Sectarian Strife In Iraq Does Not Presume A Continued Military Presence

Brian Katulis, one of my favorite foreign policy wonks, has a very good paper spinning off of the incident in Baghdad over the weekend, which signaled a breakdown in relations between the Shiite central government and the Sunni Awakening forces. Katulis argues that this was inevitable:

The standoff between two U.S. “allies” this weekend in the heart of Baghdad is a harbinger of things to come in Iraq. The showdown between Iraq’s central government security forces and members of Sunni militias, known as "Awakenings," had nothing to do with the size of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and almost everything to do with enduring tensions in Iraq—multiple struggles for power between competing Iraqi factions.

What happened this weekend in central Baghdad between Iraqi security forces and members of the Sunni Awakening groups was not unexpected, in large part because many of the tactics used in the 2007 “surge” of U.S. forces built a shaky and unstable foundation. Violence broke out in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil—just a few miles north of the Green Zone—when Iraqi troops backed by U.S. forces arrested Adil Mashadani, an “Awakening” militia leader on charges of terrorist and sectarian crimes. According to news reports, Mashadani allegedly maintained ties with Al Qaeda forces, helped plan roadside bombing attacks against Iraqi security forces, and ran an extortion racket that squeezed Fadhil residents for tens of thousands of dollars.

Whether these specific charges against Mashadani are true or not, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone like Mashadani was on the payroll of the U.S. taxpayers. I argued in a paper on the Awakening groups more than a year ago that the same U.S. tactics that contributed to the so-called “success” of the surge were actually undermining the process of helping Iraq bridge internal divisions. The tactics employed during the surge helped create alternate centers of power in supporting new militias, which built a shaky foundation that led to short-term security gains at the expense of longer-term political stability.

Iraq still exhibits a stark divide between competing sectarian factions, and the surge did nothing to assuage that. Instead we paid off the Awakening forces to provide the illusion of stability without really addressing the root causes that could make such stability lasting. And we allowed delay on the fundamental political solutions that need to be made between Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq. As Thomas Ricks says, "That is Iraq 2009. Does it sound peaceful to you? Does it seem like the political questions vexing Iraq have been solved?" And he also thinks the Sadrists could take advantage of the chaos.

If the Awakening fighting spreads, I wouldn't be surprised to see Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia re-emerge. I've always thought the Sunni Awakening forced him to go to ground, because he didn't want to be the only guy taking on American forces. But if the Sunnis are on the attack again, it might be game on for him as well. I am reminded of Ambassador Ryan Crocker's worry, expressed in my new book and elsewhere, that the future of Iraq was something like Lebanon. That is, it has a government, but it is shaky, and there is violence in the streets, with some political parties having armed wings that are outside the control of the government.

That's probably accurate, and yet it's important to note that we don't have 140,000 troops in Lebanon right now, and when we tried to put troops there we eventually were forced to leave, and Ronald Reagan made that call and I would argue that it was the right one. Anyone using the continued sectarian strife in Iraq to call for a continued military commitment from the US is not being mindful of other realities. As Katulis notes, the Iraqis set the withdrawal date, not us. We have bigger challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan that push against a giant commitment in Iraq. In addition, our military presence probably inflames this situation. The US should be engaged diplomatically to force a solution between the factions, but our military is essentially being used as a pawn for Nouri al-Maliki as he jockeys for power. Without soveriegnty, and without the US military as a crutch, Iraq will simply never be stable.

Critical Mass On Afghanistan Skepticism

Get Afghanistan Right week has come to an end, with dozens of bloggers coming together to question the fundamental premise of whether escalation is the only option. I think its success can be measured by a new sense of skepticism in the traditional media, with this decent piece in the Washington Post as an example.

The planned U.S. military and counterinsurgency drive in Afghanistan is meeting public and official resistance that could delay and possibly undermine a costly, belated effort that American officials here acknowledge has a limited window of time to succeed.

The officials say they are optimistic that the planned addition of up to 30,000 troops, combined with a new strategy to support local governance and development aimed at weaning villagers away from Taliban influence, will show significant results within the year. They say improved cooperation from the army in neighboring Pakistan and better performance by the Afghan national army are bolstering this optimism.

Yet they also acknowledge that they face an array of obstacles, including: widespread public hostility to international forces over bombing raids and civilian abuses; the growing influence of Taliban insurgents in areas where central authority and services are scarce; and controversy over plans to establish village defense groups [...]

One conundrum, U.S. military officials say, is that the expanded forces will have to come in with heavy firepower and aggressive military tactics -- likely to create more civilian casualties and public animosity -- in order to secure rural districts so they can bring in services, aid and governance aimed at winning over the local populace.

It's a very good piece with a variety of perspectives. It follows the devastating piece revealing that Obama's team is sending troops to the region to "buy time," without a strategy in place. That's important information for the public to have.

And not only is the traditional media turning in this direction, but we're seeing a lot of smart takes from the foreign policy community. Ilan Goldenberg considers what is happening in Afghanistan and the FATA area around Pakistan to be an actual threat to American interests, but thinks that any troop increases have to have narrow goals that neutralizes that threat, and the possibility for that to drift into nation-building and propping up corrupt leaders will do nothing on that score. Robert Dreyfuss notes that nobody has any idea how to deploy those new surge troops in a way to make strategic gains in the region, and that there is a real risk that the insurgency is a home-grown reaction to occupation and will only grow BIGGER and more violent with increased troop strength. He also raises this point:

If the goal is to eliminate or neutralize Al Qaeda, then we've already won the war. If the goal is to eradicate the Taliban, remake Afghan society, and modernize its culture, then America is looking at a Thirty Years' War. There are some, including some human rights and women rights activists, who believe that reorganizing the social basis of Afghan society is an achievable goal. It is not. There are other, darker forces who believe that a long-term US presence in the heart of central Asia is an important geo-strategic goal for the United States, vis-a-vis Russia and China, in the struggle for regional influence and access to oil and natural gas.

And there's this informed take at registan.net which is slightly more in the pro-escalation direction. I have no problem with having the argument about it. I'm just glad that's finally starting to happen, and hopefully it will bubble up to elites.

Time To Have The Debate On Afghanistan

This week, a number of bloggers have formed a coalition called Get Afghanistan Right, dedicated to breaking out of the narrow boundaries of the Afghanistan debate and open the discussion about what it means to escalate in a part of the world that has historically proven to be a graveyard of empires. I have seen a shift both in online and offline media over the last several weeks, with writers more willing to challenge assumptions about this war in its eighth year and what can be done outside of military escalation that meets with our national security and foreign policy goals. I've written a lot about Afghanistan, and I think my concerns with a de facto escalation rests on a number of big myths that have proven false:

1) It's not a "good war". Thomas Ricks speaks for me when he says that he finds the notion of a "good war" to be offensive. All wars are painful and cost both lives and treasure. By casting Afghanistan as unimpeachable and just, we hide the consequences, which are becoming greater as the years pass - more coalition forces died there than in Iraq last year. I'm perfectly willing to have a debate about Afghanistan, but not under the terms that it's a "good war," which is tautological.

2) There is something to "win." This has been ill-defined throughout all of Bush's wars, but particularly in Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich has a brilliant little treatise based on this premise. Once you talk about "winning," you have to define victory, and given our Western biases, we assume that to mean a democratic state able to defend its borders and become an ally in freedom. That is ahistorical to the Afghanistan experience.

Afghanistan is a much bigger country—nearly the size of Texas—and has a larger population that's just as fractious. Moreover, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan possesses almost none of the prerequisites of modernity; its literacy rate, for example, is 28 percent, barely a third of Iraq's. In terms of effectiveness and legitimacy, the government in Kabul lags well behind Baghdad—not exactly a lofty standard. Apart from opium (last year's crop totaled about 8,000 metric tons), Afghans produce almost nothing the world wants [...]

U.S. officials tend to assume that power in Afghanistan ought to be exercised from Kabul. Yet the real influence in Afghanistan has traditionally rested with tribal leaders and warlords. Offered the right incentives, warlords can accomplish U.S. objectives more effectively and cheaply than Western combat battalions. The basis of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan should therefore become decentralization and outsourcing, offering cash and other emoluments to local leaders who will collaborate with us in keeping terrorists out of their territory.

