Monthly Archives: March 2008

ANALYSIS: An emerging split between al Qaeda and the Taliban?

Al Qaeda bloggers’ sparring with Taliban could signal key differences
By Ron Synovitz, RFE/RL, March 12, 2008

An Internet-fueled squabble between Taliban leaders and influential Al-Qaeda sympathizers over nonviolent tactics and foreign influence in Afghanistan hints at deep disagreements that could alter counterinsurgency efforts in that country.

Islamic extremists who regularly post messages to a pro-Al-Qaeda website in Egypt are accusing Afghanistan’s Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad. Prominent Taliban have responded by lashing back with criticism of their own.

The development suggests a rift is emerging between the Taliban leadership and religious extremists in the Arab world — including the Al-Qaeda network that the Taliban had hosted in Afghanistan while it planned the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

Such a break could affect Afghan government efforts to convince Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and peacefully resolve their differences with officials, which could in turn influence whether non-Afghan Al-Qaeda fighters continue to be welcomed among the Taliban. [complete article]

OPINION: Getting out of Iraq

Thinking through withdrawal
By Marc Lynch, Abu Aardvark, March 18, 2008

What would be the effects on Iraqi domestic politics of an American announcement of a full withdrawal from Iraq over a 16-18 month period? For the purposes of this memo, I consider the precise timeline of the withdrawal less important than the firm, credible, public commitment to withdrawal.

First, any plausible withdrawal scenario must consider how the major actors will respond to a coming US departure and try to pre-empt most likely flashpoints. A US withdrawal should not seen exclusively as the removal of a barrier between otherwise unchanged Iraqi actors. A US withdrawal would change the identities, interests, expectations, and behavior of all actors. These transformative effects are a major reason why a firm and credible commitment to withdrawal on a clear timetable is necessary to achieve an acceptable outcome. Without such a commitment, Iraqi and regional actors alike will continue on their current course, while recent security gains will crumble as the political window closes. Without it, a Maliki-led or Maliki-like government will not be likely to deliver substantive political accommodation. Only faced with the loss of an open-ended U.S. commitment would its calculations would change. The same is true for every other actor in the Iraqi arena: Shia and Sunni, Green Zone and local, pro-US or insurgency. [complete article]

Have five years of war in Iraq achieved anything?
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, March 18, 2008

Imagine it’s early 2003, and President George W. Bush presents the following case for invading Iraq:

We’re about to go to war against Saddam Hussein. Victory on the battlefield will be swift and fairly clean. But then 100,000 U.S. troops will have to occupy Iraq for about 10 years. On average, nearly 1,000 of them will be killed and another 10,000 injured in each of the first 5 years. We’ll spend at least $1 trillion on the war and occupation, and possibly trillions more. Toppling Saddam will finish off a ghastly tyranny, but it will also uncork age-old sectarian tensions. More than 100,000 Iraqis will die, a few million will be displaced, and the best we can hope for will be a loosely federated Islamic republic that isn’t completely in Iran’s pocket. Finally, it will turn out that Saddam had neither weapons of mass destruction nor ties to the planners of 9/11. Our intervention and occupation will serve as the rallying cry for a new crop of terrorists.

It is extremely doubtful that Congress would have authorized such a war or that the American people would have shouted, “Bring it on!” [complete article]

CAMPAIGN 08 & EDITORIAL: When did betrayal become a duty?

When did betrayal become a duty?
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 19, 2008

According to the conventional wisdom among those who understand the way politics works, Barak Obama has for several days needed to do something with Rev Jeremiah Wright: “throw him under the bus.”

Obama refused to do so. He refused to treat his association with his pastor as a liability that political expediency would dictate he must disown. Some might see that as a foolish act of loyalty, yet if we were to pause for a moment there might be another and much more obvious explanation — an explanation that Obama himself has already provided: the YouTube clips of Rev Wright are not the definitive representation of who he is.

Consider for a second something that seems to have received very little if any attention. For a week we have been seeing the same clips over and over again. If these truly provide a well-rounded representation of Rev Wright’s character, why have we not seen more? We know these clips came from DVDs of sermons freely available. There must be hours of sermons from which other clips could be taken, so why just these few fleeting snippets?

The most obvious explanation is that so far, for no lack of effort, no one has been able to cull anything else that is particularly damning. Indeed, anything else might actually have the effect of diluting the impact of what has already been so widely disseminated. In other words, if people saw more of Rev Wright they might find him much less shocking.

It is presumably for that reason that Trinity Church has made other YouTube clips available. Critics will no doubt regard this as an effort at damage control, yet when the church says that they see their pastor as a victim of a “modern-day lynching,” it’s not hard to understand why — especially if you take the time to listen to some of the other things he has to say.

