Meanwhile, in Iran....

Continuing to focus on the Middle East, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's supporters lost a lot of ground in local elections, with reformists and other opponents gaining a majority of seats.

Compounding his setback was the success of Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential pragmatist and fierce critic of the president's radical policies. Mr Rafsanjani - whom Mr Ahmadinejad defeated in last year's presidential election - received the most votes in elections to the experts' assembly, a clerical body empowered to appoint and remove Iran's supreme leader. By contrast, Ayatollah Mohammed-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr Ahmadinejad's presumed spiritual mentor, came sixth.

Analysts attributed Mr Rafsanjani's resurgence to his newly-found status as a saviour of the reformists, the liberal movement that shunned him as a hated symbol of the establishment when it held power. Mr Rafsanjani has been increasingly identified with reformers since last year's presidential election and many voters turned to him to voice anger at Mr Ahmadinejad.

This is especially interesting given that Iran is a limited democracy at best, with meaningful elections only at the local level, and thousands of opposition candidates routinely banned from running.

It'll be interesting to see if Ahmadinejad moderates his behavior in response -- and if he survives the next presidential vote.

Iran, politics, midtopia

Showdown in Palestine

I haven't written about Palestine for a while. Just to catch up:

Hamas and Fatah are drifting toward open civil war, with kids getting killed and senior officials getting targeted, including the kidnapping of a top Fatah official.

Meanwhile, weapons smuggling goes on unabated, threatening peace talks with Israel and heightening the danger of civil war.

Amid it all, President Mahmoud Abbas vows to push ahead with early elections in a continuing showdown with Hamas.

Oddly, none of this has me despairing. The Hamas-Fatah split has needed resolving for a long, long time, and the papering over of their differences has been one of the biggest obstacles to a long-term peace deal. The militants in Hamas are being forced to confront the fact that their Israel policy is not the one most Palestinians prefer, which is why Abbas can threaten them with elections: they know they will lose. This confrontation will force Hamas to decide whether they will bow to the will of their electorate and moderate, or become an outlaw faction. The split could degenerate into rampant bloodshed, but it had to be addressed one way or the other.

As for the weapons smuggling, I don't understand the outrage. Why should only one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be armed? I recognize the destabilizing effect that pouring weapons into a burgeoning civil war can have, and so I oppose it on those practical grounds. And of course I oppose barbaric practices like firing unguided rockets into civilian areas. But as far as the mere act of acquiring weapons is concerned, this is a war: both sides can be expected to arm themselves as best they can.

I hope the Palestinians can avert a bloody spiral into internecine warfare. But more than that, I hope the current confrontation resolves the issue and lets the Palestinians negotiate for peace seriously and with a unified voice.

Hamas, Fatah, Israel, Palestine, politics, midtopia

Bayh bows out

Evan Bayh has decided not to run for president in 2008.

Meanwhile, John Edwards is in.

I voted for Edwards in 2004 so I'm happy to see this, but he needs to get a new schtick; "Two Americas" will be shopworn by 2008.

Hillary Clinton? Hate propoganda aside, she has carved out a very centrist position. But I'm not thrilled at the prospect of another two years of extreme polarization, and wonder how Clinton fatigue will work against her.

Barack Obama? Nice guy, and as someone who voted for Edwards I shouldn't cast stones about his inexperience. But I will anyway: he needs to get more seasoning before taking a shot at the top job. I'll give him serious consideration in 2012.

Tom Vilsack? I haven't had time to do much research on him. But he's got good experience credentials. I'll give him some thought.

politics, midtopia

Iraq, iraq, iraq....

Lots of stuff happening today.

Condoleeza Rice rejected the idea of talking to Iran and Syria, as suggested by the Iraq Study Group, saying the cost of a deal would be too high and that if Iran and Syria really want a stable Iraq they'll see that it happens anyway.

Heck, what do we need diplomacy for at all, then?

Meanwhile, President Bush is reportedly considering the "Go big" option, despite the unpopularity of that option with the public and the strain it would put on the military that he has steadfastly refused to expand.

While some key decisions haven't been made yet, the senior officials said the emerging strategy includes:

1. A shift in the primary U.S. military mission in Iraq from combat to training an expanded Iraqi army, generally in line with the Iraq Study Group's recommendations.

