What’s Wrong With the GAO Report – Frederick Kagan, Weekly Standard
At first glance--as those who leaked it last week saw--the Government Accountability Office's report on Iraq, released today, paints a dark view of progress and prospects in Iraq. Its subtitle offers the most attractive thesis to opponents of the current strategy: "Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks." Its opening paragraph dourly states that "the Iraqi government met 3, partially met 4, and did not meet 11 of its 18 benchmarks." Surely its release marks a grim moment for the Bush administration's efforts to sustain their approach in the war. Or perhaps not. The GAO report reflects everything that has been wrong with the discussion about Iraq since the end of 2006. Through no fault of the GAO's, the organization was sent on a fool's errand by Congress. Its mandate was not to evaluate progress in Iraq, but to determine whether or not the Iraqi government had met the 18 benchmarks. As a result, as the report repeatedly notes, the GAO was forced to fit an extraordinarily complicated reality into a black-and-white, yes-or-no simplicity. In addition, the GAO's remit extended only to evaluating progress on the Congressionally-sanctioned 18 benchmarks, 14 of which were established between eight and 11 months ago in a very different context. As a result, the report ignores completely a number of crucial positive developments that were not foreseen when the benchmarks were established and that, in fact, offer the prospect of a way forward that is much more likely to succeed than the year-old, top-down concept the GAO was told to measure. As the situation in Iraq has been changing dynamically over the past eight months, as American strategy and operations, both military and political, have been adjusting on the ground to new realities, the debate in Washington has remained mired in the preconceptions and approaches of 2006. The GAO report epitomizes this fact.
GAO Disinformation - Washington Times editorial
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) "progress report" issued Tuesday on Iraq has served its purpose for critics of the war: to get a credible-sounding report that would discredit the war effort issued in advance of the September 15 report from Gen. David Petraeus on the progress of the "surge." Sen. John Kerry used the head of the GAO, Comptroller General David Walker, as a prop for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee dog-and-pony show aimed at driving home the point that failure in Iraq is inevitable, and to no one's surprise, Sen. Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the left-wing blogs piled on as well, and the mainstream media dutifully reported the GAO's findings in checklist form with little or no substantive analysis. A central problem with the report is that it barely mentions the fact that Sunni Arabs in Anbar province have turned en masse against al Qaeda in Iraq and have been taking up arms against it — transforming one of the most dangerous places in Iraq into one of the safest. But the congressionally mandated benchmarks don't take account of this transformational change, making it difficult for the GAO to say very much about it. American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick Kagan highlights myriad other flaws in the GAO report. For example, the GAO found that the goal of "Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty" for former insurgents had not been met, and that militia disarmament has not been achieved. Technically, these things are true — if you confine your analysis to looking at a legislative fix courtesy of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. But these statements disregard what is actually happening on the ground — the fact that as many as 30,000 former insurgents have joined the Iraqi government and coalition forces in fighting al Qaeda and its terrorist allies. "Because of the presence of U.S. forces and agreements of the Iraqi government, insurgents and terrorists feel comfortable providing fingerprints, retina scans and the serial numbers of their weapons to our forces in order to fight our common enemies," Mr. Kagan writes in the Weekly Standard. "It's hard to imagine a better amnesty than that."
The Least Bad Choice - Roger Cohen, New York Times (subscription required)
The way the United States leaves places matters. Having armed mujahedeen fighters to undo the Soviet empire in Afghanistan, America lost interest in a backwater. Payback came in the form of Afghan-trained holy warriors bent on the destruction of the West. That was careless. It is important to be less careless in Baghdad. As reports on Iraq reach Congress this month, it’s worth considering that blow-back from an oil-rich country at the heart of the battle for the Middle East could be even more severe than the violent legacy of funding Islam to fight communism in Kabul. Nothing can undo the American blunders in Iraq that turned the liberated into the lacerated. Hubris is bad, careless hubris worse. The fraying Bush administration still can’t work out who took the decision to disband the Iraqi Army in 2003; that’s grotesque. Nobody in the administration should sleep easy over its ethical responsibility for calamitous mistakes. But what we did matters less today than how we leave Iraq. It’s far easier to score backward-looking political points against Bush than serve the forward-looking interests of 27 million Iraqis. Still, the latter is more important than the former. As Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has written: “It seems likely that the U.S. will ultimately be judged far more by how it leaves Iraq, and what it leaves behind, than how it entered Iraq.” America’s future ability to use its hard and soft power “depends on what the U.S. does now.”
