Sisyphus

Health care reform: The choice between imperfect legislation or no legislation

2009-12-18T09:58:00.002-05:00

The entire process over the past several months of reforming the delivery of health care services in this country has been very frustrating to say the least. The American health care system is one of the least efficient in the delivery of services in the West and is one of the most expensive in the world. Despite this, in the current debate about health care, defenders of the status quo warn against any changes at all because of the superiority of the American system!

The legislation that has managed to work its way through Congress has repeatedly been watered down and compromised. The very undemocratic nature of our bicameral legislative system has come to light one more time as one body, the United States Senate -- unrepresentative of the population of the country and bogged down by arcane rules such as filibuster allowing minority rule, holds the final say whether this diluted reform will even pass or not. It is a process, not unlike the making of sausage, that is not particularly pretty to watch.

Many Americans are frustrated with the whole thing and believe reformers should just call the obstructionist’s bluff and hold out for better legislation in the future. The problem is reform rarely happens all at once. For example, there was never any single civil rights legislation that changed the laws and practices of this country in regards to race discrimination. There were a number of different major legislative acts and court decisions preceded by a number of lesser legislative acts and court decisions over three to four decades.

As bitter a pill this is to swallow perhaps the current legislation before the Senate now is still a step forward. Rather than focus on all the things the bill fails to do perhaps it is worth considering what it does accomplish. Paul Krugman explains in the New York Times:

…. let’s all take a deep breath, and consider just how much good this bill would do, if passed — and how much better it would be than anything that seemed possible just a few years ago. With all its flaws, the Senate health bill would be the biggest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare, greatly improving the lives of millions. Getting this bill would be much, much better than watching health care reform fail.

At its core, the bill would do two things. First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance.

All of this would be paid for in large part with the first serious effort ever to rein in rising health care costs.

The result would be a huge increase in the availability and affordability of health insurance, with more than 30 million Americans gaining coverage, and premiums for lower-income and lower-middle-income Americans falling dramatically. That’s an immense change from where we were just a few years ago: remember, not long ago the Bush administration and its allies in Congress successfully blocked even a modest expansion of health care for children.

Bear in mind also the lessons of history: social insurance programs tend to start out highly imperfect and incomplete, but get better and more comprehensive as the years go by. Thus Social Security originally had huge gaps in coverage — and a majority of African-Americans, in particular, fell through those gaps. But it was improved over time, and it’s now the bedrock of retirement stability for the vast majority of Americans.

Look, I understand the anger here: supporting this weakened bill feels like giving in to blackmail — because it is. Or to use an even more accurate metaphor suggested by Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, we’re paying a ransom to hostage-takers. Some of us, including a majority of senators, really, really want to cover the uninsured; but to make that happen we need the votes of a handful of senators who see failure of reform as an acceptable outcome, and demand a steep price for their support.

The question, then, is whether to pay the ransom by giving in to the demands of those senators, accepting a flawed bill, or hang tough and let the hostage — that is, health reform — die.

Again, history suggests the answer. Whereas flawed social insurance programs have tended to get better over time, the story of health reform suggests that rejecting an imperfect deal in the hope of eventually getting something better is a recipe for getting nothing at all. Not to put too fine a point on it, America would be in much better shape today if Democrats had cut a deal on health care with Richard Nixon, or if Bill Clinton had cut a deal with moderate Republicans back when they still existed.

But won’t paying the ransom now encourage more hostage-taking in the future? Maybe. But the next big fight, over the future of the financial system, will be very different. If the usual suspects try to water down financial reform, I say call their bluff: there’s not much to lose, since a merely cosmetic reform, by creating a false sense of security, could well end up being worse than nothing.

Beyond that, we need to take on the way the Senate works. The filibuster, and the need for 60 votes to end debate, aren’t in the Constitution. They’re a Senate tradition, and that same tradition said that the threat of filibusters should be used sparingly. Well, Republicans have already trashed the second part of the tradition: look at a list of cloture motions over time, and you’ll see that since the G.O.P. lost control of Congress it has pursued obstructionism on a literally unprecedented scale. So it’s time to revise the rules.

But that’s for later. Right now, let’s pass the bill that’s on the table.

President Obama said at the Joint Session of Congress in September:

I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. It has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for health care reform. And ever since, nearly every President and Congress, whether Democrat or Republican, has attempted to meet this challenge in some way.

Unfortunately, the fight for reform will not be over even if this bill passes.

More turbulence is likely in Iran’s streets

2009-12-17T09:59:00.002-05:00

The upcoming observance of the Mourning of Muharram in Iran will likely see more protests by reformers upset by the election results last June in the nation’s presidential election as well as the country’s general downward spiral in its economy and relations with the outside world. The ruling government elite suffer credibility problems at home due to the contested national election and abroad due to outrageous remarks by President Ahmadinejad. The economy is suffering and will take a turn for the worse as sanctions are tightened in response to Iranian nuclear weapon ambitions. Demonstrators and state security forces have clashed repeatedly since last summer.

The Mourning of Muharram is not only rich in symbolism but also marked the final push 31 years ago by the Iranian public to topple the government of the Shah. Gary Sick explains:

The next month in Iran is likely to be extremely hot.

The Shiite mourning month of Muharram begins on December 18. It involves massive street marches of citizens mourning the death of Imam Hossein, the quintessential martyr in the Shiite faith. He was killed on the tenth of Muharram (Ashura) in the year 680 on the plain of Karbala, in what is now Iraq. He and a small band of devoted followers were killed, according to Shiite tradition, while opposing the oppression and the wrongful rule of the Caliph Yazid.

This event is rich in symbolism and is extremely emotional. The life and martyrdom of Hossein is relived in sermons and passion plays that touch all Iranians from their earliest days. It is well known for the sometimes grisly marches of thousands of young men, some dressed in shrouds, who march through the streets rhythmically beating themselves with chains or other instruments, not unlike the “mortification of the flesh” sometimes practiced by Christian believers, with the same intent of purification and as a demonstration of utter devotion.

This year, Ashura, the culmination of the mourning ceremonies, will fall on December 27.

Muharram and the story of Imam Hossein’s martyrdom have obvious political resonance. Hossein’s battle was one of an underdog fighting for his rights, certain of the justice of his cause, and willing to give his life to oppose a much stronger but oppressive monarch who was considered to be abusing the true meaning of Islam. This powerful imagery was used to great effect 31 years ago, when millions of Iranians came to the streets in support of Khomeini and in opposition to the shah’s regime. That moment is widely regarded as the culmination of the Iranian revolution. The shah left the country a month later.

Although no one believes that Iran’s rulers will topple next month, those leaders who helped engineer the massive demonstrations on Ashura in December 1978 now find themselves in the ironic position of defending themselves against a popular movement that sees them very much as they saw the shah.

Iran’s Green Movement has been taking advantage of major holidays and national celebrations to go to the streets in protest. This will be another dramatic opportunity, with the symbolism of protest and even the traditional Islamic green that is part of the pageantry.

The regime is intensely aware of the dangers. In the past few days, Iranian national television has repeatedly shown video clips of Ayatollah Khomeini’s photos being torn and burned by unidentified hands. Was this really the televised work of opposition forces? Possibly. There is certainly no shortage of increasingly radicalized opponents of the government who would be capable of such an act.

But in the symbolic battle of the media, it scarcely matters whether it was genuine or fake. The regime is sending a clear message that it intends to treat any political opposition as a challenge to the very concept of the Islamic Republic, as represented by its founder, Ayatollah Khomeini. The lesson is that any crackdown on demonstrators is justified in the name of the sanctity of the revolutionary regime itself. The video also appeared to legitimize vigilante actions by identifying Green reformists as enemies of the people. The Tehran and Tabriz bazaars closed briefly on December 16 as a show of protest against the desecration. Warring demonstrations between pro-regime and reformist forces are becoming a real possibility.

In the meantime, the war within the regime continues. Pro-regime clerics attacked Ayatollah Rafsanjani, one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic who has moved closer to the reformists. The deputy of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, who was a member of the Iranian negotiating team for the past five years, resigned without explanation. The most senior religious figure in Iran, Ayatollah Montazeri, who was a close associate of Khomeini and was once regarded as his successor, has denounced the current government as un-Islamic and has dismissed it as just another military dictatorship. The crisis of confidence is the deepest since the earliest days of the revolution.

The regime is determined to put on a confident face. In the short run, they hold all the levers of power, and they are willing to use all the force at their command in order to preserve their control.

The opposition, by contrast, has no real leader. Mir Hossein Mousavi is a symbol, but he has been thrust into his central position almost against his will and is not controlling events. Instead, the opposition has gone viral. Like the Internet that is its nervous system, it exists in small nodes and decisions emerge almost spontaneously.

A close friend of mine in Tehran says that the opposition is like “fire under the ashes.” It smolders and pops up at the least opportunity, with the slightest puff of oxygen. If there were a free demonstration, he adds, where people could come without fear, there would be three million people in the streets of Tehran tomorrow demonstrating against the regime.

The Revolutionary Guard and the basij are determined to make sure that Muharram and Ashura will not provide that opportunity. And they will probably succeed.

But the long-range forecast calls for more hot weather.

The modern GOP failing to face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy

2009-12-14T09:23:00.002-05:00

The “Party of No” (a.k.a. the modern Republican Party) showed its colors one more time on Friday voting en masse in the House of Representatives against reform aimed at Wall Street.

The problem for conservatives now ruling the GOP is that the economic events of the past year don’t fit the narrative of rigid laissez faire doctrine. So rather than fine tune the ideology to the reality they cling to the ideology and ignore the reality regardless of the consequences for the American people.

Paul Krugman explains in the New York Times:

When I first began writing for The Times, I was naïve about many things. But my biggest misconception was this: I actually believed that influential people could be moved by evidence, that they would change their views if events completely refuted their beliefs.

And to be fair, it does happen now and then. I’ve been highly critical of Alan Greenspan over the years (since long before it was fashionable), but give the former Fed chairman credit: he has admitted that he was wrong about the ability of financial markets to police themselves.

But he’s a rare case. Just how rare was demonstrated by what happened last Friday in the House of Representatives, when — with the meltdown caused by a runaway financial system still fresh in our minds, and the mass unemployment that meltdown caused still very much in evidence — every single Republican and 27 Democrats voted against a quite modest effort to rein in Wall Street excesses.

Let’s recall how we got into our current mess.

America emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system. The regulations worked: the nation was spared major financial crises for almost four decades after World War II. But as the memory of the Depression faded, bankers began to chafe at the restrictions they faced. And politicians, increasingly under the influence of free-market ideology, showed a growing willingness to give bankers what they wanted.

The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess.

But the proponents of deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape. In a memorable 2003 incident, top bank regulators staged a photo-op in which they used garden shears and a chainsaw to cut up stacks of paper representing regulations.

And the bankers — liberated both by legislation that removed traditional restrictions and by the hands-off attitude of regulators who didn’t believe in regulation — responded by dramatically loosening lending standards. The result was a credit boom and a monstrous real estate bubble, followed by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Ironically, the effort to contain the crisis required government intervention on a much larger scale than would have been needed to prevent the crisis in the first place: government rescues of troubled institutions, large-scale lending by the Federal Reserve to the private sector, and so on.

Given this history, you might have expected the emergence of a national consensus in favor of restoring more-effective financial regulation, so as to avoid a repeat performance. But you would have been wrong.

Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.

Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.

In part, the prevalence of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” As Democrats have pointed out, three days before the House vote on banking reform Republican leaders met with more than 100 financial-industry lobbyists to coordinate strategies. But it also reflects the extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology, one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy.

So it’s up to the Democrats — and more specifically, since the House has passed its bill, it’s up to “centrist” Democrats in the Senate. Are they willing to learn something from the disaster that has overtaken the U.S. economy, and get behind financial reform?

Let’s hope so. For one thing is clear: if politicians refuse to learn from the history of the recent financial crisis, they will condemn all of us to repeat it.

President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech: A vision of moral realism for the conduct of war and peace

2009-12-11T09:25:00.002-05:00

President Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday in ceremonies in Oslo. The award comes a week after the President’s announcement of a more focused strategy and build up of reinforcements in the war in Afghanistan. The irony of accepting an award for peace during an escalation of war was not lost on Mr. Obama nor was the criticism from some that the honor was somehow “premature.” The President rose to the occasion and gave, to paraphrase Fred Kaplan, a clear and complex statement outlining the “vision of moral realism for the conduct of war and peace” reminiscent of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Fred Kaplan explains:

When President Barack Obama sat down with his speechwriters to outline his Nobel lecture, he must have known that his core task would be to reconcile what many of his hosts in Oslo probably regard as irreconcilable—accepting the peace prize while seriously escalating a war in Afghanistan.

There was an easy, or at least obvious, way out of this. He could have cited the time-honored principles of a "just war"—self-defense, proportional use of force, and so forth—and then moved on to the standard bromides about our nobler natures, the oneness of mankind, etc., etc.

But Obama took a harder, subtler path, using the occasion to outline nothing less than a vision of moral realism for the conduct of war and peace in the modern era—as clear and complex a statement on the subject as any American president has delivered in nearly a half-century.

Critics may dismiss the speech as a hodgepodge—a steely invocation of Realpolitik here, a rousing chorus of democracy promotion there—but they would be mistaken.

Yes, Obama's speech is filled with ambiguities, dilemmas, and contradictions. More to the point, it explicitly grapples with them. If there is a single theme to the speech, it's that a philosopher-statesman of our time (which is what Obama is trying to be) must recognize and grapple with both universal principles and contingent realities, with our ambitions and our limits, with—as Martin Luther King Jr. put it in his Nobel lecture (and which Obama quoted today)—the "is-ness of man's present nature" and the "ought-ness that forever confronts him."

Read in its entirety, Obama's speech seems a faithful reflection of another theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, who, during World War II and the Cold War that followed, sought to reconcile the principles of Christianity with the imperatives of national defense. In his influential 1952 book The Irony of American History, he wrote that American idealism must come to terms "with the limits of all human striving, the fragmentariness of all human wisdom, the precariousness of all historical configurations of power, and the mixture of good and evil in all human virtue."

Obama's speech doesn't mention Niebuhr, but back in April 2007, early on in the presidential campaign, David Brooks asked Obama whether he'd ever read Niebuhr. The candidate replied, "I love him, he's one of my favorite philosophers." Asked what he took away from Niebuhr, Obama answered, "I take away the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world"; that "we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate these things, but we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction"; that "we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naive idealism to bitter realism."

