What the heck is going on down there? Posted by Ken Gude

I fail to understand how the Bush administration could have screwed up its detainee policy so badly. Yes, their record is a long catalog of catastrophic failures, from the grossly flawed strategy in Iraq to the complete indifference during Katrina. But the issue of detaining and interrogating suspected al Qaeda terrorists is different--they cared as much or more about it as they did getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but they gave the job to a whole bunch of Brownies, and they sure have been doin' a heck uva job.

The latest evidence comes from a story in today's Washington Post and a book excerpt that ran in the Guardian last Saturday. The Post story details allegations from Guantanamo detainees that they were forcibly drugged during interrogations, transfers, and to restrain them in their cells. While it seems unlikely (though not impossible) that there was widespread use of drugs during interrogations, the most plausible explanations for the consistent accounts from detainees is that they were given chemical restraints to subdue them and those administering the drugs had no idea what they were doing.

Philippe Sands, in his new book Torture Team, portions of which were re-printed in the Guardian over the weekend, uncovered more stories of mind boggling inexperience and incompetence. Topping the list was the revelation that the source of greatest inspiration during the development of interrogations techniques at Guantanamo was none other than Jack Bauer. Yes, the guy from 24, and no, I am not kidding. The junior staff lawyer responsible for approving the list of techniques told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas."

The Bush administration believed that interrogating terrorist suspects was so important that bedrock principles which formed the basis of our military culture for decades were "obsolete". The reason why they thought it was so important was that they feared we were all going to die in another al Qaeda attack and information gained from interrogations was in some cases our first and only line of defense. But instead of bringing in experienced interrogators and knowledgeable regional and al Qaeda experts, we got Dr. Quinn and Jack Bauer. This is the nature of my confusion.

Pakistan: Another Embarassing Terror Suspect Escape on President Bush's Watch Posted by Brian Katulis

Here in Islamabad, Pakistani authorities are scrambling to explain how Rashid Rauf (pictured here) the alleged mastermind of a August 2006 plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights from Britain slipped away from Pakistani police this weekend.   

Though the news media is abuzz about yet another videotape from Ayman Zawahiri (Al Qaeda's second in command probably somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan), people should carefully watch what happens in the case of Rashid Rauf' in the coming days and weeks.

The circumstances surrounding Rauf's escape are still murky.  Earlier last week, BBC reported that a Pakistani judge ruled that there was not sufficient evidence to try Rauf, reinforcing skepticism about how real the plot was.  The New York Times reports this morning that Rauf escaped after an extradition hearing on Saturday here.  One Pakistani newspaper reports today more unusual details and circumstances - that the two policemen responsible for Rauf were transporting him back to jail in a private taxi cab and had allowed Rauf to perform prayers at a mosque, where he escaped using the backdoor wearing his handcuffs.

Whatever the circumstances, this incident could be deeply embarrassing for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who imposed emergency rule in early November using the threat of insecurity and terrorism as the main rationale (and then throwing thousands of mostly secular lawyers, judges, and human rights activists in jail).  The same day emergency rule was lifted a key terror suspect flees.

More broadly, Rauf's escape raises questions about the growing numbers of terror suspects and terrorists that have given authorities the slip over the past four years.  The record is abysmal, and more people should be asking questions.  Few other recent escapes that people should ask about include:

1.  July 2005 Bagram prison escape.   Four detainees escaped from the secretive and supposedly highly secure U.S. detention facility in Bagram.  Omar Al-Faruq, one of the escapees, was reportedly killed in Basra, Iraq in September 2006.  Another escapee, Abu Yahya al-Libi, remains on the loose and returned to his role as a chief Al Qaeda propagandist.  Profiled recently by the Washington Post as one of the key leaders in a revived Al Qaeda network, al-Libi brags about the escape in this video.

2.  Several escapes and releases in Yemen.   In 2003, 10 Al Qaeda suspects escaped from a prison in Aden, Yemen.  Another 23 escaped from a prison in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a in February 2006.  Earlier this year, the United States used the suspension of development assistance to pressure Yemen to detain once again Jamal al-Badawi, one of the 2006 escapees who turned himself in October of this year and reportedly was placed under some form of house arrest by Yemeni authorities.

3.  Zarqawi's release in 2004.  Iraqi authorities reportedly detained and released the former leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi more than a year before his death in June 2006, giving him time to foment sectarian strife and lead a movement that murdered thousands of Iraqis. 

Nearly everyone knows about how top Al Qaeda leaders were allowed to slip away at the end of 2001 in Tora Bora, and Democrats in Congress understandably complain about the thousands of days that Osama Bin Laden has been on the loose. 

But where is the Congressional oversight hearings on these escapes by terror detainees and suspects?   Where is the investigative journalism into these failures?  And will the applicants to become the next U.S. commander-in-chief move beyond vague campaign rhetoric and offer more concrete plans to address these failures and the continued challenges posed by terror networks? 

Pakistan: 'Twas the Night before End of Emergency Rule Posted by Brian Katulis

On the eve of the end of emergency rule, Pakistan is heading into a four week election campaign fraught with great uncertainties. 

Intelligence agencies are warning of a new round of suicide attacks.  Opposition parties are already complaining of electoral fraud, with some boycotting the January 8th elections and others planning to contest and then protest the results.  And a new poll indicates that President Musharraf's popularity has plummeted since the imposition of emergency rule last month, a view confirmed in a range of interviews with political party leaders, human rights activists, and journalists in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi.

For longer pieces on the situation, see posts on U.S. competing interests in Pakistan, how opposition activists marked International Human Rights Day earlier this week under emergency rule, whether Pakistan is the real "central front" in the fight against terrorists, and how the coming months in Pakistan are pivotal for making a course correction in the so-called "global war on terrorism."

The Ultimate Asymmetric Advantage Posted by Lorelei Kelly

From a recent articleby Robert Kaplan (ah, my love-hate relationship with Kaplan) His prose is beautiful here, and the implications of his thesis are as urgent as they are alarming:

"Jihad as practiced, not as theorized, places more emphasis on the “mystical dimension” of sacrifice than on any tactical or strategic objective. Jihad is most often an act of individual exultation rather than of collective action, observes Olivier Roy in The Failure of Political Islam (1994). It is “an affair between the believer and God and not between the believer and his enemy. There is no obligation to obtain a result. Hence the demonstrative, even exhibitionist, aspects of the attacks......

...The suicide bomber is the distilled essence of jihad, the result of an age when the electronic media provides an unprecedented platform for exhibitionism."

AND so much for airpower:

"But our near obsession with finding ways to kill others at no risk to our own troops is a sign of strength in our eyes alone. To faithful or merely nationalist enemies, it is a sign of weakness, even cowardice."

