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Through the NIE Lens - Jim Saxton, Washington Times
The Intelligence Community (IC) publicly released its take on prospects for Iraq's stability in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Aug. 23. Many commentators have already recognized the NIE as either a glass "half-full" or a "half-empty," depending on one's perspective of the war in Iraq. Regardless, the NIE underscores a few noteworthy key points. The regional perspective of the Iraq war is sometimes lost in the exchange of commentaries and criticisms of the mission. I myself have been concerned with Iran's intent to use Iraq as a land-bridge to Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Iran would benefit greatly from being able to openly use Iraq as a conduit to provide support to Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran would also be able to more effectively aid Syria's objective to destabilize the Lebanese government. A rushed pullout of American forces or premature change in mission could create the conditions for Iran and Syria to exploit a weakened Iraq. The NIE says "The IC assesses that Iraq's neighbors will continue to focus on improving their leverage in Iraq in anticipation of a Coalition drawdown." It comments on Iran as a destabilizing force in Iraq, and on Syria's support of groups in Iraq to increase its own influence there. The Syrian-Iranian strategic partnership that has emerged — which includes Iran bolstering Syria's weapons arsenal and a commitment to share nuclear research with Syria — is already extremely dangerous. Giving them unfettered access through Iraq would clearly exacerbate the threat.
Iraq’s Last Best Hope? - Ivan Eland, Washington Times
Iraq's future as a viable country may require an entirely new form of government unique in its power-sharing structure, a government that will survive only if the Iraqis adopt a useful political trick devised by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812. Time is running out. The United States probably will start withdrawing troops from Iraq early next year. More than likely, politicians will gravitate toward the Iraq Study Group's recommendation to withdraw about half of the U.S. combat troops and use remaining forces to hunt down al Qaeda operatives, train Iraqi security forces and guard the Iraqi borders. But even a modest withdrawal probably will trigger more violence, putting the remaining U.S. forces at greater risk. A better solution would be to announce plans to withdraw all U.S. forces. Getting it over quickly would limit U.S. casualties and provide the Shi'ite and Kurdish-dominated national government with a sober reality check that will force it to make needed concessions to the Sunni, which might prevent a winner-take-all civil war. The main concession would be an agreement to decentralize the country, creating three semi-autonomous states — a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center, and a Shi'ite state in the south, with the government in Baghdad responsible mainly for trade and economic affairs and the conduct of foreign policy.
The Lesser of Two Evils – William Shawcross, The Australian
Not everybody would regard it as a badge of honour to be cited favourably by President George W. Bush in a speech about Iraq, but I was pleased it happened to me last week when he warned that the consequences of leaving Iraq precipitously could be a bloodbath even worse than happened in Indochina after the American defeat in 1975. Alas, I think he is right. Iraq has not gone the way that I and other supporters of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein had hoped. Some commentators argue for abandoning Iraq, but the consequences would be infinitely more horrible than the horrors we see today. The suggestion ignores that for Islamic extremists, and especially al-Qa'ida, the war to subjugate the West is indivisible. Osama bin Laden has said Iraq is the front line. An al-Qa'ida victory will strengthen the movement everywhere. In Bush's long and rather literary speech, he said: "Recently two men who were on opposite sides of the debate over the Vietnam War came together to write an article. One was a member of president Nixon's foreign policy team and the other was a fierce critic of the Nixon administration's policies. They wrote that the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be disastrous. Here's what they said: 'Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate.' I believe these men are right." The two men he was referring to were Peter Rodman, a former aide to Henry Kissinger and more recently assistant secretary of defence in the Bush administration, and me.
