Tonight, I received Hillary Clinton's formal statement explaining her vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Iran Resolution -- and her assertion that this did not amount to Congressional authorization for actions against Iran.

Clinton stated:

"Earlier today, I voted for a non-binding resolution that designates the Iranian Revolution Guard as a terrorist organization. The Revolutionary Guards are deeply involved in Iran's nuclear program and have substantial links with Hezbollah.

"I voted for this resolution in order to apply greater diplomatic pressure on Iran. This resolution in no way authorizes or sanctions military action against Iran and instead seeks to end the Bush Administration's diplomatic inaction in the region.

"Iran has gained expanded influence in Iraq and the region as a result of the Bush Administration's polices which have also rejected diplomacy as a tool for addressing Iranian ambitions. While the United States has spurned talks, Iran has enhanced its nuclear enrichment capabilities, armed Iraqi Shiite militias, funneled arms to Hezbollah and subsidized Hamas, even as the government continues to damage its own citizens by mismanaging the economy and increasing political and social repression.

"I continue to support and advocate for a policy of entering into talks with Iran, because robust diplomacy is a prerequisite to achieving our aims.

"This legislation reaffirms my policy of engagement and refers specifically to the statement of Defense Secretary Gates who said that "diplomatic and economic means" are "by far the preferable approach" for dealing with the threat posed by Iran.

"In February, after troubling reports about the possibility of military action against Iran, I took to the Senate Floor to warn that President Bush needs Congressional Authorization before attacking Iran. Specifically, I said it would be a mistake of historical proportion if the Administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further and explicit Congressional authorization. Nor should the President think that the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, in any way, authorizes force against Iran. If the Administration believes that any use of force against Iran is necessary, the President must come to Congress to seek that authority.

"Nothing in this resolution changes that."

If all parties were above board, this statement could calm some nerves, but the problem with the current administration is the duplicity and overreach of the Executive Branch. Bush's team concocted the anti-democratic notion of the "unitary executive" and has been disdainful of Congress' constitutionally specified authorities and responsibilities.

This administration has stretched the authorizations Congress has given it in the past -- and assembled rationalizations for action, like abandoning the Geneva Conventions, while Cheney staffers like David Addington stated "[Congress] doesn't have a vote" in what the administration was doing.

So, even if one takes Hillary Clinton's assertion at her word that she was not giving permission for the Kyl-Lieberman Resolution to be twisted into Congressional authorization for an Iran War, it doesn't mean that other Senators saw it that way -- and certainly doesn't mean that the administration won't spin the Resolution in that direction.

What is needed from Senator Clinton now is leadership in passing an explicit Senate resolution forbidding Bush from taking action against Iran without clear advise and consent from Congress -- a Resolution that would move the President's actions into the light instead of the murkiness where the possibility of an Iran action now rests.

That kind of resolution is needed. Some have been kicking around the Congress -- but if Hillary Clinton, right now the front runner to be the next President of the United States -- adopted this effort as her own, many would come to have greater trust in the kinds of rationales she provided in her statement above.

-- Steve Clemons

As all eyes turn to Myanmar with brutal crackdowns by the military junta (including reports of a Japanese reporter murdered and school children being fired upon), international condemnations, speculation of a "saffron revolution," and China caught between a policy of noninterference and brutal crackdown on its borders that could turn into a public relations disaster, there are stories at the micro-political level that deserve to be highlighted for the inspiration they might offer.

First, the role that technology has played in both mobilizing and broadcasting this information to the rest of the world through cell phones and the internet. News reports abound on the process of gathering reports in Myanmar as much as the actual reports of the brutal crackdowns by the military junta. The Democratic Voice of Burma has been praised for its role at the helm of collecting, hosting, and distributing information from the myriad of reports electronically smuggled out of the country. Despite the internet crackdown which The New York Times The Lede is reporting on, information is still apears to be making its way through to blogs like Global Voices and the Cbox aggregator of on-the-ground reports.

Just like the protests against a chemical plant organized by text messages in China a few months ago, this is not the story of technological triumphalism, but rather, of little victories that are applying pressures and compelling governments and international actors to move in certain, sometimes constructive ways.

The second story that needs be told (and I hope gets reported on more) is the bonds of solidarity formed between the monks and local residents. The lead editorial of the Asahi Shimbun reads:

Sharp increases in the prices of gasoline and other items on Aug. 15 sparked the demonstrations. The price hikes caused bus fares and other fees to soar, hitting the pocketbooks of ordinary citizens. Monks who rely on alms stood up in protest on behalf of the citizens. (...)

In Myanmar, it is customary for men to enter the priesthood at least once during their lifetime. As writer Michio Takeyama (1903-1984) described in his novel "Biruma no Tategoto" (The Harp of Burma), Buddhism is the spiritual mainstay of the people. The fact that monks, who distance themselves from mundane affairs, stood up in protest shows just how precarious everyday civilian life has become.

In return, DVB is reporting that local residents of all religions have been defending Bhuddist monks and thwarting attacks on monasteries, which have been targeted by the military:

In Rangoon, troops encountered resistance from local residents as they approached Sasana Alin Yaung, Sanana Wuntha and Min Nanda monasteries in Daw Pon and Tharkayta townships.

At Min Nanda monastery, which backs on to Pazuntaung creek, troops tried to approach from both land and water but retreated when they saw the strength of local resistance.

"There were not only Buddhist people but also Muslims, Christians and Hindus defending the monasteries," said a resident of Tharkayta township.

A similar story has been played out in other townships in Burma, as residents take action to resist government raids on monasteries.

Despite the much ballyhooed cedar, rose, and orange revolutions that turned out to be far more complex power struggles rather than purely democratic revolutions, there appears to be something qualitatively different about what is happening in Myanmar right now -- a much more organic galvanization of the population -- though I think we lack sufficient information to substantiate it. Nevertheless, the accounts above should provide sufficient cause to hope that a new social contract will arise out the battle unfolding in the country.

--Sameer Lalwani

It turns out that John Bolton's recent lobbying against the Law of the Sea represents a major flip-flop.

I've known about this exchange for quite a while, but it doesn't commit Bolton to personal support of the treaty:

BOLTON: The administration has submitted the Law of the Sea Treaty as one of its priorities, and I support that.

SARBANES: Simply because it's an administration position, or does that represent your own view of it?

BOLTON: Well, I haven't personally read the Law of the Sea Treaty. I don't think I've ever read it, to be honest with you.

Of course, administration appointees are required to support administration policy. But I recently came across another exchange, in which Bolton substantially undermines the most common policy-grounded objections to the convention. It goes well beyond the basic level of support that is compulsory for administration officials and indicates that he at some point did read and endorse the Law of the Sea.

Here's what he had to say at his confirmation hearing on April 11, 2005:

LUGAR: [D]o you see any potential entanglement of the United States with the Law of the Sea Treaty and loss of sovereignty to the U.N. or to any other world body?

BOLTON: No, I don't see that the Law of the Sea Treaty implicates the United Nations in any material respect. And those that have gone over the question of the seabed conclude there's no risk of taxation or anything like that.

As I say, my own review and that of the bureaus that report to me was on the importance that our military attached to it.

I will say, perhaps, one related point. A number of people have asked about the relationship of the Law of the Sea Treaty to the Proliferation Security Initiative.

And you know, I don't think that if the Senate were to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty and the president were to make the treaty, that it would have any negative impact whatsoever on PSI.

One of the things the PSI statement of interdiction principle says very clearly is that any actions taken pursuant to PSI would be done in accordance with existing national and international authority.

And of course all of our other core group members of the PSI are states party to the Law of the Sea Treaty.

We would not ask them, obviously, to do anything that would violate their obligations. And so, in effect, we built that into the PSI base as it were.

Confirmation conversion, anyone?

If he keeps up his scorched earth policy and his flip flopping, Bolton's credibility will head into a downward spiral right on time for his upcoming book release.

On a related note -- that is, related to Law of the Sea opponents embarrassing themselves -- the most visible Law of the Sea opponents had scheduled a "telephone press conference" for this morning. I just found out it was canceled for lack of interest.

There's a lesson here for Bolton: when you're consistently inconsistent, or just plain absurd, people stop paying attention to you.

-- Scott Paul

Note: As I wrote earlier, Dick Lugar's opening statement at yesterday's Law of the Sea hearing finally exposed the right-wing hypocrisy on the Law of the Sea and the Iraq war. It's now up on his site. Everyone should read it.

There are many including this writer who have been documenting the internal decision-making divisions inside President Bush's White House.

The response that tends to be offered back is that we are misreading the situation, or that all of President Bush's people are pulling together even if there are serious differences in the debate when policy is being hammered out.

But yesterday, I learned of something that John Bolton did during the first George W. Bush term that reflects the deep hostility between warring factions in the Bush machine.

On a White House orchestrated conference call, a number of officials had been discussing a national security matter. One White House official in the phone conference apparently was supposed to go off the call before then Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control John Bolton came on -- but the White House operator forgot to disconnect him (or her).

When the moderator of the meeting stated that the portion of the call with "X Person" had ended and the discussion with John Bolton would begin, Bolton allegedly said:

I want to tell everyone on this call now, do not trust [that person]."

Well, the person was still listening, in utter shock. The person quickly hung up the call.

This is yet another indication of Bolton's divisive 'with him or against him' tactics in the administration.

When Bill Frist and George Bush kept saying "Bolton is a good man" during his failed UN confirmation process, it really turned the stomachs of many inside the White House.

Now Bolton is lobbying against Bush's Law of the Sea policy. He's been trying to undermine virtually every serious project at the Department of State -- from efforts to redirect Iran, the Six Party talks with North Korea, and the coming November Israel/Palestine Summit.

Bolton is the hardest working person in Washington now trying to undermine global stability, in much the same way he has been trying to undermine his former colleagues who serve the same President he served.

-- Steve Clemons

Some of the leading opponents of the Law of the Sea, ironically, feel very strongly that we should trust the judgments of military personnel on military matters.

Jim Inhofe:

"I don't think it's too much to expect for our leaders in Washington to keep an open mind and get the facts before drawing their conclusions. I, like the other 534 members of Congress, am not a General and do not presume to be. That is why I will yield to the judgement of a competent, objective, military leader in forming my opinion..." - at Captain's Quarters blog, 9/17/2007

Jim DeMint, who is fast establishing himself as the George Allen of the 110th Congress with his instinctive opposition to international institutions and problems keeping facts straight (he suggested at one point in today's Law of the Sea hearing that the U.S. is fulfilling its obligations under Kyoto while others are freeloading):

"Right now, our commander in chief and those he commands are daring greatly and our brave warriors are paying with blood, sweat and tears. Yet, many in Congress prefer to sit in the arena stands and offer scorn rather than support.
...
"Instead, many of my colleagues prefer to support a nonbinding resolution that expresses disapproval of the president's plan to reinforce our troops in Iraq.

"Voting for such a resolution is not leadership; it is criticism -- criticism without offering alternative solutions.
...
"Voting to condemn the president's plan is a vote of no confidence in the mission that we have told our troops to carry out. It is also a smack to the face of Gen. David Patraeus..." - in the Politico, 2/6/2007

Apparently, the right wing's faith in military leaders stops at the water's edge. Both Inhofe and DeMint oppose U.S. accession to the Law of the Sea, which the President, civilian military leaders, and commanders say unambiguously will help them fulfill their missions and keep American service members safe.

Dick Lugar put it much more eloquently at today's hearing. Lugar is usually understated and is generally inclined more to seek consensus than provoke confrontation. Today, though, he stood up to his ideological opponents and knocked one out of the park:

"The Commander-in-Chief, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States Navy, in time of war, are asking the Senate to give its advice and consent to this treaty. Our uniformed commanders and civilian national security leadership are telling us, unanimously and without qualification, that U.S. accession to the treaty will help them do their job.

"We have charged the U.S. Navy with maintaining sea lanes and defending our nation's interests on the high seas. They do this every day, and even in peacetime these operations carry considerable risk. The Navy is telling us that U.S. membership in the Law of the Sea Convention is a tool that they need to maximize their ability to protect U.S. national security with the least risk to the men and women charged with this task.
...
"Mr. Chairman, the military is not always right. But the overwhelming presumption in the United States Senate has been that if our Armed Forces and our entire National Security apparatus ask us for something to help them achieve a military mission, we do our best to provide them with just that tool within the constraints of law and responsible budgeting."

And finally, the hypocrisy shines through:

"In recent weeks we have heard a great deal of advocacy about the necessity of heeding the advice of our military leaders as they seek to carry out the missions we have given them. Senators rose to declare that General Petraeus, an acknowledged counterinsurgency expert, was better positioned and trained to assess our progress in Iraq than critics in Congress. In the coming debate on Law of the Sea, we should be similarly respectful of the expertise of military commanders. "

(As delivered; hyperlink to statement not yet active)

Hypocrisy has become so commonplace among isolationist conservatives that it doesn't always register, but this time it's too blatant to ignore. Those most vocal about giving the President and the military a blank check to put troops and treasure on the line in Iraq are also dead-set against giving them the tools they need to protect and enable the Armed Forces at sea.

I'll try to get some more updates up on yesterday's hearing. More details on Bolton and his Law of the Sea lobbying on the way, too.

-- Scott Paul

Joe Wilson is off in Nevada campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Joe and I think similarly on many national security issues -- and we have like-minded disdain for what Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, John Bolton and others have done to America's global position.

But I hope someone in Nevada will ask Joe Wilson how he squares Hillary's vote in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman Iran resolution yesterday. Hagel and Lugar voted against the resolution. Jim Web did too. But Hillary helped give the White House (which she may very well occupy) implicit authority to trip into war with Iran.

The Joe Wilson I know wouldn't be too pleased with Hillary's vote -- but I imagine he's forgiving the vote on the grounds that if that is what she has to do to get into the White House, do it -- and then change course later.

But we really need to see some evidence that Hillary Clinton is not going to tilt at conflicts and rapidly deploy hard military force the first chance she gets as a way to define her presidency.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm not in a place to judge the veracity of Dan Rather's reporting on Bush's National Guard service, but as usual, Sidney Blumenthal has done an extraordinary job sequencing the bits and pieces of the Rather CBS story and suggests that Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS will animate some much needed truth-telling about Bush's slippery story on military service.

Blumenthal writes:

If the court accepts [Rather's] suit, however, launching the adjudication of legal issues such as breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference with contract, it will set in motion an inexorable mechanism that will grind out answers to other questions as well. Then Rather's suit will become an extraordinary commission of inquiry into a major news organization's intimidation, complicity and corruption under the Bush administration. No congressional committee would be able to penetrate into the sanctum of any news organization to divulge its inner workings. But intent on vindicating his reputation, capable of financing an expensive legal challenge, and armed with the power of subpoena, Rather will charge his attorneys to interrogate news executives and perhaps administration officials under oath on a secret and sordid chapter of the Bush presidency.

In making his case, Rather will certainly establish beyond reasonable doubt that George W. Bush never completed his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. Moreover, Rather's suit will seek to demonstrate that the documents used in his "60 Minutes II" piece were not inauthentic and that he and his producers acted responsibly in presenting them and the information they contained -- and that that information is true. Indeed, no credible source has refuted the essential facts of the story.

Most cases of this sort are usually settled before discovery. But Rather has made plain that he is uninterested in a cash settlement. He has filed his suit precisely to be able to take depositions.

A principled stand to get at the truth is what we need, and if this is what Dan Rather is up to then all the better.

-- Steve Clemons

A lot of folks out there think I'm a sucker for good email notes -- or very effective, personalized fundraising appeals like Hillary Clinton's invitation to all of us (including me) to possibly have lunch with her, after she picked up the groceries and with her husband dropping by to say hello.

But I really liked this note from Chris Dodd -- received just a few moments ago while I'm up covering the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

Senator Dodd writes:

Subject: Real Quick

From: Chris Dodd [Chris_Dodd@chrisdodd.com]

To: Steve Clemons [clemons@newamerica.net]

Hey,

I only have a few seconds on my way back to Washington from last night's debate.

The fundraising quarter is wrapping up and we're just short of hitting our goal. Will you chip in $23 and put us over the top? You can contribute here:

http://www.chrisdodd.com/deadline

I'll be in touch soon.

Chris

I really like Dodd's take on foreign policy and national security issues. He continues to set a high mark in his comments on the Middle East, on Cuba, on Iran, and just a general modern, 21st century approach to thinking about the tough challenges ahead. Listening to Dodd last night reminded me of Chuck Hagel's foreign policy views.

In any case, I may be a sucker for fundraising notes -- but this is another one I liked.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Juan Cole has picked up stories from Reuters and Harpers on a transcript of President Bush's conversation with Spanish President Aznar that confirms that he had no intention of seriously pursuing UN Security Council support and was exceedingly optimistic over the outcomes of Iraq.

But here's the kicker -- the President was offered a deal by the Egyptians but passed on an opportunity to buy Saddam out, have him exiled to Saudi Arabia, and avoid a US occupation that has come at such a high cost.

Cole suggests these are impeachable offenses but I'm less concerned with that angle than as a lesson to current and future leaders who are grappling with a number of present security dilemmas, especially in light of the Senate vote yesterday that pushed us a step closer to conflict with Iran.

The counter-factual account -- what if we had bought Saddam out instead of invading Iraq -- should be pondered and instructive for our dealings with North Korea and Iran, who have at many points indicated their compliance could also be bought with security guarantees and economic incentives. Of course there are risks and a "buy-out" package, which would need to complemented by some credible sticks. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking that the use of force comes without risks of failure or blowback as we are witnessing now in Iraq.

And the moral repugnance of buying out thugs like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il like as some might invoke has to be balanced against the loss of our troops and global influence as well as expected but unintended consequences (let's call them "known unknowns") that ought to weigh on our moral conscience -- like 600,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and over five million refugees.

--Sameer Lalwani

Note the correction -- the event will be from 3:00pm-4:30pm

If you are near Dupont Circle on Thursday afternoon, you should drop by the New America Foundation to hear Council on Foreign Relations Vice President and Director of Studies, Dr. Gary Samore, in an event hosted by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative and publisher of Arms Control Wonk. The event "Countering a Nuclear-Armed Iran" will focus on how we might develop new options to counter Iran beyond the choice of acquiescing to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons break out option or using military force to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.

