I'm just getting my feet back on the ground after a long weekend in Maine. When I left DC, we were just starting to feel the shockwaves of the Democratic debate. Five days later, it feels like they've only gotten stronger. The Obama and Clinton PR machines are still trying to get a boost (or contain the damage) from last week's 90-second argument over diplomacy with rival countries.

I did some reflecting on what all this means when I was in Acadia National Park, one of the country's most beautiful places (I thought about posting a picture of Clinton or Obama, but this shot of Acadia's Otter Point is a much more refreshing sight in the midst of the long campaign season).

I was in a bit of a news vacuum and didn't get to read what others were saying. So it was a nice surprise when, upon my return, much of my views were already reflected here on this blog. Steve makes two important points: first, that Clinton must not leave the impression that she won't deal with "bad guys"; and second, that what Clinton actually said leaves a lot of room for high-level engagement with hostile countries. Sameer rightly points out that Obama never "promised" to meet with anyone, as some of his rivals have suggested.

This furor started a week ago, so part of me is tempted to let Steve's and Sameer's insightful comments to speak for themselves and move on. Weighing in now only contributes to the outrageous media maelstrom that currently surrounds electoral politics.

But this is one of those rare moments in which the ongoing media storm actually serves the country well. If it gets big enough, both candidates will have to make moves. For both candidates, the right moves politically are the right moves policy-wise, too.

Clinton probably got the better of the CNN debate exchange, appearing both prudent and cautious. However, her subsequent attacks on Obama have left the impression that she's cool on diplomacy. There's a way she can bolster her reputation as the seasoned, experienced candidate and still emphasize her commitment to diplomacy: she can outline (perhaps in an op-ed) her strategy for the U.S. to proactively start talks with some or all of the governments of Syria, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.

Primary voters don't need Clinton to promise that she'll meet every Head of State personally. They need to be reassured that a Clinton administration will come to the table instead of holding out and setting preconditions for negotiations.

For his part, Obama hasn't yet decided how ambitious his agenda is. One moment he's invoking the spirit of Ronald Reagan, suggesting that negotiating with adversaries has always been commonsense; the next moment, his campaign is about "turning a page."

The Reagan/Kennedy invocations work for Obama to set the frame and he should keep using them. But let's be honest: no presidential candidate has ever campaigned on a platform of direct, high-level talks with hostile nations.

Obama's campaign seems to be hard-wired to avoid risk and to project moderation, but the candidate needs to resist that push and instead embrace the boldness of his idea. An "Axis of Frank Dialogue" tour would signify far more than even "turning a page." It would mean writing a new chapter in the most progressive, revolutionary way.

What matters most to me in this skirmish is that both candidates are prepared to go to the negotiating table at some level without arrogantly suggesting that others need to ante up first, as the current administration does.

Both candidates have an opportunity to make that point in ways that reinforce their respective identities. Whether it's Clinton's experienced leadership or Obama's future-oriented optimism is of secondary importance to me for the time being. What matters is that we start talking.

-- Scott Paul

I have just returned from a quick weekend trip to London which I will write about soon I hope, but am catching up with the drama of DC debates about Iraq, Iran, the Middle East in general.

One of the pieces that has attracted a lot of attention this weekend is an article written by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack in the New York Times suggesting that things are much better than we all think they are in Iraq.

O'Hanlan and Pollack saw what they saw and sensed morale among the US military to be what they felt it to be -- but I have my own network back there, and I just don't get the same read.

I also feel compelled to remind readers of a 2004 Washington Post article that I thought was brave and smart about America's deteriorated position in Iraq. The article was co-authored by former Deputy National Security advisor James Steinberg and Michael O'Hanlon and called for US withdrawal from Iraq.

I think that the foundation of this 2004 Steinberg/O'Hanlon piece remains true today -- and I know Steinberg has not changed his views -- whereas O'Hanlon has not only become an advocate of keeping American troops in Iraq but thinks things are going swimmingly on the military front.

I'm with Steinberg and just about every other long-time Iraq observer on this one.

-- Steve Clemons

A former "comfort woman" in South Korea

Mindy Kotler is director of Asia Policy Point a Washington nonprofit research center that studies the U.S. policy relationship with Japan and Northeast Asia.

Thank you Steve for this opportunity to guest blog about Asia on TWN. Like Steve, I lament the many missteps and poor decisions made by the Bush Administration. U.S. policy toward Asia is no exception. Although relations with Japan are believed to be going well, they are built upon a fragile base that masks a multitude of contradictions.

Today, July 30th, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution introduced by Rep Mike Honda (D-CA) on January 31 asking the Government of Japan to "formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as 'comfort women', during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II." The necessity of this resolution illustrates well the inadequacies of the Administration's Asia policy.

What the House of Representatives saw as an important step toward encouraging historical reconciliation in Asia, the Japanese government believed was affront to their national honor. The Bush Administration, although fearful the resolution would provoke right-wing anti-Americanism in Japan derailing alliance building, found itself unable to speak out against it. The Abe Administration's denial of the internationally accepted comfort women history was simply too embarrassing to a White House intent on promoting the U.S.-Japan Alliance as based on shared values. The resolution too easily exposed the current effort to shape a new U.S.-Japan relationship is at cross-purposes with other American foreign policy goals.

The resolution, H, Res. 121, was the fifth time Congress has considered legislation suggesting that Japan apologize for perpetrating the comfort women tragedy during its Pacific War. It is the second time the resolution was reported out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee positively (once under the Republicans and now under the Democrats). The success of this bipartisan resolution can be attributed to a number of factors, none that outweighed the other.

Unique to this Comfort Woman resolution was that a select, international group of scholars advised congressional staff on Japanese history and political process. These scholars advised on how the resolution would be perceived in Japan and prepared briefing papers that carefully explained and documented how and why the government of Japan had never given an official apology to the Comfort Women. They were also available to respond to Embassy of Japan's lobbying statements, to answer staffers' specific questions, and to explain the nuances of the Japanese language of apology. (My organization spearheaded this effort and many of these briefing papers can be found on our website.)

Members of Congress and their staff learned that Japanese governmental statements of policy, such as an important diplomatic apology to the Comfort Women, must either be approved by a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) or a Diet resolution to be considered official. Thus far, no Japanese apology to the Comfort Women meets either of these criteria. Moreover, it is the Cabinet not the prime minister that is constitutionally the chief executive of Japan. Without a Cabinet Decision backing up a prime minister's policy statement, he is only expressing his personal views. It was a lesson with implications far beyond that of Japan's historical responsibility.

The effort also demonstrated the growing political maturity of the Asian American community, especially Korean American. Asian American volunteers and the human rights groups, coordinated by two young Korean American Washington lobbyists, were able to bring the message to individual congressman and sign up a record 168 co-sponsors. The professionalism, energy, and experience of these lobbyists were critical for the Asian Americans to understand the legislative process and how to get its voice heard.

Groups as diverse as the College Shiks to Korean American dentists to Filipinos of Florida joined together on this issue. The work of international organizations such as Amnesty International and Polaris was also built upon and incorporated in the campaign. The issue was internationalized and recognized as more than an historical injustice between Korea and Japan.

Most important, the issue had become appealing. The victimization of women during conflict and the transnational crime of human trafficking are bipartisan causes on Capitol Hill. They are the "new" human rights issues. A February 15th hearing at the Asia, Pacific and Global Environment Subcommittee featuring three former Comfort Women -- two Korean and one Dutch -- provided an all too vivid picture of what it was like to be a sex slave for Imperial Japan. Their accounts of their rape echoed ones of those in contemporary Rwanda, Bosnia, and Burma. Their ordeal in Imperial Japan's state-sponsored system of rape camps resembled the degradations suffering by current victims of human trafficking.

In addition, the Congress believes in the importance of the U.S. Japan alliance to help maintain stability in East Asia. With a wary eye on a rising China and a newly nuclear North Korea, both sides of the aisle doubted Bush Administration abilities to keep the regional peace. During Bush's watch, China's influence expanded in Asia and its military budget expanded; North Korea acquired the bomb, South Korea leaned toward China, and Pacific maritime threats grew. In this fast changing environment remained old historic injustices that continued to keep our allies distant and wary of cooperating with Japan.

To address security in Asia, to counter a rising China and a nuclear North Korea, the only option the White House offered was a closer alliance with Japan, a country that had a constitutional restriction against active military cooperation and a poor history with its neighbors, especially China and Korea. To remilitarize Japan, the Administration allied itself with political forces in Japan that not only believed in a closer U.S.-Japan alliance, a strong Japanese military, and constitutional change, but also in a host of retrogressive notions of what it means to be Japanese, not the least being that the Pacific War was one of liberation against white colonialism.

Last September, Shinzo Abe became prime minister pledging to boost Japan's global security profile and rewrite its pacifist constitution. Those changes were welcome and encouraged by the Bush White House, who hoped to shape Japan into America's closest ally. This emphasis, however, ignored both the opinions of the Japanese people who did not put a priority on foreign affairs and the realities of unresolved historical injustices that perpetuated tensions between other US allies in the region and Japan. Abe's conservative nationalist agenda, while presenting a picture of a tough, prideful, even prickly Japan, also excite regional suspicions and hindered regional security cooperation.

Essentially, Japan as the linchpin of Asian regional security was a quick fix that clashed with the growing importance of issues of human dignity and social justice in global foreign relations. The lessons of Iraq, Darfur, Bosnia and countless other contemporary conflicts demonstrated that "hard" and "soft" power could not be separated. And in Asia, it seems that the history issues need to be resolved before security could be advanced. Thus the Comfort Woman resolution resonates with many members of Congress in several different ways.

On June 26, members of the House Foreign Relations Committee voted 39-2 to approve the resolution. No one disputed the facts that Japan had never officially apologized to the women (and men) that Imperial Japan enslaved them to work in its frontline brothels. The few congressional objections centered on whether it was a job of the U.S. Congress to question of policies of another country. Japan's massive, multi-million dollar lobbying to defeat the resolution's passage focused on an interpretation of the "facts."

These facts depended upon the source: the Embassy focused on the number of unofficial apologies, and the conservative Japanese groups, who on June 14 took an ad in the Washington Post, calling the Comfort Women paid prostitutes and chastising Congress for not having the "facts."

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA) said at the Committee vote, "The true strength of a nation is tested when it is forced to confront the darkest chapters in its history. Will it have the courage to face up to the truth of its past, or will it hide from those truths in the desperate and foolish hope they will fade with time?" And House Speaker Pelosi responded to the vote by issuing an unprecedented Press Release supporting the resolution and saying, "They [the Comfort Women] have waited far too long [for an apology], but it is not too late to recognize their courage."

Reconciliation and regional peace in Asia are at the heart of Mr. Honda's resolution. Long overdue justice and respect for the Comfort Women are one of the elements needed to achieve this peace. There was wide, bipartisan support for H.Res.121 in Congress.

The resolution projects U.S. leadership and attention to the important--but currently unresolved--issues dividing America's Asian allies and exacerbating differences between countries in Asia. It is also good for our very close ally Japan, as its government seeks long-overdue recognition of Japan's 60-year history of constructive, responsible and resolutely peaceful membership in the modern world community.

-- Mindy Kotler

Sameer Lalwani is a policy analyst in the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program

The upside of this latest tiff between Senators Clinton and Obama is that it is starting to force candidates, and hopefully the broader public, to start thinking about what a new foreign policy should look like, and further, if we support diplomacy, what the sound byte of "vigorous diplomacy" should contain.

Lest we forget, the Bush administration in their heyday of unilateralism characterized their Iraq efforts as diplomacy when in it was clear from a number of vantage points, that they had already made up their mind to invade.

Even former Ambassador John Bolton suggested the US was pursuing maximum diplomatic efforts with regards to Iran at exactly the same time the administration chose to reject the now-famous offer made by Iran in May 2003. The transcript of the Radio Sawa interview reads:

So we are hoping that the example of Iraq divested of its weapons of mass destruction would be persuasive to a number of other states in the Middle East, and we certainly intend to exert a maximum diplomatic effort to persuade other states like Syria, Libya and Iran among others to give up their pursuit of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and long range ballistic missile delivery systems. [emphasis added]

Bolton also expressed commitments to diplomacy in the announcement of his nomination, his testimony, and interviews throughout, but they rang hollow when faced with his actions which were roundly criticized for their very undiplomatic nature.

The fact is, for years the administration ran roughshod over the meaning of diplomacy and turned it into a political sound byte rather than a serious effort to secure our own interests. So committing to diplomacy is not enough, defining its contents and fleshing out its meaning are what counts.

To that end, Senator Obama tries to counter the Bush administration's brand of thin-diplomacy (sometimes unilateralism cloaked in the garb of diplomacy) by evincing a willingness to meet leaders of all stripes, even the ones we don't like, in order achieve strategic ends.

(Since several TWN comments have challenged Steve on his read of this, if we're going to have a close textual reading of the debate transcript, its important to note the question asked about a "willingness" to meet with leaders that somehow metamorphosed into a "promise" to meet with them--the reframing in absolutist terms allows the respondent to describe what they wouldn't do and evade articulation of a positive foreign policy vision).

Ironically, while Sen. Clinton didn't want to be used as propaganda for dictators, she finds herself--much to her chagrin--to be the heroine of neo-con extraordinaire Charles Krauthammer's column this morning. With the Krauthammers of the country praising Sen. Clinton for her tough-sounding rhetoric, it probably doesn't do much for her defense against the Bush/Cheney-lite charge.

One canard Krauthammer offers in defense of Senator Clinton's statement is that meeting and talking somehow rewards leaders and dictators we don't like. I'd like to know what reward Russian President Vladimir Putin received when President Bush met with him a month ago in Maine. Were we congratulating him for his opposition to our intended missile defense deployment or his threats to withdraw from the CFE or INF treaties? I certainly didn't see Krauthammer opposing that meeting. The reason is because at some point we have to face-up to the realities around us and some of those are odious leaderships we don't particularly like.

According to Freedom House's rankings of countries in the world (which I don't fully subscribe to but is generally referenced and praised by the Krauthammer types) nearly all the countries mentioned in the debate's diplomacy question fall into the same category as Russia, while Venezuela actually ranks slightly higher. All five countries mentioned rank higher than Russia on the Economist Intelligence Unit's newly established Global Peace Index. Base on these metrics, Russia appears as bad or worse than the countries we refuse to talk to. So if we're willing to stomach our disdain and meet with Russian leadership for strategic objectives, why not the other leaders?

Russia is no geopolitical wallflower, yet President Bush met with Putin because Russia has been disruptive to our interests and we'd rather they play a more responsible stewardship role in their part of the world. We have little use for meetings with effusive, well-intentioned leaders of countries that can't deliver anything and pose little consequence to global stability.

A willingness to meet thuggish leaders is a matter of cold, calculating self-interest whether to express displeasure and redlines, clarify miscommunications, or attempt some deal making. This isn't a promise to meet on a dictator's whim. It means maintaining the option, the strategic flexibility to talk and cut deals that further our own objectives--like flipping Syria to disrupt Iranian power projection across the Middle East, or luring Cuba into our economic orbit to deflate Venezuela's control of Latin America.