Who Says Non-Binding Resolutions Don't Matter? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Nope, this post isn't even about Iraq, except in the way that every darn thing in foreign affairs is now about Iraq.  A non-binding resolution requesting that the Italian Senate reiterate its support for the government's foreign policy (inspired by a repudiation of war and respect for the role of the EU, UN and international alliances) failed and brought down the tenuous post-Belusconi government. 

Why?  In a word, Afghanistan, and discontent on the left of the coalition with Italy keeping troops in the NATO mission there.

One of my European correspondents has been telling me for months that we Americans underestimate how unhappy our European allies are with the Afghanistan mission and its potential to create serious casualties.  Well, folks, the Prodi government is a serious casualty.  And coming on the same day as the British, Danish and Lithuanian announcements of troop withdrawals from southern Iraq...

Al Qaeda, the Franchise Posted by Rosa Brooks

Today's NYT has a piece on terrorism in North Africa. No, there's nothing new about the existence of terrorist groups in North Africa-- but what's new is that local terrorist groups are recasting themselves as al Qaeda franchises. 

Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (G.S.P.C.) used to stick to murder and mayhem at home, but now their ambitions are reportedly regional and even global: according to Henry Crumpton, US Ambassador at large for counterterrorism, “The G.S.P.C. has become a regional terrorist organization, recruiting and operating" throughout Northern Africa, even sending some recruits off to Iraq.

But here's what should keep you up at night: further evidence that al Qaeda's no longer an organization, but a brand. The Times reports that "Last year, on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda chose the G.S.P.C. as its representative in North Africa." As befits the proud owners of a new franchise, G.S.P.C. promptly engaged in a little rebranding: as of January, the G.S.P.C.'s new name is "Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb."


 

Oh, Great Posted by Rosa Brooks

The NYT reports: Al Qaeda Chiefs are Seen to Regain Power.

And they really appreciate the fact that we've been too busy in Iraq to bother them.

Counterinsurgency warfare as military malpractice Posted by Rosa Brooks

Edward Luttwak of CSIS has a piece in this month's Harper's called "Counterinsurgency warfare as military malpractice." Luttwak begins with a critical analysis of the Army's new counterinsurgency field manual, FM 3-24 DRAFT, written by David Petraeus, among others, then moves on apply this to Iraq. He concludes that the new counterinsrgency manual's "prescriptions are in the end of little or no use and amount to a kind of malpractice. All its best methods, all its clever tactics, all the treasure and blood that the United States has been willing to expend, cannot overcome the crippling ambivalence of occupiers who refuse to govern, and their principles and inevitable refusal to out-terrorize the insurgents...."

Read it (it's not available online-- you'll have to buy the magazine! Sorry).

A new Cold War? Posted by Zvika Krieger

Yale professor Ian Shapiro has published an interesting op-ed that argues for the revival of containment as a post-Iraq strategy for the Middle East. Drawing on parallels from the Cold War, he predicts that the dysfunctional states of the Middle East will implode of their accord, and our interventions are only making things worse (while saddling ourselves with a massive military burden).

While I am hesitant to swallow his full equivalence of communism and radical Islamism, the point in the article that most resonates for me is his analysis of why containment worked: "So long as the USSR did not stage a military attack, containment...would guarantee security." In other words, containment necessitates patience. Americans had patience for it during the Cold War because they realized that there was not an immediate threat to their security. So that forces us to ask the question today: Are we, as Americans, really in that much danger of attack? Or, more precisely, how much safer have we become as a result of our interventions in the Middle East?

I would argue, as are an increasing amount of security analysts, that our interventions have made us less safe. In the most immediate sense, they have put our troops in the line of fire. But in a larger sense, they have provided a common enemy for secularists and fundamentalists -- America -- and are thus preventing the internal clashes (or what some might call "soul searching") that are necessary for actual democracy to emerge in the Middle East.  We have to remind ourselves that the war against radical Islamism -- like the war against communism -- is much more of an internal battle for the countries of the Middle East than it is our battle. While we may have felt some its affects on 9/11, we can't let that distract us from the fact that the war can only be won by the people of the Middle East themselves. 

So there are two lessons from the Cold War: We only hurt ourselves by intervening, and that we will only have the confidence not to intervene when we acknowledge that there is little direct threat to American security. We can't use the abstract threat of "terrorism" to justify hasty and aggressive action in the Middle East anymore. We have to recapture that Cold War confidence that authoritarian states will collapse as a result of their own dysfunction, and that "the best way to spread democracy is to demonstrate its superiority" rather than "ramming [it] down people’s throats."

"No One Would Come" Posted by Shadi Hamid

On Saturday, I heard Edward Gnehm - who was US ambassador to Jordan when 9/11 happened - speak on a very interesting panel on "the War on Terrorism Five Years In." Gnehm recalled how on September 11, 2001, a crowd had begun to gather outside the US embassy (in Amman). By then, it had become clear – America had been attacked by Muslim terrorists on its own soil. With this in mind, Gnehm and the embassy staff worried that the gathering crowd was a presage to another attack, perhaps part of some coordinated offensive. They were wrong. The crowd was there to express its solidarity with America after its great loss. Over the course of the next week, Gnehm recalled, 3800 Jordanians came to the embassy to express their grief and condolences. And then he concluded: if another 9/11 had happened today, claiming thousands of American civilians, no one would come. No one would come. Unfortunately, he is right.

Moral Clarity, Inverted Posted by Shadi Hamid

Today is September 11. It is almost impossible to tell. Nothing looks particularly different. Starbucks coffee tastes like it did five years ago (or does it?).

We don’t seem to act like a society at war. That, however, does not mean the task at hand – fighting terror and securing the homeland – is any less urgent. But we are losing, whether it is on the battlefields of Iraq or for the hearts and minds we began to lose long ago. A couple of days ago, a friend and I were talking about John McCain running for president. I ran through some of his good qualities: he’s relatively principled, sincere, I said, and he’s anti-torture to boot. Then I thought to myself – this is the legacy of the Bush administration: the moral bar has been set so low that now we get excited when a politician is against torture, which is, as far as I’m concerned, sort of like being anti-rape, anti-murder, and anti-child molestation. It’s really nothing to brag about, or at least it wasn’t before the Bush administration and their Republican enablers destroyed America’s moral compass. 

On the eve of this tragic anniversary, it’s baffling that the Bushies would coin as stupid a term as “Islamic fascism.” Wait, actually, it’s not. They want to rally their base with their red-meat appeals for the red states, who, so we are told, fancy hypermasculine posturing mixed in with their politics. When Bush decided to mix in faux Churchill in his garbage-man rhetoric, he put our troops and our country in ever greater danger. Every terrorist and religious extremist now has another talking point to whip up the anger of potential recruits. In short, this administration has sacrificed the safety of our troops and the security of the American people on the altar of domestic politics.