Sustaining the Surge - Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, Weekly Standard
When General David Petraeus reports to Washington next week, the most important question he'll have to answer is, What happens in Iraq after the surge? With all but the most die-hard defeatists--that is, the congressional Democratic leadership--convinced that the surge has improved the security situation in Iraq, there seems ever less chance that Congress will force an American withdrawal. Instead, the war will continue through at least the remainder of the Bush presidency. As a result, U.S. policy in Iraq will enter into an extended "post-surge" period. The surge brigades began to arrive in Iraq in January. Therefore, around April the arithmetic of the Army's 15-month rotation policy will begin to kick in. And as NBC's Tim Russert stated on Meet the Press on August 26, "We do not have the capacity to continue the surge because of the strain on our military." Or so the conventional wisdom in Washington goes. But is it true? The fact is, even our overstretched U.S. land forces are capable of continuing the surge without extending the tour of units currently in Iraq beyond 15 months. As Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, deputy commander in Iraq, pointed out in a news conference earlier this month, the current surge can be pushed until next August. And there are a number of ways to sustain a larger force even longer.
No Measure of Success - Baltimore Sun editorial
In Australia yesterday, President Bush defined success in the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq as "countries that can govern themselves, sustain themselves, defend themselves, listen to the people, and serve as allies in this war against extremists and murderers." By those criteria, U.S. forces would have to stay in country far longer than is acceptable. Mr. Bush should be planning for an Iraq exit strategy instead of trying to achieve some unattainable measure of success before withdrawing troops. But the president is looking for success where he can find it, and that took him to Iraq's troubled Anbar province this week, where he met troops, Sunni tribal leaders and officials of the al-Maliki government. His surprise visit was a prelude to next week's anticipated report to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus, the military commander in Iraq implementing the surge strategy. Violence has been reduced in Anbar, once a haven for al-Qaida-linked jihadists, because of an influx of U.S. troops there and, more important, the decision by Sunni insurgents to help the Americans. That is a marked shift in the cycle of violence, but the Sunnis have their own reasons for cooperating. The mayhem caused by al-Qaida operatives has killed Iraqi civilians - Sunni Arabs - as well as American soldiers. Their alliance with U.S. forces could strengthen their position against rival Shiite militias and hasten sectarian conflict once U.S. troops leave Iraq. It could also put them in a better position to demand their just rewards and services from the Shiite-dominated central government.
Turnaround on War Issue? - Donald Lambro, Washington Times
Political cracks are appearing in the Democrats' once-unified opposition to the war in Iraq and a prominent independent pollster says it's not "a slam dunk" issue for them anymore. One week before Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, gives his report to Congress, Republican leadership officials express new confidence that Americans are now far more willing to give President Bush's troop surge a longer chance to work. The mood shift is the result of reports from journalists, lawmakers and others returning from Iraq, including Democrats who say progress is being made in terrorist-infested trouble-spots and that levels of sectarian violence have fallen dramatically this summer. At the same time, the grass-roots message coming back as Republican lawmakers return from their August recess is that "we're hearing less about Iraq" from voters, a senior House Republican leadership official told me. From the beginning, the hope of the troop surge was not to say it has fully stabilized Iraq and ended the violence, something that won't happen anytime soon. Rather, it was to show that at least progress was being made, that in key regions al Qaeda terrorists can be driven out as a result of new alliances between Sunni leaders and U.S. and Iraqi military forces.