Dr. Samore is an expert on nuclear proliferation and arms control specializing in the Middle East and Asia and served at the National Security Council from 1995-2001. He previously served as Vice President of the MacArthur Foundation and Director of Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The event will be from 3:00pm - 4:30pm on the 7th floor of the New America Foundation offices located at 1630 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington DC.

--Sameer Lalwani

(US Defense Secretary Robert Gates with the Egyptian Military, soon to be deploying troops to Darfur)

Arab states have taken numerous hits in the media -- some unwarranted, some deserved -- for not taking a stronger role in condemning the violence in Darfur and arm-twisting the Sudanese government to allow for peacekeepers or peace talks. The US, by contrast, has continued to stand on a soapbox drawing attention to the issue and urging the world to move quickly to stem the violence that has claimed 200,000 lives.

But yesterday witnessed something of a reversal of positions. President Bush spoke at the UN and chastised the UN for its failures to stem the violence in Darfur (despite the breakthrough that will allow a joint UN-AU peacekeeping force) but has not been willing to put up the resources to make this breakthrough a reality as former Senator Tim Wirth stated:

This morning, President Bush admonished the UN to 'live up to its promise to promptly deploy peacekeeping forces to Darfur.' However, the Administration has requested funding for only 20% of its share of the Darfur mission, and is heading towards a debt of more than $1 billion for UN peacekeeping overall. It is impossible for the UN to 'live up to its promise' to deploy peacekeepers to Darfur if nations like the United States fail to pay for the peacekeeping missions that they vote for in the Security Council.

On the same day, Egypt, though by no means the model of human rights, took the significant step of committing 2,500 troops or 10% of the joint force to be deployed in the Darfur region. Deployments of Arab and Muslim troops cannot be understated -- they will be quite valuable to both provide credibility to a western-led mission that is viewed by a large part of the world with suspicion and to dampen the resonance of al Qaeda's twisted call to turn Darfur into another front against the West.

It's a pity when we squander an opportunity on the global stage to lead the world on what we have termed a genocide But at the very least it's good to see Middle East/North African neighbors beginning to warm to the notion of moral responsibility and regional stewardship on this front.

--Sameer Lalwani

The first question former President Clinton posed Afghan President Hamid Karzai was one of investment in Afghanistan. While the two touted the foreign investment starting to enter the country, Clinton suggested that everyone could contribute to average Afghans trying to make a living through Kiva.org -- an online microfinance network like lendingtree.com where people seeking to loan small, interest-free amounts of money match up with entrepreneurs seeking small loans for a six to twelve month period.

Nick Kristof profiled this website (see screen shot) back in March, which drew my attention and led me to make a few loans -- a little less than 6 months later, 44% of the loans have been paid back. The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted the impressive figures they've posted including $11.6 million in loans within less than 2 years and only a 0.2% default rate (as I recall, this is much lower than even the highly successful Grameen Bank which had something like a 92% repayment rate).

This is not to suggest micro-finance alone will save Afghanistan. After 30 years as one of the poorest countries in the world not to mention a perpetual governance vacuum with dysfunctional or non-existent state, the country needs a massive infusion of development aid to build up everything from infrastructure to state bureaucratic capacity, far more than the pittance of a sum the US has thus far allocated according to New York Times reporting based on Congressional Research Service reports. And it does no favors that our misplaced counter-narcotics policy seeks to eliminate the livelihoods of the 13% of the population and a third of the country's GDP.

But the micro-finance revolution will continue to make waves as it becomes increasingly profitable for mainstream banks and lending institutions and as it reaches a broader set of pooled lenders through unique delivery vehicles like Kiva.org.

--Sameer Lalwani

In the internal White House battles over the Geneva conventions, enemy combatant policies, extraordinary rendition, and torture -- which have been viciously waged between various Bush administration officials against other colleagues in the same White House -- there are a few heroes who fought the "darkness at noon" solutions advocated by Vice President Cheney's team.

I am writing a significant, lengthy piece right now on a bit of this history as I think that a giant, high beam spotlight should blare down on Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, for the particularly insidious role that he has played over the last six years in sabotaging America's norms and ethics as well as system of checks and balances in government.

There are a number of heroes in my book including former Department of Defense and Department of State lawyer Matthew Waxman, who tried to stand up to Addington and his like-minded torture obsessives, and State Department Senior Legal Adviser John Bellinger who has worked vigorously to walk America away from the so-called "war paradigm" and towards a "rule of law" framework again. In fact, Bellinger is an advocate of numerous international law frameworks -- including ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention.

I hate saying good things about Bellinger because I fear it will get him in trouble with the censors in the White House. But Bellinger is on the right side, and it must be said repeatedly.

I mention this because I just ran across an interesting and thoughtful blog, Dorf on Law that in a review of Jack Goldsmith's The Terror Presidency, Jamison Colburn mischaracterizes Bellinger and tosses him with the likes of Addington. This couldn't be more incorrect.

Colburn writes:

Goldsmith is the Henry Shattuck Professor at Harvard now. He made his academic name cautioning against "universal jurisdiction" and the application of international law in U.S. courts while teaching at Chicago. That was before his stint in the Bush Administration. It took Goldsmith's determination to pull the torture opinions and revise them because apparently there were many in the administration who adamantly opposed him and wanted the cover OLC opinions provide. (David Addington, John Bellinger, and some others are referenced throughout the book for their especially idiotic, chauvinistic, and dangerous views.) (Goldsmith's words, not mine.)

I understand the writer's general critique of the administration and agree with much of what he writes -- but his target should be Addington, not Bellinger. In fact, Goldsmith says nothing at all about Bellinger along the lines that Colburn says.

Goldsmith's only references to John Bellinger are that he strongly opposed David Addington's efforts. On page on 124, Goldsmith writes that Bellinger was one of the people, along with Paul Clement, urging the White House to try and cultivate Congressional support for "War on Terror" policies. Bellinger was shot down in those efforts, and then on page 126, Goldsmith writes:

'They do not have a vote,' was how [Addington] would invariably respond when someone -- usually John Bellinger -- would object to a policy (or lack of one) by invoking allied protestations.

That kind of response is classic Addington -- and is antithetical to everything Bellinger is about.

I share this not to harrass or impugn Jamison Colburn. As I've written a great deal about Bellinger's important work in trying to walk this country back to some kind of legal sanity, while fighting Cheney's team inside the White House, I wanted to make sure that there was a record that Bellinger and Addington are total opposites on the topics that Colburn considers them the same.

-- Steve Clemons

Former President Clinton has opened the 3rd annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) after a stunning procession of world leaders entered the room to music reminiscent of a James Horner sound track.

In his opening remarks and introductions, Clinton called up Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist to announce an new solar power initiative by Florida Power and Light to reduce the state's carbon footprint and bring its carbon emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020. (Before announcing the initiative, Clinton took a moment to praise Gov. Crist's recent move to reinstate the right to vote for former felons who have served their time and seek to assume the responsibilities of citizenship -- a principled move that probably didn't go over well with the RNC).

Energy and Climate Change will be an important theme of this conference with a number of plenaries exclusively devoted to the discussion of energy and climate change. The most famous and ardent proponent of efforts to seriously tackle climate change--former Vice President Al Gore-- is here to pick up where he left off at the UN's climate summit on Monday and push this agenda in a meaningful way. He's actually featured in the opening plenary along with a number of global figures including Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, World Bank President Bob Zoellick, and Walmart CEO Lee Scott who have all been focusing on the questions of carbon markets and the developing world.

While CGI will try to advance the theme Al Gore has spearheaded, there are some real and disturbing questions that have been posed, which I hope some panelists will consider addressing, namely -- is it too late?

Paul Saunders and Vaughan Turekian have published a provocative article in Foreign Policy, "Why Climate Change Can't Be Stopped." The authors suggest we need to begin hedging our bets and preparing to live in a world with climate change given both the pace of climate change, the history of inaction, and the enormity of the international collective action challenge at a time when global cooperation is treated as passe. They write:

New emissions limits in the United States and other major emitters such as Europe's key economies and Japan may slow the processes driving these events. But the mounting scientific evidence, coupled along with economic and political realities, increasingly suggests that humanity's opportunity to prevent, stop, or reverse the long-term impacts of climate change has slipped away. In fact, while greenhouse gas intensity (emissions per unit of gross domestic product) of both developed and developing economies has decreased significantly over the past decade as a result of greater efficiency measures, overall greenhouse gas emissions have nevertheless continued to rise. That's because as economies grow, they consume more energy and produce more carbon dioxide. And, obviously, each country wants its own economy to grow. ...

Without a technological or economic miracle, it would take a political miracle to reach an international agreement that would mandate the necessary emissions cuts to reverse the momentum behind our evolving global climate system. But once again, realities get in the way. The U.S. Congress is too divided to pass legislation sufficiently tough to make a major difference. And although some hope that regional or state-level cap-and trade systems could sharply reduce U.S. emissions in the absence of federal action, this is also unlikely because states face many of the same problems that challenge national governments. First and foremost, any state that imposes emissions limits that are too tight in comparison with its neighbors' are likely to simply export their emissions without it resulting in a major overall reduction.

The international political environment also makes truly significant emissions cuts very unlikely. In 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, developing countries will emit nearly 20 percent more CO2 emissions than developed countries. Indeed, only in China (and perhaps India) would emissions limits or cuts make more of a difference than in the United States. By one estimate, China has already surpassed America in emissions to become the world's leader and, with sustained high growth rates, will open the gap even further. In fact, if China grows at 8 percent for the next nine years, its economy will double in size--and its greenhouse gas emissions can be expected roughly to double as well. Moreover, as China's economy expands, it is turning increasingly to carbon-laden coal for electricity. And although China's energy intensity (energy consumed per unit of economic output) has decreased by nearly 5 percent per year for the last two decades as a result of greater efficiency, it is still nearly seven times that of the United States, according to the World Bank. At this rate, China's growth trajectory could add the equivalent pollution of another present-day United States to the climate system in a little more than a decade.

Dollar-for-dollar, the most efficient way to cut global greenhouse gas emissions would be, in theory, to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to improve China's energy efficiency. But Congress would never support such an approach. After all, which members of Congress would vote to undercut the competitiveness of U.S. companies, especially in the face of a weak domestic economy, public anger over outsourcing, China's currency value, and the U.S. trade deficit with China? More broadly, how long will voters in Europe and Japan, which have done the most to limit emissions, be prepared to make sacrifices for the global climate if they believe they are alone in doing so?

Recognize they do not propose we give up on the global challenge of climate change mitigation. Rather they want us to start designing complementary strategies to cope with all the contingencies -- a plan B. Despite its bleak outlook, I find this fairly reasonable and persuasive line of argument. I'll be curious to see if someone tries to respond to this argument in the coming days.

By the way, you can stay tuned at TWN for updates and commentary on CGI but you can also watch the live webcast.

--Sameer Lalwani

The Clinton Global Initiative is the largest global telethon for good causes the world has yet witnessed. Unless you are a well connected blogger or "friend of Bill (or Hillary)", the expense to attend is high -- not only financially but in the robustness of the attendee's "commitment" to some project or effort that will improve the lot of mankind.

I'm here in New York now listening to former President Clinton open this year's session. Bill Clinton knows he is a big global player, and I think it is great that he is focusing his celebrity status and ability to be one of the world's best global conveners on fixing various global problems.

Clinton just said that there are three things that unite the people in the room and those watching by webcast:

"First, our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences." "Most conflict," Clinton said, "is usually a result of people thinking that there differences are more important then their common humanity."

"Second, we all accept our shared responsibility for correcting the current challenges in the world -- and passing on a better world to our children."

"Third, the people here think we can do it."

There are 1300 Clinton Global Initiative members here today. Each has paid more than $15,000 just to get in the door -- which is only the beginning of other substantial financial "do good" projects a member must commit to.

So far, there have been more than 600 commitments made at previous CGI meetings -- and now, the Clinton Global Initiative has launched a new site for people not at this meeting to propose and declare their commitments. The site is called MyCommitment.org. Interesting idea actually. Inspirational for those looking to feel connected to a larger network of socially concerned people and groups.

I just met CGI Communications Director Ben Yarrow who said that although they "don't want to be the philanthropy police," folks just can't come in, make commitments, and not fulfill them if they want to be invited back to future CGI meetings. Last year, 17 CGI commitment makers failed to follow through and were dropped from the roles. This year, there were only 5. CGI has standards.

One of the really incredible things about this meeting is that there are 52 former and current heads of state in this meeting -- and about 45 of them just got introduced one by one at this opening plenary session.

Angelina Jolie is here. Hillary Clinton is not (she's preparing for the New Hampshire debates tonight). Former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley just said hello as I walked by -- and then I stumbled into former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, or maybe he stumbled into me.

Of bloggers, I've seen Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Brian Beutler, Blake Hounshell, and Sameer Lalwani here.

Now, we are moving to the first panel -- including World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, and surprisingly Al Gore (who still doesn't much like the Clintons we hear) -- who Bill Clinton just recognized "as perhaps the world's leading crusader against climate change."

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I've just learned that John Bolton is meeting with conservative senators, urging them to oppose the Law of the Sea. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the convention is scheduled for Thursday.

This is a wake-up call to progressives, moderates, and old-school conservatives: joining the Law of the Sea is absolutely critical to restoring the American tradition of responsible, multilateral global engagement. If you haven't done it yet, call your senators today.

If any TWN readers are real gluttons for punishment and want to study the Law of the Sea in great, great, great detail, download the 124-page briefing book here. Otherwise, see past posts here and here.

I wonder if Bolton's recent activity is more damaging to Bolton or to the Convention. Either way, I'm not too worried.

-- Scott Paul

I'm hoping Sameer will be able to confirm or deny this, but my guess is that President Bush's speech to the UN General Assembly this morning was met by a chorus of yawns. At a moment when he most needed to show his willingness to recommit to international institutions and robust multilateral cooperation, he gave us more of the same. And, in case you haven't followed the previous six Bush addresses to the General Assembly, "the same" has been almost all bad and a little good (the little good being promises to reduce agricultural subsidies and commitments to do more on poverty and health).

The only new commitment President Bush announced this year was tighter sanctions on Myanmar.

Notably, Bush had the nerve to admonish the UN to "live up to its promise to promptly deploy peacekeeping forces to Darfur." Meanwhile, the U.S. is in arrears of over $600 million to the UN for peacekeeping and President Bush's FY08 budget, if adopted without changes, would raise our debt for peacekeeping by an additional $1 billion.

The most interesting aspect of Bush's speech was what he didn't say.

He managed to get through the entire speech without once mentioning climate change. Given that Secretary-General Ban has organized this General Assembly around the issue of climate change -- and Bush himself is hosting a competing summit of "major economies" on climate change later this week -- the omission is huge.

The other big surprise was the absence of saber-rattling on Iran. Bush mentioned Iran once in the context of oppressive regimes, but there was no talk of Iran's nuclear program or the threat it poses to international peace and security. Nothing in here to suggest a rationale for going to war. For comparison, check out Bush's 2002 speech. It's all Iraq, all the time.

This could mean one of two things. Option 1: President Bush want to give diplomacy a chance and decided that this General Assembly was the wrong place for charged rhetoric. Option 2: President Bush and his team have already decided to take military action against Iran and don't want to waste time explaining it to the UN.

I sure hope it's option 1.

-- Scott Paul

Every time I think Columbia University could not possibly be the subject of more controversy relating to Middle Eastern politics, another controversy emerges. Columbia has been in the news most recently for its decision to host Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as part of its annual World Leaders Forum, at which Heads of State in New York for the UN General Assembly stop by Morningside Heights each fall to give a talk.

The way Columbia President Lee Bollinger has dealt with, and in some cases, invited these controversies has surely made him many enemies, but I admire his even-handedness and courage to speak hard truths to people on all sides of the issues. His approach has likely made him many enemies and lost Columbia a few donors, but it has made me extremely proud to be an alum.

The atmosphere at Columbia surrounding the discussion and study of Middle East issues has been toxic long before Bollinger arrived from Michigan Law School in 2003. Student groups organized around Israeli-Palestinian issues have failed to treat each other with even a modicum of respect and have polarized the environment to such an extent that virtually no reasoned discussion is possible. Dialogue at the facultly level is not much better.

Bollinger has not demonstrably improved this situation, but in my opinion (my organization has nothing to do with this) displayed a great deal of leadership and courage when he has weighed in on Middle East politics.

First, Bollinger stood up to Daniel Pipes's witch hunt in Columbia's Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) department. Pipes's initiative, Campus Watch, is dedicated to "improving" Middle Eastern Studies departments across the United States. The actual aim of Campus Watch is to expose outspoken, anti-Israel faculty members.

Scholarship of Middle East issues might indeed benefit from more diverse perspectives, but Campus Watch is more interested in intimidation than engaging in two-way dialogue. It sponsored Columbia Unbecoming, a documentary chronicling accusations against MEALAC faculty, and launched the Columbia Project, a campaign to single out Columbia faculty and its most notorious member, Professor Joseph Massad. The overview of the Columbia Project reveals immediately that it presupposes its conclusions; it also terribly (and possibly deliberately) misconstrues the the ideas and legacy of Edward Said, Columbia's late public intellectual.

I took a class with Professor Massad in 2001. I found many of his ideas very distasteful. He urges students to see insurgent violence in the context of the relationship between the oppressed and their oppressors. He ascribes ulterior motives to ideological opponents far more than I think is justified. And he has a view of Israeli-Palestinian history and current affairs that is, in my view, overly simplistic. Professor Massad also aggressively challenges students with whom he disagrees.

But Massad is fair, approachable inside and outside of class, and devoted to his students. He understands that his views are not shared by most people in the class and invites students to engage with him in the best tradition of the academy. Furthermore, he graded my work based on my understanding of the material and ability to analyze it, not ideological considerations. He and (and other faculty) may be highly enthusiastic and radical, and he may occasionally been excessively zealous, but Massad does not attempt to intimidate students who hold opposing views.

Massad has been public enemy number one for Pipes and a number of Jewish organizations. When students came forward with complaints against Massad, Bollinger organized a committee to investigate, which contacted me at the time. The process satisfied neither Massad nor his accusers, but the committee's report ultimately failed to find any systematic abuses. To the great dismay of the inquisition, President Bollinger rightly accepted the report and put the issue to rest.

