Marines in Search of a Mission – George Will, Washington Post
… Marines have an institutional memory of "small wars," from the Philippines to Central America, and this competence serves them well in Iraq, which is, an officer here says, "a thousand microcosms." But the exigencies of the protracted Iraq commitment have forced the Marines to adopt vehicles that are heavier and bigger than can easily travel with an expeditionary force on ships. And there is tension between the "nation-building" dimension of the Marines' Iraq mission and the Corps' distinctive warrior esprit, which is integral to why the nation wants the Corps.
Officers studying here at the Marine Corps University after tours in Iraq dutifully say they understand that they serve their combat mission -- destroying the enemy -- when they increase the host nation's capacity for governance. Besides, says one officer, when his units are helping with garbage collection, they know that "garbage collection is a matter of life and death because there are IEDs [improvised explosive devices] hidden under that garbage."
Still, no one becomes a Marine to collect garbage or otherwise nurture civil societies. And as one officer here notes with some asperity, there is "no Goldwater-Nichols Act for the rest of the government." That act required "jointness" -- collaborative operations -- by the services. Civilian agencies that do not play well together have fumbled the ball in Iraq, and the military has been forced to pick it up. This draws the military deeper into the sensitive responsibility for tutoring civilians who assign the forces nonmilitary tasks…
Defense Chief Keeps it Real – Boston Globe editorial
When Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke Monday at William and Mary College in Virginia, he could not have been expected to criticize his commander-in-chief or be dispassionate about ongoing military missions he is managing from the Pentagon. Yet Gates's speech, which contrasted idealism in foreign affairs with realism, was remarkable for its implicit repudiation of President Bush's past policies.
If one factors out his loyalist defense of the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the secretary's unmistakable gist was that so-called neo-conservatives who talk of spreading freedom and democracy around the world - by force if necessary - are breaking with more than two centuries of American statecraft. Gates left no doubt that he regards such "idealists" as wrong-headed…
‘Mugged by Reality’ Part III – Thomas Sowell, Washington Times
If nothing else comes out of the Iraq war, it should banish the concept of "nation-building" from our language and our minds. "The track record of nation-building and Wilsonian grandiosity ought to give anyone pause," as was said in this column before the Iraq war began.
We can now add the track record of Iraq to the list of disasters.
The very existence of Iraq is a result of Woodrow Wilson's grandiose ideas about "the right of self-determination of peoples," which led to dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious Allied powers after the First World War…
Iraq’s ‘Dirty Harrys’ – David DeVoss, Los Angeles Times
Blackwater. The name says it all, conjuring images of imminent danger, hidden predators and night terror. From the moment Blackwater USA arrived in Iraq to protect L. Paul Bremer III's Coalition Provisional Authority until last week, when its guards killed 11 Iraqis and wounded 13 more while escorting a diplomatic convoy through Baghdad, the North Carolina-based private security company has been known for its swaggering image and "Dirty Harry" demeanor.
All the U.S. private security armies in Iraq may be cut from the same khaki cloth, but each has its own personality. When I arrived in the country in September 2004 as a senior information officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, bodyguards with Kroll Inc., whose credo is "in risk there is opportunity," met me at the airport. They were British and Irish veterans of Belfast's "Troubles" and viewed terrorists with a world-weary stoicism…
The Mideast Core – Washington Post editorial
The good news about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's Mideast diplomacy is that she has gotten Israeli and Palestinian leaders talking seriously for the first time since 2000 about what she calls "the core issues that relate to the establishment of a Palestinian state." Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have been quietly discussing that state's borders, what part of Jerusalem it might claim and whether any of the millions of Palestinian refugees would be allowed to "return" to Israel, among other thorny problems. Though many of the necessary conditions for a Middle East peace settlement are conspicuously absent, one key element exists as never before: Both Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas genuinely believe in a two-state solution and seem open to compromise.