Here then are a couple of clips of Rev Wright (and one his successor, Rev Otis Moss III) that are unlikely to appear on Fox News, CNN or ABC any day soon:

Congregation defends Obama’s ex-pastor
By Eli Saslow, Washington Post, March 18, 2008

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright spent 36 years teaching this congregation how to recognize injustice, and his parishioners sense it all around them now. On Sunday, more than 3,000 of them filled Trinity United Church of Christ on the city’s South Side to pray for their former pastor. They read a handout that described Wright’s newfound infamy as a “modern-day lynching.” They scrawled his name in tribute on the inside of their service programs and applauded as Wright’s protege, the Rev. Otis Moss III, stepped to the pulpit.

“No matter what they want,” Moss said, “we will not shut up.”

A simmering controversy over Wright’s provocative rhetoric and his connection to Sen. Barack Obama ignited last week after some of his old sermons were aired, prompting the Democratic presidential candidate to condemn them and severing Wright’s connection to the campaign. But inside this mega-church that Wright built up from financial ruin, his most loyal listeners offered a different interpretation: It is Wright, and black theology in its entirety, that is misunderstood. [complete article]

NEWS & VIEWS ROUNDUP: March 17

Euphemism and American violence
By David Bromwich, New York Review of Books, April 3, 2008

Maybe the most disturbing implication of the famous sentence “They create a desolation and call it peace” is that apologists for violence, by means of euphemism, come to believe what they hear themselves say.

On July 21, 2006, the tenth day of the Lebanon war, Condoleezza Rice explained why the US government had not thrown its weight behind a cease-fire:

What we’re seeing here, in a sense, is the growing — the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one.

Very likely these words were improvised. “Growing pains” seems to have been Rice’s initial thought; but as she went on, she dropped the “pains,” turned them into “pangs,” and brought back the violence with a hint of redemptive design: the pains were only birth pangs. The secretary of state was thinking still with the same metaphor when she spoke of “pushing,” but a literal image of a woman in labor could have proved awkward, and she trailed off in a deliberate anticlimax: “pushing forward” means “not going back.”

Many people at the time remarked the incongruity of Rice’s speech as applied to the devastation wrought by Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon and Beirut. Every bombed-out Lebanese home and mangled limb would be atoned for, the words seemed to be saying, just as a healthy infant vindicates the mother’s labor pains. Looked at from a longer distance, the statement suggested a degree of mental dissociation. For the self-serving boast was also offered as a fatalistic consolation—and this by an official whose call for a cease-fire might well have stopped the war. “The birth pangs of a new Middle East” will probably outlive most other phrases of our time, because, as a kind of metaphysical “conceit,” it accurately sketches the state of mind of the President and his advisers in 2006. [complete article]

Globalization Bush-style
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, March 16, 2008
Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a small town somewhere near the Southern California coast. You’re going about your daily life, trying to scrape by in hard times, when the missile hits. It might have come from the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — its pilot at a base on the outskirts of Tehran — that has had the village in its sights for the last six hours or from the Russian sub stationed just off the coast. In either case, it’s devastating.

In Moscow and Tehran, officials announce that, in a joint action, they have launched the missile as part of a carefully coordinated “surgical” operation to take out a “known terrorist,” a long-term danger to their national security. A Kremlin spokesman offers the following statement:

“As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them. We share common goals with respect to fighting terrorism. We will continue to seek out, identify, capture and, if necessary, kill terrorists where they plan their activities, carry out their operations or seek safe harbor.”

A family in a ramshackle house just down the street from you — he’s a carpenter; she works at the local Dairy Queen — are killed along with their pets. Their son is seriously wounded, their home blown to smithereens. Neighbors passing by as the missile hits are also wounded.

The conservative case for Barack Obama
By Andrew J. Bacevich, The American Conservative, March 24, 2008
…why consider Obama? For one reason only: because this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival.

To appreciate that possibility requires seeing the Iraq War in perspective. As an episode in modern military history, Iraq qualifies at best as a very small war. Yet the ripples from this small war will extend far into the future, with remembrance of the event likely to have greater significance than the event itself. How Americans choose to incorporate Iraq into the nation’s historical narrative will either affirm our post-Cold War trajectory toward empire or create opportunities to set a saner course.

The neoconservatives understand this. If history renders a negative verdict on Iraq, that judgment will discredit the doctrine of preventive war. The “freedom agenda” will command as much authority as the domino theory. Advocates of “World War IV” will be treated with the derision they deserve. The claim that open-ended “global war” offers the proper antidote to Islamic radicalism will become subject to long overdue reconsideration.

Trying times for Trinity
By Lisa Miller, Newsweek, March 15, 2008
The year was 1971, race riots flared across the country, and on the South Side of Chicago a tiny church was dying. Many blacks, disillusioned by their ministers’ failure to bring home the promises of the civil-rights movement, were abandoning Christianity. They converted to Islam or Judaism or fringe sects—or refused to go to church at all. This particular congregation was looking for a pastor to lead them through these troubling times, and before they launched their search, they wrote a blue-sky description of the community they wanted to be: we want to “serve as instruments of God and church,” the statement said, and we want to “elimin[ate] those things in our culture that lead to the dehumanization of persons.” They wanted to be Christian, in other words. And they wanted to keep fighting.

