Remember a couple of weeks ago, when Congress passed a $680 billion appropriation? Well, don’t worry–the military will be getting still more money:

The nation’s top military officer said Wednesday that he expected the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though President Obama has pledged to end the Bush administration practice of paying for the conflicts with so-called supplemental funds that are outside the normal Defense Department budget.

The financing would be on top of the $130 billion that Congress authorized for the wars just last month.

The military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not say how much additional money would be needed, but one figure in circulation within the Pentagon and among outside defense budget analysts is $50 billion.

Link via John Cole, who says:

Personally, I think it would be supremely irresponsible to act on this legislation without seeing the CBO score. I’m hoping Max Baucus and the blue dogs will get on that, because I’d like to know how this legislation will pay for itself. I suggest we put this off a few months to talk about the costs and how we are robbing future generations.

Oh, wait. This is for the military. Never mind.

That’s pretty much the Washington attitude.

(cross posted to Heretical Ideas)

My first piece for ForeignPolicy.com, “Europe’s Obama Fatigue,” is online.

Despite George W. Bush’s defiant “you’re with us or you’re against us” public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and paying little attention to Europe.

[...]

It would be ironic, indeed, if the Europeans started longing for the good old days of the Bush administration. But that nostalgia is closer than you might think.

Supporting arguments at the link.

UPDATE: As one might expect, this piece is generating some strong rebuttals.

Daniel Larison argues:

You cannot gauge the importance or unimportance of Europe to the United States on the largely cosmetic, superficial and procedural clashes Washington has had with various European states in the last nine months. Under the previous administration, Europe continued to be “important” to the U.S. even when major EU powers opposed administration policy in very public, dramatic ways. To the extent that Obama is losing ground with Europeans, he had far more goodwill and support to lose; in almost every European country, he continues to rate higher after the drop-off from unrealistic expectations than Bush did at almost any point. Obviously relations were and remained far more strained under the last administration than they have been so far under this one. We notice the minor clashes that have taken place because there was a widely-shared, unreasonable expectation that amity and concord with Europe would prevail under Obama.

[...]

European and especially German interests were flatly ignored by Bush when it came to handling Russia. Promises to Ukraine and Georgia of eventual membership in NATO were given over strenuous German opposition. Were European interests and opinions being heeded then? No. The missile defense ploy prompted Moscow to threaten abandoning its commitments under the European conventional forces treaty and elicited a great deal of bluster from Medvedev about targeting Russian missiles on European soil. Was European security strengthened by any of this? No. What matter then if Bush went through the motions and observed the right formalities when he was getting the major decisions wrong?

Most western European allies were not seriously consulted, nor were their objections given much weight, when the Bush administration decided to push ahead with the missile defense plan. In all of the new commentary claiming that Europe has soured on Obama, this seems not to count at all.

Judah Grunstein adds:

[I]f George W. Bush learned to listen to Europe, and in particular NATO, it was largely after he’d been chastened by the failure of the Iraq war and the 2006 mid-term elections. Up until his final NATO summit, Bush continued to talk loudly about the largely unpopular measures of NATO expansion and missile defense. He listened in the sense that he allowed the alliance — led by France and Germany — to turn him back, but it was out of weakness, not out of strength. There was no movement at all when it came to climate change, which is a major driver of public opinion here.

As for Obama’s handling of Europe, I’d agree with the characterization of his aloofness, especially with regard to the current Afghanistan strategic review. But while my sympathies would normally be with Europe on this sort of thing, I do think that Obama invited the NATO allies last April to assume greater ownership of the Afghanistan war. Given their refusal to do so, I don’t blame him for the freeze-out now. That said, Obama’s brush-off of the U.S.-EU summit is inexcusable and reflects a myopic view of the EU’s potential, especially with the advent of the Lisbon Treaty.

I actually don’t disagree with either Dan or Judah on most of these points and think some of the disagreement comes from the provocative  title the FP folks chose.  My argument is neither that the Europeans have tired of Obama or even that Bush was particularly adept at transatlantic diplomacy.  Rather, it is that Bush cared more about Europe — and particularly the UK and New Europe — than Obama and therefore invested more of himself in the relationship.

