The General vs. the Ambassador – Joe Klein, Time Magazine
A few months ago, after a sweltering day in the field surveying the progress his troops were making in turning Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) extremists, General David Petraeus squinted into the Baghdad sun and allowed himself a moment of astonishment. "It's just amazing how quickly some of these tribes are flipping," he said. Amazing, indeed. Petraeus has presided over a remarkable turn of events in Iraq. The most recalcitrant areas of the country—the heartland of the Sunni insurgency—have suddenly become the most placid. The safest place for President George W. Bush to land when he visited Iraq on Labor Day was al-Asad air base in Anbar province; a year ago, a military-intelligence report said the province had been "lost" to the jihadis. Now AQI seems to have been kicked out of Anbar, pushed back from Baghdad, forced to carry out its most lethal attacks on the northern periphery of the country. It was feared that the weeks before Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker made their September reports to Congress would be dominated by the insurgency's State of Iraq report: spectacular bombings, perhaps even a Tet-style offensive. But—fingers crossed as I write this—Baghdad seems merely murderous these days, without the efflorescence of gore that would have undercut the Bush Administration's story line…
The Partitioning of Iraq - Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post
It took political Washington a good six months to catch up to the fact that something significant was happening in Iraq's Anbar province, where the former-insurgent Sunni tribes switched sides and joined the fight against al-Qaeda. Not surprisingly, Washington has not yet caught up to the next reality: Iraq is being partitioned -- and, like everything else in Iraq today, it is happening from the ground up.1. The Sunni provinces. The essence of our deal with the Anbar tribes and those in Diyala, Salahuddin and elsewhere is this: You end the insurgency and drive out al-Qaeda, and we assist you in arming and policing yourselves. We'd like you to have an official relationship with the Maliki government, but we're not waiting on Baghdad.
2. The Shiite south. This week the British pulled out of Basra, retired to their air base and essentially left the southern Shiites to their own devices -- meaning domination by the Shiite militias now fighting each other for control.
3. The Kurdish north. Kurdistan has been independent in all but name for a decade and a half...
The Rising Tensions Between Allies in Action - Bronwen Maddox, London Times
If Britain had not just clashed with the US over its plans to leave Iraq, it might have been easier to avoid the rising tension over Afghanistan. But not very easy: there are half a dozen disagreements over tactics, and a longer-term distinct difference of interest.Tension was on the cards since Tony Blair decided that Britain should take a leading role in Afghanistan, giving it a responsibility for the overall outcome that it would never have had in Iraq. From the beginning its aims and style of operation have been different from those of the US.
Washington wanted the capture of Osama bin Laden, the expulsion of the Taleban, the installation of a pro-Western government, and enough stabilisation to stop Afghanistan remaining a fountain of terrorism. Britain, early on, began using the far reaches of the vocabulary of nation-building; given its huge setbacks in the battle against the opium trade, it has begun to talk of a 20-year project…
World War IV? – William F. Buckley, National Review / Real Clear Politics
… Begin with our military superiority, which would appear to make victory inevitable. "Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?"A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:
"-- A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.
"-- A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.
"-- An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.
"-- An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians."
Add to the above "a huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10 percent to 15 percent of the Muslim population worldwide, they number some 125 million to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived." …
Progress in the Iraqi Security Forces – Frederick Kagan, Weekly Standard
… In other words, the Iraqi Army has made tremendous strides, is fighting hard and skillfully, and is now a critical component of the counter-terrorism campaign in Iraq, but it cannot continue that campaign without continued Coalition combat and logistics support over the coming months (for more on this, see a new report from the American Enterprise Institute released today, "No Middle Way"). Almost all of the trendlines for the Iraqi Army and for security in Iraq noted in the report are positive. The Iraqi Police are more problematic, but even here, the report notes that training is improving and local recruiting is making a significant positive difference. The National Police, the report rightly notes, are broken, and the media has made much of this. But the National Police consist of around 25,000 members, compared to perhaps 300,000 members of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police. The Iraqi Security Forces can hardly be judged a failure on such grounds.
