Iraq's electoral commission has announced the preliminary results of last weekend's provincial elections, amid some accusations of irregularities and voting fraud. The Iraqi army and security forces, however, say that they will maintain order despite any challenges.

The head of Iraq's High Electoral Commission Faraj al-Haidari announced the preliminary results of Saturday's provincial election, indicating that 90 percent of the vote had been counted and that international observers were pleased with the electoral process.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's bloc won 38 percent of the vote in Baghdad, 37 percent in Basrah, and large margins in other provinces.

This is the country's first election since 2005, with fourteen of Iraq's 18 provinces having voted.

More at Voice of America.

Whom should President Obama appoint as his emissary to Iran, to take on what may be the most important diplomatic mission in decades? The right person (or persons) would have the stature and experience to engage Iran at the highest level -- and to explore what Obama in his inaugural address called "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

My nominees are Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, former national security advisers for Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, respectively. They would elevate the Iran mission, connecting it to the tradition of bipartisan strategic thinking that shaped America's role in the modern world. And, like our youthful new president, these two octogenarians understand the need for America to "turn a page" in its foreign policy and to connect with what Brzezinski has called a "global political awakening."

More at The Washington Post.

About a year ago, Charlie Rose, the nighttime talk-show host, was interviewing Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the military adviser at the White House coordinating efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have never been beaten tactically in a fire fight in Afghanistan," Lute said. To even casual students of the Vietnam War, his statement has an eerie echo. One of the iconic exchanges of Vietnam came, some years after the war, between Col. Harry Summers, a military historian, and a counterpart in the North Vietnamese Army. As Summers recalled it, he said, "You never defeated us in the field." To which the NVA officer replied: "That may be true. It is also irrelevant."

Vietnam analogies can be tiresome. To critics, especially those on the left, all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential "quagmires." But sometimes clichés come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways. The parallels are disturbing: the president, eager to show his toughness, vows to do what it takes to "win." The nation that we are supposedly rescuing is no nation at all but rather a deeply divided, semi-failed state with an incompetent, corrupt government held to be illegitimate by a large portion of its population. The enemy is well accustomed to resisting foreign invaders and can escape into convenient refuges across the border. There are constraints on America striking those sanctuaries. Meanwhile, neighboring countries may see a chance to bog America down in a costly war. Last, there is no easy way out.

More at Newsweek.

Afghanistan Is Not Iraq, So US Best Not Surge Ahead Blindly - Christopher Brown, US News and World Report

Americans are often accused of fighting the last war. Unfortunately, this has a greater ring of truth to it than most would care to admit and normally ends up costing us far more in blood and treasure than if we just considered how new conflicts differ from previous efforts. This is the very danger facing America as it prepares to take the successful surge strategy from Iraq and transplant it to Afghanistan.

If America attempts a cookie-cutter approach in Afghanistan, is it likely to prove once again that "war is God's way of teaching Americans geography." That is because Afghanistan is nothing like Iraq. This is true in terms of both the physical and cultural socioeconomic geography that America is confronting.

More at US News and World Report.

Plans Emerge for New Troop Deployments to Afghanistan - Chip Cummins, Roshanak Taghavi and Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal

Senior US commanders are finalizing plans to send tens of thousands of reinforcements to Afghanistan's main opium-producing region and its porous border with Pakistan, moves that will form the core of President Barack Obama's emerging Afghan war strategy.

Mr. Obama is likely to formally approve additional deployments this week, and Pentagon officials hope the full complement of 20,000 to 30,000 new troops will be on the ground by the end of the summer, pushing the U.S. military presence to its highest level since the start of the war in 2001.

US commanders said the moves are part of a push to beat back the resurgent Taliban and secure regions of Afghanistan that are beyond the reach of the weak central government in Kabul. Unlike Iraq, where violence has typically been concentrated in cities, the war in Afghanistan is being increasingly waged in isolated villages and towns.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Obama Seeks Narrower Focus in Afghan War - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

As President Obama prepares to formally authorize the April deployment of two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, perhaps as early as this week, no issue other than the US economy appears as bleak to his administration as the seven-year Afghan war and the regional challenges that surround it.

A flurry of post-inauguration activity -- presidential meetings with top diplomatic and military officials, the appointment of a high-level Afghanistan-Pakistan envoy and the start of a White House-led strategic review -- was designed to show forward motion and resolve, senior administration officials said.

But newly installed officials describe a situation on the ground that is far more precarious than they had anticipated.

More at The Washington Post.

Reports: Christopher Hill to Be US Ambassador to Iraq - Voice of America

News outlets in the United States are reporting that Christopher Hill, the lead American negotiator on North Korea, is expected to be nominated as the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

There has been no official confirmation of the reports Monday on CBS, ABC, the Associated Press and Reuters, which quote unnamed officials who say Hill is expected to be the nominee.

Hill is currently the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Hill has previously served as ambassador to South Korea, Poland and Macedonia. He was also special envoy to Kosovo. Before he started his career in the foreign service, Hill served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon.

If nominated and confirmed by the US Senate, Hill would replace another career diplomat, Ryan Crocker, as Washington's top diplomat in Iraq.

... I think we've systematically underestimated the impact of our flat-footedness in confronting a variety of irregular threats. This goes back at least to the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and runs through Mogadishu, Nairobi, the USS Cole, to the Trade Towers. MajGen Taylor is concerned that we might not be able to deter nations states in the future. I think we should be concerned that we have already demonstrated inability to deter non-state actors. In fact, we have provided the opposite: a clear and compelling invitation to attack us in an irregular manner. And perhaps when these efforts focused on mere embassies and barracks, you could say that these were tragic, but isolated attacks that could be dealt with locally or tactically (ie, force protection, local counter-terrorism, etc.).

But we now know that's utter folly. These aren't Lilliuputian pin-pricks. We now know that our stumbling in Lebanon and clumsiness in Somalia provided very clear lessons learned to al Qaeda and their fellow travelers... Our ham-fistedness not only failed to deter our enemies, but provided them with a clear strategy for confronting us. Today we are experiencing the long-term, strategic effects of our myopia.

Like the general, I am unsure of the nature of all our future threats. And like the general, I worry that focusing on COIN could leave us somewhat more vulnerable to conventional attack. I just wish the general would worry more about the impact of our already demonstrated vulnerability to irregular assaults.

Small Wars vs Big Wars

Marine Maj. Gen. Larry Taylor, now in Iraq, recently wrote to a young Marine to warn him against assuming that the country's next war will be like those in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. I was particularly struck by his last point -- that the danger of being wrong about a big war is far greater than the danger of being wrong about a small one...

Tom Ricks's Inbox

That said, an alert SWJ reader sends in this pic that apparently captures Dave in his "night job". Go figure...