Yes, some of you might proceed to explain to me the meaning of “Islamic fascism,” and justify its usage. But what we, as Americans, think the term means is irrelevant. In today’s morass of miscommunication, what is said often has little to do with what is heard. And 1.4 billion Muslims, nearly all of them already quite angry at us, interpreted the words as distinctly hostile and an affront to their faith. In a culture which elevates honor and dignity, the spectacle of a man with little command of the English language, fronting in such a preposterous manner, is yet one more insult on top of many others. The scars of humiliation have not healed, while the indignities continue to mount.

As always, the price of such decisions, made in the name of "moral clarity," will have to be borne by us and our country, never more imperiled than it is today, five years after later. 

Credit where Credit's Due? Posted by Michael Signer

In advance of next Monday's memorial of 9/11, the conservative strategists are performing an intriguing little dance nowadays -- like when little kids dare each other to run into a water fountain and come right up to the edge but retreat, nervously giggling. 

The question they're wrestling with:  are they going to start trying to take credit for five years without another domestic terrorist attack, or aren't they?  You can start to feel the credit-taking creep into their rhetoric, albeit hesitantly.  Check out this deliciously tantalizing bit of politics on House Republican Conference Secretary John Doolittle's site:

If Sept. 11, 2006, passes without a terrorist attack on our soil, Congress should thank our homeland defenders with a formal resolution. Before the November elections. And let's see who votes against it.

If?  It's not just morbid; it's alarming.  The broader questions are (a) is security ever properly the subject of partisan, campaign-type politics, and (b) is the basic proposition -- that we're safer now than then -- accurate?

"Safer, but not Yet Safe" Posted by Heather Hurlburt

I haven't yet read the report from which that quote from President Bush is taken.  He's also due to give a speech later today which will, I'm sure, expound further on the idea.

But my immediate conclusion is this:  that the Administration has decided to end the debate among progressives about the "are you safer..." line of argumentation by pre-empting it. 

ISO New Speechwriter for SecDef Posted by Michael Signer

Donald Rumsfeld has just made an extraordinary speech at the American Legion's national convention in Salt Lake City, likening opposition to the President's policies against terrorism to appeasement of Hitler in the 1930's. 

Many people will have many things to say about the speech, which is just breathtaking in its manipulation of history and the harsh political polarization of any rational discussion of the Administration's policies.  But I want to focus here on a narrower question. 

What's up with Rumsfeld concluding with this quotation of George Clemenceau?:

"You know from experience that in every war -- personally -- there have been mistakes and setbacks and casualties," [Rumsfeld] said. "War is," as Clemenceau said, 'A series of catastrophes that results in victory.'"

Clemenceau was premier of France during WWI and a critical ally of America.  Good.  But he's not the most providential source of Administration-friendly quotes.  Here are the others that the Columbia World of Quotations offers:

"War is too important a matter to be left to the military."

"America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

"My home policy: I wage war; my foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war."

And, my personal favorite for this SecDef:

"It is far easier to make war than to make peace."

Two Wars on Terror Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Here's a piece I just published at the American Prospect Online

Five years after September 11, it is possible to take stock of what parts of the battle against terrorism are succeeding and failing, and why. The thwarting of an elaborate terrorist plot against trans-Atlantic flights last week prevented what some maintain could have been a second September 11-style attack. Regardless of what the would-be perpetrators were actually capable of, credit goes to the intelligence, law enforcement and transportation security agencies that uncovered the plan, caught the culprits, and protected the public.

The rest of the picture is bleaker. The announcement that more than 3,400 Iraqi civilians died in unrest in the month of July is a shocking reminder that the world’s most powerful military has, let’s face it, failed in its chief aim of stabilizing Iraq. The Israel Defense Forces’ inability to vanquish Hezbollah in a month-long fight further shows that when in on-the-ground combat, terrorist groups can stand up to the world’s most advanced armies

It’s clear that meticulous intelligence and collaborative criminal enforcement can curb terrorists’ ability to carry out episodic headline-grabbing attacks. But when it comes to uprooting endemic terrorist schemers with roots in unstable societies, at least as a military matter, the task is virtually impossible. The war on terror is happening on two fronts, but headway is being made on only one.

The conclusion is not a surprise. During the last three decades, Israel, despite preventing targeted killings and kidnappings around the globe, never effectively clamped down on the intifada back home. The United States likewise had an easier time defending itself against hijackings and assassinations than it had fighting Viet Cong forces hidden in jungles.

The reasons for the disparity are clear. To succeed in sowing fear, terrorist attacks must be carried out in places and against people who are well-protected and feel safe. Grassroots terrorist activity targets vulnerable populations in already unstable situations. High-profile attacks require perpetrators to risk suicide, capture, or life on the run. Endemic terrorists can melt away anonymously. Whereas splashy international terrorists must plot with utmost secrecy and isolation, domestic terrorists can draw succor from supportive civilian populations.

To read the rest, click here.

Too Ruthless to Win Posted by David Shorr

With no apologies whatsoever to John Podhoretz.

What if our democracy has become so frantic about destroying our enemies that it can no longer keep track of who its enemies are, why we are fighting them, or what it would mean to win?

What if we assign so much value to our own people that we lose any sense of common humanity? Will the people of other countries believe us when we tell them our quarrel is with their leaders and not with them? Will we have fewer or more enemies if we dismiss all other concerns than the indiscriminate pursuit of our foes? Will other nations come to our aid if we brush aside their wishes and priorities?

What if our enemies refuse to learn the lessons we are so insistent on teaching them? What if, instead of being awed by our power and righteousness, they choose to continue the fight? Is there a point at which the costs exceed the conceivable gains? Don’t we expect our leaders to calculate the chances for and obstacles to success? How many enemies must we fight, for how long?

What if not every enemy can be defeated militarily? How do we know that political steps will never give a better outcome, that they will never reduce the enemy’s will to fight or their support and sustenance?

What if our soldiers are cut loose from "voluntary limits" in combat? What if limits are essential to keeping the conduct of war from becoming completely senseless? What if they are a fundamental part of the warrior’s honor? What if they are critical to the ability of young men and women to make sense of a searing experience? What will be the long-term effects on their psyche? What if we start measuring our own behavior against those of our enemies? What will we permit ourselves (our troops) to do because our enemies are worse?

Could somebody please remind me again what it means to win?

Kleinfeld on Podhoretz -- Ouch! Posted by Michael Signer

For a vigorous and invigorating response to an op-ed by John Podhoretz's recent op-ed,  where he asks, and answers, this really, really dumb neocon rhetorical question:

WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

just click on this link to read Rachel Kleinfeld tee off, as she continues her brilliant stint for Anne-Marie Slaughter over at TPM Cafe.

Snap!

We Should be Dividers, not Uniters, of Terrorists Posted by David Shorr

The second item on Suzanne's key questions progressives must figure out was: Is the Fight Against Terror the #1 priority or simply a top priority? I'll offer a positive answer as well as a negative one on the need for a fundamental shift in how we view counterterror efforts.