Those who favor escalation have an obligation to define the end state of the mission, as well as how additional troops can accomplish that better than local forces and diplomatic measures.

3) The Afghanistan war is about Afghanistan. Actually, it's about a comprehensive strategy for the entire region. Pushing Taliban remnants and extremists out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan could destabilize a nuclear power. And that doesn't disarm the ostensible goal of US policy, to deny a safe haven for terrorist planning and activity. That requires local law enforcement globally, as well as a strategy of winning hearts and minds that is disabled by violence and chaos far away from Kabul:

More than a thousand Afghans signed up on Thursday to say they wanted to go and fight Israel in the Gaza Strip, many of them blaming the United States which has some 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, for supporting the Jewish state.

Accusations by Taliban militants and some Muslim clerics that Israel and its main ally, the United States, aim to destroy Islam have a strong impact on public opinion in Afghanistan, where Washington plans to almost double its troop numbers this year.

Scores of young men crowded into the library of Kabul's Milad ul-Nabi mosque, lined with banners reading "Death to Israel" and "Death to America," to sign up to fight Israel.

There is a regional strategy that can blunt the influence of extremism globally and increase our national security without a major troop surge. Bringing me to my next point...

4) Surges always work. The cause and effect between the troop surge in Iraq and the modest security gains there, which has been misread as a direct action, colors the potential for throwing troops at the problem in Afghanistan. But the situations are very different. Increasing the footprint of occupation on a country wary of outsiders is perilous. And the Taliban, growing in strength in the country, are not seen as outsiders imposing their views on the locals but locals speaking the language of rebellion and fighting for freedom. Peter Beaumont has more. The top US commander in Afghanistan has said that an Iraq-style surge cannot work.

5) We have to "do something." This is the common lazy style of thinking in Washington, which thinks that actions only have good consequences, and therefore any action must be supported over none at all. Today we saw a tacit admission of this in the Washington Post:

President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign off on Pentagon plans to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, but the incoming administration does not anticipate that the Iraq-like "surge" of forces will significantly change the direction of a conflict that has steadily deteriorated over the past seven years.

Instead, Obama's national security team expects that the new deployments, which will nearly double the current U.S. force of 32,000 (alongside an equal number of non-U.S. NATO troops), will help buy enough time for the new administration to reappraise the entire Afghanistan war effort and develop a comprehensive new strategy for what Obama has called the "central front on terror."

With conditions on the ground worsening by nearly every yardstick last year -- including record levels of extremist attacks and U.S. casualties, and the expansion of the conflict across Pakistan and into India -- Obama's campaign pledge to "finish the job" in Afghanistan with more troops, money and diplomacy has encountered the daunting reality of a job that has barely begun.

I imagine that the Obama team has seen the assessments and they are dire. The Bush Administration muddled through with no overarching strategy and wasted valuable time. But how do you tell a soldier that you're deploying him to buy time while you can come up with a way out? How does that meet the interests of the military, or our national security?

It's in some ways encouraging that the Obama team does not expect a "surge" to automatically succeed. And they have talked about building a developmental and diplomatic counterpart to the military action, so I am confident that the mission will also be concerned with reconstruction and improving regional ties (the admission by Gen. Petraeus that the US and Iran share interests in Afghanistan is a very good new way to think about this conflict). But just airlifting in troops, without a settled strategy or even how to best deploy them seems unwise.

Afghanistan in 2009 does not lend itself to an obvious solution, and there are arguments for more troops that have a certain logic to them. But these lines of debate should be open, instead of arguments against escalation marginalized as the "unserious" alternative in Afghanistan. Hopefully this effort will go a long way in bringing those viewpoints more into the mainstream.

The Strangling Tourniquet

We're starting to see some consideration put to the planned escalation in Afghanistan, and a lot of people are finally getting around to asking the "why" instead of accepting that Obama will fulfill a campaign promise by sending 20-30,000 more troops into that hostile environment and a rapidly deteriorating occupation. The first person asking why is, interestingly enough, Afghan President Hamid Karzai:

President Hamid Karzai pressed America's top military leader Monday on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and preparations to pour up to 30,000 more forces into the country, reflecting Karzai's concerns over civilian casualties and operations in villages. Karzai asked Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what kinds of operations the newly deployed troops would carry out and told him that the Afghan government should be consulted about those missions.

The Afghan president, stinging from a series of civilian casualties in U.S. military operations in recent years, said he doubts that sending more American forces into Afghan villages will tamp down the insurgency, and he has questioned a U.S. plan to deploy 3,500 U.S. forces in two provinces on Kabul's doorstep next month.

Karzai told Mullen that U.S. troops must take more care during operations in Afghan villages and stop searching Afghan homes. He asked the chairman to investigate allegations that U.S. forces killed three civilians in a raid last week in Khost province, a reflection of increasing concern about civilian casualties. The U.S. says three militants were killed.

This is the central problem. A larger footprint for occupiers will do nothing for security and is likely to turn the population further against an effort they are after seven years beginning to resent. Karzai acknowledges a possible need for border protection, but troops in major Afghan cities and villages is counterproductive.

Indeed any option in Afghanistan is fraught with pitfalls right now. A surge of troops would have made sense when the population was still behind the effort and the Taliban wasn't reconstituted as an insurgency force. Now the Taliban pretty much controls the countryside and the amount of troops needed to perform a counterinsurgency campaign cannot be brought into the country without much resentment and hatred.

“We may have missed the golden moment there,” said Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official who has long advocated an increased U.S. focus on Afghanistan.

The tension between the short-run need for more muscle to thwart the Taliban and the long-term trap of becoming the latest in a long line of foreign intruders bogged down in Afghanistan forms the core of the dilemma confronting Obama.

There are efforts underway to recruit local tribal militias to bolster the paltry amount of native security forces in a kind of "Afghan awakening," but they are likely to have little or no control from the central government, not historically a factor in the country, and more likely to rule over their own areas and increase bloodshed among ethnic rivals.

“There will be fighting between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns,” said Salih Mohammad Registani, a member of the Afghan Parliament and an ethnic Tajik. Mr. Registani raised the specter of the Arbaki, a Pashtun-dominated militia turned loose on other Afghans early in the 20th century.

“A civil war will start very soon,” he said.

NATO forces would like to stem the poppy trade that is funding the insurgency and encourage alternative crop development, but many member nations are wary of involving themselves in counter-narcotics actions.

NATO officials in Brussels declined to list the nations that have opposed widening the alliance mandate to include attacks on drug networks, and no nation has volunteered that it has legal objections.

But a number of NATO members have in broad terms described their reluctance publicly, including Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. Their leaders have cited domestic policies that make counternarcotics a law enforcement matter — not a job for their militaries — and expressed concern that domestic lawsuits could be filed if their soldiers carried out attacks to kill noncombatants, even if the victims were involved in the drug industry in Afghanistan.

There are discussions about splitting off Taliban elements and causing a rift in the insurgency through negotiations and entry into the government, but there's absolutely no sign that any Taliban fighter would be amenable to it.

Overall, everyone knows that a major strategic shift is needed, but there's simply no evidence that any of these shifts would produce something resembling success, or any indication that anyone knows what "success" means. In fact, "success" is most likely defined as "an end to total failure."

"Right now there is a sense you need to apply a tourniquet of some kind," said a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing contacts with the transition team. "You need to control bleeding at the site of the wound, you need to stabilize, and you need to see what you need to do next."

After a record number of U.S. deaths in Afghanistan this year, national security officials consider it crucial for the new administration to act soon after taking office. The senior Defense official said Obama would have a limited time period to announce a new strategy for Afghanistan and build up the troop strength.

"Over time, it will be harder to put more stuff in," the official said. "You have a window where you can do dramatic things. But the opportunity to do dramatic things reduces over time."

But what are those "dramatic things" and how will they produce improvements in both American security and the lives of the Afghan people? If the goal is now to tread water and not fail so badly I can't see how staying makes sense. Tourniquets can be refashioned into nooses, after all. The plans for Afghanistan 2.0 are all based on such wishful thinking, and suffused with so many potential drawbacks, that it almost looks like they are designed to do nothing but draw our military further into an intractable conflict. There are regional diplomatic solutions that make sense at providing space for a withdrawal without leaving behind any group that can project power beyond their borders. That does not have to include thousands more troops of dubious effectiveness.