In fact, the Jones Report offers no suggestion that the Iraqi Security Forces should be judged a failure at all. On the contrary, they have made great progress and the report sees every reason for them to continue to make better progress. The issue of their "independent" operations is and always has been a red herring. For Americans concerned about how long their sons and daughters will have to be in harm's way in Iraq, which is everyone, the point isn't how long it will take the Iraqis to operate independently, but how long it will take before they can carry more of the burden of fighting the enemy. The Jones Report makes it clear that they are already carrying a significant part of that burden, and that their ability to do so will increase steadily and rapidly in the coming months--as long as we maintain our presence and our current strategy, which the report clearly judges to be working. Presenting the Jones Report as a condemnation of the Iraqi Security Forces, proof of their hopelessness, or support for a rapid withdrawal of American forces or a "change of mission" goes beyond spin. It is simple dishonesty…
Time to Take a Stand - Paul Krugman, New York Times (subscription required)
Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.
Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it...
The Long Knives - Washington Times editorial
There's barely more than a week to go before Army Gen. David Petraeus arrives in Washington with his eagerly awaited assessment of progress in Iraq, and the Democrats are making their own war strategy abundantly clear. Gen. Petraeus must be portrayed as a White House stooge and the men and women risking their lives to defeat jihadists in Iraq but his innocent lackeys. The propagandists mean to demoralize the troops by declaring their efforts doomed to failure, and even if they don't fail their substantial military successes don't amount to much.
The most disgraceful player so far is Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who in speech ridiculed as "desperate" the successful strategy implemented by Gen. Petraeus, which has dramatically reduced violence in Anbar province and saved both American and Iraqi lives. The alliance between the U.S. military and Sunni tribesmen has encouraged the Sunnis to stand against al Qaeda. "Are we placing our faith in the future of Iraq in the hands of some warlords?" asked Mr. Schumer with a sour verbal sneer. "Some tribal leaders who at the moment dislike al Qaeda more than they dislike us? Is this the vaunted clarion cry for democracy in the Middle East that the President announced when he started the build-up in Iraq?... This is a policy of desperation." ...
Moment of Truth in Iraq – Michael Duffy, Time Magazine
… Did the surge work?
Yes and no. After Bush kicked a handful of other generals out or upstairs early this year, Petraeus changed tactics abruptly, threw a ring of fresh troops around most of Baghdad and crimped the flow of explosives into the city, making life there markedly better. The surge took place in a belt of outposts around the capital, where troops barricaded roads into the city, worked with local residents to flush out insurgents and spent millions creating safe zones where markets and normal life could return. Average Iraqis tell Time that Baghdad feels safer; sectarian violence in the capital has been reduced, Pentagon officials say, and many Baghdad residents want the surge to continue. That's in part what the operation's architects had in mind when they sketched it out last fall.
But from the beginning, the surge was as much a political strategy as a military campaign. U.S. commanders in Iraq repeatedly stressed that American troops were simply buying time for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to do two things: buck up Iraqi security forces and take steps toward reconciliation that would, everyone hoped, lessen violence. The surge was designed to carve out a quiet space in which compromise rather than violence would rule. On this front, there is not much good news. Al-Maliki does not appear to need — or even want — to lead any hard negotiations. That's largely because the three major Shi'ite blocs in the Iraqi government are operating under what they feel is a historical mandate to undo centuries of injustice against them by Sunnis. In practice, this means giving the Sunnis no quarter in negotiations. "The Shi'ites feel they are carrying the burden of history and that they will betray their entire community if they agree to even one concession," says an Iraqi political analyst who asked not be be named. "This is not a matter of practical politics. It is a holy duty." …
The Measure of Progress - Wall Street Journal editorial
Progress toward a more secure Iraq has now reached a point where the President of the United States and his Secretaries of State and Defense can make a visit to Anbar province and meet with Sunni tribal chieftains once allied with al Qaeda. So what better time to trot out a Congressional report that suggests, in effect, that no progress is being made at all?We'll get to that report in a moment. What's more important is to note the changes that have taken place in Iraq, all of which indicate that the "surge" is working and that we are at last on our way toward a positive military outcome...
