Read Nawaf Obaid today in the Washington Post. Read it carefully.

The preamble:

In February 2003, a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, warned President Bush that he would be "solving one problem and creating five more" if he removed Saddam Hussein by force. Had Bush heeded his advice, Iraq would not now be on the brink of full-blown civil war and disintegration.

One hopes he won't make the same mistake again by ignoring the counsel of Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who said in a speech last month that "since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited." If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.

Over the past year, a chorus of voices has called for Saudi Arabia to protect the Sunni community in Iraq and thwart Iranian influence there. Senior Iraqi tribal and religious figures, along with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Muslim countries, have petitioned the Saudi leadership to provide Iraqi Sunnis with weapons and financial support. Moreover, domestic pressure to intervene is intense. Major Saudi tribal confederations, which have extremely close historical and communal ties with their counterparts in Iraq, are demanding action. They are supported by a new generation of Saudi royals in strategic government positions who are eager to see the kingdom play a more muscular role in the region.

Because King Abdullah has been working to minimize sectarian tensions in Iraq and reconcile Sunni and Shiite communities, because he gave President Bush his word that he wouldn't meddle in Iraq (and because it would be impossible to ensure that Saudi-funded militias wouldn't attack U.S. troops), these requests have all been refused. They will, however, be heeded if American troops begin a phased withdrawal from Iraq. As the economic powerhouse of the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam and the de facto leader of the world's Sunni community (which comprises 85 percent of all Muslims), Saudi Arabia has both the means and the religious responsibility to intervene.

Obaid is a personal national security advisor to Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Turki al-Faisal and what he is writing is no doubt the public version of what King Abdullah told Cheney when the VP was summoned to Riyadh.

What Obaid has articulated here is not offered as a threat if the US leaves Iraq, which the US must do in my view. This is the first robust declaration that the Saudis are willing to fill the vacuum left by the United State in the region and knock back some of the unchecked expansion of Iranian influence in the region.

It's not good to have rising powers with pretensions of future greatness clashing like this -- but there is NO CHOICE.

And frankly, it's much better to have the Saudis engaged that not engaged in Iraq. Iran must be balanced -- and while this may seem like an escalation, it actually is an important potential cap on a worsening of this increasingly ulcerous mess in Iraq.

But what the Saudis are doing and what they need to be do is not new -- it has been predicted for quite a while. And this is the consequence of the Bush administration's failure to think strategically. We have now drawn Saudi Arabia into a potential collision that could destabilize that nation and seriously harm our access to vital oil and natural gas supplies.

So don't blame the Saudis for seeing the world and their region as it is -- not as George W. Bush fantasizes.

-- Steve Clemons

I will be on the "Sam Seder Show" on Air America Radio at 10:30 am EST today -- chatting with Sam about all things foreign policy here from Vienna, Austria.

But on a less optimistic note, take everything that the normally unsentimental, cold-eyed Anthony Cordesman writes below and worsen it by an order of magnitude. Then you get my view.

Cordesman really does give the optimist's last hope in the report he sent out today -- and even that plants a bleaker than bleak picture. Cordesman is a must read.

I can't post the survey itself but am happy to forward to those who request it by email: steve@thewashingtonnote.com.

A Survery of Options for Iraq: The Almost Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Anthony H. Cordesman

Cover Note

The US needs to act or it will be defeated in Iraq. Iraq is already in a state of serious civil war, and current efforts at political compromise and improving security at best are buying time. There is a critical risk that Iraq will drift into a major civil conflict over the coming months, see its present government fail, and/or divide or separate in some form.

The US cannot simply "stay the course," and rely on its existing actions and strategy. It needs new options to reverse the drift towards a major civil war and political failure. The military and police development effort falls far short of Department of Defense claims, must be reinforced and will take years to make fully successful. the economic aid and development program has failed, and new incentives are needed to offer any serious hope of Iraqi political compromise and conciliation.

The US cannot wait to see if its existing strategy and actions will work. They will not. The situation is spiraling out of control, and the US must either strongly reinforce its existing strategy or change it. It also needs detailed plans and options for "Plan B," the possibility that it may have to withdraw its troops and possibly most or all of its civilian presence from Iraq.

