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Government

Was Champ's Fixer also behind Obama's 'Fact-Sheet' on the Iran ?

2015-04-12

[American Thinker] Wherever Ben Rhodes goes, lies follow. Obama's foreign policy is cooked up by a very small group of people, among them Ben Rhodes, his deputy national security adviser. This should trouble Americans. I have been writing about Rhodes for years. He has a pattern of twisting the truth to serve his masters. All of 37 years old and untrained in diplomacy, he pontificates omnisciently on Obama's mastery of world politics. He was the drafter of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. This report was criticized for deviating from its main goal to analyze the Iraq War under George W. Bush. Instead, it advised outreach to Iran and distancing from Israel. Some of the witnesses called were suspect because of their lack of expertise as well as their biases. Other witnesses were shocked by the report upon its publication because they said it did not reflect their testimony, and in fact distorted what they had conveyed. In other words, their testimony was fictionalized. Who was the...(Read Full Article)

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Home Front: Politix

Obama picks Leon Panetta to head CIA

2009-01-05

More "Change". Sandy Berger unavailable? WASHINGTON -- Two Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA. Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world. Oh, perfect... Complements the boss, he does ... An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public. Psssst...hey Scoops? Wanna story? Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California. He served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for the reversing course in the Iraq war. Which one was his ? "Cut" or "run"? Just what you want at CIA, someone who was wrong on the surge and won't admit it ... Panetta currently directs with his wife Sylvia the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay a university he helped establish on the site of the former U.S. Army base, Fort Ord. The Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy (and Automotive Repair). Well, it's located at an old army base, so he must be qualified, right?

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Iraq

"Britain has lost the stomach for a fight"

2008-12-21

This is a pretty brutal assessment of the British performance in Iraq from The Times (of London). My apologies to our British 'burgers, but it's worth a read. The fundamental cause of the British failure was political. Tony Blair wanted to join the United States in its toppling of Saddam Hussein because if Britain does not back America it is hard to know what our role in the world is: certainly not a seat at the top table. But, for all his persuasiveness, Blair could not hold public opinion over the medium term and so he cut troop numbers fast and sought to avoid casualties. As a result, British forces lost control of Basra and left the population at the mercy of fundamentalist thugs and warring militias, in particular Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. The secondary cause of failure was a misplaced British disdain for America, shared by our politicians and senior military. In the early days in Iraq we bragged that our forces could deploy in berets and soft-sided vehicles while US forces roared through Baghdad in heavily armoured convoys. British leaders sneered at the Americans' failure to win hearts and minds because of their lack of experience in counterinsurgency. Pride has certainly come before a fall. British commanders underestimated both the enemy's effectiveness and the Americans' ability to adapt. If a fair-minded account of the Iraq war is written, credit should go to President Bush for rejecting two years ago the report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that called for force reductions. He defied conventional wisdom and ordered a troop surge instead. It has been an extraordinary success and, unlike Britain, the Americans will not withdraw in defeat. During debates in Washington, British forces' ignominious withdrawal to barracks was cited to argue that the United States could not contemplate being humbled in a similar way. In the end Bush was not a quitter. Blair "cut and ran". Credit to President Bush? In a European newspaper? Britain's shaming was completed in March 2008 when Iraqi forces, backed by the US, moved decisively against the Mahdi Army, inflicting huge casualties and removing them from Basra. Operation Charge of the Knights was supervised by Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, exasperated that Iraq's second city was controlled not by Britain but by an Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia. Trust in the British had fallen so low that neither the Iraqi nor the US government was willing to give us much notice of the operation. General Mohammed Jawad Humeidi remarked that his forces battled for a week before receiving British support. It cannot be a defence of British policy that the war was unpopular at home. Our mission was to provide security for the Iraqi people, and in that the US and Maliki's government have recently had marked success and we have failed. The fault does not lie with our fighters. They have been extremely brave and as effective as their orders and their equipment would allow. I have never read otherwise. It raises questions about the stamina of our nation and the resolve of our political class. It is an uncomfortable conclusion that Britain, with nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers and the latest generation of fighter-bombers, is incapable of securing a medium-size conurbation. Making Basra safe was an essential part of the overall strategy; having committed ourselves to our allies we let them down. Conurbation? Off to the dictionary for that one. The extent of Britain's fiasco has been masked by the media's relief that we are at last leaving Iraq. Those who have been urging Britain to quit are not in a strong position to criticise the government's lack of staying power. Reporting of Basra has mainly focused on British casualties and the prospect for withdrawal. The British media and public have shown scant regard for our failure to protect Iraqis, so the British nation, not just its government, has attracted distrust. We should reflect on what sort of country we have become. We may enjoy patronising Americans but they demonstrate a fibre that we now lack. Montgomery's rotating at orbital velocity if he heard about that one. The United States will have drawn its conclusions about our reliability in future and British policy-makers, too, will need to recognise that we lack the troops, wealth and stomach for anything more than the briefest conflict. How long will we remain in Afghanistan? There, in contrast to our past two years in Basra, our forces engage the enemy robustly. But as a result the attrition rate is high. We look, rightly, for more help from Nato allies such as Germany, although humility should temper that criticism, given our own performance in Iraq.

