The Dignity Agenda – David Ignatius, Washington Post
"We talk about democracy and human rights. Iraqis talk about justice and honor." That comment from Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, made at a seminar last month on counterinsurgency, is the beginning of wisdom for an America that is trying to repair the damage of recent years. It applies not simply to Iraq but to the range of problems in a world tired of listening to an American megaphone.
Dignity is the issue that vexes billions of people around the world, not democracy. Indeed, when people hear President Bush preaching about democratic values, it often comes across as a veiled assertion of American power. The implicit message is that other countries should be more like us -- replacing their institutions, values and traditions with ours. We mean well, but people feel disrespected. The bromides and exhortations are a further assault on their dignity.
… That's why it's encouraging to hear that Rice is taking policy advice from Kilcullen, a brilliant Australian military officer who helped reshape U.S. strategy in Iraq toward the bottom-up precepts of counterinsurgency. Sources tell me Kilcullen will soon be joining the State Department as a part-time consultant. For a taste of his thinking, check out his Sept. 26 presentation to a Marine Corps seminar...
Getting Iraq to Work – Jim Goldby, Washington Post
I'm sick of hearing about all the horrible things that happen in Iraq without ever hearing about any of the good ones. That's not because horrible things don't occur here every day; they do. I've witnessed far more death and sadness than I wish anyone ever had to see. And it's not because I believe in some left-wing media conspiracy. If I'm affiliated with a political party at all, I honestly can't remember which one it is.
Rather, I'm sick of hearing about all the horrible things that happen in Iraq because I've been deployed here for more than 24 months since this war began, and I think I have a story to tell that's heroic, maybe even noble. It's not my story. In fact, I'm quite average, and I'm certainly not noble. But I've been blessed to serve with some amazing officers, noncommissioned officers and soldiers who have sacrificed another 15 months away from their families -- and, for once, produced something that I don't think looks all that bad, even in this desolate country.
Over the last six months, I've served at a large U.S. base in Iraq. My soldiers and I have been responsible for securing the area around the main entrance. We've played a major role in protecting thousands of soldiers and civilians who reside on the base. That's a significant accomplishment in itself, even though it's not sexy, and it has required a lot of discipline and dedication from my troops to do it so well…
The Right Way to Withdraw – James Dobbins, Los Angeles Times
Iraq is like a variable-rate mortgage with balloon payments and a stiff withdrawal penalty -- much cheaper to get into than out of.
Had we not invaded Iraq, there are any number of better things we could do to fight terror with the billions the administration plans to spend in Iraq this year. But the issue before us today is not whether to initiate the conflict but how to terminate it.
Having toppled Saddam Hussein and dismantled his government, the United States has assumed weighty responsibilities for about 28 million people whom we cannot in good conscience shirk. At least 4 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes. Two million of them have already fled the country, and the numbers continue to rise. For their hosts, these uprooted populations represent ticking time bombs, further burdening weak states and polarizing already divided societies. If the Iraqi refugees cannot go home -- which would require a peaceful, negotiated settlement among the Iraqi factions -- then the United States will have a moral obligation to support them. They will be a burden on the U.S. taxpayer, as on the rest of the international community, for decades to come…
One More Year in Iraq – Anthony Cordesman, Los Angeles Times
Is it really worth spending $190 billion this year on the war on Iraq? The answer may well be no, but the U.S. is already so deeply committed that it should take the risk -- for one more year.
Part of the tragedy of Iraq is that all the major cards have been dealt, and it is too late to change most elements of U.S. strategy. The leaders of Iraq's sectarian and ethnic factions are shaping events far more than the United States can. The most the U.S. can do now is to continue to pressure all sides into some form of political accommodation.
What leverage we have at this point does not lie in threatening to leave but in offering more incentives in the form of aid and long-term support. And if we can succeed in bringing the opposing sides together, it will be worth it. There is nothing pretty about what is happening: more than 2 million refugees driven from the country, according to U.N. estimates; 2 million displaced inside Iraq; 80,000 to 100,000 more driven from their homes each month; 8 million in dire poverty and perhaps 100,000 dead and many more wounded…
The War is Already Lost – Winslow Wheeler, Los Angeles Times
Spending an additional $190 billion in Iraq this year fighting a war that has already been lost will only waste more American lives and aid the enemy -- as it has already. Bringing the troops home, as we must, won't be cheap either. There are mountains of equipment to refurbish and thousands upon thousands of veterans with visible and invisible wounds to heal; only a small part of those costs has been paid for so far. Expect the human and materiel repair bill to be more than $30 billion -- just for the first year -- based on the Pentagon's own estimates for equipment repair and replacement. The costs of helping our veterans haven't begun to be measured.
As all Iraqis know, the American occupation devastated their country and unleashed murderous forces. Some of the latter will be directed at those Iraqis who are seen as collaborators. We owe any Iraqi friends refuge here. We also owe refuge, here or elsewhere, to the 2 million Iraqis who have already fled their country in fear. An America that turns its back on them is not America. Judging from our experience in rescuing and resettling refugees from the Vietnam War, the cost will be tens of billions of dollars…
Spend Whatever it Takes on the War on Terror – Frederick Kagan, Los Angeles Times
Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan is vital to U.S. national security, and we must spend whatever it takes to win in both places. The $190 billion requested for this year is still less than 1.5% of our gross domestic product, a small burden given the enormity of the stakes. We are in a desperate war against terrorists who have vowed to destroy us, yet our military remains about the same size as it was in the 1990s.