The attached study surveys the options suggested to date, examines their risk-benefits. The options it examines range from options designed to make the current Coalition and Iraqi government strategy work to options for US withdrawal. Some options might well increase the odds of success. Many other options, however, set goals not only are probably unworkable, but would impose demands on US policy and Iraqi action that would make things worse and further erode the chances of success. The US must make hard choices between the almost good, the bad, and the ugly. to succeed, it must look beyond bright ideas, partisanship, and political rhetoric.

This survey also makes it clear that any meaningful level of success will be contingent on Iraqi actions, not those of the US or other outside powers. No mix of options will allow the US to succeed unless Iraqis can succeed in creating a more effective form of political compromise that wins the support of most Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds; that the successful development of Iraqi security forces will take three to five years and not 18-24 months, and new initiatives are needed to provide economic incentives for unity. It also suggests that the US should avoid unilateral options and seek to negotiate new incentives with the Iraqi government and its allies.

No mix of options for US action can provide a convincing plan for "victory" in Iraq. The initiative has passed into Iraqi hands. US and outside action can encourage progress towards political conciliation and compromise, and improved security, but cannot force it upon Iraq's leaders or the Iraqi people. The US must also face the fact that the real world chances of emerging from the present crisis with anything approaching Iraqi stability, security, pluralism, and unity on any terms are at best even. Stripped of both optimistic spin and dire pessimism, the realities in Iraq offer hope and opportunity, but they cannot promise success.

It's hard to imagine a worse picture than Cordeman paints -- but it is worse.

-- Steve Clemons

This news is partly good. Nancy Pelosi has dropped her bid for Alcee Hastings to chair the House Intelligence Committee.

It's unclear who she will now support, but it seems to me that Jane Harman must be the only genuine alternative and that moving to another potential chair could be quite politically dangerous for the new Speaker.

The failure yet to publicly support Harman means Pelosi is extracting a price from Harman.

One of the things Pelosi and others should be asking Harman to do is to become one of the leading Democrats to articulate a "new narrative" on the Middle East and to get out of the box that any broad gains on getting a new order in place in the region automatically means a net loss for Israel.

Harman would be wise to do this.

Just met my first TWN reader at a blog gathering at Cafe Central in Vienna. There now.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm rushing, but I wanted to share this email I scribbled out this morning. It's a bit blunt, says more than I perhaps should at this point -- but Philip Zelikow's departure as Condi Rice's Counselor is very bad for those hoping for a more enlightened Bush administration foreign policy course.

This email was a response to one from a prominent social leader asking me if Zelikow was forced outi:

I do not believe Zelikow was forced out. At some level, he probably does have legitimate expenses related to his family, but my hunch as to the real reason that he is leaving is that he is fed up with having all the reasonable/constructive ideas in the administration and having little clout to implement them with "Cheney's gang" shutting him and the Rice-team down so frequently.

This is not good news for our side. Zelikow leaving indicates a few things -- Cheney still has significant power; regional deal-making in Middle East is still more fantasy than real (despite Olmert's recent moves); and our 'chances' of finding a third option between bombing and acquiescing to Iran diminish significantly with Zelikow's departure (my take anyway).

Zelikow had faults as we all do -- but he really was the only master strategist left who might have played a historic role in reshaping the US's foreign policy future. I think Rice really needed him.

Stephen Krasner is very smart and would be a cool 21st century Kennan type, but he doesn't dominate the bureaucratic process in a way that can keep the State Department's efforts from being so regularly choked to death. This leaves John Bellinger who is terrific in my view -- but more of a legal strategist and architect than a foreign policy grand strategist. Nick Burns is also great -- but doesn't have Cheney's confidence. Condi's power depends on her one-on-ones with President Bush but that cannot get her where one needs to go on every issue, every hour, every day.

This departure, and the administration's obsession with John Bolton say something -- and that is that while Bush is flirting with Baker-Hamilton, the interest from the White House is extremely thin.

