Seeing is Believing – Thomas Friedman, New York Times (subscription required)
Is the surge in Iraq working? That is the question that Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will answer for us next month. I, alas, am not interested in their opinions. It is not because I don’t hold both men in very high regard. I do. But I’m still not interested in their opinions. I’m only interested in yours. Yes, you — the person reading this column. You know more than you think. You see, I have a simple view about both Arab-Israeli peace-making and Iraqi surge-making, and it goes like this: Any Arab-Israeli peace overture that requires a Middle East expert to explain to you is not worth considering. It’s going nowhere. Either a peace overture is so obvious and grabs you in the gut — Anwar Sadat’s trip to Israel — or it’s going nowhere. That is why the Saudi-Arab League peace overture is going nowhere. No emotional content. It was basically faxed to the Israeli people, and people don’t give up land for peace in a deal that comes over the fax. Ditto with Iraqi surges. If it takes a Middle East expert to explain to you why it is working, it’s not working. To be sure, it is good news if the number of Iraqis found dead in Baghdad each night is diminishing. Indeed, it is good news if casualties are down everywhere that U.S. troops have made their presence felt. But all that tells me is something that was obvious from the start of the war, which Donald Rumsfeld ignored: where you put in large numbers of U.S. troops you get security, and where you don’t you get insecurity.
The Iraq Surge: What Next? - Greg Reeson, American Chronicle
As the U.S. Congress and Iraqi parliament enjoy their summer recesses, reports from military officials and independent analysts in Iraq indicate that President Bush’s so-called “surge” strategy for Baghdad and al-Anbar Province is beginning to have its desired effect. A serious reading of events since the final surge troops arrived in Iraq in June reveals that U.S. forces are making steady, if incremental, progress. The new emphasis on counterinsurgency operations and securing the Iraqi population has resulted in a nearly 50 percent decrease in major attacks (the spectacular bombings generally attributed to foreign terrorist elements), Sunni tribes turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq elements, some progress toward reducing sectarian violence, something resembling normalcy in several Baghdad neighborhoods, and improved morale among U.S. military troops who now feel they have a solid strategy and a commander they can trust. Yes, there are still mass casualty bombings and unacceptable levels of violence, but the trend is clearly toward an improved security situation in Iraq. Of course, this should come as no surprise to anyone who has been more than a casual observer of the performance of U.S. troops in the field. American military forces are the most capable and professional in the world and, given the right resources, can bring order and stability to just about any environment into which they are placed. But the improving situation in Iraq cannot be maintained indefinitely. The successes we are seeing are at the tactical level and are being paid for with the blood and sweat of American military men and women. What is required now is progress at the national level among the elected Iraqi leadership.
The War as We Saw It - Buddhika Jayamahan, Wesley Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance Gray and Jeremy Murphy, New York Times
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.) The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.
Petraeus and Crocker Should Report -- Publicly - Sacramento Bee editorial
The stakes over President Bush's troop surge are high. Members of Congress in May reluctantly gave Bush the money he wanted to escalate the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Another vote for yet more funding comes in September. Bush has repeatedly told Congress that he would not revisit his surge strategy until September when, he also repeatedly has said, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, would provide Congress with a progress report. Virtually all Republicans and some Democrats voted for additional funding in May, saying they were willing to stick with Bush until September. They said they wanted an honest assessment from Petraeus then, and would re-evaluate their position on a phased withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Now the stakes have gotten even higher as news reports indicate that the much-awaited Petraeus report will not be written by Petraeus. The September report will be written by the White House, just as the overoptimistic preliminary report in July was. Worse, though Congress in the May bill required Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to "testify in open and closed sessions" before the president submits the September report to Congress, now the White House has told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee that it wants Petraeus and Crocker to brief lawmakers in closed session before the release of the report.
Presenting The Petraeus Report: An Immodest Proposal - Hugh Hewit - Town Hall
The White House Press Secretary revealed that plans on how the mid-September report of General Petraeus would be communicated had not yet been decided. This is a crucial moment in securing the confidence of the country not just in the early success of the surge, but more generally in the leadership of the Coalition's forces in Iraq and the plan they are following, and so I offer these suggestions to the team trying to discern how best to communicate with the American public on this vital effort. In a word, bluntly. In another word, seriously. That means a new approach that avoids both the gaggle and the narrow field of vision of the White House press corps while understanding that there is no "audience" in America anymore, but many very discrete audiences, each one of which needs to hear what the general has to say. While General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will appear before the relevant Congressional committees, it is the right of the American people, and especially those families that have sacrificed so much through the loss of a loved one, and the men and women of the military who are called on to bear the burden, to receive both an unmediated report from the general, but also a serious set of tough questions.