Staying, Leaving Not the Only Choices - Trudy Rubin, Miami Herald
Can we please start thinking differently about this Iraq debate? Instead of stay or go, can we focus on preventing Iraq from collapsing when we ultimately leave? Such a focus fits badly with the story lines of both parties. Republicans want to shift attention away from their gross mishandling of Iraq, so they pretend we can still establish Iraqi democracy and win a neat ''victory.'' The stress on ''stay the course'' prevents an honest examination of how to salvage the best outcome we can. Yet we all know that the Pentagon can't indefinitely maintain current troop levels in Iraq, for reasons beyond domestic politics. Our armed forces are overstretched, the American public has soured on the war and many Iraqis have lost faith in our presence. That disillusionment can't be blamed on Congress; it results from years of glib administration claims belied by violence on the ground. That said, those Democrats who argue that Iraq violence will ease when we leave are mistaken. A timeline for complete withdrawal won't shock Iraqi factions or their Arab and Iranian neighbors into reconciliation. That's not how the Middle East works. None of these factions trusts each other enough to make peace without strong outside involvement. U.S. leverage in Iraq has shrunk because of the mistakes of the past four years. If we set a departure date without proper preparation, our leverage will disappear. Already, the debate over when to leave has provoked Iraq's Sunni and Shiite militias to start gearing up for all-out power struggles. The same with Iraq's neighbors.
Terrorist Training Camps in Iran – William Kristol, Weekly Standard
It's great that the military is having success in capturing "affiliates" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Iraq. But it's also clear… that the training of the terrorists is being done in Iran: "..the transportation of multiple Iraqis to Iran for terrorist training at IRGC-QF training camps." A senior administration official last week discounted to me the importance of going after such targets in Iran--while not denying they exist and that we know where they are. The explanation wasn't convincing at the time. In light of this fresh evidence, and in light of the fact that the Iranians have been shelling targets in Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, that they claim are supporting violence in Iran, one has to ask: "Why are terror training camps in Iran, camps that are directly training terrorists to attack U.S. troops, off limits?" After all, if Khameini (to whom the IRGC reports) has already established the principle of cross-border attacks against accelerators of violence, who are we to disagree with the wisdom of the Supreme Leader?
Iran: It's About Time - James Lyons Jr., Washington Times
It's about time. The Bush administration has finally decided to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a global terrorist group. My only question: What took them so long? In fact, if diplomatically feasible, the entire corrupt Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini regime should be designated a global terrorist group. Since 1984, Iran has been on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. After all, with all the hard evidence we now have on Iran's complicity in providing all forms of warmaking material, including sophisticated IEDs (improvised bombs), training of Islamic foreign terrorists including Hezbollah who are used as proxies to fight our forces in Iraq, we should not stop at the IRGC. But it's a start. The IRGC with its Quds Force has been linked to the growing flow of explosives and other arms to Shi'ite militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Quds Force also provides support to Shi'ite allies such as Hezbollah and to Sunni movements such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and facilitates the trafficking of heroin from Afghanistan to Western Europe and the United States. A corrupt organization, the IRGC is heavily involved in basically every major commercial industry in Iran. Many of the front companies procuring nuclear technology are owned and run by the Revolutionary Guards.
Iran's Arab Unrest - Amir Taheri, New York Post
Is the Islamic Republic facing a growing revolt by Iran's Arab minority? Until a couple of years ago, the question would have sounded naive. In the '80s, Arab-Iranians fought bravely against Saddam Hussein's forces, even though they were linked to the invading Iraqis by ethnic, tribal, linguistic and religious ties going back 1,300 years. Data from the Foundation for the Martyrs (which is supposed to look after war veterans and families of the war dead) show that the number of Arab-Iranians who died for the fatherland was proportionally four times higher than Iranians from other ethnic backgrounds. In the last two years, however, evidence has mounted that Arab-Iranians - disenchanted by the Islamic Republic and angry at Tehran's increasingly repressive policies under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - are being drawn toward dissidence and revolt.
Hubris vs. Humility - Irshad Manji, The New Republic
A week before General David Petraeus reports on the troop surge in Iraq, one-time backers of the mission are lining up to declare it indefensible. Like them, I assumed that the Bush administration would properly plan for the peace. I was wrong. Maybe, though, not all is lost. In essence, Iraq is about the timeless battle between freedom and security, a theme explored in such literary masterpieces as Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Looking at the war through this lens, we can learn not only why Iraq went wrong, but how democracy might still be reconciled with religiosity. In The Brothers Karamazov, one of Dostoevsky's characters pens a poem set in sixteenth-century Spain during the height of the Inquisition. There, we meet the Grand Inquisitor, a cardinal modeled after Torquemada, one of history's most sadistic torturers. According to the Inquisitor, liberty is not the great universal desire that President Bush has proclaimed it to be. In fact, he says, freedom scares people. Haunted by the fear of taking responsibility for choices, and taunted by a feeling of inadequacy, human beings will readily abdicate their agency to a dictator. If the Inquisitor is right, it is no wonder that democrats and secularists have less appeal to Iraqis than do sectarian politicians and tribal warriors. The stated intent of this war--to defeat tyranny--is thus made moot.