I just can't believe Zelikow would leave if he knew there was a genuine chance of being the architect or leading deliverer of a new and healthier equilibrium of interests in the region.

I have to write about this -- and do so in a constructive way about Zelikow -- but it's very, very hard not to be very depressed by his departure.

More later -- from Vienna.

-- Steve Clemons

It will probably be a small gathering -- but those who want to meet me tomorrow morning in Vienna, Austria -- I will be meeting some folks at about 11 am (at Cafe Central) (I might be a little late as I will be coming directly from the Airport).

Political junkies, caffeine addicts, and Trotsky followers feel free to show up. There will be a table reserved -- under Clemons, The Washington Note, or Embassy -- not sure which.

Got to catch a plane. . .

-- Steve Clemons

I hear that Leon Trotsky used to hang out at the Cafe Central in Vienna.

I will be arriving Wednesday morning in Vienna and departing Friday to participate in a conference on "The Role of Think Tanks in the Political Process of the EU and the US" sponsored by the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation.

I don't have a firm place or time yet, but I would be happy to join political junkies and blog-types on Wednesday afternoon or sometime Thursday.

One friend has recommended either Cafe Central, Cafe Landtmann, or the American Research Center -- which has offered to provide the coffee. If you have recommendations and are in Vienna. Let me know.

I will need to meet somewhere convenient to the Hotel am Stephansplatz.

-- Steve Clemons

Edward Luce and Demetri Sevastopulo have a thoughtful piece in the Financial Times anticipating the impact of the Iraq War narrative on the American psyche, particularly as of Sunday when the "Iraq War will enter its 1,347th day, thus overtaking the US's involvement in the second world war."

Some key excerpts. The first on Bush's unflagging self-delusion about the Iraq War:

President Bush has made it plain that he still seeks victory in spite of almost universal scepticism that such an outcome can be achieved. To many, the US president's stubborn faith in a war that has so far belied almost all of its reasons raises fears about how much longer it will last -- and whether worse will follow. "To almost everybody except Mr Bush, Iraq is a tragedy," said Kurt Campbell, former national security advisor to Bill Clinton and now vice-president of the Centre for Strategic International Studies. "We are probably only in act two or three of this tragedy -- there may be many more to come."

On the Bush administration's success at buffering the American public from the true costs and impact of this war and a seering comment from former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson:

Much of the human cost of the war has been kept out of sight, including the return of the dead given the Bush administration's ban on the televising of bodybags.

But the extended tours of duty imposed on volunteer part-timers in the National Guard and Reserves as well as regular units has ruptured military morale, according to Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, Mr Bush's first secretary of state.

As a result the Pentagon has been forced to dilute recruitment standards -- waiving academic requirements and lifting the age limit from 35 to 40. "This is a war that is being fought by poor people while the rest of the country drives round in its SUVs barely noticing it is happening," said Mr Wilkerson, who served in Vietnam.

And on the as yet unrealized costs of this war and the possibility of revived American isolationism:

"If you think of the Iraq war as a pool then it is still on the [US] surface," said [Kurt] Campbell. "But beneath it there are many concealed rocks." One such hidden cost could be a diminished appetite for international engagement -- an "Iraq syndrome" to match the US's reduced self-confidence following Vietnam is more likely this time, says Steve Clemons at the New America Foundation in Washington.

"It is too early to be sure what effect Iraq could have on the America public," he said. "It could be anger, it could be isolationism or some longer-term malaise. There is still a lot that we cannot anticipate."

Because of the Bush administration's choices and style of management of America's national interests, the nation is facing NO good options. So much will need to be rebuilt and recrafted by the next President, and the international system will be highly suspect of this nation -- no matter who is elected.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

The Financial Times' Philip Stephens published a very useful and interesting take on he rise of realism and fall of democracy-focused international idealism in U.S. foreign policy.

Regrettably the article, "Democracy Falls Victim to Foreign Policy Realism," is not available without registering and/or subscribing -- but I still want to link it. (here is a link that does not require registration)

Stephens characterizes "classic realism" quite well:

Realism has many dimensions. At its simplest, it implies no more than a willingness to treat the world as it is rather than as you might like it to be. That is what foreign policy practitioners mean when they say that the US should engage with enemies as well as friends. It talked to Moscow during the cold war; why not Tehran and Damascus now?