It’s true that Obama’s stance on, for example, missile defense and NATO expansion is more popular in some quarters than Bush’s.  Indeed, I prefer his approach on the latter and quibble with him on the former mostly on how the rollout was done vice the policy itself.  But the policy differences are  a reflection of Obama’s prioritizing Russia’s views over that of Europe, especially East and Central Europe.   I think Bush was ultimately wrong in his zeal to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO but it was a policy preference motivated by the stated ideals of the Alliance of “a Europe whole and free.”

Month to date there have been four U. S. casualties in Iraq. Each death remains a tragedy but that’s a far cry from a year ago or two years ago. Fatalities in the Iraqi security forces have declined, too, each month of this year seeing fewer casualties than in the corresponding month of last year. Things are far from quiet in Iraq but are clealry much better than they were and than they might have been. As U. S. casualties ratchet up in Afghanistan, largely proportional to the increasing U. S. forces in Afghanistan, we seem to hear less and less coverage of Iraq.

In today’s column, lest we forget about Iraq entirely, Tom Friedman warns of Iraq’s continuing significance and its strategic importance relative to Afghanistan:

Watching Iraqi politics is like watching a tightrope artist crossing a dangerous cavern. At every step it looks as though he is going to fall into the abyss, and yet, somehow, he continues to wobble forward. Nothing is easy when trying to transform a country brutalized by three decades of cruel dictatorship. It is one step, one election, one new law, at a time. Each is a struggle. Each is crucial.

This next step is particularly important, which is why we cannot let Afghanistan distract U.S. diplomats from Iraq. Remember: Transform Iraq and it will impact the whole Arab-Muslim world. Change Afghanistan and you just change Afghanistan.

I think he’s simultaneously right and wrong. Real change in Iraq in the direction of liberal democracy would have enormous significance. I’m not entirely sure whether that’s what’s happening or whether we’re merely seeing the emergence of Saddam Lite.

And I think that he’s largely wrong about Afghanistan through oversimplification. It is impossible to change Afghanistan at all in isolation. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the Corsican Brothers, each feeling the other’s pain, and their fates are inextricably entwined. I seriously doubt that we can prevail militarily in Afghanistan in the absence of a legitimate, decent government there and that will be impossible without a legitimate, decent government in control of the territory it claims in Pakistan, too. And that, in turn, would have tremendous implications for the entirety of south and central Asia.

And can whatever we see as the desired end state in each of Iraq and Afghanistan be maintained without an ongoing commitment to both countries?

Over at The Glittering Eye I muse in a related vein over the interrelationship between our military and our grand strategy. Is there an intrinsic conflict between nation-building and having the biggest, toughest military in the world? How should we be using our military and what are our interests?

Armed forces recruiting is at its highest levels in the all-volunteer era, Ann Scott Tyson reports for WaPo.

For the first time in more than 35 years, the U.S. military has met all of its annual recruiting goals, as hundreds of thousands of young people have enlisted despite the near-certainty that they will go to war.

The Pentagon, which made the announcement Tuesday, said the economic downturn and rising joblessness, as well as bonuses and other factors, had led more qualified youths to enlist.

The military has not seen such across-the-board successes since the all-volunteer force was established in 1973, after Congress ended the draft following the Vietnam War. In recent years, the military has often fallen short of some of its recruiting targets. The Army, in particular, has struggled to fill its ranks, admitting more high school dropouts, overweight youths and even felons.

This opening is misleading, giving the impression that the Army has mostly struggled with recruiting over the last 36 years. It hasn’t. Recruiting naturally rises and falls in opposite cycles with the civilian economy and the combination of easy availability of jobs in the private sector and the near-certainty of deployment to an unpopular war made it difficult from roughly 2004 to 2008. The decline in casualties in Iraq combined with the economic slowdown has reversed that trend.

We’ve had numerous periods where recruiting has been pretty easy. So, if this is actually the first time we’ve reached all our goals across-the-board, it’s quite likely a technicality. Maybe we’ve previously fallen short a few people in one of 500 recruiting categories. Perhaps we’ve got fewer goal categories now. Or maybe our goals are in perfect harmony with the incentives for the first time ever. (I suspect we’ve not quite raised our high school graduation, weight, and drug standards to the levels they were during our most recent flush period.)