To respond directly to Suzanne's direct question, I vote for "simply a top priority." Actually, my vote is for: a priority, with others, in need of broader strategic context. It should be possible to take this threat seriously without being consumed by it. Stopping terrorists is a minimum condition for security; taken by itself, it is not a vision worthy of American ambition or international common cause.

The best strategic vision I've heard articulated lately was by a fellow Iowan I met in Dubuque. Putting it in terms of other nations' ordinary citizens, he said our aim should be to: "make people around the world believe they're part of the world and not an ally of the nut down the street," meaning terrorist.

This is a hearts-and-minds approach only in the sense of how you gauge success. The aim is not merely to gain global sympathy for America, but to build a world with the broadest possible sense of shared stake and shared benefit. What we need is a growing law-abiding global majority that deprives warlords, WMD black marketeers, gun-runners, authoritarians, genocide perpetrators, and terrorists of all their oxygen. In other words, as more of the world's nations and their citizens find their voice and their prosperity, malefactors of all kinds will be increasingly hemmed in and under pressure. If this sounds like Richard Haass' The Opportunity, then call me a Haassian.

Now for the negative, what-the-counterterror-fight-isn't response. It is not a global confrontation between two great blocs. Here, again, is the distorting power of a monomaniacal focus on terrorists; frankly, this depiction builds up our opponent. The man in Dubuque had it right -- the terrorist is a nut. And therefore he shouldn't be dignified as a worthy adversary.

Remember the climactic scene of "The Wizard of Oz?" Dorothy and friends are in the wizard's chamber, his giant face staring down at them, while Toto notices someone off to the side. My question is this: is it in America's interests to cast terrorists as "Oz the Great and Powerful" or "the little man behind the curtain?"

The point is often made that terror is a tactic rather than a cohesive force, and scholars have analyzed the relationship of terrorism to different political, ideological, and religious objectives, but we are a long way from integrating this point into our strategy. The fight against terrorism is not actually a fight against terrorISM, but against terrorISTS. We should be driving wedges between terrorists rather than pushing them together.

Lorelei Kelly highlighted a relevant West Point study for us in a post last winter. The military academy's Combating Terrorism Center has done major empirical studies of terrorist organizations revealing frequent internal divisions over operational and political decisions. I'm just civilian policy wonk, but to me, that looks like an opportunity to divide and conquer. Or, to pick up where Heather left off with analogies from Soviet Communism, we should be using "salami tactics."

Bin Laden on Moussaoui Posted by Michael Signer

It's hard to know what to make of the very weird story earlier this week about bin Laden's statement about Zacharias Moussaoui.  Bin Laden's statement has three parts:  first, he says that Moussaoui wasn't involved in 9/11; second, he engages in a somewhat elaborate logical and empirical proof of that point, reasoning that Moussaoui had been involved, the other 9/11 conspirators would have called off the attacks, as Moussaoui was imprisoned 2 weeks before 9/11; third, and most interestingly, he whirls off into a strange riff pleading for "fairness" for the prisoners in Gitmo. 

Harvard Law Professor Juliet Kayyem writes on TPMCafe of this part:

Its a good move on his part. Say whatever you will say about 9/11, he seems to suggest, but it is America now that has the dirty hands.

I'm pretty sure Kayyem, smart as she is, is wrong that this is a "good move" for bin Laden.  On the contrary, I think it shows him reasoning from a position of striking weakness; entangled in ridiculous double standards; and rather panicky.  The statement reveals bin Laden as weak rather than strong -- and suggests that this part of our approach against al Qaeda (the element concentrated on drilling known members of Al Qaeda into the ground) may be working better than many think.

Any Storm in a Port? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

The ueber-politics-watchers at ABC's The Note make a prediction today that I think is very smart:  the Dubai Ports World case will end with a whimper when the Administration persuades the company to withdraw the US portion of its bid.

This will, if it comes to pass, be both very clever of the Administration and the worst of all possible worlds:

• The US takes a huge black eye in the Arab world, and elsewhere, for our anti-Arab posturing and for our tendency to say one thing about free markets and do another;
• We lose the heat needed to do anything about real shortcomings in port security. that have much more to do with how the ports are supervised than who runs them; and
• Commercially speaking, it probably chokes off private foreign investment in our already behind-the-times ports infrastructure.

(and, if I understand this right, it would still leave the ports in the hands of foreigners... oh, never mind...)

A Friendly Missive From Messr. bin Laden Posted by Jeffrey Stacey

While terrorism detecting eyes are averted to the stunning Hamas performance in Israel, in the campaign against terrorism the state of Al Qaeda is of far greater importance—particularly with regard to the ramifications of this month’s successful U.S. strike inside Pakistan. Not only thereafter did we hear from Osama bin Laden (OBL) for the first time in over a year, but in the course of threatening attacks in the U.S. heartland he also offered something of an olive branch.

Al Qaeda did offer a sort of truce with European governments a couple of years ago, but OBL’s offer constitutes an intriguing departure. Why such a message and why now? With a trove of American analysts suggesting the U.S. is losing the campaign against terrorism—and Al Qaeda’s success in broadening their recruiting, influencing moderate Muslim opinion, and OBL’s remaining at large—why would the leader of Al Qaeda do something that smacks of weakness?

It appears that OBL is feeling newly vulnerable, and he has reason to be. Certainly he could be motivated to snatch back some of the limelight that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (AMZ) has been hogging in Iraq, and OBL has consistently shown himself to be an able media manipulator—e.g. by making an overture he knew the U.S. would reject he comes off somewhat statesmanlike.

And no doubt by rattling the saber a bit he set off a fresh round of concerns about the post 9-11 Al Qaeda chimera’s ability to strike at will deep inside the West. But OBL has been comfortable in having his chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri (AZ), act as the public face of Al Qaeda for a couple of years now; moreover, he has an interest in remaining out of view to stoke those mythical fears even though he is becoming more frail. Granted, the OBL tape could well have been made prior to the strike, but the Al Qaeda death knell is sounding.

Al Qaeda has not only a significantly reduced direct capacity to carry out attacks but also a new reason to feel that OBL and AZ are not as safe in their Pakistani tribal refuge as they are accustomed to feeling. I am in no way writing the epitaph of Al Qaeda, nor foolishly dabbling in any “they’re in the last throes” rhetoric. Rather, evidence points to success against the top drawer terrorist organization even while its affiliates are achieving increased success of their own.

While the Madrid and London bombings indicate a continued threat of local motivated Islamic extremists in the West—the principal threat these days—Al Qaeda itself has been degraded.  By the end of December, in addition to OBL, AZ, and AMZ if he counts, only 5 other major operatives were still at large (in May top commander Abu Faraj al-Libbi was captured).

