Watch the Sunni Tribes – Thomas Friedman, New York Times (subscription required)
When U.S. Army officers try to explain the challenge of rebuilding Iraq, they often talk about the three different time pieces they’re working with: Washington’s is a stop watch, where every second longer we stay in Iraq is a problem; the Iraqi Shiite-led government’s watch often seems broken, and you have to regularly tap it to get it to work; and the Iraqi Sunni watch always wants to go in reverse — back to Saddam’s day, when Sunnis were in charge. I’ve just bounced between Baquba and Balad and a Sunni and Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad as an embedded reporter with the visiting Adm. William Fallon, head of the Central Command. I don’t know whether the surge is working — too early, too short a visit. But I did see something new here, which, if played right, could help to stabilize Iraq and better synchronize some of those watches. It’s this: the willingness of the Sunni tribes, and key Sunni neighborhood leaders in Baghdad, to work side by side with the American soldiers they’ve been shooting at for four years in order to retake Sunni towns and districts from the Taliban-like, pro-Al Qaeda Iraqi Sunnis who took charge in 2006, when the undermanned United States forces pulled out of many areas and handed over security to unprepared Iraqi Army units. Ironically, a key reason violence appears to be trending lower here is because Al Qaeda’s “surge” in 2006 so frightened Iraq’s more moderate, occasionally whisky-drinking Sunni tribal leaders — the backbone of the Sunni community here — that they became willing to work with the Americans just when the U.S. surge was taking off. Warning! This important shift by the Sunni tribes could come unglued if the Shiite-led Iraqi government doesn’t start providing government services — water, fuel and electricity — to the Sunni areas the tribes have retaken.
Who's the Real Sectarian? - Harold Meyerson, Washington Post
Nobody loves Nouri Kamal al-Maliki. In his own country, the Iraqi prime minister heads a government of, by and for fractious Shiites, against which enraged Sunnis, among others, have taken up arms. In our country, which sustains him in power, both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans call for his ouster. A National Intelligence Estimate finds his administration utterly incapable of settling the differences that are pulling his nation apart. The bill of particulars against Maliki is long and convincing, but it all boils down to this: The prime minister has done nothing to reconcile Iraq's warring populations and, to the contrary, seems either content or resigned to heading a government that consolidates the Shiite ascendancy in Iraq. His ministries are controlled by sectarian Shiites. Sunnis fear the government's police force, dread going to the government's hospitals and have given up on the government's ever picking up the garbage in their neighborhoods or providing any of the ordinary amenities that government normally provides. Over the past few months, not surprisingly, Sunni and nonsectarian parties have withdrawn from Maliki's cabinet and boycotted the parliament. Rivalries within his own Shiite community have also weakened Maliki, who, unlike such Shiite leaders as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim or Moqtada al-Sadr, lacks sectarian military legions to call his own.
Which Past War in Iraq? - Simon Serfaty, Washington Post
Analogies are designed as a shortcut to reality, but as everyone knows, shortcuts often lead elsewhere than their planned destination. So it is with President Bush's attempt to link our current predicament in Iraq and past failures in Vietnam. The analogy, meant as a warning against withdrawal, relies on an abusive rhetoric that evokes the "unmistakable legacy" paid for by "millions of innocent [Vietnamese] citizens." Previously, Bush had used the Vietnam analogy, though less explicitly, to warn against escalation against an enemy that is "never tired, never sated, never content with yesterday's brutality." Clearly, the President and his senior advisers, who had shown little awareness of geography while planning for war five years ago, could also use lessons in history as they insist on putting some fancy clothing on an unappealing present. Whether Iraq was a war of choice or a war of necessity can be argued on moral and national security grounds; but not repeating in Iraq the undisputable show of failure that ended the war in Vietnam responds to both a moral and a national security imperative that can be argued more effectively than by returning to a failed past. For once, Mr. President, the facts are on your side. Unlike Vietnam, where the fear of failure reflected a frame of mind that bore little resemblance to reality, the predictable consequences of retreat in Iraq are real. The war in Vietnam was a civil war that was turned into an American war; the war in Iraq is an American war that has become a civil war. To that extent Iraq is the true quagmire that Vietnam did not have to be. A precipitate withdrawal would unleash Iraq's civil war into ever larger killing fields of vital significance not only to the United States, but to the rest of the region and beyond.
