The Next War? - Arnaud de Borchgrave, Washington Times

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now stated publicly his country holds the key to the conditions of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, much criticized by the United States for his lack of leadership, and who has been deserted by half his Cabinet, is much praised in Tehran, where he has gone twice in 11 months to confer with Iranian leaders. Mr. Ahmadinejad also says Iran is ready to fill the power vacuum in Iraq following a U.S. withdrawal. "The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," he said, "and soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the region." The United States is not alone in trying to prove Mr. Ahmadinejad's geopolitical weather forecast wrong. Saudi Arabia and its five Gulf Cooperation Council allies in the Gulf, Egypt and Jordan, are terrified at the idea of Iraq falling under Iranian domination. Hoping to head off a U.S.-Iran military confrontation, European countries are still pinning their hopes on major Iranian concessions at the International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna. Iran is back to cooperating with IAEA — but only one comma or semicolon at a time. The three European Union countries acting as U.S. surrogates on nuclear matters with Iran, and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, detect progress where the U.S. sees only stalling. Iran is still resisting short-notice inspections of sites that are not officially declared nuclear facilities, and where secret nuclear work is believed to be taking place.

Real Crises Aren’t Fixed Overnight – Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times

It is extremely hard to know how big a crisis is while it is actually unfolding. Retrospectively, we tend to think of crises -- whether financial or geopolitical -- as one-day wonders: Think of "Black Monday," the stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987, or 9/11, the terrorist attacks of six years ago. This notion of short, sharp shocks fits in well with our human inclination to live for the moment. Perhaps it is also a symptom of our era's chronic attention-deficit disorder. Yet the really big crises in history unfolded over months and years, not mere days. The outcome of the American intervention in Iraq will be determined not in Baghdad but in Washington. Sooner or later, this president or his successor will come under irresistible public pressure to start drawing down American troops in Iraq. This will almost certainly happen, as in Vietnam, before the country they are leaving has genuinely been stabilized. This great crisis of U.S. foreign policy, like the slow-burning financial crisis we are living through, will play out over hundreds, if not thousands, of days. Throughout that time, we shall read many reports in the newspapers that the surge is working and the markets are rallying. But these reports will just be so much "noise" -- mere static on the airwaves of history. As in the early 1970s, the underlying geopolitical and financial crises of our time are in synch -- and inexorable.

Snow Job in the Desert – Paul Krugman, New York Times (subscription required)

Until recently I assumed that the failure to find WMD, followed by years of false claims of progress in Iraq, would make a repeat of the snow job that sold the war impossible. But I was wrong. The administration, this time relying on Gen. David Petraeus to play the Colin Powell role, has had remarkable success creating the perception that the “surge” is succeeding, even though there’s not a shred of verifiable evidence to suggest that it is. Thus Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution — the author of “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq” — and his colleague Michael O’Hanlon, another longtime war booster, returned from a Pentagon-guided tour of Iraq and declared that the surge was working. They received enormous media coverage; most of that coverage accepted their ludicrous self-description as critics of the war who have been convinced by new evidence. A third participant in the same tour, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reported that unlike his traveling companions, he saw little change in the Iraq situation and “did not see success for the strategy that President Bush announced in January.” But neither his dissent nor a courageous rebuttal of Mr. O’Hanlon and Mr. Pollack by seven soldiers actually serving in Iraq, published in The New York Times, received much media attention.