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Iraq

Gates: Good news for Iraq war opponents

2008-11-26

Plenty of people on the left are unhappy about the idea of keeping Robert Gates on as defense secretary in the Obama administration. It's fair to wonder when the president-elect will find an important job for someone who opposed the Iraq war. But Gates represents the opposite of the type of thinking that got us into Iraq. And keeping him on may be the best way for Obama to keep his pledge to leave with all deliberate speed. Gates is portrayed as a hawk because he's part of the Bush administration. But President Bush brought him on precisely because he needed a drastic change at the Pentagon from the gung-ho, cavalier approach of Donald Rumsfeld. People forget that Gates was a member of the 2006 Iraq Study Group, which endorsed negotiations with Syria and Iran and recommended steps that would end U.S. involvement. In fact, had Gates had his way, we'd be well on our way out by now. "By the first quarter of 2008," said the report, "subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq." That would have cut U.S. forces in half. So Gates should not be mistaken for an unrepentant supporter of the war. And because he has Republican credentials and presided over the surge, he has unique credibility in managing our departure from Iraq. If he says conditions allow us to leave, it will be hard for Republicans in Congress to argue. And if he weren't ready to undertake the job of getting American forces out of Iraq, it's hard to to believe Obama would keep him on--or that he would want to stay.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Obama links Israel peace plan to 1967 borders deal

2008-11-16

As Caroline Glick notes in the op-ed piece below, Obama is clueless about how the Middle East works. Appeasing the Arabs only whets their appetite for more. Yet Bambi is going to endorse the Saudi 'peace' plan. Guess what will happen next. Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America’s president-elect. Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party. The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem. On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be “crazy” for Israel to refuse a deal that could “give them peace with the Muslim world”, according to a senior Obama adviser. The Arab peace plan received a boost last week when President Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace laureate and leading Israeli dove, commended the initiative at a Saudi-sponsored United Nations conference in New York. Peres was loudly applauded for telling King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was behind the original initiative: “I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people.” A bipartisan group of senior foreign policy advisers urged Obama to give the Arab plan top priority immediately after his election victory. They included Lee Hamilton, the former co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democrat former national security adviser. Brzezinski will give an address tomorrow at Chatham House, the international relations think tank, in London. Brent Scowcroft, a Republican former national security adviser, joined in the appeal. He said last week that the Middle East was the most troublesome area in the world and that an early start to the Palestinian peace process was “a way to psychologically change the mood of the region”. Advisers believe the diplomatic climate favours a deal as Arab League countries are under pressure from radical Islamic movements and a potentially nuclear Iran. Polls show that Palestinians and Israelis are in a mood to compromise. The Paleos are in a mood to compromise? Since when? All they've been doing is launching Qassam rockets and sharpening their knives. The advisers have told Obama he should lose no time in pursuing the policy in the first six to 12 months in office while he enjoys maximum goodwill. Obama is also looking to break a diplomatic deadlock over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. A possible way forward, suggested last spring by Dennis Ross, a senior Obama adviser and former Middle East envoy, would be to persuade Russia to join in tough economic sanctions against Iran by offering to modify the US plan for a “missile shield” in eastern Europe. And by giving Iran Israel, which is what this is all about ... President Dmitry Medvedev signalled that Russia could cancel a tit-for-tat deployment of missiles close to the Polish border if America gave up its proposed missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic. Sort of like how the Soviets offered to eventually pull back their SS-20s if Reagan agreed not to deploy the Pershing missiles. We remember how that worked out. Bambi really is gullible ... Ross argued in a paper on How to Talk to Iran that “if the Iranian threat goes away, so does the principal need to deploy these [antimissile] forces. [Vladimir] Putin [the Russian prime minister] has made this such a symbolic issue that this trade-off could be portrayed as a great victory for him”. Ross and Daniel Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, accompanied Obama on a visit to Israel last July. They also travelled to Ramallah, where Obama questioned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, about the prospects for the Arab plan. According to a Washington source Obama told Abbas: “The Israelis would be crazy not to accept this initiative. It would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco.” Kurtzer submitted a paper to Obama on the question before this month’s presidential elections. He argued that trying to reach bilateral peace agreements between Israel and individual countries in the Middle East, was a recipe for failure as the record of Bill Clinton and George W Bush showed. In contrast, the broader Arab plan “had a lot of appeal”. A leading Democratic expert on the Middle East said: “There’s not a lot of meat on the bones yet, but it offers recognition of Israel across the Arab world.” Livni, the leader of Kadima, which favours the plan, is the front-runner in Israeli elections due in February. Her rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, is adamantly against withdrawing to borders that predate the Six Day war in 1967. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, last week expressed his support for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank Golan and east Jerusalem.

