Rusty Shackleford:

Bush-Hitler: Holding terrorists indefinitely without charge in Gitmo.

Hope-Change: Holding terrorists indefinitely without charge somewhere else.

As Jacob Sullum notes in much more thorough post, it’s a natural consequence of the Obama administration’s continuing the Bush perspective that we’re at war with terrorists.

In Holder’s view, then, we are engaged in a war that started years before we noticed it and may never end, at least not in any definitive way. The enemy is not simply the guy who shoots at you on the battlefield, who can be readily identified; he can be anyone, anywhere who helps anti-American terrorists. He could be a guy captured in the Philippines suspected of funneling money to Al Qaeda, or (presumably) he could be the employee of an Islamic charity in the U.S. that is accused of sending money to Hezbollah. Given Holder’s invocation of cyber and mental battlefields, the enemy could even be someone accused of fomenting terrorism through incendiary online criticism of the U.S. government. The implication is that any of these people could be held in military custody without trial until the cessation of hostilities, i.e., indefinitely.

Right.

This was entirely predictable and, indeed, predicted by several of us here at OTB and by other analysts.  Being president is a hell of a lot different than being a candidate for president. No administration is going to simply release possible terrorists and take the resultant risk.

The key problem with the Bush policy wasn’t detention but rather the lack of even a modicum of due process.  So long as the Obama administration comes up with a way to let suspects put forth evidence that they’re not who we think they are, we’ll have moved forward.  Sullum isn’t happy:

Such suspects need not even be tried by military tribunals; they could simply be identified as “unlawful enemy combatants” through a process that is yet to be determined but that will certainly be much less rigorous than a full-blown trial. What will be the basis for deciding which suspects get full due process and which get something far less, which receive determinate prison sentences and which are held indefinitely? If the option is available, it will always be tempting to take the easier route, which could mean that every case related to terrorism will be militarized. Then anyone accused of aiding terrorism can forget about justice as it is usually understood.

So long as we treat terrorism as a national security problem rather than a criminal justice problem, no one should expect different.

The Mahdi Army might soon be the Iraqi equivalent of the Salvation Army, Gina Chon reports for the Wall Street Journal.

Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — long a thorn in the side of the U.S. military and Iraqi government — intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization.

The transformation would represent a significant turnabout for a group that, as recently as earlier this year, was seen as one of the most destabilizing anti-American forces in Iraq. For much of the past several years, the Mahdi Army, headed by Mr. Sadr, a Shiite cleric, controlled sizable chunks of Baghdad and other cities. Its brand of pro-Shiite activism had the side effect of pitting Iraqis against each other, helping to stir worries of civil war.

Recently, however, the group has been hit by a largely successful Iraqi military crackdown against militia members operating as criminal gangs. At the same time, Mr. Sadr’s popular support is dwindling: Residents who once viewed the Mahdi Army as champions of the poor became alienated by what they saw as its thuggish behavior.

A new brochure, obtained by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by Mr. Sadr’s chief spokesman, Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, states that the Mahdi Army will now be guided by Shiite spirituality instead of anti-American militancy. The group will focus on education, religion and social justice, according to the brochure, which is aimed at Mr. Sadr’s followers. The brochure also states that it “is not allowed to use arms at all.”

This would be a wonderful development if true.  I fear, however, that this will be merely one arm of a larger organization, following a model successfully pioneered by the likes of Hamas.

Spencer Ackerman agrees. Noting that we’ve seen predictions of Sadr’s demise before, he writes, “An alternative explanation would hold that Sadr is making yet another of his endless tactical retrenchments and is embedding his movement ever deeper within the fiber of Shiite Iraqi society, establishing an alternative infrastructure to Maliki’s failed governance, and retaining his military option for future use.”

AllahPundit is skeptical too, asking, “[W]hat’s a jihadi to do when he can’t wage jihad? Simple. Wage inner jihad.”  He continues, “Sounds like they’re playing nice for now and rebuilding their popular/religious legitimacy while they build a Hezbollah off-premises, presumably for a surge of their own when conditions allow.”

Could well be.  Or, just perhaps, he’s decided that he doesn’t need violent means to achieve his political aims at this stage.  Maybe he figures he can run as a candidate in the next election — whenever it turns out to be — and win the thing.

And, as Ackerman notes, he wouldn’t have to give up anything. So long as he’s got followers, he can pull out the guns whenever he wants.

AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani

Tony Snow has died. He was only 53. CNN Breaking:

Former White House press secretary Tony Snow has died at the age of 53 after a second battle with cancer. Snow, who had been undergoing chemotherapy treatments for a recurrence of the disease, left his White House job September. 14, 2007, and joined CNN as a conservative commentator.

More from AP:

Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bush’s press secretary, has died of colon cancer, Fox News reported Saturday. Snow was 53 years old.

Snow, who served as the first host of the television news program “Fox News Sunday” from 1996 to 2003, would later say that in the Bush administration he was enjoying “the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I’m ever going to have.”

Snow was working for Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio when he replaced Scott McClellan as press secretary in May 2006 during a White House shake-up. Unlike McClellan, who came to define caution and bland delivery from the White House podium, Snow was never shy about playing to the cameras. With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster’s good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.

He served just 17 months as press secretary, a tenure interrupted by his second bout with cancer. In 2005 doctors had removed his colon and he began six months of chemotherapy. In March 2007 a cancerous growth was removed from his abdominal area and he spent five weeks recuperating before returning to the White House.

He resigned as Bush’s chief spokesman six months later, in September 2007, citing not his health but a need to earn more than the $168,000 a year he was paid in the government post. In April, he joined CNN as a commentator.

In that year and a half at the White House, Snow brought partisan zeal and the skills of a seasoned performer to the task of explaining and defending the president’s policies. During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.

Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.

Although a star in conservative politics, as a commentator he had not always been on the president’s side. He once called Bush “something of an embarrassment” in conservative circles and criticized what he called Bush’s “lackluster” domestic policy.

His death, while hardly shocking given his health problems, is sad. Like so many media personalities, I had the sense that I “knew” Tony Snow after spending so many hours with him in my living room. He seemed like a decent guy and, certainly, 53 is far to young to die.

Tony Snow Tributes:

• Scott Johnson, Power Line: “Tony was one of the smartest, wittiest, and most humane men in our public life.”

• John Cole, Balloon Juice: “Fifty-three is just way too damned young, especially for a man with a family. Terrible. And, I should note, despite what you thought of Snow, he was the only competent Press Secretary of this administration.”

• Kim Priestap, Wizbang: “Why does it seem like only the good guys die young and not the evil ones like Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jung Il?”

• Bruce McQuain, Q and O: “Tony was a gentleman who fielded every question and answered it without all the usual sidestepping spokesman do.“

• Matt Burden, Black Five: “A class act with sharp wit, keen intellect, and a huge heart – we’ll miss him greatly.”

• Joe Gandelman, Moderate Voice: “Snow was a public figure who truly seemed to have fun at his job and did it well. He was the quintessential broadcasting pro who put a professional TV face on the White House point of view.”

• Shannen Coffin, The Corner: “To call him a ‘rock star’ was an understatement. He brought substance to every meeting he was in and every subject he covered. . . . But what struck me most about him was his ceaseless optimism. Even when he was leaving his post, when his prognosis could not have been good, he was always in good cheer with his colleagues.”

• Michelle Malkin: “He was a true mensch, multi-talented–and one of the kindest people I had the honor to meet in the news business.”

• Ed Morrissey, Hot Air: “We lost a good man and a class act.”

• Warner Todd Huston, Stop the ACLU: “[I]t will be a tad colder and less friendly as well as a bit less optimistic now that this wonderful fellow has passed on to his just rewards.”

• Sister Toldja: “He was the best.”

• Faiz Shakir, Think Progress, links this Fox News tribute to their former colleague:

That’s the central claim of David Ignatius’s column in the Washington Post this morning:

So imagine that you are Qassem Soleimani, commander of a covert Iranian army deployed across the Middle East: You doubt the Bush administration would run the risk of a military strike against Iran, but you can’t be sure. You think America can’t afford to play chicken in an election year, but you can’t be certain of that, either. You think Iran is on a roll, but you know how quickly that advantage can be squandered by unwise choices. You know that Arabs, even in Iraq, have become peeved at what they see as meddling and overreaching by Tehran.

So you watch and wait. You give ground where necessary, but you prepare to strike back, as devastatingly as possible — and on your own terms, not those of your adversary.

Over the last five years events certainly seem to have been going their way. To its west Iraq, previously dominated by a regime with which the Iranians had fought a punishing war, is now led by a “political party” the Iranians were instrumental in creating. To its east the Taliban, with whom they’d been at daggers drawn (that’s the reason the Iranians were happy to cooperate with us against the Taliban), are no longer in control in Afghanistan. U. S. forces are largely occupied with keeping the fires in Iraq and Afghanistan tamped down to the extent that in the short term to deploy more troops anywhere we’d need to take them from one place or the other.