Regardless, the big takeaway is that all-volunteer has survived its first truly big test.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are considered by experts to be an unprecedented test of the volunteer military’s resilience. Its ability to bring fresh recruits into the force is critical not only to increasing the overall size of the Army and Marine Corps, but to ensuring that additional units are available to rotate into conflict zones. Some Army units sent overseas recently have been deployed at less than full strength.

As lengthy, multiple combat tours place U.S. forces under enormous stress, the willingness of young people to enlist has surprised even military leaders, experts said.

The military is suffering “strains that are tragic in personal lives, but institutionally the ground forces have held together and are not broken. They are even recovering a little bit as we speak,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Still, it is difficult to predict how much stress the volunteer military can take as it navigates uncharted waters, experts said. “There is no way to tell at what point the Army will break in the sense of mass desertion, or people unwilling to stay in, or not meeting recruiting quotas,” O’Hanlon said.

That’s because the idea that the Army personnel system will suffer calamity if pushed hard enough, long enough is a non-falsifiable hypothesis. The fact of the matter, though, is that we’ve managed to slog on through some pretty difficult periods for sustained periods without it happen.

It is indeed surprising. During the 1990s, I took it as a given that the Reserve and National Guard would not stand up to the heavy rotations they were suddenly being subjected to. After all, it was essentially free money for decades. Why, joining the National Guard was essentially a Get Out of Vietnam Free card. That has changed radically in recent years and, shockingly, the system stood up. Indeed, most studies I’ve seen show retention is actually higher in the units that got deployed to war than in those who stayed home.

Partly, of course, this is a function of the military — especially the Army — adjusting standards, bonuses, and the like according to the recruiting economy. Mostly, though, it’s because the Services, especially the Marines and Army, do a tremendous job of institutionalizing service. While people of course get tired of constant rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan and the strain that puts on their family, most nonetheless see it as important work and take considerable pride in having undertaken it.
ssss

Dick Cheney is breaking the mold on how recently-departed vice presidents act. First, he immediately went into attack mode against President Obama. Now, he’s going after President Bush, too. Bart Gelman for WaPo:

Cheney’s disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets.

“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”

The two men maintain respectful ties, speaking on the telephone now and then, though aides to both said they were never quite friends. But there is a sting in Cheney’s critique, because he views concessions to public sentiment as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end.

Gawker’s The Cajun Boy is quite amused:

Now, only Dick Cheney could ever possibly reflect on the “stay the course” presidency of George W. Bush and somehow come to the mangled conclusion that it was conciliatory in just about anything that it did. If there’s one thing that objective people can probably agree almost universally on when assessing Bush as a president, it’s that he and his administration were hopelessly, tragically stubborn.

But Cheney’s actually quite right here. As I’ve been arguing for months, Bush’s foreign policy returned to the Realist roots he campaigned on over time. Wolfowitz, Feith, and the gang were gone in 2005 and Rumsfeld followed them in late 2006. Gelman:

Cheney’s imprint on law and policy, achieved during the first term at the peak of his influence, had faded considerably by the time he and Bush left office. Bush halted the waterboarding of accused terrorists, closed secret CIA prisons, sought congressional blessing for domestic surveillance, and reached out diplomatically to Iran and North Korea, which Cheney believed to be ripe for “regime change.”

This apparently not only hurt his feelings but, more importantly, a shift away from a national strategy Cheney legitimately thought necessary to protect his country. As Kevin Drum intimates, it’s amazing that he thought we were on the right course.

But Cheney himself seems to have changed his mind on a matter of honor. He’s now working diligently on a tell-all book to set the record straight.

Some old associates see Cheney’s newfound openness as a breach of principle. For decades, he expressed contempt for departing officials who wrote insider accounts, arguing that candid internal debate was impossible if the president and his advisers could not count on secrecy. As far back as 1979, one of the heroes in Lynne Cheney’s novel “Executive Privilege” resolved never to write a memoir because “a president deserved at least one person around him whose silence he could depend on.” Cheney lived that vow for the next 30 years.

As vice president, according to one witness, Cheney “was livid” when the memoir of L. Paul Bremer, who led the occupation of Iraq, made the less-than-stunning disclosure that Cheney shared Bremer’s concern about U.S. military strategy. A Cabinet-level Bush appointee recalled that Cheney likewise described revelations by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O’Neill and former White House spokesman Scott McClellan as “beyond the pale.”