Brooks observed in his New York Times column, "[F]or a guy who's spent the last few months fund-raising, and who was walking off the Senate floor as he spoke, that's a pretty good off-the-cuff summary of Niebuhr's The Irony of American History."

The Nobel lecture that Obama delivered today is a fuller elaboration of the same ideas.

"As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work," Obama said, "I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence. … But, as a head of state, sworn to protect and defend my nation … I face the world as it is and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. … To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism. It is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man, and the limits of reason."

He made no apologies for this fact. To the clear discomfort of some in his audience, he pointed out that the global security of the post-World War II era was achieved not just by "treaties and declarations" but by the United States of America—"the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms." He added, "So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace." (Has anyone ever spoken like this while accepting a Nobel Peace Prize?)

But then he broadened and deepened the picture. "The soldier's courage and sacrifice," he said, "is full of glory … but war itself is never glorious." The challenge, he went on, "is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths—that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human folly."

The answer, he said, quoting President John F. Kennedy, is to "focus on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution of human institutions."

Most important, he said, all nations must "adhere to standards that govern the use of force." This is for practical as well as moral reasons. First, "America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves." Second, the failure to follow these stands can make our action "appear arbitrary" and "undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified."

He declared, "I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds." But, he added, as if to draw a distinction from George W. Bush's crusader rhetoric, "In a world in which threats are more diffuse and missions more complex, America cannot act alone." In fact, "all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace. … Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice."

War, he allowed, must be avoided whenever possible. But in some cases, he said, "alternatives to violence" must be "tough enough to change behavior, for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something." Those who break rules "must be held accountable." Sanctions "must exact a real price," and these pressures work "only when the world stands together as one." (Global unity not just to sing "Kumbaya" but to exert economic leverage on Iran and North Korea! Again, extraordinary words before this audience.)

The final section of his speech was the most complex and discomfiting. He said the world must also stand united against "those who violate international law by brutalizing their own people," because a truly just, stable, and lasting peace must be "based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual."

However, he then said, "The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. … I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation," but "sanctions without outreach—and condemnation without discussion—can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door."

To some, he said, Richard Nixon's summit with Mao Zedong, with the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, "appeared inexcusable"—yet it "helped set China on a path" of lifting millions out of poverty and connecting with open societies. Pope John Paul II's engagement with Poland "created space" not just for the Church but also for Solidarity. Ronald Reagan's embrace of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika "not only improved relations with the Soviet Union but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe."

The key, he said, is to "balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time."

This recitation raises many more questions than it answers. How does the United States, the United Nations, the West, or anyone pull off this balancing act? When is the right time for sanctions, the right time for summitry? (Nixon went to China entirely for power-balancing reasons; enriching or opening up the Middle Kingdom must have been the last thing on his mind.) And what is Obama hinting at for his own policy toward, say, Iran or North Korea: Does the speech presage the ratcheting of sanctions, the opening to a grand bargain, or—in some still trickier balancing act—both? And what happens if, unlike Moscow under Gorbachev or Poland in the time of Lech Walesa, today's evil regimes are uninterested in openness and impervious to pressure?

"There is no simple formula here," Obama summarized. And that's the point. His speech, like Niebuhr's writing, reflects an active awareness of humanity's ideals but also its imperfections—of our reach and our limits.

It's unclear how Obama, as president, will deal with the tensions and contradictions. But it's good to know that he knows they exist.

Has your cell phone funded the war in the DR Congo?

2009-12-10T09:45:00.002-05:00

Congo has a history of over a century of misery. From King Leopold and the Belgian rubber plantations to the current chaos in central Africa, the Congolese people have been victims of those with power who simply take what they want and do as they please. The current and seemingly never ending fighting has included armies from a number of different countries and private militias roving the country raping, looting, enslaving, conscripting children and killing with no one to stop them. The central government is so corrupt and weak it cannot protect its citizens. United Nations peacekeeping forces have failed to protect civilians. The ongoing war is the deadliest since WWII.

It is an impoverished country wealthy with many natural resources (much of it mined by slave labor) such as coltan, diamonds, gold and cassiterite that are exported to the world market and the revenue is used to fuel the ongoing war. For example, Coltan is a metal that conducts heat unusually brilliantly. It is component in our cell phones, lap-tops, and our children’s Playstations. Eighty percent of the world’s supplies can be found in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is mined by men, women and children – many of them digging with nothing more than their hands and many of them slaves.

Sasha Lezhnex, the executive director of Grassroots Reconciliation Group, and John Prendergast, co-founder of Enough, offer this perspective:

Last year, the bus in which a young Congolese woman we met named Mary was riding was stopped by a militia. "They wanted to all have me, to rape me," she related haltingly to us. "I told them no, and then they took off my shirt and beat me. I have terrible marks now."

Mary's story is similar to hundreds of thousands of women's experiences in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rape is routinely "deployed" as a weapon of war by the armed groups fighting over a nation that has some of the richest nonpetroleum natural resource deposits in the world.

Congo holds the numbing distinction of being home to the deadliest war in the world since World War II -- with more than 5.4 million people killed during the past 15 years.

"This war is caused by the minerals," Mary told us. "Those [armed groups] control the minerals. I hear that they are used in mobile phones. ... If you talk to Obama or the phone companies, tell them what happens here."

Armed groups in eastern Congo that control minerals, mines and trading routes generate an estimated $180 million each year by trading four main minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold.

This money enables the armed groups to purchase large numbers of weapons and continue their campaign of brutal violence against civilians. Conflict minerals are key components in the manufacture of cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, video games and portable music players.

Because of increasing awareness of the links between electronics products and the worst sexual violence in the world, change is afoot.

During U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to eastern Congo in August, she said: "With respect to companies that are responsible for what are now being called conflict minerals, I think the international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here."

The U.S. Congress has also initiated a strong bipartisan effort to curb the conflict minerals trade. Senate and House bills on this issue represent a significant step toward having conflict-free cell phones and laptops by setting up a system of audits and minerals-tracing mechanisms.

This would reveal which phones and laptops contain conflict minerals and which ones do not.

Introduced by Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) on the Senate side, and Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Washington), Frank Wolf (R-Virginia), Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and Donald Payne (D-New Jersey) on the House side, the bills already have the support of powerful committee chairmen but still must be moved through committee.

With the Obama administration and Congress taking a strong interest in this issue, and activist campaigning building some momentum, companies have begun to react.

The tin industry has gone the furthest by introducing an initiative to increase due diligence and trace minerals on the ground in Congo. Electronics companies also have a project under way to map out supply chains. And Intel, HP, Dell, and Motorola are hosting a meeting with activists on conflict minerals in San Francisco, California, this month. But it is not enough.

Campus activists -- from New York; to Knoxville, Tennessee; to Nevada -- are taking up this issue with increased vigor, along with major faith-based groups, from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to Jewish World Watch.
Are the government and company actions taken to date enough to stop the conflict minerals trade from continuing? The answer is no.

Electronics companies must invest in a system to certify that the minerals used in their products are verifiably conflict-free. They must work with their suppliers to trace the minerals back to their mines of origin and have independent audits conducted of these supply chains so that we know with verified proof that none has passed through the hands of armed groups.

The Obama administration should help companies develop a certification process for conflict minerals, built on the lessons of the Kimberley Process for blood diamonds.

The administration can also help devise a public-private partnership to work with companies, the Congolese government and other key donor countries to help miners in eastern Congo and improve mining inspection and tracing on the ground.

Companies and the government can take steps today. For a start, electronics companies should have audits conducted of their supply chains for the minerals. And Congress should pass the conflict minerals legislation, to get tracing started.

If you have a cell phone, you can also have an impact.

Ask your senator and representative to sign the Congo Conflict Minerals Act (S. 891) and Conflict Minerals Trade Act (H.R. 4128), and find a creative way to reach your cell phone manufacturer to tell it you want a conflict-free cell phone.

The minerals supply chain involves multiple companies, and the war in Congo will not be resolved overnight.

But if companies and consumers take a stand and say "Give us conflict-free products," we can stop this deadly trade and put real pressure on the armed groups that rape women on a mass scale in eastern Congo. Let Mary's request not be forgotten.

What and what not to expect from the Copenhagen Climate Conference

2009-12-09T09:01:00.002-05:00

The UN Climate Change Conference is underway in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference is scheduled to run from December 7th through December 18th and includes the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 5th Meeting of the Parties (COP/MOP 5) to the Kyoto Protocol. The conference was preceded by the Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions scientific conference, which took place in March 2009 and was also held in Copenhagen.

There is much disagreement between industrialized nations and developing nations about how to proceed with emissions controls and how rich countries should compensate poor ones in regions expected to bare the brunt of deteriorating environmental conditions as greenhouse gases build in the atmosphere and the sea level continues to rise. Despite the disagreements the delegates are under pressure to come up with some sort of realistic climate agreement.

Here is a rundown from TPM of what to expect and what not to expect:

• First off, don't expect a legally binding agreement along the lines of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. That was once the goal, but, despite the urgency of the issue, expectations have now been reduced. The plan is now simply to achieve a more general political commitment between nations. The details would be worked out at a followup confab next year, where a binding deal would be announced. As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs put it in this morning's gaggle: "The international hope is that we get an agreement on how to move forward on something that's more binding." In other words, this is a conference to set up another conference.

• Another key point: That hoped-for political deal is being negotiated on two tracks -- one for those countries that ratified Kyoto and one for those that didn't. The former group -- let's call them the honors track -- will try for a new commitment period to reach the goals set out at Kyoto, under which industrial countries that pledged to reduce their emissions, collectively, to 5.5 percent below 1990 levels. But it's the latter group, which includes the world's second largest carbon emitter, the U.S., as well as several developing countries -- the special slows, perhaps -- that's by far the more important. They'll work towards a deal of their own, perhaps to be called the Copenhagen Protocol.

But there are numerous awkward sticking points. For instance...

• The U.S.: The Obama administration has proposed cutting emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, 42 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. Some leaders of the global effort have already said that's not sufficiently ambitious. And yet, given the procedural set-up of the U.S. Senate and the utter inflexibility of the Republican party, it may well be more ambitious than what Congress will ultimately sign off on.

• The developing countries: They're arguing that to help fix a problem they did little to create, they'll need substantial financial help -- perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars -- from richer countries, so that they can bypass carbon-based fuels and start building clean-energy economies.

• China: The world's biggest carbon emitter as pledged to reduce its emissions by 40 percent to 45 percent per unit of economic output. But that promise has been dismissed by some European countries as falling short of what's needed.

• Russia: Perhaps weirdest of all, Russia's success in reducing emissions -- thanks to the collapse of its industrial sector in the 1990s -- could paradoxically work against the global effort. That's because the reductions have left Russia with a surplus of emissions credits, under Kyoto's cap-and-trade program. If Russia sells those credits, it could send the price of carbon plunging in the world's emissions markets. And economists say that a stable and relatively high price for carbon emissions is needed if investments in clean-energy technologies are going to be made.

• The opposition: All these technical issues are being hashed out against the backdrop of efforts by right-wing activists, aided by ratings-obsessed cable news, to obstruct progress. Saudi Arabia -- no fan of moving away from fossil fuels -- has now seized on those hacked emails which show climate scientists discussing how to bury work skeptical of global warming. Though the emails don't come close to undermining the scientific consensus on warming, summit leaders have nonetheless been forced to address the issue.

Politics being what it is, there's little doubt that, whatever actually happens, Obama and the other world leaders gathering at the summit next week will make a show of announcing progress. But it seems likely that, even if things go well, Copenhagen will be as much a beginning as an end.

Afghanistan: Attempting to bring an existing war to a non-disastrous end

2009-12-08T09:19:00.002-05:00

There is much second guessing President Obama’s speech last week regarding the decision the administration has reached about the future of the conflict in Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan. Faced with only bad choices to resolve the conflict the Bush administration had let fester while focusing attention on the second war it launched in Iraq the President picked the least awful option that hopefully can lead to a non-disastrous conclusion. Hendrik Hertzberg summarizes the dilemma faced by the President:

There are no good options for the United States in Afghanistan. That has been the conventional wisdom for some years now, and this time the conventional wisdom—the reigning cliché—happens to be true. President Obama did not pretend otherwise in his address at West Point last week. His grimly businesslike speech was a gritty, almost masochistic exercise in the taking of responsibility. What he had to say did not please everyone; indeed, it pleased no one. Given the situation bequeathed to him and to the nation, pleasure was not an option. His speech was a sombre appeal to reason, not a rousing call to arms. If his argument was less than fully persuasive, that was in the nature of the choices before him. There is no such thing as an airtight argument for a bad choice—not if the argument is made with a modicum of honesty.

In November, two months into the gruelling, three-month review of Afghanistan policy that culminated in last week’s address, the Pentagon offered the President four options, each accompanied by a number, with each number representing an increase in the American troop commitment. But these were variations on a theme. As Obama seems to have realized, his true choices, of which there were also four, were wider and more fundamental: to begin immediately to wind down the American military presence; to maintain the status quo; to commit to a more or less open-ended, more or less full-fledged “counter-insurgency” war; or to pursue some version of the course he has now charted, in which a fresh infusion of military force and civilian effort is paired with a strong signal that America’s patience and resources, on which there are many other demands, are not unlimited.

Obama did the best he could to make a positive case for the path he has chosen, but—chillingly, bleakly—the principal virtue of his choice remains the vices of the others. Withdrawal, beginning at once? The political and diplomatic damage to Obama would be severe: a probable Pentagon revolt; the anger of NATO allies who have risked their soldiers’ lives (and their leaders’ political standing) on our behalf; the near-certainty that a large-scale terrorist attack, whether or not it had anything to do with Afghanistan, would be met at home not with 9/11 solidarity but with savage, politically lethal scapegoating. Even so, if “success,” however narrowly defined, is truly an outright impossibility, then withdrawal may still be the most responsible choice. But it is not yet obvious that a better result is out of the question. “To abandon this area now,” the President said, “would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on Al Qaeda and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.” The consequences could also include a second Taliban emirate, a long, bloody civil war, and a sharp, destabilizing increase in Islamist violence, not only in Pakistan but also in India and elsewhere. The status quo? To “muddle through and permit a slow deterioration,” the President said, “would ultimately prove more costly and prolong our stay in Afghanistan, because we would never be able to generate the conditions needed to train Afghan security forces and give them the space to take over.” Or a full-scale counter-insurgency war—in the President’s words, a “dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort, one that would commit us to a nation-building project of up to a decade”? That, too, must be rejected, “because it sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests.” Such a war—such a project—would be hugely out of proportion to whatever marginal security gains it might yield. And it wouldn’t just be beyond “a reasonable cost.” It would be beyond our political, institutional, and material capacity, and therefore impossible.

