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Building for the Real Future - Mackubin Owens, New York Post
Last Friday, the Senate approved the nomination of Marine Lt.-Gen. James Mattis as the next commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command. This is great news - because it means the Pentagon can start getting "transformation" right.
Joint Forces Command is the nerve center for "force planning" - that is, for setting priorities and doctrines for building our future military. And Mattis (who'll get a fourth star along with his new job) will also serve as NATO's top commander for transformation.
For the last decade or so, the U.S. military (as well as its allies) has faced an imperative to "transform" from a Cold War force to one better able to handle the challenges of the post-Cold-War world. But the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld viewed new technology as the one-size-fits-all solution to all future military problems - a panacea that would render traditional war-fighting wisdom obsolete.
If nothing else, Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that success in war depends on a great deal more than technological prowess...
The Lonely War – Rich Lowry, Real Clear Politics
A war has probably never been so debated and so little understood as the one in Iraq. "The domestic political debate has nothing to do with what we're doing here," says one U.S. officer, in a representative comment offered not in a spirit of bitterness, but of cold fact.
This is the lonely war. No one cares about it as much or understands it as well as the men and women here on the ground, who feel -- understandably -- that they are the only ones even remotely engaged in the fight.
The U.S. government has never brought to bear its resources in a truly national effort to win; the State Department has left almost the entire nonmilitary aspect of the war to the military; the Pentagon's slow-moving procurement program has an internal clock still set to peacetime; the top brass worry more about relieving the strain on the ground forces than achieving success on the ground; and the Bush administration hasn't been willing -- until too late -- to begin to provide a bigger force that would relieve that strain…
Even the British are Leaving Iraq - Los Angeles Times editorial
The "coalition of the willing" is over. One by one, its members have ceded the bloodstained ground to the battling Iraqis and the unyielding U.S. president. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision Monday to halve the vestigial British military force in Basra was inevitable; backing the U.S. in Iraq has become a political albatross for governments all over the world.
Washington had always exaggerated the strength of the coalition, which once numbered 34 countries. But Spain and New Zealand pulled out troops in 2004; the Netherlands, Hungary, Singapore, Norway and Ukraine left in 2005, followed by Japan and Italy in 2006. Georgia and Poland, which desperately need U.S. goodwill as a bulwark against a resurgent Russia, still maintain a symbolic presence.
But Britain is our special ally, and so its decision to bail out is momentous. British forces, once more than 45,000 strong, will be cut from the current 5,000 to 2,500, with no promise to stay beyond the spring. Whitehall and the White House attempted to portray the move as made possible by the success of the U.S. troop "surge." In fact, it was made essential by Brown's vulnerability on the war issue. More ominously, it represents a repudiation of the Bush administration's argument that stability in Iraq is of vital importance to the entire Western world...
Troop Cuts will Jeopardise Basra's Progress - Con Coughlin, London Daily Telegraph
It is an understatement to say that Gordon Brown has never been a great enthusiast for the Iraq conflict.
Even though he was a senior minister when the decision was taken to invade Iraq, the pacifist-minded Mr Brown's approach to the venture was never more than lukewarm, and he only publicly declared his support for Saddam Hussein's overthrow as British troops massed on the Kuwaiti border to launch the ground offensive.
So it will come as no surprise that one of his first acts as Prime Minister has been to reduce Britain's military presence in Basra to the barest minimum.
For, short of ordering a complete withdrawal of the 5,500 British troops currently stationed at Basra air base, his declaration yesterday that the military deployment will be reduced to 2,500 by next spring means that the British force will have little more than a token presence in Iraq's second city.
In his Commons statement, Mr Brown insisted that he was acting on the advice of the military commanders on the ground, who had advised him that the Iraqi security forces would be in a position to assume responsibility for most of the region's security requirements by early next year, and that the main task remaining for British troops would be training and mentoring them.
Well, having just spent a week in Basra, the most charitable conclusion I can reach is that Mr Brown has been surveying the situation through a pair of rose-tinted binoculars. How else could he claim, as he did in the Commons, that the Government is able to reduce its troop numbers because "the Iraqis are now able to take responsibility for the security themselves"? …
Party Poopers - George WIll, New York Post
Evidence that a Democrat has read Smith's great treatise against meddlesome government is as gratifying as it is startling. But perhaps the evidence was there last week, when Wisconsin Democrat David Obey proposed a $150 billion war surtax on incomes, ranging from 2 percent to 15 percent.