Time to Let the Ghosts of Vietnam Rest - Ruben Navarrette Jr., San Diego Union-Tribune

You just can't please some people. After the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, I remember a cartoon that lampooned Democrats for their two-faced approach to the conflict. In the first panel, a donkey was scolding President George H.W. Bush for invading Iraq. In the next, the donkey was scolding the president for leaving too soon. Today, the Democrats' strategy is still fairly consistent with that model. They wait to see what President George W. Bush says, and then they say the opposite. Oddly enough, this happens even if Bush says something that Democrats have been saying for some time. Such as comparing Iraq to Vietnam. War critics have drawn that comparison almost since the invasion of Iraq began, calling the U.S.-led operation a “quagmire” and insisting that Bush was ignoring the lessons of history. But people seem to draw their own lessons from Vietnam. And recently, after months of resisting the comparison, Bush actually embraced it. During a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he seemed to imply that the real lesson from Vietnam was that defeat comes at a heavy price. The president was making two points, both legitimate. First, he insisted that Americans need to think long and hard about what would happen to those we left behind if we departed Iraq before stability takes hold, because what happened after the fall of Saigon wasn't pretty.

What the Constitution Says About Iraq – Mario Cuomo, Los Angeles Times

Most Americans want the war in Iraq ended, but it continues and Americans are killed, mutilated or wounded every day, as the Democratic majorities in Congress struggle to produce legislation that will take our forces out of harm's way. Meanwhile, President Bush continues to insist that as commander in chief, he has the constitutional power to go to war and decide when to end it, unilaterally. At the same time, another possible disaster emerges from the shadows: Bush appears to be considering a military assault on Iran, again apparently without Congress declaring war first. How did we get to this point and what, if anything, can we do now? The war happened because when Bush first indicated his intention to go to war against Iraq, Congress refused to insist on enforcement of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. For more than 200 years, this article has spelled out that Congress -- not the president -- shall have "the power to declare war." Because the Constitution cannot be amended by persistent evasion, this constitutional mandate was not erased by the actions of timid Congresses since World War II that allowed eager presidents to start wars in Vietnam and elsewhere without a "declaration" by Congress. Nor were the feeble, post-factum congressional resolutions of support of the Iraq invasion -- in 2001 and 2002 -- adequate substitutes for the formal declaration of war demanded by the founding fathers.

What Exit? Fallujah – Ralph Peters, New York Post

Jersey rules. The Marines of 1st Platoon, Fox Company, 3rd Battal ion, 3rd Marines aren't living large, but they're making a huge difference. Bunking in a police precinct headquarters in Fallujah, they're at the forward edge of our current successes in Iraq. It's summertime, but the living ain't easy. The work's tough, the heat's wicked, the "facilities" conjure the old line about what bears do in the woods, and only goodie boxes from home liven up a diet of field rations (great for two or three days, nasty after two or three months). You'd expect complaints. I didn't hear one. And talking to three Jersey boys, I was surprised to hear just how positive they felt about the mission. "I'd do it again in a heartbeat," Lance Cpl. Justin Blitzstein of West Milford told me. Self-assured and ready for anything, he added, "Anybody who doesn't think we should be here should see the difference we've made in the way these people live. And everybody here's a volunteer. We want to be here."

Return to Maturity in US Dialogue – Kim Beazley, The Australian

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell warned President George W. Bush that he risked "sucking the oxygen" out of US foreign policy if he went ahead with the Iraq venture in 2003. As the President arrives in Australia for his truncated participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation leadership forum, nothing could be more obvious. The demands of the war, particularly the forthcoming report to Congress by his commander, General David Petraeus, further kept both Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from attending the almost as important Association of Southeast Asian Nations meetings of leaders and ministers in Singapore and Manila taking place at the moment. His mind this week will be many thousands of miles away northeast and northwest. President Bush recently introduced Vietnam War analogies into his justifications for Iraq and was roundly criticised by historians. One analogy is apposite. Presidents Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson struggled in a similar way to get above the debilitating consequences of a local war to address the many issues global leadership demanded of them. They feared American leadership of the Western alliance would be compromised, our enemies strengthened, our local allies betrayed. Their worst fears were not realised. Neither will they be in Iraq, though the outcome will be horrible enough. That is not easy to see stuck in the middle of the morass. One thing is clear now. The US values its allies more fervently than at any time since the Kuwait war segued out of the cold war. The allies wanted are those who will share burdens, military and political. The allies needed are those who will help refocus the US on the long-term issues of global politics, such as those emerging in East Asia. To be recognised as a needed ally will require friends to be both.