On New Year’s Eve, the search committee interviewed its final candidate. Jeremiah Wright Jr. was a young pastor enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Wright belonged to a group of black intellectuals who embraced “black liberation theology,” the idea that blacks shouldn’t have to choose between “Malcolm and Martin,” as the theologians put it. They could be Christian and black; they could be black and proud. When Barack Obama responded to the altar call at Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988, he was responding, in part, to that message.

GOP presidential candidate seen as best to handle a 3 a.m. crisis at the White House
Zogby, March 16, 2008
The recent Hillary Clinton campaign advertisement asking who Americans want answering the phone in the White House when a crisis erupts at 3 a.m. has sparked a national debate about which candidate would best handle such a phone call. But while the ad was designed to boost the Clinton candidacy, likely voters nationwide say they would feel more secure having Republican John McCain answering the call of a crisis, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

Given the choice between Clinton and McCain, 55% preferred McCain while 37% would want Clinton to answer the phone, while 9% said they were unsure.

White male vote especially critical
By Dan Balz, Washington Post, March 17, 2008
The results in Ohio in particular raised questions about whether Obama can attract support from this crucial demographic. They also brought to the forefront the question of whether racial prejudice would be a barrier to his candidacy in some of the major industrial battlegrounds in the general election if he becomes the Democratic nominee.

An examination of exit polls in Wisconsin and Ohio, states with striking similarities, shows that many more working-class white men in Ohio said race was a factor in their vote on March 4 than was the case in Wisconsin. The analysis makes clear that race was not the deciding factor in the Ohio primary but did contribute to Clinton’s margin of victory.

Many voting for Clinton to boost GOP
By Scott Helman, Boston Globe, March 17, 2008
For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.

A sudden change of heart? Hardly.

Six signs the U.S. is not headed for war in Iran
By William M Arkin, Washington Post, March 16, 2008
There are a couple of military adages — “An Army marches on its stomach” and “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics” — that should adequately explain why the United States is not headed for war with Iran. There is no actual preparation for such a war going on. Moreover, the U.S. military is not in a position to carry off such an operation.

But then, we live in a world of “shock and awe,” where long-range air and missile strikes suggest the ability to use force without the commitment of boots on the ground. When Iran war junkies make their case for some kind of “October surprise,” they usually cite the need for preemption and say an attack can be unleashed by President Bush and Vice President Cheney with the mere push of a button.

OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Prankster president

Soft shoe in hard times
By Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 16, 2008

Everyone here is flummoxed about why the president is in such a fine mood.

The dollar’s crumpling, the recession’s thundering, the Dow’s bungee-jumping and the world’s disapproving, yet George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly, tap dancing and singing in a one-man review called “The Most Happy Fella.”

“I’m coming to you as an optimistic fellow,” he told the Economic Club of New York on Friday. His manner — chortling and joshing — was in odd juxtaposition to the Fed’s bailing out the imploding Bear Stearns and his own acknowledgment that “our economy obviously is going through a tough time,” that gas prices are spiking, and that folks “are concerned about making their bills.”

He began by laughingly calling the latest news on the economic meltdown “a interesting moment” and ended by saying that “our energy policy has not been very wise” and that there was “no quick fix” on gasp-inducing gas prices.

“You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch,” he said. “If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it’s important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch.”

Dude, you’re already in the ditch.

Boy George crashed the family station wagon into the globe and now the global economy. Yet the more terrified Americans get, the more bizarrely carefree he seems. The former oilman reacted with cocky ignorance a couple of weeks ago when a reporter informed him that gas was barreling toward $4 a gallon. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — I imagine Bush learned his happy-go-lucky trick some time in his adolescence. It’s a familiar ruse everyone remembers from the classroom. There’s a kid who’s mediocre but proud and he thinks he can avoid being embarrassed by his poor performance. He parades his lack of seriousness as though to say, “You know I could really excel if I wanted to, but none of this matters to me so I can’t be bothered. You can study and I’ll party.” This is Bush’s exit strategy from the White House. He wants to tell us he fooled us; that when we thought he was doing badly because we thought he was incompetent, in truth he wasn’t even trying.

ANALYSIS: Talking to Hamas without talking to Hamas

Mideast players differ on approach to Hamas
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, March 16, 2008

During a trip to the Middle East this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice served as an informal go-between for Hamas and its sworn enemy, the government of Israel, helping to arrange a tentative truce, according to U.S., Israeli and Arab officials.

The United States has long considered Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that seized the Gaza Strip last year, to be a terrorist group, and the Bush administration remains firmly opposed to direct talks until Hamas renounces violence and recognizes Israel. President Bush has decried Hamas’s “devotion to terrorism and murder” and said there cannot be peace until the group is dismantled.