“If he goes out and writes a memoir that spills beans about what took place behind closed doors, that would be out of character,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as White House spokesman during Bush’s first term.

Yet that appears to be precisely Cheney’s intent. Robert Barnett, who negotiated Cheney’s book contract, passed word to potential publishers that the memoir would be packed with news, and Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that “the statute of limitations has expired” on many of his secrets. “When the president made decisions that I didn’t agree with, I still supported him and didn’t go out and undercut him,” Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. “Now we’re talking about after we’ve left office. I have strong feelings about what happened. . . . And I don’t have any reason not to forthrightly express those views.”

I’m generally with Old Dick Cheney on this one. Unless one resigns in protest, one owes a certainly loyalty to those whom one serves. Cheney is one of the more controversial and important figures in recent American political history, though, and getting his considered reflections on why things unfolded as they did should be fascinating.

UPDATE: I appeared on Russia Today to talk about this issue.

If you only read one thing today, read the for-the-record answers from the Director of National Intelligence to questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee in April 2009. At the very least read the tickler summary from the blog of the Federation of American Scientists, which has done a genuine service in obtaining this document under the Freedom of Information Act and is hosting it on its site (hat tip: Washington Post).

There is something to rain on practically every parade in these answers. The number of “security personnel” required for COIN in Afghanistan? 818,000. When will Iran produce highly-enriched (weapons-grade) uranium? 2013. Russia doesn’t have the ability to project a lot of military force beyond its borders.

This last comes as no surprise to me. Something we should always keep in mind: without nuclear weapons Russia is a regional power.

There’s tons more. Al Qaeda’s resilience and capabilities. The KSA’s terrorist rehab program. The KSA’s relationship with Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda in Africa. Iran’s role in supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. How effective is the Pakistani army in dealing with the insurgency in the FATA? Pakistan’s stability. The relationship among the Iranian regime, HAMAS, and Hizbollah.

Here’s the statement on the status of Iraq’s ISF:

The capabilities of the ISF have continued to improve. The ISF’s increasing professionalism and improvements in war-fighting skills have allowed it to assume more responsibility for Iraq’s internal security, as demonstrated by the successful operations against Shia militants in Al Basrah, Sadr City, and Al Amarah, and against Sunni extremists in Diyala and Mosul. Despite these improvements, the ISF remains dependent on the U. S. for enabling capabilities such as logistics, fire support, and intelligence and will continue to require Coalition assistance during the next three years.

Short version: our military still has its work cut out for it in Iraq.

The provincial elections in Iraq. HAMAS capabilities. Hizbollah capabilities. Cyber-warfare by the Chinese government. Russia’s energy war. GITMO. The global economic crisis.

It’s truly a remarkable document. If nothing else it provides a keyhole view into the thinking of our intelligence community on a wide range of security issues. I’m still digesting it.

Barbara Walter, professor of political science at UC San Diego, warns of removing our troops from Iraq prematurely in an op-ed in the LA Times:

Right now, U.S. forces serve two important purposes. First, they signal to Maliki and the dominant Shiite population that a decisive victory over the Sunnis and Kurds will not be possible. They also signal to the less-numerous Sunni and Kurdish populations that both of these groups will be protected from Shiite exploitation over time. Remove U.S. forces and U.S. involvement in Iraq and you simultaneously embolden the Shiites while telling the weaker groups they must fend for themselves.

So what should the U.S. do? President Obama has already said he plans to remove all combat troops by August 2010, with a remaining force of 35,000 to 50,000 “support troops” in place until the end of 2011. There is pressure to pull out all the troops on a faster schedule, but there is also talk of slowing the timetable for the removal of combat troops.

The U.S. needs to decide what outcome it is willing to live with in Iraq. It’s likely that if the U.S. withdraws all of its troops on schedule, the strategic balance will dramatically shift in favor of the Shiites, and they will press for full control over the state. This, in turn, will probably goad the Sunnis and Kurds back to war, likely ending in a brutal Shiite victory and the establishment of an authoritarian state.

concluding that we’ll need to maintain substantial levels of support, including troops, for Iraq well past the 2011 withdrawal date.