While the process wasn't smooth and, frankly, neither the MEALAC faculty nor Campus Watch and its allies were happy with it. What's important is that Bollinger ultimately stood up for free speech by refusing to go after Massad and Co.

He did so again when he issued a statement rejecting the British University and College Union's decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions. His statement was applauded by the many of the same Jewish organizations so livid over the conduct of Columbia's MEALAC department. Here it is:

"As a citizen, I am profoundly disturbed by the recent vote by Britain's new University and College Union to advance a boycott against Israeli academic institutions. As a university professor and president, I find this idea utterly antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy, where we will not hold intellectual exchange hostage to the political disagreements of the moment. In seeking to quarantine Israeli universities and scholars this vote threatens every university committed to fostering scholarly and cultural exchanges that lead to enlightenment, empathy, and a much-needed international marketplace of ideas.

"At Columbia I am proud to say that we embrace Israeli scholars and universities that the UCU is now all too eager to isolate -- as we embrace scholars from many countries regardless of divergent views on their government's policies. Therefore, if the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy, then it should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you are seeking to punish. Boycott us, then, for we gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education."

Over 159 university presidents have endorsed Bollinger's statement since it was issued and I hope more still join the roster.

That brings us to today, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia at Bollinger's invitation. The invitation was consistent with Bollinger's views on free speech and, despite the uproar, was entirely appropriate.

I agree entirely with Steve's assessment that Ahmadinejad is Iran's Cheney. Guess what? Cheney speaks regularly in the United States and the American public disapproves of no individual in public life more than him.

Bollinger's introduction of Ahmadinejad today was extremely antagonistic, but it serves to underscore the point of the invitation: just as everyone should be heard, everyone should be forced to confront direct and unfiltered criticism. It should also serve to remind people -- Bush administration officials in particular -- that hearing the ideas of others is not the same as endorsing those ideas.

In his four-year tenure at Columbia, Bollinger has probably disappointed most students, faculty, and alumni at one time or another. Still, he has navigated at least three controversial high-profile guided primarily by his concern for free speech, intellectual honesty, the open exchange of ideas, and and the best interests of the university. It's also important to note that Bollinger could easily have avoided controversy by doing nothing, both on the Israeli universities boycott and Ahmadinejad's visit. Instead, he bravely spoke up and did the right thing in both cases.

Columbia may be losing money and credibility with Israel's most ardent supporters and its most vocal critics. But Bollinger is making a believer out of me.

-- Scott Paul

Update: A few readers have taken issue with the hostile nature of Bollinger's introductory remarks. They are quite confrontational. And Bollinger's comparison of Ahmadinejad to a dictator is clearly off base.

But it's important to see these comments in context. Bollinger told Iranian officials explicitly that he would make a critical introduction and "pose sharp challenges and questions." None of this was a surprise. And, for that matter, the rules of diplomatic protocol don't apply here and Bollinger is under no obligation to be courteous in his remarks. Ahmadinejad was invited to spur dialogue, not to be honored or toasted -- and he knew it.

Moreover, the purpose of his comments is neither to advance the war agenda nor to placate the hawks, as some have suggested. Rather, they represent the flip side of Bollinger's point on free speech: anyone who wants a public forum must be willing to endure public criticism, however unpleasant or even rude it may be. Point well taken in my book.

. . .in ten minutes at 10:30 pm on Mike Malloy's show.

Sam Seder is standing in and hosting tonight for Mike Malloy -- and we are going to discuss my recent Salon.com article on Iran.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm so worried about this country and the world in general. I know many of you are as well, and I'm sure than many have felt like I do now in the past. I've always been fascinated by the authors of the "lost generation" like Thomas Wolfe. Many of them skipped town and moved to Europe because they found themselves so at odds with what was going on. But I won't.

But to give some relief, something positive has begun to happen to slow the hyperventilation about America bombing Iran. Katrina van den Heuvel, Jim Lobe, Juan Cole, Blake Hounshell, Christy Hardin Smith, Joe Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Micah Marshall, Taylor Marsh, Tom Engelhardt, Thomas Barnett, Ezra Klein, Moira Whalen, Brian Beutler, Andrew Sullivan, William Hartung, SusanUNpc, and editorialists at Haaretz, and writers at Newsweek, the Guardian, the New York Times, Raw Story, and Time Magazine, and a couple hundred other media commentators and bloggers have either generally agreed with my piece that Bush was not yet predisposed to bomb Iran or at least chewed on the notion. Nearly all of them agree with me that we need to be vigilant against those who would connive to trigger a seemingly accidental, fast escalation war.

There are many who want to use the question of whether we would or would not bomb Iran as a way to criticize "the Decider" and to assert that his anti-intllectualism and perceived disdain for rationality would lead him to Cheney's dark side. I do have a disagreement with those who see Bush this way -- on this specific issue.

But what worries me about the country is how divorced so many seem to be from the various routes critical thinking might take them. This is true across the political spectrum.

I see it today with Ahmadinejad. This guy is the Dick Cheney of Iran. He wants greater power in Iran's political system -- but he doesn't have it. In fact, unless we bomb Iran, he's on the way to being a former President with little power. He has not achieved any serious consolidation of his position in the Iranian political arena.

But today with all of the hullabaloo about his speech at Columbia University, we have allowed Iran's president, who is nothing at all of the powers of a near monarchial American president, to define what Iran's intentions and character are.

How many progressives want to allow Cheney the privilege of defining who and what America is?? None -- I would guess.

But to hope that Ahmadinejad would somehow be pro-gay or honest about womens' rights, or even be honest about his intentions with Iran's nuclear program -- is to give him that opportunity to sculpt Iran's defining features for the world.

I don't buy Ahmadinejad's rhetoric. I don't buy Cheney's either.

An interesting lesson we all should be drawing from is the very short lived crash and burn tenure of Shinzo Abe, Japan's history-denying, right wing prime minister.

In my view, Abe was a god-send for those who hope for a better Japan, a Japan that is finally comfortable with its national identity and past -- and that can get beyond the history battles. Abe was one of the worst -- though not the worst -- that one could imagine leading Japan in this fragile period in culture and history wars in Northeast Asia.

But he was pro-Bush, and the White House supported him. But the Japanese people rejected him at the polls and punished severely his party. He hoped that jingoistic calls for nationalist pomp and circumstance would trump the dinner table/economic issues that most perturbed Japanese voters.

This is what we should be letting Ahmadinejad do -- crash and burn in the eyes of his own public that just doesn't buy his Cheney-like pugnaciousness.

Juan Cole says all of this eloquently here.

Ahmadinejad is failing in Iran. But we spend a lot of time fretting over his words and posture. We need to stop letting him define Iran's character and ultimate direction. But Cheney and Ahmadinejad need each other -- they push each other's buttons.

We need to move beyond both.

-- Steve Clemons

Today NRG energy announced its intention to file permit requests with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two nuclear reactors in Texas -- a phenomenon that apparently hasn't happened in roughly 30 years.

The climate sessions today at the UN have generally shied away from the specific options to reduce carbon emissions, instead sticking to the 4 pronged agenda of discussing adaptation, mitigation, technology, and financing.

Generally the people who have led the movement to combat climate change have not been wild about nuclear power despite the fact that it provides one-sixth of the world's electricity, carbon-free, as Deutch and Moniz, who chaired an exhaustive MIT study on nuclear power, tout. Interestingly enough, a cofounder of Greenpeace endorsed nuclear power some time ago arguing it was a necessary compromise to achieve a larger objective.

Indeed, the work by Socolow and Pacala, which Al Gore featured prominently in his film An Inconvenient Truth, depends on nuclear power. The two Princeton scholars propose 15 carbon stabilization "wedges" to bring carbon emission levels down to a sustainable level which each wedge contributing equally. Nuclear power was left out of Al Gore's proposal for reasons I can only speculate on -- perhaps because it has been an anathema in the eyes of the public due to the horrors of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, or perhaps it raises concerns of proliferation of nuclear materials into irresponsible hands -- but with the increasing demand for new, carbon-free energy sources, the taboo is eroding and we can expect to see a growing push for nuclear power both domestically and abroad.

--Sameer Lalwani

Of course it was! But it's nice to hear an honest assessment from Greenspan.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, syndicated on Air America Media and XM Radio, scored an interesting interview with former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who had until this interview been back-pedaling a bit on his sensible comments that the Iraq War was mostly about oil.

While Cenk gets on to an interesting course pondering the moral equivalence of Saddam Hussein attacking Kuwait for resource control to America doing something similar with Iraq (though I personally believe that that neat and compelling comparison doesn't fit reality -- the reasons for attacking Iraq were more complex than that), the real value of the interview lies in Greenspan's despair that Americans seemed so willing to sacrifice their own civil liberties in some bargain for greater security as well as his emphasis that Iraq matters more in the scope of American interests because oil lies beneath it.

From the exchange between Alan Greenspan and Cenk Uygur:

Cenk Uygur: That brings us to the moral question at hand. Because if we're concerned about our standard of living, we're concerned about our economy, we're concerned about natural resources, and Saddam says, "Well, look, I went into Kuwait because I wanted to control the natural resources," and we say, "Well, we went into Iraq because we want to control the natural resources," does that raise issues of moral equivalence? And is it right that thousands of civilians, maybe hundreds of thousands of civilians, died in Iraq because we were concerned about natural resources that effected our economy?

Alan Greenspan: Well this is a very fundamental, moral question. I agree with that. Indeed, I'm one who's a firm believer in civil liberties and believes in democracy and all of the institutions of the rule of law. And this is a problem that societies always have had over the years. I didn't like the fact, for example, that right after 9/11, there was an extraordinary swing in this country willing to give up issues of civil liberties for national security.

And when you extend that beyond the immediate present, that's where the motives of lots of people come to try to secure themselves. Now, I'm not saying that's a reason that anyone has the right to go into other governments of other countries. You know, if someone wants to use the resources as they see fit, we have to deal with it as we do.

But I was merely raising the issue that why there's such a fundamental issue around the Iraq war is that there is oil under the sands. And I'm just saying, without getting into the other issues you raised, which I frankly don't exactly disagree with you on. If oil did not happen to exist in Iraq, the issues of Iraq and the Iraq war would have come about wholly differently. And I don't think there would be a war, frankly. I think that Saddam would not be a crucial player in the world.

This is just a portion of the interview. Cenk Uygur reports that the rest will be up tomorrow.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo of people at the UN watching Ahmadinejad's speech)

When UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon kicked off the special session on climate change in the hopes of capturing the news cycle to build political momentum toward the December UNFCCC meeting in Bali.

Unfortunately, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to have stolen the attention of the New York and national media with his speech at Columbia University this afternoon. Even at the UN it seems the controversial figure has captured the attention of the attendees of this session. Much to my chagrin, the entrance to the cafeteria was blocked off my the mob of people crowded around the one television displaying the live CNN feed of Ahmadinejad's speech.

This underscores the difficulties the climate change debate has encountered time and again -- how do we raise the

spectre of global climate change to the level of imminence, and in turn, raise the political salience? There is wider debate in the US than I think there needs to be but nevertheless, even those who are willing to acknowledge the climate threat are not convinced it trumps more imminent threats like blowback from the Iraq war, the next terrorist attack on US soil, or possible Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons. Hence the reason Ahmadinejad stole Ban Ki Moon's news cycle.

When the job of the President and this Congress is increasingly driven by crises rather than long-term planning to meet emerging challenges -- especially the greatest collective action problem perhaps the world has ever known -- it would take someone fiercely determined like former Vice President Al Gore (who thundered away at the UN today in his call to arms against climate change) to manage crises without allowing the total usurpation of a long-term agenda.

--Sameer Lalwani

For those TWN readers in the area -- and I just met two -- I will be at the Starbucks in Westwood, California for the next few hours.

It's a great, sunny day here. Jodie Foster's The Brave One is playing at one of Westwood's posh old line movie houses next door. But I'm sitting here watching Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University.

And for those interested in an interesting panel discussion on "Foreign Policy after the Bush Administration", I'll be at the Hammer Museum tomorrow evening (Tuesday) at 7 pm. It's open to the public.

-- Steve Clemons

The recent Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, which revealed both a deficit in US leadership as well as a growing international concern over the global environment, afforded the US a unique opportunity to address both for the price of one. But there are already murmurings that we have yet squandered yet another golden opportunity to reverse our declining favorability and convert it into influence.

An international perception still exists, due in part to the President's recalcitrance in his post-G8 climate change statement as well as his absence from today's session, that the US has no interest in participating in an international climate change agreement, let alone leading the charge.

But California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addressed the UN general assembly session this morning to demonstrate that, while the federal government is not fully engaged in climate change policy, a number of states are. And while the value of state actions to curb emissions are debatable -- to be effective, climate change policies will need to stretch broader than a state to achieve economies of scale and to guard against a balloon effects where emissions are simply displaced to a neighboring state -- Gov. Schwarzenegger has moved beyond California policy to lead the way on inter-state compacts like the Western Climate Initiative.

Now I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the environmental advisor to Gov. Schwarzenegger who crafted his climate policy, Terry Tamminen, recently joined the New America Foundation to replicate this model throughout the country, and in so doing, put the issue of climate change on the radar screen across the country to build political momentum for greater international engagement on the issue. And the New America Foundation has begun to place this on the presidential map by hosting Democratic Presidential Candidate and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as he delivered his energy policy speech.

Though Schwarzenegger's speech in the opening plenary proposed nothing new, as UK Secretary of State for Environment Hilary Benn suggested, the California governor's presence was the real cause for optimism and telegraphed to the UN the seriousness of some US leaders to tackle this global challenge.

But he also sent a signal on a critical dispute that has consumed American debates stating:

I believe California will do great things, amazing things. But we need the world to do great things too. The time has come to stop looking back at the Kyoto protocol. It is time to stop looking back in blame or suspicion. The consequences of global climate change are so pressing, it doesn't matter who was responsible for the past. What matters is who is answerable to the future. And that means all of us. The rich nations and the poor nations have different responsibilities, but one responsibility we all have is action.

From what I have read, the critical editorials and impassioned Congressional invectives that denounce or dismiss the climate change agenda tend to harken back to the 1997 Kyoto Protocols, which did not include major future emitters like China and India. This line of argument that fixates on the past fails to recognize that Kyoto was merely a first step to galvanize international action, not the last word. The United States has spent far too much time tangled in the shortfalls of Kyoto rather than developing new innovative solutions to move past it. Governor Schwarzenegger seeks to split the gordian knot and lead with a strategy of his own.

The question of burdensharing and financing that ultimately torpedoed Kyoto can be addressed through a number of creative schemes. For instance, economist Jagdish Bhagwati, reflecting on Kyoto, penned an article last year that sketched out just how such a forward-looking financial burdensharing might look like:

India and China argued successfully that because they were hardly responsible for the "stock" problem--past damage--they should be exempted from the "flow" obligation--the current damage--at least for now. So, the stock problem was addressed by fudging the solution to the flow problem. The political fudge left Kyoto unsalable. It will remain so unless it is revised to reflect the distinction between the stock and flow obligations and, therefore, the disconnect between the nations that did damage in the past and those that are joining their ranks with a vengeance. How is one to do this?

The stock problem can be addressed by adopting the very technique that the US has used at home to deal with past damage to the environment. Consonant with the American fascination with torts actions, the US enacted in 1980 the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as the Superfund. Under it, a tax was levied on the chemical and petroleum industries and, among other actions, liability established for people responsible for the release of hazardous waste at closed and abandoned hazardous waste sites. It established a trust fund (which would also receive the payments for past damage under the act) to provide for "clean-up" when no responsible party could be identified.

This principle for dealing with past damage makes sense and can surely be applied in the international context. The rich nations, which have been responsible for the overwhelming bulk of the release of CO into the atmosphere in the past, would have to agree to payment of damages into a global warming superfund. These payments could be assessed for a period of no less than 25 years. The estimated damages could reflect the opportunity cost of reducing the CO emissions by a corresponding amount in the next 25 years.

Since "clean-up" does not make sense in the context of global warming, these funds would instead be allocated to researching a variety of CO-saving technologies, such as wind and solar energy, and to subsidising the purchase of environment-friendly technologies by the developing countries, including India and China. Such subsidies would rebound to the benefit of the rich countries paying into the superfund, since their companies typically produce these technologies. So, aside from the global warming superfund being palatable to the rich countries because it reflects a principle already in domestic practice, business support for it can be expected as well.
On the other hand, the flows need to be taxed, just as in the polluter-pays principle. The existing obligations are based broadly on the half-baked principle of "prevention of significant deterioration", whereby those who pollute more do not have to pay more and only the excess pollution generated by each country is sought to be redistributed more equitably.

Instead, efficiency and fairness require nations to be taxed on their total CO discharge annually. China and India would then have liabilities reflecting their net discharges and the US burden would be significantly higher than that of almost all other nations because it pollutes most. Again, funds collected could be partly added to the global superfund for international uses; the rest could be spent on domestic projects for the same purposes. It is hard to imagine the US, the ideological ally of markets, objecting to this application of the market principle: making each nation pay for its total pollution. The tax is only a way--like selling tradeable permits for CO discharges--of creating a missing market.

Bhagwati's proposal is a good starting point but there are a number of other new mechanisms being proposed -- for instance another one has been the pricing of carbon sinks which was not included in Kyoto and incents lesser developed countries to preserve forests and contribute to carbon mitigation.

It would behove the US government to more actively participate in and steer the international debate, not only to capture the tangible benefits of minimizing climate change, but also to restore our international legitimacy and moral credibility, a currency we seem to be finding increasingly valuable these days.

More info and opinions on today's session can be found at UN Dispatch.

-Sameer Lalwani

Today in New York UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has convened a historic special session with more than 70 heads of state in attendance to solely discuss and focus on the issue of perhaps the largest global challenge and collective action problem we face today -- the issue of climate change.

I'll be blogging live from the UN today along with a number of other folks you may read and recognize thanks with the support of the UN Foundation and its blog UN Dispatch. You can read posts from all the other bloggers at "Live from the UN" site.