Rising oil prices have given the Iranian economy an enormous shot in the arm.

Iranian-supported Hezbollah influence in Lebanon is rising.

Whatever the Iranian’s nuclear weapons development program, their efforts at stymieing the IAEA in its attempts to monitor their nuclear development activities have been successful and that, combined with the recent NIE’s findings on the Iranians, makes further sanctions against the Iranians unlikely.

But is time really on their side? I don’t believe so.

Iraq is a thorny problem for the Iranians just as it is for us. Our best interests in Iraq lie in a strong central government or at least a solid, cohesive federation taking hold there. Iranian interests are for a weak federation or something just short of chaos. How likely is that to happen?

Sunni Arabs, correctly, don’t see such a weak federation as being in their interests. It leaves them largely without resources, unless the oil in Anbar province can be developed.

The Kurds in the north are being harried by the Turks on the west and the Iranians on the east (I suspect the Turks and Iranians would say that they’re pushing back). The harder the Turks and Iranians react, the better a strong Iraqi federation may look to the Kurds.

The Iranians’ greatest strength in Iraq has long been assumed to be Iraq’s southern Shi’ites but I think it’s possible to evaluate that relationship incorrectly for several reasons. First, Iraqi Shi’ism and Khomeinist Iranian Shi’ism are not identical, Iraqi Shi’ites, taking the most senior of all Shi’ite clerics, Ali Sistani’s lead, have avoided the direct participation of its clerics in government thus far.

Will the Maliki government (or its successor, if any) be a reliable puppet for the Iranians? An agenda of its own could be even more dangerous for the Iranians than it would be for us.

Iran’s economy is struggling. It is overly dependent on oil and the Iranians aren’t investing in the improvements to their production necessary to maximize yields, electing instead to spend the money on nuclear development and subsidies on the price of gasoline, especially vexing since Iran refines relatively little of its own gasoline.

Outside of oil Iran’s economy is nearly feudal, dominated by a handful of huge monopolistic companies. These monopolies are mostly untaxed and unregulated and are monstrously inefficient. They survive because the Iranian business climate, with its masses of red tape and endemic corruption, renders starting new businesses so difficult.

Two thirds of the country’s population is below the age of 25. Iran’s economy is incapable of producing jobs for them, the new Iranians don’t remember the Shah, and modern communications makes it difficult to close Iran off from the rest of the world. These young people know what people elsewhere in the world have that they don’t. Will Iran’s younger generation support the older generation’s Iranian Revolution indefinitely?

The imprudent and heedless behavior of the Bush Administration is frequently identified as a source of Iran’s ascendance over the last half dozen years but I think that the mentality that informed the Bush Administration, thinking only as far ahead as the next election cycle, is even more problematic. Rather than thinking in terms of weeks or months we should be thinking in terms of years and decades. I believe that time is on our side.

Aaron Mannes has done an extensive statistical analysis on the effectiveness of decapitation (in the figurative as well as the literal sense) in counter-terrorism.

It is conventional wisdom that removing an organization’s leaders is an effective counter-terror strategy, but the quantitative analysis is less clear on the issue. Most of the successes focus on specific instances, such as the collapse of Sendero Luminoso in Peru after its leaders were removed. There are also examples on the other side, such as Hezbollah’s increased deadliness and effectiveness after Israel’s 1992 assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Abbas Musawi.

This study was an attempt to shed some light on the issue, focusing strictly on removing top leaders (#1 or #2 – so OBL or Zawahiri would count, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did not.) Sixty cases of terrorist leaders being killed, dying, or being captured and imprisoned for lengthy periods were identified.

The results were less than satisfying.

The data-set was relatively small so most of the results were not statistically significant. There was a trend of lower numbers of incidents after a group lost its leader, a trend that increased when a group lost its leader more than once. On the other hand there was an indication that the number of fatalities by Islamist groups increase after they lose a leader. Building on that when an Islamist leader is killed, rather than arrested, the increase is even greater.

The full study [PDF] is here. Given the intuitive and visceral appeal of killing terrorist leadership, though, I’m quite certain Mannes’ ultimate conclusion does not need more study: “Regardless of the quantitative results, decapitation will remain a counter-terror strategy.”

via Counterterrorism Blog

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a very profound statement at Monday night’s Atlantic Council awards dinner that has received virtually no press notice: That we “will have to deal with Iran in the very near future.”

