The Futility Of Counter-Insurgency In A Corrupt State

John Kerry had some good words in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday:

Kerry sets out a few principles for such refinement. “First it will be the Afghans that will ultimately win or lose the struggle against the Taliban.” The United States is in a “race against time” in a region “suspicious of foreign troops.” Recognize “the decentralized nature” of Afghan politics and society. Be flexible. “What works in Mazar-e-Sharif … is very different from what works in Kandahar.” Be “humble about our ability to bring large-scale change.” Put Afghanistan in a regional context. “Permeable borders are straddled by clans, ethnic groups and militants and what happens in one country can have profound implications for what happens in others.”

Finally: “Set realistic goals. The purpose of the mission is what the president said it was” — a struggle against al-Qaeda. Kerry, who has said the United States is involved in a “global counterinsurgency,” references the commando strike earlier this week against a Somali militant with ties to al-Qaeda. The success, he said, should cause policymakers to ask “how much counterinsurgency and nation-building is required to meet a sufficient set of goals?”

This kind of talk among policymakers is far better than those who demand a "war of necessity" with an unlimited commitment to the Afghan people, lest we leave them on the battlefield or some other such military metaphor. Expecting a democracy to flourish in Afghanistan, especially in the wake of a clearly fraudulent election and a leader who is completely ethically compromised by it, is expecting what will never be, frankly. While the US may want Karzai to run the government for explicitly ethnic reasons (it's just easier to have a Pashto heading the coalition than a Tajik) and may try to bring together a unity government by essentially buying off his rivals, that is unlikely to soothe concerns of stolen elections or inspire any defense of the government in fighting the insurgency. The election has basically sealed the fate of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, and not for the better.

I think Kerry's point about the purpose of the mission being focused on Al Qaeda and not nation-building is extremely important. Even the White House's own benchmarks, according to a document released yesterday, puts that at the top of the list. But from there it moves to a wide-ranging mission creep involving all sorts of tangential activities:

Objective 1: “Disrupt terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks.” It directs readers to metrics in a classified annex (not provided to POLITICO).

Objective 2a: “Assist efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan." It lists six metrics for measuring how progress is being achieved in that objective: from progress towards Pakistan's civilian government becoming stable and free of military involvement, to "demonstrable action by the government against corruption."

Objective 2b: “Develop Pakistan’s counterinsurgency (COIN) capabilities; continue to support Pakistan’s efforts to defeat terrorist and insurgent groups.” That objective is followed by four metrics: 1) Effectiveness of Pakistan civilian, intelligence and military in conducting counter-insurgency operations across the clear-hold-build phases to defeat insurgent groups. 2) Level of militant-initiated violence. 3) Extent of militant-controlled areas in Pakistan. 4) Effectiveness of Pakistani border security efforts.

Objective 2c: "Involve the international community more actively to forge international consensus to stabilize Pakistan."

Objective 3a: “Defeat the extremist insurgency, secure the Afghan populace, and develop increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S. assistance.” This is followed by 14 metrics, from “measuring the degree to which security operations are integrated into the overall COIN campaign,” to 14, the ability of the Afghan National Security Foces “to handle their own logistical needs.”

These goals are nice, and so are unicorns. But they ignore the reality of Afghanistan and the region. We need to make whatever deals we can with those who have the guns, shift to a counter-terrorism strategy of ensuring that no extremist can project power beyond their borders, and get out. The very fact that Pakistan factors more into these metrics than Afghanistan - since Al Qaeda actually exists there - points to the futility of a military COIN strategy in the other country in the region.

The President tried to put the brakes on any escalation talk yesterday, but given these wrongheaded metrics I can't see how we're headed for anything but that. The skeptics in Congress need to be encouraged to keep speaking out about this policy, or else another Democratic President will be defined by an increasingly unpopular war.

Feinstein: Afghanistan Cannot Sustain A Democracy

It's one thing for the Bernie Sanderses and Russ Feingolds to openly question the mission in Afghanistan. It's quite another for Dianne Feinstein to do so.

KING: Well Senator Feinstein, you're the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence. To the question of where this ends, it is eight years after 9/11. We've paused and reflected on that just the other day. You see the things that we can't see, the intelligence. Are we winning in Afghanistan? Are we any closer to finding Osama bin Laden, and does the president have a clear strategy, in your view?

FEINSTEIN: Well, I can tell you this. A lot of the leadership has been taken out of al Qaeda. I can say and I think you would agree that Afghanistan and the Pakistani border are still the major safe haven, the major safe haven for terrorists in the world. And these are people who will, if they can, come after us, not necessarily the Taliban, but certainly al Qaeda and other affiliated groups.

So we have to consider that. We have about 60,000 troops there, another 8,000 are moving in with our allies, it about equals the force that is in Iraq. To the best of my knowledge, the president has had no request for additional troops up to this time. My view is that the mission has to be very clear. I don't believe --

KING: Has to be means it is not now?

FEINSTEIN: I believe it is not now. I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan. I believe it will remain a tribal entity.

I do believe that clearing out Al Qaida, clearing out the Taliban is a bona fide part one of the mission. I do agree that training Afghan troops, Afghan -- Afghan police is an important piece of the mission.

I believe the mission should be time limited, that there should be no, well, we'll let you know in a year and a half, depending on how we do. I think the Congress is entitled to know, after Iraq, exactly how long are we going to be in Afghanistan.

Feinstein is actually more charitable about the presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan than the commanding general on the ground, Stanley McChrystal, who said this week that there are no signs of major Al Qaeda anywhere in the country.