But meeting with leaders is only one element of a diplomatic strategy that needs to be rounded out with more innovative ideas. Steve Clemons has decried the proposals by both Sen. Clinton and Obama to beef up our armed forces as a play to look tough without actually increasing what he terms "security deliverables." In fact, his charge of an "over-militarized engagement with the world" has been substantiated by a December 2006 report commissioned by then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Lugar. It details the overinvestment in and overdependence on our military to achieve security when in fact an critical but neglected civilian capacity carries out essential day-to-day operations to win the hearts and minds of the world primarily through the State Department and USAID. The report goes on to suggest a rapid expansion of these capacities to fulfill their mandates and prevent a military scope-creep that could undermine our efforts to win over local populations.

Rather than trading political punches and punch lines, both Senators could stand to read the report's recommendations and adopt more robust visions for the role of our civilian and diplomatic capacities in US national security policy.

--Sameer Lalwani

(photo credit: James Fallows)

I just received a short note from Atlantic Monthly national correspondent James Fallows who is living (and coughing a lot because of the ridiculously high levels of pollution) in China this year.

He shared these two blog posts -- first and second -- that I want to pass on.

I was in Los Angeles for the 1984 Olymics and know that in anticipation of them, L.A. did much to correct what was then a surging air quality problem. Beijing clearly has some work to do.

I'm a fan of marathons -- and would not want to see anyone have to run for a tough 26.2 miles breathing that miserably dismal quality of air.

-- Steve Clemons

Several good friends close to Senator Clinton were surprised by my post suggesting a "Nixon-Lite Strategy" as a guiding direction for some of her foreign policy thinking. To be fair, when I wrote a critique of Senator Obama's first major foreign policy address, I got similar nudges from his team.

But I do want to be fair as I like much of what Hillary Clinton says and stands for. I view a major presidential candidacy like I do any presidential administration -- as a lesson in schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. There are some dominant personalities and others that are subordinate -- and they shift.

It is my view that some of Hillary's foreign policy advisors see value in highlighting the world's bad guys and using general disdain for them as a way to rally support. This was a tactic of PNAC. It's part of the "high fear", "we live in a dangerous world", "watch out for terrorists" motif that organizations like "Family Security Matters" exploit on the political right.

But the fact is that these so-called bad guys and thugs are the same kind of thugs America has had to deal with for decades. In fact, until 9/11 and the Bush administration's wrong-headed and counterproductive invasion of Iraq as the key feature of its "global war on terror," America and the West had a pretty good "thug management system" in place.

The interesting, unspoken reality about Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Bashar al-Assad, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that they are all rational actors. They are each unique in their own way and have different concerns but most of them have to do with power or security.

Mancur Olson, one of the leading proponents of rational choice theory, found dictatorships to provide useful metaphors to explain to lay audiences the dynamics of self-interested, rational, utility-maximization in a political system.

To deal with any of these people and their governments, rationality and predictability as well as carrots and credible sticks are needed.

To satisfy various supporters of Senator Clinton, let me reprint what exactly she said during the YouTube/CNN debate:

CLINTON: Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are.

I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don't want to make a situation even worse. But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration.

And I will purse very vigorous diplomacy.

And I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly, we're not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.

There is a "cautious calculation" in Hillary Clinton's response that any president should make a constant feature of his or her decision-making process. However, there is a need for a rational, clear-headed assessment of where America is in the world today and how we are going to use this time of upheaval and instability to leap into a new global framework that is both good for American interests and good for global interests and stability.

Hillary Clinton did talk about the importance of diplomacy, and that is great. But the zinger that everyone on both sides of this debate is focusing on is whether we should talk to the world's problematic leaders or not. Even in her response yesterday to John King on CNN, she emphasized the names of the various leaders that give her pause. This is part of a "I'll be tough on them" framing of this issue that some of Hillary Clinton's advisers have been advocating.

As an example, I've been waiting to hear from Senator Clinton how her strategy on Cuba would differ from a long line of administrations who have failed to achieve any of their objectives in achieving regime change in Cuba. My sense is that we are long overdue for a major overhaul in US-Cuba relations that puts American interests overall ahead of any political cartels inside the US who have controlled that relationship for far too long and at great detriment to American interests. Regime change efforts that America has engaged in have backfired over and over and over again -- but regime change remains the official position of the United States toward Cuba and remains the unofficial policy of the US towards Iran.

Opening up travel and some trade to Cuba -- a nation that is now exporting doctors rather than guns and revolution -- may have numerous positive affects. The mere fact that the Soviet bloc fell and stopped supporting Cuba has had an enormous impact on the minds and lives of Cubans -- and as they see China's global ascension and the manner in which China has increasingly absorbed market capitalism, they are reconsidering their own national growth strategies. Cuba's economy grew by about 10% last year -- and virtually none of that growth benefited the US.

Changing the dynamics with Cuba could have a very good impact on Latin America as a whole that frankly is not too thrilled with the bravado and bluster from Hugo Chavez. Take Cuba from him and his pretensions and Latin American nations will also find ways to resist Chavez's revolutionary charms. But we should still meet with Chavez and negotiate with him.

Diplomacy -- which Hillary Clinton says she supports -- is knowing what battles to lose so that the major wars can be won. It is not a binary process.

Clinton is right to not necessarily sign on to unconditional meetings with all of these leaders -- but she should have said that it would be a high priority for her to meet them, to communicate America's views and positions, to see where opportunities might be exploited, and when a tougher edged policy was called for.

This whole debate would be different if she had said that meeting with the world's thugs is important and should be made the kind of priority that it is not in this administration. Shunning and isolating our enemies is in character for the Jesse Helms/Richard Cheney wing of Republican national security circles. It should not be a dominant feature of Hillary Clinton's profile.

More on Obama later. I'm glad that he is willing to meet those in the world who are working vigorously against American interests. But we still have yet to hear from him a "hard choices" speech on the multiple prongs of a strategy he'd deploy to get America's national security portfolio back in shape.

Both Obama and Hillary Clinton support the growth of the size of the military by another 92,000 personnel -- and in my mind, that just compounds the problems they are supposed to be fixing. We already have an over-militarized engagement with the world and we need something different. And when a nation spends as much money on defense and security as America does and still does not feel safe, the problem is not the number of troops -- it is "bad management."

That is something that Obama and Clinton, as well as the other candidates, might reflect on as well.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Clinton's press office sent this note out today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- July 26, 2007

Clinton/CNN Interview to Air this Afternoon

Senator Clinton taped an interview with CNN's John King this afternoon where she was asked to react to Barack Obama referring to her as "Bush-Cheney Lite."

The following is what Senator Clinton said (the interview will air later this afternoon on CNN):

SEN. CLINTON: "Well, this is getting kind of silly. I've been called a lot of things in my life but I've never been called George Bush or Dick Cheney certainly.

We have to ask what's ever happened to the politics of hope?

I have been saying consistently for a number of years now, we have to end the Bush era of ignoring problems, ignoring enemies and adversaries. And I have been absolutely clear that we've got to return to robust and effective diplomacy.

But I don't want to see the power and prestige of the United States President put at risk by rushing into meetings with the likes of Chavez, and Castro, and Ahmadinejad."

With all due respect to the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race, Hillary Clinton is wrong on this issue.

America has overdosed on the kind of pugnacious leadership that rejects talking to rivals and, yes, even enemies. Both Clinton and her debate rival Barack Obama know that any serious benchmark of American status, prestige, and moral credibility in the world has fallen precipitously under this administration and needs to be addressed.

Talking to rivals is not acquiescing to them, or appeasing them. Talking to our rivals is in America's own self interest. I'm not talking about a global feel good session -- but rather getting our own portfolio of interests back in some kind of reasonable shape. To do that, we need to be 'engaged' with those trying to take advantage of our eroding and eroded global position.

The right answer to the question posed in the YouTube/CNN debates would have been that Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have become empowered by the high price of oil. They are trying to expand their interests regionally and need to be dealt with. Iran's growing pretensions were entirely predictable and were a natural consequence of the United States deposing Saddam Hussein and puncturing the mystique of American power with a "war of choice" in Iraq that is now a tragic morass.

Chavez also senses a void of American attentions in Latin America and is competing to fill that space as well as to inherit the mantle of lead revolutionary and American antagonizer from Fidel Castro.

But Castro, both brothers, are a different case. Whether one organized a meeting with Fidel or Raul Castro or not -- decades of a failed embargo policy against Cuba have not yielded any of the objectives of US foreign policy there. The travel restrictions on Cuban American families themselves essentially compel citizens to choose whether they want to attend their father's funeral or their mother's.

Republican House Member Jeff Flake has had the courage to state that if he is going to have his travel restricted anywhere in the world, he'd rather have a Communist government blocking him than his own government in the United States of America.

Hillary Clinton should be honest with Americans about her own direct knowledge that US policy towards Cuba has entirely and utterly failed -- and that the perpetuation of an anachronistic Cold War-fashioned policy towards an island nation just off our coast shows an "absence of strategy" and common sense.

Clinton herself has traveled to the land of 1.2 billion communists, the Peoples' Republic of China, and been an advocate of feminist exchanges and other people to people encounters as examples of the kind of liberalizing currents that can help empower citizens and promote a culture of self-determination. Cuba deserves no less.

IN FACT Senator Clinton, opening up the travel restrictions to Cuba and incrementally lifting the economic embargo may rob Cuba from Hugo Chavez's own Latin American delusions of grandeur. Chavez is trying to spread his influence in the region by providing much needed oil and cash transfer payments to Cuba and allying himself with the mystique of Castro. I believe that Cubans want to make their own way and not be particularly dependent on any great patron -- but ending key aspects of the embargo will enhance America's weight inside Cuba and diminish Chavez's.

The same exact logic applies to Syria and Iran. If one wanted to put a speed bump in the way of Iran's growing influence in the Middle East, then America should start creating a Libya-like track to get Syria back into fully normalized relations with the US and the West -- as well as with Israel.

There are clearly problems and hurdles with what I am suggesting -- but that kind of maneuvering between the US president and foreign bad guys is called "strategy". And we need a new strategy of constructive, self-interested, tough-minded engagement with world leaders who are consequential to our well-being and interests.

So, yes -- Obama is right that Hillary Clinton articulated a Bush-lite strategy.

Even the surprising, burgeoning realists Katrina vanden Heuvel and Ari Berman at The Nation agree with this view and have knocked back their own Hillary-leaning David Corn.

Let's hope that we may be able to nudge Senator Clinton and her foreign policy team away from a policy that seems laced with elements of a John Bolton-style, Jesse Helmsian pugnacious nationalism and towards a more Nixon-lite approach -- which in my book would demonstrate real 21st century style leadership.

Nixon went to China and negotiated arms deals with the Soviets. Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Gorbachev ended the Cold War.

Will it be Hillary that changes the world and goes to Cuba? to Iran? to Syria?

Or will it be Obama?

-- Steve Clemons

Last night, I got a phone call from New York Sun writer Eli Lake, a thoughtful and serious writer who is more hawkish than I am and closely associated with neoconservatives (though I don't consider him to be one -- he's too empirical for that), about Colin Powell speaking at a huge motivational conference in September along with Sugar Ray Leonard, Steve Forbes, Robert Schuller, and Zig Ziglar.

Lake got me at a good time as I had just seen the giant full page ad for the Verizon Center conference and thought it really odd -- and just something not quite fitting Colin Powell's stature. I offered a quote, and Eli Lake got what I said right though I think that the comments said something more about me than they did Powell. I was snobbish and shouldn't have been.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I admire Secretary Powell. He did much to clean up messes behind the scenes early in the tenure of this administration. He helped squash what could have been an incredibly destructive escalation with China in April 2001. He oversaw Armitage's efforts in defusing a potential nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India.

Powell gave his North Korea-focused diplomats who began in earnest working on the current North Korea deal protection from Cheney's wing of the national security establishment. He put John Bolton in a "box" when Bolton agitated as Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control. Powell has called for Guantanamo to be shut down. He has made another brave, true statement that the Quartet envoy Tony Blair is going to have to find a way to communicate with Hamas.

I have no doubt that many of my readers are going to share alternative views that Secretary Powell could have done more to shut down the Cheney-Rumsfeld machine, or have exposed details from inside the Bush White House that might have prevented a worsening of the debacle in Iraq, or could have said more about how he was seriously misled by George Tenet and other parts of the government before his address to the United Nations in early 2003 on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities and assets. But I stand by my support of Powell -- and feel that things would have been even worse than they are today had Powell and his team not been in the administration from the beginning.

There are things I wish Powell would do and say -- but that responsibility and burden is for him to carry -- and I think that Powell weighs in on matters like Guantanamo and Hamas when he thinks it will provide a "tilt" and matter.

So, back to my regretted snobbishness. The fact is that I am of two minds about the whole speaker fee issue.

When I was in the very early stages of helping to establish the Nixon Center in 1993 and was then working at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, I was contacted by a representative of one of Japan's largest economy-focused newspapers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, who felt that I knew a lot of political folks and wanted to use me as an intermediary to invite former President George H.W. Bush to Japan.

This kind of invite was a sensitive political issue because the Reagans had accepted a trip to Japan financed by Fujianskei Communications which cost the firm somewhere between $8 and $10 million -- with a substantial chunk of that going as compensation to the former President.

I contacted President Bush then who was then working with a single staff member in a new Texas office -- and got him on the phone. He was very sensitive to appearances and did not want a repeat of the Reagan's situation -- and thought that there was a way to go to Japan for a decent fee, but not so substantial as to seem inappropriate. That particular deal never came through because the newspaper group simply wanted to have the former President appear at multiple functions around Japan charging people to attend -- and it just seemed well, unseemly.

I admired the current President Bush's father for that kind of sensitivity.

I got to know the elder Harry Walker via President Bush who handles many of the top political talent in the country -- and at one point thought about doing more to help line up talent for Japan venues. But in the end, I didn't have the interest and financial deals have never been my motivator.

The point for this back story is that I have thought about the issue of audiences, speakers, fees, and the like before -- and I do believe that it is essential for smart leaders to get out into the country and meet normal Americans who don't have the benefit (or curse) of being exposed to high octane politics 24/7. In the case of Bush the elder, that case was not about motivating Americans, or trying to connect with people who weren't political junkies.

I should not have "looked down my nose" at Colin Powell's decision to speak to thousands of people who do not normally have the opportunity to rub shoulders with people like him. They get to pay a small fee -- and perhaps they take members of their family who need some motivational kick-start. If I had the opportunity to speak to 10,000 people, I'd do it because it's an opportunity to try and instill some of the realities of "hard choices" that this town has to struggle with frequently and which many in the country don't have connection with.

So, Eli Lake got my snobbish comments correct. I do think that I erred in offering them because I should have said that while the ad glitz was just not my kind of thing, that doesn't matter. What matters is that someone like Colin Powell is going to connect with a sizable number of Americans who are probably not as informed as they might be on matters of national importance today -- and that it is good for the barriers of inside the beltway and outside to be blurred a bit.

I should probably even go and see what this Zig Ziglar and motivational scene is all about in any case. Maybe they'll give me a blogger's discount.