I don't look kindly on suggestions that we "must do something dramatic" in cases like this, on the grounds that something dramatic always and forever works to our benefit. I agree with Spencer Ackerman on this one - we need to at least pretend to think about the interests of the Afghans at some point.

What I did see was an overwhelming desire for security among the population. Lots of people said something to me that boiled down to, “When the Taliban were in power, the roads were safe, food was cheap and gas is cheap. Now the Americans are here and none of that is true.” The major factor that made the tribal revolt in Anbar work was that the population, including the extremists, understood that Al Qaeda offered them a bleaker future than even the occupation. Nothing like that exists in Afghanistan — or, at least, there is an alarming lack of evidence for that crucial proposition.

People need to take a very deep breath. To judge by the available evidence, the Afghan population wants security. It does not want more militias. The Afghan Senate has actually rejected this proposal explicitly. Is there any actual appetite among Afghans for a Sons-of-Afghanistan program? Or is this a case of hubristic Americans coming into Afghanistan and imposing a template from Iraq upon an overwhelmingly different country and overwhelmingly different set of conditions? You can tell what I suspect from the way I framed the question.

My fear is that we aren't looking at the concerns of Afghanistan policy through the lens of "is this policy good or bad" rather than "does this make us look like we are responding to the problem." That way lies disaster.

Whistling Past The Graveyard Of Empires

Sam Stein at The Huffington Post reports on "growing dissent" on the idea of moving troops from the "bad war" in Iraq to the "good war" in Afghanistan.

Sen. Russ Feingold launched a major salvo just weeks before the election, when he penned an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor, questioning the wisdom of sending more troops to Afghanistan. He was pre-dated by former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who warned about the United States repeating the Soviet Union's ill-thought-out efforts in that region, during an interview with the Huffington Post. On Monday, the scales tipped even further, when the chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan warned that a re-intervention into the country would be pointless if not done with deep cultural sensitivities [...]

"There is a growing dissent," Caroline Wadhams, a Senior National Security Policy Analyst for the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "I think around town there is new thinking: 'Well, what do we actually want to achieve?' The fact that they are doing all those strategic reviews reveals we are suffering the symptom of the same [foreign policy] problems [of the past]: no one is sure what our objectives are and what we should do now."

The angst is driven by a variety of concerns: what a longer-term military commitment to Afghanistan could mean for Obama's domestic and foreign policy agendas, whether the Afghanistan has the capacity to improve itself, and whether U.S. military forces are best suited for the task.

"People are understanding now how difficult it is going to be," said Wadhams. "You realize, 'Oh my god, we have so much to do and are we any good at this? Are we any good at anti-corruption? We have never been good at counter-narcotics. And how do you improve government?' These are extremely difficult objectives."

That dissent is wholly justified given the realities on the ground. The Taliban, by one account, has a permanent presence in 72% of the country and is closing in on the capital, Kabul. Unlike Iraq, the militant groups here have a connection to the local tribal communities - they are not solely foreign fighters imposing their will - and they are determined not to make the same mistakes as Al Qaeda in Iraq, even loosening its doctrinaire extremism to accommodate the locals and multiple insurgent groups. The plan floated to "restart the surge" by enlisting tribal groups to fight the Taliban won't work with coalition forces targeting them at the same time:

They came in the night and shot Saeed Alam in his bed. His three-year-old son was crying at his feet and his mother had leapt on top of him to try to block the bullets. Both of them were hurled out of the way and an American soldier opened fire.

America's plans to enlist Afghan militias in the war against the Taliban are running into difficulties while still in their infancy. In eastern Paktia province, the white-bearded Afghan village elders who are crucial to the "Afghan awakening", are threatening to unite against the Americans unless such night raids by US special forces are halted [...]

An American press release claimed the raid helped "decimate" a terrorist network. It described Saeed Alam as a militant and said he was holding a grenade while using his mother and son as a human shield. "The force engaged the militant with small-arms fire, killing him while protecting the women and children," the statement said. "Coalition forces estimate they safeguarded 16 women and 31 children."

The elders swore Alam was innocent. At least five of those arrested during the raid have since been released, without charge. Contrary to the American statement, the elders said there were no Afghan troops involved, and they said they knew the soldiers were special forces because they had beards.

"Raiding people's houses and snatching people away creates a very negative impression in the communities," said a senior Western policy analyst, working in the region.

The response to additional troops in the region will clearly be additional violence. This is particularly the case if civilian casualties continue, increasing anger among the local population. The US plan appears to be to focus their troops in the Kabul region, which is incredibly ominous, suggesting that the countryside is being given up for the time being. And the supply lines connecting the region have been breached.

In one of the largest and most brazen attacks of its kind, suspected Taliban insurgents with heavy weapons attacked two truck stops in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, destroying more than 150 vehicles carrying supplies bound for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.

The predawn attack on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar left the grounds of the truck terminals littered with the burned-out shells of Humvees and other military vehicles being transported by private truckers. At least one guard was reported killed.

Early today, a second attack on Western supplies was reported in the same area. A security guard said 50 containers had been burned and some vehicles destroyed by rocket fire [...]

The bold assault underscored the vulnerability of supplies moving by road through Pakistan. About three-quarters of the supplies bound for U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Afghanistan -- fuel, food and equipment -- travel by road through perilous mountain passes after being shipped to the port of Karachi. Afghanistan has no sea access.

If the supply lines are cut, even a strategy focused on reconstruction and economic growth for the locals is doomed to failure.

The Obama transition team needs to think about this, and I'm not sure there's anyone in the room reflecting the proper skepticism about adding troops into this conflagration, and the consequences for the other aspects of his agenda. Speaking at the Center for American Progress this morning, longtime historian Robert Dallek said it right:

War kills reform. Every time we've had a major commitment to a war, it has killed a reform movement. Progressivism was done in by the Spanish-American war. Populism by World War I. FDR said Dr. New Deal has been replaced by Dr. War. The Great Society by the Vietnam War. You cannot have guns and butter. If Obama escalates in Afghanistan, if he draws us into a broader war which takes many lives and much money, it will ruin his chances for reform.

That's not a small loss.

President Bush has left a score of landmines throughout foreign and domestic policy, but the worst by far is in Afghanistan. It could destroy everything.

The Lost Reports

There's a new study on Afghanistan warning of impending crisis, with an ineffective government losing power and influence to the Taliban, full-scale corruption and severe breakdowns in security. But there's also a report on Iraq that dampens the boasts of victory through surge that we keep hearing.

WASHINGTON -- A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year.

U.S. officials familiar with the new National Intelligence Estimate said they were unsure when the top-secret report would be completed and whether it would be published before the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Um, I can assure you that it won't be.

The report lays out the structural challenges which have let to be dealt with:

U.S. officials say last year's surge of 30,000 troops, all of whom have been withdrawn, was just one reason for the improvements. Other factors include the truce declared by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militia; and the enlistment of former Sunni insurgents in Awakening groups created by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida in Iraq and other extremists.

The draft NIE, however, warns that the improvements in security and political progress, such as the recent passage of a provincial-election law, are threatened by lingering disputes between the majority Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other minorities, the U.S. officials said.

Sources of tension identified by the NIE, they said, include a struggle between Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen for control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk; and the Shiite-led central government's unfulfilled vows to hire former Sunni insurgents who joined Awakening groups.

McCain will use this to walk that "we're winning but have not yet won" tightrope and argue that withdrawal equals surrender. But in actuality, our presence has done nothing to reduce sectarian tensions apart from the violence. The NIE is saying that the conditions still exist for civil war or sectarian strife, and having our troops act as a proxy army for Maliki, who wants to be a strongman, actually exacerbates the problem, increases frustrations, and heightens instability. Nobody has forced the factions to come together and reconcile - in fact, Bush decentralized the government but simultaneously empowered Maliki's militia and has now handed over control of the Sunni Awakening forces to him, which is bound to shock the system as the Prime Minister tries to consolidate power. Creating what amounts to a theocratic dictatorship allied with Iran is not a good prospect for Iraq or the world, and makes hollow the focus on violence and security in the short term.