New Nuclear Deterrents - Peter Zimmerman and Hans Binnendijk, Washington Times
The failed attempt by a bunch of medical doctors who tried to detonate Mercedes Benz automobiles parked on London's busy streets and packed with the kind of propane cylinders Americans use to fuel backyard barbecues sent antiterror alert levels in the United Kingdom to their highest possible level. Without minimizing the danger posed by the doctors' plot, it is worth noting that the men were incompetent and the explosives no larger than is commonplace in Iraq today. Suppose a group of terrorists were less incompetent, were nuclear physicists, and the explosive made from uranium? In 1977, the standard answer to the question, "can terrorists make their own atomic bomb?" was likely "no, it takes another Manhattan Project." Today, the answer is more likely a clear "yes, if somebody gives them uranium or plutonium." Indeed, some of America's deepest strategic thinkers, including former Defense Secretary William Perry and hydrogen bomb designer Richard Garwin, think the probability of a terrorist nuclear explosion is around 20 percent per year. If that is so, it is only a matter of time, and perhaps not very much time.
The Cyber War Against the United States – Jim Melnick, Boston Globe
Recent al-Qaeda recruitment videos and foiled terrorist plots in the United Kingdom remind us that the effectiveness of terrorism is an issue of winning the hearts and minds of those with the proper skills to do serious harm. It would logically follow that it is reckless to allow terrorists to combine the critical elements of ideology, skills, and the technical means of destruction. Yet, there is a less discussed conflict -- a "cyberwar" -- where these dangerous elements are coming together. Regardless of one's position on the war in Iraq or the definition of the "global war on terrorism," the threat is real. This cyberwar is embodied by scores of extremist Islamist and pro-terrorist websites that spew hatred for America, Israel, and others. Some sites train Islamists in Internet hacking skills, while others are more slanted toward military weapons training for jihadists. Nearly all are involved in recruitment, information exchange, and extremist propaganda of one kind or another. What is alarming is the sites demonstrate a steady progression of skill levels among many of the cyber jihadist groups, making their brand of cyber-warfare a greater threat than in recent years.
Risks in a Muslim Reformation – Diana Muir, Washington Post
Salman Rushdie, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof and Mansour al-Nogaidan are among the well-intentioned people who have called for an Islamic Reformation. They should be careful what they wish for. The Protestant Reformation did precede the things these men admire about modernity in the West, including women's emancipation, political liberty, scientific breakthroughs, the wealth and opportunity created by the Industrial Revolution, and permission to think freely regarding God. But all this came later, and the Reformation was only part of what brought them about. The Reformation was a time of intense focus on God and what He requires of people. As a movement, it was enthusiastic, narrow and far from tolerant. It and the Counter-Reformation brought two centuries of repression, war and massacre to the West. It's unlikely that anyone who lived through it would consider wishing a Reformation on Muslims. And yet, even as some hope for such a turn of events -- presuming, it seems, a certain conclusion -- a Reformation is sweeping through the Muslim world. Westerners are generally aware that the Shiite and Sunni sects of Islam are struggling for dominance in Iraq. But more broadly, the words and doctrine promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis or Wahhabists are eerily similar to those of our 16th-century forebears.
The Model that India Offers – Jim Hoagland, Washington Post
India celebrated its 60th birthday last week with a raucous parliamentary debate over nuclear energy and its new strategic relationship with the United States. New Delhi had the air of the capital of an emerging world power looking ahead into a promising, if complicated, future. Pakistan marked the same occasion by sinking deeper into the past. The corrupt backroom dealing between military rulers and politicians that has produced a cycle of disasters for the Pakistani nation resumed -- aided by the hidden hand of U.S. diplomacy working to preserve President Pervez Musharraf's dwindling power in Islamabad. The anniversary of the partition of the Asian subcontinent six decades ago showed the region's two contrasting faces: a giant, open democracy and a sclerotic but nuclear-armed garrison state. It also revealed two contrasting faces of the Bush administration's foreign policy, where pockets of bold thinking about the future compete with the need for short-term fixes that rely heavily on illusion.
