The Hinge of Fate in Iraq - Tony Blankley, Washington Times / Real Clear Politics

I wonder whether, perhaps, in Gen. Petraeus President Bush has finally found his Gen. Montgomery. And whether Petraeus's new strategy and success at beating al Qaeda in Iraq and growing success against the Mahdi Army -- may be his El Alamein. Wars are curious things. Certainly, as President Bush and many of his supporters have cruelly learned, victories cannot reliably be predicted. But as Sen. Harry Reid, the congressional Democrats (and a growing number of Republicans) may soon learn -- neither can one reliably predict defeat.

Intelligence Needs Human Touch - Dan Thomasson, Washington Times

The day of the spy-in-the-sky approach to intelligence gathering may be coming to an end, plagued by cost overruns and systems so complex they take too long to perfect and probably, most importantly, are increasingly less useful in the age of terrorism.

The Real Long War – Christopher Chantrill, American Thinker

The great challenge for us, conservatives and libertarians, people inspired by the spirit of democratic capitalism, is the challenge of the "oikophobes." It means that the war on terror is not finally a war with Islamic terrorism, but an episode in the long war within the west that began in 1789. It is the war between the heirs of Burke and the heirs of Rousseau and Robespierre, between ordered liberty and the "oikophobic" alliance between rational experts, progressive activists, designer revolutionaries and out-and-out thugs.

Terrorist Threats in the Horn of Africa – Christopher Griffin and Oriana Scherr, FrontPage Magazine

As the Long War against the global jihad movement continues, there is a debate over the nature of the conflict: is it principally an ideological struggle, pitting jihadist dogma against Western liberalism; an organizational fight against the al Qaeda terrorism network; a regional struggle centered on the Middle East (or the Islamic world broadly); or a war with a limited number of charismatic personalities like Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed?² It is all four, to some extent, but it is difficult to evaluate their comparative strengths and weaknesses against the capabilities of the United States and its security partners. This analytic muddle, which conflates counterinsurgency, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and the risk of failing states, stands to benefit from an important tool known as net assessment.

Is the Surge Working? – Michael Barone, U.S. News and World Report

One thing students of the history of war know is that things can change in war. And apparently they've been changing in Iraq, at least in the opinions of Michael O'Hanlon, Kenneth Pollack, and Gen. Jack Keane. Democrats like Boyda would like to preserve in amber the state of public opinion that prevailed during the 2006 election and for the first half of this year that we have been defeated in Iraq. The more cynical among them want to make political gain from that; the less cynical want to end a conflict that is taking American lives as fast as they can.

It's August. It's Hot in Iraq. So Parliament Takes a Break. – USA Today editorial

You read that right. With their nation nearing an abyss and 160,000 U.S. troops engaged in a desperate attempt to tamp down the violence, Iraq's legislators have skipped out for an August break. That's something U.S. forces sweltering and fighting in the 120-degree heat can only dream of, and it sends the worst message imaginable.

Taking a Break - Houston Chronicle editorial

With time running out to meet benchmarks to maintain U.S. support, the fractured Iraqi council of representatives is out the door for a month-long summer vacation. Unwilling to compromise on key measures to bring bitterly divided factions together, the lawmakers have opted to fiddle while Iraq burns.

Cut Iraq Some Slack – Clifford May, USA Today

Granted, Iraq's government has disappointed. Americans liberated Iraqis from Saddam Hussein and gave them the right to vote. What we couldn't give them are the institutions, values and habits required for effective democratic governance. Those they will have to develop over time, if they can.

O’Hanlon and Pollack on the Surge – George Packer, The New Yorker Interesting Times

Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack, of the Brookings Institution, fresh from an eight-day trip to Iraq, have an optimistic Op-Ed titled “A War We Just Might Win” in today’s New York Times. It raises more questions for me than it answers.

War Powers Rest with Congress – Mario Cuomo, USA Today

If Congress had paid closer attention to our Constitution when dealing with Iraq, the nation would be much better off than we are today. The frustrating political paralysis that prevents us from pulling our forces out of harm's way in Iraq might have been avoided in 2002 when President Bush first made clear his desire to declare war.

United We Fall? – James Taranto, Wall Street Journal

Kansas Rep. Nancy Boyda is defending her decision to step out of a hearing room last week while a retired Army general testified about U.S. progress in Iraq… Boyda, it seems, wants to suppress information about success in Iraq, because such information would "divide the country."

Questions for Reps. Murtha and Moran – Washington Times editorial

Tomorrow, the House is expected to take up the defense appropriations bill, and despite the good news coming out of Iraq in recent days, the Democratic leadership is prepared to do everything it can to tack on amendments aimed at discrediting the war on terror. The chairman of House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Jack Murtha, says he will offer an amendment to shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where approximately 360 jihadists captured abroad are being held.

On to Containment – Michael Hirsh, Newsweek

In the space of a year, the Bush team seems to have gone from condemning the decades-old U.S. policy of backing the Arab regimes to championing precisely that course. Am I being unfair here? We all know this new multibillion-dollar aid package is about containing Iran (Rice, in her comments en route to Egypt Monday, didn’t deny that the new U.S. policy was “akin to postwar containment,” saying, “Situations are different, but there isn’t a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important single-country strategic challenge to the United States and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see.”). And containment of Iran seems to be a fairly reasonable policy, especially compared to the alternative of a military strike.