My objective today is to steer some readership and interest towards the subject of climate change. While I've followed some of the debates over climate policy for almost 10 years now -- since the release of the 1997 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report -- I can by no means pose as an expert on the subject. But given the rare opportunity and to attend this UN session and access a number of high-up UN officials and policy formulators, my hope is to highlight certain elements, tensions, and strategies of this global discussion that I find interesting.

Some of the issues I hope to probe include: criticisms levied against climate change policy; financial schemes to balance responsibilities and interests; the question of nuclear power; the burgeoning nexus of religion and and the environmental movement; the divide between Europe and the US; opportunities for global leadership and internationalism; and hopefully any questions and suggestions any readers would like to pose.

Just as an aside, while here I'll also be trying to lay the groundwork for the Turtle Island String Quartet - - an innovative string quartet that fuses, adapts and creates jazz in a classic form -- to someday perform for the UN in Turtle Bay. Beyond the nominal connection, their artistry and mastery of adapting classical to the contemporary is something the UN might draw inspiration from as it seeks to adapt to the new global contours and challenges of the 21st century.

Stay Tuned.

--Sameer Lalwani

Just caught this. Politico's Kenneth Vogel suggests that Mitt Romney's silence about the Blackwater killings in Iraq may have something to do with the fact that:

The top counterterrorism and national security adviser to Romney's presidential campaign is Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA.

I thought it might have been Romney's general stance on the inappropriately termed war on terror and that we should "double Guantanamo" rather than shut it down that explains Romney's silence.

But I think Romney will be the Republican primary winner, the way things look today -- and it's good to add to the brief.

-- Steve Clemons

(Laurie Rubiner, Legislative Director in the Office of Senator Hillary Clinton)

Hillary's foreign policy team has some of the mega-stars in the national security business. She has Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger, Wesley Clark, William Perry, and a good number of their acolytes -- but her counselors are about as top-heavy as George W. Bush's team was with Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz and others on board.

Having a lot of big guns as advisers doesn't mean that they will all shoot the same direction. In fact, rumors continue to slip out of the Clinton camp that there are substantial tensions between Holbrooke, Albright, and Berger who all are trying to define the key features of Hillary Clinton's foreign policy persona. To give Hillary some credit that John Kerry's campaign doesn't deserve, I think she has more a sense of her own views than Kerry might have -- and is willing to knock back the counsel of her advisers and is willing to tell them to cease the bickering, elbowing, and theatrics between these competitive camps.

But in health care -- there is one voice who dominates the policy work in "Hillary Land" and that is Laurie Rubiner. (and yes I know, Hillary knows a lot about health care policy but I'm not counting her.)

Imagine a diva who was not haughty and spoiled -- but just emanated total confidence and knowledge of some skill or issue -- like quantum mechanics, or magazine editing, or health care. That is Laurie Rubiner.

Yesterday, the New York Times profiled Rubiner and her significant contributions to Hillary's much talked about health care proposal. The Washington Note profiled Laurie Rubiner's work this past January -- and today John Fund at the Wall Street Journal takes on Rubiner (and of course, Hillary).

Rubiner doesn't only do health care policy; she runs Hillary Clinton's entire policy shop in her Senate office. In fact, in my view some of the major power brokers in Hillary Clinton's political machine sometime forget that the actual Senate staff Hillary has hired are mostly better in their ability to project tomorrow's policy needs than the White House-hungry policy advisers she has brought in to the campaign.

I should probably disclose that Rubiner and I had one serious argument that had to do with communication, honor, and who said what to whom -- but her husband told me later that what I saw was a mild breeze compared to what was possible. But I have learned from several sources that Hillary Clinton and Rubiner have the kind of gritty give-and-take relationship that few have with the Senator and would-be President of the United States. They can argue about some serious policy difference, tell each other to go to hell, and then laugh it off.

Rubiner headed the health care policy program of the New America Foundation where I have worked for the last nine years. Before joining New America, Rubiner worked in a number of key policy and advocacy roles -- but it was her work for the late Senator John Chafee (R-RI) where she conceived under the Senator's name and at his direction a health care plan that would maintain private sector deployment of health care services as the backbone of America's health system, avoid the single payer debate that divides that policy community, and be universal.

Rubiner brought her work to New America -- and the DNA of her efforts exists in all of the significant "test efforts" of comprehensive health care coverage -- including in Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal for California, Democrat Gavin Newsom's in San Francisco, and Republican Mitt Romney's in Massachusetts.

Now, Hillary Clinton has brought the sensibility of the Chafee/Rubiner health care proposals into her own plan for the country and demonstrated considerable political bravery and sensitivity in doing so. I think it takes a lot for someone like Hillary Clinton to abandon her former approach on health care coverage in which she drilled down into the fine and messy details -- and change course, rather than doing what many people who acquire power do -- and that is just yell more loudly or force more strongly a posiition they previously held.

Rubiner does a killer impersonation of Senator John Chafee, and it's so compelling that on one occasion when I was quite upset with the vote of his son, the no-longer-Republican former Senator Lincoln Chafee, on John Bolton's UN confirmation, I advised the younger Chafee to go spend time with his dad via Laurie Rubiner. I can just imagine Rubiner channeling John Chafee for Hillary Clinton and giving the Senator the secrets to making this universal health care coverage work.

Interestingly, John Fund today hardly scrapes the policy framework or nuts-and-bolts of the Hillary/Chafee/Rubiner health care plan -- but rather the optics and the politics of it. He slams Clinton's plan for being like Schwarzenegger's -- and then asserts that this plan will lead to new bureaucracies, open up tensions on coverage for illegal aliens, and fail to generate needed bipartisan support.

The fundamental, underlying problem that exists in America's health care sector is getting people with financial means who elect not to get health care to do so. If a mandate were generated that everyone needed to be in health care, not only would the nation as a whole become healthier but the costs of subsidizing those in real need or without financial means declines on a relative basis. I hope John Fund and other critics of Hillary Clinton's new proposal don't believe that the less well off should just stay that way and should get nothing at all from America's health care system.

Clinton's (and Rubiner's) proposal maintains a vibrant private sector backbone for the provision of health services; there is no "socialization" of providers and no single payer requirement.

John Fund may revisit this issue of how to get to a healthier health care system in the United States, so let me share with him and others what conservative libertarian Ronald Bailey wrote in 2003 in Reason Magazine about the New America Foundation's health care proposal (as hatched and incubated by Laurie Rubiner). This from Bailey's "Mandatory Universal Health Insurance? Perhaps It's a Better Idea Than You Think It Is":

Since it's unlikely that Americans will allow their improvident neighbors to expire without medical care in the streets, is there a politically palatable alternative that can preserve and expand private medicine in the United States? Yes: mandatory private health insurance.

Should the federal government require all Americans to buy private health insurance? This intriguing proposal is being pushed by the New America Foundation, a liberal policy shop in Washington, D.C. "Universal coverage in exchange for universal responsibility," is how the NAF characterizes it.

Before rejecting the proposal out of hand, stop and consider that it may be a second-best alternative for relieving the growing political pressure to create some sort of nationalized single-payer health care system modeled on the nearly bankrupt and increasingly shabby health care schemes in Canada and Western Europe. Make no mistake about it—private health care is imperiled in the United States, given that all of the Democratic presidential hopefuls want to expand existing government health care programs and/or create some sort of universal government-run system. The NAF proposal could derail this pernicious political dynamic.

The devil is in the details, of course. Still, the NAF plan offers some interesting possibilities. For example, mandatory health insurance coverage might be combined with desirable features such as medical savings accounts, which would encourage people to save and invest for future medical emergencies.

The NAF proposal preserves private insurance and allows consumers to choose among competing insurance plans and coverage options. Most intriguingly, NAF offers a way out of the dysfunctional employer-financed third-party-payer system that is so grievously distorting our current health insurance system. Employers would eventually devolve responsibility for health insurance to their employees by giving them the money the companies currently pay out to insurance agents. Employees would then have a strong incentive to shop around for the best health care deals, putting pressure on insurance companies to keep costs low.

While I think the New America Foundation is more "radical centrist" than "liberal", I completely agree with Bailey's general take on how to get Americans covered by health insurance without tipping towards inefficient socialized bureaucracies or the alternative, manic market provision of health care which assures humanitarian nightmares for the tens of millions and growing in the United States who have little prospect of securing health insurance.

If the libertarians in addition to Democrats like Gavin Newsom and Hillary Clinton and Republicans like Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger can sign up for what John Chafee launched some years ago -- then this deserves serious national scrutiny at all levels of government. Next to America's deteriorated national security and foreign policy standing in the world, the absence of strategy to credibly broaden health care in this country is our largest problem.

Kudos to Hillary Clinton for having the confidence of self to allow a "Senate staffer" in her employ to get some of the media credit for her proposal. This alone says something about Clinton that I haven't noted before. Staffers aren't supposed to get credit, and they certainly can't angle for it.

Rubiner is getting credit not because she wanted any of this -- but because to connect the dots in the political history of what is the most likely universal health care plan to come into being -- one must tell the story of Laurie Rubiner.

-- Steve Clemons

Last weekend, Henry Kissinger wrote a syndicated op-ed defending the President's position in Iraq but qualified with a critical point:

The second and ultimately decisive route to overcoming the Iraqi crisis is through international diplomacy. Today the United States is bearing the major burden for regional security militarily, politically and economically.

Certainly arguments have been levied to challenge Kissinger's strategic outlook, but far less disputed and patently evident is that the current administration has fallen short on this diplomatic effort upon which Kissinger predicates his support. In the absence of a robust diplomatic strategy coming from the White House, two Senators have stepped up to take on this role.

Senators Robert Casey (D-PA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are the latest to have joined the ranks of other leading figures (including

Representative Lantos and Senator Hagel) in calling for a "diplomatic offensive" as outlined nine months ago in the Iraq Study Group (ISG) report. The Senators have filed an amendment to promote both a diplomatic and civilian surge, which have been neglected of late. The press release reads:

The amendment calls for the following steps, among others:

--The United States should take the lead in organizing a comprehensive diplomatic offensive, consisting of bilateral, regional, and international initiatives, to assist the Government of Iraq in achieving national reconciliation and meeting security, political, and economic benchmarks;

--The United States should bring together Iraq’s neighbors through a regional conference or other mechanism to develop specific measures to stabilize Iraq and, in particular, end the outside flows of weapons, explosive materials, foreign fighters, and funding that contribute to the current sectarian warfare;

--The President and the Secretary of State should invest their personal time and energy in these diplomatic efforts to ensure that they receive the highest priority within the U.S. government and are viewed seriously in the region;

--The President should appoint a seasoned, high-level Presidential envoy to the region to supplement the efforts of Ambassador Crocker and focus on the establishment of a regional framework to help stabilize Iraq;

--The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations should seek the appointment of an international mediator in Iraq to engage political, religious, ethnic, and tribal leaders in Iraq to foster national reconciliation efforts;

--The United States should more directly press Iraq’s neighbors to open fully operating embassies in Baghdad and establish inclusive diplomatic relations with Iraq so that the Iraqi government is viewed as legitimate throughout the region;

The amendment reflects a key recommendation of the Iraq Study Group which called upon the United States to “embark on a robust diplomatic effort to establish an international support structure intended to stabilize Iraq and ease tensions in other countries in the region.”

Finally, the amendment also focuses attention on the need to implement a “civilian surge” to ensure that all components of the U.S. government are contributing to assist the Iraqi government to strengthen its capabilities to provide essential government services.

The Senators should be applauded for their efforts to revitalize this debate, but I at this point I doubt it will produce the stability the ISG suggested 10 months ago. I'm increasingly of the opinion that a diplomatic offensive is necessary, as Richard Haass put it -- to rebalance our portfolio in the Middle East and diversify our overall position in the world -- in other words, to hedge against the damage from Iraq.

I understand that politics is the slow boring of holes and welcome this effort, especially one co-sponsored by moderates in the Senate, but at some point these amendments calling for diplomacy need to develop real teeth and define with greater precision what we mean when we invoke the phrase "regional diplomacy". As I've written before, so long as it remains amorphous and devoid of specific contents, even the John Boltons of the world can claim to be pursuing diplomacy.

Unlike the ISG, the Senators said not a word about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process which will be central to improving our position in the region. The major Middle East conference on the horizon in November is already imperiled due to the absence of specific contents or agendas.

Beyond calls for diplomacy, we need to begin talking about what a regional security architecture that includes Israel would look like and what security assurances are we willing to exchange for it.

And though the amendment calls for assistance to internal and external Iraqi refugees, it provides no specifics. We've done little to nothing to assist neighboring states and allies who are taking in the 2 million or more refugees spilling out of Iraq and taking on the onerous economic burden that accompanies the refugees. For instance, one of our key allies, Jordan, estimates that Iraqi refugees are costing the government $1 billion a year. In 2003, our economic assistance to Jordan jumped by almost $1 billion to cushion effects of the Iraq war but then dropped back down to normal levels since everything was going so swimmingly in that part of the world. If we were serious about assisting refugees and bolstering our critical allies in the region (the few we have left), we would need to start putting our money where our mouths are.

If we're serious about a civilian surge, we need to define the contents of that as well. Does it involve more private contractors or does it mean activating our civilian wings of government to take on a larger share of our foreign policy portfolio? If it's the latter, then it requires more than statements in the well of the Senate. It requires making some hard choices in budgets -- as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report suggested last December -- and moving more resources in the budget process from the military into the State Department and USAID (not simply shifting resources within departments as the amendment proposes).

I don't mean to diminish the significance or work done for this amendment -- this is more of an urging onwards in a Frost-ian "miles to go before I sleep" manner.

Senators Casey and Murkowski have drawn up an excellent outline of where we need to go on this, but unless others in the Administration and Congress begin to populate it with specific mechanisms and begin making some hard choices on resources, the outline will remain only that, and eventually swept into the dustbins of history.

--Sameer Lalwani

Iraq throws out Blackwater. America keeps employing them and has Blackwater stay.

Someone in the White House press corps be sure to ask Bush about that "Rule of Law" thing. (I know. . .Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha, illegal wiretaps. . .).

I'm in Denver now -- flying to Los Angeles. I look forward to seeing TWN readers interested in "Foreign Policy after the Bush Administration," at the UCLA Hammer Museum on Tuesday at 7 pm. (and yes, despite my picture and bio not being listed there with John Judis, Ian Masters, Christopher O'Sullivan, and John Brady Kiesling -- I'm supposedly on the program)

-- Steve Clemons

My former boss, Senator Jeff Bingaman, did not vote with others to condemn MoveOn.org's recent ads attacking David Petraeus. Bingaman votes his conscience -- and sometimes that is a lonely exercise. I remember when he was just one of four votes -- along with Richard Lugar, Christopher Dodd, and someone else -- who voted against the Helms-Burton legislation designed to strangle Cuba and Cubans while essentially undermining American interests.

Here is the breakdown of the vote today condemning the "General Betray Us" ad.

Unfortunately, the MoveOn ad has now taken the limelight away from what is really important and what should be debated. Americans and Iraqis are dying in a war where it's clear that progress is negative on the political front and at best nuanced on the military front.

What Senators should be doing instead of the distracting vote held today is to debate what is going on inside Iraq as well as whether America's objectives are being met or not -- and whether those objectives are connected at all to crucial American interests. For an increasing number of people, this war is seen as an unmitigated disaster.

I want the focus back on the issue of Petraeus's testimony and what it means politically. My colleague, Steve Coll, wrote this on Petraeus in a September 24 New Yorker piece titled "General Accounting," but this bit is worth extra emphasis:

Petraeus also apparently clings to the belief that Iraq's sectarian leaders might reconcile if American forces stay the course. This opinion, shared by many in the Bush Administration, has encouraged yet another generation of unconvincing strategic plans that assume that a unified Iraq governed from Baghdad is attainable and that thousands of American troops might help patrol the capital's streets for years.

A more plausible strategy, devoted to managing as successfully as possible the informal sectarian partition of Iraq which is already well under way, has again been postponed, along with substantial troop reductions.

American majorities repudiated the Vietnam War and have repudiated the invasion of Iraq. They did not lack guts then or now; they saw past the false promises and manipulations of their leaders, and called time.

George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden appear to share the belief that the United States is chronically afflicted with a cut-and-run syndrome, but they are both wrong: the most striking aspect of American democracy during the catastrophe in Iraq today is not the public's inconstancy but, rather, its capacity to absorb thousands of casualties on behalf of a war that is widely understood as a mistake and has no foreseeable end.

Coll's take is very bleak -- and very real -- and is what the real debate should be about.

As Chris Matthews recently said, "the ad didn't kill anybody."

-- Steve Clemons

Tomorrow at noon Pacific Time, I will be on with Warren Olney of KCRW's To The Point. I think that the show runs live at 3 pm in DC -- and then is replayed at 9 or 10 pm.

I will be chatting with Olney Iran's nuclear intentions and what we are trying to do about them.

On other fronts, I'll be speaking with Ian Masters on his show, Background Briefing on Sunday -- and then speaking at UCLA's Hammer Museum in Los Angeles along with John Judis and others on Tuesday evening next week on "Foreign Policy After the Bush Administration" (though my name still does not appear on the program -- soon to be fixed I think)

And Saturday, I'll be on with Bill Scher's new radio show, Liberal Oasis Radio, on the Iran bombing question.

-- Steve Clemons

I think not, at least not in the way that those asserting that Bush will bomb Iran have been arguing. I make my case in a piece titled "Why Bush Won't Bomb Iran" that ran as the lead on Salon.com yesterday.

I worry a great deal about various players to loyal to Dick Cheney and/or to the IRGC/Al Quds force in Iran trying to trigger a quick escalation of conflict that circumvents the national security decision-making structure that surrounds Bush -- or alternatively Iran's Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei.

What may be cooking is an effort to trigger purposefully an accidental war, but I don't believe that Bush is part of that. Views at Salon.com in reaction to my piece have been running about 3 to 1 against my perspective,

Here are some others who have commented on the subject:

Scott MacLeod at Time

Julian Borger at The Guardian

Thomas P.M. Barnett's Blog

Christy Hardin Smith at Fire Dog Lake

Scott Horton at Antiwar.com Radio

Matthew Yglesias

Taylor Marsh

Brian Beutler

Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy's Passport Blog

John Byrne at Raw Story

William Hartung at TPM Cafe

Ezra Klein at the American Prospect's Tapped

Moira Whalen at Democracy Arsenal

SusanUnPC at No Quarter

Tom Engelhardt at The Nation

Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish

There are many I have missed -- but the discourse and further commentary on these blogs challenge and complement the arguments I make. I can't think of a topic more important to seriously work through right now.