None of this is to say that we are out of the woods in Iraq, nor that there aren't risks associated with the alliances the U.S. military is now forming with Sunni sheiks who were previously allied with the insurgents. But neither would the gains that have plainly been made been possible without a new commander, a new strategy, a heightened tempo of operations and the military resources needed to sustain them.
In some other war, under some other Administration, all this would be cause for bipartisan rejoicing. So leave it to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to pounce on the Congressional report, written by the Government Accountability Office, to salvage the bad news from the good. "We can't continue to sacrifice American lives, deplete our treasure and weaken our national security in pursuit of a goal that the Iraqi people themselves show no interest in achieving," said the Nevada Democrat on Tuesday...
Troops Political Pawn in Iraq War – Marco Martinez, USA Today
You can tell a lot about a nation by whom it trusts.
I am a former gang member-turned-Marine, not a statistician. But when I read that a Pew Research Center survey recently found that 76% of Republicans "have confidence" in the U.S. military to give an accurate picture of the war vs. only 36% of Democrats, the long-range consequences of a divided country became clear: We've become a nation that sees its soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines as political pawns, not patriots. Like thousands of combat veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I am now home, working and attending college. Yet it is the pre-presidential election climate I see stateside that concerns me most for my brothers and sisters in arms.
Gen. David Petraeus, who has faced Herculean challenges of mortal consequence, will issue his report on progress in Iraq next week. Regardless of what he reports, it's worth reminding the American people — and all politicians in Washington — that the troops must not become the rope in a political tug of war on Capitol Hill.
When I hear members of Congress, such as House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., say that progress with the surge might create a "real big problem for us" in moving toward withdrawal, I think back to the hellish fighting my fellow Marines and I endured — and I feel ashamed that any American would make such a seemingly reckless political calculation. Knowing that a politician might view success in Iraq as an electoral problem is political zealotry in the extreme. Does Clyburn's remark, though his alone, reflect a growing anxiety among Democrats that success in Iraq might complicate plans for ending the war? ...
War Question - Diana West, Washington Times
The worst possible outcome of next week's congressional hearings on Iraq — already dubbed "Petraeus Week" after Gen. David Petraeus' dramatically anticipated testimony on whether "the surge" is working in Iraq — would be a political haggle over whether the surge is working in Iraq.Let's just say the surge defined as a military plan to enhance security in targeted sections of Iraqis working. As even The Washington Post owned up, "If there is one indisputable truth regarding the current offensive, it is this: When large numbers of U.S. troops are funneled into areas, security improves." No one needs four years at West Point or even two hours watching "Battleground" to figure that out. The cavalry rides in, things get better.
But there are other, more significant questions to hash out: namely, whether the strategy behind the surge still makes national security sense for the United States. That is, should a functioning state of Iraq — the ultimate goal of the surge (aside from the president's mirage-like vision of Iraq as a "friend" and "ally") — remain the overriding objective of U.S. foreign policy? ...
Iraq's Persian Puzzle - Christian Science Monitor editorial
As Congress tries again for consensus on Iraq, it can't ignore the other I-nation next door. Will Iran further deepen its hold over fellow Shiites in Iraq after an eventual US drawdown? That question underlies the renewed debate on Capitol Hill like a Persian rug.President Bush keeps raising the issue of Iran's ominous presence, both in influence over its neighbor as well as its ambitions as a nuclear and regional power. His claim is part of the administration's ever-evolving definition of threats in Iraq and of a US success. If Congress is to dismiss Mr. Bush's warnings and order troops to begin pulling out, it first needs to look hard at Iran's intentions and potential.
Fortunately, the Bush administration has tried to probe Tehran's designs. Since 2003, it has had indirect talks with Iran about its nuclear program (through European allies) and this year started a series of direct talks about Iraq.
Both negotiations, however, appear to be failing as Iran has ramped up its uranium enrichment and still materially supports Iraqi militants' attacks on US soldiers. It seems to prefer an American quagmire in Iraq so the US can't strike Iran's nuclear facilities. This has led to a rising diplomatic confrontation and added UN sanctions against Iran...
Adding Centrifuges to the Fire - Claude Salhani, Washington Times
New reports from Iran say the Islamic Republic is running more than 3,000 centrifuges, which is certain to augment fears in Washington and Western Europe that Iran's nuclear program is for military, rather than civilian, use, as Iran's leadership insists.