As of the strike this month, aimed at AZ, two of the other five were killed—Abu Khabab al-Masri and Abu Ubayada al-Masri, other top commanders—along with AZ’s son-in-law and another. It was a sizable blow to Al Qaeda and highly ominous for the remaining leaders. For the strike inside Pakistan itself was a departure.

That Pakistan allowed the U.S. strike to take place upon request is significant (President Musharraf’s delayed complaints are purely due to the protests spawned around the country) and presages future success as the U.S. et al. move toward eradicating 90% of notable Al Qaeda leaders. Moreover, the numbers of fighters who went through pre 9-11 Afghan training camps have been exaggerated, as is the report of vast new camps there.

I will say more in a future post about the specter of continued attacks from affiliated groups—including a proposal to open up a Pacific front in the global campaign against terrorism—but the steady eradication of Al Qaeda itself is significant and the day of OBL’s demise may be closer than we think (and especially if he is captured instead of killed, the effect on his followers will be less malign than most imagine).

'The Sky Is Black With Planes?' Posted by Heather Hurlburt

In my bucolic 70s-80s suburban childhood, that was how the execs at the Fortune 500 media company where my dad worked described the cascading chains of management transfers among media properties.

Today, though, I'm looking at some of the CIA-torture-plane reporting coming out of Europe, counting up the national inquiries -- the BBC and Le Monde between them report eight into CIA activities on or over their territories -- and thinking two things.  First, the scandal is going to stay alive and bedevil our relations with Europe for a long time, as these national inquiries feed off each other.  In addition to the eight above, questions have been raised in Austria, Italy, Germany and the UK that I know of.   Der Spiegel and The Guardian reported 437 CIA flights to Germany since September 11, and 210 into Britain.

Second, that sounds like a lot more activity and many more flights than would have been needed for the 26 "ghost detainees" Human Rights Watch has listed.  The Washington Post said earlier this week that there had been eight prison facilities, which seems to suggest rather more than 26 individuals.

Euro-Leaders to Rice: Thanks, We Needed That (Not.) Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Ever have a life partner, colleague, or friend who interrupted your brilliant storytelling at cocktails with the words, "that's not how you told it last time?"

That's more or less what Secretary Rice, who had been getting oodles of good press for her diplomatic abilities,  did to our European allies this week.

But today in Germany it seems that two can play at that game.

"We are losing." Posted by Heather Hurlburt

"We are losing. Four years and two wars after September 11, 2001, the United States is no closer to victory in the 'war on terror.' In fact, we are unwittingly clearing the way for the next attack."

So opens the new book by my old colleagues Dan Benjamin and Steve Simon, The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right.  (They're the guys who brought you The Age of Sacred Terror a couple years back.)

You can check out their argument -- and poke holes in it, if you like -- tomorrow, when Dan Benjamin will hold forth live at 5pm EST on Monday, December 5 over at Campusprogress.org.**  I haven't read this one yet, but anybody who's not afraid to come out and say that we aren't winning deserves attention.  In addition to being a leading terror wonk, Dan is a former reporter AND fellow recovering speechwriter, which means his books are if not enjoyable (given the subject) at least highly readable.

But don't take my word for it -- check Dan out tomorrow.

**and yes, Campus Progress is, like Democracy Arsenal, an initiative of/with the Center for American Progress.  If you like us, you'll love Campus Progress.  If you love to argue with us, you'll love arguing with Dan in real time.

Bush Speech: Now We Know Posted by Heather Hurlburt

This morning's speech is not the smoothest-running piece of prose ever produced by the Bush White House -- it loops around how evil and nasty (but officially not "insane" -- that's progress, I suppose, if we understand that our enemies are also rational actors) Islamic radicals are before getting to what I think is meant to be the point -- a five-part anti-terrorism agenda.  (Aspiring speechwriters note:  there's no signpost or "nut graf" at the top of this thing, so I am really flummoxed if I only listen to the first 5 minutes before nodding off, or need to tell you what it's about without reading all of it.)  I don't have anything to add to my earlier commentary on the level of rhetoric, so I'll move to the agenda.  Its five items cover much of the rhetorical ground of fighting extremism, but we get almost nothing on how the government is pursuing items 1-3, and no mention at all of anything that requires diplomacy, coalitions, negotiations or compromise.  Hmmm.

1.  prevent attacks before they occur.  Here we get some numbers of attacks and surveillance operations prevented, no details, which I gather are supposed to be new.  coming after several pages of fulminating about how evil our enemies are, I certainly didn't find the numbers reassuring.  But then, I guess I'm not supposed to be reassured.

2.  deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and their terrorist allies.  Best they can do here is claim credit for A.Q. Khan again, in a paragraph so rote that it was probably lifted straight out of some office-level talking points.

3. deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw states.  sure sounds like a good idea to me.  so when will we be sealing the iraq-syria border, or the afghanistan-pakistan border?  And, umm, there's that little matter of radical groups that find support and shelter in allied states.  You'd never know from this speech that attacks had been planned and carried out from European cells and bases, yet those have been the most successful and bloody ones of late.

4.  deny the militants control of any nation.  Here we have, at long last, a rationale for Iraq:  "the terrorists want to overthrow a rising democracy, claim a strategic country as a haven for terror..."  What's odd about this Iraq segment (which circles around to this exact point twice, as if maybe we didn't get it the first time) is that it inflates the "elected leaders of Iraq" to great rhetorical heights -- "strong and steadfast" -- and assures us that "democracy, when it grows, is no fragile flower; it is a healthy, sturdy tree." (Ummm, Mr. President, see Nicaragua.)  Yet his argument seems to assume that if we withdrew, Zarqawi would be in control in Baghdad tomorrow.

5.  deny the militants future by replacing hatred and resentment with hope and opportunity across the broader Middle East.  here we learn that "America is making this stand in practical ways.  We're encouraging our friends in the Middle East, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to take the path of reform..."  a perfectly reasonable paragraph that could have been written at any time in at least the last 15 years, maybe longer.

So what I see as new here is yet another explicit rationale for Iraq:  we have to stay the course because "would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people and its resources?"  (The next time your lefty friends tell you it's all about oil, they'll have heard it from the President here first.)

Bush at NED: If a speech falls in the forest... Posted by Heather Hurlburt

So I really wanted to watch the President's newly-ballyhooed (as of this morning) speech at NED and share my impressions with the blog.  Scott McLellan promised us the speech would contain "new details" about our strategy and actions in the war on terror. 

It's being broadcast on CSPAN-3.  I didn't know there was a C-SPAN 3.  MY cable provider doesn't appear to know there's a C-SPAN 3.

So I'll be back when I can figure out what's in the speech...

11:15 update:  We'll look more closely at the text later today.  But here's what I didn't see:

New strategy, or even "new details" that would convince me there is a strategy.