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Home Front: Politix

History will judge Bush's legacy

2008-09-19

By Charles Krauthammer For the past 150 years, most American war presidents -- most notably Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt -- have entered (or reentered) office knowing war was looming. Not so George W. Bush. Not so the war on terror. The 9/11 attacks literally came out of the blue. Indeed, the three presidential campaigns between the fall of the Berlin Wall and Sept. 11, 2001, were the most devoid of foreign policy debate of any in the 20th century. The commander-in-chief question that dominates our campaigns today was almost nowhere in evidence during our '90s holiday from history. When I asked President Bush during an interview Monday to reflect on this oddity, he cast himself back to early 2001, recalling what he expected his presidency would be about: education reform, tax cuts and military transformation from a Cold War structure to a more mobile force adapted to smaller-scale 21st-century conflict. But a wartime president he became. And that is how history will both remember and judge him. Getting a jump on history, many books have already judged him. The latest by Bob Woodward describes the commander in chief as unusually aloof and detached. A more favorably inclined biographer might have called it equanimity. In the hour I spent with the president (devoted mostly to foreign policy), that equanimity was everywhere in evidence -- not the resignation of a man in the twilight of his presidency but a sense of calm and confidence in eventual historical vindication. It is precisely that quality that allowed him to order the surge in Iraq in the face of intense opposition from the political establishment (of both parties), the foreign policy establishment (led by the feckless Iraq Study Group), the military establishment (as chronicled by Woodward) and public opinion itself. The surge then effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864. That kind of resolve requires internal fortitude. Some have argued that too much reliance on this internal compass is what got us into Iraq in the first place. But Bush was hardly alone in that decision. He had a majority of public opinion, the commentariat and Congress with him. In addition, history has not yet rendered its verdict on the Iraq war. We can say that it turned out to be longer and more costly than expected, surely. But the question remains as to whether the now-likely outcome -- transforming a virulently aggressive enemy state in the heart of the Middle East into a strategic ally in the war on terror -- was worth it. I suspect the ultimate answer will be far more favorable than it is today. When I asked the president about his one unambiguous achievement, keeping us safe for seven years -- about 6 1/2 years longer than anybody thought possible just after Sept. 11 -- he was quick to credit both the soldiers keeping the enemy at bay abroad and the posse of law enforcement and intelligence officials hardening our defenses at home. But he alluded also to some of the measures he had undertaken, including "listening in on the enemy" and "asking hardened killers about their plans." The CIA has already told us that interrogation of high-value terrorists such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed yielded more valuable intelligence than any other source. In talking about these measures, the president mentioned neither this testimony as to their efficacy nor the campaign of vilification against him that they occasioned. More equanimity still. What the president did note with some pride, however, is that beyond preventing a second attack, he is bequeathing to his successor the kinds of powers and institutions the next president will need to prevent further attack and successfully prosecute the long war. And indeed, he does leave behind a Department of Homeland Security, reorganized intelligence services with newly developed capacities to share information and a revised FISA regime that grants broader and modernized wiretapping authority. In this respect, Bush is much like Truman, who developed the sinews of war for a new era (the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad, and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea) -- also absent an attack on the United States -- that proved highly unpopular. So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged and highly out of favor. History has revised that verdict. I have little doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.