Resolute Redux - Paul Greenberg, Washington Times
What's wrong with George W. Bush? Doesn't he know America has already been defeated in Iraq? Doesn't he realize that as a lame-duck president he is just conducting a holding operation? Doesn't the man keep up with the opinion polls? Hasn't he noticed the growing tide — a tidal wave, really — of antiwar sentiment? Shouldn't it have dawned on him even in his snug presidential cocoon that, at this low point in his presidency, there is no hope he'll regain the country's confidence? Doesn't he read the New York Times? Doesn't he listen to National Public Radio? As the gory pictures and sobering casualty counts continue to arrive from Iraq — and Afghanistan, too — this president has sunk almost as low in the polls as Harry Truman did during the last, grinding months of the Korean War. Then, too, nobody who was anybody in the American establishment, or who hoped to be, could muster much hope for the American cause. How can George W. Bush ignore what is equally obvious today? Doesn't he know the war is lost — and has been for some time? Apparently not. Because instead of throwing in the towel, the president showed up last week in Kansas City to defend his views before the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
A Surge Report Card – Kevin Drum, The Washington Monthly
Anbar is good news despite the long-term risk of arming Sunni tribal leaders. Petraeus seems to be doing a good job on the counterinsurgency front (though it's frankly hard to say how much of this is good PR based on a limited number of success stories and how much is genuine widespread progress). And it's possible that violence is down in Baghdad, though I'd rate the odds of that at no more than 50-50. On the downside, most of the evidence suggests that violence is following seasonal patterns and is going up, not down. The insurgency seems to be getting worse in the north. Civil war is breaking out in the south. Anecdotal reports of progress are undercut by suggestions that we'll need to stay in Iraq for another decade. The Iraqi police force is a disaster and the army doesn't appears to be much better, despite the usual Pentagon claims of improvement. Kirkuk is a timebomb. Iraqi infrastructure is in a ruinous decline. And the insurgency is apparently bigger than it was a year ago. The conventional wisdom this summer, after a steady round of dog-and-pony shows from the military, says that although political progress in Iraq is nil (or even in reverse), at least we're finally making some tactical progress on the security front. And maybe we are. But I'm trying to be as honest as I can be here, and it looks to me like the balance of the evidence suggests that this is more hype than reality. As near as I can tell, we're not making much progress on either front.
Good News, But Not For Democrats - Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
It's a war, and it's the Middle East, so glad tidings can go sour and there are never any guarantees. But for all the caveats, the news from Iraq has been heartening. For months, observers have been crediting General David Petraeus's "surge" with remarkable progress on the ground. That message has come not only from longtime supporters of the war, but from some tough critics as well. Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, analysts at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, jolted Washington with their July 30 op-ed column, "A War We Just Might Win." Eleven days later, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which had long pronounced the war a misbegotten disaster, radically revised its view. "The US military is more successful in Iraq than the world wants to believe," journalist Ullrich Fichtner reported. So much so that the outcome the Bush administration "erroneously predicted before their invasion -- that the troops would be greeted with candy and flowers -- could in fact still come true." More good news came just this week in a breakthrough announced by Iraq's top Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish politicians. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and the Kurdish regional president, Massoud Barzani, are joining forces on legislation to settle some of the thorniest issues bedeviling Iraqi politics, including a national oil policy, an easing of de-Baathification, and the release of certain detainees. For most Americans, positive developments in Iraq are very welcome. But good news is bad news for the Democratic left, where opposition to the war has become an emotional investment in defeat.