A dismal process of elimination has left the President to design a strategy that he believes is the only one that offers a chance, in his words, “to bring this war to a successful conclusion.” Or, at least, a bearable one. Deliver a hard punch to the Taliban, break its momentum, and welcome its defectors; throw a bucket of cold water on the hapless and corrupt central government; carve out space and time for projects of civilian betterment and the development of Afghan forces that are capable of maintaining some semblance of security; forge “an effective partnership with Pakistan”—to list the elements of Obama’s strategy is to recognize its difficulty. It is full of internal tensions, most prominently between the buildup of troops and the eighteen-month timeline for beginning their withdrawal. (To the extent that the troop surge weakens the enemy while the timeline focusses minds in Kabul and Islamabad, however, that tension could be a creative one.) The plan does not, of course, guarantee success. The best that can be claimed for it is that it does not guarantee failure, as, in one form or another, the alternatives almost certainly do.

At West Point in June of 2002, George W. Bush proclaimed to the graduating cadets, “Our war on terror is only begun, but in Afghanistan it has begun well.” In truth, it had not begun so well. Six months earlier, the first Taliban emirate had indeed been routed from power. But, at the same time, the perpetrator of 9/11 had been allowed to escape from his mountain hideout; the American forces that could have captured him were held back by an Administration already planning its misguided invasion of Iraq. The evidence, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report concluded last week, “removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.”

That was the speech in which the then President—no doubt with Iraq in mind, though he made no mention of that country—expanded what was already being called the Bush Doctrine to embrace the notion of preventive war. Obama, in the aftermath of his West Point speech, was widely condemned—and grudgingly praised—for allegedly adopting “what sounds like the Bush Doctrine” (Rachel Maddow) and “a rehash of the Bush Doctrine” (Mary Matalin). Not so. Whatever the Afghanistan war’s origins (and they were retributive, not preventive, except in the sense that every war, and every act of statecraft, is aimed at “preventing” something), this is not a preventive war. It is an actually existing war, and Obama’s purpose is clearly to bring it to a non-disastrous end.

The botched war in Afghanistan, like the economic crisis and the broken health-care system, is an inheritance from which Obama is trying to extricate the country. In each case, the institutional, historical, and political constraints under which a President must operate mean that the solutions—or, if there are no solutions, the ameliorations—are doomed to be nearly as messy as the problems. If there is no Obama Doctrine, there is an Obama approach—undergirded by humane values but also by a respect for reality. The most telling signpost in Obama’s speech may have been neither his call for more troops nor his timeline for removing them but his use of a quotation from another President who inherited a seemingly intractable war: “Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.” That was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in one of the homelier passages from his canonical farewell address, delivered the year Barack Obama was born. President Eisenhower’s point was that a nation’s security is all of a piece—that military actions do not inhabit a separate universe but must be weighed on the same scale, and be subject to the same judgments, as a nation’s other vital concerns. That seems to be President Obama’s point as well.

Demonstrators and security forces clash again in Iran

2009-12-07T23:08:00.002-05:00

Today many people were reportedly arrested across Iran following confrontations between government security forces and anti-government demonstrators. The occasion for the public defiance of the government was Student’s Day – a day marking the anniversary of the murder of three students demonstrating against the dictatorship of the Shah in 1953.

Today’s demonstrations are a continuation of protests following allegations of electoral fraud last June by incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against the opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The movement became known as the Green Revolution and, despite often violent suppression, has rallied people to the streets of Iran’s cities over and over again.

This from the Tehran Bureau:

Thousands of student protesters clashed with basij militiamen and riot police at demonstrations staged at and around universities in Tehran and other cities throughout Iran on Monday, marking the largest anti-government protests since last month's Nov. 4 rallies.

Witnesses said security forces had sealed the main gates and surrounding walls of Tehran University with banners and bus blockades to prevent views into the campus and prohibit students from joining protestors outside the university walls.

Tens of thousands of Basij militia forces, armed with guns, stun guns, paintball guns, batons and tear gas joined thousands of anti-riot and police forces to fight and disperse protesters in squares throughout the Iranian capital, according to witness reports and videos posted on YouTube.

Large-scale demonstrations took place at universities in major cities throughout the country, including Mashhad, Tabriz, Kerman, Hamedan, Arak, Shahr Kord, Zanjan, Karaj, Gilan, Yasouj, Ilam, Hormozgan, Shiraz and Isfahan. In the Iranian capital, protests were held at Tehran University's main campus and College of Art campus, as well as at other major universities, including Amir Kabir, Khajeh Nasr, Sharif, Azad Central, and Elm-o-Sanat (Science and Technology).

Witnesses driving along the streets bordering Tehran University's main campus in central Tehran said it "looked and felt like martial law" had been imposed in the Iranian capital. Security forces also fired gun shots into the air during some of the clashes with protesters, they said.

"I got to Tehran University at 1 pm. Protesters in scattered pockets walked along the sidewalks of nearby streets -- Vesal, 16 Azar, Keshavarz Blvd, and others -- among heavy security presence. Near Valiasr Square, security forces attacked us with tear gas, batons and paint-ball guns, and also fired shots into the air to disperse us," one eyewitness told Tehran Bureau in a telephone interview. "I was seized at some point while running and was clubbed and kicked in the abdomen. I was sure I would be arrested, but surprisingly they let me go," the witness said.

University student protests on Iran's national Student Day -- which commemorates the December 7 killing of three Tehran University students during demonstrations in 1953 against then US-backed monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi -- are traditionally sanctioned by the Iranian government as a means of voicing national anti-Americanism.

But Monday's Student Day rallies were the latest in a string of state-backed demonstrations to be used by supporters of Iran's opposition Green Movement -- who claim the country's June 12 presidential elections were fraudulent -- as an opportunity to hit the streets and voice their opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration.

State police officials and Tehran's State Prosecutor warned last week that protests outside university campuses and without a permit from the Ministry of Higher Education would be considered "illegal" and subject to a harsh "crackdown," according to state news agencies and Reformist news websites.

Numerous student leaders were either arrested or expelled from universities in the weeks running up to Student Day, and foreign media reporters were formally barred by Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance from attending street events and reporting outside their offices from December 7-9. Internet services were considerably slowed down during the two days prior to Student Day, and mobile phone service was briefly cut in central Tehran, witnesses said.

"By 11am, students had taken out articles of green [the trademark color of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi] clothing, such as scarves and wristbands (from) their bags as well as green balloons they filled up with air. Some had hid green clothing and shawls stashed away on campus. They began chanting non-radical slogans such as Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein and Allah-o-Akbar ("God is Great")," according to an eyewitness.

Students shouted slogans, including "Basiji go home -- no free meal today" and "Get lost, mercenary," at members of the Basiji forces and student Basiji organizations, who replied with shouts of "Death to Traitors," witnesses said. One eye witness told Tehran Bureau that Basijis on Tehran University's campus were not armed.

As the day progressed, slogans shouted by students and street protesters grew more intense and angry, with shouts of newly coined slogans, including "[Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei should know, he is on his way out," "Our curse, our shame, our incompetent Leader," and "What happened to the oil money? It was spent on the Basiji," witnesses said.

Witnesses said students on Monday also burned caricatures of the Iranian president. Students also carried flags without the emblem of "Allah" -- a coat of arms logo that was added to Iran's flag after the country's 1979 revolution, according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The Obama decision on Afghantistan

2009-12-06T21:48:00.004-05:00

Last week President Obama announced the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy to secure the population, pressure the Taliban, and train indigenous forces. The Bush administration, after launching a war against Al Qaeda and the host Taliban government following the September 11th attacks in 2001, proceeded to neglect the Afghan situation in favor of the next war it launched in Iraq. The under-resourced allied forces were left in a weak position leading to endless warfare that in turn contributed to the destabilization of Pakistan and war weariness on the part of the public of the United States and its European allies who also have troops on the ground.

Many were (and are) ambivalent about the proposal and the temptation to simply abandon the central Asian country was (and remains) high in many quarters across the political spectrum. However, Steve Coll argues (hat tip to Jeff Weintraub) that abandonment of Afghanistan now would produce a worse civil war than the Afghans suffered in the 90’s, further destabilize Pakistan which could result in a new Indo-Pakistan war, and increase danger to the Americans and British alike. There were no easy solutions for the President to pick from given the rather the serious consequences of simply walking away versus the costliness but unpredictable outcome of pushing forward on the war.

Clare Lockhart, of the Institute for State Effectiveness, writes in the London Times Obama struck the right balance in his decision:

President Obama has got it right. After taking his time to wrestle with the enormous challenge of defining the US national interest in Afghanistan and its region, he has provided a credible vision of ending the war, stabilising the country and handing over responsibility to Afghan self-rule. His move away from fighting, endorsing General Stanley McChrystal’s analysis, will protect the population and provide a security bridge while Afghan forces are trained.

No country can be run by an army alone. Lasting security in Afghanistan will be provided when Afghans can govern themselves. Mr Obama’s speech balances nurturing Afghan governance at all levels with a tough stance on accountability.

This provides a framework for restoring Afghan self-rule. It learns the lesson that bypassing Afghan institutions and spending billions of dollars on a parallel set of organisations run by UN agencies, NGOs and contractors that leach capacity away from core Afghan frontline services does not work.

***

The key conundrum now is that an effective counter-insurgency strategy requires a legitimate government. In recent years, the Afghan Government has lost the trust of both the international community and its own citizens. Requiring a set of strict accountability standards is an important way to restore integrity. Rather than proclaim the existing Government as legitimate, a better approach is to recognise that legitimacy is earned. Trust should be restored through deeds, not words.

Change needs to come not only from the Afghans, but the way that international actors operate. The aid system requires a thorough revamping, so that it no longer undermines the very institutions it claims to support. This will require measures such as limiting the wages paid to Afghan staff working in the aid system to the same level they would earn in Afghan ministries.
It will also require choices about which Afghans the international actors choose to consort with. A senior Afghan official described to me with dismay how, at an important national meeting, three significant figures walked straight past legitimate representatives who had been sent from their districts, and made a beeline for three warlords standing in the corner. This casual slight was deeply symbolic; the representatives left the meeting crestfallen.

There are three steps that remain: first, Afghanistan needs a peace-building framework. There is already a reconciliation effort under way, aimed at bringing insurgents back within the political fold. A broader approach would seek to build on the broad consensus within Afghan society already expressed through the series of Loya Jirga (tribal councils) and the recent public discussions on the need for a restoration of rule of law and just governance.

Second, the fastest and cheapest way to create stability is to engage Afghanistan’s youth with the skills they need to manage their own futures. There is a lost generation of Afghans, whose education was sacrificed to 20 years of jihad against the Soviet Union and civil war. The new generation — the 60 per cent of Afghans under 25 — fare no better.

Leaving school under-educated at 11, poor pre-teens make rich pickings for madrassas, the Taleban and the opium economy. The most cost-effective way to stabilise Afghanistan would be to invest in the secondary and advanced education and training of the next generation and find out how many medics, teachers, engineers, accountants, lawyers, construction workers and farming specialists are needed.

Third, Afghanistan can and should pay for its own nation-building. The rich potential of the Afghan economy offers not only the basis for millions of jobs for Afghans, but the means for it to collect the revenue to pay its own bills. The recent US Geological Survey report shows that Afghanistan has hundreds of billions of dollars of mineral wealth. It has significant agricultural potential and a thriving textiles and construction industry. It could also collect several billion dollars a year in revenue from trade passing through as well as taxes on business and land. Instead, this money is being collected illegally, furnishing the insurgents’ and warlords’ coffers instead.

Yet the most inspiring aspect of President Obama’s speech is his picture of America maintaining its moral authority in the world through the way that it ends wars and prevents conflict. He speaks of an America seeking not to claim another nation’s resources or target other peoples, but one that is heir to a noble struggle for freedom. And this offers hope to American citizens, their allies and the Afghan people.

You can read Coll’s blog here and Lockhart’s entire article here.

Ambivalence about the troop increase in Afghanistan

2009-12-01T10:20:00.002-05:00

The United States invaded Afghanistan three weeks following the September 11th attacks in 2001. The Taliban ruled government had hosted Al Qaeda, the organization responsible for the 9-11 attacks on the U.S., and continued to provide safe haven for them. President Bush stated that U.S. policy would not distinguish between Al Qaeda and those that harbored them.

However, after the Taliban was toppled and some degree of success seemed to be within grasp the Bush administration lost interest in the conflict and turned its attention towards Iraq. In the meantime the conflict spilled over the border into Pakistan, destabilizing that country, and the Taliban resurged in Afghanistan threatening its stability. Afghanistan became the "forgotten war."

President Obama campaigned to turn American attention back towards Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda – to “finish the job” left undone by the Bush administration. The problem is windows of opportunity have shut and the situation on the ground has become much more complex in the past six-to-seven years while Afghanistan was a second tier priority for the Bush administration. Finishing the job will not be as simple as it would have been in 2002 or 2003.

President Obama will present the administration’s plan for the Afghanistan War to the American people in a speech tonight to take place at West Point Military Academy. It is expected that, following long deliberations and exploration of various options, he will announce that an additional 34,000 American troops will be sent to central Asian country bringing U.S. forces to more than 100,000. Additional reinforcements from NATO allies are also expected.

President Obama came to office facing a situation not of his making and with no obvious right or easy solutions. All options have pros and cons but the directionless and under-resourced policy he inherited was the least unacceptable. Still, news of tonight’s expected announcement leaves many with ambivalent feelings. Fred Kaplan explains:

… I've studied all the pros and cons. There are valid arguments to justify each side of the issue, and there are still more valid arguments to slap each side down. And if the basic decision were left up to me, I'm not sure what I would do.