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Iraq

`Martyrs' List' tallies Mahdi Army's troubles

2008-07-29

Loyalists within Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia network call it the "martyrs' list," and it's long and growing: At least three dozen senior members killed in slayings or fighting since last summer and nearly 60 others detained. The internal document — obtained by The Associated Press — offers a rare look at how the top echelon of the Mahdi Army militia is assessing the sustained blows to its once-mighty shadow state and the challenges to its absentee leader al-Sadr, who is holed up in Iran. It also underscores the twin pressures on al-Sadr's followers. Shiite rivals are waging gangland-style hits with diminishing fear of reprisals. Iraqi-led forces, meanwhile, are pressing their advantage against al-Sadr's weakened network — militia cells, quasi-civic groups and street-level operatives who have all crafted reputations as the champions of the Shiite poor. Each chip in al-Sadr's power base seems to tip the scales a bit more in favor of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his pro-American allies. Most important, the shifts give the government more confidence and room to widen its influence over Shiite politics, the key to control of the country. As recently as this spring, the Mahdi Army still looked to be gaining ground on its dream of influencing Iraqi affairs the way Hezbollah exerts itself in Lebanon. Now, the al-Sadr leadership is penning more names onto its list and looking how to rebound. The latest entry in the martyrs' list was July 18 after gunmen waited at a highway choke point to ambush Sheik Saffaa al-Lami, a midlevel al-Sadr functionary who headed the office in the New Baghdad neighborhood in the eastern part of the capital. He joined 35 other names, including Riyadh al-Nouri, the director of al-Sadr's office in the southern city of Najaf — the spiritual and operational center of al-Sadr's forces where the Mahdi Army fought street-by-street battles with U.S. troops in 2004. Al-Nouri was gunned down in April as he returned from Friday prayers. The list also has at least 58 midlevel to senior figures and militia commanders who have been detained by U.S. or Iraqi forces. The al-Sadr leadership began the tally last summer to count perceived abuses after the Mahdi Army declared a shaky truce. Many of the incidents on the list were widely reported, but some could not be independently confirmed. "No doubt we are facing pressures," Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, spokesman for the al-Sadr movement, told the AP. "Each time we are hit, it encourages others to do the same. But, I assure you, we are not going to break or disappear." The Madhi Army has never released figures on its membership, but the Iraq Study Group in December 2006 estimated it could have ranged as high as 60,000 fighters. Defections and feuds suggest the current number is smaller. The Iraqi government, meanwhile, also is gaining some breathing space on another front as al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents are down to only a few key footholds around Iraq. So who is hunting the al-Sadr ranks? The targeted slayings are widely blamed on power struggles between al-Sadr's militia and government-allied Shiite groups, which have been mostly absorbed into the security forces. Meanwhile, al-Sadr's own foundations may be cracking. Some factions are drifting into the government's fold before important provincial elections, which could come late this year. The mainline al-Sadr forces do not plan to field candidates. "There is a perception of weakness around al-Sadr now and people will take advantage of that," said Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. The Mahdi Army is also on its heels after a series of Iraqi-led offensives that began in March in the southern oil hub of Basra. It then spread to other al-Sadr strongholds, including Baghdad's Sadr City — named for the cleric's father. The security forces said the main target was breakaway militia groups backed by Iran and not the regular Mahdi Army. But the net effect left the Madhi Army uprooted in its main areas. Al-Sadr, however, has been an outside observer from the Iranian seminary city of Qom since last year. His aides say he is engaged in religious study. But his absence from Iraq has opened speculation that Tehran could want to bolster ties with al-Makiki and doesn't want the firebrand al-Sadr in the mix. Al-Obeidi would not elaborate on al-Sadr's self-exile. But he acknowledged: "It encourages our enemies." No military commander is ready to dismiss the chance of a Mahdi Army resurgence. But its current trajectory shows how much — and how rapidly — its fortunes have changed. The ambush of Sheik al-Lami offers something of a roadmap to the Madhi Army's diminished grip. Until about May, the New Baghdad district where he was killed was fully under the control of Mahdi Army checkpoints and patrols that flew banners of al-Sadr. Iraqi forces now move through the area at will. At his funeral procession, a few hardline Mahdi Army militants chanted against the Iraqi military, calling them occupiers. A shopkeeper, who gave his name only as Ahmed, watched the cortege and dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "The Mahdi Army acted like kings here and not like helpers of the people," he complained. Ahmed — still too fearful of Madhi Army backers to give his full name — said the al-Sadr network had controlled nearly everything from the price of cooking fuel to what type of displays appeared in store windows. He put up a poster of al-Sadr to avoid any trouble. In many places around Baghdad, the former swagger of al-Sadr's followers has given way to worries about trying to hold the movement together. On Friday in Sadr City, an imam finished prayers by chastising members of al-Sadr's bloc in parliament for appearing to abandon the former Mahdi Army strongholds. "They stay away like they are strangers," said Sattar al-Battat. "Either they rally to our side or we should cast them off." MacGyver just ordered you another pallet of toilet paper.