Those Boots Made a Difference - Miranda Devine, Sydney Morning Herald
Activists threatening violence during this week's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation meetings in protest against "ongoing inhumane slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan [of] people whose lives could be saved if the Bush and Howard governments made a simple policy change" ought to go to those countries and see what our troops are really doing. Ditto for the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, riding high in the opinion polls while capitalising on the unpopularity of the Iraq war. Rudd boasts of his "clear-cut plan … for the staged, negotiated withdrawal of Australian combat forces from Iraq" by the middle of next year. He should go to Iraq and Afghanistan and see for himself the important work our troops are doing and judge for himself their morale. He would see how detrimental to Australia's interests it would be to prematurely draw down our small but effective contingent of 1575 troops in Iraq, even if he has quietly qualified his policy by adding the adjective "combat".
US Needs to Focus on More than War – Greg Sheridan, The Australian
It’s certainly novel - coming to an APEC summit via Iraq. President George W.Bush may have done a disservice to APEC by his swing through Iraq. It reinforces the claim made to The Australian by former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage that the Bush administration is losing out to China in Asia because it is totally preoccupied with Iraq. There is nothing wrong with the President visiting Iraq, of course. It's brave, in every sense of the word, for him to do so. But it is a most unfortunate way of framing APEC. Also, rather bizarrely, the President cancelled a summit meeting with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which was to have been held in Singapore, on his way to Sydney. Instead, he went to Iraq. No one denies the overriding importance of Iraq to Bush, his presidency, to the US and to the world. But a global superpower is meant to be able to do more than one thing at a time. It should be able to walk and chew gum. APEC is about the Asia-Pacific. Specifically it is dedicated to economic integration and co-operation in the Asia-Pacific.
The Big Ten: The Case for Pragmatic Idealism – James Baker III, The National Interest
The principles that guide American foreign policy during the coming years will determine how successful the United States will be as it addresses the complex global challenges that confront us. A foreign policy simply rooted in values without a reasonable rationale of concrete interests will not succeed. But our foreign policy will also fail if it too narrowly focuses on the national interest and disregards the role that democratic ideals and human rights play in establishing a more secure world. These truths will confront the next president regardless of his or her political party. He or she will face an international environment in which the use or misuse of American power in all its manifestations—military, diplomatic and economic—will bear decisively on our national security and on global stability. The United States will likely remain the pre-eminent global power for some time. But how we wield that unparalleled capability will determine exactly how long we remain at the front of the international pack. Despite setbacks and doubts associated with the ongoing Iraq War, the most significant phenomenon shaping global affairs today remains the uniquely pre-eminent position of the United States. Compared to earlier superpowers—ancient Rome, Napoleonic France and Britain just prior to World War I—we possess far greater advantages over potential rivals.
Potemkin Story – Kimberly Kagan, National Review
It was inevitable that the flood of reporters into Iraq this summer to “evaluate” the results of the surge would produce a certain number of irresponsible stories aimed at dismissing progress, alongside the more numerous accurate depictions of successes and setbacks in a complex environment. Even so, Washington Post reporter Sudarsan Raghavan reaches a low point when describing the Dora market as a “Potemkin village,” implying that it is a false showcase of progress concealing real failure. In reality, the Dora market is an amazing success story in its own right, paid for by the blood of American and Iraqi soldiers, and it represents a small part of the critically important success that U.S. forces have achieved in the heart of a neighborhood that had been one of al Qaeda in Iraq’s strongest fortresses. Dora was one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods in November 2006. The area once housed a robust mixture of Sunni, Shia, and Christian families in its large homes, making it a prime target for sectarian cleansing by militias — and for reciprocal bombings and vigilante attacks by Sunni inhabitants. Dora’s location on Baghdad’s main highways made it easy for death squads to move in and out. As early as July 2006, the New York Times reported that Dora’s inhabitants could not recover corpses of victims executed in the neighborhood for burial - because the risks of sniper fire were so high that residents could not walk the streets.