As with confronting most messes in life, the initial impulse is to flee. But if we simply pulled out, it's a near-certain bet that the Taliban would march into Kabul, and most other Afghan towns they'd care to, in a matter of weeks. True, the Taliban are not the same as al-Qaida, but there's little doubt that they would provide sanctuary and alliance (as they did after the Soviets were ousted), and this would strengthen al-Qaida in its struggle against Pakistan, the United States, and others.

One might dispute the significance of this, at least for its direct danger to the United States. Al-Qaida, after all, can plan attacks on U.S. territory from other sanctuaries, even from apartments in Western cities. But it's naive to claim that leaving Afghanistan would have no broader effect.

Another problem with withdrawing is that it would signal, correctly or not, a huge victory for anti-American forces generally. If we left Afghanistan to the Taliban (and, by extension, al-Qaida), especially after such a prolonged commitment (at least rhetorically), what other embattled people would trust the United States (or the other putative allies in this war) to come in and protect them from insurgents? None, and they could hardly be blamed.

I am uncomfortable making this case for two reasons. First, it's reminiscent of the bankrupt rationales, involving "credibility" and the "domino theory," for staying in Vietnam long after that war was widely viewed as a horrible mistake. But Afghanistan is different. The Taliban are not the Viet Cong, and Osama Bin Laden is not Ho Chi Minh; there is no case, this time, that the enemy has a just claim to power. And the stakes are much higher: Communists ruling South Vietnam was never a serious threat to our security; al-Qaida controlling a huge swath of South Asia is.

The second reason I'm uncomfortable about even saying this is that the argument can, and almost certainly will, be used to justify staying in Afghanistan if it turns out that this war is futile, too. It's easy to hear the generals saying, a year from now, "Three more brigades should do the trick, Mr. President" and "If we pull out now, Mr. President, our credibility will be severely compromised."

But this part of the argument is moot, since, for better or for worse, no higher-ups in the Obama administration have advocated a total pullout. Withdrawal is a tempting option only to the extent that all others seem, at best, only slightly less miserable.

Holding at the current level of troops, with perhaps some slight rejiggering, is another tempting option, but it's also the clearest recipe for war without end. The constant refrain one hears from soldiers and commanders in the field—confirmed by any journalist who spends much time with them—is that they're strained by the shortage of resources. No matter what strategy President Barack Obama decides on—chasing terrorists, protecting population centers, or some combination of the two—there aren't enough troops now to pursue it with much chance of success.

The existing troops can probably hold the Taliban at bay and keep Afghanistan from falling apart, but little more than that. The war then becomes a contest of endurance, and we're not likely to win. (Yes, lots of American troops stayed in West Germany and South Korea for several decades—some remain there still—but they were deterring wars, not fighting and dying in one.)

As for fighting from afar: With a mix of special-operations forces and airstrikes, it's appealing in the abstract, but it neglects the mundane realities of warfare—that you need good intelligence to know who and where the bad guys are, and that to get good intelligence you need troops on the ground, and more than a handful of commandos, to cultivate and earn the local people's trust.

The proposal made a few months ago by Sen. Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to focus more on training than on fighting—and to send no more U.S. troops until the Afghan army has grown substantially—makes sense. Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that enlarging the Afghan army was the key to success (and to America's exit). In March, when Obama ordered another 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, Gates assigned 4,000 of them—the 4th brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, a highly decorated combat unit—specifically to train Afghan soldiers.

However, in this war, "training" is done on the job—not so much by drilling and exercising the Afghan soldiers on bases (though there is some of that) but rather by leading, observing, and fighting alongside them out in the field. In other words, the line between "support troops" and "combat troops," ambiguous to begin with, is fuzzier still here. And at least in the short run (for the next few years), it's unlikely that enough Afghans can be trained quickly enough or thoroughly enough to secure the country on their own.

So we come to the option that President Obama is reportedly going to take, to some degree, in some fashion, in his speech Tuesday night (though press leaks of this sort haven't always been accurate): to send tens of thousands more troops—maybe not the 40,000 extra that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, wants, but some number not much smaller.

The key question here is not so much how many more troops Obama sends but, rather, what he decides they should do (and we don't yet know his decision on that point, either). Still, some questions can be raised in advance.

If he decides on a counterinsurgency strategy (which emphasizes protecting the population more than chasing terrorists), the Army field manual's calculations suggest that something like 400,000 troops would be needed—and, even under the most optimistic assumptions, there's no way that U.S., NATO, and Afghan armies combined will amass anywhere near that many forces anytime soon, if ever.

This is why much of the strategy will likely involve cultivating Pashtun tribal leaders to fight the Taliban and prodding relatively moderate Taliban groups to turn against the more militant ones—in short, buying key people off, whether through persuasion, money, weapons, ammunition, logistical support, or the supply of basic services.

Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, has long been saying that success in Afghanistan has to involve, to some extent, striking a deal with enemies. "This is how you end these kinds of conflicts," he said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in October 2008. There is, he added, "no alternative to reconciliation."

Petraeus is very agile at this sort of enterprise, as he demonstrated in 2003 in Mosul as commander of the 101st Airborne Division, and in 2007, with the "Sunni Awakening," as commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq.

But two concerns arise when mulling the transfer of these notions to Afghanistan. First, Petraeus had something to offer the Iraqi Sunnis. In Mosul, he handed out jobs (for as long as the money lasted, which, alas, wasn't long). In the Awakening, he provided military alliance after the tribal leaders (who initiated the contact) recognized that al-Qaida terrorists posed a greater threat than did the U.S. occupiers. He and McChrystal are now trying to reprise these sorts of deals in Afghanistan, but it's unclear whether they can offer much that's compelling to insurgent or fence-sitting Pashtuns.

Second, as smart as those two generals (and many of their advisers) are, how much do they really know about Afghan tribal politics, which (as they do know) are far more complex than Iraq's ethnic fissures and whose leaders are known to switch sides, and switch back again, at whim or the slightest provocation? (On this latter point, see the opening chapters of Dexter Filkins' 2008 book The Forever War.)

The United States has never fought this kind of war before (unless you count the Philippines, which lasted 40 years and involved a level of brutality that would never be countenanced today). We haven't been fighting this kind of war even in Afghanistan. (As the saying goes, we haven't been fighting for eight years but, rather, for one year, eight years in a row.) Starting to do so now, as even some of the advocates of escalation admit, is a large gamble with short odds.

So here's what it comes down to: This option might be a good idea if it worked, but the chances of its working are slim (though not zero); all the other options seem to be bad ideas, but they might cost less money and get fewer American soldiers killed (though not necessarily).

Which road is less unappetizing? I don't know. That's why I'm ambivalent.

Joe Klein is also ambivalent about Afghanistan but is worried about Pakistan:

… If the U.S. doesn't remain engaged in Afghanistan, the civilian government in Pakistan--already an incredibly shaky enterprise--will probably fall. Certainly, the Pakistani Army will be further empowered and will likely bolster its support for its Taliban allies in order to prevent India from establishing a foothold in Kabul. The possibility of a Pakistani Army coup scares the bejeezus out of expert like Bruce Riedel. It's not impossible that it would be an Islamist takeover. (Indeed, it's happened before: the coup that brought Zia al-Haq to power in the 1980s.)

The scariest national security problem we now face is the prospect of al-Qaeda-linked jihadis controlling the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. Like Fred Kaplan, I'm not optimistic that the U.S. effort can succeed in Afghanistan. But the notion that a U.S. withdrawal might empower the religious extremists in the Pakistani military does give me pause

The bottom line is we have the luxury of being something the President of the United States can’t be – ambivalent.

The risks to U.S. interests should Israel attack Iran

2009-11-28T23:58:00.005-05:00

Iran’s nuclear program was launched in the 1950’s as part of the Atoms for Peace program promoted by the United States. Western governments supported Iran’s nuclear program until the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Shah. Following the revolution, the Iranian government disbanded the nuclear program but revived it later.

Enrichment can be used to produce uranium for reactor fuel or (at higher enrichment levels) for weapons. Controversy over Iran's nuclear programs centers its failure to declare sensitive enrichment and reprocessing activities to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) coinciding with belligerent rhetoric by the Iranian leadership towards Israel. Israel, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and therefore not obligated to allow inspections by or report nuclear activities to the IAEA. Israel, surrounded by states that have expressed varying degrees of hostility towards it, has made it a policy not to allow any nearby country to develop a nuclear weapons program that might surpass the capability of Israel to defend itself. The Israeli air force bombed nuclear weapons sites in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.

The likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran has become a talking point with U.S. diplomats attempting to persuade Chinese support for pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program. The United States has a lot at stake in trying to resolve this conflict peacefully. Steven Simon at the Council for Foreign Relations (via Andrew Sullivan) assesses the risks to U.S. interests if Israel launches an attack on Iran:

Some observers would view an Israeli attack that significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear weapons capability as beneficial to U.S. counterproliferation objectives and ultimately to U.S. national security. The United States has a clear interest in the integrity of the NPT regime and the compliance of member states with meaningful inspection arrangements. The use of force against Iran’s nuclear program would, at a minimum, show that attempts to exploit the restraint of interested powers, manipulate the diplomatic process, game the NPT, and impede International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to nuclear-related facilities could carry serious penalties. Were Iran to acquire a nuclear weapons capability, the ability of the U.S. military forces to operate freely in the vicinity of Iran could, under some circumstances, be constrained. Looking into the future, a hostile Iran could also develop reliable long-range delivery systems for nuclear warheads that could strike American territory.

At the same time, an Israeli attack—even if operationally successful—would pose immediate risks to U.S. interests.

First, regardless of perceptions of U.S. complicity in the attack, the United States would probably become embroiled militarily in any Iranian retaliation against Israel or other countries in the region. Given uncertainties about the future of Iraq and a deepening commitment to Afghanistan, hostilities with Iran would stretch U.S. military capabilities at a particularly difficult time while potentially derailing domestic priorities.

Second, an Israeli strike would cause oil prices to spike and heighten concerns that energy supplies through the Persian Gulf may become disrupted. Should Iran attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz by mining, cruise missile strikes, or small boat attacks, these fears would become realized. According to the GAO, however, the loss of Iranian oil for eighteen months would increase prices by only $6 to $11/bbl, assuming that the International Energy Agency coordinated release of reserves. This said, at the onset of the crisis, prices might hit $200/bbl (up from the current level of around $77/bbl) for a short period but would likely quickly subside.

Third, since the United States would be viewed as having assisted Israel, U.S. efforts to foster better relations with the Muslim world would almost certainly suffer. The United States has an enduring strategic interest in fostering better relations with the Muslim world, which is distinct from the ruling elites on whom the United States depends for an array of regional objectives. In part, this interest derives from the need to lubricate cooperation between the United States and these governments by lowering some of the popular resentment of Washington that can hem in local leaders and impede their support for U.S. initiatives. A narrative less infused by anti-Americanism also facilitates counterterrorism goals and, from a longer-range perspective, hedges against regime change. The perceived involvement of the United States in an Israeli attack would undercut these interlocking interests, at least for a while.

Fourth, the United States has a strong interest in domestically generated regime change in Iran. Although some argue that the popular anger aroused in Iran by a strike would be turned against a discredited clerical regime that seemed to invite foreign attack after its bloody postelection repression of nonviolent opposition, it is more likely that Iranians of all stripes would rally around the flag. If so, the opposition Green movement would be undermined, while the ascendant hard-line clerics and Revolutionary Guard supporters would face fewer constraints in consolidating their hold on power.

Fifth, an Israeli attack might guarantee an overtly nuclear weapons capable Iran in the medium term.

Sixth, although progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian final status accord remains elusive, an Israeli strike, especially one that overflew Jordan or Saudi Arabia, would delay fruitful renewed negotiation indefinitely. Both Washington and Jerusalem would be too preoccupied with managing the consequences of an attack, while regional capitals would deflect U.S. appeals to upgrade relations with Israel as an incentive to concessions. If Hamas or Hezbollah were to retaliate against Israel, either spontaneously or in response to Iranian pressure to act, any revival of the peace process would be further set back.

Finally, the United States has an abiding interest in the safety and security of Israel. Depending on the circumstances surrounding an Israeli attack, the political-military relationship between Jerusalem and Washington could fray, which could erode unity among Democrats and embolden Republicans, thereby complicating the administration’s political situation, and weaken Israel’s deterrent. Even if an Israeli move on Iran did not dislocate the bilateral relationship, it could instead produce diplomatic rifts between the United States and its European and regional allies, reminiscent of tensions over the Iraq war.

Ft. Hood and the “clash of civilizations”

2009-11-11T10:41:00.002-05:00

There is not much we know yet about the man who committed the crimes at Ft. Hood other than he was an officer and a Muslim and about to be deployed to Afghanistan. We know nothing about his motivations to commit violence whether he was mentally deranged or under the influence of some extremist ideology. There seems to be no evidence to date that he was part of a larger conspiracy.

However, the absence of evidence of a conspiracy or little information on what was driving this man to act as he did has not preventing some in the press and on the internet from seeing Muslim Americans as untrustworthy aliens within the midst of a Christian majority country. Some have even called for a ban on Muslim Americans from the military. The underlying assumptions of this circling-the-wagons mentality with one set of Americans on the inside and another set of Americans on the outside is as unfair as it is ridiculous. And, in a larger political-global context, it is self-defeating. Marc Lynch explains:

Since the Ft Hood atrocity, I've seen a meme going around that it somehow exposed a contradiction between "political correctness" and "security." The avoidance of Nidal Hassan's religion out of fear of offending anyone, goes the argument, created the conditions which allowed him to go undetected and unsanctioned in the months and years leading up to his rampage. American security, therefore, demands dropping the "political correctness" of avoiding a confrontation with Islamist ideas and asking the "tough questions" about Islam as a religion and the loyalty of Muslim-Americans.

This framing of the issue is almost 100% wrong. There is a connection between what these critics are calling "political correctness" and national security, but it runs in the opposite direction. The real linkage is that there is a strong security imperative to prevent the consolidation of a narrative in which America is engaged in a clash of civilizations with Islam, and instead to nurture a narrative in which al-Qaeda and its affiliates represent a marginal fringe to be jointly combatted. Fortunately, American leaders -- from the Obama administration through General George Casey and top counter-terrorism officials -- understand this and have been acting appropriately.