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Home Front: Politix

Panel calls for new war powers legislation

2008-07-08

The next time the president goes to war, Congress should be consulted and vote on whether it agrees, according to a bipartisan study group chaired by former secretaries of state James Baker III and Warren Christopher. In a report released Tuesday, the panel says the current law governing the nation's war powers has failed to promote cooperation between the executive and legislative branches. It says the 1973 resolution should be repealed and replaced with new legislation that would require the president to inform Congress of any plans to engage in 'significant armed conflict,' or non-covert operations lasting longer than a week. In turn, Congress would act within 30 days, either approving or disapproving the action. Hah. Right. Baker, who served as secretary of state in the first Bush administration and co-chaired the 2006 Iraq Study Group, said the proposal isn't intended to resolve constitutional disputes between the White House and Congress on who should decide whether the nation fights. 'What we aim to do with this statute is to create a process that will encourage the two branches to cooperate and consult in a way that is both practical and true to the spirit of the Constitution,' Baker said in a statement. And I'm sure it will work as well as history indicates. Optimist. A new joint House and Senate committee would be established to review the president's justification for war. To do so, the committee would be granted access to highly classified information. The panel has briefed the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain, as well as congressional leadership. Spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama commends the panel 'for advocating that the president consult Congress more closely on issues of critical national importance like the use of military force.' McCain did not provide comment. But I'll bet he rolled his eyes. Congress' involvement in approving combat operations became a central issue in the Iraq debate last year, when Democrats tried to force President Bush to end the war. While Congress had authorized combat in Iraq, Democrats said the resolution approved only the invasion and not a five-year counterinsurgency. After taking control of Congress in January 2007, Democrats tried to cap force levels and set a timetable for withdrawals. While they lacked a veto-proof majority to put the restrictions into law, the White House argued that such legislation would have violated the Constitution by infringing upon the president's right as commander in chief to protect the nation. Democrats disagreed, contending there was ample precedence. The one surefire way for Congress to have ended the war was to cut off money for combat operations -- a step most Democrats weren't willing to take because they feared doing so would have hurt troops in harms' way, or at least be perceived by voters that way. Yeah, I guess 'at least be perceived' is technically accurate. Which makes all their other posturing about this rather gutless, since they lack the courage of their so-called convictions. The plan identified by Baker and Christopher, who served as secretary of State under President Clinton, would not necessarily resolve such issues in the future. But it would create a consultative process between the White House and Congress that currently does not exist. Also, calling on Congress to respond would exert significant political pressure on a president if he ignored lawmakers' wishes. The consultative process does exist: no President will go to war without talking to Congress. Bush talked with them extensively before we went into Iraq. He got a resolution. He's been talking with them extensively since then, though he and the Dhimmis don't agree. The panel studied the issue for more than a year and consulted more than three dozen experts. Other members of the panel include former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, who in 2006 led the Iraq Study Group with Baker; former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state. The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia sponsored the study. So much for being able to carry a big stick if this stoopid idea sticks, which I don't think it will. The founding fathers set things up the way they did for a reason. Sometimes it takes a king to get things done.

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Home Front: Politix

Former U.S. Officials Want to Change Process for Going to War

2008-07-08

Oh dear.... Congress should pass legislation to require the president to consult lawmakers before going to war, according to a bipartisan study group chaired by former secretaries of state James Baker III and Warren Christopher. In a report released Tuesday, the panel says the current law governing the nation's war powers has failed to promote cooperation between the executive and legislative branch. It says the 1973 resolution should be repealed and replaced with new legislation that would require the president to inform Congress of any plans to engage in "significant armed conflict," such as operations lasting longer than a week. In turn, Congress would act within 30 days, either approving or disapproving the action. Baker, who served as in the first Bush administration and co-chaired the 2006 Iraq Study Group, said the proposal isn't intended to resolve constitutional disputes between the White House and Congress on who should decide whether the nation fights. "What we aim to do with this statute is to create a process that will encourage the two branches to cooperate and consult in a way that is both practical and true to the spirit of the Constitution," he said in a statement. A new joint House and Senate committee would be established to review the president's justification for war. To do so, the committee would be granted access to highly classified information. Congress' involvement in approving combat operations became a central issue in the Iraq debate last year, when Democrats tried to force President Bush to end the war. While Congress had authorized combat in Iraq, Democrats said the resolution approved only the invasion and not a five-year counterinsurgency. After taking control of Congress in January 2007, Democrats tried to cap force levels and set a timetable for withdrawals. While they lacked a veto-proof majority to put the restrictions into law, the White House argued that such legislation would have violated the Constitution by infringing upon the president's right as commander in chief to protect the nation. Democrats disagreed, contending there was ample precedence. The one surefire way for Congress to have ended the war was to cut off money for combat operations -- a step most Democrats weren't willing to make because they feared doing so would have hurt troops in harms' way, or at least be perceived by voters that way. The plan identified by Baker and Christopher, who served as secretary of State under President Clinton, would not necessarily resolve such issues in the future. But it would create a consultative process between the White House and Congress that currently does not exist. Also, calling on Congress to respond would exert significant political pressure on a president if he ignored lawmakers' wishes. The panel studied the issue for more than a year and consulted more than three dozen experts. Other members of the panel include former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, who in 2006 led the Iraq Study Group with Baker; former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of State. The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia sponsored the study.

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Home Front: WoT

The Gates Doctrine - Kick A and Take Names, skip the pencil

2008-05-21

WASHINGTON -- When he was told that some in the Army were dismissive of press reports on the mistreatment of patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, according to one witness, grew "very, very quiet." Within two weeks, the Walter Reed commander was out of a job. This kind of decisive silence has been employed by Gates to good effect in scandals ranging from misdirected nuclear parts to the cremation of both fallen American soldiers and pets at the same facility. To those who know this Eagle Scout with 28 years of experience in government, Gates' subdued efficiency is not surprising. To those of us who haven't had the pleasure, his transformational ambitions and strategic boldness are surprising indeed. When Gates was nominated in late 2006, conservative suspicions and liberal hopes coincided. Gates, then a member of the Iraq Study Group, was expected to ease the American retreat from Iraq and begin the American engagement with Iran. Foreign-policy realism was back. When asked at his confirmation hearing if America was winning in Iraq, Gates replied, "No, sir" -- a candor that foretold change. But since Gates was the opposite of an ideologue, it was difficult to predict what form that change might take. In the 17 months of his tenure, some of this transition has been stylistic. One Pentagon source (who didn't want to be identified for fear of sounding like a suck-up) calls Gates "extraordinarily quick and extraordinarily even" and praises his "sense of humor and candor behind closed doors." But the most important shift has been substantive. Donald Rumsfeld -- along with the early President Bush -- set out an ambitious vision of military transformation. The Pentagon would use a period of relative international calm to make bold leaps in military capabilities so America would be unmatched in future wars. That calm ended on 9/11, but the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were still generally seen as temporary distractions from this great transformational purpose. Far from treating Iraq as a distraction, Gates has posed the question: Why not concentrate on winning the wars our soldiers are currently fighting? In a series of groundbreaking speeches, Gates has argued that asymmetrical conflicts in the "long war" against "violent jihadist networks" will remain the likely face of battle for decades to come, that "procurement and training have to focus on that reality," and that shaping civilian attitudes in these conflicts will be just as important as winning battles. There have been at least three practical outcomes of the nicely rhymed Gates Doctrine -- "the war we are in ... is the war we must win" -- in Iraq and beyond. First, Gates has pushed to deploy technologies immediately useful in low intensity conflict, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles. "Three armed Predators over Sadr City," says my military contact, "have hammered anyone challenging our forces. They help account for the eagerness for a cease-fire." Second, Gates is institutionalizing the teaching of counterinsurgency strategy. The old theory, says my contact, went: "If we could do the big stuff -- major combat operations -- we could take care of the little stuff, the asymmetrical stuff. But the little stuff turned out to be more prolonged and difficult." So the Army's new manual on "Full Spectrum Operations" trains new officers to conduct simultaneous offensive, defensive and "stability operations" -- things like political reconciliation, providing basic services, promoting local government. "The human terrain," says my source, "is the decisive terrain, and Gates gets it." Third, Gates argues that while American military power can be a prerequisite for stability, winning asymmetrical wars requires other elements of American power. So he calls for "a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security -- diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development." The Gates Doctrine has helped right a listing Iraq War -- and has met opposition. Getting the Air Force to deploy unmanned vehicles instead of concentrating on expensive, manned aircraft has been, Gates says, like "pulling teeth." Elements of the defense establishment, he charges, have been "preoccupied with future capabilities and procurement programs, wedded to lumbering peacetime process and procedures, stuck in bureaucratic low-gear." Recently -- seven years after 9/11, five years after the Iraq War began -- Gates noted that portions of the military are still not on a "war footing." With Americans engaged in a war, this scandal dwarfs any Gates has faced. In confronting it, the "realist" has become genuinely transformational.