One Mission at a Time – Jeff Emanuel, Weekly Standard
Operation Marne Huskey is a division-sized offensive operation focused on both hammering insurgents in the area and stepping up the interdiction of weapons and fighters bound for Baghdad. Named in part after the 3rd ID (nicknamed the "Marne" Division), Operation Marne Huskey is an integral part of Operation Phantom Strike, a massive coalition effort to hunt down and torment insurgents in the weeks before General Petraeus's September testimony to Congress. Phantom Strike not only seeks to minimize any insurgent attempts at headline-grabbing attacks during this sensitive period, but also takes the fight to the known and suspected terrorists' turf, pounding them with aviation- and artillery-borne firepower and increasing ground troops' activities in the Diyala and Baghdad areas. With Operation Marne Huskey, 3rd ID is relying on human intelligence to determine target selection and prioritization. Painstakingly cultivated trust and relationships are paying off in the form of numerous tips from citizens in the region, which the military aviation assets act on. Between attack helicopters and sustained "air assault" missions, the aviation-led operation involves a great deal of coordination. But the operation also allows for much greater range and flexibility in much less time, and utilizes a variety of effective firepower.
D.C. and Iraq, Bush’s Way – John Podhoretz, New York Post
Let me make a fearless prediction here, one that I would not have made six weeks ago: George W. Bush - you know, that deeply unpopular president who has lost all credibility with the American people, or so they say - is going to get his way yet again on Iraq. The new strategy in Iraq - the so-called surge - will continue through the winter and into the spring. In theory, there should be enough anti-war Democrats and fed-up Republicans to bring about a confrontation that would force Bush to short-circuit the surge. But it's not going to happen. The political conflagration everybody predicted for this month is going to fizzle, and here's why: It's the safest option for both parties.
Harry Reid Stands Small On Iraq – Steve Kornacki, New York Observer
Harry Reid left Washington last month a frustrated but optimistic man. He is returning, it seems, a humbled one—at least as far as the Iraq debate goes. It was at the end of July that just about every Republican in the Senate—plus Joe Lieberman—stood together to block a vote on a troop withdrawal plan, dealing a blow to Mr. Reid and his antiwar allies, who had championed the proposal. But Mr. Reid was also confident that the August Congressional recess would change the math, with irate constituents giving the holdout Republicans a piece of their mind about their unwillingness to end the war. But recess is almost over now, and with the Senate reconvening on Sept. 4, Mr. Reid doesn’t seem nearly as sure of his hand. Of the Iraq debate that will soon resume, the majority leader told The Washington Post late last week that “I don’t think we have to think that our way is the only way.” For Mr. Reid, that willingness to meet some hesitant Republicans halfway is a significant shift. After the Democratic withdrawal plan fizzled in July, he refused to allow consideration of any other Iraq proposals, even those that might have attracted more substantial bipartisan support. His calculation was that Republicans, come September, would feel so much pressure—from their consciences and from the political realities of the approaching election year—that they’d cave and back the Democratic withdrawal plan, potentially providing the votes to override President Bush’s inevitable veto and to enact a withdrawal over his head. That hasn’t happened. The problem for Mr. Reid—and, more broadly, for the antiwar movement—is that for the first time in more than a year, the pro-war crowd won control of the coverage of the war in August.
How To Change Iraq - Madeleine Albright, Washington Post
The threshold question in any war is: What are we fighting for? Our troops, especially, deserve a convincing answer. In Iraq, the list of missions that were tried on but didn't fit includes: protection from weapons of mass destruction, creating a model democracy in the Arab world, punishing those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and stopping terrorists from catching the next plane to New York. The latest mission, linked to the "surge" of troops this year, was to give Iraqi leaders the security and maneuvering room needed to make stabilizing political arrangements -- which they have thus far shown little interest in doing. A cynic might suggest that the military's real mission is to enable President Bush to continue denying that his invasion has evolved into disaster. A less jaded view might identify three goals: to prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for al-Qaeda, a client state of Iran or a spark that inflames regionwide war. These goals respond not to dangers that prompted the invasion but to those that resulted from it. Our troops are being asked to risk their lives to solve problems our civilian leaders created. The president is beseeching us to fear failure, but he has yet to explain how our military can succeed given Iraq's tangled politics and his administration's lack of credibility.