Which Iraq War do You Want to End? – Christopher Hitchens, Slate
When people say that they want to end the war in Iraq, I always want to ask them which war they mean. There are currently at least three wars, along with several subconflicts, being fought on Iraqi soil. The first, tragically, is the battle for mastery between Sunni and Shiite. The second is the campaign to isolate and defeat al-Qaida in Mesopotamia. The third is the struggle of Iraq's Kurdish minority to defend and consolidate its regional government in the north. The ability to distinguish among these different definitions of the "war" is what ought to define the difference between a serious politician and a political opportunist, both in Iraq and in America. The obliteration of political life and civil society by Saddam Hussein's fascism has meant that most of the successor political figures are paltry (and the Kurdish exception to this exactly proves the point: Kurdistan escaped from Baathist control a full decade before the rest of Iraq did). It will take a good while before any plausible nonsectarian figures can emerge from the wasteland and also brave the climate of murder and intimidation that the forces of the last dictatorship, and the would-be enforcers of an even worse future one, have created. Meanwhile, it is all very well for Sens. Clinton and Levin to denounce the Maliki government and to say that he and his Dawa Party colleagues are not worth fighting for. But what do they say about the other two wars? Sen. Clinton in particular has said several times in the past that we cannot, for example, abandon the Kurds as we once did before. Should she not be asked if this is still her view? And did I miss what Sen. Levin had to say about the battle against AQM? The next election is rightly going to be fought, to a considerable extent, over the question of Iraq. Answers to these questions about that question are a test of seriousness that all voters should be keeping in mind.
Timelines and Defeat - Frederick Kagan, National Review
Some aspects of war are complex and hard to understand, but others are very easy. As the discussion about Iraq swirls over the next month, it is essential to keep one simple fact in mind: Setting hard-and-fast timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. forces or imposing arbitrary caps on the size of those forces is equivalent to accepting failure in Iraq, with all its consequences. Nonetheless, there are many, including many in Congress, who think that success in Iraq is compatible with inflexible timelines. It is not; inflexible timelines will lead inevitably to defeat. The Bush administration, its generals, and external proponents of the current strategy have been clear from the outset: the surge of forces in Iraq is, and was always, intended to be temporary. Its primary aim was to establish security for the people of Iraq (and clearly, it is succeeding in that aim). After security had been brought to a tolerable and stable level, it was expected that the Iraqi government could begin to make significant progress toward political reconciliation at the national level. In the meantime, Coalition forces would continue to work to increase the size of the Iraqi Security Forces, and to improve the quality of those forces. The expectation since the start of the surge has been that as both security and the capabilities of the ISF improved, it would become possible to begin to reduce American forces in Iraq, most likely sometime in 2008. All indicators on the ground now suggest that we are on track to achieving this goal.
The Future of Iraq – Michael Totten, Middle East Journal
“Al Qaeda terrifies locals,” said Major Mike Garcia from Canyon, Texas, before he put me in a convoy of Humvees with 18 American Military Police on their way to the small town of Mushadah just north of Baghdad. “The only people Iraqis may be more afraid of is their mothers. When we arrest or detain people and threaten to call up their mom, they completely freak out. Please, no, don’t tell my mother they say. Women are quiet outside the house, but they severely smack down their bad kids inside the house. When your Iraqi mother tells you to knock something off, you knock it off.” The American military has slowly figured out how to leverage Iraq’s culture to its advantage, but it only works to an extent. Locating, killing, capturing, and interrogating terrorists and insurgents is the easy part. The hard part is training Iraqis to do it themselves.
Occupational Hazard – Jack Miles, New York Times
Is America’s presence in Iraq legal? As Republicans and Democrats debate the ethical and practical considerations for and against the withdrawal of the United States forces, this question scarcely comes up. But within a few months, it could, suddenly and with potentially decisive impact. In May 2003, just weeks after the overthrow of Iraq’s government, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 recognized “the Authority” — which was to say “the occupying powers under unified command” — as Iraq’s effective legal government. In October 2003, it took a further step and mandated that the United States-led multinational force establish security and stability in Iraq. While noting that this mandate would expire within a year, the council expressed its “readiness to consider on that occasion any future need for the continuation of the multinational force, taking into account the views of an internationally recognized, representative government of Iraq.” In June 2004, Security Council Resolution 1546 stipulated that “by 30 June 2004, the occupation will end and the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist, and that Iraq will reassert its full sovereignty.” Subsequently, as sovereign Iraq has moved by stages through elections and complex deliberations to the formation of its current government, the United Nations has renewed the mandate for the multinational force at the request of successive Iraqi prime ministers — Ibrahim al-Jaafari in 2005 and Nuri Kamal al-Maliki last year. The current mandate expires at the end of December. Will it be renewed?
