Days Of Decision

The McChrystal request for more troops in Afghanistan is reportedly as much as 45,000. It's now on a shelf at the Pentagon as deliberations continue in the White House on reviewing the overall strategy. Obama has no scheduled events today. That could be in observation of Yom Kippur (Emanuel and Axelrod are certainly indisposed today), but what's also likely is a day of internal discussion over the way forward in Afghanistan. The President has reached beyond his circle of advisors and even to Colin Powell in making this decision.

The competing advice and concerns fuel a pivotal struggle to shape the president’s thinking about a war that he inherited but may come to define his tenure. Among the most important outside voices has been that of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a retired four-star Army general, who visited Mr. Obama in the Oval Office this month and expressed skepticism that more troops would guarantee success. According to people briefed on the discussion, Mr. Powell reminded the president of his longstanding view that military missions should be clearly defined.

Mr. Powell is one of the three people outside the administration, along with Senator John F. Kerry and Senator Jack Reed, considered by White House aides to be most influential in this current debate. All have expressed varying degrees of doubt about the wisdom of sending more forces to Afghanistan.

Mr. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has warned of repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, where he served, and has floated the idea of a more limited counterterrorist mission. Mr. Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and an Army veteran, has not ruled out supporting more troops but said “the burden of proof” was on commanders to justify it.

In the West Wing, beyond Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has advocated an alternative strategy to the troop buildup, other presidential advisers sound dubious about more troops, including Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, and Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, according to people who have spoken with them. At the same time, Mr. Obama is also hearing from more hawkish figures, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Even inside the Pentagon, opinions are mixed as to whether more troops will make a difference.

The assumption of the hawks, that allowing Afghanistan to fall to the Taliban will automatically signal a return of Al Qaeda into the country in a safe haven, reminds me of the domino theory - speculative, ignorant of the local dynamic, based on scant evidence. James Jones, the national security advisor, seemed to dismiss it the other day. While Al Qaeda's presence in the border region hasn't been wasy, with drone strikes and other pressures, the severe anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, such that the government is openly hindering government visa requests and de facto protecting Al Qaeda, suggests that they are much more comfortable where they are than moving back into Afghanistan, where the Taliban suffered decapitation the last time they gave them harbor, are not as ideologically aligned with them this time around and would be wary of entering into the same agreement. Notwithstanding the argument that "safe havens" in host countries are unnecessary for a plot to be carried off in, for example, Denver and Queens, or for core leadership to gravitate to North Africa or some other area. An Afghanistan-centered strategy, in this context, seems foolish.

I think the linchpin of all of this is Joe Biden. He was maybe the pre-eminent humanitarian interventionist in the Democratic Party for a long time, until coming up against Afghanistan and recognizing that the nation-building effort had no partner and was doomed to failure. It's the personal meetings between Biden and Hamid Karzai that appear to have soured him on the whole project and shift to a counter-terrorism focus:

Nothing shook his faith quite as much as what you might call the Karzai dinners. The first occurred in February 2008, during a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan that Biden took with fellow senators John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. Dining on platters of rice and lamb at the heavily fortified presidential palace in Kabul, Biden and his colleagues grilled Karzai about reports of corruption and the growing opium trade in the country, which the president disingenuously denied. An increasingly impatient Biden challenged Karzai's assertions until he lost his temper. Biden finally stood up and threw down his napkin, declaring, "This meeting is over," before he marched out of the room with Hagel and Kerry. It was a similar story nearly a year later. As Obama prepared to assume the presidency in January, he dispatched Biden on a regional fact-finding trip. Again Biden dined with Karzai, and, again, the meeting was contentious. Reiterating his prior complaints about corruption, Biden warned Karzai that the Bush administration's kid-glove treatment was over; the new team would demand more of him.

Biden's revised view of Karzai was pivotal. Whereas he had once felt that, with sufficient U.S. support, Afghanistan could be stabilized, now he wasn't so sure. "He's aware that a basic rule of counterinsurgency is that you need a reliable local partner," says one person who has worked with Biden in the past. The trip also left Biden wondering about the clarity of America's mission. At the White House, he told colleagues that "if you asked ten different U.S. officials in that country what their mission was, you'd get ten different answers," according to a senior White House aide. He was also growing increasingly concerned about the fate of Pakistan. Biden has been troubled by the overwhelmingly disproportionate allocation of U.S. resources to Afghanistan in comparison to Pakistan, a ratio one administration official measures as 30:1. Indeed, before leaving the Senate last year, Biden authored legislation that would triple U.S. non-military aid to Islamabad to $1.5 billion per year. (House-Senate bickering has tied up the plan for months, and Biden has recently been working the phones to broker a compromise.)

Actually, that tripling of aid for Pakistan passed the Senate unanimously this past week.

Biden actually lost this fight the first time around to the hawks, but the futility of the fraudulent election has brought things into a different view. And yet the White House and other NATO members feel obliged to actually support Karzai, mainly because of his ethnicity (a Tajik like Abdullah Abdullah would lose the Pashto-dominated country quickly). Just writing a sentence like that leads to the conclusion that building a stable government here is impossible.

Frank Rich looks at the deliberations in the White House through the prism of the Vietnam era and the release of a new book detailing that policymaking:

George Stephanopoulos reported that the new “must-read book” for President Obama’s war team is “Lessons in Disaster” by Gordon M. Goldstein, a foreign-policy scholar who had collaborated with McGeorge Bundy, the Kennedy-Johnson national security adviser, on writing a Robert McNamara-style mea culpa about his role as an architect of the Vietnam War.

Bundy left his memoir unfinished at his death in 1996. Goldstein’s book, drawn from Bundy’s ruminations and deep new research, is full of fresh information on how the best and the brightest led America into the fiasco. “Lessons in Disaster” caused only a modest stir when published in November, but The Times Book Review cheered it as “an extraordinary cautionary tale for all Americans.” The reviewer was, of all people, the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose career began in Vietnam and who would later be charged with the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis by the new Obama administration [...]

