Peter O'Toole's performance as T.E. Lawrence in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia should remind us that all of us, of all political stripes, are dealing with stereotypes that could throw our foreign policy way off course.

The prevailing Republican view is well-documented. O'Toole put it this way in his quixotic and messianic quest to found an independent Arab state:

"[The Arabs] want to gain their freedom. Freedom...I'm going to give it to them."

And that, albeit in an exaggerated, literary way, pretty much sums up the attitude of the White House and the Republican leadership in Congress - with some important exceptions, as Steve has noted.

My hope over these past few years has been that Democrats and eventually Republicans would embrace a more enlightened view: that people in the Middle East do want freedom - and economic opportunity, and peace, and rights, and dignity - and the United States should work with them as a partner to help them achieve these goals.

This rationale, in my view, is the right justification for redeploying troops from Iraq. Such a step, coupled with international partnerships and continued nonmilitary assistance, can help bring about a political solution in Iraq, as well as progress for Iraq's neigbors.

But I'm not entirely convinced that this is the prevailing attitude in the Democratic Party. I'm worried some Democrats, frustrated with the Iraqis and sensing their constituents' impatience, are simply ready to say, "not my problem anymore" and take up the isolationist cause.

Consider this from Hillary Clinton in her interview with NYT:

"No one wants to sit by and see mass killing," she added. "It's going on every day! Thousands of people are dying every month in Iraq. Our presence there is not stopping it. And there is no potential opportunity I can imagine where it could. This is an Iraqi problem; we cannot save the Iraqis from themselves." (my emphasis)

I'm also unsure about where Carl Levin - whom I generally hold in very high regard - is on this. On one hand, he said:

"We have got to force the Iraqis to take charge of their own country," Mr. Levin said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. "We can't save them from themselves."

Then, however, he immediately added:

"It is a political solution. It is no longer a military solution."

Clinton, Levin, and others repeating the "save them from themselves" talking point need to get their acts together. Saying "we can't save the Iraqis from themselves" suggests that Iraqis, left to their own devices, will tear each other apart. It reinforces the chauvanistic stereotype that people in the Middle Eastneed steely autocrats to keep them in line and stop them from killing each other. And it leads to the conclusion that no matter what the U.S. does, it cannot affect positive change in Middle Eastern countries.

The exaggerated, literary summation of this attitude?

"So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people; a silly people; greedy, barbarous, and cruel."

That's O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence again, this time in a moment of exasperation. I don't believe that this is where most Democrats are headed. Most of them know better. And I think those who are projecting this attitude probably know better too, but believe they can win cheap political points with constituents by playing to their frustrations.

But make no mistake - the underlying attitude of the "save them from themselves" talking point is chauvanist and isolationist. If people are repeating it for political reasons, as I suspect, they need to stop right now. These political games make for dangerously bad foreign policy.

-- Scott Paul

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman was one of the headliners at a star-studded annual "Opinions Award" dinner sponsored by The Week in partnership with the Aspen Institute on Tuesday night.

On stage, Friedman made a tongue-in-cheek proposal in response to a question from George Stephanopoulos who asked: "Are we just treading water for the next 22 months until the Bush administration leaves office?"

Tom Friedman responded:

We need a new constitutional amendment called "Can I Go Now?" Something less than impeachment but more than resignation.

President Bush just needs a "Can I Go Now?" clause in the constitution.

Friedman got a lot of applause.

Others at the dinner included magazine diva Tina Brown, George Stephanopoulos, Teresa Heinz-Kerry, Tucker Carlson, Ben Bradlee, Sir Harold Evans, Margaret Carlson (who was the real power mistress of the night and invited most of the guests -- including me), Representative Jane Harman, cartoonist extraordinaire Tom Toles, Kathryn Kross, Claire Shipman, Bruce and Hattie Babbitt, Mickey Kaus, Matt Cooper, Terry McAuliffe, Michael Kinsley, Chris Matthews, Jon Fox Sullivan, Elizabeth Kieffer, and lots of other political glitterati.