What Our Army Needs is a Defence Policy - William Rees-Mogg, London Times

General Sir Mike Jackson is a soldier’s soldier. His doctrine, as told to The Daily Telegraph, is that “everything starts and finishes with the soldier”. He adds, ruefully, that he failed to persuade the Ministry of Defence of that doctrine when he was Chief of the General Staff. He has now written his memoirs that put the strategic blame, where it almost certainly belongs, on Donald Rumsfeld for the US failure to follow up their victory in Iraq with a postwar plan. He also recognises the weakness of British defence policy in its failure to match resources to commitments. It is easy to say, as some have, that the general should have made his criticisms when he was still in office. I have no doubt he did fight his official corner. He fought inside the system when he was still on active service, and he has gone public now that he has retired. I can see nothing wrong with that. Retirement gives a man back his freedom of speech, and perhaps an even greater duty to speak out. Retired generals are right to use their authority to serve the welfare of the troops they used to command. What do the soldiers themselves want? They would like their pay to be comparable to that of civilian servants of the State. Last week the prison officers went on strike because part of their pay increase had been delayed. They can make comparisons with the higher pay of policemen. But soldiers on active service are lower paid than prison staff or policemen: they are paid only a little more than £1,000 a month. However one looks at it, that is not big money for risking one’s life. Fighting soldiers naturally want the best available equipment. That does not mean that they want nuclear submarines, which would hardly fit into the Basra Palace. It means the provision of armoured vehicles that will withstand mines and that do not brew almost to boiling point in the desert sun. It means the Army should have enough helicopters, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. It does require some bigger pieces of equipment, including sufficient Hercules and strike aircraft.

Valiant Soldiers in Afghanistan – London Daily Telegraph leader

That the award of two more Victoria Crosses should even be under consideration says a good deal about our campaign in Afghanistan. No other nation has produced a medal so prized. This unprepossessing gun-metal cross, with its simple two-word inscription, is the supreme award that a soldier can win. By tradition, officers and men of all ranks salute its holder. Only 14 VCs have been awarded since the end of the Second World War; two of these (one the New Zealand version) were won in Afghanistan. The citations for the two latest candidates read like episodes from a war film. Capt David Hicks was mortally wounded, but refused morphine in order to lead a counter-attack against a Taliban rocket assault. L/Cpl "Teddy" Ruecker plunged through a hail of enemy fire, emptying his pistol magazine into an enemy gunman on route, so as to drag a wounded comrade from a burning vehicle. These are the actions of courageous men fighting in a worthy cause. It is true that brave deeds can be done in bad causes: witness the German resistance following the Normandy landings. But the soldiers deployed in Helmand are in no doubt that they are there for a purpose, and that they are securing it. Day by day, they are pushing back the Taliban, expanding the zone of peaceable civic government.

War and Opium - Philadelphia Inquirer editorial

A year ago, Afghanistan's equivalent of America's drug czar said there would be no repeat of 2006's record-breaking opium poppy crop. Good thing he didn't bet his life on that prediction. Another year, another record crop in Afghanistan for the flower used to produce opium and heroin. As a result, many lives will be lost or damaged by the increased availability of the narcotic in the illegal market. The United Nations reported Monday that poppy cultivation is up 17 percent in Afghanistan. This despite what sounds like a more encouraging statistic: The number of Afghan provinces no longer growing opium poppies has more than doubled to 13. But that progress is offset by huge increases in poppy farming in Nangarhar, Kandahar and Helmand, where the Taliban is running rampant.