Throughout her trip, Rice never publicly uttered the term “cease-fire.” But at the request of Egypt, Rice privately asked Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to issue a public statement that Israel would halt attacks if Hamas stopped firing crude rockets at Israeli towns and cities. One day later, Egyptian officials could point to the statement in talks with Hamas, and the daily barrage suddenly stopped.

Rice’s actions underscore the nuanced series of signals that are typical of Middle East diplomacy, but they also highlight the central role today of Hamas, formally called the Islamic Resistance Movement, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now some experts — and even Israelis — are questioning whether the isolation of Hamas continues to make sense. [complete article]

NEWS, OPINION & FEATURE: The cult of the suicide bomber

The cult of the suicide bomber
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 14, 2008

No one doubts that the road to Baghdad – or Tal Afar or Fallujah or Mosul – lies through Syria, and that the movement of suicide bombers from the Mediterranean coasts to the deserts of Iraq is a planned if not particularly sophisticated affair. What is astonishing – what is not mentioned by the Americans or the Iraqi “government” or the British authorities or indeed by many journalists – is the sheer scale of the suicide campaign, the vast numbers of young men (only occasionally women), who wilfully destroy themselves amid the American convoys, outside the Iraqi police stations, in markets and around mosques and in shopping streets and on lonely roads beside remote checkpoints across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iraq. Never have the true figures for this astonishing and unprecedented campaign of self-liquidation been calculated.

But a month-long investigation by The Independent, culling four Arabic-language newspapers, official Iraqi statistics, two Beirut news agencies and Western reports, shows that an incredible 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Iraq. This is a very conservative figure and – given the propensity of the authorities (and of journalists) to report only those suicide bombings that kill dozens of people – the true estimate may be double this number. On several days, six – even nine – suicide bombers have exploded themselves in Iraq in a display of almost Wal-Mart availability. If life in Iraq is cheap, death is cheaper.

This is perhaps the most frightening and ghoulish legacy of George Bush’s invasion of Iraq five years ago. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least 13,000 men, women and children – our most conservative estimate gives a total figure of 13,132 – and wounded a minimum of 16,112 people. If we include the dead and wounded in the mass stampede at the Baghdad Tigris river bridge in the summer of 2005 – caused by fear of suicide bombers – the figures rise to 14,132 and 16,612 respectively. Again, it must be emphasised that these statistics are minimums. For 529 of the suicide bombings in Iraq, no figures for wounded are available. Where wounded have been listed in news reports as “several”, we have made no addition to the figures. And the number of critically injured who later died remains unknown. Set against a possible death toll of half a million Iraqis since the March 2003 invasion, the suicide bombers’ victims may appear insignificant; but the killers’ ability to terrorise civilians, militiamen and Western troops and mercenaries is incalculable. [complete article]

Stuck in the Iraq loop
By Fareed Zacharia, Newsweek, March 24, 2008

There is a paradox in the current situation in Iraq. We are told that the surge has worked brilliantly and violence is way down. And yet the plan to reduce troop levels—which was at the heart of the original surge strategy—must be postponed or all hell will once again break loose. Making sense of this paradox is critical. Because in certain crucial ways things are not improving in Iraq, and unless they start improving soon, the United States faces the awful prospect of an unending peacekeeping operation—with continuing if limited casualties—for years to come.

In a brilliant and much-circulated essay written in August 2007, “Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt,” David Kilcullen, a veteran Australian officer who advised Gen. David Petraeus during the early days of the surge, wrote, “Our dilemma in Iraq is, and always has been, finding a way to create a sustainable security architecture that does not require ‘Coalition-in-the-loop,’ thereby allowing Iraq to stabilize and the Coalition to disengage in favorable circumstances.” We have achieved some security in Iraq, though even this should not be overstated. (Violence is still at 2005 levels, which were pretty gruesome.) But we have not built a sustainable security architecture. [complete article]

Iraq’s insurgency runs on stolen oil profits
By Richard A Oppel Jr., New York Times, March 16, 2008

The Baiji refinery, with its distillation towers rising against the Hamrin Mountains, may be the most important industrial site in the Sunni Arab-dominated regions of Iraq. On a good day, 500 tanker trucks will leave the refinery filled with fuel with a street value of $10 million.

The sea of oil under Iraq is supposed to rebuild the nation, then make it prosper. But at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery here is diverted to the black market, according to American military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated — and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.

“It’s the money pit of the insurgency,” said Capt. Joe Da Silva, who commands several platoons stationed at the refinery.

Five years after the war in Iraq began, the insurgency remains a lethal force. The steady flow of cash is one reason, even as the American troop buildup and the recruitment of former insurgents to American-backed militias have helped push the number of attacks down to 2005 levels. [complete article]

CAMPAIGN 08 & EDITOR’S COMMENT: ‘We have to come together’

Coming together
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 15, 2008

For those of us who’ve never seen ourselves as part of the political mainstream (or maybe anything mainstream), it’s sometimes easy to forget that when Barak Obama talks about bringing the country together, he really means it.