Wonkette editor and my table mate Alex Pareene caught more of the evening here. Tucker Carlson and Pareene, whom I was seated next to, have apparently crossed swords in the past -- and while Pareene admits successfully ducking Carlson, Carlson wanted to express some tough, not too pleasant words to the blogger so Carlson vented with me over some of Wonkette's "over the line" commentary.

Other highlights of the evening included Chris Matthews asking the evening MC Sir Harold Evans "Why is this room 90% white?" Sir Harold responded by asking why more than 90% of the guests on Hardball are white. Matthews said that beyond all other issues, the "biggest struggle is who we are." He argued that race and reconciliation are the issues this nation needed to deal with. He said that "the San Andreas fault line in the country is race and ethnicity."

Tucker Carlson responded by saying that "the nation's original sin was slavery" but that intermarriage rates between ethnic groups were rapidly increasing in the U.S. and that this was a good measure of change in the racial divide. My colleague Gregory Rodriguez at the New America Foundation has written more prolifically than anyone I know about this trend and validates Tucker Carlson's point -- but it was interesting to have Matthews just shoot this topic into the room that night.

Matthews went on to say that "Obama was a symbolic breakthrough" on the race front. Because he's black, Matthews suggested, everyone is excited.

Washington Editor of The Week Margaret Carlson asked a panel of Tom Friedman, Tucker Carlson, Claire Shipman, and Jim Lehrer what the '08 race would look like.

Jim Lehrer said that prognosticators on the election were all going to be wrong. He said that this election was unprecedented and that there was no conventional wisdom to rely on.

Tina Brown followed up by asking who would "bring the best people" into government. Tucker Carlson said that "the most secure candidate would bring the best people." He said insecure people bring "yes men" and Cabinet types who will not challenge or threaten them. He said -- somewhat facetiously I think -- that Richard Holbrooke should be the next Secretary of State, no matter who is president. The room broke into laughter -- probably because Holbrooke excels in the art of intimidation.

Ben Bradlee appealed to the audience to maintain faith in newspapers. He's not high on computers and blogs -- mostly because it's too uncomfortable to drag the computer to the john. He said "the newspaper and magazine work best in the bathroom."

Harold Evans asked the panel where they were on the Iraq War before the war. Tom Friedman was for the war. Jim Lehrer said he had had no opinion. Claire Shipman was undecided. Tucker Carlson said he opposed the war -- and then was lobbied extensively and sold a bill of goods by the administration and supported the war, which he regrets. Carlson said he's a "paleo" conservative and that national interests rather than democracy crusades should guide our foreign policy course.

Lehrer said that interests should always drive our foreign policy but that didn't mean rejecting efforts to promote democracy. But he said "It's one thing to have a war to spread democracy and another to just favor democracy."

Carlson said that he had no problem building strong relations with a benign dictatorship (not sure if that's an oxymoron) when it was in our national interests.

On the war and what to do in the Middle East, Friedman admitted he was out of ideas. He didn't know what to do. I spoke to him after the program and referenced his recent appeal to the Saudis to take King Abdullah's peace plan even further than they had. I suggested to him that while that was creative -- this was a time when the U.S., Europe, the UN, Russia, the Arab League and others all had to be creative and not look to the Saudi King to take steps that severely undercut his legitimacy in the eyes of his public and in the Arab world. In fact, the initiative already moves the Arab world quite dramatically far -- so that the U.S. and Israel had to respond creatively as well.

Friedman agreed -- but he said that he expressed real frustration with where we are at and sees a problem in a world that is perceiving an America that has increasingly diminished capacity to achieve its objectives in the foreign policy arena.

Tucker Carlson said that he saw America moving towards an isolationist phase after this Middle East adventure. Claire Shipman agreed.

Jim Lehrer countered saying that "If Iraq goes bad, the world will need the idealism of the U.S." I don't quite know how Lehrer's concept would work given that if Iraq gets even worse, American citizens are probably going to be a bit sick and tired of what Bush-style idealism untethered to reality and spiced up with presidential swagger achieved for this country.

Tom Friedman also stated that we "used to worry about a world with America having too much power. Now we have to consider what to do with a world with too little American power."