As Goldstein said to me last week, it’s “eerie” how closely even these political maneuvers track those of a half-century ago, when J.F.K. was weighing whether to send combat troops to Vietnam. Military leaders lobbied for their new mission by planting leaks in the press. Kennedy fired back by authorizing his own leaks, which, like Obama’s, indicated his reservations about whether American combat forces could turn a counterinsurgency strategy into a winnable war.

We shall know the outcome of these days of decision within weeks. Obama has a responsibility, not to rubber-stamp the views of Washington hawks and counter-insurgency lovers, but to outline the best possible policy for the future. I don't see how committing 100,000-plus troops to Afghanistan for five years or more, to defend an illegitimate government, to fight an invisible enemy, fits with that mandate.

The Deepening Afghan Nightmare

This looks to me like a good pivot point to up and end involvement in Afghanistan.

A U.S. jet dropped 500-pound bombs on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban before dawn Friday, triggering a huge explosion that Afghan officials said killed more than 70 people, including insurgents and some civilians who had swarmed around the vehicles to siphon off fuel.

Germany, whose troops called in the 2:30 a.m. strike in the northern province of Kunduz, said it feared the hijackers would use the trucks to carry out a suicide attack against its military base nearby.

We are completely in over our heads here. Once again we've allowed amorphous terms like "victory" to define our military involvement instead of achieving realizable goals. So a war initially based on dismantling Al Qaeda becomes a war to build a nation and protect an ethnic class. The country held an election that could lead to outbreaks of violence and unrest, as our man in Kabul is clearly corrupt and ineffectual. Tribal factions with no tradition of a central government have vowed armed conflict if Hamid Karzai is allowed to stand after multiple examples of election fraud. You could have a situation where the government is threatened by a popular uprising, leaving the US troops no clear guidance on how to react. And on top of that, dozens more civilians are bombed from above, leading to more alienation and more desire to drive out the occupiers. The latest in a series of after-the-fact inquiries will do us no good. Meanwhile, more Americans die every day without an articulated rationale.

The divisions in Afghanistan are mirrored by the divisions at home. Top advisers appear to be split on whether to add even more troops. Dick Holbrooke and Hillary Clinton look to be on the side of more troops. Robert Gates has been worried about the foreign footprint in Afghanistan but appears open to escalation. Joe Biden, no dove, is leading the group in the White House opposed to a long-term commitment, which is what escalation would signal. Inside the Pentagon, at least some officials will not acquiesce to Gen. McChrystal's request for more forces without major scrutiny. And in another sign that Obama would only have Republicans behind him if he orders more troops, Senate Democrats are not enthused by the prospect of deepening our commitment.

Speaking on a day when a U.S. bombed tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban killing 70 people, including some civilians, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said the U.S. must focus more on building the Afghan security forces. His cautionary stance was echoed by Sen. Jack Reed, who is also on the committee and spent two days in Afghanistan this week with Levin.

The senators will return to Washington next week, just as Obama receives a new military review of Afghanistan strategy that officials expect will be followed up by a request for at least a modest increase in U.S. troops battling insurgents in the eight-year-old war [...]

"There are a lot of ways to speed up the numbers and capabilities of the Afghan army and police. They are strongly motivated," Levin said from Kuwait. "I think that we should pursue that course ... before we consider a further increase in combat forces beyond what's already been planned to be sent in the months ahead."

Levin said there is a growing consensus on the need to expedite the training and equipping of the Afghan army to improve security in Afghanistan, where 51 U.S. troops died in August, making it the bloodiest month for American forces there since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

In a separate call, Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the U.S. must use a multi-pronged approach: build up the Afghan Army, send more civilians to Afghanistan to provide economic and political assistance, and reach out to Taliban supporters who are willing to recognize the Kabul government.

This is actually just a fantasy, a hope that more Afghan security forces can reduce our troop numbers. It doesn't talk about the policy itself, which as a true counter-terrorism strategy would focus on intelligence and law enforcement and containing terrorist activity to within the borders. As Chuck Hagel said very expertly this week, foreign policy is not an abstraction. We are committing real lives and real treasure to this effort, and trying to impose our will on a nation which has no interest in mimicking us.

Accordingly, we cannot view U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan through a lens that sees only "winning" or "losing." Iraq and Afghanistan are not America's to win or lose. Win what? We can help them buy time or develop, but we cannot control their fates. There are too many cultural, ethnic and religious dynamics at play in these regions for any one nation to control. For example, the future of Afghanistan is linked directly to Pakistan and what happens in the mountains along their border. Political accommodation and reconciliation in this region will determine the outcome.

If the antiwar movement is truly planning a fall campaign, they should invite Hagel. He is as perceptive and cogent on this issue as anyone. Right now it appears that the DC establishment, while always tilting toward war, is split. The progressive groups who could engage the masses in a very powerful way are reluctant to challenge the President on his policy because, to be honest, they don't feel confident talking about foreign policy and national security. But the greatest organizing opportunity in recent progressive history, what brought Democrats the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, was opposition to the war in Iraq. It galvanized a movement and made history. Moreover, it was the right thing to do. It's time for Americans to decide whether to agree to what amounts to endless war or not.

Afghanistan: Escalation And Narrowness Of Thought

Today, several bloggers are engaging in a day of discussion and debate about Administration policy in Afghanistan. Now that the President has announced his Afghanistan strategy and shared it with the world, we can begin to assess the policy. Europe has reacted to a call for more involvement with a show of support but few troops to offer to the effort, most of them temporary for security around the Afghan elections. And US commanders are already calling for 10,000 more additional US troops on top of the 17,000 combat forces and 4,000 trainers already pledged. Increasingly, this is becoming an American war.