2. A possible short-term surge of as many as 40,000 more American troops to try to secure Baghdad, along with a permanent increase in the size of the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, which are badly strained by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Military commanders look warily at a surge, saying that even 20,000 more soldiers and Marines may not be available and wouldn't necessarily help reduce Iraq's violence.

"We would not surge without a purpose," Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, said Thursday. "And that purpose should be measurable."

3. A revised Iraq political strategy aimed at forging a "moderate center" of Shiite Muslim, Sunni Muslim Arab and Kurdish politicians that would bolster embattled Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. The goal would be to marginalize radical Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents.

4. More money to combat rampant unemployment among Iraqi youths and to advance reconstruction, much of it funneled to groups, areas and leaders who support Maliki and oppose the radicals.

5. Rejection of the study group's call for an urgent, broad new diplomatic initiative in the Middle East to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reach out to Iran and Syria.

Instead, the administration is considering convening a conference of Iraq and neighboring countries - excluding Iran and Syria - as part of an effort to pressure the two countries to stop interfering in Iraq.

Those plans dovetail nicely with a proposal put forth by Fred Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute, which calls for sending seven more brigades into Iraq to begin clear-and-hold operations, then pouring reconstruction aid into the cleared areas.

The plan got a withering response from E.J. Dionne, who ties it to tax cuts and a willingness to put other people's kids in harm's way.

My criticism is more prosaic: The plan reads like a do-over, what we should have done in 2003. I find it difficult to believe that such an approach will make a difference at this late date. Kagan is right that if we decide Iraq is important enough, we'll send the troops over and leave them there instead of rotating them out, allowing us to sustain a large troop presence for a long time.

But besides the damage that will do to the strategic readiness of our military, as well as recruiting and retention rates, what will 40,000 more troops accomplish? Most credible sources said we'd need 300,000 to 500,000 troops to adequately pacify the country in 2003. In 2006 Iraq is a far more unstable place, and even 40,000 more soldiers would only bring our strength up to about 180,000. That might be close to enough, considering most of the trouble occurs in the Sunni and ethnically mixed regions, accounting for about 40 percent of Iraq's population. But given the established nature of the insurgency, I find that doubtful.

Further, the Iraqi government opposes it.

Sigh. I asked for "get serious." But this isn't a big enough troop boost to qualify.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

A fence built with illegal labor

Oh, the irony.

A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company's work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.

After an immigration check in 1999 found undocumented workers on its payroll, Golden State promised to clean house. But when followup checks were made in 2004 and 2005, some of those same illegal workers were still on the job. In fact, U-S Attorney Carol Lam says as many as a third of the company's 750 workers may have been in the country illegally.

You've got to love the company pointing to its conviction as an example of why we need a guest-worker program. I don't have a philosophical problem with such a program, but it takes some chutzpah to argue that you knowingly kept illegals on the payroll because the government failed to provide enough legal immigrants.

Good to see the Feds going after the supply side of the problem, though, even if this is a rare, even token, case.

politics, midtopia

Belgium's "War of the Worlds"

Not particularly important, but kind of funny.

State television broke into regular programming late Wednesday with an urgent bulletin: The Dutch-speaking half of the country had declared independence and the king and queen had fled. Grainy pictures from the military airport showed dark silhouettes of a royal entourage boarding a plane.

Only after a half-hour did the station flash the message: "This is fiction."

It was too late. Many Belgians had already fallen for the hoax.

Frantic viewers flooded the call center of RTBF, the station that aired the stunt. Embassies called Belgian authorities to find out what was going on, while foreign journalists scrambled to get confirmation.

The network said it was merely trying to demonstrate the importance of debate on the future of Belgium, which harbors several linguistic and cultural divides. But most people were not amused.

I was, though.

Belgium, politics, midtopia

Quick! Hide the money!

Governmental transparency is good -- unless it involves legislative salaries.

Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., introduced a bill that would remove all information on House employees from public records....

Wicker’s spokesman, Kyle Steward, said the Web site is what prompted his boss’ interest in drafting legislation. Seward said Wicker plans to reintroduce the measure when the new Congress returns next month.

“While he is an advocate of the free flow of information, he does not think it adds to the public discourse to publish individual staff members’ salaries,” Steward said.