The Left Loses the Vietnam War - Robert Tracinski, Real Clear Politics
In political battles--and all too frequently in war itself--victories are rarely complete, defeats are rarely final, and the real significance of a battle is often not evident for years, even decades afterward. America's defeat in Vietnam, for example, was seemingly a triumph for the anti-war left, which had long proclaimed the war to be unwinnable quagmire. Yet the years following that defeat--the era of American retreat and "national malaise"--proved so traumatic that the American people have never wanted to repeat them. Thus, what the anti-war radicals regarded as a vindication ended up discrediting the left on foreign policy for a generation. You could say that they won the political battle over the war--but they lost the peace. Today, we may be seeing the final chapter of that process. The left is losing the Vietnam War itself--losing Vietnam, that is, as a rhetorical high ground from which to pillory any advocate of vigorous American military action overseas.
Dems Surge Toward the Surge - Deroy Murdock, National Review
Reviled by most Democrats, President Bush’s 20,000-troop surge is working. Indeed, news of this policy’s success is emerging from an unlikely source: Democrats. Although the Democrats’ critique of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government is justified, it also represents a convenient shifting of the goal posts used to score the entire surge operation. The military surge, doomed by most Democrats at its outset, now enjoys growing Democratic praise, as its success becomes indisputable. Yet somehow, many Democrats paradoxically argue, the surge also has failed since Iraq’s civilian leadership is mired in gridlock. Indeed, the Washington Post revealed a glimpse at the new Democratic sheet music. As Jonathan Weisman and Anne E. Kornblut reported Wednesday, Democrats are pursuing a “campaign to praise military progress while excoriating Iraqi leaders for their unwillingness to reach political accommodations that could end the sectarian warfare.” Of course, there is only so much the American armed forces can do. While they are pacifying the streets, they hardly can be held responsible for Iraqi quorum calls, committee meetings, and legislative compromise. If the Defense Department could make legislatures run smoothly, President Bush might consider a Pentagon surge on Capitol Hill.
Iraq: The Bottom Line - New York Post editorial
President Bush has offered strong arguments for the need for America to prevail in Iraq, but one he pressed yesterday is among the most compelling: U.S. interests, and security, depend on it. "Either the forces of extremism succeed, or the forces of freedom succeed," he said. "Either our enemies advance their interests in Iraq, or we advance our interests. The most important and immediate way to counter the ambitions of al Qaeda, Iran and other forces of instability and terror is to win the fight in Iraq." Bush has cited the humanitarian horror that would follow a precipitous pullout of U.S. troops; he's talked of the need to promote democracy and to help Iraq stand on its own - all fine arguments against cutting and running. Yet what matters most to most Americans, notwithstanding liberal bleeding hearts, is their own interests and safety, and those of the free world. Nothing wrong with that. But, as Bush noted, that means standing up to Islamic radicalism.
Iraq Suddenly Appears on Canada's Radar Screen - David Eaves and Taylor Owen, Toronto Star
For the past five years, Canadian leaders have had little to say about the Iraq war. Content not to be in but careful not to be too critical, most have adopted a laissez-faire position on the conflict. This position is unsustainable. In just over a year's time, Americans will elect a new president. Regardless of whether the victor is a Democrat or a Republican, the last ardent defender of the Iraq war will have left the international stage and the world will look at Iraq through a new lens. The Iraq war, "Bush's War," will be over. Iraq the humanitarian crisis will be in the ascendant. In anticipation of this emerging shift, the Security Council last week voted unanimously to increase the UN's role in Iraq. The international body will endeavour to do what it – and notably not what the U.S. military – does best: engage in essential diplomatic, negotiation and humanitarian activities. And this is only the beginning. While the departure of U.S. and British troops will undoubtedly remove one aggravating factor, sectarian strife, a humanitarian crisis and a failing state will remain.