Peter Galbraith makes a similar point in the New York Review of Books:

Less violence, however, is not the same thing as success. The United States did not go to war in Iraq for the purpose of ending violence between contending sectarian forces. Success has to be measured against US objectives. John McCain proclaims his goal to be victory and says we are now winning in Iraq (a victory that will, of course, be lost if his allegedly pro-surrender opponent wins). He considers victory to be an Iraq that is "a democratic ally." George W. Bush has defined victory as a unified, democratic, and stable Iraq. Neither man has explained how he will transform Iraq's ruling theocrats into democrats, diminish Iran's vast influence in Baghdad, or reconcile Kurds and Sunnis to Iraq's new order. Remarkably, neither the Democrats nor the press has challenged them to do so [...]

From 2003 until 2007, the Bush administration helped Iraq's most pro-Iranian Shiite religious parties take and consolidate power. Naturally, the Shiites—and their Iranian backers—welcomed the US involvement, at least temporarily. Now the United States is putting heavier pressure on al-Maliki to include the Sunni enemy in Iraq's security forces. It has created a Sunni army that, as long as the US remains in Iraq, can only grow in strength. Al-Maliki and his allies want the US out of Iraq because the American presence has become dangerous.

Without American troops, the Iraqi army and police would be able to move against the Awakening. Should Sunni forces prove too powerful, Iran is always available to help [...]

Al-Maliki's agenda is transparent. The Kurds and Sunnis are obstacles to the ruling coalition's ambitions for a Shiite Islamic state. Al-Maliki wants to eliminate the Sunni militia and contain the Kurds politically and geographically. America's interest in defeating al-Qaeda is far less important to him than the Shiite interest in not having a powerful Sunni military that could overthrow Iraq's new Shiite order. The Kurds are too secular, too Western, and too pro-American for the Shiites to share power comfortably with them [...]

John McCain says that partly because of his persistent support of the surge, we are now winning the Iraq war. He defines victory as an Iraq that is a democratic ally. Yet he advocates continued US military support to an Iraqi government led by Shiite religious parties committed to the establishment of an Islamic republic. He takes a harder line on Iran than President Bush, but supports Iraqi factions that are Iran's closest allies in the Middle East. He praises the Awakening and but seems not to have realized that the Iraqi government is intent on crushing it. He has denounced the Obama-Biden plan for a decentralized state but has said nothing about how he would protect Iraq's Kurds, the only committed American allies in the country.

George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success—or a path to victory.

One great tidbit in there is that Maliki was kind of picked up at the last minute by the US when they needed a new Prime Minister, and that initially, they got his first name wrong. Yet in the name of increasing security, we've given him all kinds of power, seemingly ignorant that he's a longtime Dawa Party member who spent 20 years in exile in Iran.

Condi Rice is meanwhile crying that Iraq has been harder than she personally imagined. Perhaps it's because you have to actually pay attention to it.

Gen. Scott McClellan

I don't really care much about misspeaking the name of a random general here and there. So Sarah Palin calling the NATO Commander in Afghanistan David McKiernan "General McClellan" on a couple occasions doesn't bug me. What bugs me is that she completely misstated McKiernan's opinion of the war in Afghanistan and whether or not you can use surge tactics in that theater, which was big news as it broke TODAY. I even wrote about it.

“Afghanistan is not Iraq,” said Gen. David McKiernan, who led ground forces during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and took over four months ago as head of the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.

During a news conference yesterday, McKiernan described Afghanistan as “a far more complex environment than I ever found in Iraq.” The country's mountainous terrain and rural population, its poverty and illiteracy, its 400 major tribal networks and history of civil war all make for unique challenges, he said.

“The word I don't use for Afghanistan is 'surge,' ” McKiernan emphasized, saying that what is required instead is a “sustained commitment” to a counterinsurgency effort that could last many more years and would ultimately require a political, not military, solution.

That is the diametric opposite of what not only Palin, but McCAIN has been saying throughout this campaign. The "surge to Afghanistan" nonsense has been discredited by the general on the ground. And Palin outright lied about it tonight.

Changes Of Seasons In Afghanistan

I know that the media can only focus on one thing at a time, but this is a very sensitive moment for Afghanistan. US commanders and international diplomats alike are seeing a scenario that is very close to being lost.

The cable, written in French, paraphrases the 53-year-old British ambassador as saying:

The security situation is bad and getting worse.

The Afghan people have lost all trust in their current government, partly because of corruption.

The presence of foreign troops in the country is part of the problem, propping up the current regime and thus slowing progress toward Afghans putting a more effective government in place.

Sending more military reinforcements to Afghanistan would have a "perverse effect" on the country's stability and future, sending the message that an occupying force is in control of the country and widening the number of targets for insurgents to attack.

That last two are important. Many have this view that adding forces is all that's needed to stabilize a security problem. Call it "the Iraq delusion." John McCain has outright said this, that we need a "surge" in Afghanistan the way we surged in Iraq. Of course, the commander of NATO forces on the ground knows that the two countries aren't even remotely comparable:

First of all, please don’t think that I’m saying there’s no room for tribal engagement in Afghanistan, because I think it’s very necessary. But I think it’s much more complex environment of tribal linkages, and intertribal complexity than there is in Iraq. It’s not as simple as taking the Sunni Awakening and doing the Pashtun Awakening in Afghanistan. It’s much more complex than that.

But there are countless other differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, it’s such a poor country, by any set of metrics you can imagine. A country that has very harsh geography. It’s very difficult to move around, getting back to our reliance on helicopters. It’s a country with very few natural resources, as opposed to the oil revenues that [Iraq] has. There’s very little money to be generated in terms of generated in Afghanistan. The literacy rate — you have a literate society in Iraq, you have a society that has a history of producing civil administrators, technocrats, middle class that are able to run the country in Iraq. You do not have that in Afghanistan. So there’s educational challenges, challenges of human capitol that I mentioned earlier.

So there are a lot of challenges. What I don’t think is needed — the word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word “surge.” There needs to be a sustained commitment of a variety of military and non-military resources, I believe. That’s my advice to winning in Afghanistan. It won’t be a short-term solution.

Of course, McKiernan also wants more troops, so while he doesn't use the word "surge," he at least thinks that adding forces can only have a salutary effect on the country. There is Afghanistan as we knew it in 2002, when a grateful nation was happy to have help in getting rid of the Taliban, and there is Afghanistan today, where the public has lost faith in the government, the Taliban is controlling major sections of the country, and those who have endured six years of aerial bombing don't see NATO troops as saviors.

... I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that six or seven years later, we can just roll up our sleeves and rededicating ourselves to achieving the goals we were told we achieved years ago. The situation has changed, windows of opportunity open and close, and our mission has gotten very murky. Oftentimes when this kind of operation goes on long enough the goal becomes “succeeding” — or, rather, doing something or other that whoever’s in charge of the operation could plausibly label success. But we need to think, instead, more concretely about what it is we’re hoping to achieve in Afghanistan — specifically, does preventing portions of Afghanistan from serving as a base for terrorist operation directed at the United States really require us to establish an effective central state in Afghanistan?

That is the key question that I don't think either Presidential candidate has answered. They are arguing for an intervention in Afghanistan circa 2002. Time has changed circumstances.

The other global crisis: What should be part of Friday's foreign policy debate

(this is a modification of an earlier post from Sunday)

The first Presidential debate is scheduled to focus on foreign policy, and I imagine those tuning in, whose knowledge of the subject is extremely limited, would rather hear the candidates talk about the current economic mess. But the past week or so has also revealed a series of crises in global hotspots around the world. This includes but is not limited to Iraq, and I would hope that Jim Lehrer understands the full spectrum of global decisions that the next President will have to make, and really make a sustained effort to force the candidates past simplistic slogans and into the heart of what they would do in foreign policy.

• First we have the Marriott bombing in Islamabad, Pakistan, the second big suicide attack in the Muslim world in the space of the week (along with the bombing of the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen). Given that the Marriott is typically home to international businessmen and Western dignitaries, so those similarities exist as well. This was a signal from the Taliban in response to the recent spate of US forays into the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) region. Given that the Pakistani Prime Minister was due at the Marriott, it could have been worse.

Clearly there's a real problem with Pakistan. At least 300 have died in suicide attacks just this year. We've launched something approaching a shadow war in the FATA region, without any partnership and in fact increasing resistance from elements in the Pakistani government and the military, which is actively repelling raids. It threatens a split between the Army and the leadership of Prime Minister Zardari, and that has potentially disastrous results. In short, the country is on the brink.