Despite the glitter, the powerful political and journalist figures that there were there, and the high probability of a vapid evening -- it was actually interesting and important.

The cynicism that ran through the room about the sorry state of American affairs in the world was palpable and shared by most there -- across the majority of the political spectrum.

-- Steve Clemons

Interesting. In a 50-48 vote, proponents of an Iraq withdrawal timeline prevailed against an attempt by Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) to rip out that language in the Iraq supplemental spending bill being debated and voted on today.

Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) joined the Dems.

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) voted with the Republicans.

And shock of all shocks, Ben Nelson (D-NE) actually voted with the Dems on this one too -- though Mark Pryor (D-AR) defected. I think Hagel's aye vote forced Ben Nelson's vote of support. Nelson knows how to triangulate.

I also forgot to salute Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) who has been shaky on this vote -- and also stayed with her side of the aisle.

Senators Enzi (R-WY) and Johnson (D-SD) did not vote.

-- Steve Clemons

Cheney and his team are disurbingly impressive in their ability to constantly get away with sabotaging the work and efforts of President Bush and his team.

The New York Sun's Benny Avni reports:

As her aides anticipated an important announcement about Israeli-Arab diplomacy yesterday, sources in Jerusalem and Washington said Secretary of State Rice has encountered enough resistance from all sides to lower her expectations for a breakthrough.

Israeli officials have spoken to a top White House official in recent days, using friendly Washington contacts to go "over Condi's head" to describe several of her new ideas as unrealistic, a Jerusalem source, who declined to be identified, told The New York Sun.

Specifically, according to three officials involved in this week's flurry of diplomatic activity in Washington, Jerusalem, Arab capitals, and the United Nations, Ms. Rice intended to intensify her shuttle diplomacy between Israeli and Palestinian Arab leaders, in an attempt to get them to start negotiating "final status" issues.

There are very few people in the White House that Avni could reputably title as "over Condi's head."

Elliot Abrams would not count -- nor would John Hannah, Cheney's national security advisor. I suppose one could stretch the idea that Stephen Hadley had an edge on Rice, but it is an artificial edge as her relationship with President Bush is closer than Hadley's -- and she held his job while he served as her deputy. So, an honest journalist would not note Hadley as "over Condi's head" without some clear qualification.

David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, certainly is not over Rice -- but the VP is a different story.

I don't have any idea if the New York Sun really got access to Cheney -- but he and the President himself are the only ones would could be framed as Condi's superiors in this political process -- and I know that Bush is not the person Avni is referring to.

That means -- if the story has legs, which it probably does -- that Cheney is out there working hard to sabotage Condoleezza Rice's efforts in the Middle East, particularly her Middle East Super Summit idea which I think has merit.

President Bush needs to shut Cheney down -- sideline him -- and send an unambiguous message to all of his staff that Condi Rice has the helm and the others should swab the deck.

Bush has few if any chances to do something positive in the foreign policy arena and needs to recognize that the enemies of his administration succeeding are housed over in the VP's wing of the Old Executive Office Building.

President Bush, please send Cheney quail-hunting.

-- Steve Clemons

AP is reporting a very important story today about Indonesia's battle for control over H5N1 avian flu strains with the World Health Organization.

WHO should have access to the viral material and should share it with pharmaceutical companies working on a vaccine. But Indonesia's gripes are legitimate and deserve to be taken seriously. A scenario could indeed play out in which Indonesia, which has suffered more confirmed bird flu-related deaths than any other country, shares its information and then cannot afford the vaccine produced as a result of its good-faith cooperation.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt had this to say:

"All nations have a responsibility to share data and virus samples," U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said in an e-mailed statement that also offered $10 million to WHO to help make sure poor countries have access to vaccines.

"Responding to a pandemic will demand the cooperation of the world community. No nation can go it alone," he said. "If a country is to protect its own people, it must work together with other nations to protect the people of the world."

Mike Leavitt's not wrong - in fact, his talk is right on here. But the U.S. and the international community are far from off the hook. We are not doing our part.

Committing to share a substantial portion of bird flu vaccines at a steep discount or for free would be a good first step, but even that falls short of what's needed.

