NATO’s Not Winning in Afghanistan

Unless we immediately begin a coordinated effort to refocus NATO's military and civil strategy in Afghanistan, there will be grave consequences for both the region and the Alliance. That's the consensus among three reports released yesterday afternoon on Capital Hill receiving wide media coverage today, including this piece fronting WaPo. NATO forces in Afghanistan are in a "strategic stalemate," ...

Giuliani Blew Off Iraq Panel for Speaking Fees

By popular demand, I herewith comment on the story Newsday that broke yesterday that Rudy Giuliani missed two meetings of the Iraq Study Group because of fundraising trips and then quit the panel when told the alternative was to show up. Giuliani failed to show up for a pair of two-day sessions that occurred during his tenure, the sources said - ...

Iran Joining Regional Talks

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has announced that Iranian representatives will take part in a regional conference to discuss Iraqi security issues at Sharm el-Sheikh this week. Condi Rice would not rule out talking to the Iranians on yesterday's This Week and said that, if she talked to her counterpart, she would ask him to "stop the flow of arms ...

Honest Debate, Politics, and Victory

Thomas Barnett expresses his frustration that everything he writes gets interpreted through political lenses and, especially, "as some grubby plea for attention from Dem candidates" when in fact he's a moderate Republican who's simply disgusted by the Bush Administration's handling of foreign policy. People are misinterpreting my praise for the Dems tying Bush's hands. I expect the Dems to be what ...

De-de-Ba’athification?

Buried in a much longer story that lead with action in Anbar Province in which Iraqi security forces killed and captured a number of Al-Qaeda was a story that I found even more interesting: In Stockholm, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said there would be an announcement in a few days to reintroduce 1,000 mid-ranking officers from the former Iraqi ...

Petraeus’ Princeton PhD Posse

WaPo fronts a Thomas Ricks piece about a "brain trust" of PhD-holding officers being assembled by LTG David Petraeus to figure out how to win the Iraq counterinsurgency. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals -- including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former ...

Iraqi Police Training Botched?

Lee Hamilton and Ed Meese have told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the training of Iraq's police and judges has been mishandled. The U.S. erred by first assigning the task of shaping the judicial system in a largely lawless country to the State Department and private contractors who "did not have the expertise or the manpower to get the job done," ...

Democratic Leaders’ Letter to Bush on Iraq

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have sent a letter to President Bush--and everyone else--arguing against a "surge" of forces in Iraq. Some excerpts and commentary: The American people demonstrated in the November elections that they don’t believe your current Iraq policy will lead to success and that we need a change in direction for the sake of our troops and the Iraqi ...

Announcing a blogging colloquium on Iraq

Beginning Friday, December 15, and continuing through Wednesday, December 20, I will be hosting a blogging colloquium on Iraq entitled “Directions on Iraq: a Blogging Colloquium” at The Glittering Eye. I'm thrilled with those who will be participating. Participants include: John Burgess is a former U. S. foreign service officer who has had two tours of duty in the Kingdom ...

It’s Not Apartheid

Michael Kinsley dismisses as "moronic" Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. [N]o one has yet thought to accuse Israel of creating a phony country in finally acquiescing to the creation of a Palestinian state. Palestine is no Bantustan. Or if it is, it is the creation of Arabs, not Jews. Furthermore, Israel has always had Arab citizens. They are ...

Arabs Don’t Care About the Palestinians

Lisa Beyer has a powerful op-ed in Time with the provocative title "The Big Lie About the Middle East -- Tell James Baker: Arab nations don't care about the Palestinians." In lumping the Iraq mess in with the Palestinian problem--and suggesting the first could not be fixed unless the second was too--the Baker-Hamilton commission lent credibility to a corrosive myth: that ...

WaPo Nails it on ISG

While agreement with the WaPo editorial board is usually immediate cause to question my assumptions, I nonetheless think they got it exactly right with yesterday's essay with the subhead "The Iraq Study Group imagines a Middle East that doesn't exist."

Iran Offers to Help U.S. Exit from Iraq

It seems that Iran, at least, has read the report of the Iraq Study Group. Iran's foreign minister delivered a blunt challenge to the United States on Saturday, saying Tehran is willing to help U.S. troops withdraw from neighboring Iraq but only if Washington makes some tough policy changes. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki claimed U.S. troops were responsible for at least ...

Iraqis Near Oil Revenue Distribution Deal

The major factions are close to a deal on the incredibly divisive issue of sharing oil revenues. Iraqi officials are near agreement on a national oil law that would give the central government the power to distribute current and future oil revenues to the provinces or regions, based on their population, Iraqi and American officials say. If enacted, the measure, drafted by ...

Bush Reaction to ISG Report Worries Father’s Aides

U.S. News reports that unnamed "Former White House advisers to George H.W. Bush are keenly disappointed and concerned about the current President Bush's initial reaction to the report by the Iraq Study Group" which they term "dismissive." First, I find it amusing that these people are sniping to the press and don't even have the intestinal fortitude to put their names in ...