Here’s the context:

We also live in a time where Iran routinely pushes its way into more and more realms of instability. And I, for one, think it is important that we deal with that instability that they create, whether it is Hezbollah, Hamas. Recent operations in Southern Iraq, recent combat operations in Southern Iraq in Basra highlighted yet again Iran’s activities in ways that very specifically pointed to activities which, in fact, resulted in the deaths of coalition soldiers. And I think for the ability to create stability in that part of the world that not just this alliance, but those who are allied, will have to deal with Iran in the very near future.

You can watch the video here.

Mullen made these remarks late Monday night in his speech accepting the Council’s 2008 Award for Distinguished Military Leadership. Perhaps because there were so many other fine speakers, or because his was the last speech of the night, or because the oxygen was all taken by the next day’s Pennsylvania primary, these remarks weren’t picked up.

Indeed, when I did my quick write-up of this the next day for the Council’s website, I headlined the piece “Mullen: ‘We Will Have to Deal with Iran in the Very Near Future’” — correctly picking out the main point — but frankly not fully grasping its significance. I was only reminded about it because some gentlemen were talking about it before a luncheon I attended today put on by The National Interest at the Nixon Center.

I continue to believe that not only is military action against Iran simply not feasible but, contrary to the conventional wisdom, not part of the Bush administration’s agenda. One would think the world’s top military man doesn’t make a point of bringing up the need for action if trade sanctions or a stern diplomatic communique are all that’s on his mind. Then again, a little strategic ambiguity on these matters can help advance ones goals, especially when the options at hand are all unattractive.

Six days of Shiite-on-Shiite warfare in Basra appear over after Mahdi militia chief Moktada al-Sadr sued for peace* and the government agreed in a deal brokered by Iran. Whether this gets scored a “win” for Sadr or Prime Minister Maliki will likely vary depending on the predisposition of the evaluator. Based on what we know now, though, Maliki’s gambit in taking on the Mahdi Army failed.

Erica Goode and James Glanz for the NYT:

The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Sunday called for his followers to stop fighting in Basra and in turn demanded concessions from Iraq’s government, after six days in which his Mahdi Army militia has held off an American-supported Iraqi assault on the southern port city.

The substance of Mr. Sadr’s statement, released Sunday afternoon, was hammered out in elaborate negotiations over the past few days with senior Iraqi officials, some of whom traveled to Iran to meet with Mr. Sadr, according to several officials involved in the discussions.

Still, though fighting was reported to have died down by late afternoon in Basra, it continued in Baghdad, including heavy combat by Iraqi and American troops and aircraft in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, casting uncertainty on the deal. A strict curfew imposed by the government on Thursday was lifted at 6 a.m. Monday.

The negotiations with Mr. Sadr were seen as a serious blow for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who had vowed that he would see the Basra campaign through to a military victory and who has been harshly criticized even within his own coalition for the stalled assault. Last week, Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Kadir al-Obeidi, conceded that the government’s military efforts in Basra have met with far more resistance than was expected. Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki’s political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.

And it was a chance for Mr. Sadr to flaunt his power, commanding both armed force and political strength that can forcefully challenge the other dominant Shiite parties, including Mr. Maliki’s Dawa movement and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. In the statement, Mr. Sadr told militia members “to end all military actions in Basra and in all the provinces” and “to cooperate with the government to achieve security.” But Mr. Sadr also demanded concessions, including that the government grant a general amnesty for his followers, release all imprisoned members of the Sadrist movement who have not been convicted of crimes and bring back “the displaced people who have fled their homes as a result of military operations.” It was not clear if the government was willing to meet those demands.

Mr. Sadr’s willingness to negotiate represents a significant shift from his stance in 2004, when he ordered his militia to fight to the death in the holy city of Najaf, and suggests that his political sophistication and strategic skills have grown in the last two years. In an interview, Mahmoud al-Mashadani, the Parliament speaker and a senior Sunni politician, said, “With this statement, Sayyed Moktada al-Sadr proved that he is a good politician, working for the sake of Iraq.”

[...]

The continuing fighting on Sunday left the ultimate significance of the statement uncertain, said Qassim Daoud, a former national security adviser who leads a secular Shiite party that has supported Mr. Maliki in the past. But the muddle that has emerged from what was supposed to be a decisive assault has serious consequences for the prime minister, Mr. Daoud said. “The government now is in a weak position,” he said. “They claimed that they are going to disarm the militias and they didn’t succeed.” Asked if the erosion of support for Mr. Maliki could cause his government to fall, Mr. Daoud paused and said, “Everything is possible.” He said Mr. Maliki began the campaign in Basra without consulting outside his inner circle or members of Parliament.