A colleague and I used to joke that poultry farmers simply need to stop kissing chickens. Obviously, the picture is vastly more complex, but our joke holds a grain of truth. The most effective preventive action the world can take - for developing countries and aid donors alike - would be to vastly expand education and assistance to developing country poultry farmers. It's sorely needed.

Indonesia is one of many countries that has suffered from avian flu, figures to suffer more in the future, and lacks the resources to contain or protect itself from the deadly disease. I think its withholding of virus samples is a negotiating tactic to get more help. WHO is optimistic that it can break the impasse improve access to flu vaccines in developing countries.

I hope the negotiating works out as it should - Indonesia gets the help and assurances it needs, and WHO gets the viral strains it needs to help pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine.

-- Scott Paul

Senator Chuck Hagel has fired a warning shot across the White House's bow.

On George Stephanopoulos' This Week, Senator Hagel expressed frustration that Bush was ignoring Congress's steps to drive a new direction in America's Iraq engagement.

From a Reuters report:

"I think Congress is going to play a role now like we've not played before," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, a critic of Bush's Iraq policy from his own Republican Party.

Bush's weekend radio address in which he threatened to veto emergency spending legislation for the Iraq war if it included a timetable for withdrawing troops was "astounding to me -- saying to the Congress, in effect, you don't belong in this, I'm in charge of Iraq," Hagel of Nebraska said.

Hagel went on to say:

"I am opposed to the president's further escalation of American military involvement. We are undermining our interests in the Middle East, we are undermining our military, we're undermining the confidence of people around the world in what we're doing," Hagel said on ABC's "This Week" program.

"We have clearly a situation where the president has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort," he said. "It is now time, going into the fifth year of that effort, for the Congress to step forward and be part of setting some boundaries and some conditions as to our involvement."

Senator Hagel is taking a dangerous step in challenging the White House in this way -- and is probably calculating that his presidential opportunity will rise or fall on Iraq and America's mismanaged engagement in the Middle East.

It's a bold gamble, and Dems and moderate Republicans need to take note of the political space Hagel is creating.

-- Steve Clemons

Last year, I wrote an article in the Washington Post, "The Rise of Japan's Thought Police," suggesting that Japan's right-wing was harassing important intellectuals, political leaders, business leaders, and other important voices that were engaged in a fair debate about Japan's relations with China and about the future character of Japan's imperial institution.

The fact that my piece ran in one of the more important national papers of opinion in the United States meant that the article was going to be read -- both here and abroad.

Right wing bloggers and supporters of Yoshihisa Komori, sort of the Rush Limbaugh of Japanese journalism, gave me quite a drubbing when they could. I had written in part about harassment of a Japanese public/private research institution in Japan and how Komori had successfully wrestled an "apology" out of the Institute's director for material that the Institute ran on the web and that was counter to Japan's official stance vis-a-vis China.

This story is more complex and not important to hash out in excruciating detail -- though Komori devoted huge columns in his paper, the Sankei Shimbun, to attacking me in highly strident ways. Everyone involved in the US-Japan game has known that Komori is extremely close to Japan's current prime minister Shinzo Abe, himself an ideologue for historical denial and revived right-wing nationalism in Japan.

Komori and Abe are separate people and one's views shouldn't be automatically ascribed to the other. But in part because of the wrestling match I was having with Komori at the Washington Post, the Washington-based right-of-conservative journalist saw his visibility rise and was given the opportunity by the New York Times to "interpret" the then new Japanese Prime Minister Abe for the American public in this article.

But something else has happened in the American press -- and that is that a media that had stayed far away from the kind of discussion I had raised -- about informal harrassment of legitimate and moderate voices in Japan by "thought control" agents -- had broken wide open. This used to be a taboo subject.

Very few newspapers would venture into the subject of Japan's war memory problems -- and it was very clear that America was complicit in Japan's historical amnesia.

That no longer seems to be the case. Every other day, Yoshihisa Komori's friend, Shinzo Abe, is being pilloried in the American and European press -- and even the Japanese press -- for his efforts to roll back Japanese acceptance of responsibility for "the abduction, rape and sexual enslavement of tens of thousands of women during World War II."