Unity in opposition is a groove that’s easy to slide into. Solidarity that comes through facing the other can only be sustained because we choose not to face ourselves; we define what we are by declaring what we are not.

So at a moment when division seems to have become the substance of the presidential race, it’s worth listening to what Obama had to say today in Indiana:

The text of this part of Obama’s speech:

Let me just close my initial remarks by talking about bringing this country together. You know, Bobby Kennedy gave one of his most — gave one of his most famous speeches on a dark night in Indianapolis. Right after Dr. King was shot. Some of you remember reading about this speech. Some of you were alive when this speech was given. He stood on top of a car. He was in a crowd mostly of African Americans. And he delivered the news that Dr. King had been shot and killed. And he said, at that moment of anguish, he said, we’ve got a choice. He said, we’ve got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further so that we no longer see each other as Americans but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other. Or we can take a different path that says we have different stories, but we have common dreams and common hopes. And we can decide to walk down this road together. And remake America once again. And, you know, I think about those words often, especially in the last several weeks – because this campaign started on the basis that we are one America. As I said in my speech at the convention in 2004, there is no Black America, or White America, or Asian America, or Latino America. There is the United States of America. But I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. And I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody, you know, senses that there’s been this shift. You know, that you’ve been seeing in the reporting. You’ve been seeing some of the commentaries of supporters on all sides. Most recently, you heard some statements from my former pastor that were incendiary and that I completely reject, although I knew him and know him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships, but clearly had — but if all I knew was those statements that I saw on television, I would be shocked. And it just reminds me that we’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. That this country wants something different.

I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment, where we cannot forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us. I don’t want us to forget them. We have to acknowledge them and lift them up and when people say things like my former pastor said, you know, you have to speak out forcefully against them. But what you also have to do is remember what Bobby Kennedy said. That it is within our power to join together to truly make a United States of America. And that we have to do not just so that our children live in a more peaceful country and a more peaceful world, but that is the only way that we are going to deliver on the big issues that we’re facing in this country. We can’t solve health care divided. We cannot create an economy that works for everybody divided. We can’t fight terrorism divided. We can’t care for our veterans divided. We have to come together. That’s what this campaign is about. That’s why you are here. That’s why we’re going to win this election. That’s how we’re going to change the country.

CAMPAIGN 08, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Seizing the initiative

Why McCain might win
By Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, March 14, 2008

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama show few signs that they’re aware of it, but the general election campaign has already begun. And appropriately for the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, the pair have begun to destroy each other like the two crazy Irish cats of Kilkenny. The upshot is that both of them are already losing the general to John McCain. By the time the Democratic convention rolls around in August and the nomination is finally awarded, the battle may already be over.

Obama’s advisers point out, rightfully, that the Clinton campaign started this downward drift toward mutually assured destruction, Democratic-style, with its now infamous “red phone” ad before the critical Ohio and Texas primaries. Subtly but with devastating impact, the TV commercial raised questions about Obama’s preparedness to be commander in chief. The Obama campaign responded by effectively branding Hillary Clinton a liar about her own record. “As far as the record shows, Sen. Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue—not at 3 a.m. or at any other time of day,” top Obama adviser Greg Craig—a former close friend of Hillary’s—wrote this week in a widely circulated memo.

Winning elections is about setting the agenda and, while creating a positive image of oneself, negatively defining one’s opponent in the minds of the voters. This is happening for McCain—having Obama defined as unready and Hillary as lacking in integrity—without his having to lift a finger. If the current campaign keeps up—and there’s every sign it will—it’s likely that by summer irrepressible doubts about both Dems will have been lodged in the minds of the electorate. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Barak Obama — like most successful people — has been credited with possessing an excellent sense of timing. If there was ever a time when he desperately needed to seize the day, this is it. How can he do it?

Take the high road — no one should expect anything less from a candidate who presents himself as a unifier and natural leader — and call for a closed-door Democratic summit. He needs to reach out to Hillary Clinton and say, “I want to sit down with you and Howard Dean and for the three of us to arrive at a consensus about how we move forward in such a way that we ensure that when the party has a nominee, he or she will be able to lead a unified party.”

This isn’t about asking either campaign to accept defeat before they are ready to do so. It just means that they agree to pursue victory without doing so at the expense of the party.

NEWS: Talking to terrorists

Terror talks: would contacting al-Qaida be a step too far?
By Ian Black, The Guardian, March 15, 2008

[Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair’s chief of staff for 12 years] Jonathan Powell’s candid reflections on talking to terrorists in his book revealing an insider’s view of the Northern Ireland peace process will ring true to anyone who has worked at the highest levels of government – in Britain dealing with Northern Ireland, in France with Algeria, in Israel with Palestinian Islamists. But is his call that we should be prepared to communicate with al-Qaida a step too far?

Experts make a clear distinction between territorial-based groups such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbullah, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the jihadist movement inspired by Osama bin Laden, below. “Al-Qaida are what we call ‘incorrigible terrorists’,” said Peter Lehr of St Andrews University. “They have political demands but we cannot and should not meet them. We need oil so we can’t leave the Arabian peninsula and we can’t help them dismantle Israel. There’s nothing to discuss.”

