009 following President Obama’s visit.  The two governments reaffirmed their commitment to eliminating nuclear weapons while ensuring the national security of Japan and the US and its allies:

The Government of the United States continues to seek early conclusion of a START follow-on treaty through negotiations with the Russian Federation.  The Government of Japan welcomes the progress made in the negotiations and expresses its expectation for early agreement.  The Government of the United States and the Government of Japan call upon states that hold nuclear weapons to respect the principles of transparency, verifiability and irreversibility in the process of nuclear disarmament.  The Government of the United States is committed to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy, and the Government of the United States and the Government of Japan urge other states that hold nuclear weapons to do the same.

Is Obama as Jeffersonian as Walter Russell Mead Thinks He Is? Posted by David Shorr

I see a different problem with Walter Russell Mead's "Carter Syndrome" piece in Foreign Policy than Matt Yglesias does. Matt views Mead's four archetypes of US foreign policy as reductive, so for him, the piece -- essentially a warning message to President Obama about the unsustainability of his policy -- is a pointless and forced exercise. Being more sympathetic to Mead's theory, I think his article offers useful insights into the tensions, trade-offs, and political cross-pressures that the administration's policies confront. That said, the way Mead applies his archetypes to Presidet Obama leads to a misreading of his strategy.

The misdiagnosis starts with the following passage:

Like Carter in the 1970s, Obama comes from the old-fashioned Jeffersonian wing of the Democratic Party, and the strategic goal of his foreign policy is to reduce America's costs and risks overseas by limiting U.S. commitments wherever possible. He's a believer in the notion that the United States can best spread democracy and support peace by becoming an example of democracy at home and moderation abroad.

And the key data point, naturally, is Obama's Afghanistan decision -- which, under this interpretation, is part of a more purposeful "America come home" drive and doubt about our ability to help spread democracy and human rights. To me it seems like an awfully big leap to construe the president's desire to confine the US commitment in Afghanistan with a policy of minimizing international commitments anywhere.

Re: Yemen is the New Black! Posted by Shadi Hamid

I have to agree with Michael that I find the overblown rhetoric on Yemen the past week somewhat bizarre. It's not as if Yemen suddenly developed a terrorist problem for the first time. And, even if did, I think we should adopt a general rule to err on the side of underblown, rather than overblown, rhetoric on anything having to do with terrorist threats, unless, of course, threat-overhype would serve our strategic interests more than those of al-Qaeda, something, which I suspect is unlikely to be the case.

That said, that is why I don't think we should excessively rely on narrow national security interests to justify what, in my view, are broader, messy - and perhaps necessary - interventions that are tied to long-term transformation of failing states (I hope that sentence doesn't scare people!). This was our problem in Afghanistan: the Obama administration was making what was essentially a moral case - or what could have been a moral case - in largely amoral terms. The two - interests and ideals - go well together and I think we have some work to do to get the balance right.

This problem isn't as acute in Yemen because, for better or worse, I don't think the freedom and prosperity of the Yemeni people keeps most people in DC up at night.

For better or worse, we're in some sense tied to Yemen. Yemen is yet another Arab ally, led by yet another very unimpressive repressive dictator. So we should be wary of making President Saleh another anti-terrorist frontline. He will likely use any further support he gets, financial or political, to cement his grip on power. And Saleh's authoritarianism is certainly a source of burgeoning discontent, particularly among young Yemenis with dim prospects.

Michael, as for your question

Why should we devote more resources to a country that we barely understand; that has myriad economic, social and political problems; that is run by a unaccountable and corrupt dictator; and where our interests and capabilities are quite limited. Above all, why should we devote more resources when even the authors acknowledge that it won't cure Yemen's problems?

It deserves a longer answer than I'm able to give right now, but we barely understand most Arab countries. That should not be a pretext for disengagement, but, rather, for doing a better job of understanding most Arab countries. It's not as if the expertise isn't there. It is. There are a number, albeit small, in the U.S. who actually know Yemen, have spent months if not years there, speak Arabic, and know the political actors on the ground. One of them is Jillian Schwedler. 

It's also worth noting that Yemen is somewhat politically developed in a way that makes the situation less despairing than we might think. Despite Saleh's best efforts, Yemen can still claim a pluralistic political system, with some strong non-governmental actors, including the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islah party.

Losing Cairo Posted by Shadi Hamid

I've been meaning to link to my colleague Andrew Albertson's recent piece in Foreign Policy, aptly titled "Losing Cairo." Indeed, we do appear to be losing it, in more ways than one. The point that Andrew - executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy - hammers home is that, for the first time in God knows how long, Arabs and Muslims were excited about America. I don't want to have to rehash the story of my non-English speaking Egyptian grandmother getting excited about his election and saying things like "we're praying for Obama." Indeed, people were waiting and hoping. Now, it seems they're just waiting, although for what it's not clear. Anyway, here's an excerpt from Andrew's article:

Consider the follow-up speech U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made last month at a regional summit in Morocco. Clinton explained to her audience that though the Cairo speech was intended to launch a comprehensive new beginning between the United States and Muslim communities, the administration had decided, upon further reflection, that it would focus on only three areas of development: entrepreneurship, science and technology, and education. Democracy, religious freedom, and women's rights did not appear as part of the Cairo follow-up plans.

If one takes the charitable view, we might commend the administration for finding "shovel-ready" projects. By focusing on entrepreneurship, science, science and technology, and education, the administration found initiatives that got Arab government support. But there's a problem here that the region's young people quickly point out: The easy targets aren't necessarily the important ones. While Clinton correctly highlights jobs as a key issue in the Middle East -- particularly jobs for unemployed youth -- Washington does the region no favors by offering an entrepreneurship summit, one of its new initiatives, while avoiding the root problems hindering business such as political decay and corruption.

As they say, read the whole thing.