It's worth walking through the connection once again, because how America responds to Ft. Hood really is important in the wider attempt to change the nature of its engagement with Muslim publics across the world. Get the response right, as the administration thus far has done, and they show that things really have changed. Get it wrong, as its critics demand, and the world could tumble back down into the 'clash of civilizations' trap which al-Qaeda so dearly wants and which the improved American approach of the last couple of years has increasingly denied it.

The grand strategy of al-Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues is, and has always been, to generate a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West which does not currently exist. Their great challenge is that the vast majority of Muslims reject their theology, ideology, strategy and tactics. That's especially true of American Muslims. They therefore feel the need to change the environment in which Muslims live in order to change their calculations about the appropriateness of extremist identities and ideologies and actions.

Terrorism is a means towards that end. The object is to create a violent, polarized environment in which Muslims are forced to embrace a narrow, extreme version of Muslim identity. They want Muslims to accept a master narrative in which the Islamic umma is existentially threatened by Western aggression, and the only theologically and strategically appropriate individual response is to join the jihad in the path of god (as they have defined it).

They recognize that most Muslims won't embrace this radical conception of their identity just through messaging, internet rhetoric, or preaching. To make inroads with mainstream Muslim communities, they need to change the context in which they live -- to render their status quo unacceptable and to make their narrative resonate. And for that to happen, they need a lot of help -- for the targeted governments to take inflammatory measures against their Muslim populations, for the non-Muslim citizens in the targeted countries to discriminate against them, and for the media to fan the flames of hatred and mistrust.

Understanding this strategy points towards some fairly obvious guidelines for judging various responses. Al-Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues don't just want their targets to overreact with blanket crackdowns on the mainstream Muslim community -- they are counting on it. They want to create a homogenous, undifferentiated Islam on whose behalf they speak and a coherent master narrative which justifies and validates their actions. American reactions which feed AQ's master narrative, lump together disparate Muslim movements, and tar a wide range of Muslims with the AQ brush therefore serve al-Qaeda's strategy. Responses which disrupt AQ's narrative, disaggregate the Muslim world and relegate AQ to a marginal fringe frustrate its strategy.

A lot of people -- some well-meaning, some clowns or worse -- evidently want the American response to the Ft. Hood shootings to revive the post-9/11 "war of ideas" and "clash of civilizations" anti-Islamic discourse. It's a jihad, they shout, demanding careful scrutiny of the loyalty of American Muslims. That's what they seem to mean by the demand to throw away "political correctness" and confront the ideological menace. The overall effect of their recommendations, however, would be to revive the flagging al-Qaeda brand and to greatly strengthen the appeal of its narrative. And that's exactly what we should not want.

I don't think it's going to happen. President Obama and his national security team clearly rejects such strategic misconceptions. They understand the importance of combining effective police work and international cooperation with a carefully calibrated rhetoric and strategic communications campaign. Americans have learned a lot since 9/11. And if the careful police work and investigation uncovers real ties to al-Qaeda, then I expect they will pursue those leads and carry out the appropriate response quietly and efficiently --- but without inflaming public hostilities, scoring cheap political points, or fueling the al-Qaeda narrative.

The US Senate tradition of stonewalling democracy

2009-11-10T12:18:00.002-05:00

Under our federal system of government established in the 18th century, the legislature is divided into two bodies – one that represents people and one that represents states. The latter is the United States Senate. There is very little that is democratic about the Senate. The apportionment of representation currently leaves approximately two-thirds of the Senators representing approximately one-third of the American population. Senators were not popularly elected until the passage of the 17th Amendment less than one-hundred years ago. And, of course, there are arcane rules such as the filibuster which is used to thwart majority rule.

Senate rules permit a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless a 3/5ths of the Senate (60 out of 100 Senators – previously 2/3rds or 67 out of 100 before 1975), brings debate to a close by invoking cloture. Previously, the filibustering senator(s) could delay voting only by making an endless speech. Currently, they only need to indicate that they are filibustering, thereby preventing the Senate from moving on to other business until the motion is withdrawn or enough votes are gathered to allow the Senate to proceed with the nation’s business.

When the House of Representatives passed a proposal for national health-care reform, Senator Joseph Lieberman threatened to filibuster the bill when presented to the Senate. Benjamin Sarlin and Samuel Jacobs examine the tradition of obstructionism in the Senate:

When Sen. Joe Lieberman issued fresh threats to filibuster any health-care reform proposal including a public option, he did more than just blunt the momentum generated by the House of Representatives’ passage of a bill this weekend. Lieberman also took his place in a venerable line of legislators bent on using parliamentary procedure to hold up the works. The deans of delay have already been hard at work this Congress, blocking Obama’s nominations for the federal bench and slowing the appointment of the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. It's all becoming too much for Majority Leader Harry Reid, who let loose on the GOP for obstructionist tactics last week after Republicans held up a bill extending unemployment benefits for weeks, even though it passed unanimously after they relented.

These tactics have a rich history. Beginning in the 19th century—historians usually trace the first major threat of a legislative slowdown to 1841—the filibuster became the obstructionist’s weapon of last resort—a way for a passionate minority, sometimes a minority of one, to put the breaks on legislation. The marathon-length address embraced by crusaders and cranks alike—and knew no partisan bounds.

The filibuster was once a muscular event, if one that required a flair for the theatrical (Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York singing “South of the Border”) or absurd (Louisiana Sen. Huey Long giving recipes for fried oysters). Filibustering was as physical a contest as politicking could be—Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes; Sen. Wayne Morse held up an oil bill for 22 hours and 26 minutes in 1953; most recently, D’Amato filibustered for more than 15 hours against a bill that would close typewriter factory in his district. Senators had to put their backs, knees, and throats on the line in support of their principles.

“The onus has been turned on the leader to get the 60 votes,” said Sarah Binder, co-author of Politics or Principle: Filibustering in the United States Senate. “Why? Why don’t they put those senators' feet to the fire and make them stand all night? In large part there are such pressing agendas that no one really wants to sacrifice the time.”

Not everyone sees this change as an improvement. Harry McPherson, who has seen plenty of filibusters since serving as counsel to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1950s, said it may be time to bring the sleepover back to the Senate.

“Why is it that certain people throw up their hands if they don’t have 60 votes? Why don’t they just go ahead and force the opponents to filibuster? Filibustering is not a pleasant thing to do,” McPherson said. “In 1960, the place was full of cots. Senators were sleeping in all kinds of places. Many of these people, more then than now, were elderly people. It was quite unpleasant.”

The filibuster isn’t the only weapon at a delay-minded senator’s disposal. The anonymous hold—by which one senator can secretly hold up a bill or appointment and force the majority leader to go through a time-consuming hoops to overcome the objections—has become increasingly popular in recent years. The use of such tactics helps explain why President Obama has had considerable difficulty getting his judicial nominees and executive-branch appointments confirmed.

So who are the most epic obstructionist senators today? While there is no reliable means of tallying filibusters and holds, some lawmakers have truly distinguished themselves in recent years. Remember: the further from the center of power a member is, the more attractive these tactics designed to protect the minority appear to be…..

Read the entire article here. Sarlin and Jacobs point to some the key obstructionists – Joe Lieberman, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Mitch McConnell, Sam Brownback, and Robert Byrd – in the current Senate.

The greatest health care system in the world?

2009-11-05T08:57:00.002-05:00

Whenever there is a debate about any major change in the laws or services of society there is a perfectly legitimate concern about whether or not the change is really needed. It’s the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” line of thinking that comes into play. It is a reasonable concern to raise but sometimes some people will go out of their way to overlook the obvious in defending the status quo.

The American health care system is one of the least efficient in the delivery of services in the West and is one of the most expensive in the world. In the current debate about health care defenders of the status quo warn against any changes at all because of the superiority of the American system. Nicholas Kistof examines the outcomes of our health care system:

The moment of truth for health care is at hand, and the distortion that perhaps gets the most traction is this:

We have the greatest health care system in the world. Sure, it has flaws, but it saves lives in ways that other countries can only dream of. Abroad, people sit on waiting lists for months, so why should we squander billions of dollars to mess with a system that is the envy of the world? As Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama puts it, President Obama’s plans amount to “the first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known.”

That self-aggrandizing delusion may be the single greatest myth in the health care debate. In fact, America’s health care system is worse than Slov—er, oops, more on that later.

The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile), according to the latest World Health Organization figures. We rank 37th in infant mortality (partly because of many premature births) and 34th in maternal mortality. A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland.

Canadians live longer than Americans do after kidney transplants and after dialysis, and that may be typical of cross-border differences. One review examined 10 studies of how the American and Canadian systems dealt with various medical issues. The United States did better in two, Canada did better in five and in three they were similar or it was difficult to determine.

Yet another study, cited in a recent report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, looked at how well 19 developed countries succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” such as those where a disease could be cured or forestalled. What Senator Shelby called “the best health care system” ranked in last place.

The figures are even worse for members of minority groups. An African-American in New Orleans has a shorter life expectancy than the average person in Vietnam or Honduras.

I regularly receive heartbreaking e-mails from readers simultaneously combating the predations of disease and insurers. One correspondent, Linda, told me how she had been diagnosed earlier this year with abdominal and bladder cancer — leading to battles with her insurance company.

“I will never forget standing outside the chemo treatment room knowing that the medication needed to save my life was only a few feet away, but that because I had private insurance it wasn’t available to me,” Linda wrote. “I read a comment from someone saying that they didn’t want a faceless government bureaucrat deciding if they would or would not get treatment. Well, a faceless bureaucrat from my private insurance made the decision that I wouldn’t get treatment and that I wasn’t worth saving.”

It’s true that Americans have shorter waits to see medical specialists than in most countries, although waits in Germany are shorter than in the United States. But citizens of other countries get longer hospital stays and more medication than Americans do because our insurance companies evict people from hospitals as soon as they can stagger out of bed.

For example, in the United States, 90 percent of hernia surgery is performed on an outpatient basis. In Britain, only 40 percent is, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute.

Likewise, Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries — but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take, McKinsey said.

Opponents of reform assert that the wretched statistics in the United States are simply a consequence of unhealthy lifestyles and a diverse population with pockets of poverty. It’s true that America suffers more from obesity than other countries. But McKinsey found that over all, the disease burden in Europe is higher than in the United States, probably because Americans smoke less and because the American population is younger.

Moreover, there is one American health statistic that is strikingly above average: life expectancy for Americans who have already reached the age of 65. At that point, they can expect to live longer than the average in industrialized countries. That’s because Americans above age 65 actually have universal health care coverage: Medicare. Suddenly, a diverse population with pockets of poverty is no longer such a drawback.

That brings me to an apology.

In several columns, I’ve noted indignantly that we have worse health statistics than Slovenia. For example, I noted that an American child is twice as likely to die in its first year as a Slovenian child. The tone — worse than Slovenia! — gravely offended Slovenians. They resent having their fine universal health coverage compared with the notoriously dysfunctional American system.

As far as I can tell, every Slovenian has written to me. Twice. So, to all you Slovenians, I apologize profusely for the invidious comparison of our health systems. Yet I still don’t see anything wrong with us Americans aspiring for health care every bit as good as yours.

Progress on three fronts – Iraq, Iran and Pakistan

2009-10-27T09:22:00.002-04:00

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced President Obama as winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize there were some Americans who claimed he had not earned it. A few rather condescendingly came up with lists of things he could do to earn it.

Yet in the eight and a half months this administration has been in office the President has made solid accomplishments in foreign policy and started movements on different fronts that can lead to real peace and stability. Barack Obama campaigned on a platform of withdrawing troops from Iraq, engaging the Iranians on their nuclear program, and persuading the Pakistanis that the Taliban and Al Qaida operating on their soil was their problem. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Afghanistan are still up in the air but progress in Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan are real. Juan Cole grades Obama’s progress in Salon:

When Obama came into office in January, 142,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq, conducting regular patrols of the major cities. His Republican rivals were dead set against U.S. withdrawal on a strict timetable. He faced something close to an insurrection from some of his commanders in the field, such as Gen. Ray Odierno, who opposed a quick departure from Iraq. Moreover, Obama assumed the presidency at a time when Iran and the U.S. were virtually on a war footing and there had been no direct talks between the two countries on most of the major issues dividing them. In February, the government of Pakistan virtually ceded the Swat Valley and the Malakand Division to the Pakistani Taliban of Maulvi Fazlullah, allowing the imposition of the latter's fundamentalist version of Islamic law on residents, and Islamabad had no stomach for taking on the increasingly bold extremists.

Eight months later, it is a different world. While it is still early in his presidency, and there is too much work unfinished to give him an overall grade, it's already apparent he's outperforming his predecessor.

Iraq: B Obama has decisively won the argument over Iraq policy. Despite the massive bombings in Baghdad on Sunday -- the most deadly since 2007 -- the U.S. troop withdrawal is ahead of schedule and seems unlikely to be halted. One reason is that the security situation in Iraq, while shaky, did not deteriorate when U.S. troops ceased their urban patrols on June 30 (a date Iraqis celebrated as "Sovereignty Day"). Occasional big explosions obscure the reality of reduced guerrilla attacks. According to the Pentagon, civilian casualties have been steadily declining since late summer. Even John McCain said that Sunday's carnage should not delay the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq -- a 180-degree turn in policy for the former presidential candidate.

The process of U.S. disentanglement from Iraq has been gradual, generating no big headlines, no "Obama brings 22,000 troops out of Iraq, cuts war spending by $30 billion." But, in fact, troop levels are down to about 120,000 from 142,000 early this year, and spending on the war has fallen, from $180 billion in 2008 to $150 billion this year. Many things could still go wrong in Iraq, affecting the ability of the U.S. to meet the current timetable, but so far the Iraqi security forces are generally keeping order (there were horrific bombings when the U.S. was in control, too). He can be faulted for not working closely enough with the Nouri al-Maliki government to ease the transition, hence a grade of B instead of an A.

Iran: A There has also been movement on Iran. On Oct. 1 the administration fulfilled its campaign pledge by joining other members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany in Geneva to jawbone with Iran on the nuclear issue. As a result, Iran accepted that a United Nations inspection team would visit the newly announced enrichment facility near Qom, and on Monday inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at the Fardo plant. The acceptance of inspectors is an excellent sign. As long as Tehran remains willing to allow U.N. inspections, both at Natanz near Isfahan and at Fardo (which is not operational but could eventually house 3,000 centrifuges), neither facility can be used to produce fissionable material. Obama has changed the West's dynamics with Iran by direct negotiation, something that 63 percent of the American people support.