Ms. Rice nevertheless returned from her latest visit to the region on Friday facing a daunting -- and dangerous -- path toward the "joint statement" that she hopes Israelis and Palestinians will agree on in time for an international meeting in Washington this fall. Daunting, because the Israeli and Palestinian leaders will have to reach agreement in a matter of weeks on issues that have bedeviled Middle East negotiations for decades or at least find clever ways to finesse them. And dangerous, not only because the Hamas movement, Syria and other spoilers will almost certainly seek to violently disrupt any progress…
Canada Must Stay the Course – Globe and Mail editorial
Canada cannot abandon Afghanistan. We have made a commitment to the Afghan people and to the international community, and if we believe the governing structures there can be stabilized, we are obliged to stay on ethical, humanitarian and practical grounds that relate to our own national security interests and those of our allies. Canada therefore must make clear to its NATO partners, and to the Afghan people, that it has no intention of quitting Afghanistan until the job is done…
Pakistan Quicksand? – Richard Halloran, Washington Times
As if it were not enough that the United States is seemingly mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, and may be confronted with an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, now Pakistan has emerged as the latest site of quicksand in Southwest Asia.
"We are really worried about Pakistan," said a U.S. official with access to top-level thinking. "It is the latest fault line in that part of the world."
Until now, the Bush administration had relied on Pakistan, a largely Muslim nation, to be an ally in the war on terror that could persuade other Muslim nations of the United States' good intentions…
Musharraf's Last Ally – Adrian Levy, Guardian
Being president of Pakistan rates along with riding the Wells Fargo stagecoach as one of the all-time most dangerous jobs in the world. And now, with Osama bin Laden adding his voice to the throng calling for his overthrow, who would want to be Pervez Musharraf?
Of course, bin Laden's entreaty earlier this week was a piece of mischief-making. Having re-settled in Pakistan, along with his rejuvenated al-Qaida organisation, the audiotape was literally playing to the home crowd. It also pressed on the raw nerve of the Lal Masjid, where last July, Pakistani commandos ousted Taliban surrogates and in so doing smashed up a mosque in an Islamic republic on live TV.
But, as he so often does, bin Laden succinctly identified a moral choke-point, too. The more the west props up Musharraf (with $10bn to date), the more hollow are our own government's claims to support the propagation of freedom and democracy throughout the region and the more attractive become the Islamists' conspiracies that the west has really embarked on a crusade to transform countries like Pakistan into out-stations for a new imperium…
Osama Makes an Appearance – Salim Mansur, Toronto Sun
The appearance of Osama bin Laden in a taped video speech on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, and ahead of the U.S. Congressional hearings of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's reports on the situation in Iraq, could not have been a mere coincidence.
It was timed to send the message that simply by not being killed or captured by American forces bin Laden, and the Islamist movement he symbolizes, remains unbeaten.
From here the leap for his followers and sympathizers in the Arab-Muslim world is simple: to remain unbeaten despite the odds means eventually to triumph by relentlessly engaging in terrorism as the tool of asymmetrical warfare against the West…
The Candidates’ World of Myopia – Jim Hoagland, Washington Post
U.S. foreign policy resembles cartoonist Saul Steinberg's celebrated cover for the New Yorker where the world begins and almost immediately ends on Ninth Avenue, New Jersey looms in the near background, and Asia hovers as a microscopic dot on a distant horizon.
Iraq is Ninth Avenue for the Bush administration, draining energy and focus away from every other part of the world. You can understand why. George W. Bush has staked his presidency on the war there.
But most of the Republicans and Democrats out to replace Bush frame their worldviews through the Iraq prism as well. They make the same points again and again without advancing public understanding of what they intend to do about Iraq -- or much else -- if they win. Positioning on benchmarks for Baghdad is all-consuming…
Sympathy From The Devil – Amir Taheri, New York Post
Why is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, seeking such a full program of photo opportunities during this week’s visit to the Big Apple? Many see this as the start of his campaign for re-election.
This explains even his failed hope to secure a visit to Ground Zero, where he was to lay a wreath with the world’s TV cameras pointed at him.
Ahmadinejad wanted to soften his image, for he knows that his rabid anti-Americanism has antagonized Iranians - a majority of whom are well disposed toward the United States. (In the days after the 9/11 attacks, Iran was the only country in the Middle East where tens of thousands of people poured into the streets for spontaneous candle-lit vigils in sympathy with the American people.) …
Monday Mission for Columbia Students – National Review editorial
Last September, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger withdrew Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s invitation to speak at Columbia’s World Leaders Forum, overruling the dean in charge of the program. It was the right call, but this year Bollinger has reversed course and decided to allow Ahmadinejad to speak at the forum. Columbia students should show the judgment and decency Bollinger lacks by boycotting the event.