Beyond Basra – London Times leader
Britain’s Armed Forces are confronted by a challenge “as great as any that have gone before us in the last century,” a conflict across unpredictable battlegrounds that General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, expects to encompass a generation. They are being asked to conduct extended combat operations against “a strident Islamist shadow” with a defence budget that is lower than at any time since the pacifist early 1930s. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been tragically clear that British troops do not have all the equipment, notably but not only helicopters, that they need. Lives have been lost unnecessarily, initially from a lack of armoured vehicles. The military have also been set insufficiently clear objectives. The Government’s decade-old military strategy assumed that the typical mission would be speedy, highly mobile and of short duration. Commanders in the field accept the need to improvise. They should not be expected to “muddle through”, as they have been forced by constraints on manpower and equipment to do in southern Iraq. The men and women sent into Helmand province in Afghanistan should not have been told, as they were by John Reid then the Defence Secretary, that they were on a peace-building mission and would in all probability return home without firing a shot in anger. Political parsimony has generated military uncertainty. In General Dannatt’s speech to senior officers in June that has only now become public, he underlined how vital was “success” in Iraq and Afghanistan, declaring that failure in either campaign would leave tomorrow “a very uncertain place”. Yet he did not define “success” or set out a long-term strategy for either theatre. He did not even clarify the short-term objectives: what, precisely is meant by “significant achievement” in Afghanistan? Tellingly, his concern was “the need to keep an army in being” along the line, “not just the memory of one that expended itself” in these two theatres.
Instructions to Troops in Basra: Keep Fingers Crossed - Anthony Loyd, London Times
The clock is nearing midnight for the withdrawal of the beleaguered British troops from their base in the palace in Basra. The date at which the 650 soldiers will retire from their position to join their 5,000 comrades at the airport outside the city is imminent. In the two months since they arrived in Iraq this battle group has been under virtual siege, its palace quarters subject to the highest rate of incoming mortar and rocket fire anywhere in Iraq. Little surprise, then, that they have already suffered the worst casualty rate of any British unit serving in Iraq, including that of forces involved in the 2003 invasion. Some senior officers have attempted to portray the withdrawal from the palace –– the prelude to a wider British disengagement from southern Iraq next year –– as timely and practical. In an interview last month Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of Defence Staff, said: “Our mission there was to get the place and the people to a state where the Iraqis could run that part of the country if they chose to and we’re very nearly there.” The Americans do not agree. Over the past two weeks, senior US officers and intelligence officials in Baghdad have talked disparagingly of a British “defeat” in Basra, and cautioned that British withdrawal would be followed by turmoil as local militias fight each other for dominance. Little in Basra suggests it is ready to be handed over to Iraqi forces. Iraqi government control, so much as it exists at all in the city, is perilously weak. The city’s governor, a leading donor to the Fadilah militia that controls many of Basra’s oil refineries, was sacked by the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, over a month ago, but has refused to leave his post.
Allied Rivalry Isn't New, But We Need Each Other - Allan Mallinson, London Daily Telegraph
As the RAF stared defeat in the face during the Battle of Britain, arguments raged how best to beat the Luftwaffe. The head of Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, turned to the warring strategists and said: "Gentlemen, you miss the point; we are losing pilots faster than we can replace them." The same practical truth goes for the arguments about strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan: we simply haven't enough soldiers. The American troop surge is more than a surge in numbers, however: it is a surge in determination. Like a champion boxer coming out of his corner with his second's advice ringing in his ears after losing the first round to an unlikely opponent, US soldiers and marines are returning to the fight in Iraq with a new operational doctrine. Field Manual 3-24 Counter-insurgency was written by Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, who now commands in Baghdad. But the angry determination behind the fight-back comes from the former Vice-Chief of Army Staff, General Jack Keane, the man whose forthright remarks on the worsening situation in southern Iraq have been taken as direct criticism of British forces. "We put an army on the battlefield that I had been part of for 37 years,'' said Keane 18 months ago. "It doesn't have any doctrine, nor was it educated and trained, to deal with an insurgency… After the Vietnam War we purged ourselves of everything that had to do with irregular warfare or insurgency, because it had to do with how we lost that war." It can be no coincidence that President Bush invoked memories of Vietnam in his much-publicised speech to American veterans last week. Ironically, at the time of the invasion in 2003, the British Army had both the doctrine and training to deal with insurgency. The immediate response of the troops on the ground looked right, therefore: a relaxed posture designed to consolidate popular support both in Basra and at home (it was assumed that popular support had already been won in both places), in marked contrast to the aggressive American posture in Baghdad. The trouble was that the tactics were not properly underwritten at the theatre and strategic levels - not just by inadequate troop numbers, but the whole civil-military approach. And that lack of forethought and coherence is no better illustrated than by the calculation that emerged yesterday that Iraq has so far cost British taxpayers £6.6 billion, almost a third more than Gordon Brown set aside to fight the war when he was Chancellor. While the MoD has much to answer for in the planning for Iraq, there is no such thing as a purely military solution to insurgency because insurgency is not purely, perhaps even primarily, a military activity.