But as far as the wariness of the viability of Constitutional democracy in Afghanistan, you need only look to their recent election, into which the opposition leader is now seeking a criminal investigation. He has accused Hamid Karzai of treason and "state-engineered fraud". Despite this, Karzai will probably win election on the first ballot, and a vote that has been horribly compromised will be made official. We saw in Iran how this can lead to violence and chaos, and Afghanistan is not nearly as stable. Without a viable partner in the government, as Feinstein says we cannot expect an endless commitment. Yet because Karzai is Pashtun the US will likely back him in this fight, alienating the other ethnic groups in the region. Kalashnikovs are flying off the shelves in the Tajik areas. Civil war is not an unlikely scenario at this point.

This further limits the mission, away from state-building and toward dealing with the elements in the country willing to deal. Otherwise we set ourselves up for a decade-long slog that will only end with more dead and more treasure squandered, to little effect. And yes, as Sen. Feinstein says, that process should have an end date.

Russ Feingold Is Making Sense

This reminds me of Feingold's lonely stand against the Patriot Act. He was right about that too:

Feingold said he is increasingly disturbed by the war in Afghanistan, where troop levels are escalating by the month, US casualties are mounting and the insurgency is expanding. "It appears that no one even asked the president about [Afghanistan] at his [July 22] press conference after apparently thirty or thirty-one Americans were killed in Afghanistan last month. How is that possible?" Feingold asks. "People have to wake up to what's going on in Afghanistan, and my vote is a request that people wake up to what's happening, which is we are getting deeper and deeper into this situation in a way that I don't think necessarily makes sense at all and may actually be counterproductive." [...]

Feingold believes "the so-called surge may actually make matters worse by pushing militants into Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation which is still not effectively dealing with terrorist sanctuaries in that country." He is particularly concerned with what he calls the "balloon effect:" resistance fighters in Afghanistan being pushed into Pakistan, where "they may be safer." [...]

"This is something I've been trying to hammer away at," Feingold tells The Nation. "They admitted that it's a problem, but where's the follow-up? This administration is almost whistling past the graveyard on this issue." Feingold added, "How is it that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and our special envoy to this region both agree that this could be a problem and that it is not talked about as a serious mistake if we're going to keep increasing troops and increase that effect? This is, in my view, the central flaw in what is otherwise a policy that is better than the Bush administration's. This is the central flaw in the thinking of the administration on this issue, and it needs to be pursued."

The kind of militants that we're supposed to be stopping from threatening American national security can always melt away and move somewhere. Heck, we just arrested seven people in North Carolina and accused them of plotting terrorism. Do we now send drones over the Outer Banks, pushing the militants into South Carolina and Tennessee?

The problem is that, while the war in Afghanistan has been sold as a war against Al Qaeda, on the ground the war has become a war protecting the Afghan people in areas where the Taliban is trying to spread its power. Incredibly, this keeps in place Taliban in Pashtun areas, which is supposed to be the point of denying them safe havens!

The U.S. and its allies must change their mission to focus on protecting the Afghan people -- even if it means temporarily allowing the Taliban to operate relatively freely in sparsely populated areas, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said in an interview Saturday.

Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was appointed to overhaul military operations in the country, discussed his new strategy to shift the course of a war that has become increasingly intense [...]

He acknowledged that U.S. and alliance forces cannot routinely enter some areas.

"Practically speaking, there are areas that are controlled by Taliban forces," he said. Over time, McChrystal said, the command will "reduce" those areas, but the first priority will to be to make sure populated areas are free of insurgent influence.

It's important not to confuse this iteration of Afghan Taliban with Al Qaeda, or even the prior version of Taliban (this is not necessarily a group of Wahhabist extremists). But they war is supposed to be about denying safe havens, and the head of Afghan forces is now saying that safe havens controlled by the Taliban exist and won't really get challenged. And those safe havens equal probably half the country.

At this point, I'll have to agree with Chris Hedges.

Al-Qaida could not care less what we do in Afghanistan. We can bomb Afghan villages, hunt the Taliban in Helmand province, build a 100,000-strong client Afghan army, stand by passively as Afghan warlords execute hundreds, maybe thousands, of Taliban prisoners, build huge, elaborate military bases and send drones to drop bombs on Pakistan. It will make no difference. The war will not halt the attacks of Islamic radicals. Terrorist and insurgent groups are not conventional forces. They do not play by the rules of warfare our commanders have drilled into them in war colleges and service academies. And these underground groups are protean, changing shape and color as they drift from one failed state to the next, plan a terrorist attack and then fade back into the shadows. We are fighting with the wrong tools. We are fighting the wrong people. We are on the wrong side of history. And we will be defeated in Afghanistan as we will be in Iraq [...]

The only way to defeat terrorist groups is to isolate them within their own societies. This requires wooing the population away from radicals. It is a political, economic and cultural war. The terrible algebra of military occupation and violence is always counterproductive to this kind of battle. It always creates more insurgents than it kills. It always legitimizes terrorism. And while we squander resources and lives, the real enemy, al-Qaida, has moved on to build networks in Indonesia, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Morocco and depressed Muslim communities such as those in France's Lyon and London's Brixton area. There is no shortage of backwaters and broken patches of the Earth where al-Qaida can hide and operate. It does not need Afghanistan, and neither do we.

This is pretty simple stuff, but an America at the last vestiges of hegemony and empire remains programmed not to understand. We can undertake a law enforcement and intelligence mission against Al Qaeda that protects America without a military mission in Afghanistan that does nothing for this cause.

Iran's Choice - Rejecting Confrontation

I've been fascinated by Iran's June 12 election over the past couple days, in particular because the result could genuinely surprise, as four years of Holocaust denial and high-profile rhetorical bomb-throwing have possibly threatened Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's chances for re-election. I say possibly because it's so hard to tell: while one "secret poll" reported by Newsweek has the Iranian President trailing Mir Hossein Mousavi by 2-1, a more recent public opinion survey has Ahmadinejad ahead by the same ratio, albeit with 27% undecided. It appears unlikely that either candidate, or the two others, will reach the 50% + 1 necessary to avoid a runoff. Record turnout is expected,with campaign rallies shutting down Tehran, so perhaps the modeling is bad, producing the wildly divergent results. Is there an Iranian Nate Silver?

