Letting Soldiers do the Thinking – George Will, Washington Post

Officers studying at the Army War College walk the ground at nearby Gettysburg where Pickett's men walked across an open field under fire. They wonder: How did Confederate officers get men to do that? The lesson: Men can be led to places they cannot be sent.

Today's officers lead an Army that was sent into Iraq in 2003, and by 2004 the operation became, as an officer here says, "a deployment in search of a mission." Since then, missions have multiplied. Today's is to make possible an exit strategy. Gen. David Petraeus's Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual says counterinsurgency's primary objective is to secure the civilian population rather than destroy the enemy. This inevitably involves the military in organizing civil society, a task that demands skill sets that are scarce throughout the government and have not hitherto been, and perhaps should not be, central to military training and doctrine. Nevertheless, the War College is coming to grips with the fact that what soldiers call "nonkinetic" -- meaning nonviolent -- facets of their profession are, in Iraq, perhaps 80 percent of their profession.

For soldiers, the tempo of change, technological as well as intellectual (and technological change is a driver of intellectual change), is accelerating. For centuries, nations assumed that they could be seriously threatened only by other nations; that terrorism was a weapon of the weak and therefore a weak weapon; that wars are won by large, decisive battles…

The Tide is Turning in Iraq – Kimberly Kagan, Wall Street Journal

The initial concept of the "surge" strategy in Iraq was to secure Baghdad and its immediate environs, which is why its proper name was the "Baghdad Security Plan." But as President Bush pointed out during his surprise trip to Iraq, operations and events on the ground are already showing successes well beyond Baghdad in Anbar, Diyala and Salahaddin provinces--formerly al Qaeda strongholds and hotbeds of the Sunni insurgency.

Considering the speed with which these successes have developed, and the rapidly growing grass-roots movement among Iraqis to support the effort, there is every reason to be optimistic about the prospects for establishing security in Iraq, and every reason to continue supporting the current strategy…

Skillful combat--and skillful negotiation--have transformed the area formerly known as "the triangle of death" into a region of dawning, if precarious, stability. As coalition forces consolidate their gains in these areas, they are also striking Shiite militia sanctuaries east of Baghdad and further south and east along the Tigris River valley. Gen. Odierno and his division commanders cleared territory gradually throughout Phantom Thunder and Phantom Strike, so that they could hold it after clearing operations.

The tribal movement begun in Anbar has spread throughout central Iraq, as thousands of Sunnis have either volunteered to join the Iraqi Security Forces or formed local defense groups under Iraqi government and coalition auspices. These "concerned citizens" groups springing up throughout central Iraq have not been previously observed on this scale in the country. They permit U.S. and Iraqi forces to hold territory they have cleared more effectively. The volunteers who make up these groups, recruited and deployed in their own neighborhoods, have incentives to protect their families and communities. They are not independent militias, however. They are partnered with Iraqi Security Forces and coalition forces…

Can the Democrats Say Yes? – David Ignatius, Washington Post

A leading Democratic Party strategist is trying to explain how the politics of Iraq are likely to play out in the days after Gen. David Petraeus gives his report tomorrow on the progress of the war. The strategist grabs my notebook and writes out the word "yes."

"The challenge for us is whether we will be able to take 'yes' for an answer," explains this prominent Democrat. By "yes," he means the likelihood that President Bush will follow up Petraeus's declaration that security conditions have improved modestly by announcing that he will begin reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq this year -- as Bush said he would like to do during a brief stop in Iraq last week.

The strategist notes that the administration is simultaneously moving toward a second longtime Democratic goal -- of allowing a "soft partition" of Iraq at a time when national political reconciliation seems impossible. This soft-partition approach is inherent in Petraeus's "bottom-up" alliance with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province, which is the big success he and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will report. The consistent champion of this idea of bottom-up devolution of power has been Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden. So that's a "yes," too, if the Democrats choose to accept it…

What’s Missing in Baghdad – Thomas Friedman, New York Times (subscription required)

One of the most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion is just how empty the Arab dictatorships are. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque. There is nothing in between — no civil society, no real labor unions, no real human rights groups, no real parliaments or press. So it is not surprising to see the sort of clerical leadership that has emerged in both the Sunni and Shiite areas of Iraq.

But this is not true in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan. Though not a full-fledged democracy, Kurdistan is developing the key elements of a civil society. I met in Erbil with 20 such Kurdish groups — unions, human rights and political watchdogs, editors and women’s associations. It is worth studying what went right in Kurdistan to understand what we still can and can’t do to promote democratization in the rest of Iraq and the Arab world.