Bollinger’s ill-advised reversal raises the question: What’s changed? Well, since last September, Ahmadinejad has ramped up his crackdown on Iranian universities, purging them of professors who have spoken out against his regime; he has convened a conference of Holocaust deniers dressed up as a scholarly inquiry; he has repeatedly defied calls to suspend Iran’s nuclear program; and he has sponsored proxy wars against Israel in Lebanon and U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, not much…
An Opportunity for A-Jad – New York Post editorial
If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad needs a break this week from bashing President Bush and the West, cavorting with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and other planned mischief, he might want to tell Christine Levinson what happened to her husband.
Bob Levinson, a former FBI agent, was last seen March 8 on Iran’s Kish Island in the Persian Gulf, where he’d gone for a business meeting. Ever since, his wife and seven children have sought answers.
Eschewing politics, they’ve never blamed Iran for his disappearance (though that might be a reasonable suspicion). But given that Levinson was last seen on Iranian soil, his family thought Tehran might at least be able to give them some help...
It’s One War – Mark Goldblatt, National Review
If you accept the analytical posture of critics of the Iraq invasion, it makes no sense for the NYPD, the Port Authority, and the Secret Service to veto the request by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lay a wreath at the site of the World Trade Center during his visit to the United Nations this weekend.
After all, Ahmadinejad is the leader of Shia Iran. And Shia Muslims, war critics are quick to remind us, are the mortal enemies of Sunni Muslims, who constitute the vast majority al Qaeda — the outfit that brought down the Twin Towers. Shouldn’t the enemy of our enemy be our friend?
In fact, don’t war critics argue that the ancient antagonism between Shias and Sunnis is the reason our efforts to bring democracy to Iraq, with its mix of the two sects, is doomed to fail? Shias and Sunnis, such critics insist, will never cooperate with one another.
Except, of course, when predominantly Sunni Syria allows the Shia terrorist organization Hezbollah to operate within its borders. Or when the Sunni terrorist organization Hamas is funded by predominantly Shia Iran. Indeed, Sunnis and Shias have always been willing to set aside their differences in their confrontations with Israel.
Islam, to be sure, is beset by historical fault lines. There’s the theological rift between Sunni and Shia, the ethnic rift between Arab and non-Arab, the socio-political rift between secularist and scriptural literalist. Moderate Muslims recognize such differences but, by and large, just want to get on with their lives.
America, on the other hand, is at war with totalitarian Islam, which may represent a minority of Muslims worldwide but which traverses every fault line. Whoever embraces a universalizing vision for the religion, whether in the form of a pan-Arab Middle East, cleansed of Jews, or a worldwide caliphate, cleansed of Enlightenment values, he is America’s enemy…
The World According to UNGA – Oliver North, Washington Times
In 1982, Robin Williams and Glenn Close starred in a quirky R-Rated movie titled "The World According to Garp." The offbeat "comedy" — honest, that's what Tinseltown critics called it — was loosely based on John Irving's dark novel with the same title. Those who missed the humor in the book and film now have a chance for some real belly laughs. Next week the Big Apple will host another "gut buster" — "The World According to UNGA." If it were a flick, it would be a dark and depressing documentary combining the conspiratorial rantings of Oliver Stone, the eerie horror of Alfred Hitchcock, and the antics of a Looney Tunes cartoon.
But it's not a movie or an "Off Broadway" show. And it isn't a television program that will simply go away with the press of a button on your remote. Instead, it's an annual extravaganza which "We the People" have subsidized with billions of our tax dollars for six decades. It could be called — with apologies to Barnum & Bailey — the "Most Ridiculous Show on Earth." But this week it will be called "UNGA" — short for the United Nations General Assembly…
China in Three Colors – Thomas Friedman, New York Times
… For China, going from communism to its state-directed capitalism, while by no means easy, involved loosening the lid on a people who were naturally entrepreneurial, risk-taking capitalists. It was tantamount to letting a geyser erupt, and the results of all that unleashed energy are apparent everywhere.