Certainly Iranians have cause to find fault with their President, who I like to point out is not their leader - that would be the Supreme Leader, who blasted the President for his completely bizarre debate performance a few days back:

In the most significant development, Ahmadinejad appeared to have irked the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over his performance in Wednesday night's debate with Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main opponent in next week's presidential election.

"One doesn't like to see a nominee, for the sake of proving himself, seeking to negate somebody else," Khamenei said in a speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of the Iranian revolution's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. "I have no problem with debate, dialogue and criticism but these debates must take place within a religious framework." [...]

Apparently trailing in the opinion polls, Ahmadinejad attempted to link Mousavi – the main reformist candidate – to the past governments of Rafsanjani and the reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatam, which he said had been guilty of widespread graft. Among others, he singled out Rafsanjani's sons as well as Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, the current head of the supreme leader's inspectorate.

Khamenei's criticisms echoed those of Mousavi, who told Ahmadinejad during the debate: "This is a sin. We are Muslims, we believe in God. We cannot name people like that and accuse them."

It's not just the Supreme Leader (who still has endorsed Ahmadinejad) who have reason to call out the incumbent for criticism. Reformers who boycotted the last election after Mohammed Khatami failed to make meaningful inroads with his agenda are coalescing around the little-known Mousavi, particularly the young, who are completely turned off by the President's confrontational style. The poor economy has cut off Ahmadinejad from his rural base, who are angered by his policies of driving up inflation and rewarding political friends. And even the conservative elite has turned away from Ahmadinejad, who they find counter-productive.

Powerful reformists and conservatives within Iran's elite have joined forces to wage an unprecedented behind-the-scenes campaign to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, worried that he is driving the country to the brink of collapse with populist economic policies and a confrontational stance toward the West [...]

They have used the levers of government to foil attempts by Ahmadinejad to secure funds for populist giveaways and to permit freewheeling campaigning that has benefited Mousavi. State-controlled television agreed to an unheard-of series of live debates, and the powerful Council of Guardians, which thwarted the reformist wave of the late 1990s, rejected a ballot box maneuver by the president that some saw as a prelude to attempted fraud.

Some called it a realignment of Iranian domestic politics from its longtime rift between reformists and conservatives to one that pits pragmatists on both sides against radicals such as Ahmadinejad.

"Some of the supporters of Mousavi like his ideas; others don't want Ahmadinejad," said Javad Etaat, a professor of political science and a campaigner for Mousavi. "They've decided that preserving the nation is more important than preserving the government."

I don't think we can know for sure what the results will be, but there certainly are signs that Ahmadinejad's belligerence played better in the "Arab street" abroad than at home. Regardless of who is elected in Iran, the hardline clerics who actually run the country seem determined to continue nuclear energy production which contains the genesis of the entire conflict with the West (although nobody has reasonably explained what has changed from the most recent NIE on Iran, which said that they had not restarted nuclear weapons development, and today). But if Ahmadinejad is defeated on the 12th, it will truly signal that hardliner belligerence can be as much a hindrance for a politician as a help. And that's a good thing.

But I'm more interested in seeing our American Taliban's head spin around at the prospect of seeing the supposedly fascist dictator of Iran defeated in a peaceful election.

The Speech

Barack Obama often gives these speeches in aggressively non-sound bite forms. The speech on race doesn't have one line that people recite over and over, nor does his DNC nomination speech, or his speeches in Europe, or his Inauguration speech. He would rather create an event, something that needs to be read or watched in full. This morning's speech to the Muslim world from Cairo was promoted intensely on Facebook and Twitter, and translated into multiple different languages. The intended audiences are overseas, and the ideas complex and not easily boiled down.

Today's speech starts as almost a historical lecture about the challenges between Muslim countries and the United States, and like many Obama speeches, he seeks common ground between the divides, and calls for a new beginning of mutual understanding and shared principles, focusing on what unites and not what divides. And he asks that the two sides listen to each other and be honest with one another.

I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." That is what I will try to do - to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.

He addresses the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel/Palestine issue, the Iranian nuclear weapons crisis, democracy promotion, religious freedom and women's rights, doing the "on the one hand, on the other hand" shtick with almost all of them. Here's a good example, and a really keen take on the Israel/Palestine debate:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers - for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

There was a lot of honesty in the speech. Obama asserted that "our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons" to a part of the world where women are less equal. He said that "no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other" and acknowledged American roles in past overthrows of Muslim governments, particularly in Iran. He said that "No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons," an oblique reference to Israel, and made a hedge on Iranian negotiations by admitting that they "should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

The President, in other words, challenged the assumptions of both Americans and Egyptians, Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis, and sought common understanding through honesty and a new foundation for dialogue. Some will see the speech as essentially empty, as if a speech could end all oppression in the Muslim world. And I agree that actions matter, and words fall hollow if not backed up by them; in fact, the rhetoric makes things WORSE if the actions do not match. But I also agree with MJ Rosenberg, that speaking to Muslims and Arabs as equals does have an impact. Marc Lynch has a good take as well. Ultimately, Obama seeks to bring the greater Muslim world forward into a new conversation and marginalize those extremists who pervert religion with violence, and refuses to use ideology as a wedge between the divides. In that respect the speech is not as important as its buildup and the environment created around it. You can see by the Al Qaeda freakout in reaction - as well as conservatives - that they both hate the crackup of the Manichean relationship between the Western and Muslim worlds.

More coverage in NYT and WaPo, and even from Thomas Friedman, though I advise you to read what's inside the quotes from Obama and not the Moustache's turgid prose.