How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army - L. Paul Bremer III, New York Times
It has become conventional wisdom that the decision to disband Saddam Hussein’s army was a mistake, was contrary to American prewar planning and was a decision I made on my own. In fact the policy was carefully considered by top civilian and military members of the American government. And it was the right decision. By the time Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, the Iraqi Army had simply dissolved. On April 17 Gen. John Abizaid, the deputy commander of the Army’s Central Command, reported in a video briefing to officials in Washington that “there are no organized Iraqi military units left.” The disappearance of Saddam Hussein’s old army rendered irrelevant any prewar plans to use that army. So the question was whether the Coalition Provisional Authority should try to recall it or to build a new one open to both vetted members of the old army and new recruits. General Abizaid favored the second approach. In the weeks after General Abizaid’s recommendation, the coalition’s national security adviser, Walter Slocombe, discussed options with top officials in the Pentagon, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. They recognized that to recall the former army was a practical impossibility because postwar looting had destroyed all the bases. Moreover, the largely Shiite draftees of the army were not going to respond to a recall plea from their former commanders, who were primarily Sunnis. It was also agreed that recalling the army would be a political disaster because to the vast majority of Iraqis it was a symbol of the old Baathist-led Sunni ascendancy. On May 8, 2003, before I left for Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave me a memo titled “Principles for Iraq-Policy Guidelines” that specified that the coalition “will actively oppose Saddam Hussein’s old enforcers — the Baath Party, Fedayeen Saddam, etc.” and that “we will make clear that the coalition will eliminate the remnants of Saddam’s regime.” The next day Mr. Rumsfeld told me that he had sent the “Principles” paper to the national security adviser and the secretary of state.
The Eye of the 9/11 Storm - Victor Davis Hanson, Real Clear Politics
Another anniversary of 9/11 is near. It's been nearly six long years since a catastrophic attack on our shores, and we've understandably turned to infighting and second-guessing - about everything from Guantanamo to wiretaps. But this six-year calm, unfortunately, has allowed some Americans to believe that "our war on terror" remedy is worse than the original Islamic terrorist disease. We see this self-recrimination reflected in our current Hollywood fare, which dwells on the evil of American interventions overseas, largely ignoring the courage of our soldiers or the atrocities committed by jihadists. Our tell-all bestsellers, endless lawsuits and congressional investigations have deflected our 9/11-era furor away from the terrorists to ourselves. All this tail-chasing comes only with the illusory thinking that the present lull is the same as perpetual peace. Have we forgotten that experts still insist that another strike will come, carried out by those already here or shortly to enter the United States? Look back at jihadist near-misses in this country since 9/11 - along with a disturbing recent Pew poll that found one in four younger Muslim-Americans approve, at least in certain circumstances, of suicide bombing to "defend Islam" - and the dire predictions seem plausible. Recall the jihadists arrested in Albany and near Buffalo, N.Y., or the recently uncovered plot to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey. Past foiled targets included the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Brooklyn Bridge, JFK Airport in New York and the New York Stock Exchange.
Holding Khartoum Accountable in Darfur - Eric Reeves, Boston Globe
Does genocide continue in Darfur? Do we still see "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, [Darfur's African ethnic groups] as such," the high standard set by the 1948 UN Genocide Convention? The question acquires urgency as skepticism grows in some quarters about the intentions of Khartoum's Islamist regime. Genocide is a crime of intent, not motive; if the intention of Khartoum is no longer genocidal, their moral and negotiating equities change considerably in any peace talks with fractious rebel groups. Some skepticism about genocide in Darfur is politically motivated: much of the British left regards Darfur advocacy as a diversion from Iraq. The Bush administration, embarrassed by its weak actions following a September 2004 genocide determination, has attempted to "walk back" the g-word. Yet others argue - to diminish the urgency of deploying military protection - that Darfur's terrible realities are much improved and no longer deserve such strenuous characterization. But though violence in Darfur has mutated, we still receive many reports about acts enumerated in the Genocide Convention. Ethnically targeted violence, orchestrated by Khartoum, continues to be chronicled by human rights investigators, though it has certainly diminished since the height of massacres and village destruction from early 2003 through early 2005. Reports of ethnically targeted rape by Khartoum's Janjaweed militia are ongoing. The regime continues its indiscriminate aerial bombardment of African villages.