For other sources on the debate, here is a roster of linked pieces at Tailrank.com, Bloglines.com, and Technorati.

I'll have more on this later -- and I look forward to constructive exchanges with readers about this subject. And yes, I know many of you disagree.

But it's the last paragraph of the article that we really should be organizing against and exposing:

We should also worry about the kind of scenario David Wurmser floated, meaning an engineered provocation. An "accidental war" would escalate quickly and "end run," as Wurmser put it, the president's diplomatic, intelligence and military decision-making apparatus. It would most likely be triggered by one or both of the two people who would see their political fortunes rise through a new conflict -- Cheney and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

That kind of war is much more probable and very much worth worrying about.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

This is what state failure looks like. Zimbabwe is in everyone's backyard. In an increasingly interconnected world, cooperating to help Zimbabwe pull itself together is in everyone's interest.

Everyone ought to read the International Crisis Group's important report.

-- Scott Paul

Last week I published an article in Foreign Policy.com titled "Why We'd Miss Musharraf" that has generated pushback from Benazir Bhutto's political party and the PR firm she hired, none other than Mark Penn's Burson-Marsteller.

They write:

Every democratically elected official has been overthrown by the military, not out of the army's sense of loyalty to the state, as Mr. Lalwani suggests, but because of the army's thirst for power. In fact, the dictatorship in Pakistan has used any and all mechanisms, including discrediting past government work, and manufacturing fallacious corruption charges against anyone who opposes them - be it Mrs. Bhutto or most recently, Chief Justice Chaudhry. It is no wonder that none of these charges have ever been proven.

Despite consistently overthrown by military regimes, democratic governments have seen marked successes in Pakistan. Under PPP leadership, for example, Pakistan became one of the ten emerging capital markets of the world: the World Health Organization praised government efforts in the field of health; and tens of thousands of primary and secondary schools were built; these are only some examples.

Compare that to the current situation where the author claims that regime has succeeded. Poverty has increased, with 60 percent of Pakistanis living on $2 or less per day; there is rampant government corruption (now at 67 percent, and according to Transparency International, higher than any previously elected government); and the drastic resurgence of political madrassas.

When I wrote this piece, I did not seek to defend the Pakistani military and the Musharraf government every step of the way. I agree from the outset that the political climate has made it untenable for the Musharraf government to continue in its current form and a power sharing deal may be the best interim step.

The purpose of my piece was twofold: first to dispel the presumption that civilian government will be Pakistan's democratic savior; and second to show how the military has played a pivotal role in Pakistan's historical trajectory and how it is primed to continue this legacy as one of if not the most important institution for governance and strategic rationale even if a civilian government were to take the helm. (Another good article that takes a more critical look at the military but essentially concludes my way on its importance in Pakistan is Joshua Hammer's "After Musharraf" in The Atlantic). It is the first one the PPP spokespersons take issue with -- the second contention is never disputed.

It is certainly in the interests of the PPP and it's hired lobbyists, for which it pays a handsome quarter of million dollars, to perpetrate the myth that its tenure over the country was inherently less corrupt, more democratic, and more apt to cooperate with US strategic interests in the region by virtue of being run by civilians. After all, American politicians and the public are more inclined to believe this given our own history. But taking more than a cursory glance at the evidence in Pakistan reveals this notion to be patently false, and sometimes the opposite.

On Poverty
Though the lobbying firm alleges poverty has increased in recent years, it was under civilian governments in the 1990s that exacerbated Pakistani poverty. The executive summary of a 2002 Asian Development Bank report begins:

It is generally accepted that the declining trend in poverty in Pakistan during the 1970s and 1980s was reversed in the 1990s. The incidence of poverty increased from 26.6 percent in FY1993 to 32.2 percent in FY1999 and the number of poor increased by over 12 million people during this period.

Meanwhile, as a leading Pakistani daily DAWN reports, according the World Bank's most recent development report, it was in fact this military dictatorship managed to bring down poverty by five percentage points earning the title of "one of the top 10 global reformers."

On Human Rights
And the PPP can campaign all it wants on democracy and preserving the fabric of society but they can't bury the Amnesty International reports such as the one published towards the end of Bhutto's rule in May 1996 titled "Pakistani Government Fails to Live Up to Human Rights Rhetoric" that reveals severe human rights abuses, extra-judicial killings, torture, and most importantly genuine disinterest of Bhutto's government in these issues.

On Corruption
I'll concede corruption cuts both ways and, as documented by Ayesha Siddiqa's Military Inc., the military has in recent years sought to lay a firmer hold on the economy, disproportionately enriching itself. But a dose of perspective must be offered.

The spokesperson for the PPP claims the perception of corruption was the highest ever in 2006 but neglects to mention that there was no Pakistan specific survey done during the Bhutto and Sharif years (the reports specific to Pakistan only date back to 2002) or it might have inconveniently probed in greater depth what Transparency International's flagship index revealed -- that Pakistan ranked near the bottom of the corruption perceptions index during Bhutto and the PPP's rule in 1995 and 1996 (actually second from the bottom, just above Nigeria).

And the corruption charges against Bhutto were proven. The New York Times ran a special report in early 1998 by John F. Burns titled "House of Graft: Tracing the Bhutto Millions -- A special report.; Bhutto Clan Leaves Trail of Corruption." It traces the money trail of the Bhutto family corruption that eventually culminated in her trial and conviction for money laundering in a Swiss Court. (Though the Times Select requires a password, the series is also posted here.) Further charges still await her in Pakistan.

At least under the military corruption that Siddiqa explores, the money still circulates inside the national economy amongst the rank and file unlike the capital flight witnessed under Bhutto to finance London and Beverly Hill estates.

The evidence does not even support the claim that civilian government would do more to distribute resources away from the military. Based on World Bank data (world development indicators), during the Bhutto years, the government spent 6-7% of GDP and 30-35% of central government funds on military expenditure. Under the Musharraf government, these figures have dropped to averages of 4% and 25% respectively. This might have something to do with this military government presiding over a growing economy averaging an annual 7% a year as I mentioned in my article or it might have to do with bloated procurement costs so that Bhutto's husband-- Asif Ali Sadari or "Mr. 10%" as he was known -- could skim off the top.

On Madrassas
Because madrassas are an effective boogeyman (though their significance has been challenged), the PPP's lobbyists don't hesitate to deploy it. But the madrassa boogeyman has been continually invoked and found to be quite dubious, again with a look at the data as some World Bank and Harvard scholars sought to do. The degree of hyperbole is shocking given that the data shows madrassas only constitute 1% of enrollment in Pakistan and no evidence of dramatic increase in recent years. Moreover, madrassas are a byproduct of an institutional deficit -- that is the government's inability to provide good universal education -- and this is something that pre-dates military rule.

If Musharraf should fall, the point is the military will prevail as a critical institution. Bhutto's PR firm might be able to create a climate that gets her back in power but she cannot simply buy her way out of the strategic quandaries that surround Pakistan nor the straitjacket of incompetence and corruption that has plagued her party and feudal politics. In order to govern, she will need to depend heavily on the military (not to mention the US's own strategic dependence on them). More than democratic charlatans and feudal politics, Pakistan needs a healthier civil-military balance and perhaps a power-sharing deal can pave the way for this.

--Sameer Lalwani

(Yasuo Fukuda is on the right)

Mindy Kotler is director of Asia Policy Point, a Washington research center that provides objective information on East Asia to the policy community.

To be sure, Japan only marginally matters right now. At best, the White House has a half-hearted effort out to keep Tokyo (Kantei, if you are a cool-talking Japan cognoscenti) in the coalition of the willing against terrorism. Did you know that Moldova and Albania have troops still there in Iraq? Proud to say my fellow Ukrainians have long left.

Is it morning in Japan? It certainly is not a happy day for Japan's conservative nationalists. Ooops wrong morning. Most Japan cognoscenti* believe the imminent appointment of Yasuo Fukuda, 71, as Japan's next prime minister heralds a return to the practical, noncontroversial, America-friendly LDP, Japan's long dominant ruling party. Sensible government will now return. I wish I could be so certain, and I wonder if that is so good.

On Sunday, September 9th, at the APEC ministerial in Australia, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, 52, said he was going to resign if he did not "get his way," and resign he did three days later on September 12th. Getting "his way" meant persuading the Japanese Diet (parliament) to renew legislation that expires on November 1 to authorize ships of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force to refuel allied vessels in the Indian Ocean in support of U.S.-led antiterrorism operations. Mr. Abe, a scion of a famous and powerful political family, was used to getting his way. He had been groomed to become prime minister and taught to hold to higher ideals than the common folk, i.e., the voters. Like a child screaming for Fruit Loops in the supermarket, he believed his statement was a credible act.

Unfortunately, his APEC threat rendered him powerless as it looked like a dare to his opponents and surrender to his allies. The LDP party elders must have blanched after hearing of it and understood immediately that the Abe government was over in fact and form. The party had taken a beating in July elections and opinion polls showed plunging support for the government. Abe and the LDP were tagged of being out of touch with the voters, who were interested in neither international issues nor lectures about their values.

Humiliated albeit responsible, the LDP elders felt that it was time drag the "kid" out of the supermarket, so to speak. Or in words attributed to Sam Rayburn, one of the more famous Speaker's The of House, of course from Texas: "I told you I was with you until the end. Well, this is the end."

So, Abe's stepping down is not much of a surprise, nor too courageous. The young prince was pushed. It would be wrong, however, to attribute it all to upholding the US-Japan Alliance by toadying to US pressure to continue providing free gas to US anti-terrorism coalition ships in the Indian Ocean. It is more face-saving for Abe to resign over some vague principle, rather than to admit sheer unpopularity, a looming money scandal of his own, and an untenable agenda. For the LDP, which saw its support fading like a fake tattoo and parliamentary elections more likely each day, it was a bid to save the Party.

Abe was an experiment. He represented a substantial wing of the LDP and Japan's greater political class that contends Japan is suffering from a lack of faith in itself, the result mainly of losing the "War." This powerful group champions a conservative nationalist agenda to undo the "postwar regime." Sixty-odd years of peace and prosperity are not enough. This peace, they believe, was achieved along with something un-Japanese and soulless. It was defeatist and foreign. Global capitalism and internationalist goals are hollowing out Japanese industry, culture, and family. The remedy is as simple as a return to "tradition."

Unfortunately, this agenda did nothing to address Japan's demographic implosion, economic inequality, inadequate social safety net, rural demise, and foreign policy problems resulting from unresolved history issues. Tradition also meant different things to different people. Abe represented a powerful political class that has regressive notions of how to address Japan's malaise, without any practical contemporary solutions. Their answers focused on a return to Japanese pride, which can be attained through emperor worship, traditional gender roles, and a muscular foreign policy. All goals unwelcome by the Japanese people, not to mention Japan's neighbors.

Mr. Fukuda, many hope, will cleanse Abe's conservative agenda and make it more responsive to voter's concerns. It is highly unlikely that he will eliminate it altogether. Although I currently cannot confirm that Fukuda is a member of the activist, conservative nationalist Japan Conference, he has made his share of traditionalist statements ranging from seeming agreeable to Japan having its own nuclear weapons to questionable views on male prerogative and rape.

Businessman and old political professional Fukuda may not make Tokyo's "regime change" look any more liberal or democratic than his predecessor Abe. Fukuda's reported emphasis on an Asia focused foreign policy, however, may be somewhat more responsive to Japanese public opinion than Abe's America first one. For the Bush Administration, which has held Japan up as its greatest ally ever in its global fight against terror, this may be a cause for worry. If Japan's foreign policy does contract back to Asia, as some think, Tokyo will likely do this in tandem with a reconsideration of the risks and benefits of a close relationship with the US.

Maybe, just maybe, the June threat made by the Japanese Ambassador to the US Ryozo Kato that Japan would withhold support for the US in its war on terrorism if its interests were not respected had more substance than first assumed. The Ambassador had written members of Congress that passage of a resolution asking Japan to apologize officially for Imperial Japan's role in maintaining a system of sexual slavery for its military. At the time, this threat seemed petty and unrealistic. Today, it can actually be a legitimate, credible policy to hold off the Americans, just another reason behind it. Now, what is new about that?

-- Mindy Kotler

* "They may be just as intelligent as you say. But I'd feel a helluva lot better if just one of them had ever run for sheriff." ~Sam Rayburn.

Note: A number of readers of this may be interested enough to look to other blogs focused on Japanese politics. I suggest the following:

Asia Exile, Observing Japan, Globaltalk 21, Shisaku, and Transpacific Radio

Now be warned, these blogs are written by men who are a bit insecure and show off with a knowledge of archaic English nouns, such as: trope, encomium, plinth, parlous. When this fails they revert to trite German, French, and Latin expressions. They also like to do a lot of log-rolling and quote each other. All this makes these blogs more amusing than most. Asia Exile is by the Times of London correspondent who follows British tradition of liking pictures.

We take it for granted that Presidential candidates say dumb things during campaigns. Sure. That's a given.

Mitt Romney's taking it a step farther with a letter to the United Nations he released today.

The part I take for granted is that conservatives running for the Presidency follow two main rules for campaigning on foreign policy issues. First, you've gotta hit the bad guys harder than your opponents do, no matter whether or not the attacks make sense. After all, the candidate with the toughest rhetoric is the toughest. The second rule is you always hit the folks who can't hit back.

Romney's latest letter follows both rules, but it's way dumber than the average posturing. Romney first demands that the UN revoke its invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the upcoming General Assembly. These calls were first made last year and were properly met with guffaws.

Romney also includes in his letter veiled threats at the UN. If you don't listen to us, he says, we'll pull your funding and support. It's standard campaign behavior, but given where the American public is on international institutions and foreign policy, it won't get him very far in the general election. Either way, it's a textbook application of rule 2, since the UN has no capacity or mandate to respond. Forget hitting back, it can't even block.

But Romney really loses his footing when he calls for Ahmadinejad to be indicted under the Genocide Convention. I'm not a laywer, but my understanding of the Convention is that it makes genocidal intent very, very difficult to prove. So the idea is a non-starter already.

It gets more interesting than that, though. John Bolton and others have suggested that Ahmadinejad is guilty of incitement to genocide, but they have never suggested that he be indicted for that crime. That's mostly because such a move would put imply support for the International Criminal Court -- an ideologically untenable position.

I'll elaborate. The U.S. can't prosecute anyone for genocide because current U.S. criminal code doesn't allow for it. The Iranian courts might be able to prosecute the crime, but I hardly believe that Romney wants to indict Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide here in the U.S. only to send him home to be prosecuted in Iran. A new international tribunal would take years and millions of dollars to set up, and it would be a non-starter with the international community.

The only other option would be prosecution at the International Criminal Court. Neither Iran nor the U.S. is a member of the ICC, but the U.S. could refer the "situation" to the ICC Prosecutor's office for investigation.

The ICC would never prosecute -- first, because there is no case, and second, since Iranian courts likely exceed the requirements for independence under the Rome Statute, the ICC still would have no jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, Governor Romney should give us details. Does he support the ICC? If not, where should Mr. Ahmadinejad be tried?

When we're done with all that, we can come back to the importance of a universal international dialogue absent of veiled threats between countries and against international institutions. But given what's coming out of the Romney campaign right now, that seems like way too much to ask.

-- Scott Paul

Note: Two relevant details have come out in comments. First, the House passed a resolution calling for Ahmadinejad's to be charged with violating the Genocide Convention; only Reps. Paul and Kucinich voted against. Also, a reader points out that genocide can also be prosecuted in countries whose laws provide for universal jurisdiction over genocide. However, I'd be similarly surprised to discover that Romney supports this option, since many conservatives are even more troubled by universal jurisdiction than the ICC.

Unilateralists are getting ready to squirm. The date for the first hearing on the Law of the Sea convention has been set for September 27, when government witnesses will testify. In October, treaty opponents and business representatives (all supporters) will testify in a second hearing.

As I've written before, everyone with an interest in the use and navigation of the oceans -- the military, environmental organizations, and all ocean industries -- strongly favor U.S. accession to the treaty. That means the point in question with Law of the Sea is whether recognizing, strengthening, and adhering to international law can ever be advantageous to the United States. For those of us who believe that it is usually so -- and according to polls, we represent about 2/3 of all Americans -- this fight will take on special significance.

The small, far-right opposition faces an uphill battle to block ratification, but then again, these battles can be unpredictable. These same folks were ramped up ten years ago against a treaty with similar momentum and importance (the Convention on Biological Diversity) and won. And deck was similarly stacked against the good guys who opposed John Bolton's nomination, yet twice we prevailed.

Stay tuned.

-- Scott Paul

Note:For some interesting reading today, be sure to check out Sebastian Mallaby's very good piece in the Post on energy policy. Also, those of you intrigued by the UN Emergency Peace Service proposal should see the coverage in last week's Forward, in which, importantly, the tough but fair UN critic Ed Luck gives UNEPS his blessing.

If you're in the Southwest United States in the next few days and have some spare time, you're in for a treat. My colleagues Raj Purohit and Tom Moran are on tour with Michael Otterman. The three are discussing Otterman's important book, American Torture. Their conversation is sure to branch off into a number of interesting topics. I wish I could be there myself.

Here's the schedule. I hope TWN readers take advantage.

Albuquerque:

Webster University (Albuquerque Campus)
8500 Menaul NE Suite B-395, Albuquerque, NM 87112
(September 17th, 1:00pm - 3:00pm, Room A317)

University of New Mexico School of Law
1117 Stanford NE, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
(September 17th, 6pm - 9pm, Room 2401)

Santa Fe:

Mary Charlotte Domandi
KSFR Public Radio - 25 minute radio slot. 8am

College of Santa Fe
1600 St. Michael's Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87505
(September 18th, 3:15pm - 5:15pm, O'Shaughnessy Theater in Benildus
Hall)

Collected Works Bookstore
208B West San Francisco, Santa Fe, NM 87501
(September 18th, 6:30pm - 8:30pm)

San Diego:

San Diego Public Library (downtown branch)
820 E Street, San Diego, CA 92101-6478
(September 20th, 1:30pm - 3:30pm)

-- Scott Paul

General Wesley Clark, who was the first among potential presidential candidates, to call for direct nation-to-nation talks between Iran and the United States, has just endorsed Hillary Clinton -- who came later to that view on Iran than he did.