Let's Get Them

John Bolton never passes up an opportunity to start another war:

FOX HOST: Ambassador, if you were serving in this administration, would it be your recommendation that they go in to, militarily with air strikes and/or boots on the ground, into these so-called feral cities, where these pirates are taking hold? Should we go in and take those people out, and take their installations out, now, militarily? Is that what you’re suggesting?

BOLTON: Yes. … Unless we go in and really end this problem once and for all, we will simply see it grow over time.

This is the same John Bolton, of course, who opposed the Clinton Administration efforts to prevent a failed state in Somalia.

Bolton isn't completely wrong - the crisis in Somalia absolutely feeds piracy. But a full-scale ground invasion that would FURTHER destabilize the area, if that's possible, clearly won't solve the problem. Unfortunately, I don't think the Administration has the political will to do what's necessary. Yes, they're talking about attacking pirate bases and aiding the Somali government both with economic development support and the kind of funding to go after the problem themselves, and they appear mindful of the need to get local support before doing anything. However there's nothing resembling a comprehensive solution, which would have to include a political accommodation that would be acceptable to a broad consensus of the Somali people, which probably means including the ICU. I'm not saying that would be at all easy to get, but there doesn't seem to be any attempt to try. Which turns the whole situation into a discussion about appropriate levels of military force.

In a related development, Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ) saw his plane out of Mogadishu fired upon, allegedly in retaliation for the pirate deaths. Obviously, letting the piracy problems grow to this level means that such attacks are inevitable, but the significant work of nation-building, not nation-destroying, must be the response.

...and, um, this was not a military victory for Obama. Nor was it a military test for Obama. He followed the standard protocols and let the professionals do their work. If that's a victory, fine.

World Report

Been a while since I got into this.

• Iraq: The speaker of the Parliament has been officially ousted in a move that doesn't seem to bother anyone, not even the speaker, who was kind of a loose cannon. But if anything, it's a symbol of the political power plays that have gripped the country for the past six months, leading into provincial elections. The Prime Minister is surely consolidating power, using a narrow amount of goodwill engendered by security gains to muscle his competition for power. Maliki wants a strong central government because he's at the head of it, while the Sunni and Kurdish factions want their own authority and independence.

“Maliki is monopolizing all the political, security and economic decisions,” said Omar Abdul Sattar, a Sunni member of Parliament. He listed political parties that he said were turning against the prime minister, including a powerful Shiite party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is fighting Mr. Maliki’s drive to centralize power in Baghdad and pushing to give more to the provinces — where the party has important power bases, particularly in the south. “It’s simply the story of the transformation from a democratic prime minister into a dictator,” he said.

Given Iraq's history with dictatorships, and the fractious nature of ethnic and sectarian divides in the country, this is a natural state of affairs, which is why the hopeful talk of democratic transformation in the heart of the Middle East was always such rubbish. We invaded Iraq to remove a dictator so they could eventually install another one, this time with a more overtly religious cast. Not that Iraq was a threat to the United States beforehand, but it's hard to see how this made our country any safer, especially when factoring in the human and financial costs.

• Israel: I'm very worried that full-scale fighting is about to break out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Hamas ended its cease-fire last week, and has been lobbing dozens of rockets into Israeli territory. Since Hamas' electoral victory, Israel has sealed off the Gaza strip, turning it into essentially a large prison. Egypt, which has been offering aid and assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza, wants to mediate a truce, but I don't think it's likely. There is a faction in Israel that sees crushing Hamas as part of the road to peace - and that's the LESS hawkish faction! This is going to explode in the next several days. Very worrying.

• Japan: The Pacific Rim nation is mired in another deep recession, as industrial output cratered and deflation appeared imminent. Japan was growing largely on the back of American consumption of their goods the past few years, and so this was inevitable. As America's rise back to prominence is tied to stimulating a home-grown industrial base, it's hard to see how Asian nations like this improve unless we give up and try to return to an unsustainable consumption model again.

• Somalia: The President of the transitional (read: powerless) government is resigning. By next year, I gather that you will see the Islamic Courts Union back in power here. Ethiopia will pull all their forces out in the next few weeks, and there is little to stop the ICU. And so a US-sponsored war will have produced nothing but more bloodshed and the rise of a powerful cadre of pirates, who reduced global economic trade through thievery. It was a shortsighted solution lacking a regional context, and it failed totally.

• Guinea: I'm not going to lie and say that I am perfectly well-versed about Guinea (not to be confused with Guinea-Bissau or Papua New Guinea), but they've had a coup by a military junta, which is the 10,834th of the military-led coups in Africa since, oh, last week. The latest in Guinea followed the death of a longtime dictator, Lansana Conte. The cycle of coups and state-sponsored repression is so commonplace on the continent, that it's hard to find a glimmer of hope. The African Union is simply not a strong enough institution to deter the practice.

• Europe: European leaders are talking about accepting some Guantanamo detainees as a gesture of goodwill toward the new President. Obama is going to have a global honeymoon period where he can really get a lot accomplished, and closing Gitmo should be at the top of that list as pertaining to foreign policy. One possible red flag is the persistence of Robert Gates at the helm of the Defense Department. He is being sued by Guantanamo detainee lawyers for signing a false affidavit that allowed him to sidestep disclosure of torture. That will not help any charm offensive. Pro Publica has a good roundup of the year in Gitmo here.

Interestingly Enough, The Vice President Is A Guy Named Ford

Pervez Musharraf, seeing the writing on the wall, resigns before impeachment.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf quit office on Monday to avoid impeachment charges, nearly nine years after the key U.S. ally in its campaign against terrorism took power in a coup.

Speculation the former army chief would resign had mounted since the fractious coalition government, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said this month it planned to impeach him.