A little way along the spectrum of meanings, realists take a Westphalian view of sovereignty. Governments, democratic or otherwise, must be free to do as they please within their own boundaries. The authoritarian nature of a useful ally should not be seen as an obstacle to co-operation.

Further still, realism merges into cynicism, promoting a realpolitik indifferent to the nature of a regime. Dangerous tyrants are fine as long as they are on the right side. The arming of Saddam Hussein against Iran during the 1980s comes to mind.

During the cold war it was this last form of realism that saw the US jump into bed with some of the nastiest regimes in Latin America, Asia and Africa -- a policy that appalled as many Europeans then as does now the pro-democracy "imperialism" of the Bush administration.

Stephens, however, sets up a bit of a false straw-man here because I believe it is unlikely that "classic realism" will ever be back in the same doses we saw in the latter half of the 20th century.

This is a fascinating, sober piece by Harvard University's Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou on Israel-Palestine problems that looks at Hamas as an evolving, "astute" political player that needs to be engaged one way or another in any new effort at regional deal-making in the Middle East.

Here's one section:

Ignoring the general disposition of Hamas and its dogged political determination merely tells a story of intransigence feeding intransigence.

For the insistence on treating this organization as a terrorist group obscures the central fact of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

In that context, a militant group that emerges as a resistance movement; grows into a social-support organization efficiently operating schools, health-care centers and welfare services; suspends its resort to force; and agrees to abide by the rules of democratic contest cannot be termed terrorist.

As it is, Hamas has unilaterally declared since March 2005 a self-imposed cease-fire (tahdiya), which it respected for 15 months until the Israeli killing of the picnicking seven-member Ghalya family, following which the group's armed wing led a commando operation on an Israeli army base.

On Nov. 9, Israeli forces again killed 17 individuals also members of a same family, the Althamna of Beit Hanoun.

All along, the Israeli government failed to reciprocate the cease-fire declaration and multiplied near-daily military incursions invariably resulting in casualties.

Since June, close to 300 Palestinians have been killed, 30 of them children.

Regarding the other two demands of the international community, Hamas had offered in January 2004 -- and reiterated as late as Nov. 1 -- to enter into political negotiations leading to a 10-year truce (hudna), and the movement has been part to discussions, in September, on a draft document for a program that would "respect previous agreements in a manner that protects and safeguards the higher interests and the rights of the Palestinian people."

An opposing view has been published by the Council on Foreign Relations' Steven Cook.

This debate, and others, are being promoted by the Rosenkranz Foundation and a new policy debate organization called "Intelligence Squared".

-- Steve Clemons

Here is a decent UPI article capturing the essential themes of a program I participated in on Monday at the Hudson Institute titled "Is Democracy Good for the Middle East?" (audio version available here/MP3 download)

I said a number of things which can be seen on C-Span's coverage of the program, and which has been running this week -- but essentially, in my view it is important to remember that democracy promotion needs to be organic and come from within a country.

Also democracies are not ballotocracies, as Richard Haass calls them. Civil institutions, courts, the media, and other elements of civil society, the rights of minorities are as important if not more important than popular voting and should not be minimized or detached from political choice.

The word "democracy" is interpreted by many in the Middle East to be a trojan horse for "regime change." I think it's important to either modify our language or to reconstruct what genuine democracy means -- which must build off the aspirations of those in the Middle East for self-determination and justice.

(Blogger Steven Clemons poses question to 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Muhammad Yunus who stated "democracy cannot be achieved at gun point", 19 Nov 2006, photo credit: Jennifer Willis)

Lastly, as I said in this meeting, the first thing I said actually, our obsession with democracy in America will not undo or fix our real problems in the Middle East -- which are anti-Americanism, anti-Israel sentiment, and terrorism.