Petraeus acknowledged that the ratio of coalition and Afghan security forces to the population is projected through 2011 to be significantly lower than the 20 troops per 1,000 people prescribed by the Army counterinsurgency manual he helped write.

"If you assume there is an insurgency throughout the country . . . you need more forces," Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as head of U.S. Central Command, said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the Pentagon has not yet forwarded the troop request to the White House.

Michele Flournoy, undersecretary of defense for policy, testified that the new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan is based on a plan to concentrate forces in "the insurgency belt in the south and east," rather than throughout Afghanistan.

Obama "doesn't have to make a decision until the fall, so the troops would arrive, as planned, in 2010," she said.

The U.S. military has 38,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the number is projected to rise to 68,000 with deployments scheduled for this year. Those deployments include a 4,000-strong contingent of trainers from the 4th brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, 17,000 other combat troops, a 2,800-strong combat aviation brigade and thousands of support forces whose placement was not publicly announced, the Pentagon said.

Yes, the Administration snuck another 9,000 troops into the country when our heads were turned.

Clearly our commitment to the region in physical troops and treasure is escalating, and I fail to see how it could be de-escalated without the key goals being met. In other words, Plans A, B and C involve more and more troops to a part of the world that has not known peace in more than a generation, to carry out a policy that entrenches us in the region and with the governments there while publicly stating a desire to limit its focus.

If the Obama Administration sticks to these goals, of dismantling and disrupting Al Qaeda safe havens, I would be fine with it. But most of them don't even exist inside Afghanistan but in Pakistan, where we are engaged in the same kind of "war at 30,000 feet" through unmanned drone strikes that failed to work in Afghanistan and necessitated the call for additional troops. In Pakistan, estimates of one million people have been displaced due to these airstrikes, and they have inflamed the local Taliban, who specifically cited the bombings as responsible for their run of suicide attacks deep inside their own country. We have succeeded in turning a national problem into a regional one, without the ability to mount a ground offensive inside Pakistan where the threat originates. In this sense, it can be said that the Taliban's strength is directly proportional to US involvement.

As for Afghanistan, I basically agree with Juan Cole. Obama expresses a latter-day domino theory to justify occupation in Afghanistan, yet while a failed state would certainly have consequences for Al Qaeda, the threat of that failure has been largely overstated (in both Afghanistan and Pakistan), and there are certainly means to contain a terrorist threat without the need for military occupation. And, "when a policymaker gets the rationale for action wrong, he is at particular risk of falling into mission creep and stubborn commitment to a doomed and unnecessary enterprise."

In a later piece, Cole details how Afghanistan is turning into Iraq, with its large military bases, use of private military contractors, unrealistic talk of an imminent decision point, and worst, the rise of a fundamentalist cental government:

The US has actually only managed to install a fundamentalist government in Afghanistan, which is rolling back rights of women and prosecuting blasphemy cases. In a play for the Shiite vote (22% or so of the population), President Hamid Karzai put through civilly legislated Shiite personal status law, which affects Shiite women in that country. The wife will need the husband's permission to go out of the house, and can't refuse a demand for sex. (Since the 1990s there has been a movement in 50 or more countries to abandon the idea that spouses cannot rape one another, though admittedly this idea is new and was rejected in US law until recently).

No one seems to have noted that the Shiite regime in Baghdad is more or less doing the same thing. In Iraq, the US switched out the secular Baath Party for Shiite fundamentalist parties. Everyone keeps saying the US improved the status of women in both countries. Actually, in Iraq the US invasion set women back about 30 years. In Afghanistan, the socialist government of the 1980s, for all its brutality in other spheres, did implement policies substantially improving women's rights, including aiming at universal education, making a place for them in the professions, and so forth. There were socialist Afghan women soldiers fighting the Muslim fundamentalist guerrillas that Reagan called "freedom fighters" and to whom he gave billions to turn the country into a conservative theocracy. I can never get American audiences to concede that Afghan women had it way better in the 1980s, and that it has been downhill ever since, mainly because of US favoritism toward patriarchal and anti-progressive forces.

After criticism, Hamid Karzai has vowed to review the spousal rape law, and elsewhere the Taliban has actually relaxed their policies on burqas and beards in their negotiations with the Afghan government. Yes negotiations:

...preliminary talks between President Hamid Karzai's government and Taliban insurgents are already under way, and appear to have yielded a significant shift away from the Taliban's past obsession with repressive rules and punishments governing personal behaviour. The Taliban are now prepared to commit themselves to refraining from banning girls' education, beating up taxi drivers for listening to Bollywood music, or measuring the length of mens' beards, according to representatives of the Islamist movement. Burqas worn by women in public would be "strongly recommended" but not compulsory. The undertakings have been confirmed by Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, who was the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan in the late 1990s, and who has been part of a Saudi-sponsored peace initiative.

According to Christoph Hörstel, a German analyst of Afghan affairs, Mullah Zaeef has confirmed that the Taliban are no longer insisting that their members should form the government. Instead, they would agree to rule by religious scholars and technocrats who meet with their approval following a national loya jirga, or community meeting, attended by public figures. The demand for a loya jirga could be met as early as next month if President Karzai convenes a meeting of elders to determine who should rule when his term officially ends on 21 May.

I sincerely believe the Administration would rather have the governments inside Pakistan and Afghanistan settle this danger themselves. That's what's behind the economic development and improving intergovernmental communication lines at the heart of the strategy. But the focus on "safe havens" betrays a rather antiquated thinking about where militant extremists can communicate and coordinate, namely anywhere. And the ability of Pakistan's government to help the United States through destroying their homegrown threat, or even to govern themselves, must be in serious question at this point.