Baghdad Treat Life Returns to Mean Streets - Ralph Peters, New York Post
It may be the world's ugliest ice cream, a random mix of a half-dozen melting flavors swirled together in a chaos of chemical colors. But it's a hit at the Yarmouk market in the heart of Baghdad. Much of the city - though certainly not all - is coming back to life. The optimism of the neighborhood entrepreneur who opened that ice-cream shop may be a better indicator of progress than another empty promise from Iraq's government. And it's a good sign when a U.S. security patrol can make an ice-cream stop.
Answering ANSWER - Michelle Malkin, New York Post
The dog days of August have drawn to a close. This is the calm before the gathering political storm. On Sept. 15, the far-left group ANSWER ("Act Now to Stop War and End Racism") will descend on the nation's capital to demand what they've been demanding for the last six years in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan; immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and immediate release of every last suspected al Qaeda operative in American custody; immediate impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney; and immediate capitulation to our enemies at home and abroad. Who will be there to counter the Jane Fonda retreads? Will you? Earlier this year, I reported on a nonpartisan movement that arose to challenge the surrender lobby. On a bitter cold weekend in March, the Gathering of Eagles brought together veterans, families of active-duty servicemen and servicewomen, Rolling Thunder members, military bloggers and their supporters to raise their pro-troops, pro-mission voices.
Can We Win the Ideological War? – Patrick Buchanan, The American Conservative
Asked during World War II why the British continued to fight so ferociously, Churchill is said to have snorted, “If we stop, you’ll find out.” The question arises in the war on terror: we know who the main enemy is, al-Qaeda, the men and movement responsible for 9/11, but what are they fighting for? What is their war all about? A year ago, in Salt Lake City, President Bush, addressing the American Legion, sought to define the war from his perspective: “The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation—the right of all people to speak, and worship, and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism—the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest.” Certainly terrorists who massacre innocents are fanatics. Certainly, the caliphate bin Laden’s acolytes would establish would be tyrannical. But if the enemy were only a cabal of terrorists, hell-bent on establishing a tyranny, they would not be on the verge of expelling us from Iraq and perhaps from Afghanistan. Why are we losing the war if President Bush has correctly defined the stakes in this “ideological struggle”? One reason is that the true goals of bin Laden, the insurgents in Iraq, and the Taliban are not so abstract as those of Mr. Bush. They are concrete, understandable, realizable, and appealing to millions.
The Odd Guard - Amir Taheri, New York Post
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has moved to consolidate his hold on key organs of economic policymaking. He has replaced the Central Bank of Iran Gov. Ibrahim Sheibani after he criticized the president for policies that fuel inflation. Sheibani's forced resignation came only days after Ahmadinejad fired the oil minister, while the minister for industries also resigned in opposition to the projected sale of state-owned companies to members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The departing officials have all been replaced with Guard members. These moves confirm what many Iranians see as "a creeping coup d'etat" by the Guard against the ruling mullahs and their business partners. It's now safe to say that the IRGC is the dominant force in the ruling establishment. This, perhaps, is one reason the Bush administration is mulling the possibility of declaring the Guard a "terrorist organization." America would thus be labeling as "terrorist" the principal force that ensures the Islamic Republic's survival.
The General’s Best Chance – Washington Post editorial
For eight years, Pakistan's autocratic leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has refused to come to terms with the country's secular political parties, preferring to perpetuate his regime through deals with Muslim extremists, rigged elections, rewrites of the constitution and simple repression. Now Mr. Musharraf finds himself in the awkward position of negotiating with those parties to prevent his government from unraveling. It's hard to wish him luck -- yet a compromise between Mr. Musharraf and former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif may offer the best chance to check extremism and mounting instability in that nuclear-armed country. None of the parties engaged in ongoing talks in London -- widely reported by the Pakistani media -- are particularly attractive. While professing commitment to the war against terrorism, Mr. Musharraf has allowed al-Qaeda and the Taliban to reestablish themselves in Pakistan's unruly tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. He has been an unfaithful and at times meretricious ally of the United States, even while accepting some $10 billion in American aid. Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif both are two-time failures as Pakistani prime minister. Both have been credibly accused of breathtaking acts of corruption; both have been unscrupulous in pursuing their personal ambitions.