Terror masters exploit unmanaged, untended, ulcerous grievances to fuel popular support for their causes -- and America and Europe seriously undermine their mutual interests in the Middle East and fail to squelch the strong currents fueling terrorism by not "stealing the audience" from terrorists and working harder to resolve serious grievances.

And I did say that "democracy at gunpoint turbo-charges grievances in the Middle East."

Here's a bit more:

'The obsession with "democratization at gunpoint" is turbo-charging grievances in the region,' and the grievances must be addressed, said Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation. Long-term success will take decades, he contends, but is not an impossible feat.

'Of course democratization can take hold. But it will need to be organic, not implemented,' Clemons said.

Also necessary will be extensive framework in the form of foreign investments, and a change in language that reflects a transcending of cultural barriers. Western ideas fall on deaf ears because they don't correlate with regional beliefs such as self-determination, according to Clemons, who also proposes an idea similar to the Alaska Permanent fund for Iraq as an economic incentive.

'We have not set up an environment for opportunities to take hold,' said Clemons.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

This is interesting. Seven hours before I posted my piece on Marshall Wittman as the midwife of a McCain-Lieberman tie-up, Mark Schmitt had something similar up at Tapped.

I suggest that McCain will win the Republican primary and bring Lieberman into the dance. Schmitt, on the other hand, sees McCain losing the Republican primary race and then "pulling a Lieberman" by running independently of both parties -- and with Lieberman on the ticket, running as faux centrists.

Mark Schmitt says this won't be a centrist party but will instead be a true neocon party. Interesting. Not sure I see it the same way, but serious strategists should pay attention to these possible maneuvers.

-- Steve Clemons

There are some TWN readers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, despite the comments of one student I met recently at the colonial era college, Washington College, who first asked "What's a blog?" after a lecture I gave there. After I responded, he said, "I don't think we have blogs on the Eastern shore."

Nice guy actually, but he's wrong. There are bloggers out here -- and today, Mark Schmitt of The Decembrist is allegedly in Chestertown too, though not here at the premier town coffee shop, "Play it Again Sam."

Here's some news. John Bolton cancels an appearance he had planned today at Syracuse University. Maybe he know I had a few questions planted in the audience about how far he was willing to be used in the evolving battle over his UN appointment as a measure of faux bipartisanship.

The Bolton Battle has achieved "high art form status" at this point.

He will never be confirmed by the Senate. But outgoing Senate Majority Leader and presidential hopeful Bill Frist hopes to make some points with America's pugnacious nationalist voters by crowing from the Senate floor how outraged he is that Bolton won't be confirmed by Democrats with an assist from some Republicans, particularly Senator Lincoln Chafee. (actually Frist won't mention the anti-Bolton Republicans; he'll be going after Dems full board).

But let me remind Bill Frist of what just happened to incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She got measured by both her decision to support John Murtha as Democratic Party Leader and then her failure to deliver him.

Frist's zealous support of John Bolton with no obvious means of getting him through the Senate simply punctuates his impotence -- even in a chamber that he and his party controlled. If Frist makes Bolton the parting shot of his time in the Senate -- rather than delivering successes and achievements -- Frist's portfolio (political rather than stocks, in this case) will seriously deteriorate.

Just something for Bill Frist and his close national security aide, Stephen Rademaker -- also a former close aide of John Bolton -- to consider before orchestrating yet another chapter in John Bolton's confirmation battle.

Frist is a man of science, a rationalist, from the South. Pushing Bolton at this point doesn't square with Frist's long record of rationalism as a way forward. Rather, it's a play for those who revere Jesse Helms -- one of the most anti-international, anti-modern, anti-Enlightenment senators to serve in the modern age.

I'm not sure where the investigation into his alleged manipulation of stocks and other investments in a blind trust stands, but Frist will be leaving the Senate with a roster of both achievements and stumbles. There has been no news on the matter for a very long time -- so I imagine that the case has either been closed or is inactive. HCA stockholders just got a nice 18% jump in their stock shares last week when their company was sold -- so all's well that ends well for the Frist family.

Why add John Bolton to the stumble list?