Neoconservatives have thus far been quite supportive of the Administration's escalation policy in Afghanistan, and I agree that they pretty much pick their piece of imperialist policy that practically every President supports and latch themselves to it to maintain a certain legitimacy. In this case, I don't view it as neocons clinging to a Democratic President's policy, but the other way around, as they adhere to worn-out arguments to intensify a failed policy based on the continued fear of not wanting to lose a war.

Afghanistan Review Up On Friday

The big foreign policy news is that President Obama will unveil his policy review on Afghanistan on Friday.

The source declined to provide any details of the much-anticipated review, which has been looking for new ways to halt the worsening insurgency in Afghanistan.

Obama has said the United States is not winning in Afghanistan and last month ordered the deployment of 17,000 extra U.S. troops to the country.

He declined to comment on the results of the review on Tuesday. "I don't want to prejudge what is still a work in process," he told reporters.

Nevertheless, senior administration officials have provided the outlines of possible policy adjustments.

They have spoken out in favor of increasing the size of the Afghan security forces, improving cooperation between NATO nations and the Afghan government and increasing civilian assistance to build institutions and infrastructure.

These are frankly marginal components to an overall solution. The Afghan security forces don't simply need an increase in size, but an increase in core competency - recent reports have shown many of them to be drug-addicted and unreliable. Civilian assistance and regional cooperation is nice, but will fail to change the fundamental dynamic of a homegrown insurgency and a corrupt central government increasingly hated by the population.

On those fronts, the Administration has moved in various ways. First, they are seeking cooperation from local forces, including so-called "moderate Taliban" and warlords. The government feels it needs their help in securing goals on economic stability, infrastructure growth and poppy eradication, as well as to undercut popular support for the Taliban. In addition, the Guardian reports on plans to bypass Hamid Karzai:

The US and its European allies are preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned.

The creation of a new chief executive or prime ministerial role is aimed at bypassing Karzai. In a further dilution of his power, it is proposed that money be diverted from the Kabul government to the provinces. Many US and European officials have become disillusioned with the extent of the corruption and incompetence in the Karzai government, but most now believe there are no credible alternatives, and predict the Afghan president will win re-election in August [...]

As well as watering down Karzai's personal authority by installing a senior official at the president's side capable of playing a more efficient executive role, the US and Europeans are seeking to channel resources to the provinces rather than to central government in Kabul.

A diplomat with knowledge of the review said: "Karzai is not delivering. If we are going to support his government, it has to be run properly to ensure the levels of corruption decrease, not increase. The levels of corruption are frightening."

This is fraught with danger. Karzai was installed as a puppet several years ago, and his weak governing style has worn out its welcome among the population. I tend to doubt the lack of credible alternatives, and believe there's nothing credible about usurping the authority of an elected leader, which could easily backfire. Decentralizing power probably makes sense in a nation with almost no history of strong civic institutions, but I don't see how installing that from above helps matters. As Charles Lemos notes, another puppet just adds a buch of strings:

It is hard to not see this move as the installation of a puppet government. The other aspect of the plan is a de-centralization effort aimed at bypassing the central government in Kabul altogether. Money will be directed more to the officials who run Afghanistan outside the capital - the 34 provincial governors and 396 district governors. "The point on which we insist is that the time is now for a new division of responsibilities, between central power and local power," the senior European official said.

But what leads me to conclude that the Guardian's story is accurate is this line:

"In Wardak, as in southern Afghanistan, U.S. forces are embracing local leaders while quietly sidestepping President Hamid Karzai -- whose relations with American military leaders and diplomats have grown toxic. Wardak Gov. Mohammed Halim Fidai is an English-speaking former refugee who has spent much of his career working for U.S.-funded NGOs and has enthusiastically embraced the new strategy."

It seems that we are to have a large number of Afghan puppets.

Finally, the Administration will include an exit strategy in their policy review, which is about the only facet of it I totally agree with. President Obama discussed this with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes:

STEVE KROFT: Afghanistan ... What-- what should that mission be?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies. That's our number one priority. And in service of that priority there may be a whole host of things that we need to do. We may need to build up-- economic capacity in Afghanistan. We may need to-- improve our diplomatic efforts in Pakistan.

We may need to bring a more regional-- diplomatic approach to bear. We may need to coordinate more effectively with our allies. But we can't lose sight of what our central mission is. The same mission that we had when we went in after 9/11. And that is these folks can project-- violence against the United States' citizens. And that is something that we cannot tolerate.

But what we can't do is think that just a military approach in Afghanistan is going to be able to solve our problems. . So what we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's gotta be an exit strategy. There-- there's gotta be a sense that this is not perpetual drift.

That's very smart, but sometimes events take control - especially if all the troops and the money and the alternative governing strategies and drawn-out counter-insurgency tactics have been put in place. Afghanistan remains dangerous but the military cannot solve the entire puzzle, not that the Administration believes that. I do not mean to abandon Afghanistan, but I do think we can look to alternative strategies such as those put forward by Reps. Mike Honda and Raul Grijalva:

On the economic front, Afghanistan's infrastructure is near non-existent. This is a serious security issue. The lack of an adequate transportation grid for healthy trade makes poppy the crop of choice for Afghan farmers. Poppy produces quickly in dry climates, harvests in three months, and withstands long journeys to market. Since Afghanistan provides 92 percent of the world's opium, strategies to transition farmers off poppy must rely less on eradication and more on providing alternative crops—pomegranate, sugar cane, maize, cotton, rice, squash, legumes and potatoes—and viable market routes, regionally, nationally and internationally. Add training for traders, market managers and small-business owners, and a program to empower women economically (business is profitably boosted when gender-balanced), and a new Afghan economy emerges.