Talking to Hamas and Hizbullah is a different matter, Lehr argues. “They are rational actors fighting for something negotiable, and with negotiations you start with maximum demands and whittle them down until you get agreement, or not.” [complete article]

CAMPAIGN 08: Clinton’s “experience”

Assessing Clinton’s “experience”
By Karen Tumulty, Michael Duffy and Massimo Calabresi, Time, March 13, 2008

In her race to win the democratic nomination against a first-term Senator from Illinois, Hillary Clinton has put the criterion of experience front and center. She often references what she says is 35 years of work that qualifies her to run the country. And the most important achievements Clinton cites are the ones she claims from her years as First Lady — a job that carries no portfolio but can wield enormous influence.

The nature of Hillary Clinton’s involvement was always a matter of great sensitivity in her husband’s White House. After her disastrous 1994 foray into health-care reform, Bill Clinton’s aides went out of their way to downplay her role in Administration decision making. She rarely appeared at meetings in which officials hashed out important policy trade-offs, but when the discussion centered on issues that were among her priorities, she sent her aides — much the way Vice President Al Gore did. “There were certain issues they kind of owned,” recalls Gene Sperling, who headed economic policy in the Clinton White House. The First Lady’s top concerns, he says, were children’s issues, health care, and foster-care and adoption policies.

Now the former First Lady claims at least a share of the credit for a wide range of the Clinton Administration’s signature accomplishments, both domestic and overseas. Does she deserve it? [complete article]

Clinton role in health program disputed
By Susan Milligan, Boston Globe, March 14, 2008

Hillary Clinton, who has frequently described herself on the campaign trail as playing a pivotal role in forging a children’s health insurance plan, had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress, according to several lawmakers, staffers, and healthcare advocates involved in the issue.
more stories like this

In campaign speeches, Clinton describes the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, as an initiative “I helped to start.” Addressing Iowa voters in November, Clinton said, “in 1997, I joined forces with members of Congress and we passed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.” Clinton regularly cites the number of children in each state who are covered by the program, and mothers of sick children have appeared at Clinton campaign rallies to thank her.

But the Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children’s health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, because of fears that it would derail a bigger budget bill. And several current and former lawmakers and staff said Hillary Clinton had no role in helping to write the congressional legislation, which grew out of a similar program approved in Massachusetts in 1996. [complete article]

Clinton’s foreign experience is more limited than she says
By William Douglas | McClatchy, March 11, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton claims that her experience in dealing with foreign affairs qualifies her to handle a crisis call at 3 a.m. and be commander in chief.

Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign accuses Clinton of exaggerating her foreign affairs experience. It says that nothing in her background shows that she’s more prepared to handle an international crisis than he is.

No question is more central just now to their rivalry for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton has said that Obama hasn’t passed the “commander-in-chief test,” but that both she and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain have. [complete article]

CAMPAIGN 08: Shocking video about Barak Obama’s church

CAMPAIGN 08 EDITORIAL: Rising to the Wright challenge

Rising to the Wright challenge
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 13, 2008

The “dirt” on Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been around for years, so why has ABC News chosen to highlight Obama’s controversial pastor now?

The race fire has been lit and those who believe it serves their political interests are happy to pour fuel on the flames.

How should Obama respond? It’s time for some jujitsu.

Let’s not confuse the package with the content.

In and of themselves, Wright’s statements are not totally outrageous. (I know. Some people will think it’s outrageous for me to say that.) What makes what he’s saying so inflammatory isn’t just what he’s saying but the way he’s saying it:

Wright is the scary, fiery, black preacher: the kind who might incite an insurrection. Contrast his tone, his body language, and his theatrical force with the calm, comforting, sensible message and sweet tone that comes from some of America’s favorite gentle men of God, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson:

Unless Wright’s passion — Wright’s unwhiteness — is really the issue, then instead of responding to his statements with some new formulation of reject-and-denounce, how about grabbing this bull by the horns and saying, OK, you want race to be a campaign issue? Let’s go for it!

“God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human,” says Rev Wright. Is this pure anti-American vitriol, or does Wright have a point?

One in a hundred Americans are behind bars.

That America, the land of the free, should have more people in prison than any other nation on earth is an issue that surely merits national attention.

If America’s prison population of 2.3 million was confined to one state, it would be a state bigger than New Mexico.

Among 20-34 year old black men, one in nine is incarcerated. This is a social disaster and it should be a national disgrace.

When it comes to issues such as this, the only people who can hold their hands on their hearts and say God Bless America are the shareholders of companies like Corrections Corporation of America who have seen their stock value and revenues steadily increase for the last eight years.

What should we be talking about? Rev Wright’s intemperate rhetoric? Or some of the things he’s calling attention to — even if he calls so loudly he might be hard to hear?