Pakistan: B Then there is Pakistan. The Obama administration came into office determined to whittle away the "state's rights" prerogatives of the Pashtuns, who form about 12 percent of the Pakistani population, of which the tiny minority of Taliban had taken advantage. From its inception, the Pakistani federal government had inherited from the British Empire a policy of not attempting to rule the tribal Pashtuns too heavy-handedly. In addition, the Pakistani military uses some Taliban and other guerrilla groups to project influence in the Pashtun areas of neighboring Afghanistan, making the generals reluctant to move against them. In spring-summer, the Obama administration convinced the Pakistani government to launch a major military operation against the Taliban in the Swat Valley. Despite temporarily displacing 2 million residents, the operation enjoyed substantial success and gained wide popular support from a Pakistani population -- including most Pashtuns -- increasingly appalled at the brutality of Taliban rule. In October, the military launched a similar operation against the Taliban in South Waziristan, despite a raft of bombings aimed by the militants at deterring the federal government from coming after them.

Obama has, moreover, signed a $7.5 billion civilian aid package that encourages economic, educational and medical development and puts pressure on the civilian government to keep the military under its control. The Bush administration gave most of its aid in the form of military weaponry or support, something of which polling shows the Pakistani public disapproves. Obama intends to build clinics and schools and to develop an infrastructure that might help fight militancy more effectively than any drone strikes can.

Obama's Pakistan approach, of building state capacity and improving the economy and basic services, while dealing with the Pakistani Taliban through large-scale military operations, may or may not succeed. But compared to his predecessor's policy of just handing over billions to corrupt military officers, some of whom have links to factions of militants, Obama's policies have been far more coherent. His use of unmanned predator drones to kill suspected al-Qaida operatives and the aid bill's demand for the supremacy of civilian rule over the military are both unpopular in some quarters, because of fears that the U.S. is turning the country into a sort of colony and infringing against its sovereignty. Obama may need to be less heavy-handed in the future to avoid a popular backlash. If not for this insensitivity to Pakistani popular opinion, he might deserve an A. The Swat and South Waziristan campaigns, at least, appear to have the support of the Pakistani public.

… Far from accomplishing nothing in his first eight months, Obama has been a whirlwind of activity and has already gained a place in the Iraqi, Iranian and Pakistani history books. …

You can read the complete article here.

White House decision on Afghanistan: Take your time but don’t dither

2009-10-22T09:17:00.002-04:00

Tom Ricks lays out four simple rules for the White House internal debate on the future of the war in Afghanistan: 1) the generals are not necessarily right, even about military operations, and especially about strategy; 2) presidents should take all the time they need; 3) presidents should not take any more time than they need; and, 4) the debate should be kept as quiet as possible. Ricks writes:

In the summer of 1942, FDR had his most serious disagreement with his military leaders. He wanted to get the U.S. military into action against the Nazis. Fearing that Stalin might cut another deal with Hitler, FDR wanted to show Stalin and the Soviets that the Americans were getting into the fight, and not just letting Russians bleed. Also, Roosevelt had congressional mid-term elections coming up, and feared that his Democrats would lose heavily. Roosevelt believed that an American-led invasion of North Africa was just the ticket. He pushed endlessly for it-only to find his top generals, along with his secretary of war, deeply and even bitterly opposed to him.

Army Gen. George C. Marshall, who was effectively chief of two of today's services, the Army and the Air Force, not only was against the invasion of North Africa; he distrusted FDR's motives, thinking the president was pushing for the move for cheap domestic political reasons. In Europe, Eisenhower was equally opposed. He privately called July 22, 1942, the day of FDR's decision to go ahead with the invasion, dubbed Operation Torch, "the blackest day in history."

What bothered the military men most of all was that invading Africa in 1942 meant that a cross-Channel invasion of Europe wouldn't take place in 1943. There just weren't enough troops, tanks, aircraft, and supplies available to fight in both places. So Roosevelt's determination to invade North Africa meant that D-Day couldn't take place until sometime in mid-1944; Eisenhower calculated probably August of that year.

The irony of all this is that we now know the generals were wrong in opposing Operation Torch—not just strategically but militarily. Roosevelt was right on both counts. It was important to Stalin that we get into the war, and doing so directly aided the Russians, by pulling German aircraft from the Eastern Front to the taxing task of supplying the Africa Corps across the Mediterranean by air. We also know now that the U.S. military was hardly prepared to fight a seasoned enemy on the ground in Europe and that it needed to take several small steps, such as amphibious landings in Africa, in order to learn how to get across the beach in Normandy much later. The defeat of the U.S. Army by the Germans at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia (remember the early scenes of the movie Patton?) provided a needed shock to the Army. Training was tightened up, and lackluster generals like Lloyd Fredendall were replaced by aggressive officers like Patton. Even then, the invasion of Sicily the following summer provided another needed shakedown, and gave American soldiers more valuable seasoning.

Crossing the English Channel in 1944 instead of 1943, the Americans were a year better, and the Germans were a year weaker-especially in the air. Had the American, British and Canadians invaded Normandy in 1943, they might well have been hurled back into the sea. Eisenhower then would have been compelled to issue that famous note he drafted taking the blame for the failure. It began, "Our landings have failed and I have withdrawn the troops."

Of course, the conflict in Afghanistan isn't World War II. Even so, I think there are multiple lessons to take away from this, especially because both FDR and Obama had to consider taking risks with people's lives:

First, the generals are not necessarily right, even about military operations, and especially about strategy, which in a democracy must make political sense. In the Afghan case, I think Gen. McChrystal's plan, which calls for a major troop increase in order to carry out a counterinsurgency campaign, is better than any alternative I can see (especially a return to whack-a-mole counterterrorism, supposedly advocated by VP Biden). But the president shouldn't just go along with military advice, even if it is nearly unanimous.

Second, presidents should take all the time they need. The U.S. military wants to have Obama and the people behind this decision. But you need to make a decision and stick to it-not re-open the debate. Even after FDR made his decision, Marshall continued to try to oppose it quietly, or at least re-visit the issue, but was ignored by the president.

Third, don't take any more time than you need. That is, don't dither. Troops need time to train for where they are going. Iraq and Afghanistan are very different places, with remarkably different cultures and terrains, and so units preparing to deploy would like to know months beforehand where they are going. In this case, I thought President Obama had made his decision back in March, and so did a lot of officers. He has some 'splaining to do to the military and to the American people. It matters not just what Obama decides on Afghanistan, but how he does it. He needs to bring the country along with him.

Finally, keep the debate as quiet as you can. We know now how much Marshall and other generals opposed the president on this key step in World War II, but we didn't know it back then. Whoever leaked McChrystal's assessment did President Obama no favors, and made the decision-making process far more difficult. As Marshall angrily wrote in a different context, "If everything pertaining to the Army has to be put on a town meeting basis, we might as well quit before we start."

Bottom line: The Torch debate, while intense, happened behind closed doors. And Roosevelt didn't do it twice. Even then, he took a big political hit. On Nov. 3, 1942, the Democrats lost 101 seats in the House of Representatives, leaving them a majority of just 14. Despite Marshall's suspicions, Operation Torch kicked off five days after the election, much to the disgust of the White House press secretary, Steve Early. The attack went slowly but, ultimately, successfully. I hope Obama is as lucky.

McDonnell’s style-and-stealth campaign in Virginia’s race for governor

2009-10-20T09:17:00.003-04:00

It used to be that Virginia’s suburbs were leaning or solidly Republican. Changes in demographics have now made the suburbs – particularly those in Northern Virginia – the battleground for swing voters. That is where Tim Kaine won the governorship in 2005 and where Barak Obama was able to carry the state in both the 2008 primary and general Presidential elections. For Creigh Deeds to carry on the Democratic trend his campaign needs to focus on swing suburban voters as well as motivate those hundreds of thousands of first-time and irregular voters the Obama campaign successfully turned out last year. So far it does not look promising. The Washington Post endorsed Deeds this past Sunday but the speculation is the endorsement will not work the same magic for Deeds as it did in the spring primary.

Bob McDonnell, 55, makes little mention of his conservative beliefs in his run for governor. In response to questions raised about the master’s thesis he wrote while a student at televangelist Pat Robertson’s Regent University in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family and said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators" he has tried to change the subject saying he should be judged by what he has done in office, including efforts to lower taxes and stiffen criminal penalties. Despite an initial drop in his poll numbers following publicity about the thesis, he seems to have successfully distanced himself from the document.

The 93-page thesis culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families -- a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. Over a decade in the Virginia General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

The McDonnell campaign so far has done exactly what it needs to do – run a stealth conservative campaign in which the right-wing rank and file are satisfied with a wink and a nod so as not to scare off suburbanite swing voters or motivate the Democratic base into turning out in larger numbers than they appear they will at this point two weeks before the election. Of course, what these swing voters and unmotivated Democrats fail to appreciate is that a significant McDonnell win will have coattails carrying in more unsavory candidates. Max Blumenthal examines the campaign:

Last summer, after Virginia state Senator Creigh Deeds crushed his rivals in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, a veteran Democratic consultant named Lowell Feld offered the Deeds campaign some advice. Feld told me he urged Deeds to immediately launch an attack campaign painting his Republican rival, state Attorney General Bob McDonnell, as “Pat Robertson’s Manchurian Candidate.” If Deeds wavered, Feld was convinced McDonnell could make inroads in the liberal-leaning but fiercely competitive suburbs of Northern Virginia.

“Virginian independents vote on who holds a drink better, who can converse with a wide variety of people in a clever way,” says Professor Larry Sabato. “So whoever passes what I call the suburban cocktail party test usually wins. And McDonnell passes with flying colors.”

While many Republican candidates pander to the Christian right to win elections in evangelical-heavy states, McDonnell has done exactly the opposite in the Virginia governor’s race: He's appealing to the sensibilities of comparatively moderate Northern Virginian voters. But that’s not because he’s a moderate. In fact, McDonnell is a consummate culture warrior; a graduate of Pat Robertson’s law school, Regent University, and a personal friend of the far-right televangelist, who donated heavily to his past campaigns.

During an appearance on Robertson’s 700 Club in 2007, McDonnell said his four years at Regent “gave me the insight about what our Founders believed about government and about their view of the Constitution that I’ve been carrying with me on the job today.”

Instead of following Feld’s advice, the Deeds campaign spent the dog days of June and July raising money. By the time Deeds engaged McDonnell on abortion in August—the Republican has opposed the practice even in cases of rape and incest—the smooth-talking, telegenic McDonnell was already scoring big with swing voters on transportation and economic issues. McDonnell’s success has instilled the national GOP with newfound confidence, prompting Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to hail him as the “flower of new leadership” and the vanguard of a “Republican renaissance.”

Deeds appeared to gain new life when McDonnell’s damaging graduate thesis surfaced in early September. The candidate himself, perhaps in a moment of pride, mentioned it in passing to a Washington Post reporter, a foolish mistake that sparked her curiosity. Voters were thus exposed to an impassioned manifesto that read like a manual for implementing theocracy. In the 93-page document, McDonnell denounced working women as “detrimental for the family,” called on the government to favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators,” and attacked a Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control for married couples. [W]hen the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality,” McDonnell proclaimed, “the government must restrain, punish, and deter.”

Despite a concerted effort by the Deeds campaign to present McDonnell’s thesis as his “blueprint for governing,” McDonnell remains the clear favorite to win. With only two weeks until Election Day, he is leading by as much as seven points in most recent polls.

Unlike many Christian-right candidates, his image is easily relatable to suburban independents. During his appearance on the 700 Club, McDonnell revealed himself as a stealth candidate who learned through Robertson’s mentoring to conceal his hard-right ideology behind a moderate veneer. “[Regent] taught me the real importance of being a Christian elected official,” he remarked. “It’s not just what you say but it’s also the style of how you say it and acting in a degree of civility…without compromising principle.”

According to Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, McDonnell has successfully exploited his genial image to outmaneuver Deeds in the state’s key swing districts. “Virginian independents vote on who holds a drink better, who can converse with a wide variety of people in a clever way,” Sabato told me. “So whoever passes what I call the suburban cocktail party test usually wins. And McDonnell passes with flying colors.”

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Sabato added that historic trends favor Republicans in Virginia the year after Obama’s victory. “You can call it a Republican resurgence if you want,” he remarked, “but if we had a presidential turnout this year, Deeds would win. Instead, the Republicans are excited because they’re tired of losing and they want to send a message.”

Sabato predicted that as many as 1 million of the Democrats—primarily first-time voters, the young, and minorities—who showed up to deliver Obama a record number of votes, will not even bother to vote this year. Because Virginia is a competitive political environment with a diverse population, this year’s governor’s race may reflect broader national trends heading into the 2010 congressional midterm elections.

While Obama has stumped for Deeds and plans to make another trip to the Old Dominion, many local Democratic insiders have all but given up on him. They worry that if he loses by more than three points, hard-right Republican candidates will dominate down-ticket races. Among the new crop of right-wing upstarts is Barbara Comstock, a conservative flack running for the House of Delegates. While in Washington, Comstock helped run Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s defense fund and served as the communications director for George W. Bush’s Department of Justice, working with Regent University graduate Monica Goodling to install political cadres as U.S. attornies throughout the department.

“Comstock is bringing tons of money in,” Feld said, “and if Deeds gets his ass kicked, she is very likely to win.”

Even more worrisome for Virginia Democrats is the prospect of Ken Cuccinelli winning the attorney general’s race. Cuccinelli is a Catholic traditionalist who has accused pro-choice advocates of “killing…the children.” He recently boasted that he is the most conservative candidate to run for statewide office in his lifetime. An outspoken ally of the Tea Party Patriots, Cuccinelli has announced he was “considering” not getting Social Security numbers for his eight children because the government program “is being used to track you.”

“If McDonnell wins big,” Sabato stated, “Cuccinelli gets in on his coattails.”

Whatever the margin of victory is on November 3, McDonnell is likely to interpret a victory as a blessing from heaven—and set his sights on higher office. “There are other opportunities out there,” he told Robertson in 2007. “But what I can do now is be the best attorney general I can be. If I do that, the Lord will open other doors for me.”