-- Steve Clemons

Sameer Lalwani is a policy analyst in the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program

Last night, the New America Foundation co-hosted a dinner with The American Prospect around their June "Middle East issue" that featured a number of important pieces by my American Strategy Program colleagues. While the special issue centered on the broader strategic questions emerging out of the Middle East including our options for dealing with Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, the evening's discussion narrowed in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and "Ten Commandments for Mideast Peace" co-authored by former negotiators Daniel Levy (Israel), Ghaith al-Omari (Palestine), and Rob Malley (U.S.). Levy and al-Omari are currently both fellows at New America, Malley is the International Crisis Group Middle East Director.

Unfortunately Ghaith al-Omari had to undergo a last minute dental procedure and Steve Clemons, who was scheduled to host and moderate the event, was stranded on a tarmac in Providence due to inclement weather (a recurring event for Clemons). So Flynt Leverett--who also had an excellent memo laying out our options in the June issue titled "To the Incoming President: On Iraq"--stepped in along with Bob Kuttner, to host the evening.

The timing of the dinner couldn't have been better as it followed on the heels of the Bush administration's proposal last Monday to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and PM Salam Fayyad's government by renewing financial assistance, offering security assistance, working with Israel to release prisoners and ease its chokehold of checkpoints, and, most significantly, creating a political horizon with a regional conference scheduled for the fall.

Malley and Levy started off the evening sketching out the terrain of the post-Palestinian-split environment and whether the administration's recent proposal was both serious and substantial enough to change the dynamic in the region. Though the meeting of regional actors on the peace process, proposed for the fall, has been likened to the 1991 Madrid conference, Malley pointed out the significant differences in this climate--the fragmentation of the Palestinians, the polarization of the Middle East, the interconnectedness of regional problems increasing the propensity for interference, the collapse of US credibility, and the absence of a shared vision--shatters the analogy.

Levy underscored that the absence of a substantive, not merely nominal, referee in the process has had a devastating impact on calculating risk. The Winograd Commission interim report reveals that a number of ministers, who signed on to the bombing campaign against Lebanon last summer, had the assumption of US intervention after 48-96 hours built-in to their decision-making process. Without the US reining everyone in, Israel was locked into a downward spiral of escalation.

The general strike against the administration's strategy of isolating Hamas and bolstering Fatah in the West Bank is that no one has a real strategy for the day after, for "retaking Gaza," which suggests the complete isolation of Hamas will not be possible indefinitely. Former Secretary of State Powell stated less than a week ago that the US needed to find some way of talking to Hamas:

I think you'd have to find some way to talk to Hamas. I don't want to insert myself into what Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice is doing or what the president is doing. But they are not going to go away. And we have to remember that they enjoy considerable support among the Palestinian people. They won an election that we insisted upon having. And so, as unpleasant a group as they may be, and as distasteful as I find some of their positions, I think that through the [Middle East Quartet, which consists of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations] or through some means, Hamas has to be engaged. I dont think you can just cast them into outer darkness and try to find a solution to the problems of the region without taking into account the standing that Hamas has in the Palestinian community.

In order to navigate this and talk to Hamas, Levy proposed some innovative diplomatic tricks to have Hamas represented without formally being at the table. For instance, in '91, the Palestinians had to be brought in as part of the Jordanian delegation allowing them to claim their own seat at the table while Israeli negotiators were able to defend this to a domestic polity. But like former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin's firewall between the peace process and combating terrorism (an effective policy to prevent spoilers from derailing the peace process), this dual-delegation strategy would require a political willingness and strength that most agree is a largely absent.

The skepticism of the speakers was rivaled only by the attendees of the dinner (composed largely of journalists). But despite their doubts, the former negotiators actually suggested some possibilities for taking advantage of the President's speech to build up a real expectation of a regional conference. Some options being considered by Israel that might bolster the process included addressing the re-launch of the Arab peace initiative with some early deliverables or even another plan for "convergence" and removal of West Bank settlements.

In a departure from Steve Clemons who has derided Tony Blair's appointment as Middle East envoy, Levy and Malley offered cautious support for Blair because of his achievements in Northern Ireland bringing together the hardliners of both sides, which was attributed his keen sense of timing and the politics. Blair has a slightly different take on the direness of the situation yesterday expressing a "sense of possibility" and a confidence in his ability to extend beyond his economic portfolio to advance peace talks. Another former negotiator has mentioned to me that Blair's stature and closeness to Bush can be real assets that enable him to bypass the President's gatekeepers, some who may impede serious efforts to restart a peace process.

As Levy and Malley struggled to present possible upsides to what one of them described as the administration's plan to "push the accelerator on a failed policy," it seemed as if they were reaching deep into a hat to extract a rabbit that just wasn't there.

Towards the end of the evening, facing continued questions on the perpetual impasse (Israel's demand for a real partner to begin negotiations and Palestinians' demand for an easing of harsh conditions to preface negotiations), Levy proposed a path breaking action--if Israel issued a decisive statement of intent that they wished to return to the 1967 borders with negotiated adjustments, that they saw "no future in the occupied territories," it would have a dramatic impact on the Palestinian dynamic and the Arab world's willingness to see this process through. (It is rumored earlier drafts of President Bush's speech with more State Department input referenced the magic numbers "67" but they were scrubbed away in successive drafts).

Perhaps because the US referee Israel once counted on to cue their "next move" has since disappeared, Israel may begin to take a long hard look at its options and decide this '67 declaration is just the Gordian knot maneuver it needs to begin normalizing ties with the Arab world.

--Sameer Lalwani

David Wurmser, one of the Vice President's most dedicated neoconservative spear-carriers, is leaving the administration to start a risk assessment consulting firm.

A close friend of his who still works for President Bush shared with me that Wurmser has been looking for a new position for quite a while -- which is what actually led him to share some of this information that I reported and the New York Times, Time's Joe Klein and others helped substantiate. Ironically, the New York Times article, according to this source, made it more difficult for a consulting shop or firm to acquire Wurmser.

But several people tell me that Wurmser has wanted to leave for some time and that his departure now was consistent with what he wanted to do before disclosures about policy tension between contending teams in the White House over Iran policy.

-- Steve Clemons

When I first tuned into the Democratic debate tonight, I started taking copious notes on who was saying what. Then I stopped. Most Americans will be going more on general impressions than word-by-word analysis, so I should too.

On policy, the most important takeaway, for me, anyway, is Gov. Richardson's support for a permanent UN peacekeeping force. That bodes extremely well for a better thought out and more politically viable proposal to establish the UN Emergency Peace Service, that I've been working hard to build momentum for over the past few months. This is an idea that's going from zero to 60 and is all of a sudden squarely in the policy mainstream.

Tonight's debate is the first Democratic debate that I've recapped. I was disappointed that few if any of the questions touched on America's declining influence in the world or the importance of cooperating with others in an interconnected world.

On the flip side, I'm very happy with the Democratic slate of candidates. Nearly all of them would make fine Presidents and most of them are solid candidates, too.

Without further ado, my impressions:

Hillary Clinton: Clearly the most polished and effective debater, Clinton came off extremely well tonight. Her message is tight, her knowledge of policy is deep, and she played to her strengths at every turn. Still, primary voters wondering how committed she is to ending the conflict in Iraq will come away unsatisfied. And more importantly, half a year into the campaign, I'm still not sure what her campaign is fundamentally about. Clinton's rhetoric is very safe and generic, highlighting the "need for change," for example. She still hasn't communicated clearly what's fueling her desire to be President. Until she does, she'll remain vulnerable to allegations that she's driven by raw ambition and puts politics ahead of principle. All that notwithstanding, Clinton's effort tonight substantially helped her cause.

Barack Obama: A mixed performance. Obama's cerebral disposition, careful use of language to highlight nuance, and ability to connect hot-button issues with more fundamental questions has made him a talk-show darling, but it's not winning him points in a debate. Interesting to note: Obama has started lashing out at those ubiquitous special interests. I haven't heard him do it before. My guess is that someone advised him that if you're not going to bash Republicans, you've got to find another villain. Generally, Obama is going to need to answer questions more directly; I think his reluctance to say Americans in Iraq have not died in vain could leave potential voters with a bad taste in their mouths. That said, Obama started hitting the mark in the second half of the debate and by the end of the night, his responses were extremely compelling.

John Edwards: I think Edwards gained ground tonight. He clearly came off as an action-oriented candidate on poverty, health care, Iraq, and stuck to his populist, anti-special interests message. He was put on defense more than most other candidates and did reasonably well. The one question that put a chink in John's armor, I think, was whether or not he stands by Elizabeth's contention that he'd be a better President for women than Clinton. Then again, that's not an easy one to parry. Edwards's supporters will be happy with his performance on the whole.

Bill Richardson: Since he stated his support for something like UNEPS (but even more bold), I would love to say Richardson made gains. I really would. But Richardson seemed a bit scatterbrained tonight. He showcased his accomplishments and depth of knowledge effectively. But Richardson didn't get to answer questions in his strongest areas, energy and diplomacy. And his comments were chock full of wonk-speak. He's going to have to remember how to explain complex issues to voters on their terms. I should also note that Richardson's YouTube ad (all candidates were asked to submit one), a reprise of one of his Presidential job search spot, is the winner in my book:

Chris Dodd: Dodd didn't have many memorable moments tonight, good or bad. His understanding of complex issues, his boldness on energy policy, and his views - especially on diplomacy and foreign policy - are second to none. But Dodd comes off as a New England intellectual. He's not as boring as Gore in 2000 or as wooden as Kerry in '04, but so far, he's no more accessible than either. My guess is he gains ground in the Northeast and in university communities but loses ground elsewhere.

Joe Biden: Biden's trying to emerge as the straight-talk candidate for the Dems, and for the most part, it's working. He's avoided longwinded answers and stayed on message. His understanding of how a withdrawal from Iraq would work - coupled with his plan for federalism there - was impressive, whether or not one agrees with him on the merits of his argument (I'm sure that some who are itching for a quicker withdrawal would take issue with his position). But Biden lost big time points with me by suggesting that we need to send American troops to Darfur and, more importantly, that those who favor other options were being soft and tolerant of genocide. As Clinton, Gravel, and Richardson pointed out, there's no way American troops could perform a peace operation as well as a robust UN force could in Darfur. American forces aren't trained primarily for peace enforcement and nation-building and they're stretched thin as is, thanks to deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, people in the region are very wary of American intervention - even the good guys who are pushing hard to end the atrocities in Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic. They don't want American personnel on the ground; they want American diplomacy and logistical support to pave the way for African and Muslim personnel to successfully intervene through a UN mission. Biden knows better.

Dennis Kucinich: This was hands down the best debate performance I've seen from Kucinich. He was articulate, on point, and activist in the best possible way. He also showed a lot of discipline and foresight by articulating and repeating a message point that concisely explains his world view: "Strength Through Peace." It's a good one, and it will help Americans figure out what he's about. Kucinich explained well the need for international cooperation, and his indictment of Congress's failure to de-fund the war is clearly making the frontrunners uncomfortable. On the negative side, there were a few eyeball rollers, most notably his unconvincing effort to connect Iraq, Iran, and energy. The connection is there, but it can't be explained in 100 words or less and isn't as simple as Kucinich would have voters believe.

Mike Gravel: Gravel had trouble putting together coherent ideas. I often had a tough time understanding the basic gist of his arguments. His brand of righteous anger is getting old.

Anderson Cooper: Didn't talk much - so good job.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this shakes out tomorrow.

-- Scott Paul

When I worked in Russia in 2003 for the Moscow Helsinki Group the government has already begun limiting press freedoms and buying up independent media outlets, but civil society was becoming broader, more representative, and more active. That was the simple version of my assessment, which left me with a generally positive outlook on the trajectory of Russian democracy.

The developments of the past few years have made me reconsider my optimism. President Putin has tightened his grip over the media, the energy sector, and the civil society groups in whom I had invested so much hope.

Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group and Godmother of the human rights movement in Russia, suggests there's still much to be positive about. I noticed my former colleague's interview with Novye Izvestia this morning during my daily read of the invaluable Johnson's Russia List. I have a great deal of respect for Alekseyeva, a true human rights giant, a big picture thinker whose perspective is informed by six decades of activism, and someone who has walked the walk at every stage of her career.

For you Russian speakers, find the full interview here. Since I don't have rights to reproduce my translation of it, I'll paste a hopeful and interesting excerpt below and encourage TWN readers to subscribe to Johnson's Russia List so you don't miss interesting tidbits like this anymore.

Question: How is present-day Russia different from the country for which you fought the Soviet government?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: You know, back in those days I often used to say that all I wanted was this: that the kind of rights protection work we were doing should not be grounds for sending people to prison, labor camps, or psychiatric hospitals. And people are not imprisoned for these activities nowadays. When we started the Moscow Helsinki Group in 1976, it was the one and only independent rights protection organization in the whole USSR - but now we have colleagues and partners in every Russian region.

Question: Do you think the next two years will be like what Solzhenitsyn said about Russia's tangents - soaring toward freedom, then plunging back into dictatorship?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: I don't think it will happen this time. Ten or 15 years from now, our country will be a democracy: not because we elect an angel as president next year, but because civil society will be strong enough by then to prevent any ruler from treating people like cattle.

Question: Where will this civil society come from?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: It will grow of its own accord. Not like a garden weed, but once there are enough people willing to fight for it.

Question: Are there any such people in Russia now?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: Yes. That's why I believe that it will take us 10-15 years. Those who hold power in democracies aren't angels either, but they don't dare treat their people like our leaders treat us. And we'll learn not to let them.

-- Scott Paul

The Senate won't move on the Law of the Sea until after the August recess. Holding hearings on the Convention this month, ensuring that it won't compete with appropriations bills for floor time in the fall, would've been the right move. But with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Joe Biden on the campaign trail, scheduling isn't all that easy. Leaders in both parties and the President want action, so this will become a test of Biden's leadership in the fall.

I missed what sounds like a fascinating panel at the American Enterprise Institute on Law of the Sea - fascinating mostly because the event organizers got more than they bargained for. Jeremy Rabkin, the LOS opponent on the panel, reportedly became increasingly flustered as LOS supporters debunked his arguments point by point.

CQ reports on the testy Q&A:

After one long commentary by Rabkin, Navy Capt. Pat Neher, who heads International and Operational Law in the Judge Advocate General's office, leapt to his feet and declared: "I simply cannot sit still anymore for this nonsense." He added that Navy interdiction efforts are "huge operational successes," thanks to the provisions of both the United Nations convention and a 2003 agreement now including 88 nations to thwart terrorists from arming themselves.

Another State Department legal adviser, Ashley Roach, further advised Rabkin that the treaty was "very clear" in not referring to weapons of mass destruction. "I disagree with your interpretation," replied Rabkin. "You can't read," Roach muttered in reply.

Another account of the meeting reveals even more interesting details:

I must admit that Prof. Rabkin delivered the single most important line of the night:

"The Senate won't ratify the Convention if it is controversial, and I'm doing everything I can to make a controversy."

Rabkin knows that a rational and substantive debate of the Convention will support its ratification, so he is promoting an alternative - a non-rational, non-substantive approach aimed at creating a blocking minority of senators who either believe something might be wrong with the convention or use the controversy as cover for voting against it.