New details of actions we're taking.  Huh?

This looks like another dip into the "let's frighten civilians" pool.  Two problems here:  first, the excerpts I've read so far manage to take the extremist, caricatured doctrines of Al Qaeda and make them sound even more caricatured.  Second, if the President ratchets up the rhetoric like this in response to a bad couple of weeks, what are we going to do on the day that Al Qaeda gets a nuclear weapon or something else really, really bad happens?  This kind of cheap speech-making is producing a "boy who cried wolf" effect.  People flinch when they hear the rhetoric; it has the (intended?) effect of driving them further out of politics and public life; and then nothing happens.  So people are at once deeply afraid and deeply cynical.  That's a dreadful place for our national life, regardless of who's president.

1:00 update:  Judd Legum over at ThinkProgress agrees and has a nice list of some of the better fearmongering bits.

Being Alternative Means being Realistic: Means and Ends in Iraq Posted by Michael Kraig

Responding in part to Heather’s great piece “Open Floodgates Pt. 1: Plans for Iraq,”

First, we have to be honest with ourselves – events on the ground are too fluid and chaotic to have a stable, democratic, and highly centralized Iraqi state entity as a short- or medium-term goal.  Odds are that it will fragment, because we destroyed the Iraqi state by de-Ba’athification, and in the void have jumped all the sectarian and ethnic groups, who have their own militias – which the US military has given up on de-arming and de-mobilizing. 

The Kurds have no real interest in a real Federal Iraq; if you listen to their leaders’ statements, they basically want a confederal Iraq not too different from what our 13 American colonies started out as – a loosely knit collection of 13 autonomous states, with one central Capitol that had little power but which represented the confederation abroad.  In addition to the Kurds, it increasingly appears that top Shi’ite leaders have the same overall goal in mind.

Would such a loose confederation really constitute a functioning state?  Odds are that all things would exist simultaneously (a confederation Capitol alongside the reality of regional autonomous rule), as they do right now.  To whit:

1)      A largely autonomous Kurdish region, secured by militias, with representatives in Baghdad whose central mission is to preserve Kurdish autonomy and use central state resources and international political legitimacy to fend off any predations by Iran and Turkey next door.  In short: use the central diplomats of the state, and use the budget of the state, but use them toward the goal of an autonomous Kurdish region.

2)      A largely autonomous Shi’ite region, secured by militias, with representatives in Baghdad….etc. etc…..using central state resources to fend off predations by Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other neighbors of southern Iraq.

3)      A largely autonomous Sunni region, secured by militias….you get the idea.

This would reflect the military, social, political, and economic realities on the ground already.  Yes, a new Iraqi economy could theoretically emerge that is not based on sectarian divisions; yes, a strong central military could take on the militias.  But the Sunni guerrillas (the fighters who are truly indigenous, not from far-flung South Asia or Southeast Asia) are simply not going to let either of these things to take shape because of the very understandable fear that de-Ba’athification means de-Sunni-fication in practice, and “central Iraqi economy and state” means a state run by a coalition of Kurds and Shi’ites, who agree to a bargain to keep the Sunnis down and out, as well as out of their own business in their respective sub-regions of Iraq. 

In sum: militarily, economically, and socially, Iraq is now being run on a day-to-day basis by different politico-religious groupings based on well-defined neighborhoods in urban areas and longstanding tribes in outlying areas.  It is starting to border on fantasy to assume this will change. The best hope to avoid this de-centralized, district-based rule was to avoid wholesale de-Ba’athification.  The damage was done in 2003 and now we have to live with the consequences.

If unity happens on a more substantial basis, it will likely happen as a slow evolutionary process of complex micro-level interactions between different tribes, sects, and groups, as was true of state building in many other parts of the world.  It isn’t pretty, but it is how today’s stronger states have historically evolved. 

This leads to the basic question: how to make such an arrangement stable, peaceful, and secure, in a way that doesn’t undermine regional security and the global economy?  On this, I agree with most of Juan Cole’s suggestions.

First, a confederal Iraq (with a bunch of Sunni tribes in outlying border areas doing pretty much what they want) can only be stabilized and regularized if every single neighbor is brought into the process. 

This means finally admitting that Iran is not the primary supporter of Iraqi internal terrorism or insurgency, and in fact, that Iran has played its cards cautiously and pragmatically since March 2003, as pointed out by the International Crisis Group in various reports.  Iran has been schizophrenic, like the U.S. (and like all other neighbors of Iraq) in supporting various factions here and there so as to avoid all worst-case outcomes while at the same time giving relatively higher support to like-minded groups. 

So, Iran has aided virulently pro-Tehran leaders and groups, but not nearly to the extent monetarily or militarily as some analysts would have you believe.  Further, Iran has aided secular groups and even the current central government, in large part because in the end, Najaf is not Qom and Baghdad is not Tehran, and Ayatollah Sistani does not care at all for the Iranian melding of the Koran with authoritarian religious rule (believing that Shariah law must have a central moral role in law-making is not the same as iron-fisted rule by theocrats). 

So, Iran actually is spreading its various forms of aid in ways that avoids an overly strong, overly sectarian, overly-ideologized central grouping that could grow to challenge Iran on religious as well as political grounds. 

Sound familiar?  It should.  It is basically the strategy of all Iraq’s neighbors: keep Iraq together, but keep it weak.  If you believe that America’s six Arab “friends” in the Gulf are acting any differently from Tehran in this regard, then there is a bridge I could sell you in NY.   

Put another way: the balance of power and Realpolitik are not just concepts for international relations; they are the central concepts being applied to internal Iraqi affairs by Iraq’s neighbors.  Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Kuwait, and other Gulf Arab Monarchies are playing balance-of-power politics in Iraq, just as Syria and Israel and others once did in Lebanon with various factions. 

Within this paradigm, Saudi Arabia will of course give more relative support to those Sunni groups that accept the Saudi version of Wahhabi Islam, just as Iran will support similar groups in its favor.  And the Turks will aid the Turkomans to the extent possible to provide challenges to Kurdish militia leaders.

But, neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran, nor any other neighbor, is interested in a strong Iraqi state dominated by any such groups.  Hence the sly practice of aiding other forces as well.  If this sounds familiar, again, it should, because it’s what major corporations do in aiding politicians during election campaigns: relatively higher support goes to Republicans, but the Dems get a fistful of dollars as well.  It’s called playing the odds and spreading your bets, and Iran and Syria are no more “rogue-ish” in doing this within Iraq than any of the other neighbors. 

This reality of neighborly love for confederal fragmentation can work to the benefit of stability or against it.  It is the US job to use its muscle and pull to make sure that the neighbors’ strategy is coordinated (or at least constrained) in a way that supports a stable confederal arrangement rather than leading to all-out civil war, as happened in Lebanon. 