Drawing police and military personnel into a world of false conspiracy theory

2009-10-19T10:18:00.002-04:00

It’s never clear as to how serious to take political fringe groups that peddle paranoia. They are nothing new to the political scene of any country and in this one they have an absolute First Amendment right believe and say what they wish. On the other hand, the nonsense they promote can sow seeds of violence by convincing those without a firm grasp of reality that they are in danger and must act. Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran, was one who became convinced of the tyranny of the American government and acted on this conviction by killing 168 people by bombing the Federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

News comes of a new group, the Oath Keepers, urging military and law enforcement personnel to disobey orders they deem unlawful. Their list of orders they would refuse include a few that sound downright civil libertarian such as the refusal to conduct warrantless searches and refusal to detain American citizens as “unlawful combatants” but others are completely loopy such as refusal to turn American cities into concentration camps and assisting foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people. The suggestion of these latter points and similar items is that the country is on the verge of this actually happening.

The group is planning a national conference in Las Vegas later this month. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has this:

… Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.

More specifically, the group's members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming "giant concentration camps," a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years.

It's a Cold War-era nightmare vision with a major twist: The occupying forces in this imagined future are American, not Soviet.

"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here," Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer, said in an interview with the Review-Journal. "My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.

"We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution, we'll fight with you."

That type of rhetoric has caught the attention of groups that track extremist activity in the United States.

In a July report titled "Return of the Militias," the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center singled out Oath Keepers as "a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival."

The Patriot movement, so named because its adherents believe the federal government has stepped on the constitutional ideals of the American Revolution, gained traction in the 1990s and has been closely linked to anti-government militia and white supremacist movements.

The movement is blamed for spawning Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

"I'm not accusing Stewart Rhodes or any member of his group of being Timothy McVeigh or a future Timothy McVeigh," law center spokesman Mark Potok said. "But these kinds of conspiracy theories are what drive a small number of people to criminal violence. ... What's troubling about Oath Keepers is the idea that men and women armed and ordered to protect the public in this country are clearly being drawn into a world of false conspiracy theory."

****
The group's Web site, www.oathkeepers.org, features videos and testimonials in which supporters compare President Barack Obama's America to Adolf Hitler's Germany. They also liken Obama to England's King George III during the American Revolution.

One member, in a videotaped speech at an event in Washington, D.C., calls Obama "the domestic enemy the Constitution is talking about."

According to the law center, militia groups are re-emerging in this country partly as a result of racial animosity toward Obama.

As mentioned above, the Southern Poverty Law Center is concerned about the group. Here is what they have to say about the Oath Keepers in a recent SPLC report on the resurgence of far-right militias:

Oath Keepers, the military and police organization that was formed earlier this year and held its April muster on Lexington Green, may be a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival. Members vow to fulfill the oaths to the Constitution that they swore while in the military or law enforcement. "Our oath is to the Constitution, not to the politicians, and we will not obey unconstitutional (and thus illegal) and immoral orders," the group says. Oath Keepers lists 10 orders its members won't obey, including two that reference U.S. concentration camps.

That same pugnacious attitude was on display after conservatives attacked an April report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that suggested a resurgence of radical right-wing activity was under way. "We will not fear our government; they will fear us," one man, who appeared to be on active duty in the Army, said in an angry video sent to the Oath Keepers blog. In another video at the site, a man who said he was a former Army paratrooper in Afghanistan and Iraq described President Obama as "an enemy of the state," adding, "I would rather die than be a slave to my government." The Oath Keepers site soon began hawking T-shirts with slogans like "I'm a Right Wing Extremist and Damn Proud of It!"

In April, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — a Yale Law School graduate and former aide to U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (a Texas Republican and hard-line libertarian) — worried about a coming dictatorship. "We know that if the day should come where a full-blown dictatorship would come, or tyranny … it can only happen if those men, our brothers in arms, go along and comply with unconstitutional, unlawful orders," Rhodes told conspiracy-minded radio host Alex Jones. "Imagine if we focus on the police and military. Game over for the New World Order."

He's not the first to think so. In the 1990s, retired Phoenix cop and conspiracy enthusiast Jack McLamb created an outfit called Police Against the New World Order and produced a 75-page document entitled Operation Vampire Killer 2000: American Police Action Plan for Stopping World Government Rule.

It's not known how large Oath Keepers is. But there is some evidence beyond the group's mere existence to suggest that today's Patriots are again making inroads into law enforcement — the leak of the DHS report, along with those of a couple of similar law enforcement reports, was likely the work of a sworn officer. Rhodes claims to know a federal officer leaked the DHS report, and says Oath Keepers is "hearing from more and more federal officers all the time."

The group does seem to be on the radar of federal law enforcement officers. In May, a member complained on the group's website of a visit to his farm by FBI agents who asked him, he said, about training he provides in firearms, survival skills and the like.

One Oath Keeper is longtime militia hero Richard Mack, a former sheriff of a rural Arizona county who collaborated with white supremacist Randy Weaver on a book and who, along with others, won a U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened the Brady Bill gun control law in the 1990s. "The greatest threat we face today is not terrorists; it is our federal government," Mack says on his website. "One of the best and easiest solutions is to depend on local officials, especially the sheriff, to stand against federal intervention and federal criminality." Mack's views echo those of the Posse Comitatus, which believed that sheriffs are the highest law enforcement authorities in America. "I pray for the day that a sheriff in this country will arrest an IRS agent for trespassing or attempting to victimize citizens in that particular sheriff's county," Mack said in a video he made for Oath Keepers.

Restricting legal and safe abortions does not reduce abortions – contraception does

2009-10-16T09:15:00.002-04:00

A report from the Guttmacher Institute shows that increased use of contraceptives has pushed global abortion rates down, but unsafe abortions kill 70,000 women each year and seriously harm or maim millions more.

Those fighting to restrict or ban outright legal and safe abortions work on the assumption that they are reducing the number of abortions taking place. Wrong. Illegal and unsafe abortions simply fill the void with many women left injured or dead. If the goal is to reduce the number of abortions then the solution is to make contraception easily available. It’s just that simple.

This from the BBC:

The Guttmacher Institute's survey found abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is legal and regions where it is highly restricted.

It did note that improved access to contraception had cut the overall abortion rate over the last decade.

But unsafe abortions, primarily illegal, have remained almost static.

The survey of 197 countries carried out by the Guttmacher Institute - a pro-choice reproductive think tank - found there were 41.6m abortions in 2003, compared with 45.5 in 1995 - a drop which occurred despite population increases.

Nineteen countries had liberalised their abortion laws over the 10 years studied, compared with tighter restrictions in just three.

But despite the general trend towards liberalisation, some 40% of the world's women live amid tight restrictions.

On some continents this is particularly pronounced: well over 90% of women in South America and Africa live in areas with strict abortion laws, proportions which have barely shifted in a decade.

Researchers also noted that while liberalisation was a key element in improving women's access to safer terminations, it was far from the only factor.

Even in countries where abortion is legal, lack of availability and cost may prove major obstacles. In India for example, where terminations are legally allowed for a variety of reasons, some 6m take place outside the health service.

The costs of unsafe abortions, which can include inserting pouches containing arsenic to back street surgery, can be high: the healthcare bill to deal with conditions from sepsis to organ failure can be four times what it costs to provide family planning services.

Every year, an estimated 70,000 women die as a result of unsafe abortions - leaving nearly a quarter of a million children without a mother - and 5m develop complications.

In the developed world, legal restrictions did not stop abortion but just meant it was "exported", with Irish women for instance simply travelling to other parts of Europe, according to Guttmacher's director, Dr Sharon Camp. In the developing world, it meant lives were put at risk.

"Too many women are maimed or killed each year because they lack legal abortion access," she said.

"The gains we've seen are modest in relation to what we can achieve. Investing in family planning is essential - far too many women lack access to contraception, putting them at risk."

Western Europe is held up as an example of what access to contraceptive services can achieve, and the Netherlands - with just 10 abortions per 1,000 women compared to the world's 29 per 1,000 - is held up as the gold standard.

Here, young people report using two forms of contraception as standard.

Even the UK, which has a relatively high rate, fares well in comparison to the US, where the number of abortions is among the highest in the developed world. The institute says this rate is in part explained by inconsistencies in insurance coverage of contraceptive supplies.

In much of eastern Europe, where abortion was treated as a form of birth control, abortion rates have dropped by 50% in the past decade as contraceptives have become more widely available.
And globally, the number of married women of childbearing age with access to contraception has increased from 54% in 1990 to 63% in 2003, with gains also seen among single, sexually active women.

But there were still significant unmet contraception needs, and a lack of interest among pharmaceutical companies in developing new forms of birth control that provide top protection on demand, the institute said.

The struggle for women’s rights in Iran

2009-10-15T09:37:00.002-04:00

The rights of women under Iran’s Islamic Republic have been a roller coaster. Cultural and legal restrictions are imposed, are eased over time, and then resurface in one form or another. It is all the more frustrating for Iranian women because the pre-revolution culture of education for women continues to this day. The educated female population is all too aware of discrimination in the workplace, of the unfair legal disadvantage women experience in marriage, and how adult women are treated as children in how they choose to dress.

Saeed Valadbaygi at Revolutionary Road discusses the treatment of women during the last few years of the Ahmdinejad government:

In 1386 (2007-March 2008), Ahmadinejad’s government entered a new phase in the treatment of women. With the change of the police commander of Greater Tehran, comprehensive efforts were made - in the name of public security - to limit the way women cover-up in public more than ever. The first phase of the Social Security Plan started at the beginning of the month of Ordibehesht, according to General Raddan, the head of the police forces of Greater Tehran, and was designed to confront women who were inappropriately dressed. At his first press conference, in 1386, General Raddan announced that bad dress consisted constituted wearing short trousers, short scarves and shawls and other short, tight or revealing clothing. According to him, bad dress disturbs society psychologically. But instances of bad dress were not limited to these items. Other long fabrics with slits on the side or back were a “New style for some women” which would be challenged. In the execution of this plan many women were arrested by police forces and taken to detention centers until their families brought them longer, "more appropriate" dress. There were numerous cases of women getting in trouble for the way they were dressed and even being by the police forces, prompting Hashemi Shahroodi to announce: “Bringing women and young adults to police stations only produces social harm”. This plea was ignored and the public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, announced: "Many of the women have come to Tehran from the provinces and if they don’t obey the law here they will be dealt with by the courts in their own home towns.

However, the oppression of women wasn’t limited to their cover. In the autumn days of that year there were whispers of a plan for "improving" gender quotas against female students. By implementing this plan, there would be 40 percent quotas for men without any competition for places, to prevent female students. Protest and gatherings took place against this decision, which made the head of the organization responsible to confirm gender acceptance in universities for entrance exams in 87, and a minimum acceptance of 30 percent male and female for the following year.

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… announcement of the details of a bill named the “Family Support Bill” launched a new phase in the public confrontation of the government against women. According to article 23 of this bill, which was reviewed by the Guardian Council on 4 Shahrivar, remarrying of men would be dependent on his wealth, the permission of the court and the first wife’s consent. This bill which was a bigger step to oppress women rights further, was added and submitted to the judiciary and parliament by the government illegally. Continued protest against this bill caused the 7th parliament to ignore the bill in the final months of its review. Their excuse for not reviewing this bill was the existence of other more urgent bills.

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In the past year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, the Social Security plan and the severity of restricting women's clothing, took a broader dimension. According to this plan, the Interior Ministry and chastity legislation are responsible for controlling bad dress and other crimes, and 88 people were arrested for committing these types of crimes. Harsh confrontations and the beating of a few women by police forces, raised public sensitivity to society and media objection, forced the president to send a letter to Sadegh Mahsooli, the Country Minister demanding the respect of citizens' rights in the last few months of his presidency. However, General Radaan, who was the patron of this plan, in many statements after the president’s letter announced: "The performance of police forces in this field is acceptable and other cultural units are responsible for lack of work and neglect". These continued statements prompted a rumour that government and police forces were in disagreement on this plan. As a result Ahmadi Moghadam, Head of police forces had to react and in a short interview with said: "Government and Naja (police forces) have no disagreement". Some political analysts believe that the government's retreat from implementing this plan was just an election tactic, otherwise they would’ve taken action during the past two years. Despite continued objections even by the Head of Judiciary, Ahmadinejad has never considered the freedom of women’s cover and their presence in society and public places, such that the very same women whom he doesn’t consider equal to men, but as a ornamental objects, to be put down even more because of their gender and end up at police forces detention centers.

Despite all the hard work during the presidency of Ahmadinejad to marginalize women from the public and social spaces around them, the wave of freedom supporters against female discrimination in social and legal rights was so extensive that for the first time in the last 30 years all three presidential candidates, in detailed statements talked of eliminating such discriminations. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the only candidate who did not make any promises to women and did not present any statement or plan in this regard.

You can read her entire blog post here.

President Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-13T10:21:00.002-04:00

There is no question that the choice by the Norwegian Nobel Committee of President Obama as winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize came as an almost universal surprise. The bewilderment came as to how the third standing U.S. President (Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were the first two) could receive the award so early in his term. That said, many Americans are proud their President was chosen. Others, particularly those who cheered the American loss of the 2016 Olympics, were outraged. It seems that people who would have difficulty naming the last ten Nobel Laureates have become overnight experts on the criteria for winning the award and how the Norwegians clearly made a mistake.

The award indicates recognition and appreciation for a new approach towards international relations by the world’s dominant player – a movement away from unilateralism and self-serving jingoism masquerading as “American Exceptionalism” of the past several years towards engagement with the world community working to solve common problems. It is a win-win move that will benefit the world community and, contrary to right-wing critics, the American people. According to the statement from the Nobel Committee:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Steve Clemons explains the significance of the award:

…the Nobel Committee's decision to make Obama the only sitting U.S. president since Woodrow Wilson to receive the Nobel Peace Prize shows the committee's clear-headed assessment that Obama's "unclenched fist" approach to dealing with the world's most thuggish leaders has had a constructive, systemic impact on the world's expectations of itself.

Obama has helped citizens all around the world -- including in the United States -- to want a world beyond the mess we have today in the Middle East and South Asia. They want a world where America is benign and positive, and where other leaders help in supporting the struggles of their people for better lives rather than securing themselves through crude power.

Obama has found a way in this interconnected world of cell phones, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking to reach a majority of the world's citizens with his message of hope for a better world. He speaks past the dictators to regular people and has, on the whole, raised global political expectations about everything from climate change to nuclear nonproliferation in ways that no one in history has done before.