Disgraceful Nonsense - National Review editorial
Nothing in the Iraq-war debate is quite as unimpressive as the proposals of Republicans seeking middle ground. But Virginia senator John Warner has set a new standard for lack of seriousness. He is predictably garnering press coverage that makes him sound like George Marshall and Metternich all rolled into one, for a proposal that is laughable on its own terms. Warner wants to pull out 5,000 troops by Christmas, on the theory that this will send a “signal” to the Iraqi government and to the region that we aren’t going to stay indefinitely. He argues that Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki will be likelier to perform if we make a gesture toward leaving, as if Maliki were fated to be ineffective with 160,000 U.S. troops in country but might bridge the country’s sectarian divides and guide contentious legislation to passage if we went down to 155,000. Warner maintains that the withdrawal would also “say to the bordering nations . . . why don’t you come forward with your ideas, if you’ve got a better one, and try and help the United States of America resolve this problem?” So we are supposed to believe that Syria and Iran will foment chaos in Iraq when we have 160,000 troops, but when we are at 155,000 they will decide it is in their interest to have a stable democracy allied to the United States next door? This is disgraceful nonsense.
Maliki's Retort - Boston Globe editorial
Even if Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki received encouragement from the Bush administration to excoriate Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin for saying he should be replaced, his complaint against American politicians' "ugly interference" in Iraqi affairs was not entirely unjustified. Most of the American meddling, however, has originated with President Bush and his advisers. From the beginning, US policy makers have been ambivalent about independence for post-invasion Iraqi governments. The administration has lauded those governments as independent, sovereign models for the new democratic order Bush wants to confer on the larger Middle East while criticizing those governments for failing to achieve objectives that were formulated in Washington. Maliki may sense a move by US politicians to blame him for failing to create the conditions of political reconciliation that would make it possible to start withdrawing US military forces. Indeed, there are signs that conservatives would like to scapegoat Maliki's government for the uncontrollable chaos loosed in Iraq as a result of Bush's mistakes. For their part, some Democrats are suggesting that US troops have no obligation to go on fighting for a government that is not doing its part to create a stable Iraq.
He's a Fighter - Ralph Peters, New York Post
"AL Qaeda's worn out their welcome," Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno told The Post. Probably the tallest, and just maybe the toughest, man in Iraq, the Rockaway native also has a vigorous intellect at odds with the stereotype of generals. Even though he looks like he could've had a parallel career in the World Wrestling Federation. In a forthright interview with The Post yesterday, the commanding general of the Multinational Corps-Iraq - the man who leads the day-to-day fight in support of Gen. David Petraeus - noted that, while foreign terrorists remain a threat, al Qaeda's been wounded so deeply by the Sunni Arab shift against them that he now feels other issues take priority. "First, I worry about Shia extremism and Iranian interference, which is increasing. In the long term, Iraqis won't allow Iranians to take over their country - but, in the short term, I'm worried about Basra and the Port of Um Qasr." Odierno, whose limbs stretched out from a big, black-leather chair, folded his hands. "Second, I'm worried about the development of the government of Iraq. They have to solve their own problems - we can't solve them."
Lesson from Vietnam: It's Time to Cut Our Losses - H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe
It ill behooves an administration led by two who assiduously avoided the Vietnam War -- Vice President Dick Cheney famously said he had other priorities than fighting for his country -- to lecture the nation now on the lessons of its consequences. President Bush said last week that those who succumbed to calls to end the war would be responsible for the same tragedies that the end of Indochina wars unleashed. "Will today's generation of Americans resist the allure of retreat?" he asked? Or will we bug out and leave Iraq to Khmer Rouge-like horrors? For those of us who spent some years in Indochina, living through that drawn-out catastrophe, there are indeed parallels with today. The president's rousing claim that "a free Iraq" is within our reach is the same drivel as was the "light at the end of the tunnel" to a previous generation. Robert McNamara, the Donald Rumsfeld of the Vietnam War, admitted, even tearfully, years afterward that we had little business sending soldiers to die in a country where we knew so little about its culture or history. Of course there were knowledgeable people who tried to tell McNamara, but, like Rumsfeld, he had his own illusions of American military capability, and didn't want to hear anything that ran counter to his preconceived conceptions. There are parallels in the arrogance and hubris of those whom David Halberstam called the "best and the brightest," the men President Johnson inherited from John Kennedy -- smart to a fault and, like Paul Wolfowitz and his soulmates, totally wrong.