Wesley Clark's statement:

"Senator Hillary Clinton has earned the support of millions of Americans in her campaign for president -- and today I am pleased to count myself among them. The world has reached a critical point, and we need a leader in the White House with the courage, intelligence and humility to navigate through many troubling challenges to our security at home and abroad. I believe Senator Clinton is that leader, and I whole-heartedly endorse her for President of the United States. Senator Clinton and I share a worldview in which diplomacy is the best first-strike tool in our arsenal; in today's complicated global system, the United States should be making more friends than enemies."

Never before have so many Americans had our well-being so closely tied to world events. Our economic and national security has become more complicated than ever before, and we deserve a leader who draws on wisdom, compassion, intelligence and moral courage -- in short, we need Hillary Clinton. She is tough but fair, a rock-solid leader equal to the many weighty challenges ahead of us."

I respect Clark who has endorsed Hillary Clinton, as did Joe Wilson. Clark has no doubt put himself in contention for a VP slot possibility -- or perhaps would be high on the list to be Secretary of Defense.

But I also have great respect for Zbigniew Brzezinski who sees the matter differently.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm going to be over at Al Jazeera tonight listening to and then offering reactions on Bush's speech on Iraq.

Bush is going to restate his intention to draw down US force levels in Iraq by 30,000 troops, to pre-surge levels. In the judgment of many, this reduction was a structural reality anyway and is something that the Pentagon would have had to do -- no matter what the results on the ground in Iraq. But politically, Bush's reduction of forces deployed to Iraq will hold the line in Republican ranks increasingly skittish about the war.

However, House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton sent this out this evening -- and I think this articulates well the view of many skeptical Dems and some of the Republicans who have already defected from the White House's position:

""The force reductions proposed tonight by the President, while welcome, do not take the necessary step of changing the mission of American forces in Iraq and getting our forces out of policing a civil war. For our country's sake, we need to begin a more significant redeployment of our troops from Iraq. The burden our country has placed on our military personnel and their families is tremendous, and their sacrifices deserve to be honored with a policy that furthers American national interests at home, in the Middle East, and around the world.

"We currently have more than 160,000 U.S. military personnel deployed to Iraq. General Petraeus testified this week that since the beginning of the surge of troops, levels of violence are down from the catastrophic levels of late 2006. But despite security improvements made possible by the dedication of our forces, the Government of Iraq has yet to achieve tangible progress toward national reconciliation. Without political progress, no security gains made by American troops will matter.

"Beyond disappointment that the Iraqis have not done enough to achieve political accommodation at the national level, we must not allow our focus on Iraq to jeopardize other critical national security concerns. This ongoing U.S. military commitment in Iraq has consequences, which include the strain placed on the health of the Army and the impact on U.S. military readiness should forces be needed to respond to other situations affecting our national interests. Bringing troop levels down to pre-surge levels will help reduce some of the strain on the Army, but not enough to ensure that it is trained and ready to deal with any future threat. I doubt it will also be enough to allow us sufficient forces for the hunt for Osama bin Laden and those who attacked us on September 11th.

"I remain unconvinced that placing U.S. military forces in charge of the counterinsurgency mission in Iraq, essentially fighting an Iraqi civil war, is worth the sacrifice in American lives, treasure, and the continued damage to the strategic ability of the United States to react to growing problems in other parts of the world. I believe that a change in mission for our forces in Iraq, coupled with a substantial reduction in their number, is in the best interest of U.S. national security. The Administration's proposal of minimal troop reductions does not do enough to get us out of the civil war in Iraq and ready to deal with our many other strategic challenges."

Since President Bush will be commenting as well on the testimony offered in Congress by US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus, I think it is well worth taking time to read again Senator Richard Lugar's opening statement at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing -- which I found riveting -- and the single best implied critique of the Bush administration's failures in Iraq and the Middle East.

I found particularly compelling the metaphor of farmers planting crops in a flood plain as a way of framing any "false positives" that we may be seeing in Anbar or in other regions because of the so-called "surge."

Lugar said:

One can debate, as many will do this week, whether progress in Iraq has been sufficient to justify continuing American sacrifices. But the greatest risk for U.S. policy is not that we are incapable of making progress, but that this progress may be largely beside the point given the divisions that now afflict Iraqi society. The risk is that our efforts are comparable to a farmer expending his resources and efforts to plant a crop on a flood plain without factoring in the probability that the waters may rise. In my judgment, some type of success in Iraq is possible, but as policy makers, we should acknowledge that we are facing extraordinarily narrow margins for achieving our goals.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

My New America Foundation colleague Michael Lind and author of The American Way of Strategy has just penned a thoughtful op-ed that gets right at the nugget of what Senator Lugar was pushing in his opening statement at the Crocker/Petraeus Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings.

Lind writes in The Australian:

The long-awaited report by David Petraeus to the US Congress on the war in Iraq has provoked a debate about tactics rather than what is needed: a debate about strategy.

The tactics are those of the US troop surge (a weasel word for escalation). Observers agree that the surge has had some effect in reducing violence in parts of Iraq, temporarily if not permanently. But this success, if it is a success, ignores the larger question of US strategy.

The US did not invade Iraq to provide it with a police force. The goal is not reducing Iraqi violence as an end in itself.

The tactic of reducing violence by Shia and Sunni militias and jihadists, some Iraqi and some foreign, was supposed to serve two goals: reconciling the Iraqi population to the central government and giving Iraq's three main ethnic groups - Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds - time to agree on a stable power-sharing arrangement in a national unity government.

Unfortunately, it appears that however successful the surge may be as a tactic, the two strategic goals are incompatible. The Iraqi nation cannot be reconciled to the Iraqi government if there is no Iraqi nation, only three ethnic nations, each of which prefers a government it controls to one in which it shares power with the others.

I'm not completely on board with Lind on the complete break-up of Iraq into three distinct nations, and I recognize many problems with the somewhat similar Biden-Gelb plan to create a tripartite federal structure -- but still, working through the dimensions of that debate is what is important and what we should be spending most of our time wrestling with.

Lind continues:

The beginning of wisdom is to realize that the US needs a new strategy in Iraq, not new tactics in the service of an unworkable strategy.

Recently the US has experienced successes in getting Sunni leaders to co-operate in suppressing jihadists in their territories. This success, however, exposes the falsehood on which the Bush administration has based its justification of the war since 2003: the claim that the US has been fighting a single group called "the terrorists", consisting of Sunni and Shia militants as well as al-Qa'ida-linked jihadists.

The US should build on this success by reaching out to Shia militants as well as Sunni militants, on condition that they agree to capture or kill jihadists operating in their territory.

Iraq has degenerated into a Hobbesian anarchy in which power grows from the barrel of a gun, as well as from the minaret of a mosque. If mullahs and militias are the real authorities in Iraq, not powerless politicians in a paper parliament, then to avert the further unnecessary expenditure of Iraqi as well as American and British lives, the US should build its policy on this fact.

I also disagree with Lind that an effective US strategy to decrease the Hobbesian temperature would be to create temporary alliances with Shia leaders as we have with Anbar Sunnis to attack and kill resident jihadists.

In my view, the Sunnis in Anbar -- now less one important Sheikh killed perhaps in part because of his high profile support of the US mission and his handshake with George W. Bush -- are working with American troops so as to buy time to re-organize and rejuvenate before going after Shia interests later, particularly after US troop levels taper.

And frankly, if US troops don't depart, our Sunni allies today may be attacking us tomorrow.

But again, Michael Lind is exactly on target that we need to engage in a discussion about our strategic objectives -- not the micro-tactics discussion the administration has seduced Congress into.

-- Steve Clemons

The political demise and fall of Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is the best news from Japan I have seen in some time. While Abe was down in the polls, it is the rejection of him inside the Liberal Democratic Party and his own personal frustration with his party leadership that gives me hope that a healthy, rather than strident, Japanese nationalism may yet emerge as Japan's defining national personality.

I'm glad that Abe emerged, got the top post -- and now essentially has been tossed out (though yes, I know, he resigned).

Abe's brief tenure -- and his obsession with the most strident, history-denying edge of Japan's war experiences and nationalism -- will most likely chasten any politicos that try to exploit these issues again.

I share my thoughts on Abe's resignation on Chicago National Public Radio's Worldview.

-- Steve Clemons

. . .is now very much in the past tense for two US soldiers, now dead, who helped pen an important August 19th New York Times op-ed, "The War As We Saw It," authored by seven soldiers in Iraq.

FireDogLake has more.

Petraeus called these soldiers the new "Greatest Generation." Well, a few more of the best and brightest are dead. And more and more will die -- and the political deals that might rationalize any of this tragedy and that are needed to stabilize Iraq and the Middle East are not happening.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm working on an article about whether or not we will bomb Iran right now -- and am trying to sort through a mesmerizing talk that Peter Bergen gave about a resurgent al Qaeda organization. I'll be back later when finished with the op-ed.

But in the mean time, this YouTube item on "Grannies Against the Iraq War" may interest some. It's a bit too sentimental for me in my current mood watching the Petraeus/Crocker hearings, but some may enjoy it.

-- Steve Clemons

I know I'm a week late in seeing it, did this attack on Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei come out of nowhere or what?

The Washington Post doesn't always get it right, but it's never gotten it quite this wrong. First, the editors can't seem to decide whether they want the IAEA Director General to be more or less independent. They fault him for ignoring his mandate as an international civil servant and then, paradoxically, suggest that he should more faithfully follow the lead of the United States.

There's plenty of sloppy thinking in this piece, but the second paragraph is really a gem:

Mr. ElBaradei was lionized by opponents of the Iraq war for debunking Bush administration charges that Saddam Hussein had restarted his nuclear program before the 2003 invasion. Emboldened, he has now set himself a new task: stopping what he considers to be the "crazies" in Washington who "want to say, 'Let us go and bomb Iran.' " We're not part of that camp, though we consider its members saner than many of the statements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But what's really unacceptable is Mr. ElBaradei's way of accomplishing his aim, which is to excuse the Iranian activity that most justifies the would-be bombers -- uranium enrichment -- while also trying to undermine the principal non-military leverage against it, which is economic sanctions.

Let's review. First, the Post insinuates that Dr. ElBaradei doesn't deserve a feather in his cap for getting Iraq WMDs right when the world's largest intelligence bureaucracy got it wrong.

Then comes a weird, backwards bit of logic. To summarize: Iran hawks are less crazy than Ahmedinejad. That means that Iran hawks are sane. Therefore, ElBaradei, who wants to stop the Iran hawks, is crazy.

And it's downhill from there. The Post says ElBaradei excuses uranium enrichment. Actually, ElBaradei makes an enrichment freeze a central point of negotiations with the Iranians and talks about its importance at every turn. Finally, the Post concludes that sanctions are the "principal non-military leverage" the international community has. Diplomacy anyone?

Really, the Washington Post editorial board is not always crazy. After all, I consider them much less crazy than the editorial board of the Washington Times, so they must be sane!

-- Scott Paul

(painting of President Dwight Eisenhower by Mike Hagel; hanging in Senator Chuck Hagel's private Senate office)

Before he departs the Senate 16 months from now, Senator Chuck Hagel will have many opportunities to focus a national spotlight on the gaps in the foreign policy and national security course the country is on.

Hagel has 16 months to channel Eisenhower and to challenge in an Ike-inspired way those who aspire to live in the White House and those who surround Bush now to be far better stewards than they are being now of America's national security portfolio.

Hanging in Chuck Hagel's Senate office is a portrait of Dwight Eisenhower painted by his brother Mike. This article by John Judis tells the story of Chuck and his brothers -- particularly Tom who fought alongside him in Vietnam -- and is important to understand the Senator's decision-making DNA.

I think that the Senate will be far worse off without Hagel there to stand up to the brow-beating and recklessness from the Cheney wing of the Republican national security establishment, but I don't think Hagel will be disappearing at all from public service or Washington.

But 16 months in the Senate is still a long time. Hagel has responsibilities not just for Nebraska but for the country -- and hopefully will play a key role in preventing any new wars hatching while he still has access to the Senate floor and like any Senator can make the nuts and bolts of "unanimous consent" procedures a bit less unanimous.

Here is Chuck Hagel's formal statement made today:

I will not seek a third term in the United States Senate, nor do I intend to be a candidate for any office in 2008. It has been my greatest honor and privilege to serve my country and represent my fellow Nebraskans in the U.S. Senate. My family and I will be forever grateful for this opportunity and the trust placed in me by the people of Nebraska. It has enriched all of us.

I have always tried to live up to the promise I made to the people of Nebraska the day I announced my intention to seek this Senate seat. On March 30, 1995 I said, "I intend to be a Senator all Nebraskans can be proud of." I hope I've done that, and made some contributions to our state and country along the way. History will sort that out.

I am proud of my Senate record and deeply grateful to all those who helped get me there and keep me there, and those who have worked so hard for the people of Nebraska -- my staff. I would like to particularly thank Mike McCarthy, Ken Stinson and Lou Ann Linehan. I owe a great deal to these three individuals.

I would have been unable to do my job without the love, wise perspective and constant encouragement of my wife Lilibet, my daughter Allyn and my son Ziller. My appreciation for their support is immeasurable. I would also like to thank my brothers, Tom and Mike, for their constant support and occasional brotherly constructive evaluations.

I said after I was elected in 1996 that 12 years in the Senate would probably be enough. It is. I have always believed that democracies work best when there is a constant cycle of new energy and ideas, and fresh leadership.

I will leave the Senate with the same enthusiasm, sense of purpose and love of my country that I started with. I leave maybe a little wiser, surely a little more experienced and with a very respectable amount of humility.

Public service has always been a big part of my life, and I hope to have another opportunity to serve my country in some new capacity down the road.

This afternoon, my family and I will return to Washington, and I will go back to work. I look forward to working as hard in the remaining 16 months of my Senate term for the people of Nebraska as I have over the last 11 years.

Thank you.

I think what really just happened in Hagel's statement is that he has just issued a warning to Cheney's people that even though he and they are out in 2008, he's going to do his best to keep them from further wrecking the military and degrading America's standing in the world.

Watch for fireworks from Hagel tomorrow in the Petraeus/Crocker hearings.

-- Steve Clemons

Chuck Hagel is standing down, something this blog highlighted a few days ago.

I think that as things look at the moment, the next president is likely to be a Democrat -- but the country still will be deeply divided. Building reasonable, pragmatic Republicans into the next leadership team is going to be important, and John Edwards has hinted that he's already making such plans.

The next President should consider Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. Alternatively -- and only secondly -- he would be a capable and credible roving emissary in the Middle East or envoy to the United Nations. His "no false choices in the Middle East" speech still stands out as one of the very best I have heard.

But Defense is what he should be asked to do.

I had occasion to chat one on one with former Senator and New School President Bob Kerrey yesterday, and he gave me no indication one way or another that he was going to run for Hagel's Nebraska senate seat -- but he did tell me to stay tuned next Saturday.

-- Steve Clemons

Iowans have the privilege and responsibility of field testing presidential candidates and in return, they command an attention in our national policy debates that at times allows them to squeeze out a few goodies, such as ethanol subsidies, despite their inefficiencies. But with farming a pivotal part of Iowa's economy, Iowans should be asking themselves what candidates are willing to do for them and the country beyond the ethanol pledge when it comes to agriculture sales, especially when there is low-hanging fruit to be plucked in this arena.

In July, the International Trade Commission (ITC) released a report estimating national earnings from lifting the ban on agriculture sales to Cuba. Applying trade and theory and pricing analysis to current sales, the ITC estimated the US could reap $320 million in agriculture sales to Cuba. And this was merely a counterfactual assessment--it estimated what sales might be if the restrictions on sales did not exist in 2006. But it openly admitted this to be a short-term, lower bound estimate that did not take into account dynamic returns and the ITC expects this figure to grow. Another study from a few years ago has projected upwards of $1.2 billion in agriculture sales alone.

From my rough estimates, combining the results of the ITC report and the previous study's state by state analysis, Iowans could have taken home a 6% share of that $320 million and previous projections estimate Iowa's annual gain to be $70 million in agriculture sales and an additional $200 million in downstream/spin-off effects. Even if the primary spike in sales comes from Southern poultry exports, the Iowa Ag Review has noted that for every pound of poultry sold an additional pound of soybean meal moves off market creating new demand. And a quick look at the USDA's Iowa fact sheet would reveal that, behind corn, soybeans are Iowa's meal ticket.

The share that Iowans could expect would rival most boondoggle subsidy programs and could be easily captured with some rational, commonsense policies that evade our antiquated US-Cuba policy thinking.

Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani bill themselves as pragmatic problem solvers and competent managers, but they've staked out fairly ideological positions on foreign policy. Though Mike Huckabee -- who has recently garnered new attention and interest after his successful performance in Wednesday's Republican debate -- has at times gestured in this direction, he has not yet committed himself to a foreign policy that belies a commonsense pragmatism. And more importantly, he exhibits countervailing tendencies.

Huckabee appears more in touch with the struggles of his fellow constituents paying greater attention to bread and butter issues than the other leading candidates. As Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus put it, Huckabee "has the air of the nice neighbor who wanders by to discuss your crabgrass problem." (He also plays the bass guitar in his own band, which performed at his Iowa straw poll party).

Coming from a state like Arkansas that stands to gain almost half a billion in agriculture sales to Cuba, Huckabee would have to consider this issue. And as he's trolling for votes, caucus goers should pose the question to him to determine whether he's willing to put the interests of Iowan and American farmers above an ill-thought out, ideological trade policy that harms our interests.

His second place finish in the recent straw poll shows Huckabee can do well in Iowa but he remains quite an unknown quantity and needs to distinguish himself in some way. Standing out on such a reasonable issue such as agriculture sales that benefits Iowa farmers might be the ticket to position himself against the ideological blinders of leading Republican candidates attracting more national attention and garnering the support of more Iowans. The ag sales position also offers Huckabee a boost in some critical regions -- California, the Midwest, and the South. And it would call into question Romney and Giuliani's pragmatist credentials when they opt to foreclose on opportunities for American farmers.