Democratic leaders, leery of making their itch to raise taxes even more conspicuous, reacted to Obey's idea the way vampires react to garlic. But they are considering his proposal - which as chairman of the Appropriations Committee he can execute - to delay until next year action on the president's request for $190 billion supplemental funding for the war. Congressional Democrats have heard growls from their base.
Those menacing sounds were provoked by Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's responses, in the Sept. 26 debate, to this question: "Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq?" Their dusty answers were clear enough: No and no...
Iraq's Misfortune is Blackwater's Good Fortune – Carl Hiaasen, Miami Herald
Plenty of American companies are getting rich off the war in Iraq, but few have seen their fortunes multiply as dramatically as Blackwater USA, the private security firm whose operatives last month shot dead 17 civilians in a disastrous blunder in Baghdad.
Back in 2001, Blackwater had less than $1 million worth of government business. Since then, the company has received more than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds, including a huge no-bid contract with the State Department.
How did such blessings come to be showered upon a relatively small outfit that most Americans had never heard of until recently?
The answer is at the core of the Bush administration's outsourcing frenzy: It's all about connections…
The Damage is Done - Cynthia Tucker, Baltimore Sun
Just imagine that Vice President Dick Cheney went on a visit to a foreign country - Great Britain, let's say - and that one of his Secret Service agents was shot several times and killed by a drunken bodyguard hired by the Brits. Let's say the British government quickly hushed up the crime and spirited the bodyguard out of the country, leaving him free to go about his life.
Americans would, of course, be outraged - and rightly so. They would demand justice for the slain Secret Service agent. The ensuing controversy would preoccupy the White House and damage relations between the two countries.
So what happened when a Blackwater USA security guard fatally shot a bodyguard of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi? The Blackwater man, who had been drinking heavily, had left a Christmas party in the Green Zone last year when he was confronted by the Iraqi guards. According to reports, he opened fire, killing a 32-year-old Iraqi. The Blackwater employee was spirited out of the country, with the help of the U.S. State Department. He has so far faced no criminal proceedings. He was not subject to any Iraqi laws or to U.S. military jurisdiction...
Solving Iraq May Not Clear the Transatlantic Air – Bronwen Maddox, London Times
Is anguish about the US’s sour relations with the world a problem of the past?
Sadly not, argue a quartet of French and American think-tankers in a persuasive pamphlet which is more precise and practical than the genre normally delivers.
Iraq isn’t the lasting problem, they maintain, even if it was the cause of so much tension. Nor was the Bush Administration’s high-handed pursuit of national interest entirely to blame, they say (and Gary Samore, one of the authors, adds that not only has the Bush team softened its rhetoric, but that the next president is certain to be milder in tone).
But the attacks of September 11, 2001, proved an unexpected strain, the authors suggest. Even though Europe’s reflex was wholeheartedly behind the US, the threat demanded that the alliance shift its focus from Europe, where allies agreed on what they were trying to do, to the Middle East, where they didn’t…
Sy Hersh's Overactive Imagination - Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard
In the latest edition of the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh returns to one of his favorite themes: The Bush administration is preparing for war with Iran. Well, that is, may be preparing for war with Iran.
Anyone familiar with Hersh's writing these last couple of years knows that he has been fixated on claims from anonymous spooks and foreign policy luminaries concerning the Bush administration's supposed dastardly designs on Iran. His latest piece does not disappoint. Former and anonymous CIA officials opine on the Bush administration's gameplan for attacking Iran. The suddenly once-again-in-demand foreign policy guru Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has never shown any particular proclivity for diagnosing Iran or the Middle East correctly, tells Hersh's readers what he has heard about "limited bombing plans for Iran." And, in a new twist, David Kay, the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the UN, tells Hersh that he thought General Petraeus exaggerated the extent of Iran's nefarious activities inside Iraq.
All in all, one is left with the same impression as after having read any of Hersh's previous contributions to the "neoconservatives vs. Iran" genre. Hersh and his sources believe that the Bush administration is hyping the threat from Iran in preparations for a war (of some sort), which will be disastrous for the U.S. and the Middle East…
Deadlier Consequences - Zalman Shoval, Washington Times
I was recently startled to see a photograph in the Financial Times showing members of the Osnabruck Symphony Orchestra, a German provincial ensemble — some of the women musicians wearing Muslim headscarves — playing a concert in Tehran.