The bill is a direct reaction to LegiStorm, a site that went online a few months ago and allows easy access to, and comparison of, staff salary records.

I understand how he feels. My father was a professor at a big state university. He was particularly prominent in his field, and as a result was one of the highest paid professors at the school.

The university was required to make its top salaries public, and every year our local newspaper published the list, with my dad's name near the top. And every year my dad complained about his pay being splashed all over and talked about. He felt his privacy was being violated for no good reason.

His ire was understandable, but it ignored the same fact that Wicker's bill does: that the people in question are public employees, being paid out of the public purse. And the public's interest in knowing how its money is spent outweighs the privacy concerns of people who have chosen to work for governmental entities.

The same principle is why the pay of a public corporation's top executives are public domain: so shareholders can see how their money is being spent. If a CEO doesn't want his pay to be known, he should only work for privately-owned companies.

Wicker's bill died when the lame-duck session ended, but he says he plans to reintroduce it in the new session. Consider writing your representative to explain why passing it would be a bad idea. The public has the right to know the public's business.

politics, ethics, politics, midtopia

Jefferson blocked from committee seats

William Jefferson, D.-La., handily won his runoff for re-election, garnering 57 percent of the vote despite keeping $90,000 in FBI bribe money in his freezer.

Okay, the voters have spoken, even if what they said isn't particularly great. It happens from time to time: when I lived in New Jersey in the early 1990s, the mayor of Union City was re-elected while sitting in a jail cell.

But that doesn't mean all is forgiven, especially in the new ethics-conscious Democratic caucus.

House Democrats, insistent that they will hold lawmakers to higher standards, decided Tuesday that Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana will not return to an influential committee until a federal corruption investigation involving him is completed.

Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the Democratic Steering Committee had resolved that Jefferson, who last Saturday won a runoff election in his New Orleans district, will not be given back his spot on the Ways and Means Committee, the panel that determines tax and trade policies.

Good. Members shouldn't have committee seats taken away on mere allegations, but the weight of evidence in Jefferson's case justifies a vigorous response from the caucus. Especially when what's at stake is merely committee seats, not his seat in Congress.

The story also notes that Pelosi has a couple more headaches to deal with, in the person of James McDermott (who was criticized on Monday by the House ethics committee for letting reporters listen to an illegally taped phone call) and Alan Mollohan, who has been accused of using his position to enrich himself and his friends.

McDermott's transgression is both relatively minor (a leak to the press) and a decade old, so a rebuke strikes me as an appropriate sanction. He also faces a civil case over it, which could end up causing some real pain if he loses.

Mollohan was forced to quit the ethics committee because of the allegations against him, and he should remain off of it until they are resolved. The question at hand is whether he should be stripped of other posts. At the moment the facts don't sustain that: while like Jefferson he is the subject of a federal inquiry, in his case no concrete evidence has surfaced that clearly points to wrongdoing.

He should, however, not be given any post that would give him oversight over the FBI or other agencies that are investigating him.

Mollohan, McDermott, William Jefferson, ethics, politics, midtopia

Whither Iraq

We've heard the Iraq Study Group's opinion, and President Bush's response.

Now we get an elaboration of the latter: Bush will not be rushed into a decision.

Although the White House had initially suggested that Bush would deliver his speech on Iraq strategy before Christmas, he has decided to delay it until early next year.

Defending that decision, Bush said, "I will not be rushed into making a difficult decision ... a necessary decision."

Given Bush's stubborness and perceived inability to acknowledge his mistakes in Iraq, I can understand why such a statement would raise alarm bells that Bush will attempt to ignore reality and simply keep doing what he's been doing.

But those concerns are misplaced. First, Bush is right: important decisions should be made deliberately, not rushed. After all, it was a desire to act quickly while looking tough and decisive that led Congress to rush through the Patriot Act without proper deliberation, for instance.

More importantly, though, is that Republicans would probably string Bush up themselves if "deliberation" turned into foot-dragging and inaction. Change must come: it is up to Bush to decide if he wants to lead the charge or get run over by it.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing to weigh in on Iraq, and the LA Times reports that it increasingly favors "Go big."

Strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.