...

After the event I began to wonder what AEI had anticipated when they planned and scheduled it. I seriously doubt that the organizers of the event anticipated that it would be so heavily weighted toward supporters of the Convention. I don't believe I have ever seen an organization convene an event in which the organization has a stake in one side of the issue where the participation was so heavily weighted to the opposing side. That strikes me as bad planning - where were other AEI staff who oppose the Convention - for that matter, where were AEI Fellows and Scholars such as John Bolton and Robert Goldwin? Do other opponents, such as Frank Gaffney, only come out if they will be in the spotlight?

I was very glad to see the large turnout of Convention supporters for this meeting. I think it would be conservative to say that at least 75% of the audience was supportive of ratification and many of them were in uniform.

Finally, the last and most important development regarding Law of the Sea is former Secretary of State George Schultz's letter to Dick Lugar, indicating that he supports U.S. accession to LOS and that President Reagan would have as well. The letter reads:

The treaty has been changed in such a way with respect to the deep sea-beds that it is now acceptable, in my judgment. Under these circumstances, and given the many desireable aspects of the treaty on other grounds, I believe it is time to proceed with ratification.

It surprises me to learn that opponents of the treaty are invoking President Reagan's name, arguing that he would have opposed ratification despite having succeeded on the deep sea-bed issue. During his administration, with full clearance and support from President Reagan, we made it very clear that we would support ratification if our position on the sea-bed issue were accepted.

So there. Creating a controversy irrespective of the merits of ratification is the only tactic Professor Rabkin, Frank Gaffney and their ilk have left.

-- Scott Paul

The news is out that Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Washington Post Managing Editor Steve Coll will be my next boss succeeding Ted Halstead at the New America Foundation.

Coll is one of the world's leading experts on Pakistan and Afghanistan and can get into the weeds with anyone on those issues -- and gets the big picture need to tilt foreign policy and national security work towards the empirical and pragmatic rather than positions fashioned mostly by ideology or inertia.

I would have written about this sooner -- given my blogging insider access -- but this is one of those points where discretion about the internal game needed to be maintained for professional reasons. I was one of the early builders and architects of New America that joined Ted Halstead, Sherle Schwenninger, and Michael Lind in building out the organization. It has been a great ride so far.

Steve Coll should be a great new leader of the New America Foundation and will help position the institution for its "next phase". The foreign policy and economic team I work with looks forward to exploiting Steve Coll's sizzle as much as possible (partly joking Steve).

On other fronts, I'm in Providence, Rhode Island today -- enjoying the city despite dreary weather.

-- Steve Clemons

I just wanted to acknowledge what CNN is now reporting, that Dick Cheney will hold the power of the Presidency while Bush undergoes a colonoscopy.

This will likely just end up as a blip on the radar screen. Cheney will probably spend his short time as President eating snacks and watching TV, or otherwise wreaking whatever havoc he ordinarily wreaks over the course of the day.

Then again, a lot can happen in 2 and a half hours.

On an entirely serious note, the Veep has pushed to expand his influence not only beyond the customary, but also the legal authority of his office. If there were one person in public life who would exercise Presidential power as a caretaker, does anyone doubt it would be Cheney?

In all likelihood, this is a big 'ol non-story. But I'm still going to breathe a big sigh of relief when Bush wakes up and relieves Cheney after an uneventful few hours.

-- Scott Paul

My colleague Raj Purohit writes on the Citizens for Global Solutions blog:

A few years ago I was talking to a former high level official from the Clinton Administration about Pol Pot. Specifically we were discussing why he was never brought to trial for his crimes in the weeks before he committed suicide. The official told me that there was a real desire on the part of the Administration to bring Pol Pot to trial in the U.S. but that our criminal code was far too narrow to allow for a prosecution to occur. The official correctly noted that the law as it stood only allowed for the prosecution of individuals who have committed genocide within the U.S.

Raj's quick post exposes an important and embarrassing gap in U.S. criminal code: genocide can only be prosecuted in the U.S. if it's committed by a U.S. national or on U.S. soil. That effectively makes the United States a safe haven for genocidaires everywhere.

It's time to close this loophole. The Senate passed the Genocide Accountability Act earlier this year to do just that. Pelosi & Co. need to move on this and give it the attention it deserves.

-- Scott Paul

The bleat of many Scooter Libby supporters in the Valerie Plame CIA-outing scandal is that there was "no underlying crime." They tried to sidestep the obstruction crime that Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff was found guilty of.

Something similar is going on in the UK-Russia standoff over the extradition of former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoy to face charges for the Le Carre-esque murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Well, there is an underlying crime here of course -- a murder.

But that has little to do with the diplomatic dance that the UK and Russia are now engaged in. Both sides are escalating the costs to the other over the standoff -- in ways that have little to do with the issue of justice in Livinenko's death.

The Russians are not only meeting Britain's expulsion of four Russian diplomats with an expulsion of the same number of British foreign ministry personnel, but are now suspending cooperation in anti-terrorism.

According to the Times Online:

Lamenting the breakdown in relations, Mikhail Kamynin, a foreign ministry spokesman, added: "To our regret, co-operation between Russia and Britain on issues of fighting terrorism becomes impossible."

The Russians wouldn't blur such lines between a high-profile murder case and major national security issues unless they wanted to communicate that the institutionalized, post-9/11 cooperation among Europe, the US, Russia and other nations against Islamic terrorism was over.

Russia is telegraphing that it sees an American-British colonization of the international security and intelligence apparatus that it either wants to help control as well -- or wants to defect from given the clear failure in any case of the stronger Western powers to control or confine Islamic terrorism.

For Russia, the extradition standoff over Lugovoy is a convenient trigger to assert its national ego and position -- and to undermine to some degree America and the UK's standing in counter-terrorism politics.

Russia is back -- and the price for collaboration with Russia on common efforts ranging from global warming to containing Iran's nuclear ambitions has just gone higher.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Reid's clever theatrics of keeping the Senate open all night to do battle with Republicans over Iraq policy is another winner in my book. It was nearly as good a legislative tactic as his Frist-frazzling Rule 21 move.

Many argue that this was a stunt. It wasn't. It's hard core politics -- the kind Gingrich and Lott and Boehner would frequently deploy on gay rights issues or abortion politics to drag Dems into "symbolic votes" that they hoped would boost Republican fortunes at the polls.

Reid is orchestrating the same -- and making it increasingly tough for Republicans who are doggedly committed to leaving American women and women on the front lines of a civil war in Iraq.

As I have written before, many of the tactics deployed by Democratic leadership are designed to embarrass the White House and Republican leadership for their support of a tragically failed Iraq policy but not fashioned to win. In my view, despite the importance of ending this war and bringing people home -- for the Dems to win in 2008 and to win big -- they need the President and the Republican Party to continue to have this war pinned on them.

If Dems succeeded in getting agreement to bring the troops home in some way -- any way -- that allows the President to continue to have some leverage in that decision, then the Dems lose political capital in the next race.

This kind of calculation of winners and losers when it comes to people in harm's way in Iraq is not something anyone wants to admit -- but it is happening, and it's important that people realize that Dems want to be about a better path, better policy in Iraq, but don't want to win. . .yet.

And the Republicans running in 2008 feel Reid squeezing them. If they revolt against Bush, Reid wins. If they don't revolt and stay with the President's course, Reid and the Dems win.

-- Steve Clemons

When in Europe, I was frequently queried about the current state of play in the Republican and Democratic presidential primary process.

My quick response on the Dems was that Hillary's juggernaut was extremely impressive -- but that Barack Obama had passed the skeptic's test and was filling the "bubble" of expectations he created with an impressive architecture of widely diverse donors and well thought out policy proposals. I believe that Edwards is being crushed in between Hillary and Obama -- despite his connection with worried middle class Americans and organized labor. I thought that the rest of the pack -- Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, and well -- that's about it -- were running for VP or other positions.

In the Republican race, I told the story of the McCain campaign's fall from what once looked like inevitable success. I suggested that Brownback, Tancredo, and Huckabee -- despite their bond with Southern Christian fundamentalists -- gave up any real chance of living at 1600 Pennsylvania when they denied believing in evolutionary science. I told folks that while Giuliani and Romney were both performing impressively -- both in fundraising and in sustaining themselves in the polls -- I just couldn't see either firmly securing the Republican nomination.

I could be very wrong here -- but the Republican Party is not so pliable as to celebrate its redness in the last couple of elections and then turn around and nominate either of two northeastern liberal Republicans.

My guess is that Fred Thompson comes in and steals a lot of the party -- both moderates as well as Christian conservatives.

And then in August/September of this year, I think that there is a strong chance that Newt Gingrich will come into the race with a force and excitement that most underestimate. He is someone who straddles the South and science. Gingrich can weave faith-based commentary and new economy globalization and jihad-focused national security concerns into the same sentence, or at least the same paragraph. He has had an affair and confessed -- and that won't be a problem running against Hillary; only against Obama.

The only unbeatable pairing, I suggested, was Gore-Obama.

But Gingrich is putting a lot of effort into keeping himself in the public eye. Here is an email that I received from his staff today:

An Invitation to the World That Works

Today I have an invitation for any of you who have:

Tracked a package online with UPS or FedEx;

Used a mobile phone with a camera;

Gotten money from an ATM outside the U.S.; or

Used Travelocity, Orbitz or Expedia to buy an airplane ticket or book a hotel room.

For any of you who have done any of these things, I am inviting you to join me for a briefing on how we can make our government bureaucracies work more like UPS and FedEx and less like, well, bureaucracies.

Please join me on Monday, July 23, from Noon to 6:00pm (EDT) for a briefing on "From the World That Fails to the World That Works: The Coming Transformation of Government." The briefing will be at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. It will also be webcast at americansolutions.com.

To join us at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, please e-mail Nancy Bocskor at nancyb@americansolutions.com.

The World That Works Is Not a Theory

For a good introduction to the ground we will cover next Monday, watch this video.

I think Newt is going to run.

This is classic pre-campaigning, and Dems need to begin thinking about -- and stop scoffing about -- a possible Newt run. He's the kind of clever and formidable competitor who should not be underestimated.

-- Steve Clemons

I've been fielding a number of inquiries on the UN Emergency Peace Service since I threw up a post on it last week. I have been extremely pleased with the reception it's getting on Capitol Hill and now am very pleased too with how readers of this blog have taken to it.

I know I owe readers an update on the Law of the Sea and I promise there will be one soon.

In the meantime, though, I want to recognize some campus activists who will be campaigning to raise awareness and funds to fight malaria. These individuals were chosen from a large pool of applicants to receive a scholarship from The People Speak. I was at the UN Foundation today to offer some tips on how to carry out pragmatic, effective advocacy on global issues.

The campaigns are as diverse as their coordinators. I wish them the best of luck. Here they are.

Leslie Schweitz, University of Nebraska: Buzzing in the Night: Students collect money to give a "buzz cut" to a professor. The professor raises money to keep his hair. The side with the most money wins!

Lemar Clark, Middlebury College: Midd10 Humanitarian Challenge: This group will hold 10 events over the course of the fall semester to engage different parts of the college community. The whole student body will be divided into teams that will earn points by giving money and participating in educational activities.

Katie Boyce-Jacino, Wesleyan University: Malaria Awareness Week: This school will place educational displays about malaria in high traffic area of campus and hold small events all culminating in a final fundraising party.

Ilham Hassan, University of Southern California: Bed Net Fashion Show: USC will host a fashion show where designers will incorporate nets into their outfits.

Emily Renzelli, West Virginia University: Bite Back: This group will create an awareness campaign about malaria. As students complete each of the three activities, they will receive a bracelet. One will say "B" for believe, the next will say "U" for understand, and the final one will say "G" for give - all spelling out BUG!

Patricia Hester, University of Tennessee: Malaria Awareness Step Show: Tennessee campus has hosted very popular step contests with sororities, fraternities and a dance company in past years. Capitalizing on the popularity of previous step shows, the group will educate attendees about malaria and use the revenue from ticket sales to buy nets.

Amy Hamblin, Northwestern: Labor Day Beach Volleyball Tournament: This tournament has a twist - volleyballs will be painted to look like mosquitoes! Teams will raise money and donate it to buy bed nets.

Cecilia McDonald, Boston College: The Bed Net Ball: The alcohol-free events committee will cosponsor an evening event with film-screenings, decorations made from nets, and a lot of students having fun. Ticket sales will go to the purchase of bed nets.

Molly McGravey, Allegheny College: Parents Weekend Nothing But Nets Events: This group will organize a series of events, including a 5K race during parents weekend to help support their growing campaign against malaria.

Recca Buckwalter-Poza, Harvard University: Net 'em and Bug 'em: Volunteers in mosquito costumes will walk around campus "biting" people, while others in net suits are visibly immune. This public dramatization will be followed by a presentation about malaria and a fundraising pitch to students and faculty.

Alison Case, DePauw University: Knitting for Nets: Using a popular Monday "knit night" club, presentations will educate knitters about malaria and they will then knit scarves to sell for $10 a piece. Each scarf will include information about Nothing But Nets and malaria.

Cymone Bedford, Wells College: Malaria Awareness Carnival: This Africa-themed carnival will focus on ten pieces of information about malaria, including 10 mosquito-suited volunteers stopping students, informing them about a statistic and giving them a sticker proving that they now know about that piece of information and are then responsible for sharing it with others who ask.

-- Scott Paul

I will be posting something shortly focusing on Ernest Hemingway's home in Havana, Cuba and the wrong-headed U.S. restrictions on and penalties against Americans helping to try and preserve Hemingway's 21-year home, Finca Vigia, and the many books, memos, and other belongings there that are important to Cubans, Americans, and many around the world.

But in another Hemingway dimension, a close friend just posted a YouTube video of himself running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. (here is a higher resolution version of the film)

I did the same with him two years ago, but he got expelled from the course for having a camera. This time, he somehow mounted a small camera on his head and got away with it.

Despite popularizing the run along the ancient, cobble stone streets of Pamplona -- and the bull fights after (not my thing) -- Hemingway seems never to have actually done the run himself.

Hope you enjoy the video and when watching it think of Hemingway and the "public commons" that culture is; it is something that no nation -- including the United States government -- should be able to cut off access to or restrict financially supporting.

In fact, cutting off funding from supporting preservation of Hemingway's library and notes sounds a lot like cutting off a constitutional right to free speech.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

THURSDAY, 12 JULY 2007 -- 4 pm ACELA/AMTRAK -- NEW YORK TO DC

NeoCon High Priest Bill Kristol sits one row behind liberal blog-phenom diva Arianna Huffington and proceeds to chat about his role in nudging and tweaking President Bush's language.

Huffington reports:

Kristol was sitting a row behind me, talking on his cell phone with someone who apparently shared his optimism. "'Precipitous withdrawal' really worked," I overheard him say, clearly referring to the president's use of the term in that morning's press conference. "How many times did he use it? Three? Four?" he asked his interlocutor, and the conversation continued with a round of metaphorical back-slapping for the clever phrase they had "come up with."