Iran Courting Latin America is Bad News For Us - Daniel S. Mariaschin, Miami Herald

Iran is dramatically expanding its presence in Latin America, and we cannot lose sight of the threat that it poses to our nation's security. Latin America is a gateway to the United States, and Tehran is rapidly prying the door open. Notwithstanding some historic setbacks, the United States has much in common with many countries of Latin America. A shared commitment to independence and democracy has, over the centuries, helped shape relationships in the hemisphere. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has forged a friendly alliance with Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez who has, in effect, become Ahmadinejad's ambassador in the region. As a result, the Iran-Venezuela corridor is now even easier to navigate with a flight available from Tehran to Caracas. Iran, through Venezuela, is building its diplomatic capital in the region by trading with such nations as Ecuador and Bolivia. According to reports, Iran has sold tractors to Venezuela, which has resold them in the region at bargain prices. Iran's trading inroads provide an entree for geopolitical machinations throughout much of Latin America. Iran and Nicaragua recently signed an agreement that allows Tehran to develop Nicaragua's infrastructure in exchange for agricultural exports, such as meat and coffee. The infrastructure from Iran would include the first port on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast and a hydroelectric energy plant. The economic benefits for Nicaragua are many; the political advantages for Iran are staggering. Iran's largess means Tehran will have extraordinarily close ties to Nicaragua for years. And Iran and Venezuela are using the same playbook; Venezuela can use its vast oil profits to provide economic aid across Latin America, and in the case of Nicaragua, assistance for energy needs. These economic ties could lead to long-term political realignment. We can ill afford to have Iran establishing a forward position in our back yard. Its threat to our homeland security, and that of countries of Latin America, should not be underestimated.

Attack Mode: America Can't Afford Bush's Swagger on Iran - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial

It is absolutely critical that the United States, while already tied down in two wars, not attack Iran. In light of the fact that the media are accused of not having sounded the alarm in 2002 when President Bush, with congressional acquiescence, began beating the drums for a war with Iraq, the Post-Gazette takes this occasion to counsel against an attack on yet another country. The lack of wisdom in such an aggression is obvious. Iran has not done anything yet to justify invasion or bombardment. The wrangling over its nuclear weapons program -- like that over Iraq's, in the event, nonexistent nuclear program -- can be resolved through international negotiations and actions, correctly led by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran and Iraq are signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, unlike nuclear powers India, Israel and Pakistan. Some Iranian politicians make threatening noises about Israel. It would be interesting to see if they continued to do so if American politicians, starting with Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, stopped threatening Iran. Another reason it would be foolish for the United States to attack is that U.S. armed forces are already stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Bush knows quite well that if the draft were reintroduced to fill the ranks, even an ineffective, generally supine Congress would rise up and block the measure.

Russia and the Usual Suspects – New York Times editorial

It certainly would be welcome news if, in fact, Russian investigators have arrested 10 people involved in the murder of the crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and perhaps also the killing of an American journalist, Paul Klebnikov, and the deputy head of the Russian Central Bank, Andrei Kozlov. That is what Russia’s prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, announced the other day. But forgive us if we remain skeptical. There’s just too much of the “usual suspects” here, and Russia’s criminal justice system is too blatantly under the thumb of President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, for us to accept at face value that due process of law is at work. It is certainly possible that the murders involved the suspects Mr. Chaika described — professional Chechen hit men, moonlighting police officers and a rogue intelligence officer. There are plenty of these types in Russia, and Russians would readily accept that they were hired to commit the killings. Mr. Chaika’s bombshell was his suggestion that the mastermind behind the hits was an exile interested in stirring up chaos and resentment against Mr. Putin. That happens to confirm what Mr. Putin himself suggested only three days after Ms. Politkovskaya’s murder last Oct. 7 — that there were fugitives from Russian justice bent on sacrificing somebody “in order to create a wave of anti-Russian feeling in the world.”