America's top priority for weakening Islamist terror groups should be to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is the increasingly important offshoot of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It cannot be allowed to grow stronger. Already, Al Qaeda has used the Soviet failure in Afghanistan and U.S. retreats from Somalia and Lebanon as proof of the strength of its ideology. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanese Hezbollah (whose agents are supporting Shiite extremists in Iraq), has said that the U.S. will withdraw in shame from Iraq as we did from Vietnam. We must not allow that prediction to come true.
Some people say we must get out of Iraq immediately because our presence there serves only to recruit more people to the ranks of theradical Islamists. But honestly, the presence of American forces in any numbers in a Muslim land can serve as a recruiting tool. It doesn't matter to the terrorists if there are 160,000 Americans in Iraq or 160 -- the propaganda about "U.S. occupation" will be just the same. It does matter if they can claim to have defeated us again…
Tangling with the Taliban – Matthew Kaminski, Wall Street Journal
Gen. John Craddock sits in Dwight Eisenhower's old chair at the head of NATO forces. A tank commander, the West Virginia native spent 14 years in Germany faced off against the Russians. The other day, half a world away from the Fulda Gap, he found himself at the improvised hilltop base of a U.S. 82nd Airborne platoon peering across a different sort of front line.
Beyond these wooded hills and ravines are the Pakistani sanctuaries for the Taliban and al Qaeda who've in recent months crossed, mostly at night, in growing numbers. The U.S. doubled the number of combat troops in eastern Afghanistan, and the 82nd Airborne--part of the 40,000-strong NATO mission here--opened three new border posts. The boosted presence partly accounts for the intense fighting. "We're more offensive, not just waiting to be hit," an American lieutenant colonel on his second tour tells Gen. Craddock.
But this is a frustrating game of hide-and-seek where the enemy is hard to spot--is that goat herder also an al Qaeda lookout?--and the insurgency leadership a jumble of names and allegiances. Southeast of Kabul, seasoned Arab, Uzbek and Chechen foreigners command Afghans, referring to them sometimes as "sheep," according to Command Sgt. Maj. Richard Weik. Further north, men loyal to Jalaluddin Haqqani, a powerful jihadist who joined up with the Taliban, are in the lead, brazenly kidnapping and harassing villagers and manning roadblocks not far from Kabul.
Gen. Craddock separates the Taliban--estimated between 5,000 and 20,000 strong--into "day fighters," who take up arms for money, and "a hard-core extremist leadership [that] will never change." What fuels the rising violence in Afghanistan may be as much indigence and tribal feuding as al Qaeda ideology. Hamid Karzai's government pushes economic development and reaches out to so-called Taliban moderates--with little to show for it. And the supply of fighters, foreign and Afghan, won't dry up as long as western Pakistan provides the kind of safe haven that America pledged to destroy after 9/11…
Preemption, Israeli Style - Joshua Muravchik, Los Angeles Times
Last month, one of the more mysterious episodes in the history of the Arab-Israel conflict began to leak slowly into the news. Although the facts are still unconfirmed, what seems to have happened has major implications not only for the region but even more for the laws of war and preemption that President Bush has been trying to redefine ever since his 2002 national security strategy paper.
First, Syrian spokesmen complained that Israeli planes had violated their country's airspace on Sept. 6 -- and had been driven off, or so they said. Within a few days came stories -- mostly from anonymous sources -- that the planes had fired into Syria; these were followed by still other stories that a target had in fact been hit. But what was it?
After further journalistic digging, the most plausible accounts said that the Syrian targets were related to nuclear weapons activity and may even have been manned by North Koreans. Later reports suggest some dispute within the U.S. government about how far Syria had progressed in achieving its nuclear ambitions, but these same reports confirm that this is what Israel was targeting…
Military Compensation Far Short of Fair – London Daily Telegraph leader
Military personnel who risk life and limb in the service of this country are entitled to expect that, if they are wounded, they will be looked after by the Government that sent them into battle. But while an RAF typist who suffered a strain injury to her thumb received close to half a million pounds, Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, who lost both legs and suffered brain damage from stepping on a mine in Afghanistan, was "recompensed" with £285,000. The MoD initially offered substantially less. It was only last week that the department finally and belatedly recognised that its rules for compensating personnel who suffer multiple injuries were inadequate.
Even the new rules on compensation, however, fall far short of what fairness demands. This shames the Government and it shames the rest of us, in whose name it is being done. The MoD says it only follows the rules laid down by the politicians, and to some extent that excuse has weight. Yet there appears to have been a reluctance on the part of both senior officials in the department and the military's top brass to press for improvements. Both should have done more to combat the impression that, as LBdr Parkinson's mother expressed it, "the injured are simply figures on a balance sheet. The MoD wants to dispose of them as cheaply as possible"…
Surveillance Update – Washington Post editorial
When it comes to updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for a new technological age, the Bush administration refuses to take yes for an answer.