I think that Dr. Walter is trying to close the barn door after the horse has bolted. The American people have decided that it’s time for us to remove our troops from Iraq. If President Obama were to step back from an agreement that the Bush Administration negotiated and the premise of which, that we would remove our troops from Iraq, was the key plank in his successful campaign for the presidency, he would face revolt from factions in his own base that he needs to secure re-election in 2012, especially if his domestic policies give independents cold feet as they’re all but certain to do. So the die is cast.

The matter is now a logistical question rather than a strategic one.

UPDATE (James Joyner):  I didn’t catch the connection the first time I read Dave’s piece but I used to use  Walter’s essay, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement” from the Summer 1997 issue of International Organization in my classes on national security policy and international conflict.  A useful summary here. While her LAT op-ed is in the spirit of that essay, she seems to have lengthened her timeline.  We’ve otherwise met all of the conditions that she outlined a dozen years ago.

Also, Jim Henley is “appalled” that this discussion is going on as if this were simply a decision for the United States and we had not made a commitment to a sovereign government to withdraw by the end of 2011. Presumably, though, persuading the Iraqi government that they continue to need us is implicit in this calculation.    I agree with Dave, however, that the issue is moot:  American appetite to remain in Iraq in more than a token capacity is fading fast.

The Conservative Wahoo makes an interesting point: “Are There No Live People Worthy of the Medal of Honor?”

News yesterday of the upcoming posthumous award of the Medal of Honor to SFC Jared Monti, USA for conspicuous gallantry in Afghanistan. I am humbled and awed any time I read of the bravery and selflessness of those who earn this most sacred of honors, and my debt as an American to SFC Monti is incalculable.

That said, I wonder why it is that this country has been at war for nearing eight years and to my knowledge, not a single live person has been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for action in Afghanistan or Iraq. Yes, I know that the standards are high, and that is where I want them to be.

But I would surely like to see the President draping that Medal over the head of a living, breathing hero. I hope that we haven’t reached the point where one must give his or her life for the MOH.

Looking at the list of Medal of Honor recipients, it certainly seems that we have.   We’ve awarded two for action in Afghanistan (Navy LT Michael P. Murphy and Army SFC Monti) and four for Iraq (Army SFC Paul R. Smith, Marine Cpl Jason Dunham, Navy MA2 Michael Monsoor, and Army SPC Ross McGinnis).  All died as a result of their heroism.   Similarly, the two men awarded the Medal for the Battle of Mogadishu (Army MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randy Shugart) died in action.

No one has earned a earned a Medal of Honor and lived to tell the story since the Vietnam War.

Contrast this with Vietnam, which saw 246 Medals of Honor awarded, 154 posthumously.  Or Korea:  133 Medals, 95 posthumously.   WWII:  465 awarded, 266 posthumously.   WWI:  124 awards, 33 posthumous.

Clearly, it’s both harder than ever to get recognized with the Medal of Honor and harder still to do so and live to see it.

Correction: The original version said there had been no MOH action by a living awardee since he Liberty incident, for which CMDR William L. McGonagle was recognized. That’s not true. I was looking at a list arranged by conflict and, of course, Vietnam started before but continued after 1967.

I’d like to draw your attention to a new article by Donald Snow, Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama and authority on foreign policy, international relations, and national security at New Atlanticist on the feasibility of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. I won’t attempt to dissect Dr. Snow’s article but will only say that his observations jibe quite well with my own.

I would add, however, that an additional complication of the situation in Afghanistan is that not only is the country large but it has indefensible borders and several of its neighbors have a stake in the outcome there. Also, counter-insurgency is a doctrine invented more than a half century ago by the colonial powers to keep their errant colonies under control. While it may have made sense for the European colonialists, it doesn’t make nearly as much sense for us. We don’t own the territories where we’re trying to practice counter-insurgency and we don’t want to own them.

Here are Dr. Snow’s remarks on the relevancy of the Iraq experience to Afghanistan:

The US government likes to draw the analogy between Iraq and Afghanistan: COIN “worked in Iraq” and can be transferred to Afghanistan. Two rejoinders: the war in Iraq is not over, and will not be concluded until after the US leaves and the Iraqis sort things out,possibly violently. It’s not clear we “won.” Second, Afghanistan and Iraq are alike only in the sense of being in the same area of the world. One experience does not imply another.