The picture's caption read: "Orchestra reaches for harmony with Iran," and the accompanying story quotes its executive director that he was "hoping music can help ease the tensions between Tehran and the West over Iran's nuclear program," adding that "his mission was about trying to stop a possible military confrontation — if Iran is bombed, it would be the biggest imaginable disaster for the world."
He didn't deign to reveal whether in his view Iran using a nuclear device against some of its neighbors — Israel, for instance — would be less of a disaster. The above gentleman also declared that "the concerts would draw attention to real life in Iran."
This brings to mind equally naive — or hypocritical — statements made 71 years ago about the Berlin Olympics. Some people at the time also claimed that bringing international sports to the German capital would ease tensions between Nazi Germany and the democratic West…
Clouds over Korea – Richard Halloran, Washington Times
Clouds of good cheer billowed out from Pyongyang and Beijing last week, giving rise once again to the hope that maybe, just maybe, peace is at hand on a Korean Peninsula freed of nuclear arms.
Amid this optimism, it may be curmudgeonly to say so but the history of dealing with North Korea over six decades justifies a dose of skepticism. That path is strewn with North Korean deception, lies, broken promises, assassinations and attempted assassinations, kidnappings, other violence, and no small amount of belligerent bluster.
In Pyongyang, a summit meeting between President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea and Kim Jong-il, who was billed as chairman of the North Korean National Defense Commission, produced an agreement declaring "a new era of national prosperity and unification." In Beijing, representatives of China, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States in the Six-Party Talks produced a consensus on actions, "the goal of which is the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner."
Diplomatic declarations often suggest what was not said could be even more significant than what was said. Mr. Roh and Mr. Kim said, for instance, they would make "joint efforts" to find a solution to the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula. The "nuclear problem" is that North Korea has pushed ahead with acquiring nuclear weapons to the point of testing a nuclear device a year ago. Mr. Kim and Mr. Roh said nothing about North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons or shutting down its nuclear facilities as demanded by the other five nations in the talks…
A Crude Awakening – Daniel Davis, Washington Times
… Most people in America today believe that the flow of crude oil which powers our national (and global) economy will continue flowing at its current rate and relatively low price indefinitely. The only point of concern most have is that posed by our "dependence" on foreign oil. But the fact of the matter is that we face a much more serious and eminent danger once the peak of oil has been reached.
Roughly defined, this peak occurs when half of the world's endowment of cheap crude oil has been pumped from the ground. For various geological reasons, once the halfway point has been reached, the rest is much more difficult and expensive to extract. But the real problem — and the danger — is that once this peak occurs, the global supply of conventional oil will enter a terminal decline at precisely the same time global demand reaches an all time high. When developing nations like China and India are unable to continue their extraordinary economic growth, and when developed nations are unable to sustain the level of economic development they've enjoyed since the end of World War II, turmoil is the likely outcome, and eventually the pressures for major war over dwindling natural resources rises dramatically…
A Tortured Stance on Torture – H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe
In half a century of reporting around the world, I have found that there was usually a feeling that the United States stood for standards of liberty, human rights, and the dignity of mankind. The Bush administration has taken us off that gold standard and drained away much of that reservoir of respect. The horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have eaten away at America's credibility and moral standing, dismaying our friends and empowering our enemies.
Washington shuddered last week when The New York Times revealed that the Justice Department, under the direction of Alberto Gonzales, had undermined the will of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as hard-won national and international standards with secret legal opinions supporting torture. "Shocking" was the word Republican Senator Arlen Specter used, and well he should.
Men and women of good will may differ on how much power the executive branch should have, and how much of our privacy and civil liberties need to be curtailed in an age of terrorism. As the former deputy attorney general, James Comey, who tried to stem the tide of the administration's malfeasance, said: there are "agonizing collisions" between the law and the desire to protect Americans. But no good will can be ascribed to those who secretly sought to undermine the republic by their underhanded advocacy of torture…
Gen. Musharraf’s Cynical Win – New York Times editorial
Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s “election” last weekend as Pakistan’s president was a perversion of democracy.
The vote was not really a vote since, knowing how badly the deck was stacked, the opposition parties refused to participate. The results must now be certified by the Supreme Court, which must decide whether General Musharraf was even eligible to run while still in uniform. We hope the court will rule fairly and independently — and that General Musharraf’s enablers in Washington will make clear that he must respect that decision and finally start moving his country toward the rule of law.