But if Frist thinks he really does want to take a run at the presidency -- which I think he does -- then he needs to give Americans a snapshot of constructive, principled political and policy achievements. He can do a lot in the next couple of weeks pushing spending bills through that need to be addressed and usher forward more support for those Americans wounded and families harmed by the loss of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do good stuff, Senator Frist. Leave the politically outrageous acts for others.

-- Steve Clemons

My good friend, Matt Stoller of MyDD, has scolded me just a bit for some minor swipes I took at the leftish blogosphere. I probably deserved the swat.

Nonetheless, Stoller has an excellent follow-on article to my post about Marshall Wittman and the effort to shape the centrist cosmetics of a McCain-Lieberman 2008 White House run.

He saw this same dynamic in the Lamont-Lieberman Senate race in Connecticut, and what Matt Stoller understands that sizeable chunks of the left-progressive blogosphere don't is that just saying something is so, over and over and over again, just doesn't make it so.

We need real strategies with traction -- not hyperventilation, and not self-delusion.

-- Steve Clemons

Oakley says happy Thanksgiving to all -- and the good news is that his sister Annie will soon be in town, right around Christmas. Here she is:

Happy holidays from this blogger too.

-- Steve Clemons

The politically ambidextrous king of one-line political zingers Marshall Wittman has made bloggers and traditional style journalists go bonkers the last couple of days. He's going back to work in the Senate, but this time for an Independent.

I wondered what was going on when Wittman moth-balled on November 17th his thoughtful blog, The Bull Moose, which frequently seemed to be tracking issues similar to what I was writing and thinking about (or I him) -- with us occasionally on quite opposite sides of an issue.

Today, the New York Times' Mark Leibovich penned a quite harsh treatment of Wittman's political profile and work career on the occasion of Senator Joseph Lieberman hiring "the bull moose" to be his new communications director.

Nancy Pelosi and Jane Harman have been on a collision course for some time. They are both very tough-minded, opinionated, media savvy Democrats on the rise, and they have been knocking into each other for some time while still feigning mutual admiration.

None of us -- or them -- come with a perfect package of policy views and perspectives. I admire Nancy Pelosi a great deal, but her views on China concern me, and her tendency to promote loyalists and friends at the expense of "experts" is very GW Bushian and disconcerting.

That said, I'm impressed by Pelosi -- even with her decision to support Jack Murtha which I believe was pre-cooked with Hoyer's understanding. Those who think it was an incredible misstep turned out to be more accurate than I because I failed to see how the media would turn this decision into a measure of Pelosi's power to manipulate her caucus. I also failed to see that Pelosi could be duped by the media in trying to make the Murtha campaign a real, rather than a politically contrived, one.

(Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, former President Bill Clinton, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; UN Foundation Dinner, 19 Nov 2006, photo credit: Jennifer Willis)

Last night, Washington's political stars turned out to pay homage to the banker who started in 1976 lending $27 to 42 people in one village in Bangladesh.

Muhammad Yunus and many of his colleagues from the Grameen Bank were feted at an extraordinary reception and dinner gathering -- on a Sunday night -- at the Willard Hotel in Washington and hosted by the United Nations Foundation.

(Blogger Steven Clemons, Muhammad Yunus, and Ted Turner, 19 Nov 2006, photo credit: Jennifer Willis)

Among the guests were former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Congressman and Mrs. Tom Udall, Senator and Mrs. Paul Sarbanes, Pew Research executive and former Washington Post "Outlook" Editor Jodie Allen, Ted Turner and his companion Kathy Leach, Bruce and Hattie Babbitt, former Senator and UN Foundation President Timothy & Wren Wirth, former State Department Legal Adviser William Howard Taft IV, former Senator Donald Riegle, Ashoka founder William Dreyton, Kathy Bushkin, Kenneth Adelman, John Cochran, Diane Rehm, John Henry and Ann Crittendon, and many others.

(Former US Trade Representative Carla Hills and New America Foundation/American Strategy Program director Steven Clemons -- Muhammad Yunus Dinner, 19 Nov 2006, photo credit: Jennifer Willis)

I sat next to and had a fascinating political and trade policy discussion with Bush 41 US Trade Representative Carla Hills (who told me that former Ambassador and Boeing Executive Thomas Pickering was joining her firm, Hills & Co.)