The Lost War - Misha Glenny, Washington Post
Poppies were the first thing that British army Capt. Leo Docherty noticed when he arrived in Afghanistan's turbulent Helmand province in April 2006. "They were growing right outside the gate of our Forward Operating Base," he told me. Within two weeks of his deployment to the remote town of Sangin, he realized that "poppy is the economic mainstay and everyone is involved right up to the higher echelons of the local government." Poppy, of course, is the plant from which opium -- and heroin -- are derived. Docherty was quick to realize that the military push into northern Helmand province was going to run into serious trouble. The rumor was "that we were there to eradicate the poppy," he said. "The Taliban aren't stupid and so they said, 'These guys are here to destroy your livelihood, so let's take up arms against them.' And it's been a downward spiral since then." Despite the presence of 35,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, the drug trade there is going gangbusters. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghan opium production in 2006 rose a staggering 57 percent over the previous year. Next month, the United Nations is expected to release a report showing an additional 15 percent jump in opium production this year while highlighting the sobering fact that Afghanistan now accounts for 95 percent of the world's poppy crop. But the success of the illegal narcotics industry isn't confined to Afghanistan. Business is booming in South America, the Middle East, Africa and across the United States.
Help Mexico with Costs of the Drug War – Michael Shifter, Miami Herald
In Quebec tomorrow, a large U.S. aid package to Mexico -- reportedly on the order of several hundred million dollars a year -- will be on the agenda at a North American summit meeting with President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderón. The eight-month-old Calderón government has repeatedly called for substantial U.S. support to help stem the uncontrolled, drugfueled violence that is subduing city after city in Mexico. For the health of our southern neighbor's nascent democracy and the strengthening of our own border controls, it is fundamental that the United States and Mexico enhance their cooperation. Indeed, a failure to heed the appeals for assistance at such a critical juncture would be not only self-defeating for the United States but highly irresponsible as well. As Calderón often points out, the United States bears a significant responsibility for the spreading violence and criminality in Mexico. U.S. consumption is largely driving the drug trade, and the inability or, rather, political unwillingness to control the sale and transport of arms that end up in the hands of vicious drug gangs, is hard to defend. But the United States needs to proceed cautiously. For understandable historical reasons, Mexicans are very sensitive about protecting their country's sovereignty, particularly from the United States. Not surprisingly, U.S. military training on Mexican soil is prohibited. True, such mistrust has declined somewhat in recent years. Not too long ago, after all, Calderón's request for U.S. support would have been met with opprobrium in Mexico. But the widespread disapproval of the U.S. military-centered adventure in Iraq makes any ratcheting up of anti-drug aid quite delicate.
In Venezuela, It’s There Hugo Again – Dale McFeatters, Boston Herald
Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez likes being president so much he’s arranging to stay in charge indefinitely, much in the manner of his hero and mentor, Fidel Castro. While this may be good for Chavez’s boundless ego, it’s bad for Venezuela. Chavez has presented another rewrite of the country’s constitution - he rewrote it earlier, after first being elected in 1998 - to the tame National Assembly. This latest version would abolish the current two-term limit and extend a presidential term from six to seven years. It would also greatly diminish possible challenges to his authority by curbing the powers of elected governors and mayors in favor of local “communal councils” that will be dependent on Chavez for funding. And to secure that funding he is proposing to end the autonomy of the Venezuelan Central Bank, giving him access to the bank’s billions. That shortsighted move is bound to weaken the country’s currency and isolate it from international financial institutions. Chavez has already scared off needed foreign investment in Venezuela and especially its aging oil-industry infrastructure. Already overly dependent on oil revenues, Venezuela under Chavez has become solely dependent on them.
Return of the Bear – Oliver North, Washington Times
For more than three years now, our White House, State Department and Pentagon have been fixated on America's adversaries in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Our preoccupation has been on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. Unfortunately, we seem to have missed what's happening in Russia. Not to carry the wildlife metaphor too far — but the Bear is back. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Moscow would build a new air defense radar system in St. Petersburg, to be "the first step in a large-scale program," and that it will be "carried out before 2015." This follows Mr. Putin's threat to retarget Russian nuclear weapons on Europe if Washington goes ahead with plans to deploy missile defense radars in the Czech Republic and anti-missile interceptors in Poland. As usual, the Blame America First crowd claims the U.S. ICBM shield is precipitating a "crisis."
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