I, of course, have no idea who was on the other end. Tony Snow, perhaps? After all, he and Kristol were colleagues before Snow left Fox. But whoever it was, the emphasis during their conversation on the significance of the "clever" phrase has been emblematic of the White House prepping of the president.

Instead of sending their boss out with the real facts or logical arguments, Bush's aides and their friends (see Kristol) concoct some nonsense phrase in the spin lab, hand it to him and tell him to go out there and repeat it as often as he can. The latest is "precipitous withdrawal." It's the new "cut and run."

It's actually not all that new: back in January 1969, Richard Nixon used it again and again in his famous "Silent Majority" speech: "The precipitate withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam would be a disaster not only for South Vietnam but for the United States and for the cause of peace." Again and again throughout the speech, Nixon used the phrase to paint the nightmarish consequences of a "precipitate withdrawal" from Vietnam.

Almost forty years later, George Bush is using the slightly tweaked "precipitous withdrawal" to paint his own nightmarish scenario of what will happen if American forces leave Iraq. And for that, apparently, we have Bill Kristol to thank. At least partially.

After Arianna's encounter, Bill Kristol published what many in the reality-based world consider to be one of the single most duplicitous and Orwellian treatments of Bush's years in office titled "Why Bush Will Be a Winner."

Kristol writes:

I suppose I'll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush's presidency will probably be a successful one.

Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

It's unbelievable to me that Bill Kristol sees Iraq on a positive course -- but clearly part of the game here is to sound reasonable and hold out a glass of half full optimism that scratches into popular hope.

But what about a less-varnished treatment of what Bill Kristol's crowd thinks. . .

Writer Johann Hari did something I very much want to do which was to embed himself anonymously as a listener and chronicler of neocons talking to their followers on a recent cruise that included many leading neocon personalities (There is another coming up soon with other pugnacious nationalist personalities like John Bolton.)

Here are a number of the gems from Hari's brilliant cruise ship sleuthing:

. . .A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."

. . .As [Hillary-Ann] explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

. . .There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few moments to realise exactly what it is. All the tropes that conservatives usually deny in public -- that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is fighting a class war on behalf of the rich -- are embraced on this shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed liberals lose it. "It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but who's 'we'?" the writer Dinesh D'Souza asks angrily. "The left won by demanding America's humiliation." On this ship, there are no Viet Cong, no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers."

. . .A fracture-line in the lumbering certainty of American conservatism is opening right before my eyes. Following the break, Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley -- two of the grand old men of the Grand Old Party -- begin to feud. Podhoretz will not stop speaking -- "I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends on the right, too," he rants -- and Buckley says to the chair, " Just take the mike, there's no other way." He says it with a smile, but with heavy eyes.

Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism, and they stare at wholly different Iraqs. Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who travelled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America's power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims: "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and " thank God" for that.

. . .A few floors away, Podhoretz tells me he is losing his voice, "which will make some people very happy". Then he croaks out the standard-issue Wolfowitz line about how, after September 11, the United States had to introduce democracy to the Middle East in order to change the political culture that produced the mass murderers. For somebody who declares democracy to be his goal, he is remarkably blase about the fact that 80 per cent of Iraqis want US troops to leave their country, according to the latest polls. "I don't much care," he says, batting the question away. He goes on to insist that "nobody was tortured in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo" and that Bush is "a hero". He is, like most people on this cruise, certain the administration will attack Iran.

Podhoretz excitedly talks himself into a beautiful web of words, vindicating his every position. He fumes at Buckley, George Will and the other apostate conservatives who refuse to see sense. He announces victory. And for a moment, here in the Mexican breeze, it is as though a thousand miles away Baghdad is not bleeding. He starts hacking and coughing painfully. I offer to go to the ship infirmary and get him some throat sweets, and -- locked in eternal fighter-mode -- he looks thrown, as though this is an especially cunning punch. Is this random act of kindness designed to imbalance him? " I'm fine," he says, glancing contemptuously at the Bill Buckley book I am carrying. "I'll keep on shouting through the soreness."

. . .The familiar routine of the dinners -- first the getting-to-know-you chit-chat, then some light conversational fascism -- is accelerating. Tonight there is explicit praise for a fascist dictator before the entree has arrived. I drop into the conversation the news that there are moves in Germany to have Donald Rumsfeld extradited to face torture charges.

A red-faced man who looks like an egg with a moustache glued on grumbles, " If the Germans think they can take responsibility for the world, I don't care about German courts. Bomb them." I begin to witter on about the Pinochet precedent, and Kate snaps, "Treating Don Rumsfeld like Pinochet is disgusting." Egg Man pounds his fist on the table: " Treating Pinochet like that is disgusting. Pinochet is a hero. He saved Chile."

"Exactly," adds Jim. "And he privatised social security."

. . .I spot the old lady from the sea looking for her suitcase, and stop to tell her I may have found a solution to her political worries about both Muslims and stem-cells.

"Couldn't they just do experiments on Muslim stem-cells?" I ask. " Hey -- that's a great idea!" she laughs, and vanishes. Hillary-Ann stops to say she is definitely going on the next National Review cruise, to Alaska. "Perfect!" I yell, finally losing my mind.

"You can drill it as you go!" She puts her arms around me and says very sweetly, "We need you on every cruise."

As I turn my back on the ship for the last time, the Judge I met on my first night places his arm affectionately on my shoulder. "We have written off Britain to the Muslims," he says. "Come to America."

Listening to what the other side really believes -- unvarnished and up front -- is important. And many of the folks we have allowed to run the White House share the views that Arianna Huffington and Johann Hari have reported.

Cheney's wing of the foreign policy establishment which is served by ideological officers outside the administration like Kristol and Podhoretz denies empirical reality and reason.

I had the chance to chat about this Bill Kristol encounter with Arianna Huffington at her Washington home last night at a grand affair of her many blogging and political friends in Washington, and I agreed with her that what she heard Kristol say on the train and what Hari reported from the cruise show that modern neoconservatism has become a reality-denying cult.

And for those who think that the neocons are out and gone -- think again. They continue to embed most corners of America's policy establishment.

-- Steve Clemons

Foreign Policy's blog, Passport decided to draw up a list of ten "good things" the President can take credit for in foreign policy in commemoration of his July 6th birthday.

Blake Hounshell suggests this list:

1. Boosting aid to Africa threefold

2. Preventing a nuclear war between India and Pakistan

3. Taking down the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network

4. Getting Libya to give up its weapons of mass destruction programs and renounce terrorism

5. Turning independent-minded India into a strategic ally

6. After a rough start, sticking to a pragmatic China policy

7. Getting North Korea to shut down its nuclear reactor ... eventually

8. Decapitating some two thirds of al Qaeda's top leadership and not having a second 9/11

9. Giving immigration reform the old college try

10. Challenging his party over harmful agricultural subsidies while pushing free trade

The only thing I want to add to this roster is that Vice President Cheney, Scooter Libby, David Addington, and other members of their team have been either publicly or privatetely dismissive and unsupportive of this short list of Bush achievements.

Even the point on al Qaeda and stopping another 9/11 ought not go to Cheney's credit because of the manner in which Cheney-driven policies have helped Al Qaeda recruit a whole next generation of followers disillusioned with the West. In fact, al Qaeda is back, reorganized, and moving to new targets according to many reports. Let's give the Cheney-Bush crowd a lot of credit for that.

Keith Porter shares his views on Bush's top ten list here.

-- Steve Clemons

Daniel Levy is Senior Fellow in the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program and Director of the Middle East Peace Initiative there. He is also Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation.

President Bush in his Palestinian announcement today pushed down softly on the accelerator of a failed Middle East policy.

The President continued to base his policy on deepening the division among Palestinians, on pre-conditions to a two-state solution, and on an unwillingness to outline his own parameters for an Israeli-Palestinian endgame deal. Even the $190 million dollars of money pledged to the new PA government is mostly a repackaging of old commitments.

In most respects today was a rehash of his speech five years ago, albeit under less propitious circumstances. That speech encouraged a regime change that eventually (and one imagines inadvertently) brought Hamas to power -- the new speech may well drive Palestinian politics towards a period of even greater chaos that could create a space for al-Qaeda look-a-likes to gain a foothold.

The President continued to mistakenly conflate Hamas with al-Qaeda and the Taliban and, in so doing, almost guarantees the failure of his approach. In Iraq American policy is belatedly focusing on internal political reconciliation, but in Palestine it is still, sadly, all about deepening divisions.

The two-state solution that the President claims to support will need to deliver basic security and have legitimacy on both sides in order to have a chance of being sustainable. That cannot be based on an irreconcilable Palestinian political division. Clearly, there is a discomfort level within the administration regarding this approach as witnessed by the leak from intelligence sources in today's Washington Post, claiming that relying on Abbas-Fayyad cannot work. The leak came from people, who presumably cautioned against giving this speech.

The President managed to list a full seven Hamas "must do" pre-conditions, rather than the traditional three. Dividing the region into extremists and moderates may sound nice, neat, and tidy in a speech, but on the ground there is a huge grey area that the President apparently refuses to acknowledge. As with elsewhere in the region, this detachment from Palestinian reality makes for bad choices and destabilizing actions.

The one possibly new announcement of a meeting in the Fall to be convened by Secretary Rice actually sounds like little more than a repeat of the London conference on Palestinian reform of January 2003. US officials have admitted that so far none of the neighboring countries have signed up for the conference. Indeed, in his speech, the President outlined four pre-conditions for attendance. One of those -- that participants recognize "Israel's right to exist" will very likely be dropped, or at least massaged, given that not even Egypt and Jordan with their peace treaties with Israel ever accepted this formulation, let alone the Saudis or other Arab States.

The President's ask from the Israeli side is minimal, consisting of realizing previous commitments, including those made on outposts and settlements from a 2004 letter that the US failed to follow up on.

Noteworthy was that even the Fatah-controlled Palestinian TV stations did not carry the speech live, suggesting that they hardly saw this as a great boost to their cause.

President Bush, contrary to the expectations of some optimists, chose not to use this speech to outline his own, more detailed, parameters for a peace deal. He dropped hints regarding the territorial issue, such as "mutually agreed adjustments," but refused to explicitly refer to the 1967 lines or to offer any guidance on Jerusalem or refugees.

The administration's commitment to reform and democracy ring even more hollow, given the recent measures taken by the new Ramallah government that they so favor. Military courts have been established in the West Bank to replace civilian courts, a progressive NGO law has been overturned, Hamas-affiliated persons have been imprisoned without due process, and the entire legality of the Ramallah government itself, is questionable.

The Arab states are called upon to make confidence building gestures towards Israel and this is likely to become a fruitless and unrealistic focus of upcoming diplomatic activity.

The President also appears to be flying solo again and eschewing multilateralism. For although he refers to working with the Quartet partners, his approach on dividing the Palestinians is not shared by most EU-states (see last week's letter of all ten Mediterranean Foreign Ministers), the Russians, and it seems even the UN Secretary-General. Finally, in a hint that bodes ill for Iraq and Lebanon, too, the President makes no attempt to bring Syria into the peace process.

So, it's more of the same with even less chance of success.

-- Daniel Levy

Hillary Clinton's Director of Online Everything, Peter Daou, sent a tantalizing email today inviting a handful of political bloggers to a conference call with a mystery endorsement of the campaign. I called him and didn't press very hard as he preemptively and craftily said "of course I can't say yet who it is, but I can tell you it is someone bloggers will appreciate."

I was hooked.

So at 1:30 pm, I jumped out of an event where I was speaking about America's backward visa policies in the House of Representatives, and Peter introduced the mystery endorser: Ambassador Joe Wilson.

This is actually very significant -- even though Stuart Rothenberg writes disparagingly about these sorts of endorsements in a piece he wrote today in Roll Call titled "Do Endorsements Matter in Today's Presidential Races?"

Rothenberg mentions former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt endorsing Hillary Clinton. And then Edwards scoring "the support of several prominent Ohio leaders", various "prominent Latinos", and a bunch of "African American leaders." Rothenberg also mentioned Biden scooping up "three Iowa state Representatives" into his camp.

But the clincher from Rothenberg is this:

So let the candiates roll out their list of state legislators, city council officials, dogcatchers and "activists" who support them. Just remember that only those few people who have a campaign treasury under their control or real fundraising clout, a near-unique ability to motivate and mobilize real people, or unusual influence in Iowa are truly important supporters.

Well, back to Ambassador Wilson. He does have a unique ability to motivate and mobilize real people as the encounter he and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, have had with the Bush administration over the President's war in Iraq has been the single most important event exposing serious crimes and duplicity committed by Bush administration officials.

Wilson and Plame are favorites among the leftish "net-roots." They are a favorite among many bloggers for taking them seriously and for working with them to understand the nooks and crannies of what was real and not in their David and Goliath battle with the White House. Wilson gave young political activists hope that they could get traction in their battles against an occasionally vulnerable Bush/Cheney machine.

But now Joe Wilson has endorsed someone that many in the blogosphere have been slow to love: Hillary Rodham Clinton. This will have impact and will shock some. Some lefty bloggers will not abandon Obama and not forgive Clinton for being complicit in the decisions that empowered the Bush White House to wage the Iraq War. But others will now rethink their positions.

During the conference call, Joe Wilson said that he had been friends with Hillary for the last ten years. He stated that he believed that Hillary had emerged as a well-established, serious critic of the Bush administration and felt that she believed that "the Iraq War needed to be ended soon, that troops needed to be removed from harm's way, and that a political process had to be started, a process that would end the war and preserve some shred of our strategic position in the Middle East."

Wilson argued that the President had show no leadership in affecting the real political process in Iraq -- and that this had to happen and was something Clinton understood. Wilson mentioned that he was involved in helping to get the political circumstances right in the Middle East during the first Gulf War and had later worked with key players before and during the Dayton Accord process. In 1998, Hillary Clinton was pivotal in convincing her husband to travel to Africa -- a trip that Wilson was in charge of.

And since the point at which the Bush administration decided to punish Wilson for his efforts to hold the Bush White House accountable for its statements in the lead up to Iraq War II by outing the covert status of his CIA-employed wife, Valerie Plame -- Hillary Clinton had reached out repeatedly to the Wilsons. She helped advise, counsel, and compare the experiences Joe and Valerie Wilson were having in the Republican meat-grinder with her own experiences in the same situation.

His endorsement was compelling -- and made a lot of sense -- but still will be a interesting move for net-roots bloggers to consider.

I asked him whether given Wilson's support of a "grand bargain" approach to Iran and broad Middle East negotiations that solve many of the interlinking realities in the region whether he felt there was much distance in his own views from Hillary Clinton's.

Wilson replied that he believed that "the more diplomacy the better -- though we ought always be prepared to defend our national security interests." He subscribes to views on Iran that are shared by "Zbigniew" and others that he and I have mutual acquaintance with. And Wilson stated that he felt that "there is no sunlight between my own views on Iran and Hillary's."

Very interesting development that will no doubt make the papers tomorrow -- and of course, the blogs today.