Prime Minister Abe's denial of Japanese responsibility for its "comfort women" ranks pretty closely with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust. Abe's behavior is simply outrageous.

But all of America's newspapers are calling Abe out on this -- as the Washington Post did today in an excellent editorial, "Shinzo Abe's Double Talk."

And let me hasten to add that the Prime Minister we are reading about on a daily basis now in our press bears much more of a likeness to the trends I described in my own Washington Post article and little to the version promulgated by Yoshihisa Komori in the New York Times.

-- Steve Clemons

For more information: See materials on the Comfort Women issue at the Japan Information Access Project.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey is speaking at Yale University next Thursday afternoon. If you are nearby, you should go.

Woolsey will be speaking for he Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism on Thursday, 29 March, at 4:15 pm in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 101, 63 High Street in New Haven.

His topic: "Energy, Security and the Long War of the 21st Century."

I think Jim Woolsey's work to support greater energy independence in the U.S. is laudable -- while I have strong disagreements with him on how he has positioned himself as a financial winner in this war on terror while so many American men and women are paying with their lives, family emotional and financial security, and careers for a war he has helped flame as a pundit. I also strongly disagree with the former CIA Director's advocacy of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard's release.

That said, it would be interesting to hear Woolsey talk about the "long war."

Ask him where the best opportunities are for profiteers in this long war we face. Where is putting his money? He'll probably say "Toyota stock" -- but press him.

Seriously though, I think anti-semitism as a trend is important and worthy of study. Years ago, I helped the Pacific Rim Institute of the American Jewish Committee get access to high-level Japanese political and cultural leaders for discussions to help stem what was a rising tide of anti-semitic literature in Japan. The material that some Japanese cults were producing was really disgusting and needed a response.

I just don't know what Jim Woolsey's energy concerns have to do with anti-semitism studies -- unless in his remarks (that I hope someone reports on) he is going to paint a broad brush stroke alleging anti-semitism against all the Middle East regimes that sit on oil -- even those regimes that are trying to propose a final peace solution with Israel. That would be a sad outcome of Woolsey's appearance at Yale. Let's hope he proves my suspicions unfounded.

Charles Small, the Yale program director, is an accomplished academic and may just be bringing in someone like Woolsey because of the cachet of having a former CIA Director. It wouldn't matter to Small perhaps what Woolsey was speaking about -- even if it was something like Eastern shore birdwatching.

But I suspect that Woolsey has been invited in part because of his overdrive activities advocating Jonathan Pollard's release or as a tireless advocate of another war in the Middle East.

Perhaps I'm just being cynical, but it would be useful to hear from any Yale attendees on how much hyperbole Woolsey engages in next Thursday.

-- Steve Clemons

There is a great website out there, Poem of the Week, that is run anonymously by a good friend of mine.

This week's poem is Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born in 1792 and was "a renowned atheist and proponent of 'free love' when such things were decidedly unfashionable."

Percy Bysshe Shelley is probably best known as husband of the brilliant author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley.

When I read this poem, the image that came to mind was a faltering America stranded in the eroding sands of the Middle East.

I can just imagine someone eventually pointing to a map of the world and then to the U.S. saying, "They used to be big. . ."

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

'Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Poignant. . .

-- Steve Clemons

It was heavy-lifting all the way, but the House funding bill that funds America's operations in Iraq but requires withdrawal in 2008, passed today in a 218-212 vote.

I haven't seen the floor statement yet, but Representative John Murtha was apparently quite emotional -- on the verge of tears -- speaking about the successful passage just after the vote.

I think that the Senate will be an insurmountable challenge to this legislation as Dems will not be able to muster enough votes to move legislation forward that requires a date-specific withdrawal. But this does further fix blame for the Iraq War on the White House.

There were 15 Dems who opposed the funding bill -- some like Kucinich because he sees the appropriations bill as keeping the war going and others because they opposed any hand-tying of the military in Iraq.

The 15 included Represenatatives Barrow, Boren, Lincoln Davis, Kucinich, Lee, Lewis (GA), Marshall, Matheson, McNulty, Michaud, Taylor, Waters, Watson and Woolsey.