They’re also alike in that both have large areas which have never been under the control of a central government, a characteristic common to a swath of territory that runs from the Bosporus to the Indus.

Read the whole thing.

In accordance with the status of forces agreement negotiated between the U. S. government and the Iraqi national government last year under Presidents Bush and Maliki, respectively, U. S. forces are no longer to be seen on the streets of Baghdad:

BAGHDAD — Iraq declared a public holiday Tuesday to celebrate the official withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi cities and towns, emptying the streets as many people stayed home because they feared violence.

As official Iraq celebrated, the American military announced the death of four soldiers on Monday from combat operations in Baghdad, a reminder of the continuing hazards for American troops here and the vulnerability of soldiers as they wrap up operations in the field.

In the past few weeks, with the approach of the official date for withdrawal, nationalist sentiments have spread within the Iraqi government and military, with officials all but boasting publicly that Iraq is ready to handle the security situation on its own. The date of June 30 was set in an Iraqi-American security agreement that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2009.

Claiming that American forces have completely left Iraqi cities is a bit of an exaggeration. U. S. forces will remain in the city of Mosul, at least for the time being:

Although the number of daily attacks have been cut in half, security in Mosul is still precarious. Iraqi officials last week agreed to allow several dozen US soldiers to remain at each of five small bases within the city. After June 30, those combat outposts will be called “joint security stations” and the American soldiers will assist their Iraqi counterparts under the new stricter rules.

“The coalition is going to stay in some of the places where we need them – we will call for help,” said General Ghazal.

Additionally, American trainers will continue to be embedded with Iraqi units and I suspect they’ll be spotted in Iraqi cities from time to time.

Although there may be an increase in violence in Iraq as a consequence of the reduced visibility of American forces, I think that this small move in the direction of complete Iraqi sovereignty is wholly salutary and I’d also hope for a substantial reduction in the forces we have in Iraq by the end of the year. I don’t think I have too many illusions about the situation in Iraq. I think the situation will remain dangerous and fractious for the foreseeable future.

I opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and I opposed our withdrawal from Iraq in 2005 or 2006. I think that events have proven me right on both scores. Now I think it’s time for us to start leaving.

Given how much of the early years of OTB was devoted to writing about the war in Iraq, it wouldn’t do to fail to mention the fact that we have formally handed over control of Baghdad to the Iraqis, withdrawing our combat troops.  It was not at all long ago that the headline currently topping YahooNews, “Iraq takes control of security, US troops withdraw,” seemed a distant dream.

US General Daniel Bolger (L), commander of US forces in Baghdad shakes hands with General Abud Qambar, commander of Baghdad Operation Command, after handing him a symbolic key of the1st Cavalry Division at the old Iraqi Defence Ministry, the last of the 86 positions occupied by the US military in Baghdad since the US-led invasion in 2003, on June 29, 2009. US combat troops will pull out from Iraq's cities and main towns June 30 as the war-torn country takes sole charge of security in a major stepping stone to a complete American withdrawal. AFP PHOTO / ALI AL-SAADI (Photo credit should read ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/Getty Images.)

As to what it all means, Chris Dierkes nails it with a post I’ve republished (with permission) at New Atlantiicst under the title “Iraq Victory Achieved with Handover?” Suffice it to say, this is a “decent outcome” rather than a “victory” and we’ve got many miles to go before we know how it all turned out.

I was always skeptical of the idea that democracy in Iraq would be so attractive in the Middle East that it would spread virally throughout the region. However, Iraq does serve as a useful model to its neighbor, Iran, in one particular and the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor is performing good service in reminding us of that:

Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the weakest reed in Iran’s complex system of government has been the claim of a supreme leader with absolute political authority based on his Islamic credentials. It is an idea not accepted by the 90 percent of the world’s Muslims who are Sunni. And it is rejected outside Iran in other Shiite strongholds, such as in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon and in Iraq.

Known in Arabic as velayat-e motlaqeh-ye faqih (guardian or the jurist), this concocted religious doctrine, enshrined in Iran’s Constitution, was recently rejected by a leading Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeric, who was once the designated successor to the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

[…]

But the debate over a supreme leader may not fade. There are signs in Iran of increasing popularity for Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shiite figure in Iraq. Since the 2003 US invasion, he has supported a democracy that is run by secular leaders and inclusive of all faiths. (The Shiite spiritual leader in Lebanon, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, also does not see himself as a political leader.)