Don't Sell Sharif Short - John B. Roberts II, Washington Times
Presidents don't always get to choose the events that forge their legacies. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's return next week to Pakistan illustrates the point. How the White House handles this twist in Pakistan's political transition from military rule to democracy is crucial to U.S. strategic interests in the region. Mr. Sharif served as Pakistan's prime minister before Gen. Pervez Musharraf's 1999 coup. The background to the coup was that Mr. Sharif at President Clinton's urging had begun to restrict Pakistan's semi-covert aid to Kashmiri guerrillas. This prompted unrest within the military. In a deadly game of brinkmanship, Mr. Sharif denied President Musharraf's aircraft landing rights as it circled low on fuel. Religiously conservative elements within Pakistan's military rallied to the general, as photo analysis of the troop cordon around him during the early hours of the coup reveals. Trumped-up charges were brought against Mr. Sharif in a kangaroo court but settled with a deal that exiled him to Saudi Arabia, where he has lived for the past seven years.
Getting to Yes With North Korea - Boston Globe editorial
There may still be sniping from hard-liners such as John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, but the process of negotiating North Korea's denuclearization is gathering unmistakable momentum. This is one of the few bright spots in the struggle against nuclear proliferation. It represents a welcome turnaround by President Bush and merits bipartisan support at home and cooperation from America's allies in Asia. Bilateral talks this past weekend in Geneva between Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the lead US negotiator, and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan, produced agreement on reciprocal steps to fulfill the terms of a breakthrough deal last February. The key trade-off requires that the North permit the disabling of its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, its nuclear fuel fabrication facility, and its facility for reprocessing plutonium. In return, the United States will remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The North is also pledging to provide a full accounting of everything in its nuclear program. The United States, in turn, is preparing to end sanctions on the North and to pursue talks on eventual normalization of relations between the two countries.
Putin's Ambition - Helle Dale, Washington Times
A Danish ambassador to Peter the Great was asked by the czar to point out his country on the map. Embarrassed at the size of his homeland compared to the vast Russian expanse, the ambassador evaded the question, and rather than point to the Lilliputian Scandinavian country from which he hailed, he put his finger on Greenland, the world's biggest island. "Let me show you one of our colonies," he said slyly, but truthfully. Peter the Great, of course, was suitably impressed. Today, the North Pole is again an object of international competition, thanks mainly to the putative consequences of global warming, and Russia and Denmark are among the countries competing for territorial claims to its landmass. The other nations include Norway, Canada and the United States. Russia has launched a pre-emptive claim to the so-far-frozen north, to the point of reviving Cold War military tactics, causing other nations on the edge of the Arctic circle to scramble. To reinforce its claim, Russia has started flying military missions over the North Pole, reviving its policy from Cold War days, approaching close to U.S. airspace. The Russians discontinued the missions in 1992 because of the lack of funding and have now revived a fleet of obsolete Tupolev bombers to establish the principle of their right to the airspace. Norwegians have had to scramble to send up their own aircraft to fend off Russian incursions. The whole scenario is straight out of a Cold War spy movie.
Taiwan: Still Less U.N. Respect - Don Feder, Washington Times
In mid-September, Taiwan will again attempt to join the United Nations, as it has since 1993. This time, it will probably get even less respect than it has in years past, due to the imperious action of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Taiwan's diplomatic dance with the international body had become routine. In mid-September, the U.N. General Committee would meet to devise an agenda for the General Assembly. Taiwan's allies would press the committee to include an item on the status of the Republic of China (Taiwan's official name) — a motion that would be quickly crushed by Beijing's allies. This year, Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian wrote to the secretary-general, asking that his country's application for membership be submitted directly to the Security Council. For the first time, the application was made in the name of Taiwan, not the Republic of China. Mr. Ban not only refused, but returned Mr. Chen's letter with the curt observation that under Resolution 2758, it is "the position of the United Nations that Taiwan is a part of China." That's not what Res. 2758 says. Adopted in 1971, it transferred China's U.N. seat from Taipei to Beijing. It says nothing about Taiwan's status.
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