Returning Pakistan to civilian government has been a declared goal of the United States since General Musharraf seized power in 1999. Time and again he has promised that he would resign his post as chief of army staff and take off the uniform, but even now he is playing cute about when — and whether — that might happen…
Presidential Perils - Tulin Daloglu, Washington Times
What would we do without politicians? To begin with, we'd have no one to vote for — and to be honest, sometimes we wish for such a thing. In the end, many of us just are not excited about the people we vote for, and it feels as though they win election because there are so few choices and because we have to elect someone to office. Sometimes we'd love for someone to choose not to seek re-election and open the space for a newcomer as there's always the hope for discovering someone special.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Islamist-rooted and now two-term prime minister, is perceived as such a politician. He is leading Turkey at a time when the war in Iraq rendered his opposition toothless. There is a popular notion that America may be planning something sinister with regard to the different ethnic groups in the region, be it changing Turkey's sovereign borders or a full-on war with Islam…
Armed Killers of Childhood - Steven Freeland, Canberra Times
As we watch with increasing anxiety the brutal suppression of the demonstrations currently taking place in Burma, it is perhaps worthwhile reflecting on the fact that about 20per cent of the country's military are children under the age of 18, most of whom have been forcibly recruited into the government forces. Human Rights Watch estimates that Burma has the largest number of child soldiers in the world.
Burma is but one example of what has become a tragic global phenomenon. There are about 300,000 children currently acting as front-line troops in armed conflict worldwide, with another 500,000 who are conscripted into government, paramilitary and guerilla groups as sex slaves, porters, cooks, spies and to plant land mines…
Latin America Doesn’t Need Another Radical Like Chavez - Carlos Sabino, Christian Science Monitor
Change or death." That's the stark campaign slogan of Fernando Lugo in his bid to become Paraguay's next president.
The outspoken populist appeals to the poor – but he also increasingly resembles Latin America's leading anti-democratic firebrand, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.
His candidacy is cause for concern that Paraguay's gradual 18-year move toward democracy may be reversed. The last thing Latin America needs is another populist troublemaker.
Already, Paraguay's democratic progress has taken a few hits under the current government. President Nicanor Duarte Frutos, whose term ends next August, has tried – unsuccessfully so far – to amend the Constitution so he can run for reelection. As his campaign to remain in control becomes more desperate, so have his methods. They have grown increasingly strident and confrontational – common in a region long known for populist politics…
We Should Help Colombia – Richard Lugar, Miami Herald
The U.S. policy in Latin America is in trouble. Thanks to the failure of U.S. immigration legislation and to populist disillusionment with economic and pro-democracy reforms, among other elements, we are seeing a rise of anti-Americanism and of governments that are hostile, or at least cool, to American policies.
A key factor in this disturbing trend is the slow dissolution of U.S. leadership for a pro-trade agenda on a regional scale, which is seen as a sign of U.S. inattention to Latin matters other than the war on drugs and immigration.
A case in point is Colombia, where President Clinton launched an effort, continued by President Bush, to break the drug lords' stranglehold on that country and stem the flow of cocaine into the United States. The program, dubbed Plan Colombia, has made Colombia the third-largest recipient of regular U.S. foreign assistance, after Israel and Egypt.
Under very difficult circumstances, Plan Colombia has achieved important gains and enjoys bipartisan support in Congress. But the situation remains precarious…
Victory for Costa Rica – Washington Post editorial
In a region where politics has too often been characterized by demagoguery, corruption and violence, Costa Rica has long stood out as a shining exception to the rule. Having abolished its army in 1948, the Central American country is set to complete six decades of uninterrupted civilian democratic rule. The latest demonstration of the Costa Rican people's common sense came on Sunday, when the electorate ratified the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a tariff-slashing accord between the United States and six small countries to its south.
It was close: About 51.5 percent of the public voted yes, to make Costa Rica the last of the signatories to put the accord into practice. The victory probably would have been wider if not for the release, late in the campaign, of a regrettable internal memo showing that the yes campaign, led by President Oscar Arias, was thinking of trying to expand its margin by stoking voter fears of such free-trade opponents as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. The fact remains, though, that the referendum was a defeat for Mr. Chavez and his populist "Bolivarian Alternative" to trade with the United States…
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Abandoned to Fanatics - Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie, Los Angeles Times
As you read this, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a safe house with armed men guarding her door. She is one of the most poised, intelligent and compassionate advocates of freedom of speech and conscience alive today, and for this she is despised in Muslim communities throughout the world. The details of her story bear repeating, as they illustrate how poorly equipped we are to deal with the threat of Muslim extremism in the West.