-- Steve Clemons

I have some property in a rustic part of Colorado not far from the 120 mile long Rainbow Trail in the Rockies. I also get a decent tax deal on the land because I have an arrangement with a cattle farmer to allow grazing on the land. Colorado is a "fence out" state meaning that if cattle come into a ranch area, those cattle are free to roam everywhere -- unless "fenced out" by property holders.

This is probably a bad metaphor for what is happening today geopolitically in the United States -- but the fenced out/fenced in realities of modern America are a useful template to think about an evolving "fortress mentality" among Americans -- both inside the country and between the United States and the rest of the world.

For the most part, America has not maintained high fences to those from abroad. America has maintained over the two plus centuries of its formalized nationhood a fairly low bar to immigration and travel here. In fact, much of the nation's success is due to the fact that America has been the direct beneficiary of the rest of the world's brain drain.

This may be in danger today as American borders are thicker than ever and that fear about allowing terrorists inside the nation is so great that whole classes of foreign visitors are subjected to a fickle, unpredictable, and inhospitable visa application and review process that telegraphs our national disinterest and ambivalence about nations and their citizens who aren't lucky enough to be included in a U.S. visa waiver program.

There are sophisticated methodologies that can help screen bad people from good -- and we need to rely more on these and less on the clunky, expensive, and inefficient visa interview process that blocks so many from coming to America -- particularly from developing nations -- and which often charges them $100 for the application fee, only to find that they have in the end been rejected.

The back side of neoconservatism has always been isolationism. They go hand in hand.

Today, we really need to promote people to people exchanges. This is the best way that the rest of the world can understand that our objectives as a country are diverse, benign, hopeful, and not consistent with the image that Bush, Cheney, and Rove have generated.

I am speaking on this subject today with two colleagues from conservative circles who believe as strongly as I do that the United States is undermining itself by not promoting more visa-waived travel from countries in Eastern Europe like Poland and Hungary. I am also a great believer in the benefits of trade, people-to-people exchanges, and unrestricted travel in cases like Cuba. As Republican Congressman Jeff Flake recently said at a New America Foundation meeting I chaired: "When it comes to traveling anywhere in the world, I would rather have a Communist nation trying to block me rather than my own government."

For those free today and on short notice, I will be joining James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation and Dan Griswold of the Cato Institute today at 12:00 noon in Room 2200 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Sandwiches will be provided.

-- Steve Clemons

I have been catching up with paperwork and stuff since returning from Europe. Here's a picture of me with a cute, two-month old Weimaraner named Hugo and his young owner that I crossed paths with in Berlin.

-- Steve Clemons

(Philippe Sands, Queen's Counsel and Professor of Law, University College London)

The BBC has a must-listen show on radio tomorrow titled Called to Account (times noted further below) offering a theatrical version of Tony Blair's indictment for Iraq War-related crimes. This may inspire many on this side of the Atlantic pond to think about various strategies to hold America's current political leadership accountable for duplicity and mismanagement of America's national security portfolio -- and particularly for the Iraq War.

Democracy has become a term derided in much of the world today because for many beleaguered peoples it has come to mean Western duplicity, uneven standards between the mighty and the weak, an excuse for invasion and occupation, a code word for regime change, or obsessive focus on ballots rather than healthy civil society institutions like courts and a free media that help to keep power accountable.

If 'Democracy' is ever going to shed its bad name, accountability must be one of its fundamental pillars in any genuine system of checks and balances. There should be a price paid for serious errors by national leaders -- and an even higher price paid by those who wield power with impunity and who lie to their publics in so-called democracies.

When the revelations of Abu Ghraib became public, Donald Rumsfeld should have resigned. The fact that he did not and was not fired did more to undermine the American brand than virtually anything up until that point. If there was no accountability for crimes of that scale, why should other foreign states abroad empty their torture prisons or work against corruption or not falsely promise reforms to their people while engaging in self-dealing for themselves or their sectarian interests?

America is struggling with the mess it is in and trying to figure out the power dynamics of fixing blame and responsibility for the Iraq War on national leaders. The current reality is that there is little stomach among moderates and conservatives in the United States to impeach Cheney or Bush for lying America into a war whose end one way or another has disastrous consequences for the nation. This may change -- and certainly the calls for an impeachment process against Cheney have picked up some momentum, though still not enough to be successful in the view of this writer.

But BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting a play titled Called to Account this Saturday, 14 July 2007, at 2:30 pm UK Time and at 9:30 am EST. This can be listened to over the web live or downloaded to a podcast for later listening.

One of the principals involved in this production is British barrister and writer Philippe Sands whose book, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules -- From FDR's Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush's Illegal War, exposed the important fact that Prime Minister Blair and President Bush decided on war with Iraq in January 2003 no matter what the outcome of diplomatic efforts.

Sands is a very serious and thoughtful legal commentator who is part of the "reasonable middle" of British political society -- and the BBC's support of such a provocative legal simulation is something that might inspire similar exercises -- even in theatrical form if not real -- in the United States.

-- Steve Clemons

This morning I received a Treasury Department email reminding me of the damaging encounter that America had with Dubai and many Arab moderates and modernists when a bipartisan Congressional crowd forced the White House to privately tell the Dubai government owned DP World to drop its acquisition plans for a number of American port operations.

I received an announcement from the Department of the Treasury with a statement from Deputy Secretary Robert Kimmitt about an effort to modify the Foreign Investment and National Security Act (in part to avoid more debacles like the U.S.-Dubai fight):

The Foreign Investment and National Security Act is a well-balanced bill, and I commend this bipartisan effort by the Congress. This bill updates the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and strikes the important balance between protecting national security in a post-9/11 world and advancing the open investment policy set out by President Bush on May 10 of this year.

I haven't analyzed what changes to CFIUS have been made, but I do know that there is lasting damage in the United Arab Emirates and across the Gulf Cooperation Council as a result of the sloppy rejection of DP World.

The fear that many Americans had is that a multinational global firm based in the Arab world could not be counted on not to be "secure"; that Islamic jihadists might penetrate DP World and thus be able to smuggle people or WMD materials into the United States through port operations it was trying to acquire in Miami and elsewhere.

I don't want to get into how shallow that debate is given the reality that Dubai and the UAE are vital to American national interests -- and that this small emerging Hong Kong of the Middle East is among our best hopes is showing the promise of melding modernity and Islam.

I met UAE Economic Minister Sheika Lubna al-Qasimi during a trip to Dubai last year organized by Arab American Institute President James Zogby and heard from her that she was meeting or had recently met high-powered commercial missions from Korea, Japan, Germany, China, France, Australia, Russia, and Brazil, among others. But she said that "no American Commerce Secretary had made an official visit or brought a commercial mission to Dubai."

This is somewhat shocking given Dubai's importance to us -- particularly given the tumult going on in that neighborhood and also given that many of Iran's most internationally-minded elites hang out and invest in Dubai. Just to meet and know this part of Iran's portfolio would be valuable.

Zogby, who as a close friend and aide to the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, thought that Brown had made a commercial visit to Dubai -- but in checking the records, I have not found such a trip. Brown was clearly interested in building bridges to the Middle East which is commendable and should be noted, but as of this writing, I have not found evidence of a commercial excursion of American corporate players and government officials to Dubai.

(I have since writing this piece received a note from a Commerce Department official indicating that both Commerce Secretaries Brown and Daley did make trips to the UAE in the mid-1990s, so I stand corrected on the issue of Democrats going to the UAE -- but stand by the view that the collapse of the ports deal was politically significant enough to justify further economic diplomacy from the Bush administration -- but this has not happened.)

The DP World deal can't be replayed to solve the wound of rejection that many Arab modernists feel. And I don't know if the new CFIUS measures strike a clearer and better balance that would have preempted the mistakes made in this M&A deal.

However, I do think that much can be done on the public diplomacy side of things if Commerce Secretary Gutierrez began to use his position to help engender responsible, credible commercial engagement between American interests and those in Dubai and more broadly in the Gulf.

After the rejection of DP World, the first thing President Bush should have called for was a mission to the region and Dubai to demonstrate our commitment to modernists there.

-- Steve Clemons

Side Note: DP World does remain interested in investing in the U.S. as evidenced by its acquisition of the Hotel Washington, right across the street from the Department of Treasury.

(picture of the top of the Reichstag in Berlin)

I've just returned from Berlin and am scribbling a brief note from JFK Airport in New York.

One of the unavoidable impressions I got from Europeans and particularly Germans during this trip is that there is widespread regret that America has slipped off its pedestal as a largely benign superpower that promoted liberty and economic opportunity. The dollar's decline against the euro has only reinforced a widespread view that America can't afford its global pretensions any longer. While America remains important, it is clear to everyone that it is less so.

And the Germans are angry at Bush and America as a whole for so badly screwing up a number of collective efforts -- particularly on climate change -- but also in the Middle East. They are angry that Europe is not in a position to fill the void America is leaving and focus their frustration not on their own leadership problems but at the U.S. for undermining the dynamics of global order.

A widespread view among elite Germans and the non-elite normal types I spoke to is that America is in fast decline -- sort of like Britain after World War II. I think that the impressions foreigners have of this decline is "overshooting reality" as there are many substantive realities about America's ability to deploy force and purpose in the world that remain formidable.

But conversation in some serious circles is turning to what Europe can do to help America stabilize in some position of "lesser global stature." There is also a sense that the nation that is filling much of America's previous geopolitical space is China and that Europe feels tension in its strong alliance with U.S. power in decline and its strategic distance from China clearly ascending.

More later on this, but wanted to scribble out these impressions of an interesting discussion evolving among politicos and wonks in Berlin and more broadly in Europe.

-- Steve Clemons

I heard Sen. Dick Lugar deliver some insightful remarks this morning on energy, Iraq, and U.S. foreign policy at the 20/20 Vision National Summit on Energy Security. The talk was an acceptance speech for the first ever Energy Security Leadership Award.

A lot of what Lugar has to say on energy is intuitive, but he offered a couple of exceptionally nuanced observations today. Here's one:

"Although securing oil supplies was not the proximate motivation for the U.S. intervention in Iraq, Persian Gulf oil is highly relevant to the difficulties associated with extricating ourselves from that country. Having set in motion conditions in Iraq that could threaten regional stability, American and, indeed, global analysts rightly are concerned that if instability spreads it could threaten oil flows. Moreover, the supposed American greed for oil is used as an excuse by a myriad of Middle Eastern propagandists. The oil dependence of the United States and the West is a pillar of Iranian foreign policy."

The other observation Sen. Lugar made is less quotable, but equally important. I've noted before both the impossibility and the irrelevance of the goal of "energy independence" or "ending dependence on foreign oil," or worse, "ending dependence on Middle Eastern oil." At some point I'll outline all the details of why these buzz terms are so misleading, but for the time being, it should suffice to say simply that the U.S. can never insulate itself from energy prices on the global energy market and that nothing the U.S. does unilaterally will solve the global climate, development, or security problems caused by the current energy situation.

As far as I can tell, Lugar generally recognizes this principle. The main reason that he suggests we should reduce oil imports is that doing so would lessen the global demand for oil (I'm not totally sold) and pave the way for others to follow (a smart rationale). After all, it's the global demand for oil that has the greatest effect on U.S. national security interests and needs to be reduced, not U.S. imports specifically. The Energy Diplomacy and Security Act, a bill authored by Lugar and Joe Biden that passed in the Senate last month, rightly takes that approach.

Some commentators, of which Tom Friedman is the most vocal, have basically said we should reduce imports because oil money is going to the "bad guys" in the Middle East. It's a political winner to demonize Middle Eastern governments, but Friedman and his followers ignore a couple of key facts. First, in the global energy economy, if one oil producer profits, all oil producers profit. And second, any oil we don't buy will be scooped up by rapidly developing economies at the same or similar prices.

Lugar doesn't fall into that trap, but he does give two smart reasons to be concerned about Middle Eastern oil imports. One, which I quoted above, is that propogandists will use consumption of Middle Eastern oil to support their claims that the U.S. is after imperial dominance in that region. The second is that transporting Middle Eastern oil puts a huge strain on the U.S. military, upon which energy companies rely to protect their shipments.

Even if the goal of ending our energy relationships with Middle Eastern countries is both unrealistic and distracting from the main energy issues, as I believe it is, Lugar's concerns are valid.

Senator Lugar is doing something rare in the soundbyte era of politics: he's speaking to hot-button regional realities, keeping his eye on the main issue, the global oil problem, and elevating the debate above shallow rhetorical devices all at the same time. Presidential candidates need to stop talking down to Americans with energy independence mumbo jumbo and instead follow Lugar's lead.

-- Scott Paul

I attended a John McCain Mixer at "The Core Club" in New York last year (on an evening I had helped organize a George Soros book party in the same club) and was impressed with McCain's unambiguous support for stem cell research, his smart views on immigration reform, as well as his candor that he felt America was doing few of the things a nation had to do to reinvent itself and to establish great objectives and pursue them.

But I disagreed with him on his support of the Iraq War and was surprised that he didn't feel that America's wrong-headed, military dominant approach to the Middle East had done enormous damage to our national prestige, military capacity, and ability to get things done in the world.

At that time, I chatted with the McCain campaign's CEO, Rick Davis, who recently has taken over the reins of the sputtering McCain campaign with the firings of John Weaver and Terry Nelson and virtual side-lining of long-time McCain Senate office Chief of Staff Mark Salter.

I expressed surprise to Davis that Senator McCain was allowing a dispute with filmmaker Eugene Jarecki over some content in his prize-winning film, Why We Fight, to get out into the public. Mark Salter, the Senator's chief of staff, had felt misled by Jarecki on a number of fronts and was angry that the filmmaker had included a clip of McCain criticizing corrupt defense industry practices in Iraq -- and was implicitly criticizing Vice President Cheney or at least saying an investigation would be justified in the proliferating cases of no-bid defense contract awards to Haliburton. At the time that McCain said this on film, someone from McCain's staff interrupted and said audibly that Vice President Cheney was on the phone. McCain looked surprised -- and then took the call. It was a hilarious clip, but Mark Salter and Eugene Jarecki were engaged in a fairly public tiff about this.

The bottom line at the time was that Mark Salter strongly supported the war and felt that there should be no gap at all between McCain and Cheney, not to even mention no gap between the Senator and President Bush.

However, Rick Davis -- a very smart, savvy political hand -- told me then, more than a year ago, that he felt that they should be "running against Cheney."

Rick Davis is the new head of the McCain campaign, and he was right in June 2006 when he made that comment to me. It's too bad that the Senator and his core campaign staff did not listen to Rick Davis's view until now, when it is perhaps too late.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: I will hyperlink relevant materials to the post above after I return to the U.S. I am posting this from an airline lounge in Berlin's Tegel Airport, and the system here is not allowing any hyperlinks. SCC

Subseqent Update: the links have been added. SCC

Scott Paul has been doing a great job offering some stimulating posts while I have had a heavy conference and meeting schedule in Berlin.

I will be back in full commentary mode when I get back to Washington tonight.

-- Steve Clemons

Most of the political news today is focused on the McCain staff shakeup. The departures of Terry Nelson and John Weaver are noteworthy, but the biggest news is the end of Mark Salter's official employment with McCain. Salter has reportedly walked McCain through every significant decision he's made and the two recently co-authored their fifth book together.