Fire the Neocons, Fight the War – Jed Babbin, Human Events
On October 11, 2000 George W. Bush said, "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win wars." In January 2003, President Bush was presented with two post-invasion plans for Iraq. One, authored by the Defense Department, called for a hard and fast invasion, establishment of a provisional government in Baghdad, and an exit from Iraq in very few months, to enable our forces to deal with the neighboring state sponsors of terrorism, Iran and Syria. The other, authored by the State Department and the CIA, was for the extended occupation and nation-building in Iraq. In between was 9-11, and George Bush’s conversion to the neocon “strategy” to fight the war we’re in. In April 2002, I wrote that the president’s thinking was dangerously garbled, and that our British allies were very uneasy about it. That September, I wrote that the president needed -- before we took military action against Iraq -- to make very clear that Iraq was only part of the problem and that a war president was obligated to lead us and the free world to defeat the enemy in its entirety. But between October 2000 and January 2003, President Bush became a neocon.
Iraq Withdrawal Will Not Hand Victory to Bin Laden – Michael Lind, Guardian
Critics of the Iraq war have called it George Bush's Vietnam. Now, it appears, President Bush himself agrees. In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week, the president sought to increase support for his policy by drawing parallels between the consequences of the US departure from Indochina in the mid-1970s and possible consequences of a US withdrawal from Iraq. In Vietnam, the president stated, "the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like boat people, re-education camps and killing fields". Similar suffering would follow from US withdrawal in the midst of continuing conflict in Iraq. In addition, the president argued, the US itself would lose much of its credibility and suffer a defeat in the global ideological struggle against jihadism. Bush's evident purpose in making the speech was to win back the support of conservatives who consider the Vietnam war to have been a noble lost cause but are having growing doubts about the Iraq war. Even so, the assertions of President Bush deserve to be analysed on their merits. About one thing the president is undoubtedly correct: Osama bin Laden and other jihadists would be emboldened by a US withdrawal. Doubtless they would take credit for having humbled the "world's only remaining superpower", even if Sunni and Shia insurgents who are not jihadists were primarily responsible for forcing the US out. The jihadists could point to the US withdrawal from Iraq, following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon and the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan, as proof that non-Muslim powers can be defeated by Islamic militants. One of the lessons of the 20th century is that a revolutionary success in one or a few countries can inspire a transnational revolutionary "wave" because the revolution is seen as unstoppable.
Cooperation, Not Confrontation – Hans Blix, Sydney Morning Herald
At the end of the Cold War there was a window of opportunity for the world to create a new collective security order. But the window soon closed. The United States embarked on a path of unilateralism - the United Nations, international law and disarmament were out. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, US confidence and trust in international negotiations, particularly dealing with disarmament issues, was at a record low. And tensions continue to grow. Instead of negotiations towards disarmament, nuclear weapon states are renewing and modernising their nuclear arsenals. In 2006 North Korea tested a nuclear device, showing the world that it had the capacity to build a bomb. In the wake of a US decision to place components of its missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia declared its withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. China has demonstrated its space-war capabilities by shooting down one of its own weather satellites in space. This development is worrying, and somewhat paradoxical. At a time when there were no longer any ideological differences between the major powers, when the economic and political interdependence between states and regions reached new heights, and when the revolution in information technology brought the world into the living rooms of billions of people, we ought to be able to agree on steps to restrain our capacity for war and destruction.
Help Wean Afghans from Poppy Crop - M. Ashraf Haidari, Baltimore Sun
After decades of violence, the opium poppy crop remains one of the few stable income sources for poor Afghan farmers, who cannot be effectively persuaded to end poppy cultivation without being granted alternative ways of making a living. In 2005, most farmers complied with the poppy ban set out by the Afghan government with the understanding that legal alternative means of survival would be provided. But when the promised aid failed to materialize, drug production quickly rose again. Forced eradication of poppy crops merely targets the effects of poppy production, not its underlying causes. International experience has taught us that eradication in isolation is ineffective. Decreases in cultivation in one area can simply lead to increases in another, and news of impending eradication efforts can provoke growers to disperse cultivation over a larger area, much like investors diversifying portfolios to hedge risk. Counter-narcotics efforts must be enacted contemporaneously across the country in a strategic manner. Above all else, farmers must be given the opportunity and necessary resources to grow alternative crops. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most Afghan farmers are sharecroppers, whose landlords dictate what they can grow. Consequently, the high-value opium poppy is the crop of choice.