The United States played a critical role in Kurdistan. In 1998, we helped to resolve the Kurdish civil war — the power struggle between two rival clans — which created the possibility of a stable, power-sharing election in 2005. And by removing Saddam, we triggered a flood of foreign investment here.

But that is all we did. Today, there are almost no U.S. soldiers or diplomats in Kurdistan. Yet politics here is flourishing, as is the economy, because the Kurds want it that way. Down south, we’ve spent billions trying to democratize the Sunni and Shiite zones and have little to show for it…

Setting the Tone – Oliver North, Washington Times

The commander in chief's "surprise" Labor Day visit to Iraq has buoyed our troops, reassured an anxious ally and confounded America's adversaries in radical Islam. Whether the president's on-site evaluation will change the political dynamic in Washington or alter the behavior of Iraq's neighbors remains to be seen.

For several months now, President Bush has been urged in this column to put Iraq on his travel itinerary. This past week's six-hour visit to "the front" — his third since U.S. troops entered Mesopotamia in March 2003 — is particularly important to the upcoming congressional debate on the future of our commitment to a stable and independent Iraq. His trip comes just one week before the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, are scheduled to testify before Congress with their assessments of the war effort thus far.

The venue Mr. Bush chose for his on-scene evaluation is also important. Al Asad Air Base in western Al Anbar is the headquarters for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, the 3rd Marine Air Wing and home to the Iraqi Border Patrol Academy. It's also the largest Coalition facility in a province that just a year ago was "written off" as "unwinnable" by most of the so-called mainstream media, political opponents of U.S. policy, and even some in our military…

Accepting Iraqi Reality – Washington Post editorial

Multiple reports on the "surge" of U.S. forces in Iraq -- including that due tomorrow from Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker -- ought to compel both the Bush administration and congressional Democrats to rethink their strategies. First and foremost, President Bush must accept the fact that what he defined as the principal objective of the military offensive, the stimulation of an Iraqi political settlement, has not been achieved. As we and many others anticipated, the idea that Iraqi leaders would take advantage of greater security in the country to strike deals was unrealistic; few of the political benchmarks Mr. Bush agreed on with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have been met.

But Democrats who have spent the past few months proclaiming that "this war is lost," as Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) put it, also have an adjustment to make. That's because the military results of the past few months have been in some respects undeniably positive. The surge appears to have modestly improved security in and around Baghdad and reversed the previous momentum toward all-out civil war. According to the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, a group of retired U.S. military officers and police commissioned by Congress, there has been improvement in the Iraqi army and security forces, and more progress can be expected if U.S. training programs continue…

Hiding Behind the General – New York Times editorial

The military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is to deliver a report to Congress on Monday that could be the most consequential testimony by a wartime commander in more than a generation. What the country desperately needs is an honest assessment of the war and a clear strategy for extricating American forces from the hopeless spiral of violence in Iraq.

President Bush, however, seems to be aiming for maximum political advantage — not maximum clarity on Iraq’s military and political crises, which cannot be separated from each other. Mr. Bush, we fear, isn’t looking for the truth, only for ways to confound the public, scare Democrats into dropping their demands for a sound exit strategy, and prolong the war until he leaves office. At times, General Petraeus gives the disturbing impression that he, too, is more focused on the political game in Washington than the unfolding disaster in Iraq. That serves neither American nor Iraqi interests.

Mr. Bush, deeply unpopular with the American people, is counting on the general to restore credibility to his discredited Iraq policy. He frequently refers to the escalation of American forces last January as General Petraeus’s strategy — as if it were not his own creation. The situation echoes the way Mr. Bush made Colin Powell — another military man with an overly honed sense of a soldier’s duty — play frontman at the United Nations in 2003 to make the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush cannot once again subcontract his responsibility. This is his war…

Bush Must Accept Bloody Reality and Follow our Fumbling Retreat – Simon Jenkins, London Times

The American and British armies do not have to withdraw from Iraq. They are powerful and can stay as long as they wish, even if entombed like French legionnaires in desert forts and sustained at great cost in lives and money.

Their governments are a different matter. They need reasons for occupying foreign countries and now face humiliation in the greatest war of ideological intervention since Vietnam. They are praying for their armies to save them from this humiliation.

This week David Petraeus, the talented American general in Baghdad, reports on the progress of his “surge” strategy to an impatient Congress. Two thirds of Americans have joined two thirds of world opinion in wanting a swift American withdrawal, defined as inside a year. Petraeus’s predicament is therefore agonising. He cannot possibly offer victory. He can offer only defeat or a desperate clinging on, as now. For George Bush, his commander-in-chief, only the last is imaginable. Petraeus must therefore forget about a better yesterday or a better tomorrow, and concentrate on today…

As the Iraqis Stand Down, We’ll Stand Up – Frank Rich, New York Times (subscription required)

It will be all 9/11 all the time this week, as the White House yet again synchronizes its drumbeating for the Iraq war with the anniversary of an attack that had nothing to do with Iraq. Ignore that fog and focus instead on another date whose anniversary passed yesterday without notice: Sept. 8, 2002. What happened on that Sunday five years ago is the Rosetta Stone for the administration's latest scam.