The House is poised this week to take up a carefully crafted revision to the law that addresses the administration's valid complaint about the old statute: that because of technological changes in international communications, intelligence agencies were being required to go through the time-consuming process of obtaining court orders to eavesdrop on foreign targets. The measure produced by the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees would alleviate the burden of obtaining individualized warrants in such situations while still maintaining a critical oversight role for the FISA court. Instead of having to seek warrants on a case-by-case basis, intelligence agencies would be able to obtain blanket, year-long orders from the court for such surveillance programs. However, the FISA court would have to approve the procedures under which that surveillance is conducted -- specifically, to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect the privacy of Americans whose communications with foreigners happen to be intercepted…
Spies, Lies and FISA – New York Times editorial
As Democratic lawmakers try to repair a deeply flawed bill on electronic eavesdropping, the White House is pumping out the same fog of fear and disinformation it used to push the bill through Congress this summer. President Bush has been telling Americans that any change would deny the government critical information, make it easier for terrorists to infiltrate, expose state secrets, and make it harder “to save American lives.”
There is no truth to any of those claims. No matter how often Mr. Bush says otherwise, there is also no disagreement from the Democrats about the need to provide adequate tools to fight terrorists. The debate is over whether this should be done constitutionally, or at the whim of the president…
The ‘Good German’ Among Us – Frank Rich, New York Times
… Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.” …
Name Dispute of Ethnic Misdeeds? - Metodija Koloski, Washington Times
In August 1903, Macedonian patriots rose against the Ottoman Empire. While they won Macedonian independence for only a limited time, it was clear that Macedonian national consciousness was alive.
Today, there is a nonsensical "dispute" about the same land, as Greece denies the right of the Republic of Macedonia to call itself by that name. In doing so, Greece disregards the United Nations Charter's admonition that all people have the right to self-determination. Greece's stated basis for this "dispute" is that the Republic of Macedonia supposedly harbors "territorial ambitions" toward northern Greece. The Greek government also claims Macedonia misappropriates "Greek history."
The Republic of Macedonia amended its constitution to unequivocally disclaim any "territorial ambitions," and it changed national symbols to remove "Greek" connections. But Greek government intransigence persists…
India’s Identity Crisis in Burma – Boston Globe editorial
When arguing for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council or assuring the Bush administration that India can be trusted with American nuclear technology - even though it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - Indian officials recite the mantra that India is the world's biggest democracy. But India's shameful collaboration with the military junta in Burma that has been arresting and killing Buddhist monks and civilian protesters raises a serious question: Is India betraying its democratic values for the sake of its great-power ambitions?
There is no mystery about the reasons for India's complicity with the Burmese generals. There are purely commercial motives, a thirst for access to Burma's oil and natural gas reserves. There's a desire to gain the junta's cooperation in crushing insurgent groups that have been crossing from Burma into India's northeast to mount guerrilla operations. But above all, India has abandoned solidarity with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues because Indian policy makers are obsessed by their strategic competition with China…
Saving Burma the Right Way - Thant Myint-U, Los Angeles Times
… I have a nightmare scenario for Burma. It goes something like this: I'm about 60, and there is still a military regime. One day, students and monks again lead mass protests. This time they are successful. The army leadership caves in, and the regime falls to pieces. There is, however, almost nothing left to build on. Western sanctions, tightened over the years, have had no real effect on the government's politics, but they have frozen out Western influence and the potential benefits of globalization. The country is poorer than ever. The healthcare and education systems have disintegrated, and there is no alternative political leadership nor even an educated class of technocrats who can keep basic state institutions intact.
The long-running insurgencies in the hills have largely petered out, but there is no real peace, only simmering inter-ethnic grievances and armed gangs in place of the former rebel armies. India and China are powerful and prosperous, and Burma is a basket case, having traded the country's natural wealth for what few consumer goods it could afford. The uprising is successful, but it leads to chaos and anarchy. Burma becomes a failed state, a disaster zone in an otherwise rich and happy Asia.
Could such a scenario come to pass? It's not impossible. Indeed, as recent Burmese history shows, the country may already be on its way there…
Permission Slip for the Sea – Oliver North, Washington Times
In his 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush said, "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country." Members of both parties and Houses of Congress applauded.
But if the U.S. Senate votes to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea — known as the Law of the Sea Treaty, or by its appropriate acronym LOST — he and his successors will need lots of permission slips.
In 1982 Ronald Reagan, concerned about the treaty's implications for our sovereignty and national security, formally rejected LOST because it did "not satisfy the objectives sought by the United States." In 1994, William Clinton, anxious to appease One World Government advocates in his own party and at the United Nations, negotiated a parallel "Agreement" that purported to address Mr. Reagan's concerns — and urged ratification. LOST has since gathered dust in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. All that may be about to change. The deeply flawed, Soviet-era agreement giving unelected, unaccountable international bureaucrats control more than 71 percent of the Earth's surface is now on a fast track to ratification…
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