The parallels between this action and the Israelis’ 2006 invasion of Lebanon to take on Hezbollah are striking. In both cases, the party that initiated the escalation into high level conflict inflicted substantial damage on their adversary and were able to claim military victory. At the same time, neither came anywhere close to achieving their political objectives. In assessing the 2006 action, I concluded that Israel therefore lost. Absent substantial new information, I’d have to conclude that Maliki was the loser here for the same reason.

We’ve essentially returned to the status quo ante, which would seem to be better for Sadr than Maliki given that Maliki’s initiation of conflict is a fair indicator that he was less happy with prevailing conditions. The infrastructure in Basra has obviously sustained some damage, making the central government’s task in rebuilding the economy more complicated.

The Iraqi Army has, once again, proven itself to be a collection of amateurs, a substantial number of whom are cowards and/or disloyal. AP’s Charles Hanley provides a timeline of our efforts to stand up a competent force capable of fighting without American support and concludes, “Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, free-standing Iraqi army has seemed to always slip further into the future.” It’s hard to argue with that assessment.

More importantly, any illusion that Iraq is near political reconciliation has also been shattered. The Western media division of Iraqis into merely three sects — Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd — is obviously wrong, as there is substantial discord within those groups. It’s difficult to imagine that six days of killing one another is going to lessen that in the near term.

The only hope, really, is that Sadr’s support will start to dry up in reaction to this episode. Perhaps war-weary Iraqis will decide to get behind their government. More likely, though, they’ll simply blame Maliki and double down on Sadr. Which, frankly, would seem the more prudent bet.

*UPDATE: Or maybe not. While the tenor of the first reports I received on this, including NPR’s early coverage, indicated that Sadr had initiated this, McClatchy’s Leila Fadel tells a different story:

A parliamentary delegation from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s own coalition (mainly now the Da`wa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) defied him by going off to the holy seminary city of Qom in Iran and negotiating directly with Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr and with the leader of the Quds Brigades of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Qasim Sulaymani.

As a result of those parleys, Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to stand down, though I read his statement as permitting continued armed self-defense, as at Basra where the Iraqi Army is attacking them and the US is bombing them. Significantly, he calls on the Mahdi Army to stop attacking the HQs of rival political parties. That language suggests that the parties are suffering from such attacks and are worried that party infrasture is being degraded ahead of the October 1 provincial elections. The southern parties have essentially defied al-Maliki and Bush to make a separate peace.

Juan Cole, at least, finds that account plausible.

Thomas Ricks reports that Matt Matthews, a historian at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute, has written a new report concluding that “five years of fighting insurgents in Iraq may also have dulled U.S. soldiers’ skills at more conventional combat.”

The study, apparently, isn’t a case study of the U.S. military but rather the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and Israel’s woeful performance.

The fight at Wadi Saluki, for example, revealed the failure of tank commanders and crewmen to use their smokescreen systems, the lack of indirect fire skills, and the total absence of combined arms proficiency. The IDF lost many of these perishable skills during its long years of COIN [counterinsurgency] operations against the Palestinians.

[...]

While the U.S. Army continues to perform irregular warfare operations throughout the world, it must not lose its ability to execute major combat operations.

Unfortunately, combat skills are not interchangeable. We spent years presuming that, if we trained to beat the Big, Bad Russians, we could handle anyone. Vietnam, Beirut, and other encounters proved different. Similarly, proficiency in maneuver warfare has only limited transfer into counterinsurgency or stability operations. The reverse, alas, is likely true as well.

Imad Mughniyeh, the man behind the the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut and the TWA Flight 847 hijacking, has been killed.

A senior Hezbollah commander suspected in some of the highest-profile international terrorist attacks of the last 25 years has died in an explosion in Syria, Hezbollah TV said Wednesday.

Imad Mughniyeh died Tuesday in an explosion in a residential section of the Syrian capital, Damascus, according to Hezbollah’s television station, Al-Manar.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for Mughniyeh’s death, but Israeli officials denied they were involved. “Israel rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident,” an Israeli government spokesman said.

Western intelligence agencies long suspected Mughniyeh in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 63 people, according to a 2001 CNN report. He also was suspected in the truck bombing that year of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, an attack that killed 241 people and preceded the U.S. military withdrawal from Lebanon.

The FBI listed Hezbollah’s Mughniyeh as one of its Most Wanted Terrorists, blaming him for his role in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which gripped the attention of TV viewers in the United States and around the world for more than two weeks.