Of course, troop constraints mean "go big" would really be "go sort of large", with something south of 40,000 new troops. And even that would only be sustainable for a year or so. The plan also calls for increasing the size of the military by 20,000 soldiers, but recruiting and training timetables mean that wouldn't help much in the short term, and it wouldn't make a gigantic difference in the ability to sustain force levels.

And never mind the near-complete lack of public support for such a move. Even the military is sharply divided over the idea.

I also can't help asking: if more troops were the answer (and IMO, they were), why is this plan only being put forward now? Shouldn't we have sent in more troops long ago, when they still could have made a serious difference?

Given the risky nature of going big or doubling down or whatever it will eventually be called, any such plan must also include yardsticks for success, with a plan to call it off if the objectives are not being met. Otherwise we risk an open-ended, ever-growing commitment like we had in Vietnam, where we kept sending more and more troops because nobody wanted to be the one who "lost" Vietnam. The result, beyond the additional lives and money lost, was a shattered military and the emergence of a risk-averse national psyche.

But at least we've now got the debate bookended by what I've long called for: "get serious or get out." At this point in the war I favor the latter, but if we choose the former and go about it intelligently, I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Prager gets an ally!

In the brouhaha over Rep. Keith Ellison saying he intends to be sworn in on the Koran, Dennis Prager has found a high-profile friend -- (fired) judge Roy Moore.

His take: Congress should refuse to seat Ellison in the name of religious freedom.

I'm not making that up.

Moore, you may recall, is the Alabama state Supreme Court justice who was fired for installing a two-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of his courthouse in the dead of night, then refusing court orders to remove it.

He has the chutzpah to write the following....

To support the Constitution of the United States one must uphold an underlying principle of that document, liberty of conscience, which is the right of every person to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, without interference by the government.

...and then proceed to carve out a Muslim exception, justifying it by pointing to the words and deeds of extremist Muslims and saying such actions prove that Islam as a whole is incompatible with America.

That's like pointing to Eric Rudolph and claiming that Christianity is incompatible with the Olympics.

Moore's summation:

Enough evidence exists for Congress to question Ellison's qualifications to be a member of Congress as well as his commitment to the Constitution in view of his apparent determination to embrace the Quran and an Islamic philosophy directly contrary to the principles of the Constitution. But common sense alone dictates that in the midst of a war with Islamic terrorists we should not place someone in a position of great power who shares their doctrine.

Bleh.

Eric Rudolph, by the way, recently complained that the conditions of his imprisonment are designed to drive him insane. Sorry, Eric, but that train left the station years ago.

Eric Rudolph, Roy Moore, religion, politics, midtopia

Sen. Tim Johnson hospitalized

The Democrat reportedly suffered a stroke.

I'll get into this in more detail later as time and information allow. Beyond the personal implications for Johnson and his family, if he is unable to serve his replacement will be named by the state government, which is dominated by Republicans. That would probably lead to a 50-50 split in the Senate, which would throw control of that body back to Republicans thanks to the vice president's tie-breaking vote.

Just when you thought it was over....

Update: As the commenter noted, it wasn't a stroke and doesn't appear to be serious -- although they're not saying what it was.

Update II: Johnson is now in critical condition after brain surgery. The problem was a "congenital arteriovenous malformation", which causes tangled blood vessels.

The surgery was apparently successful and the prognosis is good.

Tim Johnson, politics, midtopia

The right words, but hear that siren call?

In yet another sign of how firmly the pendulum has swung to the middle, lobbyists are on the march -- with centrists in their sights.

One of the earliest signs that life for Democrats would be different in the majority came at a post-election event sponsored by the New Democrat Coalition, the pro-business group of centrist Democrats.

Previous affairs drew at most 20 lobbyists, but the “meet-and-greet” at Nortel’s Washington office two days after Democrats swept to power drew around 60 mostly high-tech lobbyists looking to build a relationship, according to Kevin Lawlor, the spokesman for New Democrat Coalition (NDC) Chairwoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.).

Worried about what the Democratic Congress may mean for their business clients, to say nothing of the new limits on member access Democrats may impose as part of an ethics reform package, lobbyists have tried hard in the weeks following the election to build new links to the new majority.

One favored path has been through moderate to conservative blocs like the New Democrats and the Blue Dogs, who are a group of budget-minded conservative Democrats mostly from Southern states.