"Whether I win or lose, the nation will lose," Musharraf, 65, said of the impeachment process in an hour-long televised address in which he passionately defended his record.

"The honor and dignity of the country will be affected and in my view, the honor of the office of president will also be affected."

It's always good when you quit your job and stocks jump up four percent. That's an ego-builder. This is also good for the soul:

Indeed, celebrations broke out across the country after the announcement, with people dancing and handing out sweets.

"Thank God he's resigned. The country will do much better now," said Mohammad Ilyas, 30, in Karachi.

I actually agree with the revelers. A Pakistan edging toward democracy, however slowly, will start to cut off extremism. If their government can successfully fight poverty, all the better (this is of course a long shot, but it's an area where the US can help). Musharraf's dictatorship and tight connections to both the seat of power and the military is a dangerous mix for a nuclear-armed country. Let's hope this is a better way forward.

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman has a more cautious take:

Just because Musharraf is out doesn't mean things are going to get better. In fact, it's a mistake to view any country, but specifically Pakistan, as the product of a single strongman. To go back to something I wrote on Friday, the job of the next administration is to build ties with Pakistan -- the nuclear-armed South Asian power that, among other things, has an uninvited guest named Usama bin Laden -- that go beyond the contingency of the moment. It's inconceivable that the Bush administration could have surveyed the post-9/11 landscape, observed the centrality of Pakistan to the war on terror, and said, "You know what we should do? Base our ties to Pakistan on a mercurial dictator." The next administration may have to distance itself from the U.S. in order to underscore the end of the Musharraf era, and if so, that's a mistake the U.S. can ill-afford at a time of resurgent al-Qaeda in Pakistan and rising U.S. casualties in Afghanistan.

The ruling coalition has based most of their time in office so far on getting rid of Musharraf. With that mission accomplished, they have to actually govern a country which is very fractious. Good luck to them.

Less Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update?

This is very relieving if true.

Faced with desertions by his political supporters and the neutrality of the Pakistani military, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, an important ally of the United States, is expected to resign in the next few days rather than face impeachment charges, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats said Thursday.

His departure from office would be likely to unleash new instability in the country as the two main parties in the civilian government jockeyed for the division of power.

Yeah, I don't agree with that. The instability would have come if Musharraf tried to hold on to power despite overwhelming opposition against him. But clearly he didn't have the support of the military he once held (like in the successful 1999 coup), and so this was his only solution.

Significantly, US and British diplomats have been urging Musharraf to quit in recent days, perhaps understanding that there was no chance of him keeping power with all the forces aligned against him.

Anything that avoids a coup or civil war in Pakistan is a good thing. This is an unstable country with nuclear weapons - a constitutional crisis would be extremely worrying. Ultimately, this shows the bankruptcy of US-Pakistan relations in the Bush era. As Joe Biden is fond of saying, we didn't have a Pakistan policy, we had a Musharraf policy, and it stirred resentment among the public and led to this backlash. The US tried to engineer a power-sharing agreement between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto that left Bhutto dead and Musharraf disgraced. The new coalition government is going to have its struggles, but it will certainly better reflect the will of the Pakistani people more than American interests. And in the end, I would argue that would be a POSITIVE development for the United States. This would be a more honest partner for peace and democracy than a dictator like Musharraf, who was enabling terrorists and extremists in the border region anyway. Our lack of thumbs on the scale will aid us in the fight in Afghanistan, too, which is turning grisly.

SAYDEBAD, Afghanistan -- Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the United States reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed seven weeks ago.

The soldiers -- two of them members of the National Guard from New York -- died as their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades. At least one was dragged off and chopped to pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials. The body was so badly mutilated that at first the military announced that it had found the remains of two men, not one, in a nearby field.

Horrifying, but the answer is full engagement with Pakistan's new government, promoting an actual semblance of a democracy, instead of holding on for dear life to a double-dealing dictator. A stable Pakistan is the eventual key to a stable Afghanistan where low-level development and an end to the narco-terrorist state can flourish.

This is ultimately good news, though I'm sure the spin in the Western media will be otherwise.

Rare Good News

The fall of Robert Mugabe would be a welcome result for the globe.

HARARE, Zimbabwe — The opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is in talks with advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe, amid signs that some of those close to Mr. Mugabe may encourage him to resign, a Western diplomat and a prominent Zimbabwe political analyst said Tuesday. The negotiations about a possible transfer of power away from Mr. Mugabe began after he apparently concluded that a runoff election would be demeaning, a diplomat said.

A resignation by Mr. Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, would be a stunning turnabout in a country where he has been accused of consistently manipulating election results to maintain his lock on power.

There is no guarantee the negotiations will succeed, and the situation could still deteriorate. But a Western diplomat and a political analyst said the opposition was negotiating with Zimbabwe’s military, central intelligence organization and prisons chief.

It was telling after the opposition appeared to win the election that their leaders immediately went into hiding. But if it can be resolved peaceably, this would be an enormous victory. Mugabe has been a cancer for Zimbabwe, with runaway inflation and unemployment and suffering. He's maybe the worst head of state on Earth.

And once again, we see that democracy promotion begins at home.

Puppet Picked For Putin

They're "voting" in Russia tomorrow (some of the polling in the easternmost portions of the country has already begun) to anoint a successor to Vladimir Putin, and all relevant polls show that it's likely to be his former campaign manager Dmitry Medvedev. That's probably due at least in part to some helpful nudging by the party in power.

The Kremlin is planning to falsify the results of tomorrow's presidential election by compelling millions of public-sector workers to vote and by fraudulently boosting the official turnout, the Guardian has been told by independent sources.

Governors, regional officials and even headteachers have been instructed to deliver a landslide majority for Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's first deputy prime minister, whom President Vladimir Putin has endorsed as his successor.