Honestly, though, I'm more interested in the Giuliani campaign news today.

My organization doesn't endorse presidential candidates, so I'm speaking only for myself here. But boy, ever since he began his run for the presidency, Giuliani has been trying really, really hard to position himself as the "strong against terror candidate," playing on his resume and compensating for his moderation on social issues.

I've been very worried that Giuliani would build on that identity by laying out a highly pugnacious, nationalist, fear-based, and unilateral foreign policy. Now it's starting to take shape.

Sources tell me that Giuliani has looked to John Bolton in the early stages of his campaign for foreign policy advice; people at the NY Observer seem to have heard similar things. Not promising.

Giuliani put out a press release today that indicates that his campaign will be heading further in this direction:

"The Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee announced today several members of Mayor Giuliani's foreign policy team. The team will advise the Mayor on a foreign policy vision that advances the United States as a world leader, while expanding America's involvement in the global economy, strengthening our reputation around the world, and keeping our country on the offense in the Terrorists' War on Us.

...

Senior foreign policy team members include Norman Podhoretz and Senator Bob Kasten. Other team members include Steve Rosen, Senior Defense Advisor; Martin Kramer, Senior Middle East Advisor; S. Enders Wimbush, Senior Public Diplomacy Advisor; Peter Berkowitz, Senior Statecraft, Human Rights and Freedom Advisor; and Kim R. Holmes, a Senior Foreign Policy Advisor."

Bob Kasten, one of Giuliani's "Senior foreign policy team members" used the UN as a political football throughout his career in the Senate and was ultimately defeated by Russ Feingold for his far-out views. Kasten supported aiding the Indonesian military during its violent occupation of East Timor, started the myth that the UN Population Fund supports forced abortion, and argued that countries should be stripped of aid if they do not vote in lockstep with the U.S. in the UN General Assembly.

The other senior foreign policy team member? None other than Norm Podhoretz, the longtime Commentary editor who recently suggested that we'd be nuts not to immediately bomb Iran.

This campaign is getting scarier by the second.

-- Scott Paul

I mentioned in a post last week that I've been pushing an exciting proposal to make the U.N.'s peacekeeping and disaster relief capacity far more responsive and effective than it is now. It's time to tip my hand.

For the past four weeks or so I've been meeting extensively with Congressional staff about a proposed UN Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS).

Even without any changes, the UN is very effective at disaster relief and peacekeeping. The RAND Corporation reports that the UN is far more successful at nation-building and peacekeeping than any international institution or country in the world. And the U.S. Government Accountability Office has shown that UN peacekeeping is as cost-effective as it is successful.

But here's the problem: building peacekeeping missions and relief efforts right now is like building a fire station for every new fire. For each new mission, the UN needs to raise funds, recruit personnel, and train them to work together despite differences in equipment, weapons systems, and languages. It's a slow, arduous, and difficult process. Since the early stages of conflicts and disasters are often the most deadly, this is a serious problem.

Right now, the UN defines rapid deployment as thirty days for a simple peacekeeping mission and ninety days for a complex contingency, a situation that involves spoilers or antagonists. The UN has a lot of trouble meeting even this low bar. For civilians caught in the crosshairs of conflict or disaster, "rapid deployment" can seem like a cruel joke.

The UN Emergency Peace Service would consist of 12,000-18,000 civilian police, military, judicial, and relief professionals that could deploy within 48 hours of a Security Council authorization. Envisioned as a 9-1-1 style first responders unit, it could hold down the fort while the international community cobbles together the resources, personnel, and plans for a long-term, sustained mission.

Had UNEPS existed during crises in Rwanda, Haiti, Liberia, or Somalia, hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars might have been saved.

Regarding Darfur, today's best-publicized humanitarian crisis, President Bashir has alternately accepted and rejected UN intervention, manipulating the UN's slow ramp-up to derail momentum towards peace. Were UNEPS a viable option, this kind of posturing would not be possible.

Not only is UNEPS a common sense way to save lives and money, it would also be an important step for UN reform. Since the force would be permanent and voluntary, its participants could be trained together in the same language and with a clear chain of command, use the same weapons and communications equipment for greater interoperability, and have a greater level of commitment to the success of their missions.

And since its members would be employed by or seconded to the UN, any abuses like those alleged in Congo and Sierra Leone would be could be quickly investigated and punished as necessary under the UN's strict code of conduct.

Most Democrats and a good number of Republicans should support UNEPS. Granted, black helicopter conservatives will be startled by the idea, but most of my meetings with Republican staff on Capitol Hill have been very positive. It turns out that the potential to save lives is remarkably compelling, not to mention the compelling national interest in greater accountability, interoperability, and financial savings in Security Council-authorized and UN-run peace operations.

Given the current state of America's image in the world and the more permanent dynamics of the UN General Assembly, any such proposal would be doomed to fail if it were submitted by the United States. But moving the idea forward in the U.S. is still important, since other countries that have shown interest in UNEPS will look to the U.S. before stepping forward. Right now, there is a widespread perception that Congress won't go for it.

That's why Reps. Al Wynn (D-MD) and Jim Walsh (R-NY) have introduced a resolution expressing Congressional support for UNEPS. With more and more organizations and Members of Congress jumping onto this bandwagon, I'm hopeful that, when their resolution passes, they get the recognition they deserve.

Obviously, I can't explore every detail of the proposal in a short blog post, and many of the details still need to be ironed out. But the fact remains that the time for a UN emergency capacity has come. Three months is far too long to wait for help in a disaster or conflict zone.

Hopefully I'll have more to report on this soon.

-- Scott Paul

(Natanz nuclear enrichment facility)

Just released in the Washington Post is an interesting story on the existence of a new -- heretofore unreported -- hardened underground facility and set of tunnels conneted to Natanz. Some analysts believe that it this facility is probably meant to disperse and protect nuclear assets in case of attack.

Given the earlier reports on TWN confirmed by other major journalistic establishments that a member of Vice President Cheney's staff was reporting that the Vice President was afraid of losing the "policy argument" on Iran with the President's other advisors and wanted to tie Bush's hands by encouraging an Israeli cruise missile attack against Natanz, this new report does give one pause.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed Note: I am reporting from Berlin, Germany today through Thursday and will be meeting various German politicians of the CDU this evening. More later, Steve Clemons

I don't really want to ridicule Senator Chuck Schumer, who has a thoughtful fundraising appeal letter out today which does a very good job spelling out the problems Senate Republicans face in 2008.

I will post his letter below.

However, I feel it important to remind leading Democrats not to become too overwhelmed by their own sense of infallibility about the War and what led to it; not to become too intoxicated with a "holier than thou" attitude for a pugnacious nationalism that flipped a finger off to the rest of the world as they helped enable a crusade led by Cheney and Bush.

Every time I get an email from Senator Schumer, I am reminded of his support of John Bolton's confirmation in the 2nd push the administration made on Bolton during the Israel-Lebanon conflagration. Several -- yes more than three -- U.S. Senators told me personally that Schumer was telling them "a vote against Bolton is a vote against Israel."

It is that kind of false choice thinking that undermines American prestige and moral credibility. So yes, Republicans are vulnerable on this war -- but the kind of giddy notes that Schumer is sending out neglect his own role in empowering this crowd.

Here is the letter:

Dear Friend:

I have been leading the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) for two and a half years now.

And yet I am still continually amazed by the commitment of you, our grassroots.

In the past few weeks alone, thousands of our supporters helped us blow past our ambitious quarterly fundraising goal - the tenth straight quarter we've done that.

And then, this week, when President Bush made the outrageous decision to commute Scooter Libby's prison sentence, tens of thousands of you signed on to our petition expressing your disgust for this affront to justice.

Thank you so very much.

Your unrivaled energy and unflagging financial support means that Republican Senate incumbents, already beleaguered by their blind support for George Bush and plummeting poll ratings, will have an even tougher road ahead to defend their Senate seats in 2008.

21 Republican seats are up for reelection in 2008, compared to only 12 Democratic seats. And already, some GOP incumbents are showing clear signs of vulnerability. Only 31% of New Hampshirites think incumbent John Sununu deserves to be reelected. Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Gordon Smith in Oregon have approval ratings hovering below 50%.

Republican senators are once again showing their blind obedience to Bush -- not one has had the guts to stand up and say that the Scooter Libby commutation makes a mockery of the American justice system.

Democrats have a once in a generation opportunity to expand a 51-49 Senate majority that has made it all too easy for Republicans to carry George Bush’s water and obstruct the change that you voted for in 2006.

You have provided a huge lift for us at the DSCC. Your support allows for more staffers in key states, more ads and more investment in advanced micro targeting techniques to get Democrats to the polls on Election Day. You are giving us the resources to convince the very best leaders that Democrats have to offer, to run for Senate.

Most importantly, your energy is keeping every one around here fired up and focused on the goal at hand: expanding our majority.

We've still got a long way to go. But thanks to you, we're off to an amazing start.

Sincerely,

Sen. Chuck Schumer

I do want to see a restoration of genuine political competition in this country -- but I am also really fed up with the historical amnesia that so many politicians on both sides of the aisle are promulgating.

-- Steve Clemons

How times have changed -- sort of.

I realize that the above picture is not as clear as it might be. I snapped it on my cell phone camera when visiting Senator Hagel's office recently.

The picture shows George W. Bush hugging Senators McCain and Hagel. This kind of encounter happens all the time in DC. Even enemies have to smile, laugh, tell jokes and keep the heat turned down to some degree so as to fight another day. Today's friends may be tomorrow's enemies and vice versa.

But the note from Bush says:

To Chuck --

Is it a rose betwee two thorns? Nope! 3 roses --

Best wishes, George Bush

Hagel is the one who should have run for office here. McCain, by embracing Bush and Cheney, has undermined his Straight Talk magic. And Bush may have undermined them both.

Just a tidbit to chew on before I get on my flight to Berlin.

-- Steve Clemons

This is going to be a bit of a disorganized, stream-of-consciousness roster of items on which I feel I owe some comment. Short and brief.

First of all, I have been pestered by quite a number of people and posters about Cheney/Bush and impeachment. Go back and read the blog. TWN has been one of the most persistent and compelling (in my view) vehicles for making the case against Cheney and his team. I wish those pursuing impeachment well. That said, I'm a realist. I have already spoken out against Cheney -- and said that he needs to be contained, confined, and booted. But impeaching him or Bush -- and failing -- will blow the Dem's chances next round out of the water. So, those engaged in the enterprise should follow their passions. I want to contain Cheney and his team in ways that I think have real traction and move a sensible agenda forward.

Second, this is old news. But I have been really bothered by Senator Robert Menendez's endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential aspirations. The price no doubt is her support of a backwards, counterproductive embargo against Cuba. Hillary Clinton believes in engagement with China, with Vietnam, and with other Communist states. She believes in "engagement", people to people exchanges, and the 21st century/bridge to the future stuff her husband used to speak to.

But on Cuba, she is protecting an anachronistic, Cold War-fashioned policy that has been frozen for 40 years. This makes no sense.

I intend to encourage people who meet her everywhere in the country to go out of their way to ask why she can endorse such an incredibly backward and failed national policy towards Cuba that George Bush has taken to new absurd levels. With the stroke of a pen, George W. Bush tightened an already idiotically tight travel ban for Cuban American families.

Now, Cuban Americans must choose between attending their father's funeral, or their mother's. If they go to Cuba, which current law allows them to do under license once every three years, they may see a parent or family member who is sick -- and then go back to the U.S., only to be unable then to attend a funeral if life turns death's direction.

Why isn't Hillary blowing that policy out of the water?! Tell me, please, that Senator Robert Menendez is not asking for the perpetuation of what is really an anti-Cuban-American policy that perpetuates the interestes of Venezuela, China, Israel, Europe, and just about everyone else but us in Cuba.

Third, the Washington Post is developing a story on new facilities in Iran designed to prepare for an attack. I can't say more now, but it should be out over the weekend. And to my original sources -- don't worry -- I found other sources. But while this is not "huge" news, it is significant to know that Iran is preparing for Cheney.

Fourth, for those looking for Congressional level political hope, Jonathan Powers is great. I have a profile in the works on him -- but other distractions have impeded my progress on it. He is an Iraq War veteran who cared about the Iraqis -- who set up a foundation working with Iraqi orphans -- and who traveled with Gunner Palace director Michael Tucker for a period helping to market one of the most brilliant inside treatments on the insanity of the Iraq War that I have seen. You should kick his tires. I think he is someone who will take back some the terrain from bad guys.

Fifth, in case you missed it, this was one of the oddest items I have seen in some time. Giuliani's campaign called for donations in the Jerusalem Post. Before you get too crazed, it is "legal" for Israeli-Americans who carry US passports to donate to American presidential campaigns.

But Guiliani panders in this letter:

Guiliani advertising in the Jerusalem Post

Dear Friend,

As a longtime friend and staunch supporter of Israel during my entire public life, I want to share with you my deep concern for the Jewish state and ask for your support as I campaign to become the next President of the United States.

We are at a crucial moment in history. We are once again at a point where the free world's resolve in fighting evil is being tested.

In the 1990's, we had the blinders on with regard to Islamic terrorism. Coddling terrorists -- even applauding for winning the Nobel Peace prize as was done with Yasser Arafat -- is a policy we cannot return to.

Yet, these blinders are still worn by some people who wish to lead our country.

In neither of their debates did the Democrats mention Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and the threat they pose to our country. One candidate has even said that the global war on terror is nothing but a bumper sticker slogan. It makes the point that I've been making over and over again -- that the Democrats, or at least some of them, are in denial.

I promise you that if elected President, I will make sure this country remains on offense against terrorism. But I need your help and support to get there. Will you consider giving $1,000, $500, $250, $100 or $50 to my campaign?

Israel and the United States share common values. We cherish freedom, democracy, and human life. Our shared values have attracted common enemies. The terrorists Israel is fighting are the same terrorists America is fighting, and we must continue to fight them together.

Last week Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that the world would soon witness the destruction of Israel. This 2008 presidential campaign will determine how we deal with statements like these and the madmen who make them.

I stand by Israel and I'll never embrace a terrorist like Arafat, a tyrant like Ahmadinejad, or a party like Hamas.

Will you join me and support my campaign for President so we can continue to work together? Your contribution of $1,000, $500, $250, $100 or $50 will go a long way in helping us to ensure victory.

Please consider signing up for my email list as well. Doing so will keep you up to date on the latest news from my campaign.

A Giuliani administration won't accept business as usual. We will stay strong amidst the threats of tyrants and we will stay on offense against the terrorists.

Sincerely,

Rudy Giuliani

This Giuliani plea would make a great vignette in Team America, World Police II.

And nearly lastly, I have a quote in The Guardian today warning my acquaintances on the left, the middle, and the reasonable right not to make the mistake of underestimating President Bush's enduring influence and his Lazarus-like ability to continue to matter after some moment of reinvention. His numbers are incredibly low -- but it doesn't seem to make much difference in what he chooses to do.

And in other news, I am flying to Berlin today -- and am sitting in JFK Airport now -- the one some Trinidadian terrorists wanted to blow up, allegedly. Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism.