Going from dirty capitalism to clean capitalism is much harder. Because it involves restraining that geyser — and to do that effectively requires a system with some judicial independence, so that courts can discipline government-owned factories and power plants. It requires a freer press that can report on polluters without restraint, even if they are government-owned businesses. It requires transparent laws and regulations, so citizen-activists know their rights and can feel free to confront polluters, no matter how powerful. For all those reasons, it seems to me that it will be very hard to make China greener without making it more orange…
Why Pick on Mugabe When Africa is Teeming with Tyrants? - Rod Liddle, London Times
… Indeed, according to Amnesty International, Zimbabwe does not figure in the top 10 of African countries for what it calls “horrendous” human rights abuses; it comes instead towards the top of the second division for unlawful detentions, beatings, torture and executions. According to Amnesty, there are at least 24 other African countries in which, like Zimbabwe, freedom of expression simply does not exist and there are none at all where it is entirely free and untrammeled.
And all is not exactly rosy in Nelson Mandela’s South Africa, where the white liberals who fought for the overthrow of apartheid are now getting the hell out as quickly as they can…
10 Years in South Florida – Barry McCaffrey, Miami Herald
The U.S. Southern Command is currently celebrating the 10th anniversary of its move from Panama to South Florida. From its headquarters in Doral, Southcom advances U.S. objectives in Latin America and the Caribbean -- an era encompassing 32 countries, 13 territories, 450 million people and 16 million square miles.
As a former Southcom commander who brought the headquarters to Miami from Panama, I am proud to take note of a 10-year anniversary and to offer best wishes for its continued success in South Florida.
Southcom has a long and distinguished history. As commander between 1994 and 1995, I worked to improve U.S. counter drug capabilities, established a human rights training program and connected the command with leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean. Today, under the direction of its first U.S. Navy commander, Adm. Jim Stavridis, Southcom is improving its interagency approach to hemispheric security problems. These are issues that we must address in order to ensure prosperity and democracy in the Americas…
When the CIA Got it Right – David Ignatius, Washington Post
… In some respects, the agency is as messed up as its critics contend. Years of presidential arm-twisting, congressional second-guessing and public disdain have taken their toll. As Weiner says, the agency has made too many mistakes -- from the old days of flamboyant prep-school arrogance to the modern era of button-down mediocrity. The truth is that America -- a democracy that is uncomfortable with spying and that treats its spies badly -- has the intelligence service it deserves.
But the catalogue of catastrophe isn't the whole story. As a 60th-birthday surprise, it's worth considering an example of how the agency got it right. This particular case study involves Iraq -- an area where the public (thanks to some dirty tricks by the Bush administration) wrongly thinks the agency messed up totally -- and a career CIA intelligence analyst named Paul R. Pillar…
The Big Lie About the ‘Great Silencer’ – Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
When John Mearsheirmer and Stephen Walt embarked on "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy," which argues that a mighty pro-Israel machine controls America's dealings in the Middle East and crushes those who get in its way, they expected to be condemned as anti-Semites.
"The charge of anti-Semitism," the two academics write in their book (as they had in their notorious 2006 essay on the subject), is one of the "most powerful weapons" in the Israel lobby's arsenal. "Anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy stands a good chance of getting labeled an anti-Semite. In fact, anyone who says that there is an Israel lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism." …
A French Connection – Washington Times editorial
The effort to reduce the flow of immigrants into the United States after a period of unprecedented mass immigration is sometimes caricatured as a far-right project. Tell that to the French.
The tough immigration measures the French National Assembly passed this week suggest once again that restrictions are the normal recourse of nations that exercise their prerogatives. They make sense after periods of prolonged, high-volume immigration — not to mention after episodes like the 2005 riots. French citizens overwhelmingly agree that it is time for their government to moderate immigration. A survey published this week in the French daily Le Figaro indicates that 74 percent favor immigration quotas, while majorities oppose amnesty for illegal aliens and support French-language requirements for immigrants…
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