Now the cynical or pessimistic (okay, realistic) among you, may see this as a harbinger of bad things to come, as the huge Niagara Falls of political cash overwhelms yet another class of idealistic freshmen and turns them into greedy, money-grubbing captives of their special interests.

And in the long run, you're probably right; few people resist the temptation forever. But in the short run, there is still hope, because the Democrats keep promising concrete things that they can be judged on.

emocrats taking control of Congress next month say they will try to ban for the remainder of fiscal 2007 the special-interest "pork" projects that got Republicans in so much trouble with voters in the November elections.

"We will place a moratorium on all earmarks until a reformed process is put in place," the incoming Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House appropriations panels, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, said late on Monday.

That won't eliminate the power of special interests, of course, but it would short-circuit one of the most egregious ways they extract direct favors.

The article was worthwhile simply for the spectacle of seeing Byrd, an earmark king, denouncing earmarks. You could almost see Nancy Pelosi behind him, twisting his arm until he could touch his own shoulder blade with the flat of his palm.

But having said it, they'll be hard-pressed to back off on it. And no one will be impressed if they try to weasel out of it by saying they meant no new earmarks -- while allowing all the old ones to slip comfortably through.

Wait and see.... Wait and see....

corruption, politics, midtopia

The perils of restricting free speech

As all of you undoubtedly know by now, Iran is hosting a conference on the Holocaust. Billed as an academic inquiry, the thinly-veiled gathering of Holocaust deniers has drawn international criticism.

Let's be clear here. Holocaust deniers rank right up there with flat-earthers as people not to be taken seriously. They're a bit like creationists, pointing to bits and pieces here and there, or building elaborate theories based on the flimsiest conjectures, all while ignoring the towering mountains of evidence all around them.

But frankly I think the conference mostly demonstrates why countries like Germany and Austria are misguided when they make denying the Holocaust a crime.

Why? Because by banning discussion of the topic, they make racist, conspiratorial fools like David Duke look reasonable, even civic-minded. From his website:

In some Western nations, to diverge even slightly from Holocaust orthodoxy will cause an historian to face not only a loss of academic career but also imprisonment.

The main theme of the Holocaust Conference is that there must be freedom of speech on this subject as on all others. Free speech, inquiry and debate is the only way to learn the truth on any issue. Many Western governments have imprisoned many academics for simply expressing their historical opinions on the Holocaust.

For instance, world-renowned historian David Irving at this moment sits in a prison near Vienna, Austria for simply stating his historical opinion about Auschwitz in a lecture in Austria in 1989. German researcher/chemist Gemar Rudolf faces years of imprisonment for simply publishing a forensic analysis that challenged the authenticity of alleged Auschwitz gas chambers...

First, freedom of speech is a vital human right. It is the cornerstone of all other rights, because without freedom of speech no one has to the right to even freely know and learn of the abrogation of other rights affecting human freedom and survival. That is why the American founding fathers put freedom of speech, press and religion as the first and highest of the Bill of Rights.

Second, freedom of speech and debate are absolutely vital for the truth to prevail. If one side of any controversial issue can suppress the voice of opposition, we cannot arrive at the certainty of any truth. If academics and citizens can be career and monetarily blackmailed; if they can be threatened with firings, loss of income, or imprisonment from simply sincerely pursuing an historical inquiry and publishing it, how can the truth be fairly arrived at?

See? Duke is simply asking for the right to speak freely, and may the best idea win. How can you disagree with him? You can't; he's right. And by banning him you give him the opportunity not only to indulge his paranoid fantasies ("Look! Look! I'm being repressed!") but to cloak himself in the language of light and freedom.

Never mind that he's a lying loon. He also writes:

I and Davidduke.com take no hard position on the historical accuracy of the Holocaust. Obviously, Jews, as well as other nationalities suffered great losses during the Second World War.

But at the conference in Iran:

On Monday, Mr. Duke asserted that the gas chambers in which millions of Jews perished did not actually exist. In prepared remarks published by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, he contended that the depiction of Jews as the “overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine.”

Hmmm... no hard position, except the gas chambers didn't exist. Sure, Dave.

See what happened there? We gave Duke some light, and exposed him for a fraud. That's how free speech works; while bad ideas are never actually banished, they lose their ability to influence the mainstream. Banning bad ideas merely gives bad ideas credibility and a certain outlaw panache.