Furthermore, by freeing farmers of the financial fix offered by poppy, you undermine the Taliban's hold. The Taliban protects and finances farmers who face crop eradication, a dependency that establishes unwitting loyalty. If we intervene by providing farmers with alternative options, we reduce the Taliban's reach and employ communities that are facing unemployment rates of 40 percent to 80 percent. Other ways of reducing Taliban influence include the construction of schools (enrollment is dangerously low at 25 percent) and hospitals (provinces like Helmand struggle to equip even two hospitals for 700,000 residents). As long as Kabul quits the nation on both accounts, the Taliban is eager to substitute [...]

The president's intent is right, to help a beleaguered country realign itself. But lest Obama miss the opportunity to learn from the previous administration's mistakes, a concerted effort to realize these economic, political and social goals is necessary. We recognize that the answer to Afghanistan remains elusive, as it has puzzled outsiders, from Britain, to Russia and now America. But we need to do right in a country that is failing fast. The ground for gain, economically, politically and socially, is vast. We trust the president is ready to pursue it.

Relatedly, Steve Hynd argues that the consensus view on the need for counter-insurgency tactics in Afghanistan is wrong, and the public does not want a protracted 15-year campaign in the tribal regions costing maybe a trillion dollars, and that the more favorable approach is a containment strategy that relies on local intelligence and law enforcement to ensure that extremist elements cannot project violence across borders.

I am willing to listen to the policy review and engage with it directly, and will not pre-judge the process. But the mission and the tactics have to be roughly equivalent, and we cannot ask our military to employ themselves serving an impossible goal.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

The Vice President gave a speech to NATO yesterday, basically urging the membership to get involved in Afghanistan. I don't think it will be very successful, though he is right that there is a shared national security interest to deny a regional safe haven for extremists. The problem, of course, is that there already is one, in Pakistan and in the FATA areas. Pakistan is currently in the throes of a political crisis, that would cause instability and allow extremist forces to operate more freely. The fear is not that the Taliban takes over Pakistan, but that the political wrangling between Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif will predominate, and leave the leadership up for grabs. It's basically an old-fashioned political squabble

A conflict developed between Nawaz Sharif and PPP leader Asaf Ali Zardari over the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhury. Dictator Musharraf had dismissed Chaudhury in spring of 2007 for opposing some of his policies. Pakistan's massive legal establishment began holding rallies and demanding that the chief justice be reinstated, which he was in summer 2007. Musharraf was under pressure from Washington to become a civilian president. But he found out that fall that the supreme court would not allow this transition because the constitution requires that a military man have been out of the service for 2 years before becoming president. So Musharraf just dismissed the whole supreme court, including the recently reinstated Chaudhury, and appointed a new court, which sycophantically recognized him as president.

When he was allowed to come back to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia, Nawaz Sharif, who had been overthrown as prime minister in 1999 by Musharraf, began demanding that Iftikhar Chaudhury and the old, dismissed, supreme court be reinstated.

After the PPP won the parliamentary elections, its leader, Zardari, declined to reinstate Chaudhury. Zardari was afraid that the chief justice might reinstate the corruption charges against him, which had been amnestied by Musharraf [...]

But just last week, the supreme court dismissed Shahbaz Sharif as chief minister of Punjab, and barred him and Nawaz Sharif from running for office. Some suspect the court of acting at President Zardari's behest.

The Sharif brothers say that this court is anyway illegitimate and refuse to recognize its rulings, since it is the fruit of a poisoned tree, i.e. the arbitrary creature of a desperate military dictator 18 months ago.

The attorneys are also still angry over the failure of Zardari to reinstate Chaudhury and the others.

So on March 15, the Muslim League (which is more conservative landlord than religious fundamentalist, despite the name) is organizing a "long march" on parliament to protest the current supreme court and the recent decisions it issued against the Sharifs.

On the hustings, Nawaz Sharif said that the only thing that could save Pakistan now was a revolution, and announced that he had "raised the standard of rebellion."

Pakistan is a young nation. These political struggles could easily break the country apart, with secession, a partition between areas, and perhaps a military coup to stop the factional fighting, with a return to dictatorship. And remember, this is a nuclear-armed state. It seems to me that Afghanistan is almost an afterthought compared to the dangers here.

It's not that Biden and the Administration aren't doing some things right in the region - they are realistically looking at folding certain Taliban elements into the state, which may or may not be successful but it at least inventive, and they are halting some raids, mindful of the deleterious effect of civilian casualties on the battle for hearts and minds.

But Pakistan is a far more dire situation, one that requires immediate attention.

Double The Quagmire

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is signaling that we are about to double our military commitment in Afghanistan.

The top U.S. military officer said Saturday that the Pentagon could double the number of American forces in Afghanistan by next summer to 60,000 — the largest estimate of potential reinforcements ever publicly suggested.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that between 20,000 and 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 already there.

Considering how deadly this year has been for US forces, it seems almost incredible that only 31,000 troops are stationed there. I knew that the per capita casualty rates were bigger in Afghanistan than Iraq this year, but that is much smaller than I thought.

Meanwhile, we're going to try an Afghan awakening by arming militia groups, which makes the mistake that the dynamics in Afghanistan are exactly like Iraq. In Iraq we were arming ex-insurgent Sunnis to fight foreign AQI forces (that's an oversimplification, but generally the case). In Afghanistan it is completely unclear who the enemy is, whether this move will ask tribesmen to fight other tribesmen, etc. I don't think there are the clear fault lines among insurgency groups in Afghanistan the way there was in Sunni areas in Iraq. And remember, the Sunni Awakening was organic, beginning well before we decided to arm or fund anyone.

That's not to say there isn't possible value in this, especially if it splinters the Taliban. But I don't think it will have any impact on strengthening the central government, as the tribes are famously independent in Afghanistan. The central government lacks legitimacy, and the inability to deliver basic services just buttresses that. Arming militias will just create separate fiefdoms, which is how Afghanistan naturally governs itself anyway so that's not all bad.