It was also Ted Turner's birthday. Tim Wirth shared with us that when America was more than $1 billion in arrears on its UN dues, many worked to get that debt paid -- and when the last gap was $31 million, and the US government would not close it, Turner wrote a personal check to the US treasury for $31 million to apply to America's UN obligations.

Turner was impressive last night and started the dinner off noting that it was rare to see "so many do-gooders" in one place, "no one who wanted to go do someone harm." Neocon fellow traveler Kenneth Adelman was in the room last night and continued to stand by the mea culpas he had been offering for his "Iraq would be a cake walk" comments -- and unlike Joshua Muravchik was not advocating bombing anyone, at least last night.

Yunus's impressive and charming daughter, Monica, was at his side most of the evening. She sings operas at the Met in New York.

(New America Foundation American Strategy Program Director Steve Clemons and former President Bill Clinton, UN Foundation Dinner, 19 Nov 2006, photo credit: Jennifer Willis)

But the night was not about gossip about Washington's most well-heeled. It was about the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank for their hard work and magic in bringing economic opportunity to the world's poorest and lifting so many out of poverty -- not through grants but through micro-lending and banking.

I mentioned to Muhammad Yunus that when the Nobel Committee announced that he had won the Peace Prize, I was with George Soros in Tokyo. Soros instantly said that it was "an excellent choice." And last evening, Yunus confided that Soros had really helped provide critical support for the Grameen operation and had always supported them.

Yunus and the Grameen Bank are what transformational diplomacy ought to look like -- and Soros, Yunus, Turner, Carla Hills, Tim Wirth and others there last night are the world's real transformational diplomats.

One of the interesting tidbits Yunus conveyed last night is that while micro-lending in a single village began in 1976, the program in Bangladesh now covers more than 80% of impoverished families in that country.

The Grameen Bank was founded in 1983, and In 1986, then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton invited Yunus to Little Rock and together they helped establish a Grameen micro-lending operation in Arkansas, which Hillary Rodham Clinton chaired. Yunus said that people would start asking "What is this Grameen?" And when told that it was a bank operating in Bangladesh, they'd say "What is Bangladesh?" Sadly, one can still imagining that happening today -- but perhaps less so after the awarding of the Nobel.

Yunus' most important comments last night explored the links between poverty and peace. He said that "there is no military solution to terrorism," that "poverty is a threat to peace" and "poverty fuels feelings of humiliation and injustice, which feeds terrorism."

He said that the world's biggest problems -- whether "real or imagined injustices" -- were driven by economics. He said that the best way to turn around those factors that fueled the hopelessness that terror masters exploited was to give people an opportunity at entrepreneurship. Yunus said that if society got out of the way, "all human beings are entrepreneurs."

It was an uplifting, fascinating evening.

Yunus completed his remarks by committing Bangladesh to build the first "poverty museum" when there was no poverty any more and people needed to look back and remember what poverty once looked and felt like.

He reported that 58% of Grameen families had crossed over the poverty line and that 100% of their children were being educated.

Uplifting, noble -- clearly, much left to do -- and Yunus acknowledged that.

But as Ted Turner said, it felt great to be in a room of "do-gooders" whose results were in the black.

Norway's Ambassador to the United States Knut Vollebaek told us that the December 10th Awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize will be aired live over the internet for the first time ever. And following up, Bangladesh's Ambassador to the United States Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury said that the embassy would be having a huge gathering that night to watch the award presentations live.

TWN will post the link when it is up.

-- Steve Clemons

According to Bob Woodward's recent book State of Denial, Henry Kissinger reportedly advised the Bush administration that "victory was the only way out of Iraq."

Now, according to this AP report, Kissinger seems to be changing his tune.

In an interview Sunday with the BBC, Kissinger stated:

If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.

Note that Kissinger has dropped the semantic idiocy of debating whether a civil war is underway in Iraq. He finally acknowledges that it is.

-- Steve Clemons