I recognize that the Holocaust is a much more provocative and painful topic in Europe than it is here in the States. And I can even understand -- though not agree with -- the feeling that such talk needed to be controlled immediately after the war. But 60 years have passed; three generations have been born since then, more than enough time to get some historical distance on those dark days. Holocaust censorship now does more harm than good, and should be stopped.

Update: Duke goes on CNN and calls Wolf Blitzer a "Jewish extremist." And that was before he got really nutty.

free speech, civil liberties, Holocaust, Iran, politics, midtopia

Why does anyone read WorldNetDaily?

Some conservative bloggers are fond of citing the Richard Mellon Scaife-backed WorldNetDaily or its evil twin, NewsMax, to support their arguments. When I criticize such sources, I get accused of attacking the source instead of attacking the argument.

Enter the Captain. I view Captain's Quarters the same way I view Antonin Scalia -- I disagree with much of what he says, but there's no denying that he is smart and thoughtful. He's one of the most influential conservative bloggers out there.

Here's what he has to say about WND:

While this article is an opinion column and therefore slightly less egregious than the news article from last month, it uses some of the same tricks seen in that WND exclusive. It references vague 'studies' without ever naming them or providing links to them. It assumes that a food element consumed for thousands of years in Asia in significant amounts without turning it into a large version of Fire Island has suddenly begun feminizing Americans.

WND reminds me of the National Enquirer. It sometimes gets stories right, and most of the time has at least some elements of truth. More often than they should, WND relies on hyperbole and outrageous exaggeration to draw attention to its political agenda. Readers who know this can pick their way through the chaff -- but those readers know better than to waste their time at WND.

The "last month" article he refers to is this one.

The WND article that triggered all this is here.

Loons.

WorldNetDaily, blogging, politics, midtopia

The nature of civil war

James Traub, one of my favorite writers, has a piece in this Sunday's New York Times on Iraq and civil wars in general. He quotes James Fearon, a Stanford University expert on civil conflicts, who ticks off the death toll, the massive refugee flows, the major players, and says "by any reasonable definition, Iraq is in the midst of a civil war."

But that's not really the point of this post, which is to delve into what we might expect in the future as Iraq is consumed by sectarian conflict.

Scholars and diplomats who have closely studied civil wars describe them almost as forces of nature, grinding on until the parties exhaust themselves, shredding bonds that cannot be stitched back together even long years after the killing stops.

Wars that do not end quickly -- as the Rwanda civil war did, for instance -- tend to drag on for years. Take Northern Ireland, for example, or (as the article does) Bosnia and Lebanon. All three continued until everyone finally recognized that they were not going to win by force alone and decided that just about any alternative, including compromise with hated enemies, was better than continuing to fight.

In Lebanon -- perhaps the best parallel for Iraq -- that came only after 5 percent of the population was killed or wounded and half had become refugees. Translated to Iraq, those numbers would mean a war that caused 1.3 million casualties and uprooted 13 million people.

The good news, I suppose, is that we're already making excellent headway on those numbers, with death estimates in the 100,000-plus range and 3.4 million refugees.

Given that civil wars are driven by grievances rooted in tribal, religous and ethnic divisions, it's possible to view an Iraq civil war as inevitable. In this instance we were the catalyst, knocking over the dictator that kept the lid on the bubbling pot. But Saddam wasn't going to live forever, and when he finally shuffled off the scene the suppressed tensions were likely to explode anyway. And one could argue that it's better for that to happen sooner rather than later -- otherwise the grievances keep piling up and make the subsequent spasm of violence that much more gruesome.

So what happens if civil war is indeed in Iraq's future? Assuming the Kurds don't simply secede and the Shiites don't overrun the Sunni, this:

When the sectarian combatants finally do exhaust themselves, Iraq will need a great deal of outside help, though not the kind it has received so far. Civil wars liquidate the trust among parties that makes settlements possible; outsiders must act as guarantors and, usually, peacekeepers. And they have to be prepared to make a major commitment: NATO put 60,000 troops in Bosnia, with a population less than one-sixth that of Iraq, to police the Dayton Accords that ended the war. Today 1,900 soldiers from the European Union are sufficient to do the job.