Officials have been told they need to secure a 68-70% turnout in this weekend's poll, with about 72% voting for Medvedev. Independent analysts believe the real turnout will be much lower, with 25-50% of the electorate taking part.

The Kremlin is planning to bridge the gap through widespread fraud, diplomats and other independent sources have told the Guardian. Local election officials are preparing to stuff ballot boxes once polls have closed, they believe, with regional officials giving inflated tallies to Russia's central election commission.

It's clear that Russia has backslid massively on democracy over the last eight years, so the fact that this is a Potemkin village of a vote does not surprise. Medvedev was likely to win anyway (Putin isn't an unpopular leader, at least not in public), but a landslide would confer some sort of legitimacy, so it's being mandated.

Seeing both Clinton and Obama struggle with a question about Medvedev in the last debate, it's obvious that both of them could have answered it by saying "It doesn't matter who this guy is, Putin will remain in power, he's isolated himself from the democratic process, and George Bush looking into his soul and seeing a friend didn't exactly help."

Strains of Peace

This hope thing may be catching. Kofi Annan managed to broker a deal in Kenya between the two political factions after a disputed election erupted into violence. The two sides agreed to share power in a unity government. Let this put to rest the familiar bleating on the right about the fecklessness of the UN or its surrogates like Annan. Conflict resolution is, in fact, a positive development.

In a development that is perhaps MORE positive, 24 Senators on the Finance Committee have written to the Secretary of State, asking for a reassessment of US-Cuba policy.

Our current policy of isolation and estrangement has failed.  Cuba's political system is stable after five decades of American efforts to force change on the island.  New laws that tightened sanctions in 1992 and 1996 have had no effect. The administration's 2004 sanctions and its comprehensive plan to bring about transition in Cuba have failed in their objective.  The absence of Fidel Castro for 20 months has not led to a change in the system.

Instead, our current policy deprives the United States of influence in Cuba, including the opportunity to promote principles that advance democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.  By restricting the ability of Americans to travel freely to Cuba, we limit contact and communication on the part of families, civil society, and government.  Likewise, by restricting the ability of our farmers, ranchers, and businesses to trade with Cuba, the United States has made itself irrelevant in Cuba's growing economy, allowing Cuba to build economic partnerships elsewhere.

There is no magic U.S. policy that will transform Cuba.  But with Cuba facing a period of change, we have a new opportunity to seize.  Our policy based on sanctions, passivity, and waiting should end.  We need a new approach that defends human rights, is confident about the value of American engagement with Cubans, builds new economic bridges between America and Cuba, and seeks every possible avenue of increasing American influence.

We urge you to take a fresh look at our policy toward Cuba.  We should seize upon Castro's long-awaited and welcome departure to chart a new course that favors hope and engagement over isolation and estrangement.

I think that when you see a political campaign run the way that Barack Obama has run it, and how successful it has become, and how it's built such a movement for change, politicians, which generally follow the herd, TAKE NOTICE. Strong advocacy against the current Cuba policy makes perfect sense. We are not fighting the Cold War anymore, and constructive engagement has continually led to democratization. I'm not saying that the answer to all of our worries in the world is to send in the New York Philharmonic, but clearly isolating and alienating an island 90 miles from Florida for the last 50 years has done nothing. It's good to see a bipartisan commitment to fixing this error.

The 2008 Election Just Turned

Three major developments globally have the potential to really change the dynamic in the Presidential election. Fidel Castro's resignation, the declaration of independence in Kosovo, and the resounding defeat of General-Dictator Pervez Musharraf's party in elections in Pakistan, are major, world-changing events that could be extremely positive for the world and the people in those nations, or profoundly destabilizing, over the next several years. Will Castro's exit usher in political and economic reforms? Will the counter-productive embargo finally be lifted? Or will US policy toward Cuba remain in its 50-year stasis, and will more sinister possibilities reveal themselves? Will Kosovo receive their independence and spark other democratic movements in the region, or will Serbia and Russia start another war in the Balkans? Will the opposition movements force Musharraf from power in Pakistan, or will the military render the will of the people moot, and will the society remain under martial law or worse? These are important political questions, and the next President will have an opportunity to really alter the global landscape, with smarts and savvy and the use of soft-power diplomacy.

Whether you see now as a time to stick with someone with the experience to make these tough and delicate decisions, or to go with someone with a different mindset on foreign policy, this is certainly a momentous occasion. And certainly, contrasting the two candidates we have left on the Democratic side to Bush's third term proxy John McCain, the difference is stark. Here's an example of what can be done right now, in this case with respect to Pakistan.

Now that Musharraf is for all practical purposes about to be dispensed with, the Bush administration needs to take a new approach.

A good start would be to adopt Sen. Joseph Biden's proposal to triple U.S. economic aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion per year. A second step should be to acknowledge that flooding military aid into the country -- to the tune of $10 billion since the beginning of the Bush presidency -- has done more harm than good. In this administration -- if possible -- and certainly in the next, the United States needs to shift from "democracy promotion" to "democracy support." Instead of trying to impose pro-U.S. regimes by force, U.S. policy should involve supporting indigenous democratic forces with non-military assistance, taking its cues from the needs of these movements rather than trying to manipulate the results.

These really are the fundamental questions. Are we going to stick with a foreign policy of the neoconservative consensus, with bullying and unilateralism and warmongering, are we going to attempt to better our position in the world through cooperation and mutual support.

When you shrug off the posturing and the day to day of the campaign, these are the stakes.

UPDATE: The initial statements of the leading candidates on Castro's resignation does not make me particularly hopeful, though there are some vague claims about reaching out and talking on the condition that Cuba takes legitimate steps to reform, particularly by releasing political prisoners. Sadly, our Cuba policy is still tied to electoral politics, particularly with respect to Florida.