Deadly Persian Provocations - Reuel Marc Gerecht, Newsweek
Two weeks ago, the bush administration announced it may designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization—the first time a foreign military body has received that label. Days later, a top U.S. general in Iraq accused Tehran of training Shiite militants inside the country. The moves came at an already precarious time in U.S.-Iran relations, and have greatly worried Washington's European allies, who see the steps as a prelude to war and fear they will make ongoing nuclear diplomacy with Tehran much more difficult. Such fears are unfounded, however, and rest on several basic misunderstandings. For one thing, the terrorist label is nothing new, and thus will do little to change the current state of play. For another, Iran represents a much greater threat than Europe typically recognizes. It is not a status quo state that favors stability, as most pundits and governments portray it. Iran is, instead, a radical revolutionary force determined to sow chaos beyond its borders. Assuming that normal negotiations can bring it around is, therefore, a grave mistake. The mullahs don't want peace in Iraq—just the opposite. War may come, but not because negotiations break down. The likely trigger is an Iranian provocation.
Congress's Ill-Timed Iran Bills - Danielle Pletka, Washington Post
This month, the Bush administration tightened the screws on Iran yet again. Its move to formally designate Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization is the latest in a wave of state, federal and international efforts to pressure the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into reconsidering its nuclear weapons program and increasingly aggressive sponsorship of terrorism throughout the Middle East. Five bills are pending in Congress that would encourage divestment and eliminate loopholes in the Iran Sanctions Act, among other things. At the state level, bills are pending in at least 13 legislatures to compel state pension funds to divest from companies and financial institutions doing business with Iran; in Florida and Louisiana, such measures have become law. More broadly, the U.N. Security Council will consider a third resolution in September responding to Iran's failure to suspend its uranium enrichment program. There is growing recognition that Iran's nuclear activities must be stopped, and the voluntary divestment movement is gaining ground. Yet this moment of harmonious convergence -- possible only because of the gravity of the threat from Iran -- may come to an abrupt end if Congress has its way.
Enemy of My Enemy - Struan Stevenson, Washington Times
This summer, there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of executions in Iran. Since July, the Iranian state media have reported at least 86 executions. Twenty-one were hanged in public and 58 in prisons nationwide, including 12 hanged simultaneously in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Some 600 victims are on death row in Gohardasht Prison west of Tehran. The regime even admitted some cases of stoning, after years claiming that this barbaric punishment was no longer in force. Oppression by the fascist mullah regime continues at an alarming pace. What makes the situation even more horrific is that the mullahs air their brutality on the state-run television to terrorize an increasingly enraged and discontented citizenry. The regime is also training and deploying suicide bombers and insurgents in neighboring Iraq in a bid to foment civil war and deliver Iraq into the clutches of Iran. The mullahs and their 125,000-strong Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) provide the sophisticated roadside bombs (EFPs) that kill and maim allied military personnel. They were Hezbollah's puppet-masters during the recent war with Israel in Lebanon and their support for the militant Palestinian group Hamas has led to the rupture with Fatah and the partition of Palestine. Members of the IRGC's elite force — Quds — even targeted dissidents abroad with kidnappings and assassinations. True to form, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad served as a commander of one of those hit-squads in the 1990s. Mr. Ahmadinejad has repeated his threat to wipe Israel off the map. He is steadily rolling out his nuclear- enrichment program to a point where he will have the means to do so.