For Iraq, that means returning in several years as peacekeepers, 400,000 strong -- the same number, not coincidentally, that we should have gone in with in the first place. And it probably won't be us doing it, but a coalition of non-Western forces, perhaps under UN flag, that won't rekindle the anti-Western resistance our presence has provoked.

Perhaps from the perspective of history our invasion of Iraq, flawed as it was, will not be viewed as a horrible catastrophe that caused all sorts of problems in the Mideast. Instead, it will be viewed as the event that merely triggered a catastrophe that was coming anyway. It's a measure of our attenuated ambitions that such a historical verdict might be something for us to hope for.

civil war, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Regional winners and losers in the 110th Congress

Technical note: You may see several versions of this post over the next few hours, as it is my first attempt to include a table with a post. If it looks weird in your browser, let me know.

The Democrats have nailed down most of their committee assignments for the new Congress. Much has been made of the race and gender of the new chairmen and chairwomen. But what does that tell us about how business will be conducted come January?

Beyond the politics of the individual chairmen, consider the way power shifted regionally.

SENATE

Committee	Former chairman	Incoming chairman
Aging	Gordon Smith (R-Ore.)	Herb Kohl (D-Wis.)
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry	Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)	Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)
Appropriations	Thad Cochran (R-Miss.)	Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.)
Armed Services Committee	John Warner (R-Va.)	Carl Levin (D-Mich.)
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs	Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)	Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.)
Budget	Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)	Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)
Commerce, Science, and Transportation	Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)	Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Energy and Natural Resources	Pete Domenici (R-N.M.)	Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.)
Environment and Public Works	James Inhofe (R-Okla.)	Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
Ethics	Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)	Tim Johnson (D-S.D.)
Finance	Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)	Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
Foreign Relations	Pete Domenici (R-N.M.)	Joe Biden (D-Del.)
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions	Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.)	Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)
Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs	Susan Collins (R-Maine)	Joe Lieberman (I/D-Conn.)
Indian Affairs	John McCain (R-Ariz.)	Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.)
Intelligence	Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)	Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
Judiciary	Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)	Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
Rules and Administration	Trent Lott (R-Miss.)	Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Small Business and Entrepreneurship	Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)	John Kerry (D-Mass.)
Veterans' Affairs	Larry Craig (R-Idaho)	Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)

Analysis: Power shifted generally from the middle and South to California, New England and the Upper Midwest. Mississippi and Maine each lost two chairmanships, New Mexico and Iowa broke even, while Hawaii, California, North Dakota, West Virginia, Connecticut and Massachusetts each gained two. The middle South remains shut out.


HOUSE

Committee	Former chairman	Incoming chairman
Agriculture	Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)	Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)
Appropriations	Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.)	David Obey (D-Wis.)*
Armed Services	Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.)	Ike Skelton (D-Mo.)
Budget	Jim Nussle (R-Iowa)	John Spratt (D-S.C.)
Education and the Workforce	Howard McKeon (R-Calif.)	George Miller (D-Calif.)
Energy and Commerce	Joe Barton (R-Texas)	John Dingell (D-Mich.)
Ethics	Doc Hastings (R-Wash.)	Howard Berman (D-Calif.)
Financial Services	Michael Oxley (R-Ohio)	Barney Frank (D-Mass.)
Government Reform	Tom Davis (R-Va.)	Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.)
Homeland Security	Peter King (R-N.Y.)	Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)
House Administration	Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.)	Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Calif.)
Intelligence	Peter Hoekstra (R. Mich.)	Silvestre Reyes (D-.N.Y.)
International Relations	Henry Hyde (R-Ill.)	Tom Lantos (D-Calif.)
Judiciary	James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.)	John Conyers (D-Mich.)
Resources	Richard Pombo (R-Calif.)	Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.)
Rules	David Dreier (R-Calif.)	Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.)
Science	Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.)	Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.)
Small Business	Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.)	Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.)
Transportation and Infrastructure	Don Young (R-Alaska)	James Oberstar (D-Minn.)
Veterans' Affairs	Steve Buyer (R-Ind.)	Bob Filner (D-Calif.)
Ways and Means	Bill Thomas (R-Calif.)	Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.)

Analysis: A more muddied picture, but generally power shifted from Virginia and the Central Midwest -- Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio -- to New England, the Upper Midwest and the South. Alaska, again, lost its only chairmanship. Texas, California, Wisconsin and Michigan broke even; New York went from two to three chairmanships. The West remains entirely shut out.