Hirsi Ali first fled to the Netherlands as a refugee from Somalia in 1992 after declining to submit to a forced marriage to a man she did not know. Once there, in hiding from her family, she began working as a cleaning lady. But this cleaning lady spoke Somali, Arabic, Amharic, Swahili, English and was quickly learning Dutch, so she soon found work as a translator for other Somali refugees, many of whom, like herself, were casualties of Islam. These women had been abused, mutilated, denied medical care and proper educations and forced into lives of sexual subjection and compulsory childbearing.
After attending the University of Leiden, Hirsi Ali began speaking publicly about the repression of women under Islam, and shortly thereafter she started receiving death threats from local Muslims. Her security situation eventually became so dire that she moved to the U.S. in 2002. However, she was soon contacted by Gerrit Zalm, then deputy prime minister of the Netherlands, who urged her to run for parliament. When Hirsi Ali voiced her security concerns, Zalm assured her that she would be given diplomatic protection wherever and whenever she needed it. She returned to the Netherlands with this assurance, won a seat in parliament and became a tireless advocate for women, for civil society and for reason...
Zero Tolerance for Religious Intolerance - Libby Purves, London Times
You can get a bit depressed, surfing around gathering religion stories for the Times Online Faith blog. Muslim staff in Sainsbury’s are being let off handling alcohol. Some Muslim medical students are refusing to learn about diseases related to booze or promiscuity.
The Archbishop of Mozambique is promoting chastity by saying that European-made condoms are deliberately infected with HIV. A mosque in Toronto has ordered its faithful never to wish people Happy Birthday or join in Thanksgiving, Hannukah or Christmas parties, because: “How can we bring ourselves to congratulate or wish people well for their disobedience to Allah?” …
If Muslim Doctors are Intolerant, Let Them Go - Andrew O'Hagan, London Daily Telegraph
… It should be stated immediately that this is not a large group and it mercifully does not apply to all Muslim trainee doctors. But the British Medical Association has confirmed there are students who are refusing to attend lectures on these matters and that the refusal is being made on religious grounds.
Has the world gone mad? It was only last week that Sainsbury's said it would permit Muslim employees who worked at its checkouts to refuse to scan alcohol if doing so offended their religious beliefs.
Other Muslim students are refusing to examine female bodies and still more, working in high street pharmacies, refuse to supply the Pill.
A friend of mine recently went to a wine warehouse in London. He didn't have a car, so he asked the local minicab firm to come and pick him up, but it declined on account of the fact that the driver on duty refused to have alcohol in the car or to touch it.
Let me ask a simple question. Why do people who wish to train to be doctors choose to do so in a culture they find so objectionable as to make their jobs impossible? ...
The Weight of Words: 'Intifada' and 'Jihad' Pack a Punch - Ira Rifkin, Baltimore Sun
Bitch is an appropriate word when referring to a female dog. Yet how many of us would use the term when chatting about a pet's gender with a stranger in the park? Few, I'd venture to say - because of our sensitivity to the word's negative connotations.
Then there's the word love. Two strangers meet at a singles bar and one asks the other to return home with him to "make love." That's love as a euphemism for sex. How different the meaning is when a couple of a quarter-century's duration stay home on a Saturday night to talk, snuggle and make love.
Clearly, words - nouns and verbs in particular - take on contextual, historical and cultural meanings that go beyond their primary dictionary definitions. Non-English words used in an English context carry additional baggage.
That's why it seems disingenuous when highly educated, English-speaking American Muslims argue that their use of the words jihad or intifada is benign and misunderstood - despite the links to violence those words have for non-Muslim Americans living in a post-9/11 world where terrorist threats persist…Saffron Through the Firewall - Roby Alampay, Washington Post
European Union justice and interior ministers met in Lisbon early this week to discuss how to inoculate the Internet against forces that can threaten the free world. By November, they expect to put together a raft of proposals to somehow secure the internet from, say, websites that recruit terrorists or teach you how to make a bomb.
States have come far in such discussions and in reaching some levels of consensus. International standards have greater impetus, evidently, when they seek to cap that which they perceive as threatening to the civilized world: child pornography, organized crime, terrorism, and SPAM. This much is understandable.
What the international community has barely begun to discuss, however, is the other side of the dilemma: What should be the international standard on ensuring Internet accessibility and openness? …
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