Deceptive Calm – Jerusalem Post editorial
For better or worse, barring another explosion of conflict, UNIFIL will continue to feature on our northern frontier for at least the next year. Its mandate has just been unanimously extended by the UN Security Council. The resolution extending that mandate hailed UNIFIL for establishing "a new strategic environment" along the Lebanese border with Israel. But comments from Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, underlined how far from satisfactory this environment continues to be: Israel's two kidnaped reservists have yet be returned, he noted, weapons are continuing to pour into the Hizbullah armory and Hizbullah gunmen are still deployed in southern Lebanon, albeit less overtly than in the years before last summer's Second Lebanon War. The extension of the mandate does nothing to grapple with those worrying realities. What it does do is perpetuate a dangerous status quo. The hope in most UN quarters, and certainly among the nations contributing troops to UNIFIL, is that the present situation in Lebanon can be kept as is. So long as it doesn't appreciably deteriorate, UNIFIL's sponsors will be gratified. But the calm in Lebanon is deceptive. Beneath the surface, Hizbullah has rearmed, acquiring weaponry more sophisticated than that with which it caused such heavy damage to Israel last summer. UNIFIL has not prevented this.
The Contradictions of Confidence in the Middle East - Dominique Moisi, Daily Star
Confidence is a vital element of life, for nations and civilizations as well as for individuals. Confidence is the ingredient of hope. It allows you to project yourself into the future, to fulfill or even transcend your capabilities. It comes from within, but can be reinforced or weakened by the way others perceive you. But confidence, like blood pressure, must be balanced: the problem starts when you have too much or too little of it. Overconfidence tends to be as destabilizing as a lack of it. Consider, for example, America in Iraq. The Bush administration's overconfidence in the validity of its objectives - democratizing the Middle East - much more than implementation failures, was the key factor behind the unfolding catastrophe there. I recently debated one of the key thinkers behind the decision to "liberate" Iraq from Saddam Hussein. A prominent neoconservative, he seemed to me something of a Bolshevik of democracy, owing to his unshakeable confidence in the validity of his vision. According to him, the status quo in the Middle East was untenable and dangerous. Democracy in Iraq would not only bring peace in Israel, but also a new, safer, and better equilibrium in the entire Arab world. Because the United States was the most powerful and wisest of nations, it had a unique role to play, and the world should rally behind it in courageously tackling this challenge.
British Openings - William Buckley Jr., National Review
Western Europe has a Muslim problem, and it is particularly acute in Great Britain, which is more intimately linked to constitutional traditions and procedures. The French are quietly aghast at the presence of five million Muslims in their midst and are endeavoring to cope. But that is a country which is enjoying (or accommodating) its Fifth Republic. If a Sixth Republic were introduced in the years ahead, one would not think the event mortally destabilizing. In Britain the situation is different. For one thing, we have there the mother of parliaments, which has weathered tumult and war and devolution, without any sense that the vital organs of British life had been anachronized. Consider only the monarchy. It is easy to think of it as Punch and Judy, but it is more than that, never mind the annus horribilis about which the Queen complained. And that year was followed by others in which she breathed a sigh of relief when a member of the royal family was not divorcing, renouncing a title, or dying in a French tunnel with her lover. Forget all of that. What would never happen anywhere in the world, if the Queen were to appear, is a failure to curtsy or, however slightly, to bow one’s head. What we have, said a British patriot in one of the darkest days of the war, is “the British way of life.” That way of life is ever so vulnerable if examined under lacerating glass, and indeed that is exactly what happens every week at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, where the students tear themselves and their country to pieces for a noisy evening and then submit decorously to the ruling of the Union’s President, and get on with the British way of life.
In Darfur, From Genocide to Anarchy - Alex de Waal and Julie Flint, Washington Post
Imagine you are a U.S. Special Forces officer and you get a call: You are being posted to Darfur. Your job is to protect African villagers from marauding Arab horsemen and to show the Sudanese security chiefs that their bluff has been called -- at last, the international community is standing up to their evil schemes. What can you expect? According to news reports, a sort of slow-motion Rwanda in the desert. What will you find on arrival? A reality that's complicated and messy. A Darfur that has more in common with Chad, southern Sudan and -- dare we say it? -- Somalia.In Darfur today, knowing who is on which side is not straightforward. The savage counterinsurgency offensives, with their massacres and scorched earth, that Colin Powell called "genocide" in September 2004 had in fact largely concluded by the time Powell made that historic determination. This isn't a moral exculpation; it's simply a fact. It's also been a regular sequence in Sudan's recurrent wars over the past 25 years. Episodes of intense brutality and mass displacement are followed by longer periods of anarchic internecine fighting, ably exploited by the government.