More than any other terrorist attack in this volatile country, the devastating truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel over the weekend has presented government and military leaders here with a stark choice: Go all out against extremists or risk the nation's collapse into chaos.

That is the growing consensus among many Pakistani analysts and commentators, who fear that without rapid, determined and ironfisted action by officials and security forces, this nuclear-armed land is in danger of becoming a failed state, with Islamic radicals in control.

Brandon Friedman has more on this, and he believes that John McCain will end up altering his position on Pakistan with one more broadly in line with Barack Obama. But the question is how to best articulate that policy - maintaining a stance that respects Pakistan's national sovereignty, but one which understands that a safe harbor for those who wish to do Americans harm is not advisable. This is best accomplished by the locals, not yet another occupying force. But the locals may have competing interests. It's a complex, dangerous situation that represents the most dangerous trouble spot on the globe, and it demands attention.

• Across the border, Afghanistan is falling apart because the central government is weak and the Taliban has figured out how to fill in the cracks.

The new Taliban movement has created a parallel government structure that includes defense and finance councils and appoints judges and officials in some areas. It offers cash to recruits and presents letters of introduction to local leaders. It operates Web sites and a 24-hour propaganda apparatus that spins every military incident faster than Afghan and Western officials can manage.

"This is not the Taliban of Emirate times. It is a new, updated generation," said Waheed Mojda, a former foreign ministry aide under the Taliban Islamic Emirate, which ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001. "They are more educated, and they don't punish people for having CDs or cassettes," he said. "The old Taliban wanted to bring sharia, security and unity to Afghanistan. The new Taliban has much broader goals -- to drive foreign forces out of the country and the Muslim world."

That's just distressing. From a humanitarian standpoint alone we have a responsibility to keep the Taliban on the run. But if they've become the de facto government in much of the country, military force against them will take on the look of an invasion, and it will have trouble succeeding. In fact, the US considers that violence will worsen in the country over the next year, due to a winter offensive, and the troops simply aren't going to be available to stop that. There's talk of a joint security force between the Afghans, the US and the Pakistanis to police the border, but it's unclear why the Pakistanis, who are resisting foreign actions in their territory, would agree to that.

• Ehud Olmert has been forced to resign as Israeli Prime Minister resulting from a bribery scandal, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is set to take over as head of Kadima and the favorite to be the next leader. Needless to say, any turmoil in Israel impacts the greater Middle East. Livni has been the chief negotiator with the Palestinians, but if she can't form a government, there will be early elections, and a return to Likudnik power would be a disaster for any hopes for peace. Yet polls are showing that Bibi Netanyahu would be the victor if elections were held today. That's genuinely scary. And what's worse is that John McCain considers Middle East peace a low priority and would discourage Israeli-Syrian peace talks. This is the same neocon boorishness that has decreased our standing in the world and made us less safe, and it should absolutely be a part of any debate where Americans are trying to assess the candidates on foreign policy.

• Africa is at a crossroads. Much of East Africa is susceptible to extremism and has been ignored by the Bush Administration for years. Somalia, where a proxy force from Ethiopia raided a couple years ago and took down the Islamic Courts Union, is becoming increasingly unstable as the insurgents regroup, and if a harbor is established it could be another opportunity for attacks to be launched. The southern region, where a modicum of stability appeared to exist, has been rocked by the resignation of Thabo Mbeki in South Africa amid allegations of corruption, as well as eleven members of the cabinet. Mbeki has spent lots of time and political capital trying to put together a unity government in troubled Zimbabwe, which is incredibly tenuous. A forgotten Africa is both vulnerable to extremism and Chinese influence.

• The headline here is that North Korea is backing away from the nuclear deal with the United States, but the reality is more complex. The US was dragging their feet in removing North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, and with the instability surrounding the possible illness of Kim Jong Il, there could also be a jockeying for power among competing forces in Pyongyang. We have bought ourselves a little time, but it seems like both sides are stalling. With Pyongyang asking the IAEA to remove seals at their largest reprocessing facility, the gains of the past couple years are almost entirely lost, and this is a failure of the Bush Administration to live up to their commitments. Will that get mentioned?

• Meanwhile, the lax standards in Chinese manufacturing are still killing people, and the chemicals that are put into our foods, our supplies and most everything we buy (at a cheap price) are toxic. Can we have a serious argument about trade and relations with China without recognizing this?

• And then there's Iraq, of course. We now have a fair bit of proof that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad is what led to the drop in violence, not the surge. There's more to Iraq than Baghdad, of course, but there are also more explanations for the security gains in those outlying areas (the Sunni Awakening in Anbar, for example). Meanwhile the political situation remains stalemated, as legislation for the provincial elections has failed for the fifth time. And the Awakening forces are growing more violent, which will get worse if the Maliki government follows through on locking them out of the security forces. As long as the debate here is played out over whether the surge was a success, we won't be having a real argument about the future of Iraq. It's dishonest.

It's time to get serious. The belligerent Bush foreign policy is making a dangerous world more dangerous. Our shrinking moral authority and lack of cooperation with allies has enhanced this. I don't know if we're losing the war on terrorism because I have no idea what a war on terrorism is, but the public thinks we are. And the choice in this Presidential election is between the same old neocon know-nothingism or a measured approach that recognizes both the challenges we face and the best way to combat them. That is more than important enough to fill 90 minutes on Friday night. I just hope that the debate is about the real issues.

World Report

With the first Presidential debate scheduled to focus on foreign policy, an area where knowledge is limited and bullshit spreads wide, let's take a brief look at what's going on in the world and what might be discussed in that debate, so that you're better informed:

• First we have the Marriott bombing in Islamabad, Pakistan, the second big suicide attack in the Muslim world in the space of the week (along with the bombing of the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen). The Marriott is typically home to international businessmen and Western dignitaries, so those similarities exist as well. This was a signal from the Taliban in response to the recent spate of US forays into the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) region.

Clearly we have a real problem with Pakistan. We've launched something approaching a shadow war in the FATA region, without any partnership and in fact increasing resistance from elements in the Pakistani government. It threatens a split between the Army and the leadership of Prime Minister Zardari, and that has potentially disastrous results. Brandon Friedman has more on this, and he believes that John McCain will end up altering his position on Pakistan with one more broadly in line with Barack Obama. But the question is how to best articulate that policy - maintaining a stance that respects Pakistan's national sovereignty but understands that a safe harbor for those who wish to do Americans harm is not advisable. This is best accomplished by the locals, not yet another occupying force.

• Across the border, Afghanistan is falling apart because the central government is weak and the Taliban has figured out how to fill in the cracks.

The new Taliban movement has created a parallel government structure that includes defense and finance councils and appoints judges and officials in some areas. It offers cash to recruits and presents letters of introduction to local leaders. It operates Web sites and a 24-hour propaganda apparatus that spins every military incident faster than Afghan and Western officials can manage.

"This is not the Taliban of Emirate times. It is a new, updated generation," said Waheed Mojda, a former foreign ministry aide under the Taliban Islamic Emirate, which ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001. "They are more educated, and they don't punish people for having CDs or cassettes," he said. "The old Taliban wanted to bring sharia, security and unity to Afghanistan. The new Taliban has much broader goals -- to drive foreign forces out of the country and the Muslim world."

That's just distressing. From a humanitarian standpoint alone we have a responsibility to keep the Taliban on the run. But if they've become the de facto government in much of the country, military force against them will take on the look of an invasion, and it will have trouble succeeding.

• Ehud Olmert has been forced to resign as Israeli Prime Minister resulting from a bribery scandal, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is set to take over as head of Kadima and the favorite to be the next leader. Needless to say, any turmoil in Israel impacts the greater Middle East. Livni has been the chief negotiator with the Palestinians, but if she can't form a government, there will be early elections, and a return to Likudnik power would be a disaster for any hopes for peace. Yet polls are showing that Bibi Netanyahu would be the victor if elections were held today. That's genuinely scary.

• The Zimbabwean unity government has begun with Morgan Tsvangirai ruling out prosecution for the criminal activities of Robert Mugabe. And in the same breath he name-checks "the rule of law." Nice. Meanwhile, Thabo Mbeki, who spent much of the past several months brokering the Zimbabwean deal, was toppled as the head of his own country of South Africa amid allegations of corruption. There is instability in southern Africa that could metastasize and grow violent.