The announcement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday also will likely augment the likelihood of an attack by the United States on Iran's nuclear production plants and installations. Iran's main nuclear facilities, according to Alireza Jafarzadeh, an exile with close links to the Iranian opposition, are those at Natanz and Arak.
According to a report published in the London Sunday Times, the Pentagon has drawn up plans to conduct "massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days." The Times quotes Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, a conservative policy institute. Mr. Debat told a conference in Washington last week that U.S. military planners are talking "about taking out the entire Iranian military." ...
Al Qaeda’s Hope – Clifford May, National Review
As the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001 approaches, we should be grateful: Al Qaeda has not successfully attacked Americans a second time on American soil. We also should be distressed: Americans are debating whether to fight al Qaeda — or whether to retreat from the one battlefield on which we have a chance to seriously damage al Qaeda, both militarily and ideologically. That battlefield is in Iraq. True, a case can be made that had President Bush not invaded Iraq, we would not need to fight al Qaeda in Iraq. But that is irrelevant to the question policy makers need to decide: Do we continue battling al Qaeda in Iraq? Or do we stop — and let al Qaeda combatants in Iraq live to fight another day? …
Avoiding Surprise – Austin Bay, Washington Times
… The sixth anniversary of September 11 is an appropriate moment to reflect on the vexingly complex problem of surprise, and particularly strategic surprise. The problem has no solution, at least no perfect solution. Unless you know the future, surprise is inevitable.Limiting the more devastating effects of surprise is the elegant trick that defines the best-prepared. I think the insurance industry uses the term "lowering the risk premium." That means limiting the number of lives lost, the property damage and the costs of assuring security.
Last month, the CIA inspector general's office released its assessment of the CIA's pre-September 11 efforts. The report was damning. The CIA had sources, leads and facts, but it lacked imagination — the dynamic imagination to foresee al Qaeda's planned attack…
A Weird Way to Wage War – Adam Brodsky, New York Post
As Americans mark the sixth anniversary of the start of the War on Terror this Tuesday, we can be thankful that our response to the attack, so far, has averted any follow-up on our shores. At the same time, though, some of our actions post-9/11 have been, well . . . weird.
And potentially self-destructive.
What's been most inexplicable is the urge to accommodate the enemy. It's almost as if we've felt guilty about our ability to prevail and want to even the sides, handicapping ourselves and giving the enemy every edge…
Domestic Focus Deflects from Need to Rein in Iran – Michael Costello, The Australian
… This is a distraction from the opportunity to confront much bigger issues for Australia's future, none more so than the risk of two extremely dangerous countries getting nuclear weapons.One is North Korea. The six-nation talks, made up of North Korea and five partners, have made some progress in getting Pyongyang's agreement to cease and desist from developing nuclear weapons. But we have been there before. North Korea has given similar undertakings in the past and cheated. The verification arrangements in this deal are weak.
Note that the leaders of all five partner nations are here in Australia: Russia, South Korea, Japan, China and the US. This is a tremendous opportunity for them to agree to push for much tougher verification requirements on North Korea. This applies particularly to China, which has more leverage on North Korea than anyone.
Even more dangerous, however, is the situation in Iran. For years, Iran has been cheating on its nuclear undertakings. It continues to do so. The US agreed several years ago to use the diplomacy route to try to get Iran to abide by its undertakings and has worked conscientiously during the past several years to see what progress can be made. It agreed to let the European Union take the lead because the EU thought it was better at this sort of thing than the Americans. Yet Iran remains defiant…
Rudd Offers a Cheeky Lesson in Soft Power - Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald
When Kevin Rudd met George Bush yesterday, he handed the leader of the free world two books. One was David Day's biography of John Curtin, Australia's much admired leader during World War II.Curtin was the man who, in Australia's most desperate hour, unprotected by Britain and facing Japanese invasion, famously issued the declaration that "Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom." It was the origin of the Australia-US alliance.
Rudd chose to give Bush this book to make the point that, as he put it yesterday, "there had been earlier relationships between Australian Labor prime ministers and American presidents and we faced common challenges together."