-- Steve Clemons

I will be in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at Dickinson College Saturday evening for the "central Pennsylvania debut" of a new fictional film on Iraq by Director Philip Haas titled The Situation.

Ticket information follows here -- but just prior to the show at 7 p.m. -- former Army War College Commandant Major General Robert Scales, former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, and I will be engaged in a pre-film "discussion" on the issues that the film delves into.

Director Philip Haas will be there as well -- and the public is welcome. If there are friends of TWN or members of the media who would like to attend, I think I can get a break on the $6.00 price of admission (but no guarantees).

-- Steve Clemons

Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is about to get former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack's endorsement.

This is pretty big news and strengthens Clinton's position in Iowa significantly. Vilsack -- while a second tier presidential contender -- is nonetheless an important part of a credible heartland strategy.

A timely endorsement like this gets Vilsack on the VP consideration list -- even though I think a more interesting pairing for Clinton would be Chuck Hagel.

-- Steve Clemons

Chris Matthews and Tom DeLay had a tug back and forth on whether DeLay had called Dick Armey "drunk" or "blind" with ambition.

DeLay kept insisting through the show that his new book cites Armey as "blind with ambition" but Matthews pointed out to him that the book reads "drunk with ambition."

It's clear that DeLay had both fronts covered in his own ambition.

-- Steve Clemons

(Former Senator Jesse Helms was the partner of Dan Burton on Helms-Burton Law)

Perhaps it was too good to be true. Congressman Dan Burton -- co-author of the Helms-Burton Law imposing extraterritorial sanctions law towards Cuba -- seems to have reversed himself -- or is at least seen to be flip-flopping this way and that -- on relaxing the Cuba travel ban.

Burton told Cuban-American Iraq War veteran Carlos Lazo and Sarah Stephens, Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, that he was supporting the Delahunt-LaHood bill removing travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans wishing to travel to Cuba.

I saw this as progress in the right direction -- even though I believe that U.S. laws that discriminate among classes of Americans based on ethnic descent are probably unconstitutional. Such a law permitting travel restrictions to be lifted for Cuban-Americans while not all Americans seems to be discriminatory and would unfairly limit my human right to travel as compared to Cuban-Americans.

But that said, Congressman Burton did communicate his intention to support Congressman Delahunt's and LaHood's legislation.

What also accompanied Sarah Stephens' press release yesterday was that Congressman Burton "had communicated" his position to both Congressmen Bill Delahunt (D-MA) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), the latter a proponent of lifting the travel ban to Cuba without restrictions.

So, has anyone called Congressmen Flake and Delahunt to see if Dan Burton did what he said he did?

-- Steve Clemons

(Israeli Ambassador to Italy and former Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General for Public Affairs Gideon Meir: AIPAC can help so much it hurts)

Even the best informed of us can be just real dumb on Friday mornings. I never knew that AIPAC was NOT compelled to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Apparently, the criminal investigation of two AIPAC employees, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, has many in the US-Israel policy community worried that a conviction would compel FARA registration for the organization. I had not seen this debate previously.

One would think that it was obvious that AIPAC was an agent for Israel's interests and thus would have to register as such.

Then again, to take the alternative position, I guess that there can be "undirected" agents of interest and that AIPAC members are simply advocating policies that they feel are good for the United States with regards to Israel -- without direction from Jerusalem.

There is some sense in this. If I wanted to advocate on behalf of smarter U.S. policy towards Cuba, towards Japan, towards Palestine, or towards the United Arab Emirates, then I should be able to do so without a need to register as an agent of foreign interests -- particularly since I am taking no direction from those foreign interests.

This is fascinating and explains a mystery that has bothered me for some time.

Pat Choate's famous book, Agents of Influence: How Japan's Lobbyists Manipulate America's Political and Economic System, has an appendix listing all of the known lawyers and lobbyists operating in Washington on behalf of foreign interests.

But Israel is one of the very few nations not listed. One might have surmised that Pat Choate had enough trouble taking on the Japan lobby at that time that he didn't want to take on the Israeli lobby as well -- but the reason seems to be that AIPAC was not required to file as a foreign agent and thus would not be listed in the book's appendix.