But doubling our forces in Afghanistan doesn't seem to be that helpful. Increasing the occupier footprint may only anger the local population, and now the strain on the already threatened supply line will be even greater. I don't see the strategy here.

Four More Wars

I'm going to step cautiously with this bit of newsmaking from Sarah Palin's first national interview.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

Now, let's be crystal clear on this, even if our friends on the right would certainly not be. Palin is accurately describing the state of affairs if a NATO member country is attacked. Signatories to the treaty would be obligated to go to war with them.

What you can be terrified about is her absolute certainty that Ukraine and Georgia ought to be allowed into NATO. That would put the United States in a position of restarting the Cold War with Russia if Georgia provokes them by invading South Ossetia first and trying to massacre Russian peacekeepers. Of course, that is also John McCain's position, and he's quite adamant about it. What you can also be terrified is that John McCain thinks Palin knows Russia very well because she lives next door to them, and yet she continues to argue for NATO expansion and a generally belligerent attitude toward Russia. (She also has national security credentials because she "knows energy." Really, that's the terrible interview of the day.)

Now, the other issue here is that Barack Obama has argued for something similar to NATO inclusion for Georgia.

Going forward, the United States and Europe must support the people of Georgia. Beyond immediate humanitarian assistance, we must provide economic assistance, and help rebuild what has been destroyed. I have consistently called for deepening relations between Georgia and transatlantic institutions, including a Membership Action Plan for NATO, and we must continue to press for that deeper relationship.

There is a difference between arguing for expansion of NATO and arguing for a Membership Action Plan. The MAP is a process where the country in question must prepare a long list of qualifications for possible future membership. It does not mean instant membership.

However, it's not the polar opposite of what Palin has advocated, either. It's part of the way there.

Later in the interview she offers a slightly more cogent imminent threat standard for pre-emptive military action, but of course George Bush offered the same standard, he just lied about the imminent threat coming from Iraq and now Iran. So that doesn't warm my heart. She didn't know what the "Bush Doctrine" was.

I think going on national television and saying we might have to go to war with Russia is perhaps ill-timed, but it also happens to be John McCain's policy. He just won't tell you. She did. Whether or not it's Barack Obama's policy is unclear - there is indeed a difference between an MAP and membership.

UPDATE: Just to make myself clear - Democrats should go after this comment. The Governor is calling for possible nuclear war with Russia over a non-strategic internal skirmish in a region with a history of skirmishes. I agree that it would be tantamount to Russia saying "If the US ever invades Panama again, we'll declare war!" Whether or not the Obama campaign will say anything about this depends on how far they've gone with their Georgia/NATO policy. Maybe seeing the stakes laid out this clearly will show them how dumb it is to argue for NATO expansion.

Stuck In The Middle Of The Road

Russia appears to be having a problem with the withdrawing part of the withdrawal agreement, sounding a bit like the Bush Administration in the process:

Russia claimed that it had begun withdrawing its troops from Georgia on Monday, but there was little evidence of it on the ground: Russian soldiers continued digging in to positions along the highway approaching the capital, Tbilisi, showing no sign of pulling back from the severest confrontation between Russia and the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union [...]

(Dmitry) Medvedev on Monday cautioned that any force used against these soldiers would provoke a response.

“Obviously, if anyone thinks he can kill our citizens, our soldiers and officers who are serving as peacekeepers, and go unpunished, we will never allow this,” Mr. Medvedev said. “Anyone who tries this will receive a devastating response. For this, we have all the means — economic and political and military. If anyone had illusions about this some time ago, then they must part with those illusions now.”

He added: “We do not want to aggravate the situation, but we want to be respected, and our government to be respected, and our people to be respected, and our values.”

They do appear to be trolling for a provocation. The other issue is that the cease-fire agreement, which allows for “security operations” by the Russians inside Georgia, if you read it one way, enables them to be both in compliance and outside of compliance simultaneously. That was bad work by the drafters.

NATO is holding an emergency meeting today on this, but the alliance is not united on what to do:

As Nato's 26 foreign ministers gather in Brussels, the BBC's Jonathan Marcus says there is disagreement among the alliance as to how to respond, so the focus will be on where members can agree.

It is thought that in one camp, Britain, Canada, the US and most Eastern European member states will seek a tough stance on Russia, but most of Western Europe, led by France and Germany, is expected to be more cautious of harming ties with Moscow.

I think Russia is dragging their feet because they can, and they're taking out key installations inside Georgia to try and pre-empt any additional attack on the breakaway republics. Today they detained a bunch of Georgian soldiers at a Black Sea port. It looks like the Russians aren't exactly concerned about a Western response.

The Georgia Saga Continues

The Russia-Georgia conflict has been hard to understand on a day-to-day basis due to the unreliable narrators. Russia claims that Georgia firebombed South Ossetia and committed genocide in their initial attack; Tom Lasseter tours Tshkinvali and finds no evidence for the allegation. Georgia has been claiming repeatedly that Russian troops are advancing on the capital despite a cease-fire agreement, and while this one may be true today, it's not entirely clear. So you kind of have to be a detective and wait until all the facts are in to see where things are going.

But certainly, Russia is dragging its feet on withdrawal, and using the "genocide" of South Ossetia as a casus belli. The cease-fire itself has certainly stalled to some extent, and Russia bombed a Georgian bridge over the weekend that was a key east-west artery for the country. This may eventually serve Putin's goals of teaching its near abroad states a lesson, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia probably will rejoin the federation. But that doesn't mean this operation was an unqualified success for Russia:

The West was never going to actively approve of the Russian invasion, but if Putin had limited himself to a short, sharp clash in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it would have been an almost unalloyed victory. The murky status of the provinces combined with the fact that Saakashvili sent in troops first would have kept Western reaction to a minimum, and Russia's message would still have been sent loud and clear: don't mess with us in our sphere of influence.