Perhaps this is an issue for Ron Paul or Sam Brownback, who have both expressed concerns over failed US foreign policy positions, though from very different angles. But one thing is for certain -- this issue, like sales of chickens to Cuba, is ripe for the taking.

--Sameer Lalwani

(Civil rights attorney Leonard Weinglass)

All I'd need to write here is Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib or Haditha to make the case that America has lost its moral credibility in much of the world. It's tough to make a case against other thugs in the world when we deploy unaccountable thuggery of our own.

But despite that, I think that it's important to continue to fight for what is right and just -- particularly in the cases that are unpleasant.

Did Larry Craig -- someone who really doesn't deserve much support from this blogger -- get screwed by the cops in Minneapolis? Probably so. We all know what constitutes genuinely lewd conduct vs. what is just hitting on someone. But let's leave that for another day.

Another case when weighing justice gets tougher is when national security, foreigners, and fears of espionage are involved. This is in fact the case of five Cuban nationals charged with spying for their government and currently in prison for trying to infiltrate groups in the US who might attack Cuba or Cubans.

I've begun to look into this case as more and more media around the world are kicking the tires of this bizarre legal case in which five men -- who seem rather ordinary to tell you the truth -- have received some of the heaviest prison penalties in the intel business and yet -- didn't seem to have discovered any national secrets and as best as I can tell were not spying on the US government.

I need to learn more about this -- and as readers of this blog know -- I think that US-Cuba relations are important to change gears on -- as a move on this front could appear a harbinger of healthier American engagement in Latin America but also more enlightened US global engagement as well. It would symbolize the peripheralization of interest-group driven foreign policy cabals and finally bury Cold War era deals that have no place in the 21st century.

I'm going to go hear the Cuban 5's attorney, Leonard Weinglass -- who is mentioned in the CNN story above -- make his case. It should be useful and interesting to those who are interested in how real or not the charges against these Cuban nationals are -- and whether there ought to be a difference when people are caught spying on dangerous NGOs or spying on the Pentagon.

The info for the meeting is:

FOREIGN POLICY, POLITICS AND THE LAW: THE CASE OF THE CUBAN FIVE

You are cordially invited to hear noted civil rights lawyer and activist, LEONARD WEINGLASS, speak about this highly controversial case

SEPTEMBER 12, 2007
6:00 P.M.
HOWARD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, MOOT COURT ROOM
2900 VAN NESS STREET, NW WASHINGTON, D.C. 20008

I'm not the organizer of this meeting -- but I find the subject very interesting because it may be the cases involving citizens from Cuba, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere when it is most important to show how "justice" in a fair and impartial legal system is supposed to work.

I have a hunch that some in the Cuban-American community have been more than comfortable with subverting a just legal process to achieve unfair convictions. . .but as I said, I want to learn more.

Someone I know in the military establishment, however, shared with me a bit of information that may very well be classified.

He said that in the many simulations he had been involved with in planning war exercises dealing with Cuba, the simulation called for US military forces to repel attacks from Floridians aimed at Cuba.

That information makes one think that whatever the Cuban Five may have been doing for the Cuban government, fears in Havana were shared by many planning combat exercises in the Pentagon.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator John Ensign just proposed a major cut to U.S. contributions to UN peacekeeping on the Senate floor.

Just last month, with strong U.S. support, the UN Security Council authorized a peacekeeping mission to Darfur. It's the largest, most expensive mission ever, and it's coming together now in a very promising way. The new mission's establishment means that half of all UN peacekeeping dollars are going to Sudan. It's very simple: if we cut funds for U.N. peacekeeping, we are leaving victims in Sudan (not to mention 17 other countries that depend on the blue helmets) out to dry.

But that's not all: by not paying our peacekeeping dues in full, we also irritate troop contributing nations - close allies all - who put their people in harm's way with the expectation that they will get paid. Here's a list of countries and the amount (U.S. dollars) that they are owed, courtesy of the Better World Campaign:

Bangladesh 77,082,065
India 56,629,046
Kenya 55,020,550
Pakistan 49,689,151
Jordan 29,440,123
Nepal 17,263,828
Italy 15,292,565
France 14,250,191
Chile 13,788,618
Australia 13,182,030
China 10,532,743
Argentina 10,087,173
Indonesia 9,357,385
Uruguay 9,139,317
Germany 8,481,133
Ghana 8,154,489
Brazil 7,210,090

We're already hundreds of millions of dollars behind on peacekeeping payments. With one roll call vote, the Senate can dismiss our international obligations, jeopardize the lives of innocent civilians around the world, and kick our closest allies in the teeth. Here's hoping Ensign doesn't get his way.

-- Scott Paul

Update: Thankfully, the Ensign amendment failed overwhelmingly on a vote of 30-63. The roll call is here. Biggest surprise: Senator Sam Brownback, one of the most outspoken advocates for international help in Darfur, voted for the amendment. What's more, he and the other 29 who supported the amendment did so despite opposition from President Bush, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and almost all of the senior Republicans on relevant committees and subcommittees (Lugar, Hagel, Gregg, Cochran, Lugar, Hagel, Warner).

J.J. Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Forward, says I misinterpreted the editorial he wrote on Israel, the American Jewish community, and the Armenian genocide in my post last week.

The writers and editors at The Forward are a very bright and thoughtful bunch, and I value their contributions to the public debate highly. But having re-read the editorial, I still think I got it right. You read, you decide.

J.J. Goldberg has asked that his letter to me be published. For the sake of an open debate, I would do that regardless of the letter's content. I'm especially happy to do it this time, though because this is an important letter. First, it recognizes the Armenian genocide and urges Jewish and Israeli leaders to do the same. Second, it makes a general point that needs to be made more often and more prominently: that Jews should not equate the behavior of the state of Israel with basic morality. Here it is:

Dear Scott Paul,

I'm the editor in chief of the Forward. I wrote the editorial that you criticized in the Washington Note last week. I have a feeling you weren't reading the same editorial that I wrote.

I had no intention of endorsing the denial of the Armenian genocide. I explicitly called it genocide, repeatedly. I wrote of Israel "finding itself - or placing itself - on the side of the deniers," which is a dirty name where I come from, and I assumed it would mean the same thing to others. I went on to describe the thinking of Israeli political leaders when they made and make that decision, but I certainly did not mean to imply that this was admirable behavior. I assumed that was covered by the single word, "deniers."

The point of my editorial was to call out those people - a significant proportion of the American Jewish community - who still think that Israel is above reproach, that its behavior is synonymous with morality, and who are therefore in shock when they see Israeli realpolitik clashing with the basic moral imperative of responding to genocide. My point was that Israel is a country like others, for good and ill, and it makes choices on the basis of self-interest, not necessarily morality. It's certainly happened before that the Jewish religious/cultural value of identifying with Israel has clashed with fundamental moral values of human rights. But it's never happened in so glaring a fashion, I think, as it did last month, when Israel put itself blatantly on the side of genocide deniers, not once but twice.

That's why I wrote that it's time for a new ethic for the post-post-Holocaust world. Jewish identity and religion still demand some sense of identification with Israel, as I have written often in the past. But it isn't tenable to assume, as so many Jews do, that Israeli behavior is necessarily synonymous with basic morality. What I was calling for is a new relationship between the two pillars of modern Jewish identity that grew out of the Holocaust, finding a way to maintain a bond with Israel while not losing one's moral compass.

If all this wasn't clear from the editorial, then I suppose the fault is in my writing. It certainly has nothing to do with the Forward's governing board, which in any case doesn't approve my editorials in advance.

If you're in a position to post this on the Note blog, I would appreciate it. The current thread does the Forward an injustice, intentionally or not.

As I mentioned, I read this editorial differently. I take the editors and publishers of The Forward at their word, but I do want to explain my own reading of the editorial - and why I think others may have read it similarly and come away with the wrong idea.

The editorial explains that the promise of Zionism does not rest in the establishment of a state that runs on Jewish principles, in building security and roots for the Jewish people. It rightly then points out that Israel is not immune to tough choices that pit moral considerations against security and self-interest.

After going on to explain the difficulty and nuances of the debate, it concludes: "genocide is important, but not as important as saving lives today." To me, that implies that the plight of Turkish and Israeli Jews takes precedence over the memory of Armenian victims of genocide. It then continues, suggesting that we ought to "re-examine the moral principles we have created for ourselves in the wake of the Holocaust, and consider whether they reflect the realities of today's cold, hard world." To me, and many other Jews, the moral principles we have created for ourselves in the wake of the Holocaust include acceptance of multiculturalism, embracing and defending human rights, and bearing witness to grave atrocities. The clear implication - at least how I read it - is that these principles are no longer compatible with the political realities with which we live and should be discarded.

I don't think I implied that the editorial actively endorses denial - it clearly doesn't. But I'm having a hard time reading it as anything other than a justification for avoiding the topic in the name of "the realities of today's cold, hard world."

Again, you read, you decide. And if you interpret the editorial as I do, I hope you take the editors at their word and give them credit for strongly declaring their position and erasing any ambiguities on this blog.

-- Scott Paul

In mid-August, I was flying off to participate in the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue. I was catching an 8 am flight at Dulles Airport and for whatever reason was being escorted to the front of some very long security lines and was given the red carpet treatment by TSA. I have no idea why. I thought that perhaps someone had mistaken me as David Letterman's brother again -- which actually happened once and got me into a restricted but cool night club.

But standing a few layers back in the long line was Chuck Hagel, dressed in a starched shirt and crisp suit and tie. I said howdy to him -- and despite my unshaven state after hiking and camping for a week in the Cascades and wearing jeans and a t-shirt, Hagel was effusive, energetic, real. We chatted about Iran, Iraq, and the general wreck that had become American foreign policy.

And despite my nudge, he would not get out of that long line he was in, though I tried to encourage him to just take my place as the real VIP, since TSA had clearly made a mistake on me.

Hagel told me he was flying off to participate in a forum organized by former Clinton chief-of-staff Leon Panetta, and I read about his comments later in the news.

The word is slowly leaking out that not only is Chuck Hagel not going to run for President -- but he's not going to run for the Senate again in 2008. I'm not sure this is the final word, but Hagel is getting ready to make an announcement either this next Saturday or the one following -- and all indicators are that he is going to depart an institution that very much still needs his conscience and sensibilities.

Dems are already readying New School President and former Senator Bob Kerrey to run. I don't want to comment on Kerrey right now. I've worked with him, and suffice it say that we each survived the experience. He's tough-minded, iconoclastic, and ruthlessly political in a good sense -- traits I admire.

But this isn't about Kerrey. It's about Hagel.

Chuck Hagel is the kind of Republican that would would bring health back to American politics. He's a Republican conservative -- no doubt about it. But he's the kind of Republican who respects the views of Democrats. He'll compete with them, but respect them. He's not about a hyperventilating right that rules by assertion and Cheney/Rove "50% + 1" delusions.

Hagel -- like John Warner -- both have a great deal of concern for the state of the military today. So does Senator Jack Reid who served in the military. All of the presidential candidates are speaking about the need to restore our military so that its capabilities and morale don't erode further -- but Hagel, Warner, Reid, McCain, Webb -- these folks have different inroads to understanding the plight of service people and the military system today.

Hagel was the boldest in my view in fighting George W. Bush on the war. Republicans and Democrats need his kind of logic and leadership -- and it would be a terrible shame for him to leave the Senate.

I think he may leave anyway. But he shouldn't. He should rethink his views on this as he's not talking to the right people.

More on what he might do in his next life later -- but in the mean time, i just want to post an open admonishment to him for these rumors that he might end his tenure.

Hagel has been a terrific national leader in my view -- and leaving now reduces our ability to correct the many, many problems in our national security and foreign policy portfolios after the Bush administration finally is brought to an end. He should stay where he is and should partner with the next President and the next raft of Senators and Congressman in undoing the damage done.

-- Steve Clemons

I think I'm going to initiate a new regular feature at The Washington Note called "Over the Line." This will just be stuff that goes a notch or ten too far. Some funny. Some tragic.

I have three items today.

First, big Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton donor Norman Hsu didn't show up for his bail hearing today -- repeating his no show performance 15 years ago.

Second, I just received this note from a friend in the Senate. Joe Lieberman has decided to share with his Senate colleagues an opportunity to meet one of the Bush administration's must ideologically predictable advocates in favor of the Iraq War, the surge, and expansion of that war to include Iran.

Lieberman Chief of Staff Clarine Nardi Riddle writes:

Invitation for your boss from Senator Lieberman

Senator Lieberman will be hosting a briefing for Senators with military historian Fred Kagan, who recently returned from extensive travel in Iraq, to discuss new developments in the situation there and the way ahead.

Having taught for ten years as an associate professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Fred Kagan is currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of a forthcoming report, examining several prospective plans for the drawdown of U.S. forces and the transition of their mission in Iraq. Fred holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale University and has written numerous articles on defense and foreign policy issues for Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Policy Review, Commentary, Parameters, and other periodicals.

The briefing with Fred Kagan will be held on September 7, at 1:00 pm. Location TBD.

Please let the Senator's scheduler, Rayanne Bostick, or me know if your boss plans to attend. Thank you.

I can just imagine the beginning of Kagan's talk: "I have to admit surprise at agreeing with the recent assessment by Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon that. . ."

If Lieberman would listen, I'd really like to suggest to the Senator a roster of people who also publish in the leading journals of opinion in this country who might provide a view of Iraq that at minimum would provide balance to Fred Kagan and very possibly get to a more real truth about the mess there.

And then third, finally, the other day several commentators, including James Fallows and myself, expressed shock that Bush seemed to be so unaware of the details surrounding the disbandonment of the Iraqi military.

The next day, L. Paul Bremer shot back at Bush and released to the New York Times documents showing that Bremer had had an exchange of letters -- so to speak -- with Bush about the subject of disbanding the military.

What is bizarre is how air-headish Bush's letters were, leading me to believe he never paid much attention to Bremer's note.

This seems to validate that Bush was not in the driver seat on the war and not involved in crucial decisions but that as Lawrence Wilkerson has said, a Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal had usurped power and decision-making while the President and his National Security Advisor just acquiesced.

But what is also strange is that given the devastating consequences of disbanding the military that Bremer says he would have done it again. Huh? Is infallibility all these people care about?

Let's send Bremer to some funerals so that he can repeat those words to the families of American men and women killed by insurgents fighting American occupation when they might otherwise have been members of Iraq's military fighting to preserve and defend a new Iraq with us on the sidelines.

-- Steve Clemons

Jon Corzine ended up being the butt of a couple of jokes today at the ground-breaking event for the new Giants and Jets football stadium. First, before a who's who of politicos, football people, and journalists, Corzine said he believes the new stadium will stand for "tens and tens of decades," or, at minimum, 200 years. Apparently a few people at the event with little exposure to the ridiculousness of speeches in professional politics had a nice chuckle.

Then Rich Eisen, emceeing the event on behalf of the NFL Network, mentioned that there would be light rail access to the stadium, adding "which we hope Governor Corzine will take."

Ouch. I hope the Giants do better at their new stadium than Gov. Corzine did today.

-- Scott Paul

At about 12:40 pm today EST, I will be doing an interview on NPR's new "Bryant Park Project" show on the subject of the APEC leaders meeting in Australia.

I think that the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders summit is important for no other reason than that like a clock when the hour hand hits 4, the APEC meeting forces a good number of global leaders to focus on the Asia Pacific region and what is happening there.

In Washington, we rarely think about much more than Iraq and Iran as of late. Japan makes it into the news when a minister commits suicide, or Abe riles up regional historical memory battles, or over whaling -- but not much else. China is an exception. Few Americans remember that Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore or Malaysia are out there. . .somewhere.

Australia, New Zealand, and the balance of the 21 member APEC crowd are also given short shrift in America's collective international consciousness.

But APEC compels some momentary attention on the region, and that is good. Showing that America is interested in anything beyond wars in the Middle East is good.

Australia has elections around the corner. Liberal Party (the conservative party) Prime Minister John Howard is trying to stop a Labor Party ouster. Someone thought that a Bush visit would help bolster support for John Howard's party -- but thus far, it seems that Bush's visit has only further cost the Liberals support among Australia's Bush-miffed citizenry.

As far as APEC itself, the institution has lost its edge. By including Russia and a variety of Pacific Rim-located Latin American countries that simply don't feel connected to the ASEAN/China/Japan/Australia-dominated character, the 21 member nation group has become unwieldy and inchoate. Almost no one talks any more of the grand economic objectives of the APEC 2010/2020 free trade proposals.

APEC itself has become another place for American leaders to meet Chinese leaders and Russian leaders -- and for the Chinese to meet the Russians, and to be reminded that there are other players like Japan, Australia, and Indonesia that matter at the periphery.

That wasn't why APEC was established -- but perhaps summitry of this sort is more than enough justification for its existence.

-- Steve Clemons

Given the complicity between the Executive branch and the military industrial complex in feeding at the trough of the treasury, I'm not sure that there has ever been much "objectivity of voice" among the military leadership -- but perhaps the myth itself was useful.

When I think of Eric Shinseki's brave counter to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz though, I see that I'm overstating this, but generally -- I think that there has been a widely held if not mistaken belief that the military work to defend the nation as a whole and not just the prognostications of one party over another, or of the White House over the Congress.

Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman has a very interesting piece in the Financial Times today highlighting the ways that President Bush is corrupting military leaders and the Pentagon in putting them to work on his political message:

President George W. Bush's campaign to stay the course in Iraq is taking a new and constitutionally dangerous turn. When Senator John Warner recently called for a troop withdrawal by Christmas, the White House did not mount its usual counterattack. It allowed a surprising champion to take its place. Major General Rick Lynch, a field commander in Iraq, summoned reporters to condemn Mr Warner's proposal as "a giant step backwards".

It was Maj Gen Lynch who was making the giant step into forbidden territory. He had no business engaging in a public debate with a US senator. His remarks represent an assault on the principle of civilian control -- the most blatant so far during the Iraq war.

Nobody remarked on the breach. But this only makes it more troubling and should serve as prologue for the next large event in civilian-military relations: the president's effort to manipulate General David Petraeus's report to Congress.