Color Me Surprised

Either we had a fair election in Pakistan, or Dictator Musharraf is so reviled that the results couldn't be countermanded:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistanis dealt a crushing defeat to President Pervez Musharraf in parliamentary elections on Monday, in what government and opposition politicians said was a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States.

Almost all the leading figures in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that has governed for the last five years under Mr. Musharraf, lost their seats, including the leader of the party, the former speaker of Parliament and six ministers.

Official results are expected Tuesday, but early returns indicated that the vote would usher in a prime minister from one of the opposition parties, and opened the prospect of a Parliament that would move to undo many of Mr. Musharraf’s policies and that may even try to remove him [...]

The results were interpreted here as a repudiation of Mr. Musharraf as well as the Bush administration, which has staunchly backed Mr. Musharraf for more than six years as its best bet in the campaign against the Islamic militants in Pakistan. American officials will have little choice now but to seek alternative allies from among the new political forces emerging from the vote.

It's amazing how you impose martial law and remove the independent judiciary and all of a sudden people get their back up.

Based on unofficial results, the Pakistan Peoples Party (the party of the late Benazir Bhutto) would have 110 seats in the National Assembly (out of 272), the Pakistan Muslim League-N (the party of Nawaz Sharif) would have 100, and Musharraf's party (the Pakistan Muslim League-Q) would have just 20 or 30 seats. Turnout was low, as voters feared violence, but the violence was also mercifully low.

The question of course is whether or not the opposition parties will attempt to remove Musharraf, and if so what resistance they will get from the military, and how the Bush Administration will react. Of course, with Musharraf losing badly the Administration looks even sillier for hitching their wagons to his star. In fact, it was likely that the main effect of that hitching was this crushing electoral defeat. If Musharraf leaves the country, as appears possible, the possibility exists for a leader in Pakistan hostile to American interests. All because, as Joe Biden is fond of saying, we don't have a Pakistan policy, we have a Musharraf policy.

Meanwhile, the Islamist parties lost in the areas around the tribal region where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are prominent. This, of course, is probably because they don't need the validation of the vote to rule when they have the machine gun.

Still, this is quite hopeful, that a dictator was so fully rejected that he could not even hold back the challenge to his own power. Between this and Kosovo's independence being recognized by the US and other leading European countries, I'm almost hopeful about democracy.

At Long Last, Kosovo

Change your maps:

Kosovo's parliament declared the disputed territory a nation on Sunday, mounting a historic bid to become an "independent and democratic state" backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

Serbia immediately denounced the declaration as illegal, and Russia also rejected it, demanding an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

This could end up as a thorny situation, but the people of Kosovo deserve it. This may raise Russia's hackles, but key European countries are going to recognize the vote, and while I'd like to see the United Nations take role in the recognition process, this uneasy peace with Serbia wasn't likely to hold. The balkanizing of the Balkans has often been extremely messy, but this was a formal process taken with the view of both the people and the Parliament.

Finally, it seems to me that this is the best practice of a true democracy, not what we're currently seeing in Iraq. While the world stepped in to stop Kosovo from being bombed out of existence, in the interim they set their minds to a declaration of independence that did not come from an occupying power but the people themselves. Democracy at the barrel of a gun, just like escalation in the face of insurgency, never works. Building democratic societies is about empowering individuals to take action.

The Not-So-Innocent Abroad

With the "Filipino Monkey" story starting to hit the major press, the Administration's credibility on this Straits of Hormuz incident is lessening even further. It's very clear that the audio threats, which set this apart from more routine incidents in the Straits, bore little relation to the incident itself and was likely to be essentially a crank call. And Cernig notes that the other threatening aspect of the early reports, those mysterious white boxes that the Iranians tossed in the water, were pretty much... white boxes.

The small, boxlike objects dropped in the water by Iranian boats as they approached U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday posed no threat to the American vessels, U.S. officials said yesterday, even as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff charged that the incident reflects Iran's new tactics of asymmetric warfare.

After passing the white objects, commanders on the USS Port Royal and its accompanying destroyer and frigate decided there was so little danger from the objects that they did not bother to radio other ships to warn them, the officials said.

"The concern was that there was a boat in front of them putting these objects in the path of our ships. When they passed, the ships saw that they were floating and light, that they were not heavy or something that would have caused damage," such as a mine, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, a spokeswoman for the Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Gulf.

The Navy ships in the water appeared to take this incident in stride. Somebody in the upper echelons saw an opening and leaked this to the press, and blew it up out of proportion. When you have people like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen saying he's never seen such a provocative incident but then admitting he never saw the video, the suspicions grow. And the fact that it occurred at precisely the time when Bush was headed to the region with the intent of threatening Iran is no accident. If the dynamic between the US and Iraq was changed by the release of last year's NIE, Bush hasn't gotten the memo.

President Bush on Sunday called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terror" and sought to shore up opposition to the government in Tehran throughout the Middle East.

But even as he criticized Iranian leaders, saying they were seeking to repress their citizens and cow neighboring countries, Bush appealed to U.S. allies in the region to open up their own political and economic systems to greater democracy.

Spotlighting a swath of the globe where U.S. diplomacy is built around seeking help for the administration's anti-terrorism effort, the president criticized only Iran by name. He avoided mentioning Egypt, his final stop on a six-nation Middle East trip, despite its long record of human rights abuses, limited political rights and economic disparity. Nor did he cite other nations across the region with similarly troubled histories.

Kind of a delicate subject in the Middle East, and the emirs didn't take kindly to it.

Even political analysts here who share Bush's democratic vision said that his speech painted over the daily reality for most inhabitants of the Middle East, an oil-rich region where power is largely inherited and human rights violations abound.

Whether chastising Iran or praising Palestinian elections, analysts said, Bush left out key facts that would have offered a messier — and more true-to-life — portrait of the modern Middle East.