But then Putin got greedy — or just made a mistake — and sent Russian troops into Georgia proper. This was almost certainly militarily unnecessary, and it succeeded mainly in uniting virtually everyone in outrage against Russian aggression. Putin can pretend all he wants that he doesn't care about Western opinion, but he obviously does — and what's more, Western unity makes a difference in concrete terms too. Poland's quick turnaround on missile defense is probably just the first example of this. The U.S. has gotten lots of bad reviews for its handling of the situation, but in the end, the countries on Russia's border are more firmly in our camp now than they were even before the war.

I don't know if I agree with that last part. Georgia seems just as mad about our failing to intervene as they are about the Russian invasion. In addition, while Poland's missile defense turnaround is interesting, their pro-Western government has been firmly ensconced for some time. And I'm not so sure who needs who here - does Russia need the West as a market, or does the West need Russia's goods - particularly their energy resources?

Some smarter takes have been given by Joseph Galloway:

Although Vice President Cheney bravely rattled a sword or two and George Bush was talking a little tougher to his old soul mate Vlad the Impaler, the simple truth is that there's not a damn thing we can do about the Russian invasion and perfidy short of nuking them. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made it amply clear that we aren't going to do that, or much of anything else beyond sending some humanitarian medical aid and supplies for the Georgian refugees [...]

Washington can respond only with tough talk. We can threaten to punish the Russians by expelling them from the International Monetary Fund and the Group of Eight wealthy nations, but with a fat bankroll bulging with Arab-size oil earnings, the Russians don’t really need to care about this [...]

Things have truly come to a sorry pass when both our military and our diplomatic threats are as empty as our national treasury, and the Russians of all people can afford to laugh them off.

Bush and Cheney seven and a half years ago inherited control of the world's only reigning superpower, and in that short time they've squandered our military power, our international good name and our national treasury.

Julian Barnes:

WASHINGTON -- In the last week, two major pillars of President Bush's approach to foreign policy have crumbled, jeopardizing eight years of work and sending the administration scrambling for new strategies in the waning months of its term.

From the earliest days of his presidency, Bush had said spreading democracy was a centerpiece of his foreign policy. At the same time, he sought to develop a more productive relationship with Russia, seeking Moscow's cooperation on issues such as terrorism, Iran's nuclear program and expansion of global energy supplies [...]

Since the Georgia conflict erupted, Bush has repeatedly cited that nation's progress toward democracy as he promised American support. "The people of Georgia have cast their lot with the free world, and we will not cast them aside," he said.

Faced with a massive deployment of Russian military power, however, the U.S. response was confined to condemning Moscow's actions, pushing for humanitarian aid and pressing Georgia to accept a cease-fire agreement brokered by France that would leave Russian troops still inside Georgia's two breakaway enclaves.

"What freedom strategy?" asked David L. Phillips, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of a report on Georgia. "It is scorned worldwide. Afghanistan is backsliding. The bar has been set low in Iraq. Georgia is in ruins."

And Michael Dobbs:

It soon became clear to me that the Ossetians viewed Georgians in much the same way that Georgians view Russians: as aggressive bullies bent on taking away their independence. "We are much more worried by Georgian imperialism than Russian imperialism," an Ossetian leader, Gerasim Khugaev, told me then. "It is closer to us, and we feel its pressure all the time."

When it comes to apportioning blame for the latest flare-up in the Caucasus, there's plenty to go around. The Russians were clearly itching for a fight, but the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been erratic and provocative. The United States may have stoked the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili to believe that he enjoyed American protection, when the West's ability to impose its will in this part of the world is actually quite limited.

This is the truth of the matter: Ossetians identify with the Russians more; the Georgian invasion was scandalous, though not as bad as the Russians advertised; the Russian incursion into Georgia was deeply wrong; the West was fairly powerless to do anything about it; US-Russian policy on key issues like nuclear proliferation and the Iranian question is in tatters; the cease-fire agreement allows for continued security operations inside Georgia by the Russians, so it's not even clear they're dragging their feet or taking advantage of a bad agreement; Georgia is ruined, America is exposed, and NATO has little recourse.

I agree with Scarecrow - this is good news for John McCain.

How Does Regime Change Feel On The Other Side?

This has the feel of unintended consequences.

Putin criticized the United States for viewing Georgia as the victim instead of the aggressor, and for airlifting Georgian troops back home from Iraq on Sunday.

"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages," Putin said in Moscow. "And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed ten Ossetian villages at once, who ran elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilian alive in their sheds — these leaders must be taken under protection."

Look, there's no doubt that Russia's response, to incur far into sovereign territory and bomb civilian airports and empower separatists, appears disproportionate. But so did the bombing of Baghdad as a response to a terrorist attack they had nothing to do with. The President's denunciations and stern warnings just sound totally hollow. And to hear the Russians tell it, the initial assault on South Ossetia by Georgia has the earmarks of a genocide.

NOTE: It's not completely clear what's happening over there. Georgia is claiming that they're enforcing a cease-fire and yet there are reports of their troops firing on Russian positions. Each side is accusing the other of ethnic cleansing. The Georgians claim that the Russians have taken Gori but there are conflicting reports on that. So all reporting there has to be met with skepticism.

What is clear is that something was offered by the West to Georgia if they chose to blitzkrieg South Ossetia, and the Bush Administration failed to carry through, resulting in an almost impotent response.

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

It's heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times—officials, soldiers, and citizens—wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It's infuriating because it's clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would. When Bush (properly) pushed for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, Putin warned that he would do the same for pro-Russian secessionists elsewhere, by which he could only have meant Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin had taken drastic steps in earlier disputes over those regions—for instance, embargoing all trade with Georgia—with an implicit threat that he could inflict far greater punishment. Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.