The $63 Billion Sham – Derrick Jackson, Boston Globe

Talk about wriggling in quicksand. Having destroyed Iraq to save us from horrors that did not exist, Rice now wants to save us from Iran's future nukes by selling American weapons of mass destruction. Over the next decade, the Bush administration wants to give Israel $30 billion in military aid, a nearly 43 percent increase over what that nation received over the last 10 years, according to The New York Times. We want to give $20 billion to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. We want to give Egypt $13 billion.

Call to Arms: New Weapons will not Quell the Middle East - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial

It is hard to see exactly what the administration is trying to achieve by this sale. First, it seems incendiary to the point of irresponsibility to dump another $50 billion in arms into a region as full of conflict and instability as the Middle East. There is the Arab-Israeli conflict. There is the Iraq war. There is the simmering rivalry between the Sunni states and Iran. There is the basic shakiness of governments in many of the states of the region, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Our Moral Obligation to Iraqi Workers - Lanny Davis and Michael Medved, St. Louis Times–Dispatch

The war in Iraq has inspired bitter divisions over whether America should have intervened, how we have conducted the conflict and if and how we should get out. But one issue should bring together all factions of the ongoing debate: America's moral obligation to open our doors immediately to Iraqis who face danger and death because of the assistance they have provided to our forces.

The Martyrs No One Cares About - Michelle Malkin, Real Clear Politics

The blood of innocent Christian missionaries spills on Afghan sands. The world watches and yawns. The United Nations offers nothing more than a formal expression of "concern." Where is the global uproar over the human rights abuses unfolding before our eyes?

Power Sharing in Pakistan – Washington Times editorial

After the bloody but successful raid against the Red Mosque in Islamabad, President Pervez Musharraf decided to finally go to war against Pakistan's growing number of hardline, Taliban-style militants, even sending troops into the northwest frontier provinces. This is welcome news for the United States, but it is set against the backdrop of serious political problems for Gen. Musharraf.

The Pakistan Policy Predicament - Teresita C. Schaffer, Washington Post

If a future leader of Pakistan -- and there will be one some day regardless of what happens in the elections -- wants to shift from controlling violent extremist groups to suppressing them, he or she will need to use the army for this purpose. The army will need to be a participant in this decision, and the new leader will need to command the army, in fact and not just in name. The army is more likely to be persuaded if the campaign is based on the extremist groups' violent challenge to state authority rather than on their religious character. The trick will be to sustain the effort for as long as necessary, to create a political consensus behind the new policy, and to change the hedging policies that have looked on violent groups as a foreign policy asset. The recent shocking events in both Islamabad and the Northwest Frontier Province makes clear that they are now a pressing domestic danger.

Simmering Discord in the Tribal Badlands – Selig Harrison, Boston Globe

The alarming growth of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Pashtun tribal region of northwest Pakistan and southern Afghanistan is usually attributed to the popularity of their messianic brand of Islam and to covert help from Pakistani intelligence agencies. But another, more ominous reason also explains their success: their symbiotic relationship with a simmering Pashtun separatist movement that could lead to the unification of the estimated 41 million Pashtuns on both sides of the border, the breakup of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the emergence of a new national entity, "Pashtunistan," under radical Islamist leadership.

Orwellian Logic at the U.N. - Herbert London, Washington Times

Those who cover the U.N. understand full well that a body housing democracies and dictatorships cannot long prevail as long as the good and bad are treated in the same manner. When Zimbabwe and the Sudan are considered the equals of the United States and the United Kingdom, relativistic standards must be imposed. Even a debating society must realize at some point that some views are more valid than others.

Endgame for Palestine - Harvey Sicherman, Foreign Policy Research Institute

Bush’s triple bet—in effect his endgame for alleviating if not ending the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict - is a long shot. The United States does not ride high now in the Middle East; Iran and its allies are pressing hard; and the President does not command much support in the region, or for that matter, in Washington. Moreover, the two horses dragging the chariot of peace, Olmert and Abbas, are very lame. American gambles in the midst of adversity, however, are not new; in many ways, the local governments prefer it that way. Nor are tactics and timing the real obstructions to success: those determined to reach agreement manage to overcome clumsy diplomacy; and the timing is always bad for someone.

Seize the Cesium – Peter Zimmerman, James Acton and M. Brooke Rogers, New York Times

The government and people need to have a conversation about radiation terrorism before the next attack. The easiest way for such a conversation to take place is through solid reporting and discussion by the news media — discussion focused on the science instead of hype and scary language.

Unwelcome Internet Guests – Jonathan Last, Weekly Standard

An ambitious private initiative to help American Internet service providers (ISPs) identify jihadist websites they are unwittingly hosting was unveiled the other day in Washington. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) will lend its translation capabilities and the expertise of its Islamist Website Monitor Project to any ISP that wants to investigate the content of a suspicious foreign-language site. MEMRI president Yigal Carmon expects that ISPs will voluntarily shut down extremist sites once the providers realize what inflammatory material the sites contain.

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