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Al Qaeda’s Travel Agent – Joseph Lieberman, Wall Street Journal
The United States is at last making significant progress against al Qaeda in Iraq--but the road to victory now requires cutting off al Qaeda's road to Iraq through Damascus. Thanks to Gen. David Petraeus's new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, and the strength and skill of the American soldiers fighting there, al Qaeda in Iraq is now being routed from its former strongholds in Anbar and Diyala provinces. Many of Iraq's Sunni Arabs, meanwhile, are uniting with us against al Qaeda, alienated by the barbarism and brutality of their erstwhile allies. As Gen. Petraeus recently said of al Qaeda in Iraq: "We have them off plan." But defeating al Qaeda in Iraq requires not only that we continue pressing the offensive against its leadership and infrastructure inside the country. We must also aggressively target its links to "global" al Qaeda and close off the routes its foreign fighters are using to get into Iraq. Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that support flows into Iraq through one country--Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers--approximately 60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow themselves up to kill countless others.
The Surge in Action - Jeff Emanuel, Weekly Standard
Though ease is an extremely relative attribute in this case, hunting and killing the enemy in the Salman Pak region of Iraq (southeast of Baghdad) is, in fact, the easy part of the U.S. mission there. 'Terrain denial' artillery missions are staged in known al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) areas on a nightly basis, attack aviation assets are constantly scouring the area and firing on militant outposts, and, with the launching of the division-sized Operation Marne Huskey on August 15, major air-and-land offensives are being conducted in virtually every known insurgent stronghold and outpost in the region. But fighting is what these soldiers have been trained for, and what they have been preparing--both mentally and physically--to do their entire careers. Very few soldiers have been trained to carry out nation-building or ambassadorial missions, and in the case of an area like Salman Pak, which has seen a negligible troop presence since the initial invasion, trust and rapport cannot be improved or built on, but rather must be created and constructed entirely from scratch. This is an infinitely more difficult (and time-consuming) process, but one which is absolutely essential to the coalition effort in Iraq. The key to making it happen is demonstrating, on a daily basis, that the coalition has the best interest of the Iraqi people--from security, to services, to medical care-at heart.
The Good War, Still to be Won – New York Times editorial
We will never know just how much better the fight in Afghanistan might be going if it had been managed more competently over the past six years. But there can be little doubt that American forces — and Afghanistan’s government — would be in far stronger positions than they are today. How different things might be if the Bush administration had not diverted needed troops and dollars into the misguided invasion of Iraq, nor wasted years discouraging needed NATO military assistance, nor pulled its punches rather than pressuring a Pakistani dictator with, at best, mixed feelings toward the Taliban. Those are some of the questions raised in a devastating Times account earlier this month of how Afghanistan’s “good war” went bad. The battle against Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies is still winnable, and it is vital to American security. But victory will require a smarter strategy and a lot more attention and resources.
Let Afghan Poppies Bloom – London Times leader
A British company is trying to recruit farmers to grow opium poppies to meet the urgent need to stockpile more supplies of diamorphine should its production be disrupted by an outbreak of pandemic flu. At the same time British troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan to disrupt the Taleban’s control of the soaring opium harvest that has made Afghanistan overwhelmingly the source of heroin now flooding into Britain and Western Europe. The failure to halt this deadly trade is one of the factors fuelling the violence, impoverishing the debt-burdened farmers and entrenching the warlords and Taleban fighters in a swath of southern Afghanistan. It is, surely, also a terrible indictment of policy-makers in Kabul, in Nato capitals and in the United Nations who could transform the poppy harvest from a scourge to a blessing but have failed to do so. Afghanistan is now awash with opium. Production has risen by around 15 per cent since 2006, with some 457,000 acres under cultivation compared with last year’s total of 408,000, according to US data. More than 92 per cent of all heroin sold in Europe originates in Afghanistan, and the proportion is still rising. Helmand province alone, where British forces are deployed against Taleban fighters, accounts for a third of the crop.