I think that Gordon Brown is finally getting it right by burying and abandoning the term, "Global War on Terror." That is leadership.

But I will be in Berlin until next Thursday -- and blogging from there.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I'll throw in my two cents on Bush friend Pete Domenici's statement on Iraq this week. My organization doesn't work on Iraq, but my colleagues and I spend a great deal of time thinking about how we use language and how it affects the public debate.

I've often argued on this blog that rhetoric matters, that roll call votes shouldn't be the exclusive measure of an elected official. Floor speeches, press releases, and other statements do shift the policy debate and ultimately do make a difference in people's lives.

Senator Domenici's rhetorical shift on Iraq, therefore, will have some positive impact. It will intensify pressure for a course change and it's miles better than the message he's used for much of the past five years (with or against, stay the course vs. cut and run). Still, it leaves much to be desired.

Domenici is one of many Members of Congress and presidential candidates - Republican and Democratic alike - to put the blame exclusively on the Iraqi government. The headline of Domenici's press release reads: "Domenici, Pushed by Iraqi Government Failures, Supports New U.S. Military Strategy."

That, my friends, is called nerve. The Bush/Cheney strategy that Congress supported from the outset called for toppling a regime, dismantling its bureaucracy. Moreover, the strategy assumes that a newly-created democratic government should be able to quickly and neatly compromise on some extremely divisive issues. Meanwhile, the 219-year-old government in which Domenici and his colleagues serve is failing to resolve questions on health care, social security, immigration, and other issues, all of which are contentious, but none of which are near as divisive or foundational as those with which the nascent Iraqi government is currently grappling.

Governing and compromising aren't easy, and no one who serves in government can plead ignorance to that fact. Let me state the obvious: the real problem is a strategy that was doomed at the outset. Any Member of Congress who cites the Iraqi government's lack of progress as reason to change course is guilty of some some serious hypocrisy.

Some Republicans, by the way, are getting it right. Dick Lugar says: "military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world." And Chuck Hagel has vocally argued that diplomacy, not military action, is the tool that can best solve problems in the Middle East. Through their rhetoric, Hagel and Lugar give people the impression that by smartly applying influence, we can work with other countries to serve common interests. Domenici's language gives us the opposite cues.

The Iraqi government hasn't made great progress, but I'm sick of hearing American politicians use it as a scapegoat for their own bad judgment.

-- Scott Paul

Read this snippet from a Globe and Mail article yesterday:

6 Canadian soldiers and interpreter die as Taliban adopt deadly Iraqi tactics in Afghanistan GRAEME SMITH, Globe and Mail Update, July 5, 2007 at 1:55 PM EDT

. . .Asked whether this represents an "Iraqization" of the conflict, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Trudel, who serves as chief of staff for the Canadian headquarters in Kandahar, shook his head.

"Not particularly," he said. "It indicates a loss of control by the insurgents."

Up is down. Down is up. Black is White. You know what I mean. . .

-- Steve Clemons

Ed Note: Thanks to JP for directing this to my attention.

Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) really likes President Bush and Vice President Cheney. He has had a strained relationship with John McCain for years -- and when Bush beat McCain in the 2000 primaries, Domenici was absolutely "giddy" about it.

When Cheney was running with Bush in 2004 for their second term together, Domenici's kingpin status at the helm of New Mexico Republican politics allowed him to orchestrate for Cheney "card-carrying Republican party members only" gatherings where independents or even "soft" Republicans were not permitted entry. There was outrage in the state but Domenici performed for Cheney and Bush.

But now Domenici is joining the likes of Senators Chuck Hagel, Susan Collins, George Voinovich, Richard Lugar, Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith and others in advocating a "change in America's Iraq strategy." That is code for 'getting out.'

Domenici's defection indicates a trend, but in and of itself is still not enough of a tilt to shut the Bush/Cheney war down.

-- Steve Clemons

Was Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei behind the abduction of Britain's 15 sailors -- who were taken by Iran's Revolutionary Guard on March 23rd of this year -- or not?

Many of the Iran experts I know have told me that it is hard to imagine a scenario that would not depict Khamenei as the key decision-maker who authorized the episode. Some others, however, do not agree -- and the question is important because just as there are increasingly clear divisions in the White House, so too might there be very important divisions inside Iran's ruling clique that would affect our strategy in trying to chart something other than a hot collision between the US and Iran.

To be candid, I have not been following carefully serious after-the-fact journalism following the abduction of the British sailors. I have noted though that there has been some interesting analysis of where to place blame on the British side for the incident, and this piece by RedState.com's Jeff Emanuel makes many strong points about the encounter.

But what I have come across -- via a senior European intelligence official -- is a narrative on what happened that deserves to at least be written up and posted. I have confidence in this official, and am certain that the information shared reflects the collective analysis of his particular country -- though I have no idea whether American, Israeli, or other intelligence operations elsewhere share this perspective.

And to be clear, I am in no position to validate one way or another the truthfulness of this narrative.

This is what the intelligence official recounted:

The abduction of the sailors was an operation that was animated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The political fortunes of both have been falling this past year. Ahmadinejad lost key elections in December that not only marked his decline but marked the rise, to some degree, of political forces allied with former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.

The abduction was designed to secure domestic political leverage for Ahmadinejad and the al Quds forces, whose budgets have been stagnant despite the rise of national income from increasing oil prices.

According to my source, Ayatollah Khamenei was furious when informed of the abduction. Iran nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani reportedly threatened to resign his post if the sailors were not released. And Rafsanjani -- behind the scenes -- "heaped scorn" on Ahmadinejad for the action he and the al Quds force triggered.

Khamenei ordered the sailors to be released and allowed Ahmadinejad to be the deliverer of the news -- on his own terms -- in a way that would allow him not to appear rebuked and would allow him to save political face.

According to the intelligence official, Rafsanjani's crowd has become marginally stronger -- and Ahmadinejad significantly weaker -- which makes the latter even more dangerous and unpredictable.

I was also told that Ahmadinejad's chief rival politically right now is the current Mayor of Tehran and former presidential aspirant, Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf.

Ahmadinejad tried to get Qalibaf out of the country by appointing him Iran's Ambassador to Venezuela, and Qalibaf refused the appointment. The intelligence official speaking to me told me that Khamenei is maneuvering Qalibaf to knock Ahmadinejad out of the presidential seat.

Again, I can't validate these tidbits shared above. But I do find them potentially important because it provides to those who don't follow the close details of Iran's theocratic politics some sense that despite Khamenei's seeming strong control of the country and its machinery -- particularly the Iranian Revolutionary Guard -- that there is instability of leadership and episodes of rogue autonomy.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I imagine Steve figured his "Happy 4th of July" post would stay up here throughout the holiday, but I'm bumping it down to announce my triumphant return to The Washington Note and explain my two-week absence.

I've spent some time in New York and Minneapolis for birthdays and weddings, respectively, but the balance has been spent talking with Congress about various aspects of America's nonmilitary global engagement.

Some of this has been education on the Law of the Sea and an exciting proposal to make UN peacekeeping and disaster relief more responsive (I'll have more later on that). For the most part, though, I've been knee-deep - ok, maybe only ankle-deep - in the Congressional appropriations process, and I'll have more to share on the good, the bad, and the ugly in a couple of days.

In the meantime, Anne-Marie Slaughter has a quickie in Foreign Policy this month that's worth a read.

Foreign Policy also publishes an important poll this month that illustrates the obvious rule - that faith in U.S. global leadership is waning - and notes some exceptions. Slaughter's general thoughts on American exceptionalism as the cause of this decline are on point, if a little vague. She does lay out five specific recommendations to stop the bleeding:

[F]irst, close Guantanamo and work with other nations on a shared understanding of the rules for the interrogation of terrorism suspects; second, commit to specific carbon emissions targets and a cap and trade system; third, ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiate with other nuclear states to begin major cuts of nuclear arsenals in the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; fourth, make room at the Security Council table for emerging powers such as India and Brazil, as well as Germany, Japan, two African nations, and at least one major Muslim country at any given point; and finally, bring peace between Israel and Palestine, or at least, in the words of the Clinton administration, "get caught trying."

Point 1: Closing Guantanamo would be there, but I fail to see why a new "shared understanding" for detainee treatment is necessary when the Geneva Conventions are a perfectly good starting point. Similarly, how is the U.S. going to buttress international law while still punishing International Criminal Court member states for fulfilling their treaty obligations?

Point 2: Emissions caps and a cap & trade system need to happen; I'd add a serious commitment to climate adaptation and a more substantial focus on the nexus between energy and development - one key place where American neglect has left its brand badly damaged.

Point 3: Ratifying the CTBT and reducing nuclear arsenals is a good start, but we need to think bigger. The next president is going to have to undertake a serious diplomatic effort to revamp and boost up the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the face of new security realities.

Point 4: Slaughter gets the Security Council reform piece just right. That said, Security Council reform is just one part of the larger UN reform puzzle, and it's a puzzle that must be solved in a holistic and comprehensive way.

Finally, Point 5: Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian problem is crucial, and the next president is going to need to look at it in a regional context. How can progress between Israelis and Palestinians leverage (or be leveraged by) Lebanese political and economic development, Iranian nuclear ambitions, new negotiations with Syria, and democratic reforms in Egypt and Saudi Arabia?

These are more expansions on Slaughter's points than critiques of them, and I don't doubt that Slaughter might have expanded similarly if she had the space to do so. Her general points are as good a place as any to start the conversation.

-- Scott Paul

Annie, Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner and I want to wish all of you a very happy and relaxing 4th of July.

-- Steve Clemons

(1st Lt. Andrew J. Bacevich Jr. -- died in Iraq in line of duty -- 13 May 2007)

Last week, I was in attendance at the "conference launch" of the Center for a New America Security when anti-Iraq War scholar Andrew Bacevich was present at and acknowledged the creation of a new CNAS Bacevich fellowship in honor of his son, Andrew J. Bacevich Jr., who was recently killed in the line of military duty in Iraq. (I wrote a piece in tribute to his son the night the Department of Defense announced his death.)

After that, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) gave a speech that very much outlined what he published in the Financial Times today. One can watch the Bacevich tribute and Hagel speech at this video link -- or read Hagel's oped here.

But essentially, Senator Hagel is calling for the American flag to be removed from the scene in Iraq and continues to hammer on the "false choice" that too many are making between the deal-making we must do in the Middle East with Arab nations on one hand and Israel's security needs on the other.

I completely agree with Hagel who wrote:

American military power will not be the solution. The time for more troops is past. We must begin planning for a phased withdrawal and redeployment of US troops from Iraq. The only sustainable way forward is to achieve Iraqi political accommodation that will begin to move the country towards political reconciliation. However, Iraqis by themselves appear incapable of achieving political progress. They have had more than four years to find a political consensus. It continues to evade them, increasing the violence and danger in the Middle East.

We need strategic direction for Iraq that moves to "internationalise" our efforts to help the Iraqis achieve a core of political stability. As the Baker-Hamilton report concluded, Iraqi political accommodation can be achieved only within a constructive regional framework supported by the international community. The US must refocus its policy, leadership and resources on directly helping the Iraqis to establish an inclusive political framework to begin to defuse the violence.

An international mediator, under the auspices of the UN Security Council and with the full support of the Iraqi government, should be established. The mediator should have the authority of the international community to engage Iraq's political, religious, ethnic and tribal leaders in an inclusive political process. In letters last month to President George W. Bush and the UN secretary-general I urged them urgently to consider this initiative.

Special envoys have been instrumental in helping bring political reconciliation to other recent conflicts -- Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor, Northern Ireland -- adapted to the conditions in each country. Iraq needs the inter­national community's help and support if it is to turn away from sectarian violence. If there is Iraqi resistance, we should be clear with all Iraq's leaders that this initiative is a condition of continued US support.

I think Iraq is going to be a long term problem, and that 'some dimensions' of the Iraq conflict are beginning to bear some similarity to the Israel-Palestine standoff.

In fact, Israel-Palestine today looks more solvable even though the Palestinian government is divided in territory and government than Iraq appears.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

The United States has had a long history of hawkishness in its foreign policy, but for the most part American hawks have been judicious ones who carefully weighed costs and opportunities. But then there is also a cast of characters in our history that can't see the gray area between bombing and appeasement.

Famed Air Force General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay was one of these people who if left to his own devices would have triggered several nuclear exchanges.

Former US Ambassador to the UN and now chief critic of Bush administration foreign policy John Bolton is another of these sorts who seems obsessively driven with dragging America into war with North Korea and Iran.

In today's Wall Street Journal, John Bolton savages President Bush's diplomats and their work:

. . .Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill recently made a pilgrimage to Pyongyang where he said he was "buoyed by the sense that we are going to be able to achieve our full objectives." Undoubtedly, North Korea was buoyed by the visit, which marked yet another administration retreat -- this one from the position that such a trip was impossible before performance by the North.

This Pyongyang visit symbolizes the full return of Clinton-era, bilateral negotiations with North Korea, and their predominance over the Six-Party Talks.The Bush administration has effectively ended where North Korea policy is concerned, replaced for the next 18 months by a caretaker government of bureaucrats, technocrats and academics.

So complete was the transformation that putative Shadow Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke facilitated a number of Mr. Hill's bilateral contacts with Pyongyang. Kim Jong Il will now, in all likelihood, further his slow roll, waiting for America's 2008 elections, when the Clinton era may return de jure as well as de facto.

This is not a comment on partisan disagreements, but an important signpost that Bush's clear determination in 2001 to follow a different course has disappeared, replaced with the same flawed conceptual framework that failed so badly in the 1990s. New failures lie ahead.

Applauding Japan's right wing Prime Minister who is best known for engaging in a bizarre denial of Japan's role in lining up "comfort women" to "service" its soldiers in World War II, Bolton writes:

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave voice to what a Bush administration would have done if it were still in power, saying, "We need to seek a harsh response from the international community."

Japan has legitimate national security concerns about the almost predictable cycles of bad behavior by North Korea, but for Bolton to so seriously malign the "President he served" to paraphrase White House Spokesman Tony Snow shows what Bolton always was more interested in war in the case of North Korea and Iran than achieving results in the interests of the US and other parties.

Bolton has about zero sense of the harm that he and other Cheneyites have done to America's ability to secure our national security objectives. I wonder if the thought had ever occurred to him that when American power was benchmarked at higher levels than is the case today -- the U.S. botched arrangements that would have precluded North Korea's reprocessing program and walked away from a US-Iran normalization opportunity that we would have had great leverage in sculpting and enforcing.

Today, America is perceived to be in a weaker position -- and now in that weaker position -- the Bush crowd seems to be more open to serious, thoughtful, interest-driven dealmaking. Just think about what could have been accomplished if this same disposition had been in place when Bush and America were higher in the saddle.

Bolton, Cheney, and their fellow travelers harmed this nation and its global position and should be paying a higher price for the mistakes they have made than they are.

-- Steve Clemons

I am hosting a dinner for Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns tonight, and will report on the "on the record" portion later.

In other news, Scooter Libby will not go to jail. He will still have to pay a $250,000 fine and will be on 2-year probation. President Bush has commuted his sentence.

And the world turns. . .

-- Steve Clemons