CAMPAIGN 08 & EDITOR’S COMMENT: What’s Hillary’s position on the Hitler Concept?

Hillary’s prayer: Hillary Clinton’s religion and politics
By Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet, Mother Jones, September 1, 2007

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian “cell” whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton’s prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or “the Family”), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to “spiritual war” on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship’s only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has “made a fetish of being invisible,” former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.

Clinton declined our requests for an interview about her faith, but in Living History, she describes her first encounter with Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship’s majestic estate on the Potomac. Coe, she writes, “is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — In a 2006 New York Times interview, Hillary Clinton said warmly that “Doug [Coe] was always very supportive of me.” One wonders then what her position might be on Coe’s promotion of the “Hitler concept”?

This is how Coe explained the concept in a conversation recounted in Harper’s:

“Do you know what a difference a friend can make? A friend you can agree with?” He smiled. “Two or three agree, and they pray? They can do anything. Agree. Agreement. What’s that mean?” Doug looked at me. “You’re a writer. What does that mean?”

I remembered Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which we had begun to memorize. Fulfill ye my joy, that ye be likeminded.

“Unity,” I said. “Agreement means unity.”

Doug didn’t smile. “Yes,” he said. “Total unity. Two, or three, become one. Do you know,” he asked, “that there’s another word for that?”

No one spoke.

“It’s called a covenant. Two, or three, agree? They can do anything. A covenant is . . . powerful. Can you think of anyone who made a covenant with his friends?”

We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name invoked numerous times in this context. Andrew from Australia, sitting beside Doug, cleared his throat: “Hitler.”

“Yes,” Doug said. “Yes, Hitler made a covenant. The Mafia makes a covenant. It is such a very powerful thing. Two, or three, agree.”

And Jeff Sharlet, the author of the Harper’s piece, in a subsequent interview went on to explain more about this concept as understood by members of Coe’s secretive organization:

All these guys Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden is another guy they cite a lot, are guys who understood the power of a political avant garde. That’s what they mean by the Hitler Concept.

If the evidence of disarray inside her campaign is any indication, it doesn’t seem that Hillary is making use of this Family principle. Even so, her association with Coe and his organization does little to burnish her Democratic credentials.

CAMPAIGN 08 FEATURE: McCain adviser wants to destroy Islam

McCain’s spiritual guide: destroy Islam
By David Corn, Mother Jones, March 12, 2008

Senator John McCain hailed as a spiritual adviser an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a “war” against the “false religion” of Islam with the aim of destroying it.

On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a “strong, true, consistent conservative.” The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain’s effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a “spiritual guide.”

The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook, including the 2005 Silent No More. In this work, Parsley decries the “spiritual desperation” of the United States, and he blasts away at the usual suspects: activist judges, civil libertarians who advocate the separation of church and state, the homosexual “culture” (“homosexuals are anything but happy and carefree”), the “abortion industry,” and the crass and profane entertainment industry. And Parsley targets another profound threat to the United States: the religion of Islam.

In a chapter titled “Islam: The Deception of Allah,” Parsley warns there is a “war between Islam and Christian civilization.” He continues:

I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.

Parsley is not shy about his desire to obliterate Islam. [complete article]

OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The slow rise and meteoric fall of Admiral “Fox” Fallon

American Icarus
By Mark Perry, Rootless Cosmopolitan, March 12, 2008

There is a view abroad, commonly held, that Admiral William “Fox” Fallon has been sacrificed, has been gotten out of the way, by the Bush Administration because he disagreed with its policies on Iran. That Fallon stood in the way of the neo-Conservative cabal who is bent on expanding the Middle East conflict and that, when given the order for the attack (at some point in the future), Fallon would have courageously refused the order and reversed the tide of history.

What bunk.

William Fox Fallon was and is a Navy officer and a patriot. As such, if given a legitimate order from the President of the United States, as passed through the legally constituted chain-of-command, he would have obeyed the order. Of this we can have absolutely no doubt. To do otherwise is treason and to believe otherwise is to believe that Fallon would have rejected every moment of training, every tradition of his service, every law and custom that has governed U.S. civilian-military relations. The problem is not that Fox Fallon disagreed with George Bush.

The problem is that he talked to Thomas Barnett. [complete article]

See also, The man between war and peace (Thomas Barnett) and Commander rejects article of praise (WP).

Editor’s Comment — Sometimes it’s better to get out sooner than later.

As much as I respect the knowledge and views of my friend and colleague Mark Perry, it’s hard for me to believe that Fallon didn’t know exactly what he was in for when agreed to spend several days with Thomas Barnett. Indeed, in addition to spending four-and-a-half days with him, Fallon later welcomed Barnett as a speaker at an event the admiral was hosting.

Barnett blogs: “… since I’d offered him a speech in return for the favor of letting me on the tour, and since his staff took that offer up by asking me to address the Bright Star post-exercise gathering of senior Mideast military leaders (which Fallon was hosting) in Cairo the weekend after the trip, I figured I’d get some chance for F2F [face-to-face] follow-up if required.”