Hurray!

Practically speaking, this will have little impact. There’s always another guy and his “greatest hits” were during the Reagan administration. Still, it’s good to see him go. And it’s good to have these bastards looking over their shoulder wondering if they’re next.

A recent survey of Saudi Arabian adults finds a complicated view of America, terrorism, and freedom.

Most Saudi Arabia citizens interviewed in a poll oppose terrorism and want closer ties with the United States. But many Saudis remain opposed to making peace with Israel, according to what researchers call an unprecedented survey of the kingdom.

Ten percent of Saudis have a favorable view of the al Qaeda terrorist network, according to a survey by Terror Free Tomorrow, an international public opinion research group based in Washington. Fifteen percent said they have a favorable view of al Qaeda’s leader, Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, the poll found.

[...]

Saudis also have a better opinion of the United States than in other countries in the Muslim world, with 40 percent saying they view the U.S. favorably. That compares to 19 percent in Pakistan, according to a poll taken by the same group in August, and 21 percent of Egyptians, according to a May survey by the Pew Research Center.

CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said a spate of al Qaeda attacks on Saudi targets starting in 2003 appeared to have turned the Saudi public against the group. “The results, while a little surprising, seem fair enough considering the circumstances,” he said. But while the poll was encouraging, “It’s not all Kumbaya,” he added. Bergen said a “substantial minority” of Saudis — 30 percent — support fighting against U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq, and 52 percent would support Saudi Arabia’s development of nuclear weapons.

[...]

Thirty-three percent of Saudis viewed Hezbollah favorably, compared to 42 percent unfavorably. When asked about Hamas, 37 percent had a positive response, while 38 percent viewed the group unfavorably.

[...]

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq was seen as the most important step in improving U.S.-Saudi ties by 85 percent of those surveyed. Most Saudis said they opposed their countrymen fighting in Iraq and favored helping the United States reach an end to the nearly five-year-old war there.

Support was also strong for increasing visas for Saudis to come to the United States, with 74 percent calling that a step that would improve their opinion. And 71 percent favored a free-trade pact between Washington and Riyadh, while 52 percent said a U.S.-brokered peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians would be an improvement.

[...]

Saudis expressed support for a free press and free elections, though 79 percent also said they continued to support an absolute monarchy — and 15 percent supported the recent sentence of 200 lashes and six months imprisonment of a 19-year old Shiite woman for being with a male acquaintance before she was gang-raped by seven men. Abdullah announced Monday the woman would be pardoned.

Despite the kingdom’s somewhat forbidding reputation among Westerners, Ballen said those contacted were far more receptive to pollsters than most Americans. The poll’s response rate was 61 percent, compared to 10 to 15 percent for most U.S. surveys

The findings are interesting although one wonders how reliable they are. People living in a theocratic state with severe punishment for dissent tend to be reluctant to give their honest opinion to complete strangers.

UPDATE: As Anderson suggests in the comments, the fact the responses were overwhelmingly against the sharia punishment for the rape victim is not only encouraging but an indicator that the responses are likely legitimate. Certainly, the responses ring true to me. The caveat above, though, always needs to be added to surveys taken outside the free world.

Image Source: S as in Saudi

Mansoor Ijaz reports that Mitt Romney has announced he would not appoint a Muslim to the cabinet were he elected president. His reasoning is a mite peculiar:

I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that “jihadism” is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, “…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”

Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in Republican caucuses, wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead. Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they’re too much of a minority for a post in high-level policymaking. More ironic, that Islamic heritage is what qualifies them to best engage America’s Arab and Muslim communities and to help deter Islamist threats.

Certainly, this is intellectually inconsistent. Then again, Ijaz’ complaint is not that Romney is being hypocritical on ethnic quotas but rather that he should immediately announce his enthusiasm for them:

Imagine how a qualified American Muslim FBI director, sensitized to the genuine concerns among Arab and Muslim communities about civil rights violations, would be able to ensure that FBI actions and policies target the real bad guys, not communities as a whole. Imagine how an American Muslim CIA director or defense secretary whose understanding of cultural differences in places that breed Islamist violence would ensure that intelligence was not biased by bigotry or lack of understanding and that defense strategies were constructed on data acquired from authentic sources.

[...]

[Romney] and other candidates for the presidency from both political parties, should actively begin searching for American Muslims and Arab Americans who can serve in primary decisionmaking cabinet level posts. To do otherwise is to risk promulgating policies that once again put the US straight in the sights of the terrorists who seek to bring America down.