Americans tend to look at everything from a U.S.-centric lens, and many woke up this morning shocked that Obama, who just saw a lot of his political capital wasted on trying to secure the 2016 Olympics for his hometown of Chicago, has gotten a fresh injection of sizzle to fill the Obama bubble.

The world has been mesmerized by Obama since he started to run for the presidency. The battle between Hillary Clinton and Obama for the Democratic nomination did more to educate the rest of the world about real political choice -- and about a system in which no candidates had an automatic lock on victory -- than any USAID program could have achieved.

Obama's decision to make the ulcerous Israeli-Palestinian negotiations one of the first foreign policy challenges of his administration, rather than the last, defied most seasoned analysts' expectations. His message to Iran's citizens, marking the Persian new year holiday of Nowruz, and his powerful and captivating speech in Cairo, Egypt, communicated to Muslims all around the world that their lives and their faith and their expectations for a better world were vital and as valid as any others.

From his perch in the White House, Barack Obama affirmed the humanity of Muslims and told them that America does value Muslim lives.

Obama's posture and rhetoric have reversed the collapse of hope and trust that the world's citizens had in America and stopped the degradation of America's image during the tenure of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney.

Should a U.S. president get the Nobel Peace Prize if he's about to send more U.S. troops, armed drones, bombs, tanks and other military hardware into the war-ripped zones in Afghanistan?
Or should Obama get the prize if he hasn't even succeeded in getting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations going? Or if he hasn't gotten Iran to drop its nuclear ambitions and to re-enter the international system on constructive terms?

The answer is yes.

I think that given how the odds were already so stacked against Obama on the global economic and security fronts, one can only be amazed at what this unlikely and fascinating president has done with "optics."

The night before Obama's inauguration, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accepted my congratulations and responded, "It's going to be tough, and right now we can only change the optics," meaning that political perceptions and appearances could be changed more quickly than hard realities.

What is brilliant about Obama and why he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize is that he is a global leader who clearly saw the gains that could be made in changing "the optics" of the global order, upgrading the level of respect between the United States and other nations, making a point of listening to other leaders.

Obama saw that before the world could move to a more stable and better global equilibrium, it had to believe it could -- and this is what Obama has done in ways that no other leader has in memory.

Obama will still make mistakes. Leaders will still wrestle with him. Hard choices and the gravity of war will still generate challenges for Obama's leadership.

But the Nobel Prize Committee has shrewdly given a key down payment for a kind of leadership it wants to see from the U.S. for many more years and given Obama another tool to help craft a new global social contract between the United States and other responsible stakeholders in the international system.

A legitimate Afghan partner means a legitimate Afghan election

2009-10-06T08:42:00.001-04:00

A significant factor in the decision about what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan is whether or not there is a competent and legitimate government in place. As the US learned in Vietnam, siding with a corrupt government does not advance the cause. Hamid Karzai came to power several following the toppling of the Taliban government to much fanfare. However, his administration has been plagued with corruption and he was reelected as President of Afghanistan in a process that was plagued by ballot stuffing and other means of electoral fraud.

Peter W. Gralbraith was dismissed as the United Nations Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan in September by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He had held the position since March and had serious disagreements with the UN’s Special Representative, Kai Eide, over the fraud in the 2009 Afghan presidential election.

He wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post:

Afghanistan's presidential election, held Aug. 20, should have been a milestone in the country's transition from 30 years of war to stability and democracy. Instead, it was just the opposite. As many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent, and lesser fraud was committed on behalf of other candidates. In several provinces, including Kandahar, four to 10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast. The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.

The election was a foreseeable train wreck. Unlike the United Nations-run elections in 2004, this balloting was managed by Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC). Despite its name, the commission is subservient to Karzai, who appointed its seven members. Even so, the international role was extensive. The United States and other Western nations paid the more than $300 million to hold the vote, and U.N. technical staff took the lead in organizing much of the process, including printing ballot papers, distributing election materials and designing safeguards against fraud.

Part of my job was to supervise all this U.N. support. In July, I learned that at least 1,500 polling centers (out of 7,000) were to be located in places so insecure that no one from the IEC, the Afghan National Army or the Afghan National Police had ever visited them. Clearly, these polling centers would not open on Election Day. At a minimum, their existence on the books would create large-scale confusion, but I was more concerned about the risk of fraud.

Local commission staff members were hardly experienced election professionals; in many instances they were simply agents of the local power brokers, usually aligned with Karzai. If no independent observers or candidate representatives, let alone voters, could even visit the listed location of a polling center, these IEC staffers could easily stuff ballot boxes without ever taking them to the assigned location. Or they could simply report results without any votes being in the ballot boxes.

Along with ambassadors from the United States and key allies, I met with the Afghan ministers of defense and the interior as well as the commission's chief election officer. We urged them either to produce a credible plan to secure these polling centers (which the head of the Afghan army had told me was impossible) or to close them down. Not surprisingly, the ministers -- who served a president benefiting from the fraud -- complained that I had even raised the matter. Eide ordered me not to discuss the ghost polling centers any further. On Election Day, these sites produced hundreds of thousands of phony Karzai votes.

At other critical stages in the election process, I was similarly ordered not to pursue the issue of fraud. The U.N. mission set up a 24-hour election center during the voting and in the early stages of the counting. My staff collected evidence on hundreds of cases of fraud around the country and, more important, gathered information on turnout in key southern provinces where few voters showed up but large numbers of votes were being reported. Eide ordered us not to share this data with anyone, including the Electoral Complaints Commission, a U.N.-backed Afghan institution legally mandated to investigate fraud. Naturally, my colleagues wondered why they had taken the risks to collect this evidence if it was not to be used.

In early September, I got word that the IEC was about to abandon its published anti-fraud policies, allowing it to include enough fraudulent votes in the final tally to put Karzai over the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. After I called the chief electoral officer to urge him to stick with the original guidelines, Karzai issued a formal protest accusing me of foreign interference. My boss sided with Karzai.

Afghanistan is deeply divided ethnically and geographically. Both Karzai and the Taliban are Pashtun, Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group, which makes up about 45 percent of the country's population. Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main challenger, is half Pashtun and half Tajik but is politically identified with the Tajiks, who dominate the north and are Afghanistan's second largest ethnic group. If the Tajiks believe that fraud denied their candidate the chance to compete in a second round, they may respond by simply not recognizing the authority of the central government. The north already has de facto autonomy; these elections could add an ethnic fault line to a conflict between the Taliban and the government that to date has largely been a civil war among Pashtuns.

Since my disagreements with Eide went public, Eide and his supporters have argued that the United Nations had no mandate to interfere in the Afghan electoral process. This is not technically correct. The U.N. Security Council directed the U.N. mission to support Afghanistan's electoral institutions in holding a "free, fair and transparent" vote, not a fraudulent one. And with so much at stake -- and with more than 100,000 U.S. and coalition troops deployed in the country -- the international community had an obvious interest in ensuring that Afghanistan's election did not make the situation worse.

President Obama needs a legitimate Afghan partner to make any new strategy for the country work. However, the extensive fraud that took place on Aug. 20 virtually guarantees that a government emerging from the tainted vote will not be credible with many Afghans.

As I write, Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission is auditing 10 percent of the suspect polling boxes. If the audit shows this sample to be fraudulent, the commission will throw out some 3,000 suspect ballot boxes, which could lead to a runoff vote between Karzai and Abdullah. By itself, a runoff is no antidote for Afghanistan's electoral challenges. The widespread problems that allowed for fraud in the first round of voting must be addressed. In particular, all ghost polling stations should be removed from the books ("closed" is not the right word since they never opened), and the election staff that facilitated the fraud must be replaced.

Afghanistan's pro-Karzai election commission will not do this on its own. Fixing those problems will require resolve from the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan -- a quality that so far has been lacking.

You can read the entire article here.

Rewriting the Bible so even conservatives can believe in it

2009-10-05T08:54:00.002-04:00

The Conservative Bible Project, brought to us by those fine folks at Conservapedia, is worried that the Bible is too liberal and new conservative version needs to available to set things right. One of the biggest problems they see is “translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.” They see the solution here by simply retranslating the King James Version into modern English. (Maybe they don’t know the King James Version is itself a translation.) The new Bible would need to meet certain guidelines to be correct:

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]

4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".

5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census

6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

They want to “identify pro-liberal terms used in existing Bible translations, such as ‘government‘ and suggest more accurate substitutes” as well as correct socialist terminology used in current English translations of the Bible such as the word “labored” (15 times) and “fellow” (55 times!).

Rod Dreher at Beliefnet sizes it up:

…the insane hubris of this really staggers the mind. These right-wing ideologues know better than the early church councils that canonized Scripture? They really think it's wise to force the word of God to conform to a 21st-century American idea of what constitutes conservatism? These jokers don't worship God. They worship ideology.

American imposed regime change in Iran – a particularly ridiculous and odious notion

2009-10-02T08:26:00.002-04:00

Joe Klein offers a little push-back to those advocating American imposed regime change in Iran:

This is a particularly ridiculous and odious notion--not that the Iranian regime isn't disgraceful and badly in need of a thorough, internal cleansing. It is ridiculous because the vast majority of Iranian dissidents have no intention of overturning the Islamic Republic, but want to reform it. They are joined now by a significant slice of the theocracy, which is appalled by recent events and have no desire to live in a military dictatorship quietly dominated by the Revolutionary Guards. They have made it clear that they are opposed to foreign economic sanctions, to foreign interference of any sort. Mir Hossein Mousavi came out against sanctions a few days ago, on the ground that they would hurt ordinary people more than they would hurt the regime.

What makes the call for regime change particularly tone-deaf and odious is history. Iranians--all Iranians--are extremely aware of past US meddling in their country's internal affairs. There was the CIA involvement in the 1953 coup against Mossedegh. There was also the not-so-covert US support for Saddam Hussein, including the provision of chemical precursors for the poison gas Saddam used in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The Iranian opposition knows that any association with the Great Satan will fatally taint their movement; they know that Barack Obama's low-key strategy has made life particularly tough on those, like Ahmadinejad, who feast on American bellicosity and overreach.

Finally, there is the question of standing. The idea that the U.S. has any right to push regime change anywhere, much less in a country that has taken no direct bellicose action against us, seems a neo-colonialist vestige. Two of the three similar situations that Kagan cites--the Philippines and Nicaragua--are banana republic examples from a different era; the third, Poland, was not achieved by U.S. actions, but by a global movement (of which we were a part) led by the Catholic Church. It should be understood: we are no longer in the coup business, Thank God. The era of self-delusional US imperialism, camouflaged by high-minded freedom slogans, should be safely put in the past as well. We should, of course, promote democracy wherever we can. The era of us imposing it must end.

Muddling through Afghanistan

2009-10-02T08:20:00.001-04:00

Marc Lynch argues that the time is not right to be making key strategic decisions about Afghanistan and there is a lot to be said in favor of “muddling through” Afghanistan for the time being:

I've been hearing two things a lot about the President's choices on Afghanistan strategy: first, that it's time to either "go all in or get out", the second that he is "dithering" in the face of an urgent decision. Both seem to me profoundly unhelpful, driven more by political positioning than by serious analysis. Sending more troops may in fact be the right call -- I'm open-minded on that question -- but the attempts to bull-rush the process are problematic on their face.

"All in or get out" is a typical false choice offered by advocates of any position who support the "all in" option in question, since it's so much easier to argue the risks of "getting out" than it is to argue against intermediate options. And as for the rush, why make such a momentous choice precisely at a moment of total political chaos in Afghanistan and the near complete absence of a legitimate partner on which to build due to the rampant fraud which eviscerated the Afghan election?

This is particularly problematic because, as the President's advisers clearly understand, there is absolutely no reason to think that Gen. McChrystal's current request is really "all in". McChrystal’s review is admirably clear and quite honest that even with such changes, the policy may not succeed.

The overwhelming odds are that if the escalation option is chosen, in a year or two we will be confronting the exact same questions. More troops will once again be needed, a new strategy will once again be demanded, we’ll still be reading about how the Taliban is out-communicating us and about how the corruption of the Karzai government poses a serious challenge. And then the exact same debate will recur… the Kagans will demand more troops, dark mutterings about tensions between the administration and the generals will roil the waters, the Washington Post editorial page will publish debates where everyone is on the same side, the smart think-tankers will agonize over the tough choices but ultimately come down on the side of escalation. Might as well have this debate now, and get it right.

I'm skeptical about the ambitious goals on offer because the odds of it succeeding on those terms are exceedingly low. If the goal is the creation of a functioning, effective, legitimate Afghan state then I would say the prospects are close to zero. Not with 40,000 troops, not with 400,000 troops, not in twelve months and not in twelve years. Afghanistan has gone through nearly thirty years of non-stop war and is as close to a functional anarchy as most anyplace on Earth. I am unmoved by arguments that there was once a decent state fifty or a hundred years ago. Thirty years of continuous war and anarchy are not so easily overcome – with or without the Afghan election fiasco. If the goal is lower than that – local level security, keeping the Taliban on the ropes, etc – then maybe this can be done for a while. More troops would help do it in more places, but I doubt it would add up to the national level.

Which brings me to a serious question: what’s so terrible with muddling through for a while, giving the new tactics a chance to work at the local level while preventing the worst-case scenarios from happening? Why choose between escalation or withdrawal at exactly the time when the political picture is at its least clear? Why not maintain a lousy Afghan government which doesn’t quite fall, keep the Taliban on the ropes without defeating it, cut deals where we can, and try to figture out a strategy to deal with the Pakistan part which all the smart set agrees is the real issue these days? Why not focus on applying the improved COIN tactics with available resources right now instead of focusing on more troops? If the American core objective in Afghanistan is to prevent its re-emergence as an al-Qaeda safe haven, or to prevent the Taliban from taking Kabul, those seem to be manageable at lower troop levels.

Good for the President's team to take the time to have a serious debate about this and not give in to the politically expedient path (in either direction). The readouts on yesterday's big Afghan strategy meeting reflect exactly what you want to see from a President making a tough call. I would urge them to set aside both of these corrosive, misleading notions -- that the choice is between "all in" or "getting out", and that the time for decision ins now. Why is this not the right time to muddle through, avoiding the worst outcomes and changing strategy at the local level where possible, while waiting for the political situation in Afghanistan to clarify? Muddling through might not make for sexy headlines, but it’s probably good enough for what the U.S. needs to accomplish in Afghanistan for now and is closer to the resources actually available.