As Juan Cole points out, a much worse civil war could still break out, and if millions die because of it, the blood would be on our hands.  And, of course, such a war would severely disrupt oil supplies in the Gulf, leading to all sorts of nasty international outcomes. 

So what does this mean in practical terms?  First, it means customs, customs, customs, and border patrols, border patrols, border patrols.  It means defining a new military mission for the US that puts all of its gee-whiz high-tech gadgets to use with not only friends and allies, but also enemies such as Iran, in the region, to avoid a very real scenario of highly-trained Islamic insurgents leaving Iraq and destabilizing all neighboring states. 

At a recent Stanley Foundation off-the-record dialogue in Dubai, involving experts and officials from all 6 Arab monarchies, one of the main central security concerns expressed was this scenario: newly trained insurgents-cum-terrorists leaving Iraq when it finally stabilizes and destabilizing everything they can around it. 

I would venture to say that the same fear holds true for Syria (which has secular Ba’athist rule, not radical Wahhabi Islamic rule) and Iran, whose Shi’ite religious basis is antithetical to the radical Islamic insurgents being trained in terrorist methods in Iraq.  In fact, the most radical Sunni sects (which have followers in Iraq originating from far-flung areas such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Southeast Asia) believe that if you kill a Shi’ite child, you go to heaven. 

In sum: The first recommendation is that the US does everything in its power to aid all of Iraq’s neighbors in setting up a customs and border security “firewall” around Iraq. 

Second, see Juan Cole’s full column, which makes acid points about America’s dysfunctional and infeasible policies toward Syria and Iran, as well as good military and logistical points about how to get US troops out. 

What Juan doesn’t do is admit that the current reality is the future reality; he still holds out hope for a strong and meaningful centralized Iraqi state.  At this point in the game, though, the option of a stable confederal state – with an internationally recognized government that handles diplomacy but which has few real powers internally beyond coordinating common security policies between militias where common interests exist – should be studied further as a potentially more realistic and feasible goal of US policy. 

But this is not as pragmatic as it sounds: it means dumping decades of rogue-state strategies based on coercive diplomacy toward Iran and Syria, and actually engaging them, Richard Nixon-goes-to-China style.  This would constitute a radical policy shift for both Dems and Republicans, but it is one that is necessary and long overdue (see for instance the Stanley Foundation Policy Analysis Brief, “Realistic Solutions for Solving the Iranian Nuclear Crisis.”) 

Michael Kraig

The Stanley Foundation

Foiled by Idealism? - The US Foreign Policy Pendulum Posted by Michael Kraig

Foreign Affairs Managing Editor Gideon Rose recently wrote a very provocative column in the NYT on August 18, appropriately titled, "Get Real."  It is a Realpolitik bashing of America's proclivity for swinging wildly between unrealistic ideals in international relations and prudent balance-of-power pragmatism. He's definitely on to something, but I question his description of current policy realities.

Rose's argument is compelling: the United States has swung back and forth for decades between getting into international messes because of ideals/culture/nationalism, after which pragmatic policies reign and the US extricates itself, only to repeat the idealist debacle again under another Administration.  This pattern, according to Rose, does not respect partisan lines; Dems or Republicans are both prone to the errors of idealism, and both sides have had their chance to extricate America from its unrealistic messes.

There is one problem, however: we are not swinging back to pragmatism this time around - at least, not yet. 

First, Rose forgets what all of DC and much of America have "learned" from their supposed past Realpolitik misdeeds during the Cold War: namely, it was not idealism that led to 9-11, according to this argument, but rather Realism itself that is the cold-blooded culprit.   In the new DC Consensus, our active aiding and abetting of all sorts of authoritarian nasties during the Cold War is what got us into the current mess and made us a hypocrtical sham the world over.  According to both Dems and Republicans, it is time to make things right.

Thus, despite the debacle in Iraq, there is still a largely unquestioned assumption - growing increasingly popular to the point of becoming received wisdom - that the US can only be secure through spreading and supporting true democracy and economic liberalization the world over.  In this new Consensus, the path to Realism is Idealism.   To lessen one's ideals in the name of pragmatism is to invite disaster. 

For this reason, authors such as Reinhold Neibuhr and Hans Morgenthau, and the halcyon Wise Men of post-WW II international system building  (Marshall, Acheson, Kennan, etc.), are no longer being held up as revered historical gurus.  After Vietnam, these Realists felt vindicated in their earlier assessment that our failure was due to an overzealous application of an unrealistic "domino theory" of communism based on the obsessive need to spread systems like ours throughout the Developing World.   There is no similar vindication occurring now; rather, criticism tends to be on the Bush Adm.'s bad methods and faulty original rationales (WMD arguments), rather than criticism of the core assumption of "transforming the Middle East."

More to the point, there is no indication that Condi Rice's State Department is prepared to implement a truly "balance of power" policy of Realpolitik pragmatism and/or a progressive policy of reciprocal engagement and cooperation with the enemy (i.e., detente or rapprochement).   Rose makes much of the new and improved operation at State, but here's what's missing in our actual security policies:

--support for a new security consensus, or common security vision, between the Developed and Developing World at the upcoming negotiations in NY for UN Reform (see Thursday's Washington Post story to see what I mean);

--support for new confidence-building measures (CBMs) toward "rogues" such as Syria, Iran, and North Korea, all of which essentially say, "We recognize you as a sovereign state with legitimate security concerns, interests, and anxieties, and we will talk with you about security guarantees that will meet the interests of both of us without undermining the other." 

--(in other words: a balance of interests, which is what the Realist's balance-of-power is meant to create);

--statements to the effect that our goal toward these 3 states is not regime change, preemptive, preventive, or otherwise, but rather is one of reaching detente or a "grand bargain" that meets the interests of both sides without endangering either side's security;

--allowance of our friends and allies in these respective regions to engage the rogues, invest in them, and trade with them, without punishment from us (for instance, allowing India to negotiate with Iran on a new oil pipeline for South Asia);

--engaging Iran to better manage the threat of a disintegrating Iraq, which would make both Iran and the US massively insecure;

--in sum: the idea of Nixon going to China, with a view of transforming things gradually through achieving a balance of interests and values, rather than radical transformation through winning a competition and delivering outright defeat via coercive methods (i.e., one side's values/interests overturning the other);

--all of this based on the assumption that North Korea, Iran, and Syria are not expansionist powers chomping on the bit to kick out the Americans and win aggressive wars against their neighbors, but rather are insecure regional powers who feel under constant threat of extinction - an assumption that is neither idealistic or realistic, but is simply the truth (see for instance Leon Sigal's argument in Arms Control Today concerning North Korea's motivations and intent, based on actual behavior).