Far from thinking that Fallon took a calculated risk in responding to Esquire’s invitation, I’m more inclined to think that on some level he got what he was asking for.

Barnett is upfront in spelling out his own motives where — in a comment on his blog — he refers to “outing” Fallon:

It’s the secrecy by which decisions are made that has poisoned the well. If “outing” any opposition to the administration’s line puts that person at risk, then is the journalist’s choice simply to ignore the internal debate to spare the public such knowledge?

Cause if it is, then we’re offering descriptions of our own government that historically are better leveled at authoritarian regimes, where America constantly needs to be careful shining a light on dissidents lest they fall under attack by authorities.

If we place our military leadership in that category, then this country is in a world of trouble.

The public’s right to know of internal debates on matters as crucial as to whether or not we go to war with Iran is sacrosanct in my mind. Wars of choice have to be national choices, not just leadership choices.

Fallon is now a free agent. Will he use his influence to more effect outside than he did inside the Pentagon? The answer to that may depend on who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, but if after a diplomatic silence of a few weeks, Ret Adm Fallon lends some solid military credibility to the campaign of the young senator from Illinois, I wouldn’t be surprised. And then, speculating even further over the horizon, why should we not ask: Which position offers the greater potential for Fallon to fulfill his stated mission?

He said, “I’d like to continue to do things that will be useful to the world and its inhabitants.”

Was he seeing himself as head of CENTCOM when he said that, or might he have had had some inkling that a larger brief lay ahead? Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of State, perhaps….

CAMPAIGN 08: Experience required

Senator Clinton’s claims of foreign policy experience are exaggerated
By Greg Craig, RealClearPolitics, March 11, 2008

When your entire campaign is based upon a claim of experience, it is important that you have evidence to support that claim. Hillary Clinton’s argument that she has passed “the Commander- in-Chief test” is simply not supported by her record.

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton played an important domestic policy role when she was First Lady. It is well known, for example, that she led the failed effort to pass universal health insurance. There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff. She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis. As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue – not at 3 AM or at any other time of day.

When asked to describe her experience, Senator Clinton has cited a handful of international incidents where she says she played a central role. But any fair-minded and objective judge of these claims – i.e., by someone not affiliated with the Clinton campaign – would conclude that Senator Clinton’s claims of foreign policy experience are exaggerated. [complete article]

NEWS & FEATURE: Fallon quits

Top U.S. commander in Mideast to retire early
By Thom Shanker and David Stout, New York Times, March 11, 2008

Adm. William J. Fallon, the top American commander in the Middle East whose views on Iran and other issues have seemed to put him at odds with the Bush administration, is retiring early, the Pentagon said Tuesday afternoon.

The retirement of Admiral Fallon, 63, who only a year ago became the first Navy man to be named the commander of the United States Central Command, was announced by his civilian boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who said that he accepted the admiral’s request to retire “with reluctance and regret.”

President Bush said Admiral Fallon had served his country with “honor, determination and commitment” and deserved “considerable credit” for the progress in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But despite the warm words from Mr. Bush and Mr. Gates, there was no question that the admiral’s premature departure stemmed from a public appearance of policy differences with the administration, and with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq. [complete article]

The man between war and peace
By Thomas P M Barnett, Esquire, March 11, 2008

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it’ll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it’ll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him “Fox,” which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America’s two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it’s impossible to make this guy–as he likes to say–“nervous in the service.” Past American governments have used saber rattling as a useful tactic to get some bad actor on the world stage to fall in line. This government hasn’t mastered that kind of subtlety. When Dick Cheney has rattled his saber, it has generally meant that he intends to use it. And in spite of recent war spasms aimed at Iran from this sclerotic administration, Fallon is in no hurry to pick up any campaign medals for Iran. And therein lies the rub for the hard-liners led by Cheney. Army General David Petraeus, commanding America’s forces in Iraq, may say, “You cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq,” but Fox Fallon is Petraeus’s boss, and he is the commander of United States Central Command, and Fallon doesn’t extend Petraeus’s logic to mean war against Iran. [complete article]

Commander rejects article of praise
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, March 6, 2008

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East is the subject of a glowing magazine article describing him as the only person who might stop the Bush administration from going to war against Iran.

Esquire magazine’s forthcoming profile of Adm. William “Fox” Fallon portrays the chief of the U.S. Central Command as “brazenly challenging” President Bush on Iran, pushing back “against what he saw as an ill-advised action.”

Written by Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, the article in the magazine’s April issue predicts that if Fallon leaves his position at Central Command, “it may well mean that the president and vice president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way.”

The article is written in an admiring fashion, praising Fallon as “a man of strategic brilliance” whose understanding of the tumultuous situation in Pakistan “is far more complex than anyone else’s.”

Asked about the article yesterday, Fallon called it “poison pen stuff” that is “really disrespectful and ugly.” He did not cite specific objections. [complete article]