Georgia has American and Israeli weapons, a long history with the President, troops in Iraq (until yesterday) and an ally in their quest for NATO inclusion. That they received nothing for all that just shows the limits of cowboy diplomacy and a belligerent foreign policy. We cannot back up the tough talk with action everywhere in the world, and by promoting militarism and aggression, people die. Furthermore, the unnecessary war in Iraq eliminated any claim to the moral authority of saying that Russia invaded a sovereign state.

No wonder Russian "expert" Condi Rice isn't coming off her holiday to get involved. This is a disaster.

FWIW, Anatol Lieven has a good backgrounder. And here's Obama's statement today, which is not cribbed from Wikipedia, to my knowledge. Obama's in a tough spot, because the failed foreign policy of the Bush years has made this crisis almost impossible for us to help manage.

At Least This Means He May Have Figured Out How To Use The Internet

John McCain's statement today on Georgia, ripped off from Wikipedia.

First instance:

one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)

vs.

one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion (McCain)

Second instance:

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis. (Wikipedia)

vs.

After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises. (McCain)

Honestly, I don't care if he ripped off basic biographical facts from Wikipedia, though it kind of diminishes his pretensions to having a rich knowledge of the region. I do mind McCain stealing his ideological outlook on conflicts with Russia from General Jack D. Ripper. Contrary to Georgian President Saakashvili's claim that this is somehow a war for the West (which I think tips his hand as to the level of American support he was promised), his country provoked this war and has consistently tried to needle Russia and cement ties with the West. At this point, calling for Georgia's inclusion in NATO is tantamount to calling for war with Russia. Who would want that? Both sides are very clearly at fault, yet with Russia rumbling toward Tblisi and taking over Gori the Russians are clearly the aggressor at this point. I think this statement, however, is very right.

Russia must be condemned for its unsanctioned intervention. But the war began as an ill-considered move by Georgia to retake South Ossetia by force. Saakashvili's larger goal was to lead his country into war as a form of calculated self-sacrifice, hoping that Russia's predictable overreaction would convince the West of exactly the narrative that many commentators have now taken up.

The commitment of troops to Iraq was also a calculated move on Georgia's part, with the expectation, fueled in the minds of the population, of a quid pro quo.

As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”

A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.

America may have wanted this kind of proxy attack or at least a show of force on Russia's border, and the massive response took everyone by surprise. As Dylan Matthews says, this is a disaster for the Bush foreign policy. His "freedom agenda" is in tatters as one of the progenitors of it gets crushed by an adversary; NATO expansion is dead, tensions with Russia are on the rise, and the Iraq "coalition" is seen for what it is, pure realpolitik. There are two responses to this mess - more testosterone-fueled foreign policy that would result in tactical nuclear weapon deployment or worse, or a calmer, less belligerent means of dealing with crisis. Guess which one each Presidential candidate fits.

Let's Loop Back To Failed War #1

Meanwhile, in that other, forgotten war:

About 870 prisoners escaped during a Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and demolished a prison floor, Afghan officials said Saturday.

The police chief of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said 390 Taliban prisoners were among those who fled the prison during the attack late Friday.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force put the number of escapees slightly higher, at around 1,100, according to spokesman Brig. Gen. Carlos Branco. He conceded that the assault was a success.

If the Taliban is able to pull off mass-scale operations like this, and now has hundreds of fighters willing to do more, shouldn't this be a signal that Afghanistan needs dire attention, and not by browbeating NATO partners but a legitimate commitment. The Taliban almost assassinated Hamid Karzai a couple months back, and now this. They bombed out a wall with a truck at the front gate, had a suicide bomber blow himself up at the back wall, and then rockets fired from INSIDE the prison courtyard, all at the same time. They reportedly had minibuses waiting for the escapees.

Heckuva job.

Just Six More Months, Please!

David Petraeus is bucking for a column in the New York Times.

We think we won’t know that we’ve reached a turning point until we’re six months past it. We have repeatedly said that there is no lights at the end of the tunnel that we’re seeing. We’re certainly not dancing in the end zone or anything like that.

As Andrew Bacevich said the other day, this was actually the real goal of the surge - to keep our troops stuck in Iraq for as long as possible, so the occupation could be passed off to the next President. The idea was to create enough security success in the short-term by flooding the zone with troops to offer a propaganda victory, to allow the neocon wags to sputter "We're winning!" and forestall the inevtiable drawdown. Now, death tolls are actually rising again, and the Shiite militia cease-fire could be ending. But Iraq has moved off the front page, and the endless shouts of victory from the right have dampened any effect of this new data. And the warhawks are essentially running interference for those like Bush and Petraeus who are simply trying to prolong matters.

As for St. Petraeus, he has his own reasons for setting this trap for the next President.

Indeed, Petraeus can basically write his next round of orders. But wherever he goes, his next important campaign probably won't be on any battlefield. It'll be political. For the past year, the GOP has laid the groundwork to enlist Petraeus as its standard-bearer in the fairly likely event that the party loses in November to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. You read it here first. Plant your lawn signs now. Petraeus 2012: Surging to the White House.

We're also starting to hear about Petraeus being shifted over to NATO Commander, where he could serve under the next President, as they would be unlikely or even unable to uninstall the Hero of the Surge. Like that wouldn't be just a minefield, right? Remember when Colin Powell blocked Clinton's effort to allow gays in the military, deeply embarrassing the President at the beginning of his term? Powell doesn't have 1/10th the ambition of Petraeus.

This is just one of the dozens of landmines that Bush is going to put in place to make himself look better and to trip up his successor. He doesn't much care about the future of the country, only saving his own skin.