The other book? It was The Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World…
Post-9/11 Hubris – Victor Davis Hanson, National Review
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…
Forget Our Peril – Cal Thomas, Washington Times
Throughout our young history, Americans have been admonished to "Remember the Alamo," "Remember the Maine" and "Remember Pearl Harbor." These remembrances — and others — were for the purpose of motivating the public to fight on until an enemy was vanquished. When victory was assured, the memory faded into history.
Now, as we approach the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001, there are suggestions we should begin to forget the worst terrorist incident in America's history. Recently, a Page One story in the New York Times suggested it is becoming too much of a burden to remember the attack, that nothing new can be said about it and that, perhaps, September 11 "fatigue" may be setting in…
The Detainee Quagmire - Michael Gerson, Washington Post
If the president, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense all want to see the Guantanamo Bay prison closed before they leave office -- as they do -- why does it remain open?When asked this question directly, senior administration officials -- some of the ones charged with implementing such changes -- reveal the difficulties of turning a gesture into a policy...
As much as we'd like this facility to simply disappear, it exists for a reason. Captured terrorists remain dangerous; they know they are at war with us even when we question it ourselves. And the circumstances of their capture often make normal legal prosecutions -- witnesses and proof beyond a reasonable doubt -- impossible. Some were captured by other countries. Some were identified by classified or inadmissible evidence. And in a war zone such as Afghanistan, there is little concern for preserving an unbroken chain of evidence. For all these reasons, the long tradition of war allows captured combatants to be detained until hostilities end -- not to punish them but to prevent them from returning to the battlefield...
MacFarquhar Strikes Again - Steve Emerson, National Review
Another New York Times article by Neil MacFarquhar on an Islamist group in America means another complete whitewash.
In his latest effort (Abandon Stereotypes, Muslims in America Say) in what has become a disturbing trend, MacFarquhar covered the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention over Labor Day Weekend. In his article, MacFarquhar not only gives a free pass to Islamists, but at the same time dismisses legitimate criticism of the Department of Justice’s presence at the conference (which seems especially inappropriate, and newsworthy, when it is considered that ISNA has been named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the ongoing Hamas fundraising trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)). In the process, MacFarquhar completely ignores damning information about ISNA that came out during trial, including such things as its foundations in the Muslim Brotherhood, and its multiple financial contributions to Hamas through its subsidiary, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT)...
Unprotected Darfur – Boston Globe editorial
This is the fifth year of the Darfur genocide. The protracted failure of the international community to rescue the victims has made a mockery of the United Nations' 2005 resolution declaring a responsibility to protect civilians who are not protected, or who are being killed, by their governments. Given the UN's sad record of allowing Sudan's National Islamic Front regime to thwart efforts to halt the ethnic cleansing, murdering, and raping of villagers in Darfur, it is hard not to be skeptical about the outcome of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's visit this week to Sudan.
Ban went there to prepare the way for deployment of a "hybrid" force of 26,000 African Union and UN peacekeepers, as mandated in a Security Council resolution that was approved in July (after being watered down at China's insistence). During his visit, Ban justifiably stressed that "it is crucially important that a political negotiation process start now."
If there is no peace to keep, the UN and AU soldiers and police will be hard-pressed to carry out their mission: to protect more than 2 million uprooted refugees so that they can eventually return to their villages; to protect humanitarian workers along with the food and medical supplies they deliver to the at-risk population; and to defend themselves…
Kosovo: Europe’s Challenge - Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband, Guardian
No European can forget the atrocities that took place in the Balkans during the 1990s. No European can forget the scenes of brutality, murder and mass deportation. At the moment when the fate of Kosovo returns to the forefront of international attention, no European should forget the tragic events that motivated the international community to intervene: we are confronted today with the last stage in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.The region's return to stability and normality has been thanks in large part to the action of the European Union: European countries have contributed international troops and police as well as significant financial assistance to the Balkans. And the perspective of entering Europe has encouraged the countries of the region to adopt crucial reforms.
That commitment to ensuring the stability of Europe and the future of the Balkans must today guide our approach to Kosovo. The approach we take must also recognise the particular circumstances of Kosovo's recent history and the unique nature of this issue…
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