This is simply nonsensical. Muslim Americans are uniquely qualified to judge the culture of foreign lands? So, your average Arab-American construction worker has more expertise than, say, an Irish-American with a PhD in Middle East politics? Really?

Jim Henley similarly rejects Ijaz’ reasoning but thinks Romney likely to get a pass from the conservative intelligentsia for his quota talk, given that only Evil Muslims are harmed. We shall see, I guess.

Frankly, aside from polls in Iowa and New Hampshire — and Hugh Hewitt — I haven’t seen much conservative support for Romney thus far. He’s hardly the favorite of the conservative intelligentsia. To the extent they spill any ink (or pixels) on Romney at all, I doubt we’ll see a lot of defense of his reasoning here.

Now, had he justified his position with the equally absurd notion that we simply can’t trust any Muslims with important positions, he’d have likely found some defenders. But for this particular idiocy? Likely not.

As to the title question, there may well be a Muslim or three who belongs in the cabinet. But let’s pick them based on subject matter competence, executive experience, and coherence with the president’s policy preferences rather than on a need to fill ethnic quotas or because it would send a certain signal.

Image source: Townhall

Like most analysts, Peter Brookes sees little chance that the Annapolis Conference will solve the longstanding Arab-Israeli crisis. He does think, however, that it is already a resounding success.

The bulk of his column is devoted to the obstacles that will almost surely prevent much substantive change. Several major players have an interest in keeping the conflict going and the Palestinian government doesn’t even have the ability to speak for the Palestinian people, given the Hamas issue.

Still, Brookes is optimistic:

But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Look on the bright side: This week’s meeting is likely to restart a negotiation process that has been moribund for seven years.

In fact, all the major players will descend upon the Naval Academy this week – including Saudi Arabia (the de facto leader of the Arab world) and Syria, neither of which even has diplomatic relations with Israel. (Don’t hold your breath for an Israeli-Saudi handshake, though.)

Plus, the 22- nation Arab League gave its blessing to the conference at a Cairo meeting last week. (Hamas won’t attend, and is none too pleased with the Arab League’s “sellout” of the Palestinian cause.)

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Condemning the talks as “useless,” Tehran sees the gathering as nothing more than its Mideast Muslim brethren collaborating with arch-foe Israel. Tehran also fears the formation of an US-Arab anti-Iranian alignment at Annapolis. It will certainly use its pull with Hamas and Hezbollah (which has also denounced the talks) to obstruct any progress on Middle East peace.

Iran is no doubt worried about Syria’s participation in the Annapolis meeting, too. The beginnings of a Syrian-Israeli rapprochement over the Golan Heights could weaken Tehran’s ties with Damascus – heck, even stabilize Lebanon.

Which points to how Annapolis is a success: Just getting more than 100 key players in the same room at the same time to talk peace is a real achievement.

Of course, the confab will only be the first play in a long, grueling game – but the “boos” from some in the stands are a pretty good sign of which side is losing in this matchup.

That’s rather thin gruel. Still, this is the Middle East. Progress is almost always made in baby steps, often followed by steps in the other direction. But, yes, getting all these people together for a common purpose is progress.

Lebanon’s president stepped down at midnight, as required by law, with no successor in place, leaving the country in constitutional crisis.

Reuters reports a power vacuum:

Lebanon stepped into uncharted territory on Saturday when time ran out on attempts to find a new president before President Emile Lahoud’s mandate expired. Lahoud, a pro-Syrian retired general in power for nine years, left the presidential palace vacant at midnight (5:00 p.m. EST) after parliament failed to find a successor acceptable to both sides in a bitter dispute with international ramifications.

Speaking in the palace driveway before riding off in a motorcade to his nearby private home, Lahoud said his conscience was clear and Lebanon was well. The Lebanese must choose a consensus president quickly because the existing cabinet, which is backed by the United States and Europe, was illegitimate, he added. “If that doesn’t happen, the price for Lebanon will be high. I hope we can get there as quickly as possible,” he said.

The cabinet, led by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, says it automatically assumes the powers of the presidency until parliament agrees on a new head of state.

The United States, the United Nations, the European Union and conservative Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are expected to recognize the cabinet’s authority. But the other side in the dispute — an opposition alliance led by the Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran — says the country no longer has any recognized executive.

London’s Guardian, however, paints a more dire picture.