Kosovo’s Grim Future – David Binder, Washington Times
Forget about status negotiations for a moment. The near-term outlook for Kosovo is unalterably grim: An economy stuck in misery; a bursting population of young people with "criminality as the sole career choice;" an insupportably high birthrate; a society imbued with corruption and a state dominated by organized crime figures. These are the conclusions of "Operationalizing of the Security Sector Reform in the Western Balkans," a 124-page investigation by the Institute for European Policy commissioned by the German Bundeswehr and issued in January. This month the text turned up on a Web log. It is labeled "solely for internal use." Provided one can plow through the appallingly dense Amtsdeutsch — "German officialese" — that is already evident in the ponderous title, a reader is rewarded with sharp insights about Kosovo. The authors point out a "grotesque denial of reality by the international community" about Kosovo, coupling that with the warning of "a new wave of unrest that could greatly exceed the level of escalation seen up to now," The institute authors, Mathias Jopp and Sammi Sandawi, spent six months interviewing 70 experts and mining current literature on Kosovo in preparing the study.
Give Turkey's Abdullah Gul a Chance - London Daily Telegraph leader
Even though yesterday's election of Abdullah Gul as Turkey's new President had been forecast long in advance, it has nevertheless had the effect of sending shock waves through the country's secular establishment. For the first time since Kemal Ataturk declared in the 1920s that the modern Turkish state should be run on secular, not religious, principles, the country has a president who is a practising Muslim and a parliament that is dominated by an avowedly Islamic party. For the millions of Turks who remain committed to the Kemalist settlement, the encroachment of Islam into the country's leading political institutions poses a threat not only to their way of life, but also to the state's stability. The Turkish military, which regards itself as the guardian of Ataturk's legacy, has made threatening noises about Mr Gul's appointment, with General Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey's military chief, going so far as to warn, on the eve of Mr Gul's appointment, that "centres of evil" were trying to "corrode the secular nature of the Turkish republic". Turkey's military leaders have already forcibly removed four governments over the past 60 years, and there are understandable fears that it might be tempted to do so again. This would be as foolhardy as it is unnecessary.
Turkey's Democracy Faces a Test - Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer
The real test of whether Islam and democracy are compatible is taking place not in Iraq or in the Arab world but in Turkey. Right now. Yesterday, a devout Muslim named Abdullah Gul, whose wife wears a head scarf, was elected president of Turkey by the country's parliament. Turkey is a country where the presidency has traditionally been held by a secular figure, and women in head scarves are banned from government buildings. Gul's election has unnerved many secular Turks. He is a member of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, which is commonly described as having "Islamic roots"; his new post will give AK control over laws, education, and the appointment of judges. His rise has provoked deep opposition inside the Turkish military, which has zealously guarded the Turkish secular model that was established by modern Turkey's founder, the legendary Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Victory for Democracy Marks a Break with Ataturk’s Vision - Bronwen Maddox London Times
The success of Abdullah Gül in becoming Turkey’s new President is a victory for democracy. But it is a blow for secularism, in that it accurately reflects the new strength of the conservative, low-key Islamic voters from the heart of Anatolia at the expense of the secular cities. At the expense of the army, too. Despite the threats on Monday from the head of the armed forces that he saw “centres of evil” trying to undermine Turkey’s secular character, the scale of popular support for Gül’s AK party, and its big majority in parliament, has given the military little choice but to stand back. That is the best result for Turkey. Better that it is democratic with an Islamist tinge to its elected Government than that it is victim to a fifth military coup in 60 years, the generals overthrowing politicians they considered too religious. Even though the last such coup was only ten years ago, that behaviour is out of keeping with Turkey’s modern aspirations, never mind such garnishes as eventual membership of the European Union. Gül himself, who as Foreign Minister has displayed world-class smoothness, is not the problem for other countries. But they should take note of what his popularity represents: the growing voice of the majority of poor, ordinary Turks. That, more than any single leader, will change the character of Turkey in its relations with its neighbours.