An Iranian by birth, Mr. Sistani holds much sway over the clerical establishment in Iran’s most religious city, Qom. And he lives in the Iraqi city of Najaf, the most holy of Shiite sites and a popular pilgrimage for Iranians.

Ali Sistani is deserving of praise as the Monitor reminds us. His example and teaching stand in stark opposition to Khomeinism and as such he presents a rebuke and threat to the Iranian ruling oligarchy.

Matt Yglesias has discovered the facts that 1) each state gets two Senators and 2) some states are bigger than others, a condition that has obtained since the inception of our current system in 1789.  There was, as some may recall having read, this thing called the Great Compromise whereby delegates representing sovereign states under the extant Articles of Confederation agreed  they would have a bicameral legislature wherein one house represented people and another represented said states.  This compromise, incidentally, was a diminution of the power the smaller states had under said Articles.

Anyhoo, it has come to Matt’s attention and he’s none too happy about it:

The point is that this is an unfair and bizarre way to run things. If you consider that the mean state would contain two percent of the population, we have just 34 Senators representing the above-average states even though they collectively contain 69.15 percent of the population. The other 66 Senators represent about 30 percent of the people. If the Iranians were to succeed in overthrowing their theocracy and set about to write a new constitution, nobody in their right mind would recommend this system to them.

Probably not — but we might have been better off recommending something like that to the Iraqis.  Some form of strong federalism or even confederalism makes a lot of sense in cases where states are comprised of geographically bound subgroupings with a strong sense of separate identity and history of autonomy.

The problem in the United States is that our current system no longer reflects the reality on the ground.  Most of us are now highly mobile with no strong sense of place-related identity.  Most Californians or New Yorkers or Virginians probably just think of themselves as Americans and only incidentally as residents of their states. This is least true, however, in the less populated states, which tend to be comprised of residents with intergenerational roots and therefore much more provincial.

Hilzoy pronounces herself “happy as a clam” with President Obama’s speech yesterday on national security issues, with one glaring exception:

But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because evidence may be tainted, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who’ve received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, or commanded Taliban troops in battle, or expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.Let me repeat: I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture — like other prisoners of war — must be prevented from attacking us again.

This was followed by a long list of caveats about “fair procedures,” “the rule of law,” and “checks and balances.” While applauding the caveats, Hilzoy nonetheless retorts:

Preventive detention????????

No. Wrong answer

If we don’t have enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we don’t have enough evidence to hold them. Period.

The power to detain people without filing criminal charges against them is a dictatorial power. It is inherently arbitrary. What is it that they are supposed to have done? If it is not a crime, why on earth not make it one? If it is a crime, and we have evidence that this person committed it, but that evidence was extracted under torture, then perhaps we need to remind ourselves of the fact that torture is unreliable. If we just don’t have enough evidence, that’s a problem, but it’s also a problem with detaining them in the first place. [all emphases original]

Were we talking about American citizens or even aliens captured on American soil, we’d be in agreement.  But we’re not.  These are people captured on the fields of battle of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama is quite right here:  “Al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States, and those that we capture — like other prisoners of war — must be prevented from attacking us again.”  It has long been established in international law that enemies captured on the field of battle are subject to detention through cessation of hostilities.

To be sure, the present conflict introduces a new murkiness.  We are not at war with a nation-state, so there is no one with whom to negotiate a definitive surrender or peace treaty.  Further, most of the combatants in detention are not privileged belligerents under the Geneva Conventions and other laws of war in that they wore no distinguishing uniforms or insignia, fought for no state, and were not part of a traditional resistance movement.   Many if not most are war criminals who hid amongst noncombatant civilians and/or used the cover of mosques, hospitals, and other protected sanctuaries as shields.

The problem with Guantanimo is not that we’re holding enemy combatants indefinitely but rather that we’ve flouted some of the rules of the Geneva Conventions, most notably in not establishing some minimal due process to allow people to present evidence that they’re not who we claim they are.   Additionally, we used “enhanced interrogation techniques” on a handful of captives that were quite probably torture and quite certainly a violation of the laws of war.  Obama, to his credit, has renounced all of these practices.