Once again, nobody is noticing the threat to civilian control. Mr Bush has pushed Gen Petraeus into the foreground to shore up his badly damaged credibility. But in doing so, he has made himself a hostage. He needs the general more than the general needs him. Despite the president's grandiose pretensions as commander-in-chief, the future of the Iraq war is up to Gen Petraeus.

The general's impact on Congress will be equally profound. If he brings in a negative report, Republicans will abandon the sinking ship in droves; if he accentuates the positive, it is the Democrats who will be spinning.

In fact, if not in name, it will be an army general who is calling the shots -- not the duly elected representatives of the American people.

Wars are tough on constitutions, but losing wars is particularly tough on the American separation of powers. Especially when Congress and the presidency are in different hands, the constitutional dynamics invite both sides to politicise the military. With the war going badly, it is tempting to push the generals on to centre stage and escape responsibility for the tragic outcomes that lie ahead. But as Iraq follows on from Vietnam, this dynamic may generate a politicised military that is embittered by its repeated defeats in the field.

Ackerman's sense of things is validated in the interviews that biographer Robert Draper did with Bush and which were reported in the New York Times. Here is a clip on Bush's comfort with using Petraeus as his political messenger:

For now, though, Mr. Bush told the author, Robert Draper, in a later session, "I'm playing for October-November." That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: "To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence," and, he said later, "stay longer."

But fully aware of his standing in opinion polls, Mr. Bush said his top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would perhaps do a better job selling progress to the American people than he could.

I am reminded as well of Wesley Clark's call at YearlyKos to Bush to stop hiding behind Petraeus.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

This seems important, constructive and unusually non-partisan:

The Federal Election Commission announced today that it has unanimously resolved two complaints alleging that Internet blog activity is subject to Commission regulation, finding that the activity is exempt from regulation under the media or volunteer exemption.

In Matter Under Review (MUR) 5928, the Commission determined that Kos Media, L.L.C., which operates the website DailyKos, did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act. The Commission rejected allegations that the site should be regulated as a political committee because it charges a fee to place advertising on its website and it provides "a gift of free advertising and candidate media services" by posting blog entries that support candidates. The Commission determined that the website falls squarely within the media exemption and is therefore not subject to federal regulation under the Act.

Since 1974, media activity has been explicitly exempted from federal campaign finance regulation. In March 2006, the Commission made clear that this exemption extends to online media publications and that "costs incurred in covering or carrying a news story, commentary, or editorial by any broadcasting station. . . , Web site, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, including any Internet or electronic publication,"are not a contribution or expenditure unless the facility is owned by a political party, committee, or candidate. With respect to MUR 5928, the FEC found that Kos Media meets the definition of a media entity and that the activity described in the complaint falls within the media exemption. Thus, activity on the DailyKos website does not constitute a contribution or expenditure that would trigger political committee status. The Commission therefore found no reason to believe Kos Media, DailyKos.com, or Markos Moulitsas Zuniga violated federal campaign finance law.

In MUR 5853, the Commission rejected allegations that Michael L. Grace made unreported expenditures when he leased space on a computer server to create a "blog" which advocated the defeat of Representative Mary Bono in the November 2006 election. The Commission also rejected allegations that Grace coordinated these expenditures with Bono's opponent in the race, David Roth, and found that no in-kind contributions to Roth's campaign resulted from Grace's blogging activity. The Commission also found that the respondent did not fraudulently misrepresent himself in violation of 2U.S.C. S. 441h.

This decision seems unusual and heartening to me after so much previous debate at the Federal Election Commission over 527 entities and over the general arena of campaign finance reform.

To see writer Michael Grace, DailyKos, Markos Moulitsas vindicated against Mary Bono in our current political climate doesn't happen every day.

-- Steve Clemons

My old Senate staff colleague, Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Ed McGaffigan, died Sunday.

McGaffigan, who was fighting melanoma, was a tenacious truth-teller in his public service work -- and an incredible father, from what I saw at a distance. His wife, who died in 2000, had been ill for a very long time, and McGaffigan managed her situation, his own health problems, and a high intensity work load while somehow always having time set aside for his children.

I saw this when I worked as Senator Jeff Bingaman's foreign policy and economic advisor -- and Ed handled much of the defense/energy/armed services portfolio in the office. He was sometimes rough-edged but told it straight, and just melted when the subject of his children came up.

Much of the media mentions that he was a Democrat -- which he certainly was. But he was an example of a public servant that you simply could not guess his party affiliation in the content of his work or in his professional conduct. He influenced me significantly, particularly in the importance of thinking more creatively and outmaneuvering one's opposition in the substance of an argument.

Americans have lost an incredible person and resource -- and it's not surprising to me that Ed was still voting on matters at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission all the way up through last week.

-- Steve Clemons

While I'm not with Hillary Clinton when it comes to her US-Cuba policy (and actually not with any of the candidates on all of their views. . .), I do tremendously admire her ability to convey a "personal connection" with voters and constituents -- even though the reality is that this person-to-person connection is managed en masse on an economy of scale that only multi-media broadband could make possible.

This morning, I received an email from Hillary Clinton at 8:22 am ask me if I'd like to "do lunch." That's a respectable time for an email to come in -- none of this 2 or 3 am listserv stuff that would come from either a mass mailing or insomniac.

I was sitting right there when the incoming email chime sounded -- and I said, "wow, hey -- an email from Hillary Clinton (though the email was actually from 'info@hillaryclinton.com")

But here is Hillary's letter:

Dear Steven,

Let's do lunch. Let's talk, you and me -- about whatever you'd like. Our hopes. Our goals. Our work. The weather. Maybe even politics.

I think it would be fun to have you over for lunch, at my table, in my home in Washington. You and I both know that we need a serious change of direction in this country. So let's sit down for a meal and talk about exactly the best way to make that change a reality.

Of course, that change can't happen if we don't win. So I'm asking you today to demonstrate your commitment to real change by supporting my campaign with a contribution. We're going to choose one supporter to come to my house in DC, along with a guest, to share lunch and talk. And if you contribute between now and midnight Friday, September 7, it could be you.

Click here to make a contribution.

My favorite part of being on the campaign trail is talking to people one-on-one, in their homes or their workplaces, learning about their lives and the challenges they face every day.

I recently had a chance to share dinner with Las Vegas nurse Michelle Estrada and her family in her home. We talked about her long hours at work and her concerns for her daughter, who is heading off to college this fall. (I sure remember that feeling!)

I had such a wonderful time eating, talking, and laughing with Michelle and her family. There's so much I want to do as president for families like Michelle's: help them pay for college and protect the basic American dream of owning a home.

Now I want you to come to my home, share a meal, and tell me about your life, your family, your concerns, and how we can work together to change America.

But first I need to ask for your help. I cannot win this race without you, without your support and your commitment to our campaign. Will you help me today by making a contribution?

If you contribute by Friday, you might just have lunch with me at my home in Washington.

Click here to make a contribution.

I wish I could invite every single one of the more than one million people who are supporting my campaign -- but I don't think you'd all fit!

Besides, we're building this campaign through person-to-person contact -- not just the conversation I hope to have with you, but also the conversations you have with family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers everyday. Together, we're making history.

Will you help my campaign make history today? Make a contribution by Friday, and you and I might be sharing a meal.

Click here to make a contribution.

I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I'll pick up the groceries before you get there. Let's sit down and talk about how to change America!

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

She will pick up the groceries before you get there. This is a brilliant letter -- and it has me transfixed.

This is the kind of letter -- and the kind of style -- that could be transformative in American politics. What I mean is that a combination of mass communications innovation, "framing", and broadband are making it easier somehow for people to feel connected on a personal basis to politicians (and others).

Hillary Clinton conveyed this same sort of approach during her amazing "conversations with America." Here are the three videos -- first, second, and third. I wrote then that her style of connecting with people on important policy challenges of the day could change the way that the President's Annual State of the Union message was given. I thought that the way she reached out to people and discussed real problems embarrassed the stiff and stale style Bush and other presidents relied on during the State of the Union.

On her second night of these conversations -- the one that came just an hour before Bush's speech, Hillary Clinton talked with me and answered a question I had posed in a blog posting.

While my blog was but one of millions out there, this made many bloggers feel as if she might reach out to them too -- or so they told me. As my New America Foundation colleague and friend Jim Pinkerton said commenting on the Hillary Clinton-Steve Clemons exchange on his Fox News Channel show, "it's all about interactivity."

The Clinton people get that.

Hillary Clinton's house is up on Whitehaven Street off of Massachusetts Avenue. I almost went up to her door one night by accident as I was having dinner with Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Friis Arne Petersen -- a thoughtful, intellectually curious guy who lives right across the street from HIllary Clinton.

When I realized my mistake -- before I rang the door bell -- I have to say that I was impressed that I wasn't jumped by secret service, though it's clear that they are in the black cars parked outside her place -- and I had the feeling even then that this was a good, normal house owned by normal people.

Of course, Hillary Clinton is not normal; she's a political superstar -- but what is may not be as important as what I sense when I meet her and also get letters like the one I did today. She does come off as quite human and connects. I don't get any sense of the gossiped-about coldness at all.

I can't contribute to her campaign as I feel I need keep my blogger independence from all of the campaigns, but I do want to have lunch with her one day.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it will happen. I have some thoughts on foreign policy and national security issues that I'd like to share.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

First of all, this is excellent news.

Second of all, it will be interesting to learn the back story. There are three other Iranian-Americans still being detained, so there is still room for very bad things to happen in the relationship.

But my hunch here is that China is playing a balancing role behind the scenes. The U.S. is still working hard on lining up political support for a third round of UN Security Council sanctions over Iran's nuclear program -- but after the relatively mild and constructive IAEA report on Iran's nuclear activities and now the release of Esfandiari -- either this is part of backroom deal-making between the US and Iran, or is part of a confidence builiding process that the Chinese or Europeans are coaxing Iran through.

Alternatively, Iran may just be on the edge of a kind of "charm offensive" that it is directing on its own to balance the bleat that will soon start from the neocon crowd these coming weeks.

-- Steve Clemons

James Fallows and I are both still in utter disbelief about what appeared in the New York Times yesterday regarding Bush's comments to biographer Robert Draper that he really didn't know much about why his policy on keeping the Iraqi military intact was reversed.

From the Times report:

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, "The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen."

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush's former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army's dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'" But, he added, "Again, Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff," referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

There are several layers that need to be peeled back on this revealing admission from Bush.

First, who made the decision if not Bush? From Charles Ferguson's prize-winning documentary, No End in Sight, we learn that CPA National Security Advisor Walter Slocombe had much to do with the decision.

On May 9, 2003, Walter Slocombe, L. Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith had a meeting discussing Iraq. A question came up: "What about the Iraqi military?" And according to Slocombe, no one said anything -- which was a response in itself. The decision to disband was made by Slocombe and Bremer. My source does not know if the decision went up to Rumsfeld or not -- but it did not go further to anyone else in the administration, including to the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, to the Secretary of State Colin Powell, to the Vice President, or to the President.

But then there is another question that just seems to SCREAM OUT.

When Bush & Co. realized that the administration's policy on the keeping the Iraq military intact and all of those soldiers employed had been flipped upside down, why didn't they reverse the decision? Why didn't Bush demand an immediate reversal?

According to former senior CPA Office of Reconstruction Special Initiatives chief Paul Hughes -- who is one of the few good guys in No End in Sight and who responded to a query of mine:

Steve Clemons: Why after the Iraq military had been disbanded -- and it was made clear that this was not consistent with President's Bush's position -- that the military was not immediately reconstituted/reassembled? Is there some technical reason why after a military is officially disbanded that that order could not have been rescinded -- and then the Iraqi military reconstituted?

Paul Hughes: In a nutshell, Bremer was empowered to make the decision and it could have only been rescinded by him. The trick was how to make that happen.

Jay Garner tried to get him to roll it back some and Bremer refused; I suspect it would have taken Rumsfeld to make it happen and we know where he was on the issue.

The president was aware of the plans to use the military but he never had his hand on the throttle. So when the Pentagon leadership decided to abolish the military, it felt no need to inform either the President or the NSA (Rice). He was out of the loop on this decision because his management style enabled others to do end-runs around him.

Another aspect of this issue concerns how you put toothpaste back in the tube. Once the order was announced, there was no turning back because at that moment we stopped being an army of liberators and became an army of occupation. Once the Iraqis saw us in that light there was no way to go back and change that.

Paul Hughes is probably right that when this decision was implemented, it affirmed what many Iraqis and Arab Muslims throughout the region feared: that US forces were not "an army of liberators and became an army of occupation."

But still. . .It is stunning to hear Bush himself admit his surprise that a policy this consequential to the Iraq effort had been reversed by his people -- and that he knew little about it. No curiousity? No fury?

Perhaps the single worst mistake in Bush's presidency despite the decision to invade Iraq in the first place and he tells Draper: "Yeah, I can't remember. . .[to Bremer] This is the policy, what happened? . . .Hadley's got notes on all of this stuff."

Stunning, frustrating, depressing honesty from George W. Bush.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Dan Rosen)

George W. Bush may be in Baghdad today, but that won't change the realities on the ground in Iraq.

The next month, the Bush administration is going to try and convince Americans that what most observers see happening in Iraq is not actually happening and that conversely, things are improving -- with no evidence.

Paul Krugman in his piece, "Snow Job in the Desert" fillets Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack for their role in the effort and compares the non-empirical assertions of Colin Powell on WMDs to Petraeus's coming assertions that the surge is working.

A difference I'd suggest to Krugman between Powell and Petraeus is that Powell was lied to by the administration for which he worked and was told that the intel in hand had come from multiple credible sources -- and not just the single, questionable source, later identified as "Curveball." Petraeus, in contrast, is actually a working part of the information collection and marketing operation on the surge.

My New America Foundation/American Strategy Program colleague Nir Rosen framed Iraq realities bluntly in an exchange with CNN's Tom Foreman. I think Rosen's grim read is right:

TOM FOREMAN, CNN ANCHOR, THIS WEEK AT WAR: Nir, let me start with you. Who is running the show in Baghdad? Or is anyone?

NIR ROSEN, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: Well it depends where you are. As it has been since April 9, 2003, when Baghdad fell to the Americans, militias have been running the show. Whoever has power in the given neighborhoods, whatever local warlord, he's the one running the show. The government is basically a theater. Whatever happens in the green zone doesn't matter. It's always been militia leaders, political leaders at the party level who control the various militias and the ministers, not the prime minister and not the Americans, certainly. it is various militias.

FOREMAN: Nir, based on what you are saying though the problem is there is no credible alternative is there?

ROSEN: There is no government to begin with. It's a collection of militias. And indeed, there is no alternative. The whole focus on the government in Baghdad is the -- problem is that -- in everybody's approach. In Iraq it used to be you could have a coup replace the government and the whole country followed. But now Iraqi is a collection of city states, Baghdad, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Mosul, Basra, Erbil, each one with its own warlords. They don't answer to Baghdad. Baghdad has no control over them. When we overthrew Saddam, we imposed one dictator after another. We didn't like Prime Minister Jaafari so we got rid of him and we put in his close ally, Maliki. And now the occupier is once again upset that the occupied people are not being sufficiently obedient. But it doesn't matter. We are past that stage. Iraq doesn't exist as a state anymore. The government has never existed. It has never brought in any services. Even the most fundamental service the government can provide, a monopoly over the use of violence, it doesn't provide that because it has never controlled the militias and militias are the ones that control the police and the army.

FOREMAN: So Nir, we keep hearing reports, though, nonetheless out of Baghdad. People saying that give us time, we are trying to get this government worked out. We are going to make some progress. Do you see any way that can happen?

ROSEN: No. This has been the case for the past would two years at least. There is no hope. There is no government. Neither side is interested in compromise and why should they? The Shias control Baghdad. They have removed the Sunnis from Baghdad, from Iraq's political future.

FOREMAN: What's going to change that if anything?

ROSEN: Nothing is going to change that. The Shias have actually expelled most of the Sunnis from Baghdad. It went from being a majority Sunni city. Now it is a majority Shia city. The last few pockets of Sunnis are slowly being purged by the police and the Mehdi army. It's now irrevocably a Shia city and Sunnis are just out. Unfortunately, Iraq has been completely remade and it is time to be honest. It is time for the American leaders to be honest and American military to be honest with their people.

There can be no reconciliation. This does -- the latest show we had a few days ago where they brought a few leaders together and pretended like they were going to reconcile, the Sunnis are still out of the government and they remain so and why should they be? They have been expelled from Iraq. The majority of the three million refugees that we have from the region, from Iraq are Sunni. The majority being internally displaced are Sunni. Of course, whatever agreement were to be reached, parliament would never ratify it anyway.

Krugman is right to put us all on alert for a month of "snow jobs" ahead.

Rosen is setting a benchmark for truth-telling in Iraq, and it would be constructive for the administration to either object to what he is sharing or to concede that his observations are closer than Petraeus to the on-the-ground truth.

-- Steve Clemons

This is off topic, but I enjoyed watching this YouTube video of 1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines mimic Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

I've not nothing worthwhile to add other than that the original frightened girl in Thriller was Ola Ray, who was a high school classmate of mine in Yokota, Japan and then went on to semi-glitzy fame.

-- Steve Clemons

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings -- Heinrich Heine (1821)

I hadn't paid much attention to the growing "banned books" problem in American schools and libraries, but I saw an ad on a Chicago train yesterday and dug in a bit.

Here are some of the books that have been "challenged" in 2007 and earlier years:

To Kill A Mockingbird -- Harper Lee
Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov
1984 -- George Orwell
Cather in the Rye -- J.D. Salinger
Grapes of Wrath -- John Steinbeck
Catch-22 -- Joseph Heller
Go Tell it on the Mountain -- James Baldwin
Harry Potter series -- J.K. Rowling

Here is the roster of most challenged books for 2006. And here the top 100 novels of the 20th century banned or challenged.

All the Harry Potter novels are targeted by fundamentalist Christian groups.  I don't believe in book banning, but I do wish my friends would read a bit less Rowling and a bit more of anything else. I haven't seen any of Andrew Sullivan's books on the list.  But neither did I see James Dobson's.

I had no idea that "book challenging" and "book banning" were so pervasive in this country. 

Not much else to say really -- but the struggle between reason and dogma requires us to keep our eyes and minds open.

-- Steve Clemons