Turkey's President Must Keep the Army at Bay - Damien McElroy, London Daily Telegraph
Abdullah Gul takes his name from a rose, but Turkey's affable foreign minister for the past five years is likely find promotion to the nation's presidency to be a bed of thorns. As commander-in-chief, Mr Gul will need all his diplomatic skills to handle a high command that has hitherto exercised more power than mere prime ministers and cabinet members. Because Mr Gul is a conservative Islamist, his elevation to the top office has been resisted at every turn by the generals. As late as Monday, General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the general staff, had a signed statement posted on its internet site vowing to resist "centres of evil" working to destroy the state's secular principles. It did not take a cryptologist to work out to whom the general was referring, but Turks were left wondering what tactics the military will employ to corral Mr Gul after his election. With yesterday's straight majority vote to elect Mr Gul, Turkey enters uncharted waters. The military views itself as the defender of a secular state established by Kemal Ataturk, founder of the nation, in 1923. Ataturk kicked away the religious pillars of the Ottoman empire. He regarded the Ottomans' fusion of religious and tribal influence as the gravest threat to his project to establish Turkey as a modern European state. Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish academic, points out that Ataturk built his secular model not to ensure freedom of religion, but to guarantee freedom from religion.
Sarko Steps Up – Wall Street Journal editorial
Nicolas Sarkozy made headlines this week by telling his diplomatic corps that "an Iran with nuclear weapons is for me unacceptable." But the French President did more in his speech than name the gravest current threat to global security, itself a feat of clear thinking. He also signaled that France means to be something more on the international scene than an anti-American nuisance player. That's worth applauding at a time when the conventional wisdom says the next U.S. President will have to burnish America's supposedly tarnished reputation by making various policy amends. In Germany, under the conservative leadership of Angela Merkel, foreign policy views have been moving closer to the Bush Administration's, not further away, while new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made clear he will not depart significantly from the pro-American course set by Tony Blair. But it is Mr. Sarkozy who, true to his reputation, has been the boldest in stepping up to his global responsibilities. On Afghanistan, he told the assembled diplomats, "the duty of the Atlantic Alliance as well as that of France," is to "increase efforts." He then announced he would be sending additional trainers to assist the Afghan Army. On Israel, he said he "would never budge" on its security. He warned about Russia, which "imposes its return on the world scene by playing its assets with a certain brutality," and he cautioned against China, which pursues "its insatiable search for raw materials as a strategy of control, particularly in Africa."
Why We Need a Draft - Cpl. Mark Finelli, Newsweek
According to the Pentagon, no service personnel have died in an MRAP. So why isn’t every Marine or soldier in Iraq riding in one? Simple economics. An MRAP costs five times more than even the most up-armored Humvee. People need a personal, vested, blood-or-money interest to maximize potential. That is why capitalism has trumped communism time and again, but it is also why private contractors in Iraq have MRAPs while Marines don’t. Because in actuality, America isn’t practicing the basic tenet of capitalism on the battlefield with an all-volunteer military, and won’t be until the reinstitution of the draft. Because until the wealthy have that vested interest, until it’s the sons of senators and the wealthy upper classes sitting in those trucks—it takes more than the McCain boy or the son of Sen. Jim Webb—the best gear won’t get paid for on an infantryman’s timetable. Eighteen months after the Marines first asked for the MRAP, it’s finally being delivered. Though not nearly at the rate that’s needed. By the end of the year, only 1,500 will have been delivered, less than half the 3,900 the Pentagon had initially promised. It’s not hard to figure out who suffers. The 160,000 servicemen and women in Iraq are the latest generation of Americans to represent their country on the field of battle. And like their predecessors, they are abundantly unrepresented in the halls of power.
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