The Afghan Grassroots – Ann Marlowe, Weekly Standard
"This is an Afghan process," Lt. Col. Gordon Phil lips began, "and I am here to make sure it goes smoothly. But the decisions are not mine. They are yours." A dozen members of this province's Provincial Council or Shura listened carefully as the interpreter translated into their native Pashto. Phillips, the commander of the Nangarhar Provincial Reconstruction Team, or PRT, continued: "Don't think about money. Think about what you will need five years from now, about your children, and your grandchildren. I have other money, emergency money, which I can and will use if appropriate. Think about what Nangarhar needs." For the first time in Afghan history, Afghans are about to set spending priorities for their localities, rather than accepting the crumbs that a king, warlord, or Kabul-appointed governor condescends to allow them. This process of writing Provincial Development Plans, which Lt. Col. Phillips described to the council members, has been going on throughout Afghanistan this July and August, and it promises to correct some of the more egregious failures of American aid here. At the least, it will put to rest the frequent charges--some warranted, some not--that we are giving the Afghans what we think they need rather than what they think they need, and listening to bureaucrats in Kabul rather than the people who will actually use the roads, bridges, dams, and irrigation channels being built.
Fatal Alliance - Arnold Trebach, Washington Times
A recent article in The Washington Times by Sara A. Carter show the frightening importance of the alliance between Arabic terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. It documents how well known this dangerous situation has been for several years, for which no effective action had been taken by the Department of Homeland Security or local officials. As an old drug-policy hand, I thought I had heard everything about it. But parts of the story were news to me and terribly disturbing. One example was the report that "approximately 20 Arab persons a week were utilizing the Travis County Court in Austin to change their names and driver's licenses from Arabic to Hispanic surnames." I do not claim that this horrendous problem is easy to deal with; it is not. However, I do claim that some obvious first steps come to mind. In the short and medium term, there must be greater legal controls on name changes and also more border agents and border fences. To the expected objections by the Mexican government and by our own group of the usual fuzzy-minded critics, my reply would be, cleaned up a bit: "Terribly sorry you feel that way."
Hitting Tehran Where it Hurts – Washington Times editorial
If the new sanctions imposed on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) by the Bush administration are to have any meaningful, positive effect on Iranian behavior, they have to be seen as a first step toward pressuring Europe and Japan to curtail their financial relationships with the Iranian regime. Already confusion has emerged through leaks to The Washington Post and New York Times about how far the sanctions actually go. Michael Jacobson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (who previously served as a senior adviser in the Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence) observes that The Post's Aug. 15 account reported that the IRGC would be hit with sanctions under Executive Order 13224 (E.O. 13224) — issued on Sept. 23, 2001, by President Bush. Almost 500 people and entities are on this list. But according to the Times, the IRGC would be listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), joining approximately 40 other groups on that list. In a paper co-authored with Washington Institute scholar Patrick Clawson, Mr. Jacobson writes that the FTO listing would apply only to accounts at financial institutions but not to other types of property. But the E.O. 13224 designation would mean that "all assets of the designated entity within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen, including not only bank accounts but all other property as well."
Pakistan Showdown – Robert Novak, Washington Post
Benazir Bhutto arrived in New York three weeks ago, shortly after meeting secretly in Abu Dhabi with Gen. Pervez Musharraf. She leaves this week without having heard again from Pakistan's military ruler. More than merely deciding who rules Pakistan, global conflict against radical Islam may be at risk. The Bush administration is the silent matchmaker for an unlikely political marriage of bitter opponents: Pakistan's president, Musharraf, and former prime minister Bhutto. The unstated U.S. goal is a democratic Pakistan, with the unpopular Musharraf retaining his presidency and the popular Bhutto returned to the prime minister's office, from which she was twice ousted by the military. Washington now views this as the means of making Pakistan a reliable, invaluable ally against worldwide terrorism.
Checklist for a Peace Pact - Ephraim Sneh, Washington Post
If the Middle East peace conference proposed by President Bush succeeds, it will be hailed as a milestone. If it fails, it will bring about increased despair and cynicism and mark the gravestone of peace efforts. The key lies in preparation. For this conference to become a steppingstone for real progress, participants must come with well-defined ideas and clear objectives and leave with a genuine plan of action in which all players know the roles they have committed to. Good speeches are not enough. The most critical parties, the Israelis and the Palestinians, should come ready with an agreed-upon list of permanent-status principles that will outline the contours of an agreement. No details are needed at this stage. Conventional wisdom suggests that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders are not strong enough to market such an agreement to their constituencies. That is simply not true. Both peoples are smarter and more pragmatic than even their leaders think, and both publics came to their own practical conclusions long ago.