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Home Front: Politix

Steyn: Obama an appeaser? How dare you

2008-05-17

HT to Powerline "That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me." That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's "one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies. President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old. But they heard their names, didn't they? Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior. Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here's what the president said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they're talking about me. Actually, he wasn't – or, to be more precise, he wasn't talking only about you. LOL, squeal piggies! Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here]concept is an original idea. Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything. talking means not having to do anything. B.O. sez he'd have "STRONG DIPLOMACY™", whatever the f*ck that means.... And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program. That's why that Hamas honcho endorsed Obama: They know he's their best shot at getting a European foreign minister installed as president of the United States. *smack* Mo Mowlam was Britain's Northern Ireland secretary and oversaw the process by which the IRA's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness became ministers of a Crown they decline to recognize. By 2004, she was calling for Osama bin Laden to be invited to "the negotiating table," having concluded he was no different from Adams: Stern fellow, lots of blood on his hands, but no sense getting on your high horse about all that; let's find out what he wants and give him part of it. In his 2002 letter to the United States, bin Laden has a lot of grievances, from America's refusal to implement Sharia law to Jew-controlled usury to the lack of punishment for "President Clinton's immoral acts." Like Barack Obama's pastor, bin Laden shares the view that AIDS is a "Satanic American invention." Obviously, there are items on the agenda that the free world can never concede on – "President Clinton's immoral acts" – but who's to say most of the rest isn't worth chewing over? This will be the fault line in the post-Bush war debate over the next few years. Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian, genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said: "There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously." Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are those of Hezbollah's patrons in Tehran. President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly – after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he's so twitchy about it.

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Home Front: Politix

Quagmire; Hopeless; Sunnis Get All the Credit

2008-04-07

The United States is no closer to achieving its goals in Iraq than it was a year ago but a quick military withdrawal could lead to massive chaos and even genocide, according to a report released Sunday by a U.S. think tank. The U.S. Institute of Peace report was written by experts who advised the Iraq Study Group, a panel mandated by Congress to offer recommendations on U.S. policy in Iraq in 2006. The report was released two days before top commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker brief Congress on the situation in Iraq and prospects for American troop reductions. Their recommendations, which President Bush has signaled he will accept, could largely determine the course of action in Iraq for the coming year. The report cited security improvements in Iraq since the buildup of U.S. forces in 2007, but credited factors outside U.S. control, such as help from mostly Sunni fighters who turned against al-Qaida and a truce by a Shiite militia. So the U.S. didn't win, several of the enemy quit. "The U.S. is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago," it concluded. "Lasting political development could take five to 10 years of full, unconditional U.S. commitment to Iraq."

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