Putin and Stalin: Revising Reality - Steve Chapman, Baltimore Sun

In most countries, the future is impossible to predict, but the past doesn't change. In Russia, it's just the opposite. President Vladimir V. Putin, when he is not busy restoring autocracy to a country that has known little else, has taken on the task of refreshing Russian history with a novel perspective - his own. He is on record lamenting the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." It was worse, apparently, than World War I, worse than World War II - worse, even, than the creation of the Soviet Union. Last year, the president informed a group of history teachers that Russia "has nothing to be ashamed of" and that it was their job to make students "proud of their motherland." His government has tried to help by commissioning guidelines and books that present a more balanced picture of Josef Stalin, described in one approved volume as "the most successful Soviet leader ever." That sentiment could be taken as ironic - on the order of praising a slag heap as the most picturesque of its genre. In fact, Mr. Putin really wants to commend a dictator who, if he was not the most savage and destructive criminal of the 20th century, certainly ranks in the top three, with Adolf Hitler and Mao Tse-tung. The efforts at rehabilitation may be working. One poll found that 54 percent of young Russians think Stalin was "a wise leader."

A ‘Dissident President’? – Washington Post editorial

When he met Egypt's best known democracy advocate, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, at a conference in Prague in June, President Bush told him that he, too, felt like a dissident because of the State Department's tenacious resistance to his "freedom agenda." But Mr. Bush is not a real dissident. Consider: While Mr. Bush returned to the White House after the Prague meeting, Mr. Ibrahim has not yet returned to his home in Cairo -- because he has been told that if he does, he will be arrested. In the view of Egypt's autocratic president, Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Ibrahim's meeting with Mr. Bush is among several offenses that merit his renewed prosecution -- the 68-year-old professor already spent the better part of three years in jail since 2000. Another was his organization in Doha, Qatar, of a conference of Arab democracy advocates, including a dozen Egyptians, a week before the Prague meeting. Then there was the vote by the House of Representatives to condition $200 million of the military aid Egypt receives every year from the United States on human rights reform and more aggressive policing of the border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Since he supports such conditionality, Mr. Ibrahim has been blamed for the congressional action. Finally, members of Mr. Mubarak's ruling party have called for Mr. Ibrahim's prosecution because of an article he published on the opposite page last month, in which he denounced a massive and accelerating crackdown on opposition activists in Egypt.

The Great Turkish Experiment – Boston Globe editorial

The election of Abdullah Gul, a moderate Islamist, as president of Turkey marks a new stage in that country's struggle between a secular establishment centered in the army and Gul's Justice and Development Party, which has its social base in a recently urbanized middle class loath to abandon provincial habits of piety. As a former economics professor and the foreign minister who steered Turkey's campaign for membership in the European Union, Gul is unquestionably qualified to serve as head of state. Yet crucial questions hover over his ascension to a position that gives him the power to veto laws, appoint top judges, and approve senior military leaders. Gul and his party need to show they have truly tempered their original Islamist leanings. And the generals, who see themselves as guardians of the secular values of the Turkish Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, will have to refrain from toppling an elected government for the fifth time.

Turkey’s Edgy Advance – Toronto Star editorial

In Turkey, democracy has spoken and the country's jumpy generals should respect the message instead of trying to shout it down. After a referendum-style election in which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development party won a major victory, Parliament has just elected secular Turkey's first modern head of state with an Islamist political background. President Abdullah Gul, sworn in Tuesday, is an urbane, moderate figure. As Erdogan's foreign minister he pressed Turkey's entry to the European Union and championed democratic reforms and civil rights. The regime has also delivered solid growth and has invested in better health, welfare and housing. Like millions of Turks, Gul is also a devout Muslim whose wife wears a head scarf. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government should regard Gul as a credible choice for president in a mostly Muslim nation of 75 million that is an ally in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Americans have rightly welcomed "this exercise in Turkish democracy." So have the Europeans. As the newspaper Milliyet put it, this brings the country "one step closer to political maturity. If successful, Gul's presidency will confirm that modern Muslim democrats can uphold political pluralism, individual rights and the rule of secular law. That offers the Muslim world a healthier role model than radical Islam, Islamic caliphates and imposed religious law.

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