"Iran is a neighbor, we have to deal with that," said Ambassador Ibrahim Mohieldin, director of the Arab League's Americas department. "The U.S. is thousands of miles away from Iran - it's OUR national security that will be affected" if leaders agree to keep Tehran isolated at Washington's request.

This is the result of an incurious man who is given a script without checking the facts. Bush can talk about democracy promotion, but when it comes down to it a substantial portion of US aid goes to undemocratic regimes, and little goes to actually strengthening the building blocks of democracy. Bush can praise the United Arab Emirates (!) as a model society because to him, it is; an obscenely wealthy oligarchy that practically enslaves immigrant labor to construct their opulent palaces. Bush can caution for stability in the region while selling $20 billion in arms to the Saudis, clearly as a counter-balance to Iran, which may increase tensions rather than diffuse them (Congress, by the way, has the ability to, and should, outright reject these sales). Bush can call for an end to the occupation of Palestine while failing to understand or even engage with the dynamics of the debate, seven years after ignoring the peace process and making the problem significantly more protracted. This is the "Innocent Abroad," only he's not so innocent.

In private meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week, Newsweek reports that President Bush disowned the U.S. intelligence community’s judgments:

"But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. “He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views” about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity."

This incident in the Straits was very orchestrated and very timed. Career staffers in the intelligence apparatus won the first round in the effort to halt a march to war with Iran, but that was only a round (that WSJ piece is really interesting, by the way, have a read). We have a President that is visiting the Middle East at the same time he is ignoring their wishes and making their region significantly less livable through saber-rattling and falsification.

Speaking of Dictators

Hugo Chavez is a "dictator" who loses elections. Pervez Musharraf is a "strong civilian leader" who bars chief rivals from competing in elections.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been barred from running in January’s parliamentary elections because of a prior conviction, Pakistan’s election commission announced today.

A spokesman for Mr. Sharif, Ahsan Iqbal, said the barring of Mr. Sharif was part of a plan by President Pervez Musharraf and his supporters to rig the elections, and that Mr. Sharif’s lawyers would contest the decision.

Mr. Sharif, a leading opposition figure who was overthrown in a military coup in 1999, was allowed to return from exile last week, and filed nomination papers to represent a district of his home city of Lahore in the parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8. But other candidates in the district challenged his nomination on the grounds that he was convicted in 2000 of hijacking a plane carrying Mr. Musharraf, who was then head of the army, an act that precipitated the bloodless coup.

Just the idea that Sharif could get a fair hearing from a commission that's part of the government of the guy who OVERTHREW HIM AT GUNPOINT is madness.

American coverage of foreign political affairs is very corrupted by official government biases.

Who's The Dictator?

So in common American parlance, Hugo Chavez is the devious dictator while Vladimir Putin is the establishing G8 leader. Yet yesterday, both of them held elections, and that alone is enough to upset that conventional wisdom. Even more so when you realize that Chavez' election was a legitimate balloting which he could lose, while Putin's election was grossly unfair.

Now, Chavez is barred from running for President again in 2012, but of course he can use similar means to Putin by trying to install a puppet government that he controls behind the scenes. The point is that he'll have to try. And his concession speech sounded almost humble.

Humbled by his first electoral defeat ever, President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state.

"I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense," he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reforms by 51 percent to 49 percent [...]

"I wouldn't have wanted that Pyrrhic victory," he said, suggesting a small margin wouldn't have been enough of a mandate.

I'm not trying to be a propagandist for Chavez, but the distinction between him and Putin here is stark. By contrast, the Russian dictator dismissed all charges of a stolen election:

But Putin and his allies praised the result as an overwhelming endorsement of his leadership and policies.

"Of course it's a sign of trust," Putin said in televised remarks. "Russians will never allow the nation to take a destructive path, as happened in some other ex-Soviet nations."

America might want to re-think the labels it puts on other world leaders.

Checkmate

Earlier this week, Gary Kasparov, the chess champion and a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was detained by authorities after an opposition rally protesting the upcoming Parliamentary election. He was later released after a five-day sentence, but he immediately spoke out against the creeping loss of democracy in the country.

Mr. Kasparov said his coalition, Other Russia, would continue its protests against the Kremlin in order to spotlight what he described as a government that has grown increasingly repressive.

“We’ve entered a very dangerous period because we don’t know where this is going to stop,” he said at an impromptu news conference outside his home in Moscow shortly after being freed. The failure of the government to abide by its own laws and Constitution, he said, “could result in a catastrophe for the whole country.”

Basically, the Kremlin is rigging the election, using their official government power to disrupt the opposition parties, destroying campaign literature and signage, arresting and beating opposition campaign workers, and intimidating civilians to vote for United Russia, Putin's party.

This could be the most dangerous legacy of the Bush Administration. The President looked into the soul of Pootie-Poot and saw a kindred spirit. He ignored the blinking red lights warning that democracy in Russia was on the brink. Putin will eventually run the country from a Prime Minister post after being termed out as President. He's never going to give up power and we are impotent to effect any kind of reforms. Putin has outfoxed the President at every level, and now he's suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which could lead to a major military buildup on the Russian border. There's really a lot to worry about regarding the future of Russia. They can use petrodollars to finance whatever they want in the short term, and they are increasingly becoming a despotic regime. So much for that freedom agenda.

Crossing the Line

According to Bush, Musharraf hasn't crossed the line yet.

"He's been a loyal ally in fighting terrorists. He's also advanced democracy in Pakistan," Bush said. "He has said he's going to take off his uniform. He's said there will be elections. Today he released prisoners, and so far I've found him to be a man of his word."

The reason for this optimism is that, to Bush, suspending the Constitution, arresting the opposition, shutting down independent media, firing the Supreme Court and installing your own judges are all within the boundaries of what he calls democracy, because they're all things HE would do if given the chance.

Freedom's on the march.