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 ...

Rumsfeld Bids Farewell to Pentagon

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said his goodbyes to his team at the Pentagon, although he doesn't officially step down for a few more days. Rumsfeld choked up briefly while recalling a woman in Alaska giving him a bracelet last August as a reminder of the sacrifices by soldiers of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade, whose year-long tour in ...

Burial of Neoconservatism?

Andrew Sullivan asserts that "Bush's apparent acceptance of the Blair-Baker position that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to resolving Iraq is the end of neoconservatism in the Bush administration." I reject both the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has much of anything to do with Iraq and much of the neoconservative foreign policy agenda. Regardless, it is far from clear ...

The Sticky Parts of the ISG Report Recommendations

As I re-read the recommendations in the Iraq Study Group (does this conjure up images of James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Sandra Day O'Connor, etc. huddled together in the college library for anybody other than me?) Report published yesterday, several points jumped out at me that made me wonder if the members of the group realized how controversial some of their ...

Iraq Study Group Quote of the Day

This one's going to be hard to top: The truth is a lot of reports in Washington aren't read by anybody. To show you how important this report is, I read it. -- President Bush, on the ISG report, at this a.m.’s presser. I presume he was being intentionally self-deprecating, by the way. via Hotline

Language Deficit and Disdain for Arabists

Jim Henley applauds the Iraq Study Group for pointing out our incredible dearth of Arab speakers but observes, "It’s too late. The time to start to instill competency in the language and culture of the society you’re trying to scare-quotes transform is not more than four years after deciding to take the place over." Agreed, except that it's been clear ...