Steps to End Suffering in Darfur - Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Miami Herald
As the final vote was cast and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1769 was approved last month, many of us indulged in a collective sigh of relief. After months of duplicity and obstructionism by the regime in Khartoum and senseless bickering in the Security Council, the deployment of a groundbreaking, hybrid, U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force had finally been approved. Just one week earlier, I had joined House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer in traveling to the United Nations to advocate for such a resolution. Reflecting a strong bipartisan desire to help halt the slaughter of innocents in Darfur, we urged approval of a robust peacekeeping force, unified under a single chain of command, with a strong mandate to protect civilians and humanitarian operations and a clear timeline for deployment. The final resolution was watered down (at the insistence of China and others), and highly desirable provisions that would have allowed peacekeepers to forcibly disarm combatants and threatened sanctions if Khartoum interfered with the mission were removed. Yet the resolution ultimately authorized the rapid deployment of nearly 26,000 troops and police, in addition to 5,000 civilian personnel, with authority under the U.N. Charter's Chapter VII to use force to protect civilians, humanitarian operations and peacekeeping personnel. Unfortunately, any sense of relief that might have followed passage of UNSCR 1769 was short-lived. The remarks make by Sudan's U.N. representative following the council's action made it all too clear that the most difficult work lies ahead. He asserted that Chapter VII authority was ''no blank check'' and implied that Khartoum's advice and consent would be a prerequisite for the use of force by the hybrid operation.
As Turkey’s World Turns - Tulin Daloglu, Washington Times
Some developments, good or bad, can catch us so fully by surprise that they feel like a joke. But the best jokes are a reflection of an emotional threat as they mirror the truth. Today, the Turkish Parliament will appoint Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as the country's 11th president. Since April, Mr. Gul's candidacy has divided Turks. Turkey went to early elections as a result of this unrest and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a significant victory. Nevertheless, that doesn't negate the millions of protesters who demonstrated in order to try to prevent Mr. Gul and his wife, who wears a headscarf, from assuming office. The protesters fear a president with a background in political Islam. But they have to take this day as a joke, hoping that it will bring laughter of unity at the end. Yet they have reason to be concerned. Recently, Bekir Coskun, a prominent secular-minded columnist, wrote that he would not feel comfortable calling Mr. Gul "my president." Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would not tolerate such criticism. "Some say that [Mr. Gul] cannot be their president," he said. "If they can say such things, first, they need to have their Turkish citizenship revoked. They can go wherever they want, and elect whomever they want." Soon, Mr. Coskun received death threats. The Turkish media rallied to his defense — supporting the right to speak freely and criticize the government, regardless of whether or not they agreed with his position. Mr. Erdogan's spokesman later issued a statement backpedaling from the attack.
The Case for Surveillance - Mortimer Zuckerman, US News and World Report
How does any civilized nation cope with fanatical barbarism? What kind of people will plot to murder thousands--so crazed with hate they will kill their own families for the cause? Even after 9/11 we have been slow to recognize the nature of the beast we face. It is hard for us to comprehend the mentality of, say, the group of 21 homegrown suicidal jihadists apprehended last year in Britain. We now know not only that they were prepared to blow up 10 civilian airliners flying from London to the United States--which might have killed as many as 3,500 innocent people--but also that they planned to avoid airport scrutiny by traveling with their wives and children and were thus prepared to execute their nearest and dearest. As a free society, we are remarkably vulnerable. Our open borders permit second-generation terrorists from Europe to infiltrate under the legal visa waiver program. We admit many imams from Egypt and Pakistan trained in Saudi Arabia under the extremist perversion of Islam known as Wahhabism. The consequences of our tolerance are spelled out in a recent report by the New York City Police Counterterrorism Department. It focuses on how difficult it is to follow the "trajectory of radicalization"--the behavior and whereabouts of homegrown radical Islamists. That New York report has to be read with the most recent National Intelligence Estimate that the external threat from al Qaeda has not waned despite expanded worldwide counterterrorism efforts. This is the context in which to consider the protests about tightening electronic surveillance, led by the liberal New York Times and the ultraliberal New Yorker and espoused by Democrats who watered down the recent reform legislation--including an insistence that it be reviewed in six months. How far should security concerns impinge on privacy? The administration says the balance has to be recalibrated. The trouble is that the administration has lost much of its moral authority. As USA Today put it, the White House "has all the credibility of a teenager who has squandered his allowance and is demanding more money."
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