There are others who can weigh in on whether or not AIPAC is taking instructions from Israel's government and political leaders. If former Prime Minister Netanyahu is giving orders from his Likud seat, or Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making requests of AIPAC in its roster of political action efforts, then AIPAC should be registered appropriately. It's an interesting question.

But one thing that I can report from my trip to Israel last year is that there are some in the Israeli government who do not want to own AIPAC's actions and advocacy.

Then Israeli Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General for Public Affairs Gideon Meir (and now Israel's Ambassador to Italy) told me that "AIPAC does not represent the interests of the Israeli government. This organization may mean well but these diaspora organizations -- in order to keep and retain their members -- present battles in black and white and see only two sides. I have to deal with five sides -- or seven sides -- to a problem; and sometimes AIPAC and these diaspora groups undermine our efforts."

This would argue against AIPAC registering as a foreign agent. But if memos came down the pike that Israel is giving AIPAC clear instructions, then the requirement of registration should be implemented.

-- Steve Clemons

The details are fuzzy, but news agencies are reporting that the Iranian Navy has just detained 15 British troops in Iraqi waters.

After some negotiation and diplomatic sizzle, these troops will no doubt be released.

But this is more evidence that America and Iran are poking each other through proxies. Iran is using these British military personnel to send signals to the U.S. -- and the U.S. has taken similar actions against Iran inside Iraq and probably along the Iran-Iraq border.

These kinds of incidents become the stuff of escalation and miscalculation. One would hope that the President has purchased copies of The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis for his team to get them to understand what reckless escalation might cause. The problem is that part of Bush's foreign policy team views "reckless escalation" as its hobby.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly bought copies of this book and distributed to both sides in what could have been a hot nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan.

One hopes that Bush has the sense to drop the swagger and realizes that we are increasingly tilting towards accidental, if not purposeful, war -- but perhaps that is the President's intention.

-- Steve Clemons

My New America Foundation colleague Daniel Levy scores a great article in Ha'aretz suggesting that Condoleezza Rice is now a believer in and delivering on construction of "a horizon" for Palestinian-Israeli negotiated peace.

George Soros's piece, if you have not yet read it, on "Israel, America and AIPAC," deserves another read by this blogger.

For a laugh, watch this recruitment video for Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces. I had seen it a couple of years ago but someone sent the link recently from YouTube.

As if we needed one, here's yet another reason to get rid of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is the "anti rule-of-law Attorney General."

And a strong partner article to that of George Soros was written by Gary Kamiya at Salon.com titled "Can American Jews Unplug the Israel Lobby"

And then. . .Wow. . .David Ignatius wallops the Bush administration for its disdain of America's hard-working, solid civil servants. Here's the whole piece, but after reporting a short roster of obituaries of career civil servants in the Post op-ed pages, Ignatius writes:

What infuriates me about the Bush administration is its disdain for people like these. You sense that scorn reading the e-mails that have surfaced in the flap over the firings of U.S. attorneys. I don't think the story is much of a scandal. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and he can fire whomever he wants. What interests me about the Justice e-mails is that they are a piece of sociology, documenting the mind-set of the young hotshots and ideologues who populate the Bush administration.

Here's Kyle Sampson, now-deposed chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, griping about a U.S. attorney in Phoenix who had the effrontery to want to make his case personally: "In the 'you won't believe this category,' Paul Charlton would like a few minutes of the AG's time." And here's Brent Ward, the director of a Justice Department task force who made his name as an anti-pornography crusader grumbling that he doesn't want to deal with the U.S. attorney in Las Vegas: "To go out to LV and sit and listen to the lame excuses of a defiant U.S. attorney is only going to move this whole enterprise closer to catastrophe."

The Bush political operatives have become the people the Republicans once warned the country against -- a club of insiders who seem to think that they're better than other folks. They are so contemptuous of government and the public servants who populate it that they have been unable to govern effectively. They are a smug, inward-looking elite that thinks it knows who the good guys are by the political labels they wear.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons