Next Stop Kandahar – Mark Hemmingway, Weekly Standard
… There are warm greetings all around. In a few seconds, Gerber goes from all-business army officer to aw-shucks Midwesterner. The joint Afghan-American mission is a success. In fact, it was such a success you could almost believe you're not in Kansas anymore.
The Afghan village is a fake. It's nothing more than a handful of carefully stacked and modified shipping containers set up in the prairie on the outskirts of Fort Riley. The base is ringed with mock villages and tactical training areas. They're given Arabic or Afghan names, but are generally referred to by their army designation. This village is known as "Cluster City Five."
The terrorists and village dwellers in the exercise are role players supplied by a defense contractor. Most are young males recruited from nearby Kansas State--all too happy to play army for $14 an hour. During their downtime, they sit around in the rusted shipping containers playing cards, joking, and generally enjoying themselves…
Federalism, Not Partition - Joseph Biden Jr. and Leslie Gelb, Washington Post
The Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki greeted last week's Senate vote on Iraq policy -- based on a plan we proposed in 2006 -- with misrepresentations and untruths. Seventy-five senators, including 26 Republicans, voted to promote a political settlement based on decentralized power-sharing. It was a life raft for an Iraq policy that is adrift.
Instead, Maliki and the administration -- through our embassy in Baghdad -- distorted the Biden-Brownback amendment beyond recognition, charging that we seek to "partition or divide Iraq by intimidation, force or other means."
We want to set the record straight. If the United States can't put this federalism idea on track, we will have no chance for a political settlement in Iraq and, without that, no chance for leaving Iraq without leaving chaos behind…
The Case for Soft Partition - Edward Joseph and Michael O'Hanlon, USA Today
The basic situation in Iraq remains as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker described it to Congress last month — substantial progress on the battlefield, little progress in the halls of the Iraqi parliament. Local leaders have made power-sharing deals in some of Iraq's provinces, but without a way to break the deadlock at the central level, there won't be stability.
Rather than continuing to place all our hope in Baghdad, it is time to do what Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and a majority of his fellow senators have been pushing of late: Build on that local progress by advising Iraqis to consider a form of federalism or, as we call it more bluntly, a soft partition of Iraq.
Last Wednesday, the often-divided Senate voted 75-23 to back a resolution sponsored by Biden to decentralize Iraq into regions. Sunday in Baghdad, bitterly divided Shiite and Sunni leaders, in a rare moment of unity, denounced the Biden resolution. Unfortunately, while Iraq's Arab leaders can agree on what they don't want, they still can't agree on what they do want. Efforts to forge compromises on the key issues that divide them have failed.
Instead of clinging to the dwindling hope for a breakthrough, our approach is premised on a core truth: Centralizing power in Baghdad makes a sectarian power struggle almost unavoidable. Shiites, who make up 60% of the country, were denied full access to power throughout Saddam Hussein's rule (and before). For them, Baghdad has not only been Iraq's capital, it has also been the source of their systematic oppression. Though free elections have effectively guaranteed Shiites' dominance in the new Iraq, they still fear a Sunni attempt to reclaim power. This has led to wholesale sectarian division of government into fiefs, leaving Sunnis alienated and Shiite militias empowered...
The Case for Soft Partition - Edward Joseph and Michael O'Hanlon, USA Today
The basic situation in Iraq remains as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker described it to Congress last month — substantial progress on the battlefield, little progress in the halls of the Iraqi parliament. Local leaders have made power-sharing deals in some of Iraq's provinces, but without a way to break the deadlock at the central level, there won't be stability.
Rather than continuing to place all our hope in Baghdad, it is time to do what Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and a majority of his fellow senators have been pushing of late: Build on that local progress by advising Iraqis to consider a form of federalism or, as we call it more bluntly, a soft partition of Iraq.
Last Wednesday, the often-divided Senate voted 75-23 to back a resolution sponsored by Biden to decentralize Iraq into regions. Sunday in Baghdad, bitterly divided Shiite and Sunni leaders, in a rare moment of unity, denounced the Biden resolution. Unfortunately, while Iraq's Arab leaders can agree on what they don't want, they still can't agree on what they do want. Efforts to forge compromises on the key issues that divide them have failed.
Instead of clinging to the dwindling hope for a breakthrough, our approach is premised on a core truth: Centralizing power in Baghdad makes a sectarian power struggle almost unavoidable. Shiites, who make up 60% of the country, were denied full access to power throughout Saddam Hussein's rule (and before). For them, Baghdad has not only been Iraq's capital, it has also been the source of their systematic oppression. Though free elections have effectively guaranteed Shiites' dominance in the new Iraq, they still fear a Sunni attempt to reclaim power. This has led to wholesale sectarian division of government into fiefs, leaving Sunnis alienated and Shiite militias empowered...
The Realignment of Iraq – Bartle Bull, Wall Street Journal
The war in Iraq was always going to be won by the Iraqis, and so it has proven. But the Iraqis who have won it are on our side.
It was in the spring of 2004--a month or so before I first arrived in Baghdad in a taxi to stay in a small hotel--that the Sunnis launched their disastrous insurgency. Its defeat is becoming ever more clear this autumn as new reports reach us of the patriotic stand of the Anbar tribes, the pacification and nascent prosperity of Fallujah and Ramadi, the isolation of al Qaeda, and the peace overtures of defeated Baathists.
That first season of serious fighting also included the time of the original uprising by the poor Shiites of Iraq, led by Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Six times during that fighting I drove with Iraqis through the so-called Death Triangle of Sunni towns south of Baghdad to cover the events in Najaf. Surrounded on the highway by pickup trucks carrying chanting Mahdi Army fighters and caskets bearing the dead from the Sadr City fighting, one would see the green and black flags of the Shiite saints atop houses and feel safe…
Not so Fast – London Times leader
Baghdad and Basra are a long way from Blackpool. It is hard, nonetheless, not to see some connection between the timing of Gordon Brown’s visit to Iraq yesterday and the Conservative Party conference. The Prime Minister was always likely to visit the troops before the House of Commons returned to work, but in the present frantic election atmosphere, this trip was bound to send political signals. That message is that the military commitment is being scaled back and may soon be finalised.
Senior figures in the Army will not object to that, even if they would rather that those under their command did not become part of a political battleground. The effort to train a local replacement force of Iraqis to replace them has made striking progress in the course of this year, and fewer UK soldiers are required to perform an “overwatch” function than when they were patrolling the streets of Basra city. Commanders are also aware that reinforcements will probably be required in Afghanistan to take on the Tale-ban and their al-Qaeda affiliates soon. A timetable that sees an estimated 1,000 men and women return from Iraq before Christmas, with another substantial withdrawal by Easter, will suit all concerned. The Army has performed admirably in extremely challenging circumstances and the troops are entitled to some respite after their valour.
It would be deeply unwise, however, to pledge to move any faster. Iraq has turned significantly for the better in recent months and the once doubted “surge” has been vindicated. But these are early days for an army that still has to demonstrate its capacity in the sort of policing activities that will be demanded in and around Basra…
Fix FISA – Washington Times editorial
Few cases highlight the acute need to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) like its role in delaying a May search for three American soldiers ambushed by terrorists in Iraq. At one point after the soldiers were kidnapped, it apparently took the U.S. government more than nine hours to begin emergency surveillance of the kidnappers' electronic communications — the result of a ruling by a judge on the special court overseeing FISA that challenged the government's ability to collect data from wires in this country — even if they were monitoring foreign terrorist targets. One of the soldiers was later found dead, and the other two are missing.
The facts of the case are this, according to a Defense Department timeline reported by the Associated Press: On May 12, the soldiers disappeared after being ambushed by insurgents south of Baghdad. As coalition forces mounted an all-out search for the missing soldiers on May 13 and May 14, intelligence officials learned of insurgent communications they believed were related to the ambush, and on May 14, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees FISA, issued an order permitting some of the suspected insurgent communications to be targeted…
Blackwater’s Rich Contracts – New York Times editorial
It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration would take any opportunity to reward its political friends with lavish no-bid contracts. Still, there is something particularly unseemly about the munificent payments to Blackwater, the State Department’s principal private security contractor in Iraq.
With many Iraqis still seething after Blackwater guards killed as many as 17 people two weeks ago, it is evident that Blackwater and other security contractors are undermining the military’s efforts to win over Iraqis.
Now an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has underscored the lavish extent of Blackwater’s payments and its relationship to the Bush administration. The committee, which held hearings on the use of security contractors in Iraq yesterday, should investigate these links further…
Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater – Maureen Dowd, New York Times
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster,” Nietzsche said. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
We’re gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.
Besides having an army for hire, brave kids who are paid to fight so that most Americans are not personally touched by war, we have the real mercenaries. And they’re a spooky cadre, careening outside the laws of Iraq, the United States and the military…
Accept the Blackwater Mercenaries – Max Boot, Los Angeles Times
Like a volcano finally erupting after repeated rumblings, the actions of a Blackwater USA team in Baghdad last month have brought to the surface a scalding gusher of animosity toward the private military industry. Everyone, it seems, has a reason to hate the men in black.
American soldiers dislike them because they get paid a lot more for similar work. Iraqis dislike them because they have become a symbol of infringements on their sovereignty. And many American leftists dislike them because they are seen as war profiteers.
Given all this antipathy, it is easy to assume the worst about military contractors, justified or not. Take the Sept. 16 incident, in which at least 11 Iraqis were killed and which was the impetus for a House hearing Tuesday. Blackwater says its employees fired in self-defense after being attacked. Iraqis claim that the Blackwaterites fired indiscriminately and without provocation. There is no reason to assume -- as so many critics do -- that the more damning version is true, especially because the harshest condemnations have come from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, a notorious hotbed of sectarianism…
Beyond that, we need to do a better job of integrating contractors with military units so as to avoid mix-ups such as the one that occurred in 2004 when four Blackwater employees were killed in Fallouja, triggering a Marine offensive. Malcolm Nance, a veteran intelligence operative who has worked as a contractor in Iraq, makes an intriguing suggestion in the Small Wars Journal: Create a "force protection command" within the U.S. military that would be responsible for overseeing contractor operations. This would help make contractors more useful to military commanders…
Would You Vote for War on Iran? – Simon Heffer, London Daily Telegraph
The other day I went to one of the most disturbing events of my life. Together with a number of others, I listened for the best part of two hours to two American security experts: their area of expertise was Iran and the threat it poses.
The burden of their observations can be summed up as follows: that an American strike on Iran's nuclear facilities is not a question of if but when.
And, it was emphasised, this certainty is not dependent on the man the world regards as the warmonger Bush still being in office: his successor, be he or she Republican or Democrat, will see that there is no option but to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions too…
Ahmadinejad Finds it Warmer in Latin America – Daniel Erikson, Los Angeles Times
If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was displeased by the hostile reception he got during his trip to a United Nations summit in New York last week, the next stage of his journey surely lifted his spirits. He hopped on a plane to Caracas, where he was warmly greeted by Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan president praised Ahmadinejad's performance at Columbia University, telling him: "An imperial spokesman tried to disrespect you, calling you a cruel little tyrant. You responded with the greatness of a revolutionary."
Ahmadinejad went on to Bolivia, whose president, Evo Morales, had just days earlier appeared on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," imploring the audience, "Please don't consider me part of the 'axis of evil.' " Back in Bolivia, however, Morales met with Ahmadinejad for five hours, signed a cooperation agreement worth $1 billion and established the first-ever diplomatic relations between the two countries…
They Always Blame Reagan… - Paul Kengor, Weekly Standard
It has become a truism in liberal circles that Ronald Reagan brought us Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The accusation could already be heard mere weeks after 9/11. Articles developing the "blowback" thesis metastasized around the Internet. Given the staying power of ideologically convenient misinformation, it is worth reviewing the facts of the Reagan administration's support for the mujahedeen, the fighters who resisted the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and their link with today's Islamic extremists.
The USSR, it will be recalled, invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The Soviets proceeded to brutalize a country that, though still very poor, had made surprising progress since the 1950s. How would the United States respond?
One man who spoke up promptly was Ronald Reagan, then a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. In a campaign speech in Florida in January 1980, Reagan urged Washington to provide Stinger antiaircraft missiles to Afghans fighting the Red Army. He called specifically for supplying the rebels with "shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missiles that can shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships." …
The Jihad Way – Cal Thomas, Washington Times
Dr. Esam Omeish resigned as a member of the Virginia Commission on Immigration after his anti-Israel remarks in support of "the jihad way" were posted on YouTube. He told a news conference that jihad has nothing to do with violence, but instead is about inner struggles leading to spiritual triumph. We've heard this before. Such explanations are presented after a terrorist act or a radical is exposed. Radicals also have been known to lie, especially to "infidels."
Dr. Omeish claims his remarks were "taken out of context." The context appears clear to anyone familiar with the language of the Middle East. Most rational people understand "the jihad way," especially when it is associated with Israel, as meaning the violent overthrow of Israel (and other democracies) and the destruction of the Jewish people…
Stemming the Junta's Cash Flow - George Monbiot, Canberra Times
... I mention this because the Western companies still trading with Burma use it as their first and last defence. If we withdraw, they insist, China will fill the gap. It is true that the Chinese Government has offered the Burmese generals political protection in return for cheap resources.
In January, for example, China vetoed a UN resolution condemning the junta's human rights record. Three days later it was given lucrative gas concessions in the Bay of Bengal. It is also true that the Chinese Government has no interest in promoting democracy abroad. But the more the Burmese junta must rely on a single source of investment and protection, the more vulnerable it becomes. China is not intractable. If Western governments boycotted the Beijing Olympics, it would precipitate the biggest political crisis in that country since 1989...
To: The World From: Burma - Hanna Ingber Win, Washington Post
They tried to erase Burma from the Internet last week. In an attempt to weaken the opposition and shield itself from international opprobrium, the military junta that runs the country tried to cut off access to the Web.
It did not succeed. Already, damning e-mail, photographs, video clips and instant messages had made their way around the world. And, although new reports and images slowed after the Internet crackdown Friday, they didn't stop. They continue to make their way onto news sites -- such as expat-run Irrawaddy magazine, Mizzima News and the Democratic Voice of Burma -- and blogs -- including Ko Htike's Prosaic Collection, Burmese Bloggers Without Borders and Burma-Myanmar Genocide 2007…
Those Blogs and Videos Will Get You Nowhere – Mick Hume, London Times
We have admired from afar the bravery of the Burmese standing up to military dictatorship. Now, as the heat of the protests and repression dies down, perhaps we might try to help to throw some light on a way ahead.
What Burma needs most is surely internal democracy, not international diplomacy. To achieve that end, history suggests that the activists will have to mobilise the Burmese people more than appeal to world opinion. If it is to get rid of the generals, their movement may need to deploy political weapons other than prayers, blogs and digicams.
With the protests largely driven off the streets, leaving an unknown number dead and hundreds of monks rounded up, Burma’s Foreign Minister has appeared at the UN to declare: “Normalcy has now returned to Myanmar.” Meanwhile, there are desperate appeals for the UN and the West to act, especially to put pressure on the Chinese to rein in their allies in the Burmese junta…
Crossing the Line – London Times leader
The stage for this week’s “historic” second-ever summit between the two Koreas has been carefully set, with North Korea in charge of the stage furnishing, the lighting and the script. Roh Moo Hyun, the South Korean President, has willingly crossed the line, but even the most casual observer would recognise that Kim Jong-Il is, well, very, very strange. The concessions he has made simply to get the Dear Leader to agree to this second meeting do not inspire confidence. For starters, it is taking place in Pyongyang, not Seoul, although a much-underlined feature of the first summit in 2000 was the Dear Leader’s promise to travel south for the next such encounter. Instead, President Roh went north – and, in a gesture that the North is likely to parade as an act of submission, crossed the invisible line dividing the two Koreas on foot. In a further controversial gesture, the two leaders will attend today North Korea’s Arirang Festival, an annual spectacular devoted to idolisation of the Dear Leader and his deceased father Kim Il Sung (the Great Leader) and the all-conquering force of North Korea’s bankrupt official juche ideology.
At the level of substance, notably absent from the agenda will be North Korea’s nuclear programmes and its appalling abuses of basic human rights. The first omission can be justified on the ground that nuclear issues are a matter for the six-party talks that appear finally to be making limited headway. The second omission is impossible to reconcile with President Roh’s priority to “make peace take root” on the peninsula: the militaristic brutality of the North Korean regime mocks all talk of national reconciliation…
Putin's Maneuvers Dash Hopes for Russian Democracy - USA Today editorial
America's first president, George Washington, and Russian President Vladimir Putin share one thing: Nearing the end of their second terms, they were so popular that majorities wanted them to stay for a third. This week, it became clear the parallel ends there.
Washington refused to run again. He established the tradition (broken only by Franklin D. Roosevelt) of American presidents serving no more than two terms that later became law. Washington understood that it's unhealthy for one person to hold the reins of power too long.
Putin is taking a different path, one that undermines Russia's long-term chances for democracy and stability. This week, he began to reveal his gambit for retaining the power he has accumulated for almost eight years. Because he is barred under Russia's Constitution from a third consecutive term, he is aiming to be prime minister...
Putin the Great – Wall Street Journal editorial
Vladimir Putin has announced that he will remain active in Russian politics, probably as prime minister, after his second presidential term expires next year. The sorry news in this is that it surprises no one.
It has now been eight years since the world first learned of Mr. Putin, a KGB man vaulted almost overnight from municipal obscurity into the presidency by an ailing Boris Yeltsin. Mr. Putin made his political mark by initiating a second war against the breakaway province of Chechnya, using the pretext of a series of alleged terrorist bombings in Russia. According to Alexander Litvinenko, the one-time spy who became an opponent of the Putin regime before his murder last year, these bombings were orchestrated by the Russian secret services.
By January 2000, the Chechen capital of Grozny resembled Dresden in 1945. Yet Western leaders did not turn away from Mr. Putin. On the contrary, they feted him as an "flawless democrat" (Gerhard Schröeder) and a man "deeply committed [to the] best interests of his country" (President Bush). He has been helped by the tripling of oil prices, a gift in part of Alan Greenspan's easy money Federal Reserve policy….
Ukraine: The Struggle Continues – Boston Globe editorial
On Sunday, Ukraine held its third general election since the Orange Revolution of 2004, and the outcome reflected the country's nearly even split between pro-Russian forces and those that lean toward the West. This election will hardly resolve the East-West tension at the core of Ukrainian politics, and it cannot be expected to overcome deeply rooted corruption and stark economic disparities. Nevertheless, the openness of political debate and the politicians' quest for the consent of the governed suggest that Ukraine is not turning back from the Orange Revolution.
Because the West-leaning parties of President Viktor Yushchenko and former prime minister Yulia Timoshenko gained only a slight edge over the pro-Russian party of current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and its Communist allies, the reconciled former rivals Yushchenko and Timoshenko may have to form Ukraine's next government by drawing smaller parties into a coalition. A patchwork of this sort can be awkward. It can lack a mandate for radical reforms. But it can teach the democratic virtue of settling differences by means of imperfect compromises…
-----