Whatever the current realities, is Rose right in his prescriptions?  Yes.  I do hope that Rose's pragmatic turn will happen soon, as laid out above, because as recently argued by Realpolitik Middle East analyst F. Gregory Gause in Foreign Affairs,

"Is it true that the more democratic a country becomes, the less likely it is to produce terrorists and terrorist groups? In other words, is the security rationale for promoting democracy in the Arab world based on a sound premise? Unfortunately, the answer appears to be no....Terrorism appears to stem from factors much more specific than regime type. Nor is it likely that democratization would end the current campaign against the United States. Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are not fighting for democracy in the Muslim world; they are fighting to impose their vision of an Islamic state. Nor is there any evidence that democracy in the Arab world would "drain the swamp," eliminating soft support for terrorist organizations among the Arab public..."

Michael Kraig, Director of Policy Analysis and Dialogue, The Stanley Foundation

Foiled by Assumptions Posted by Michael Kraig

I am writing in my capacity as a temporary replacement for Lorelei Kelly as she takes a much-needed vacation.   And as a new voice, I would like to comment on some assumptions about international security that centrists and progressives hold in common with the conservatives, which consequently undermines attempts to arrive a truly different security paradigm that can be held up as a strong, coherent alternative.

First, David Adesnik said in a post about Cindy Sheehan, "And what if the Ba'athists and their Al Qaeda allies prevail in that war and transform Iraq into a staging ground for international terrorists attacks, a la Afghanistan except with oil?"  This is a mischaracterization of what's happening in Iraq, and it is an error that points to larger US policy community assumptions in general about connections between groups, and between states and groups.  The fact is that there are multiple fights, battles, and mini-wars going on in Iraq, by myriad groups, and though the Ba'athists and Al-Qaeda fighters may indirectly benefit from the chaos and fear that each is creating, they are NOT creating this chaos and fear with an eye to helping each other (and, they are not the only ones doing it; representatives from nearly every group are involved).  Nor is there any compelling evidence that they are actively planning and coordinating their activities together.  The Ba'athists are fighting for their once Sunni-dominated homeland; the foreign insurgents are taking the opportunity created by Bush to cause as much chaos and pain as possible in the cause of overturning the globalizing status quo in the Middle East.  Rest assured, if the Ba'athists were to finally win (even if just over a slice of the original Iraq), they will ruthlessly root out the foreign insurgents -- of any kind, creed, ideology, religion, or national origin - and rest assured, the foreign insurgents will fight them to the death (or, go next door to Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, where they can cause more trouble for years to come for those governments).   For instance, at a recent Stanley Foundation dialogue in Dubai, it was made quite clear that the biggest fears of Iraq's neighbors is not an alliance of insurgents within Iraq, that then make a strong Iraqi state that supports terrorism, but rather, an eventual return of foreign insurgents to the lands from which they first originated.  In short: they fully expect the foreign fighters to be kicked out at some point in the foreseeable future, because they do not assume that these foreign fighters agree with any other group, or ally with any other group.  Rather, the assumption (which I believe is correct) is that these groups are opportunists, quite separate from the Ba'athists, who simply wish to wreak as much havoc as possible -- and when Iraq gets its act together, whether in Sunni or Shi'ite form, then these foreign terrorists will raise literal hell elsewhere.   

With this in mind, I'm not sure it really matters whether the centrists and leftists be seen as appeasers in 2008 elections, because the entire threat and entire problem is being defined incorrectly from the beginning, by both conservatives and liberals alike -- much as Vietnam and the infamous "domino theory of communist expansion" were ruled by misconceptions on each side of the DC spectrum throughout that entire war.   The question is not whether we stay or go, but whether we are willing to admit just how big a mess it really is, and recognize the true costs of cleaning it up, and admit what kind of transnational (not national) terrorist legacy it is going to leave behind.  Iraqi stability and unity should be a goal -- but this goal will not be reached if characterize the problem incorrectly.

Another example: I find on Democracy Arsenal (and other blogs) a certain amount of agreement with the status quo policy conception that the anger in the Middle East is due to internal, domestic repression/oppression/injustice under autocratic governments, and that the anger toward Israel, the West, the US, and the globalizing world order is a byproduct of this, or an escape valve for this.   Indeed, I've heard this from numerous US officials and non-officials throughout my work for the Stanley Foundation; you could almost call it a standing epistemic agreement in the US policy community. 

Unfortunately, it's wrong -- or at least, half-wrong.  There is of course an "escape valve" factor at work here.  But after traveling to the Near East and the Persian Gulf for a combined total of two months this year (in a cross-country outreach tour for a Stanley product translated into Arabic), what I found was nearly everyone saying that "democracy" is not just about internal practices -- there is also an international dimension to justice, development, and democracy.  And this is where anger toward perceived neo-colonialist aggression, not too different from the British mandate in Egypt and the French mandate in Lebanon and Syria, comes in.  The truth is that people feel oppressed at one in and the same time by their own governments (internally) AND by perceived anti-Islamic, anti-Arab forces at the international or global level (externally), and neither of these exists in a vacuum apart from the other.  There is a palpable feeling throughout the Middle East that their values and way of life are potentially or actually under assault by hostile attempts to subvert true Arabism and Islamism and turn it into a Western template.  Israel's actions fall under this umbrella, but by no means is it just Israel alone; Israel is just sort of the lead "indicator", if you will, of overall Western intentions, especially US intentions. 

Put another way, and a bit more broadly: a Chinese analyst complained to me some years ago that Americans talk about democracy all the time, but they subvert it all the time.  I asked what he meant.  And he sincerely said that international institutions, and international rule of law, were the international equivalent of domestic democracy within sovereign states.  He said that China had finally bought into the conception promulgated by the Clinton Administration in the 90s that the NPT, the CTBT, the ICC, etc. and so on, were legitimate institutions to join and adhere to -- and the internal Chinese debate had been won on this score in part because it was "sold" by analysts within China as "international democracy" -- with soveriegn states as the individuals comprising the electorate.  But, this analyst complained, now the US is abusing the UN, failing to ratify the CTBT, disregarding key obligations of the NPT, and is slowly but surely weaponizing outer space.   In this analyst's view, this was "undemocratic" behavior at the international level, even though it was all being done due to democratic decisions made by the US within its own domestic level of politics. 

Long story short: this is how many Arabs feel about Iraq, Palestine, and about globalization in general.    And this is why the assumption mentioned above is a very dangerous one to hold, particularly for progressives trying to lay out true alternatives to the current policy status quo.  Yes, it is necessary to support democracy internally within Middle East states; yes, if people were not repressed domestically (and were not as poor economically, for some countries) in the Middle East, they probably wouldn't hate Israel, Europe, or the US as much as they currently do.  But would this anger and hate disappear if the Middle East were democratized at the domestic level?  The answer is, simply, no.  Because the feelings about lack of justice, or lack of democracy, at the INTERNATIONAL level are just as acute and just as real for many citi