That was the morning when the Bush White House officially rolled out its fraudulent case for the war. The four horsemen of the apocalypse — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice — were dispatched en masse to the Washington talk shows, where they eagerly pointed to a front-page New York Times article amplifying subsequently debunked administration claims that Saddam had sought to buy aluminum tubes meant for nuclear weapons. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condoleezza Rice on CNN, introducing a sales pitch concocted by a White House speechwriter.

What followed was an epic propaganda onslaught of distorted intelligence, fake news, credulous and erroneous reporting by bona fide journalists, presidential playacting and Congressional fecklessness. Much of it had been plotted that summer of 2002 by the then-secret White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a small task force of administration brass charged with the Iraq con job…

Stand by Our Man in Pakistan – Anthony Zinni, Washington Post

As the turn of the millennium drew closer in December 1999, Jordanian officials uncovered a terrorist plan to attack U.S. tourists visiting Middle Eastern sites during the New Year holidays. They arrested the suspects and gained valuable intelligence on their plans and leadership. Washington went on red alert, fearing further plots.

At the time, I was commander of the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East. Senior State Department officials asked me to contact Pakistan's ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to see whether he would conduct operations to seize the leaders of an al-Qaeda cell in Pakistan who had been identified by the terrorists now in Jordanian hands. Musharraf agreed, and his forces captured the jihadists. I was asked to contact him again to inquire whether U.S. interrogators could have access to those arrested. He said yes. Three more requests were made, and each time he agreed.

I asked the U.S. officials using me as a conduit whether, as a result of Musharraf's cooperation, we could improve our ties with his government and military. The answer was a flat no. I told Musharraf that I felt bad about this lack of appreciation and lack of understanding of the strategic importance of our nations' relationship. "I don't want anything for this," he replied. "I did it because it was the right thing to do."

That story sticks out in my mind these days, as it becomes increasingly fashionable to bash the embattled Musharraf. There's no such thing as a perfect ally, of course…

Poppies in Taliban Fields – Jacob Sallum, Washington Times

According to a recent report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, 19,047 hectares of poppies were eradicated in Afghanistan this year, 24 percent more than in 2006. Meanwhile, the number of opium-free provinces more than doubled, from six to 13.

Those victories were somewhat overshadowed by the news that the total land devoted to opium poppies in Afghanistan rose from 165,000 to 193,000 hectares, an increase of 17 percent. Due to "favorable weather conditions," estimated opium production rose even more, hitting an all-time high of 8,200 metric tons, 34 percent more than the previous record, set last year.

Since their efforts have had precisely the opposite of the result they intended, U.S. drug warriors, predictably enough, plan to try harder, calling for more eradication, possibly including aerial spraying of herbicide, and more interdiction. Over the long term, if history is any guide, these supply reduction measures will have little or no impact on heroin consumption. Over the short term, they will continue to strengthen the Taliban insurgency…

Scarier than bin-Laden – Bruce Hoffman, Washington Post

We don't usually think of terrorists as grand strategists. We're more likely to dismiss them as crazed killers or mindless misanthropes. But as another anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks approaches -- amid reports from U.S. intelligence sources that al-Qaeda is marshaling its reconstituted forces for a spectacular new attack on the United States -- it's time to recognize the strategic vision that has driven and shaped the terrorist movement for the past six years.

Even more urgently, we need to drop our preoccupation with Osama bin Laden, which is once again being fueled by his latest video. But Bin Laden's days as the movement's guiding star are over. The United States' most formidable nemesis now is not the Saudi terrorist leader but his nominal deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri…

Bin Laden Unplugged - Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Weekly Standard

Osama bin Laden’s strength as an orator has always been his ethos. He is an eloquent and seemingly honest speaker, proud of his role in the attacks of 9/11, a principled spokesman for radical Islam's war against the West. Though bin Laden may not have penned all his words personally, the force of his ideas always shines through. As Bruce Lawrence notes in Messages to the World, "these messages are not ghostwritten tracts of the kind supplied by professional speechwriters to many politicians in the West, whether American Presidents, European Prime Ministers, or their Middle-Eastern counterparts."