• The headline here is that North Korea is backing away from the nuclear deal with the United States, but the reality is more complex. The US was dragging their feet in removing North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, and with the instability surrounding the possible illness of Kim Jong Il, there could also be a jockeying for power among competing forces in Pyongyang. We have bought ourselves two years, but it seems like both sides are stalling and failing to live up to their commitments under the agreement.

• We now have a fair bit of proof that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad is what led to the drop in violence, not the surge. There's more to Iraq than Baghdad, of course, but there are also more explanations for the security gains in those outlying areas (the Sunni Awakening in Anbar, for example). Meanwhile the political situation remains stalemated, as legislation for the provincial elections has failed for the fifth time. As long as the debate here is played out over whether the surge was a success, we won't be having a real argument about the future of Iraq. It's dishonest.

• Meanwhile, the lax standards in Chinese manufacturing are still killing people, and the chemicals that are put into our foods, our supplies and most everything we buy (at a cheap price) are toxic. Can we have a serious argument about trade without recognizing this?

The Slide On Foreign Policy

Barack Obama's assertion to Bill O'Reilly that the surge has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams is being simplified and ripped from context, but it remains a stupid thing to say. Obama was trying to express that the security gains when viewed in a vacuum were positive, but the political situation remains deadlocked, and until Iraqis are allowed the freedom to handle their own affairs, that will never change. Indeed, withdrawal is the only way to break the deadlock instead of enabling a growing Shiite strongman in Maliki. In other words, the surge was a strategic failure. But the problem with the statement is that you know it would be distilled to that one soundbite, which provides fodder to your opponents while giving you nothing in return. Sarah Palin already used this line on the campaign trail yesterday.

During the primary election, Obama was willing to argue for a new mindset for our foreign policy. Now he's buying in to some pretty reprehensible right-wing frames in order to squeeze out a few independent and Republican votes.

He also proclaimed his "absolute" belief in the "War on Terror," and pledged, once again, "never to take a military option off the table" (not even the nuclear option) against the "major threat" of Iran.

In short, he continued his relentless campaign to purge himself of any of that weak-sister "anti-war" taint that got attached to him in the early days of his campaign -- which was, of course, responsible for his phenomenal rise in the first place [...]

Obama also emphasized the obscene and morally depraved position that has become the Democrat's standard line on Iraq: that the lazy, no-good Iraqis "still haven't taken responsibility" for running "their own country." The arrogance and inhumanity of this position is staggering, almost indescribable. The United States of America invaded Iraq, destroyed its society, slaughtered its citizens, drove millions from their homes, occupied the country and made itself the ultimate master and arbiter of the conquered land -- but still the Iraqis are condemned for "not taking responsibility for their own country."

Not a single Iraqi attacked America. Not one. America's action has killed more than a million Iraqis. But it is the Iraqis who are now "responsible."

Let me add to Floyd's complaint the sustained belief that we have to go into Afghanistan to fight "the real war on terror." This position is not out of step with the emerging Pentagon consensus and even the Bush Administration, which wants to affirm a "continuing war on terror" with what amounts to a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force. These are reactionary positions that fail to anticipate the continuing evolution of the situation on the ground. The criminal occupation of Iraq should be abandoned because it makes strategic as well as moral sense; but moving those forces into Afghanistan now, after years and years of continuous airstrikes have rapidly turned the population against the US would be foolhardy.

The bearded, turbaned men gather beneath a large, leafy tree in rural eastern Nangarhar province. When Malik Mohammed speaks on their behalf, his voice is soft but his words are harsh.

Mohammed makes it clear that the tribal chiefs have lost all faith in both their own government and the foreign soldiers in their country. Such disillusionment is widespread in Afghanistan, feeding an insurgency that has killed 195 foreign soldiers so far this year, 105 of them Americans.

"This is our land. We are afraid to send our sons out the door for fear the American troops will pick them up," says Mohammed, who was chosen by the others to represent them. "Daily we have headaches from the troops. We are fed up. Our government is weak and corrupt and the American soldiers have learned nothing."

A strong sense of frustration echoed through dozens of interviews by The Associated Press with Afghan villagers, police, government officials, tribal elders and Taliban who left and rejoined the religious movement. The interviews ranged from the capital, Kabul, to the rural regions near the border with Pakistan.

The overwhelming result: Ordinary Afghans are deeply bitter about American and NATO forces because of errant bombs, heavy-handed searches and seizures and a sense that the foreigners do not understand their culture. They are equally fed up with what they see as seven years of corruption and incompetence in a U.S.-backed government that has largely failed to deliver on development.

This is not Afghanistan circa 2002, which was happy to be rid of the Taliban and grateful for any measure of security and normalcy. This is 2008 and these people want us gone.

Biden's presence on the ticket means that these guys are not afraid to intervene for humanitarian reasons or even that ill-defined "vital national interests." We cannot allow fundamentalists to run around on the Afghan-Pakistan border but the way to dismantle terror networks is through local law enforcement and lifting up societies with anti-poverty measures that will choke off recruitment. I'm really worried that we've ceded far too much ground on foreign policy, robbing Obama of the uniqueness that has defined his campaign. He's welcome to prove me wrong. Immediately.

A Noun, A Verb, and "Surge"

This is getting ridiculous. McCain today:

What we need today is an Economic Surge to keep jobs here at home and create new ones. We need to reduce the tax burden on businesses that choose to make their home in the United States of America. We need to open new markets to U.S. products. And we need to reduce the cost of healthcare. And we need to end the out of control spending in Washington that is putting our debt on the backs of our children.

As TP notes, he has backed the surge in Iraq, flip-flopped and called for a surge in Afghanistan and sought a surge to control inner-city crime.

This is why you DON'T hire a warmonger to run the country. All he has is this dying metaphor of "the surge" to go on. He's holding onto it like clinging to a deck chair on the Titanic. It's meaningless and senseless.

There's No Corner Turned

The series of bombings yesterday in Baghdad and Kirkuk underscored the continued presence of sectarian tensions that have been unresolved by the security gains in the period of the surge. Of particular concern is this bit:

The attacks also underscored that the raw passions and anger fed by Iraq’s deep ethnic, regional and sectarian divides can still instantly ignite. Concerns about stability ran so high that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered a battalion of Iraqi troops to reinforce Kirkuk and put other unspecified “emergency reserve” troops on alert in case the violence spread, state-run television reported late Monday.

The city was already on edge when thousands of Kurds poured into an area near the provincial headquarters on Monday morning, to protest legislation in Baghdad that would dilute the Kurds’ dominance in the city.

Then, just after 11 a.m., a suicide bomber blew herself up, killing at least 17 demonstrators and wounding 47 others, according to Iraqi security officials.

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, which bore the hallmarks of Sunni Arab extremists. Nonetheless, many in the crowd blamed Turkmen extremists for the attack, and within minutes a mob of enraged Kurds began attacking Turkmen political offices and setting their buildings ablaze.

“They burned Turkmen buildings and they burned many cars,” said Brig. Burhan Taha of the Kirkuk police.

Gunfire and rocks from the mob wounded at least 25 Turkmen guards, according to the Kirkuk police. The guards — some armed with machine guns — returned fire, killing at least 12 Kurds in the mob. An additional 102 people were wounded in the melee that followed the bombing, the police said, though it was not clear how many were shot by Turkmen guards or wounded by other violence.

This is the kind of event that can spark recriminations. And tensions are already high in Kirkuk, where it has always been simmering, but the election law is threatening to burst it out into the open. Brian Katulis, one of the smartest thinkers in the country about Iraq, reports:

The Kirkuk dispute has its origins in the Kurdish struggle for even greater autonomy from Iraq and perhaps statehood, Iraqi national identity, and control over Iraq’s oil. Kurds claim Kirkuk for their autonomous region, arguing that they have historical claims on the city that were broken by the brutal “Arabization” campaigns of the Baathist governments of the late 20th century. Kirkuk’s oil is widely perceived to give Kurdish independence economic viability.

Ethnic Turkomans reject Kurdish claims and offer their own historical narrative. They argue that Kirkuk should be given its own special regional status, which would serve to help this minority group maintain a governing role in the city. Iraqi Arabs—both Shi’a and Sunni—insist that Kirkuk and its resources remain under the control of the national government. They say Kurdish efforts to include the city in their region are a prelude to the break-up of Iraq [...]

Today’s bombing took place against this background of increased Arab-Kurd tension over delays on Kirkuk’s status and the elections law. What the Kirkuk dispute serves to illustrate is that Iraq’s problems are fundamentally political in nature. The challenge is not security, which has improved dramatically over the last year, but political accommodation and power-sharing between Iraqi factions.

Thus far, the U.S. strategy and political discourse has been narrowly focused on the security situation, arguing over whether the “surge” has worked or not. This debate is beside the point. Iraq’s conflicts will not solve themselves peacefully unless political compromises and deals are made. As long as they remain unresolved, Iraq’s security gains will remain fragile and open to violent destabilization.

Exactly. Surge supporters try to paper over the structural impasse by citing the security improvements or hailing yet another operation to tackle extremists. But much of that is moot if there is no political reconciliation. Similarly, the success of the Sunni Awakening is not worth commenting on unless there are legitimate steps to integrate the Sunni security forces into the government; otherwise, you're relying on money to keep the peace, and that price will always go up:

The Iraqi officer leading a U.S.-financed anti-jihadist group is in no mood for small talk -- either the military gives him more money or he will pack his bags and rejoin the ranks of al-Qaeda.

"I'll go back to al-Qaeda if you stop backing the Sahwa (Awakening) groups," Col. Satar tells U.S. Lt. Matthew McKernon, as he tries to secure more funding for his men to help battle the anti-U.S. insurgents.

That's just an unsustainable solution. And so the gains in security are kind of illusory and not worth focusing on instead of the very real political compromises that must happen to avoid chaos, either sooner or later.

This is What "Regional Instability" Means

Dozens killed in 16 separate bombings in India. Two bombs in Turkey, reportedly set off by PKK rebels (many of whom operate in Iraqi Kurdistan, kill 16 and wound 150. The relative success or failure of the surge ought to be considered in a regional and global context. A non-functional government, a culture of violence and a maintenance of order through airstrikes which inflame local populations all contribute to world terrorism generally (and violence locally, even if the reporting is more sporadic).

If we continue to have foreign policy "experts" who think only about American interests with respect to Iraq, and then fail to actually understand American global interests when making those decisions, so blinded are they by the prospect of all those natural resources so ripe for the taking, we aren't going to solve these fundamental problems, and we will weaken our national security significantly.

Iraq's Truth Bursts At The Seams

A country may be credibly thought to be still at war when it can't hold a mass gathering without dozens of deaths.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four female suicide bombers and a gunman killed at least 70 people and wounded almost 300 others during a string of attacks in central Baghdad and Kirkuk on Monday, officials said.

In Baghdad, three suicide bombers detonated their explosives in three locations within 30 minutes of each other. The attacks killed at least 32 people and wounded 102 others, most of them Shiite pilgrims, an Interior Ministry official said.

It was the second day attackers have targeted Shiite pilgrims taking part in an annual march to one of the Shiites' holiest shrines.

On Sunday afternoon, seven pilgrims were gunned down in a town south of Baghdad.

About 150 miles north of the capital, another suicide bomber ran into a crowd of protesters at a Kurdish political rally, a police official said. After she detonated the explosives she was carrying, gunmen began firing into the crowd from different directions, the official said.

Every time there's a pilgrimage, security cannot be maintained. And yet, in this country discussion is shut down, because the surge has unquestionably worked. That's not what you hear from folks like the former Iraqi Prime Minister:

In a briefing before members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs yesterday, (Iyad) Allawi answered questions from members of he subcommittee on international organizations, human rights, and oversight. When asked by Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the subcommittee's ranking member, for Allawi's "assessment of of what's come of the surge," Allawi all but said, not much.

Reminding Rohrabacher that the original objective of the surge was to create a safe environment for a process of national reconciliation, Allawi said, "Now, militarily, the surge has achieved some of its goals. Politically, I don't think so."

Allawi rattled off a laundry list of perils that still confront the Iraqi people: internal displacement of large numbers of people, millions of refugees outside Iraq, security forces he described as sectarian militias dressed in national uniforms, no enforcement of the national constitution, which he described as a "divisive" document.

It's pathetic that only an Iraqi can speak the truth, that the surge hasn't worked at accomplishing its stated goals, and the challenges that the Iraqis still face are immense. But of course, the costs of war have been hidden, both in treasure and in human lives. So the outcomes of the surge have been hidden as well. The entire war has been stage-managed, and yet Americans STILL have turned against it (thanks in no small part to the power of alternative media). There needs to be a sustained effort to get at the continued truth of what's happening in Iraq, instead of making political ploys based on shared assumptions.

McCain's Iraqi Island

On the question of Iraq, John McCain is now a ridiculous figure, as this CNN interview paraphrased by Josh Marshall makes clear.

First, apparently Maliki didn't really mean what he said. Second, Wolf Blitzer read back to McCain his repeated claim that Obama would rather lose a war if it helped him win a political campaign. This is close to an accusation of treason. So Blitzer asked him whether this wasn't an attack on Obama's patriotism. McCain said 'no' that he was only questioning Obama's judgment. In any rational world the maverick label wouldn't survive a fib of that magnitude.

Perhaps best of all McCain appeared to embrace Maliki's timeline for withdrawal, but said there was no conflict with that also being Obama's timeline for withdrawal, because Maliki's was based on conditions and Obama's wasn't.

Last but not least, Blitzer asked McCain if it didn't make sense to scrutinize McCain's judgment in going to war in the first place if he's placing so much emphasis on scrutinizing Obama's judgment on the surge. McCain's answer, in so many words, that's old news.

Just wow, on so many levels. First of all, as Chuck Hagel noted, continuing to try and figure out who was right or wrong about the surge and what the meaning of "conditions on the ground" is completely obscures the key point at this stage, which is "How are we going to project forward ... What are we going to do for the next four years to protect the interest of America and our allies and restructure a new order in the world?" Bob Kerrey echoed this sentiment today.

And making the determination on how we move forward requires assessing the situation as it is, and making the best judgment of how to proceed. Now the situation currently is simply not as rosy as everyone suggests. Violent events that would be unthinkable in a country at peace still happen every day. The political situation is still a mess, and with the delay in provincial elections, it's only getting worse. Juan Cole notes that it's fairly impossible to pin down the exact cause-and-effect of the surge (though the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and bribing the Sunnis in Anbar is certainly a major facet, as well as the increase in Iraqi oil revenues which has strengthened the central government), but it's also impossible to suggest this is an unquestionably safe and peaceful nation:

I'd suggest some comparisons. The Sri Lankan civil war between Sinhalese and Tamils has killed an average of 233 persons a month since 1983 and is considered one of the world's major ongoing trouble spots. That is half the average monthly casualties in Iraq recently. In 2007, the conflict in Afghanistan killed an average of 550 persons a month. That is about the rate recently according to official statistics for Iraq. The death rate in 2006-2007 in Somalia was probably about 300 a month, or about half this year's average monthsly rate in Iraq. Does anybody think Afghanistan or Somalia is calm? Thirty years of North Ireland troubles left about 3,000 dead, a toll still racked up in Iraq every five months on average.

All the talk of casualty rates, of course, is to some extent beside the point. The announced purpose of the troop escalation was to create secure conditions in which political compromises could be achieved [...]

There has been very little reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite. The new de-Baathification law which ostensibly aimed at improving the condition of Sunnis who had worked in the former regime was loudly denounced by the very ex-Baathists who would be affected by it. In any case, the measure has languished in oblivion and no effort has been made to implement it. Depending on how it is implemented it could easily lead to large numbers of Sunnis being fired from government ministries, and so might make things worse.

So that's where we are. But again, what this proves is that the political situation cannot be managed by increases in American troops on the ground. Now that the country is a bit more stable and the Maliki government on surer footing, only they can make those necessary decisions, and our presence or absence is not really a factor. And the biggest point is that, if the Iraqis want us out, how can we deny them the freedom to have that choice?



McCain ought to embrace withdrawal as the validation of his strategy. That wouldn't be entirely true, of course, but if he's so keen on a counter-insurgency strategy, the first rule would be to listen to the local leaders about their needs and desires. Maliki is asking for withdrawal for nakedly political reasons, but if McCain rebuffs his wishes, he renders illegitimate the elected Iraqi government and threatens to have the entire population turn on us.

Petraeus's counterinsurgency manual also makes clear the Iraqi Government's desire for a timeline should be seen as an important step forward: "The long-term goal is to leave a government able to stand by itself. In the end, the host nation has to win on its own. ... Eventually all foreign armies are seen as interlopers or occupiers; the sooner the main effort can transition to Host Nation institutions, without unacceptable degradation, the better." Of course, it is quite likely that, buoyed by its recent successes, the Maliki Government is overestimating its own capabilities and the U.S. should take care to withdraw carefully in a way that minimizes the likelihood of the situation deteriorating. But with that caveat in place, counterinsurgency doctrine dictates that this assertion of independence is an important step. It should be welcomed -- not derided as political posturing or suppressed by a White House seeking a permanent presence in Iraq.

In the end, COIN doctrine tells us that Prime Minister Maliki's recent assertions are a crucial turning point as Iraqis being to declare their own independence. This moment should be seized on to begin transitioning to a more limited mission that acts to support the Iraqis instead of taking the lead, and which requires a much smaller U.S. force presence. This is the position that Barack Obama has had all along. John McCain would be wise to accept this new reality and move to Obama's position, instead of continuing to reject the major breakthrough that has occurred.

He won't, of course, because he's stubborn, and his strategy - indeed the neocon strategy from the beginning of this war - was far more about staying permanently than building a democratic society. This suggests that McCain doesn't know a lot about foreign policy and certainly nothing about counter-insurgency. And the policies he does articulate - remaining in Iraq, kicking Russia out of the G8, rogue state rollback - really threaten global stability. It's actually dangerous at this point not to leave Iraq. And that's why the best bet for our continued security and the lives of our soldiers is Barack Obama.

UPDATE: This is fucking weird.



What is he talking about? If Maliki says it, then the timetable is based on conditions on the ground, but if Obama says ithe doesn't? This doesn't make any sense. I guess he's trying to blur the lines here, but he's just confusing everyone.

The Surge Began In March 1867

So to follow John McCain's logic, everything positive that's ever happened in Iraq is part of the surge, even those occurences that began well before the actual increase in troops, which is, you know, the surge, as defined by the US military and political leaders and pretty much everybody who's ever talked about it. And everything negative is part of the "failed strategy" of which he was the number one critic. So, bad stuff - McCain knew it was bad and spoke out. Good stuff - McCain personally directed it.

McCAIN: ... Prior to that they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counterinsurgency 'surge' entailed going in, and clearing and holding, which Col. MacFarland had already started doing. And then of course later on, there were additional troops. And Gen. Petraeus has said that the surge would not have worked and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place -- successfully -- if they hadn't had an increase in the number of troops. So, I'm not sure, frankly, that people really understand, that a surge is part of a counterinsurgency strategy, which means going in, clearing, holding, building, building a better life, providing services to the people, and then, clearly, a part of that, an important part of that, was additional troops to ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed in that counterinsurgency.

REPORTER: So when you say 'surge' then, you're not referring to just the one that President Bush initiated, you're saying it goes back several months before that?

McCAIN: Yes.

Of course, this is completely illogical. If the surge is merely counterinsurgency strategy, then we've been surging since 2005 when COIN was implemented, with mixed results, mind you. But since the elite media has very little understanding of Iraq themselves, and since any attempt to clean up the historical record yields the charge that they are undermining the work of the troops, this will probably go unchallenged. Or maybe challenged, by the Obama campaign, but left for the audience to figure out on their own.

Yet what's really striking here is not the gaffe itself, but the willingness of McCain to alter reality to fit the gaffe into a new worldview. This is all very familiar, and after all devaluing facts is a key element of conservative strategy, given that those pesky facts have a well-known liberal bias.

The Blogger Candidate

Barack Obama has pretty much shunned the blogs and his campaign has been perhaps the worst in terms of netroots outreach. But the SENSIBILITY of his campaign is similar to that of a blogger, the way in which he weaves new information into his overall narrative. In this latest dust-up with John McCain over whether forces in Iraq have returned to "pre-surge levels," Obama has forcefully used the episode to illustrate the general unease we have felt over the last eight years, that the leaders in Washington aren't acquainted with the facts on the ground and make untrue statements to bolster their political goals:

"But that’s not what John McCain’s been talking about the last few days. He’s been proposing a joint trip to Iraq that’s nothing more than a political stunt. He’s even been using it to raise a few dollars for his campaign. But it seems like Sen. McCain’s a lot more interested in my travel plans than the facts, because yesterday – in his continued effort to put the best light on a failed policy – he stood up in Wisconsin and said, 'We have drawn down to pre-surge levels' in Iraq."

"That’s not true, and anyone running for commander-in-chief should know better. As the saying goes, you’re entitled to your own view, but not your own facts. We’ve got around 150,000 troops in Iraq -- 20,000 more than we had before the surge. We have plans to get down to around 140,000 later this summer -- that’s still more troops than we had in Iraq before the surge. And today, Sen. McCain refused to correct his mistake. Just like George Bush, when he was presented with the truth, he just dug in and refused to admit his mistake. His campaign said it amounts to 'nitpicking.'"

"Well, I don’t think tens of thousands of American troops amounts to nitpicking. Tell that to the young men and women who are serving bravely and brilliantly under our flag. Tell that to the families who have seen their loved ones fight tour after tour after tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged."

"It’s time for a debate that’s based on the truth, and I can’t think of anything more important than how many Americans are in harm’s way. It’s time for a debate that’s based on how we’re going to end this war -- not a debate that’s based on raising a few dollars for John McCain’s campaign."

"The American people have had enough spin. Just this week, we were reminded by President Bush’s own former spokesman of how it was deception -- not straight talk -- that misled the American people into war. It’s time to cut through the tough talk so that we can be straight with the American people about a war that’s cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer. It’s time to end the political game-playing so that we can finally end this war. That’s what I’ll do in this campaign. And that’s what I’ll do when I’m President of the United States."

He's calling in the misstatement about troop numbers, the McClellan book, the stupid "he hasn't been to Iraq in a couple years" line and the email with Petraeus' picture on it to make a narrative about McCain as unwilling to admit wrong and unable to tell the truth. And he went further today.

We all misspeak sometimes. I've done it myself. So on such a basic, factual error, you'd think that Senator McCain would just admit that he made a mistake and move on. But he couldn't do that. Instead, he dug in. And the disturbing thing is that we've seen this movie before -- a leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence. Now, just like George Bush, John McCain refused to admit that he made a mistake. And that's exactly the kind of leadership that we've had through more than five years of fighting a war that should've never been authorized, and should've never been waged.

We don't need more leaders who can't admit they've made a mistake, even when it's about something as fundamental as how many young Americans are serving in harm's way.

He's making the pieces fit and having them fit into the overall storyline. That's the mark of a good blogger. Hopefully he'll pick up this other angle, which has been well-framed by Sam Stein at HuffPo.

Up until traveling there one month ago, the Arizona Republican had made just one public tour of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina touched down in August 2005, according to the Washington Post's travel records.

When the hurricane first struck, he was celebrating his birthday with President Bush in Arizona. In the days that followed, he urged Congress to make sacrifices to help the recovery effort. But he also expressed concern about going overboard and burdening "future generations of Americans" with "the highest deficit, probably, in the history of this country."

McCain's first post-hurricane visit to the region was in March 2006. His trip, according to those in attendance, was a full-day affair touring all aspects of the storm's destruction. It came, it should be noted, after pining by local officials for more federal attention including, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu insisting that any politician serious about a presidential run would have to, at the very least, get a first hand account of the hurricane's destruction.

In the year that followed McCain did not return to New Orleans. He did, as noted by a Mother Jones feature on the topic, vote against establishing a congressional commission to examine the federal, state, and local responses to Katrina. Later, he voted against allowing up to 52 weeks of unemployment benefits to people affected by the hurricane. In July 2007, he ventured back to the Gulf Coast, but, while he held an open news conference, the purpose of the trip was officially a private fundraiser.

You put that into soundbite form and I can easily see that in an Obama speech.

It goes without saying that I like the way his campaign is unfolding.