Negotiating for Peace in Kosovo – Dan Burton, Washington Times
In coming weeks, an international confrontation is likely to occur among the United States, the European Union, and Russia over an issue most Americans have long since forgotten: Kosovo, where a few hundred Americans remain deployed as part of a NATO force protecting a shaky interim peace that ended the 1999 U.S.-led intervention. For most Americans this obscure Serbian province, with its mainly Albanian Muslim population and its hundreds of Serbian Christian churches and monasteries, may be a little-remembered footnote to the breakup of Yugoslavia. However, now is the time for clear thinking about next steps if Kosovo is to avoid revisiting its history as a hotbed of regional instability and violence. The international mission in Kosovo for the last eight years has not met its original goals regarding establishment of an open, multiethnic and multireligious society. True, there has been no return to large-scale fighting. But remaining Christian Serbs are confined to NATO-protected enclaves for fear of endemic Muslim Albanian violence. A quarter of a million expellees — some two-thirds of the Serbs, Roma, Croats, and all the Jews — still cannot return safely to their homes. More than 150 Christian holy sites have been burned, blown up or desecrated. Organized crime is rampant, with allegations of corruption reaching into the upper levels of the U.N.-supervised local administration and unemployment outside these criminal elements remains more than 50 percent.
Scruples Fade in Sri Lanka - Charu Lata Hogg, Boston Globe
In 1990, Mahinda Rajapaksa was arrested at Colombo airport trying to smuggle dossiers on the "disappeared" out of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in Geneva. Rajapaksa, a rising politician from the country's south, worked to organize the mothers of the disappeared during an insurrection from 1988 to 1990, when more than 16,000 people went missing. Today, Rajapaksa is Sri Lanka's sixth president, leading a government accused of egregious human rights abuses. Since fighting between government forces and the Tamil Tigers resumed in full vigor in mid-2006, civilians have become the primary target -- not just in direct clashes but in the insidious "dirty war" fought by both sides. Human Rights Watch researchers spent months investigating abuse allegations, publishing a report this month that uses eyewitness accounts to show how security forces have subjected civilians to "disappearances," indiscriminate attacks, forced displacement, and restrictions on humanitarian aid. Critics of the government -- as Rajapaksa was in the 1980s -- have been threatened and demonized as national traitors and terrorist sympathizers.
Being More Like Ike - Michael Korda, Los Angeles Times
It may be possible to forgive a president for failing to understand the present or to foresee the future, but it is harder to forgive a total lack of interest in the past. The Bush administration has displayed a peculiar disinterest in previous Republican presidencies, from which there is much to be learned. The president's own father set a good example of knowing when to stop, as when he took the wise step of not advancing to Baghdad. Ronald Reagan proved the immense power of soaring rhetoric. Richard Nixon, if nothing else, provided an object lesson in the perils of continuing to wage an unpopular war. But it is, above all, Dwight D. Eisenhower to whom Republicans should be looking for sound political wisdom these days. Part of Ike's great popularity stemmed from his 1952 campaign promise, if elected, to go to Korea and see for himself what was happening. This infuriated Harry S. Truman, who said that if Ike had a plan to end the war it was his duty to give it to the president. Ike ignored him, went, saw and, with the keen eye of a five-star general, surveyed the forbidding terrain. This war wasn't winnable, he determined, at least not without using atomic weapons, not as long as the Chinese were willing to keep on fighting. He came home and ended the Korean War in about six months with an armistice that is still in effect today. In short, he understood that if you can't win a war, the faster you get out of it the better. He answered criticism from the right wing of his own party by remarking simply, "The war is over, and I hope my son is going to come home soon."
Treating the Trauma of War - Fairly – Judith Schwartz, Christian Science Monitor
The high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among soldiers returning from Iraq is one of the many "inconvenient truths" of this war. Inconvenient largely because it is costly: The most effective and humane means of treating PTSD are time-intensive and long-term. The military, however, has changed the terms and given many thousands of enlisted men and women a new diagnosis: "personality disorder." While the government would be obliged to care for veterans suffering from combat-related trauma, a personality disorder – defined as an ingrained, maladaptive way of orienting oneself to the world – predates a soldier's tour of duty (read: preexisting condition). This absolves Uncle Sam of any responsibility for the person's mental suffering. The new diagnostic label sends the message: This suffering is your fault, not a result of the war. On one level, it's hard not to see this as another example of the government falling short on its care for Iraq war veterans. Yet there's another, more insidious, bit of sophistry at work. The implication is that a healthy person would be resistant to the psychological pressures of war. Someone who succumbs to the flashbacks, panic, and anger that haunt many former soldiers must have something inherently wrong with him. It's the psychological side of warrior macho: If you're tough, you can take it. Of course, we know this is not true. Wars forever change the lives of those who fight them and can leave deep scars.
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