In bin Laden's last video--released on October 29, 2004, on the eve of America's presidential election--bin Laden mocked President Bush: "Free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike--for example--Sweden?" But even while skewering President Bush for his simplistic framing of the conflict, bin Laden has been hesitant to explain the roots of the struggle to a Western audience. (His rhetoric differs when the target audience is Western rather than Muslim.) The closest he has come was the October 2004 video, where bin Laden outlined his grievances at length and urged his audience to look for 9/11's "causes in order to prevent it from happening again."

This vagueness has led some commentators to conclude that bin Laden is fundamentally a political terrorist rather than a religious one…

War on Terror is Working - Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

If there was one thing we all knew after Sept. 11, 2001, it was that another massacre was coming. The next terrorist attack on US soil, it was asserted time and again, was not a matter of if, but of when.

Americans weren't the only ones who expected Al Qaeda to commit another slaughter. Al Qaeda did, too. Earlier this year, terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed that in addition to 9/11, he had been planning to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Empire State Building, and to blow up US embassies and nuclear power plants.

None of those attacks occurred. In the six years since 9/11, Islamist terrorism has led to scenes of horrific carnage in, among other places, Madrid, London, Bali, Istanbul, Israel, and Russia. Yet there has been no catastrophic attack on the American homeland - something no one would have predicted in 2001. What explains such good fortune? ...

Are We Safer Today? – Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, Washington Post

Two years ago, we and our colleagues issued a report card assessing the U.S. government's progress on the bipartisan recommendations in the 9/11 commission report. We concluded that the nation was not safe enough. Our judgment remains the same today: We still lack a sense of urgency in the face of grave danger.

The U.S. homeland confronts a "persistent and evolving terrorist threat," especially from al-Qaeda, according to a National Intelligence Estimate issued in July. Six years after the attacks, following a series of ambitious reforms carried out by dedicated officials, how is it possible that the threat remains so dire?

The answer stems from a mixed record of reform, a lack of focus and a resilient foe. Progress at home -- in our ability to detect, prevent and respond to terrorist attacks -- has been difficult, incomplete and slow, but it has been real…

Fading Superpower? – David Rieff, Los Angeles Times

In Washington these days, people talk a lot about the collapse of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus that existed during the Cold War. But however bitter today's disputes are about Iraq or the prosecution of the so-called global war on terrorism, there is one bedrock assumption about foreign policy that remains truly bipartisan: The United States will remain the sole superpower, and the guarantor of international security and global trade, for the foreseeable future. In other words, whatever else may change in the decades to come, the 21st century will be every bit as much of an American century as the 20th…

It is hardly farfetched to scan the historical record and conclude that self-love and imperialism go together, whether it was the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes insisting that British colonialism in Africa had been "philanthropy plus 5%" or President Bush insisting that it was America's special mission to spread democracy throughout the world. But what the historical record also shows is that imperial moments are, in fact, fleeting, and that hegemony has a shorter and shorter shelf life. The Roman Empire lasted more than 700 years (more than a millennium if you count the Byzantines); the British Empire lasted a little more than 300 years in India and less than a century in much of Africa. The economic challenges facing the U.S. at least suggest that America's time as sole superpower could be shorter still…

Tony Blair vs. History – Jim Hoagland, Washington Post

Willful optimism is Tony Blair's strong suit. He hurls himself at hard cases with ironclad confidence in his ability to make history see reason. Take the liberation of Kosovo, which he spearheaded, or Northern Ireland's peace accord, which he coaxed into being. For less happy results, take the war in Iraq.

The former British prime minister journeys this month into the diplomatic wastelands of the Middle East -- with one hand seemingly tied behind him. This time, Blair confronts a challenge that may shred even his hardy historical optimism.

Some who commissioned him to represent the diplomatic artifice known as "The Quartet" -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- have come to fear that Blair will try to do too much, not too little, as special envoy to Israel and the Palestinians…

Our Man in Panama – Everett Ellis Briggs, New York Times

The deposed dictator of Panama, Manuel Antonio Noriega, was to have been released from a federal prison outside Miami today after serving 15 years of a 30-year sentence for narcotics trafficking. Instead, he remains behind bars pending extradition to France, where he is wanted for money laundering. And that’s not Mr. Noriega’s only legal problem: in Panama there is a warrant for his arrest for the 1985 assassination of a political opponent, Hugo Spadafora.

As Mr. Noriega re-emerges from the shadows, it’s worth remembering how badly the United States mishandled the Panamanian misadventure, which led to the loss of hundreds of lives and cost us politically throughout the region. Mr. Noriega’s rise and fall is instructive only insofar as it tells us how the United States should not conduct itself when faced with a thuggish foreign dictator who happens also to have been a longtime intelligence “asset.” …

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