Lebanon was again plunged into uncertainty yesterday after parliament failed in a fifth attempt to elect a president, and the former Syrian backed-president Emile Lahoud, whose term ended at midnight, passed control of the security services over to the army, declaring a state of emergency.

The US-backed government of Fouad Siniora rejected the declaration. “It is as if the statement was never issued,” said Siniora. The constitution says a president cannot call a state of emergency without government approval, but Lahoud and the Hizbullah-led opposition view the cabinet as unconstitutional following the walk out of its Shia ministers last year.

The country is now in a presidential vacuum, with thousands of troops deployed across Beirut, and is likely to stay that way until the elections, postponed until next Friday, are attempted again.

Neither side seems clear on what the army’s mandate will be, with some expecting it to play a noticeably greater role in managing the state and others anticipating a continuation of the status quo. Few Lebanese have expressed surprise at the move. It is generally seen as a stalling measure to give the two camps more time to find a way out of the impasse.

Some constitutional experts have said the move is meaningless and analysts say Lahoud’s offer was vague enough for the army to interpret it as it pleases. “This is essentially a military authority to oversee negotiations, but if the government takes over Lahoud’s responsibilities, the opposition will escalate,” said Amal Saad Ghorayeb of the Carnegie Middle East Centre. “But if the army steps in and assumes a greater role in the managing of the state, the opposition will stay silent and focus on negotiations.”

The government had said it would elect its own president without the participation of the opposition if a solution could not be reached. The opposition has said any such move is tantamount to a “coup”. If the two sides cannot agree on a candidate, the opposition has threatened to set up a second government operating in tandem, as was the case at the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.

One hopes the parties resolve this crisis quickly and that this is rock bottom. There’s not much cause for optimism on that score, unfortunately. This is, to say the least, a tremendous disappointment given the tremendous hope less than three years ago during the so-called Cedar Revolution.

WaPo’s Anthony Shadid provides some color and background on how things unraveled. A brief excerpt:

This round of Lebanon’s crisis is ostensibly over parliament’s choice of a successor to Lahoud. But its roots go far deeper. On one side is a coalition around the American-backed government that claims legitimacy from a series of demonstrations that culminated March 14, 2005, and led to the end of Syria’s 29-year military presence in the country. On the other is an alliance between Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group supported by Iran and Syria, and Christian followers of Michel Aoun, a former general.

Unlike Lebanon’s civil war, often characterized as a Christian-Muslim conflict, this crisis has mobilized the country’s Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities against each other, with Christians divided between the two camps. At stake are questions fundamental to Lebanon’s identity: its stance toward Israel, the influence of foreign patrons here, and the balance of power among the country’s communities. To many, the choice of president will reflect the relative strength of one side or the other.

Much more at the link.

via OTB News

Photo credit: Ramzi Haidar/AFP/Getty

While Condoleeza Rice’s tenure as Secretary of State is, so far as I’m aware, not set to expire for another fourteen months, the AP has nonetheless rolled out a story on Rice’s Highs and Lows.

Interestingly, the listed highs are pretty substantial and the lows seem to be almost entirely happenstance. Among the lows: Getting confirmed only 85-13, Hamas winning an election, Israel invading Lebanon to strike at Hezbollah, and North Korea testing a nuke. What she might have done to prevent those things is far from clear. Among the highs: Starting talks and getting significant agreements in several longstanding conflicts, including the DPRK nuclear situation and the Israel-Palestinian standoff.

Given the remarkably bipartisan nature of our foreign policy (which stands in stark contrast with the polarized nature of our foreign policy debate) it’s quite likely that these events would have all proceeded in much the same fashion under a Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. Still, it belies the widespread perception of a mismanaged department.

via OTB News

Now, here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “Soldier flees interrogation by exposing breasts.”

An IDF soldier fled an interrogation room by exposing her breasts to a stunned officer.

The soldier was interrogated at the Biranit army base on the northern border after she refused to undergo a drugs test. A short while after her questioning began the soldier was seen walking out of the interrogation room and heading toward the main gate.

An officer at the base told her she was under arrest and demanded that she return to the interrogation room, at which point the soldier took her shirt off and told the officer: “Let’s see if you can arrest me.” The soldier took advantage of the officer’s momentary lack of concentration and quickly left the base. She was caught a short while later.

During a hearing at the military court in Jaffa the prosecutor demanded that the soldier, who was discharged from the army due to psychological disorders, receive jail time for her actions, but the judges ordered her to pay a NIS 1,000 ($250) fine.

I wonder if Hamas and Hezbollah are going to incorporate this into their interrogation resistance training somehow.