UPDATE: It’s worth noting, as Blake Hounshel and Chris Brose do, that they’d long since been abandoned by the Bush Administration, too.  Brose:

I don’t fear for America because of the policies Obama laid out today, because I agree with Jack Goldsmith that most of these policies are largely similar in their substance to where the Bush administration ended up, often as a result of shifts in its approach during the second term based on new facts that emerged and new perspectives that were gained. This is the irony of Cheney’s current position: Many of the policies he is arguing for now were in recent years rolled back by President Bush himself, or overturned by the Supreme Court. Closing Guantanamo is an exception, but it was Bush’s stated goal to do so, and people like Secretary Rice and John Bellinger and Matt Waxman worked tirelessly to do it. Closing it now, though difficult, is both right and necessary. So in all these ways, Cheney’s argument is with Bush as much as it is with Obama.

Quite right.   For all the talk of Cheney as the power behind the throne, he was increasingly an outlier in the administration whose counsel was taken but largely not followed.

Update (Alex Knapp): I am more inclined to agree with Kevin Drum than with Hilary Bok on this issue:

I appreciate the outrage, but this is a genuinely knotty problem. It was knotty under Bush and it remains knotty under Obama. For various reasons, some defensible and some not, Obama is right: there are almost certainly a small number of Guantanamo detainees who are (a) unquestionably terrorists and unquestionably still dedicated to fighting the United States, but (b) impossible to convict in any kind of normal proceeding.

At the same time, they aren’t American citizens. They were captured on a foreign battlefield, not U.S. soil. They are, essentially if not legally, prisoners of war in a war with no end. So what do we do?

One thing that I think we should not do is let the government say “trust us” on this. If there is evidence against particular detainees, then provide it. Then we can debate the legal channels. If the law needs to be changed, Obama can go to Congress. If it’s possible to extradite some of them because they have outstanding warrants in other nations, let’s look into that. I agree that this is a hard problem, and I also agree that the simple release of some terrorists puts Americans in danger, and that risk needs to be appreciated.

That said, there needs to be some kind of open, transparent process through which claims against such detainees can be evaluated and pains can be made to ensure that detainees that their detention continued are actually dangerous. We shouldn’t just take the President’s word on it. Not any President.

Update (James Joyner): I was about to append an update linking to Kevin’s post on this but noticed Alex already had.  I agree entirely with both of them on this matter.

It appears that suicide bombings are back in a big way in Iraq:

At least 75 people were killed and 120 injured in two explosions in Iraq on Thursday that shook a quiet residential Baghdad neighborhood and a restive city north of the capital where Iranian tourists were targeted.

In the first attack, a woman wearing a suicide belt exploded herself in the Karada district of Baghdad as dozens of people lined up at a food giveaway, killing 28, including 12 police officers, and injuring 50, according to an official with the Interior Ministry.

In the second attack, in Muqdadiya in Diyala Province, a bomb went off inside a restaurant where a group of Iranian tourists were eating lunch, killing 47 and injuring 70, according to police officials. All but five of the dead and injured appeared to be Iranians. It was not immediately clear whether the explosion had been caused by a suicide bomber. Two of the dead and three of the wounded were Iraqis, officials said.

The attack in Baghdad came as food was being distributed by members of the Iraqi police and the Red Crescent charity in front of an apartment building. In the aftermath of the blast, the street was littered with bags of flour and red apples, and pieces of human flesh attracted masses of flies.

This is why progress is always so tentative in counterinsurgency/counterterrorism operations:  Well-targeted violence can send things in a downward spiral in a hurry, undoing months of progress in building public confidence.

It’s happened before.  In early 2006, things were looking up.  There were real signs of political progress in Iraq, with two reasonably successful elections, recognition of basic human rights and religious tolerance in the constitution, and numerous other indicators that civil society was taking hold.  Musab al-Zarqawi and AQI managed to turn an uncoordinated anti-Coalition insurgency into sectarian violence with the al-Askari Mosque bombing and other incidents. It took more than two years to get back to anything close to the status quo ante.

We can only hope that the latest wave of violence doesn’t do similar damage.