Looking at specific subject areas, you can predict what sort of legislation will make it out of certain committees in both houses:

Agriculture: Midwest (Minnesota, Iowa) takes over from the South (Georgia, Virginia). Among other things, might the dairy subsidy system (which has long penalized farmers in the Upper Midwest) be in for a reform effort? Also expect efforts to increase tax credits for ethanol production.

Energy: The House chairmanship stays in New Mexico, but the Senate chair shifts from Texas to Michigan. Look for fewer "drill more!" solutions and more emphasis on alternative energy. ANWR will remain untouched.

Transportation: The Alaskan stranglehold that led to such excesses as the "Bridge to Nowhere" is gone, replaced by a Hawaiian and a Minnesotan. Look for a greater emphasis on air travel. Further, with both states sharing large port facilities, expect stepped up efforts on port security and infrastructure.

Anyone see any other patterns of significance? Point 'em out!

politics, midtopia

Democrats still sounding good

As the lame-duck session of Congress drew to a close, the Democrats are still managing to make the right noises on reform.

Several days ago, they announced the new Congress would work a five-day week -- a far cry from the current Congress, which was lackadaisical on a historic scale, tending to put in three-day weeks and notching the fewest days of work of any Congress since reliable records were first compiled in 1948.

One legislator's complaint, while understandable, isn't likely to land on many sympathetic ears:

But Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said: "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families, that's what this says."

Right. Tell it to all the people who have to do such things every day. Maybe this will make him more sympathetic to working conditions, labor laws and bills dealing with child care and flexible scheduling.

Opponents have a point when they say that lawmakers' work away from Washington can be just as important as the work done in the Capitol. But it's hard to argue things are fine when this same light-load Congress failed to pass nine of 11 appropriations bills, which after all is their main job.

The news provoked some interesting perspectives from WaPo readers, including several who weren't thrilled at the prospect of a Congress with more time to do mischief.

Separately, the Democrats also blocked a proposed Congressional pay raise unless Congress also ups the minimum wage. It's a bit of a gimmick -- the pay raise will go into effect in several weeks unless Congress votes to block it again. And several critics objected to it being tied to the minimum wage, claiming the two issues aren't related. And they're right to an extent. One involves Congress changing its own pay structure; the other involves the government intruding on private pay structures nationwide.

But I for one don't mind. Legislators are well-paid already, so it's hard to show an overwhelming need for a pay raise. In fact, indexing Congressional pay to inflation was a way for Congress to avoid the politically unpopular act of voting itself a pay increase while still getting the money.

And the minimum wage is exactly that -- a minimum -- and hasn't been increased in nearly 10 years. Raising it isn't going to have a major effect on the economy; it will simply keep the minimum wage from becoming irrelevant.

As with many things, however, we must now wait and see what the Democrats actually do when they take control. The table has been set; let's see what they serve up.

ethics, politics, midtopia

Ruh-roh

Meet Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Nice guy, by all accounts quite smart and hard working.

And stunningly ignorant.

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?”

“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up a l Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.

Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil....

And Hezbollah? I asked him. What are they?

“Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah...”

Let me help you out, Silvestre. They're a Shiite militia in Lebanon backed by Syria and Iran.

Yeepers.

Does it make anyone feel better to know that key Republicans and FBI counterterrorism officials fared poorly on the same test? Cuz it sure doesn't do anything for me. These guys are paid $160,000 a year to understand this stuff. The fact that I am apparently more familiar with the forces at play than they are is -- well, pick your adjective: absurd? appalling? frightening?

But it goes a long way towards explaining why we've done such a horrible job in Iraq.

As I noted above, Reyes is by all accounts a very smart man. Let's hope he's a quick study, because the nation is going to need it.

terrorism, Islam, Iraq, Reyes, politics, midtopia

Immigration and crime

It seems obvious that new immigrants -- and especially illegal immigrants -- bring with them various short-term ills, including increased crime. There's nothing particularly surprising about that belief; crime is often correlated to poverty and limited opportunity, and new immigrants tend to be poor and face barriers of language and culture that can make social mobility difficult.

One problem though; the popular belief appears to be untrue. As immigration has skyrocketed, crime has fallen.

Ramiro Martinez Jr., a professor of criminal justice at Florida International University, has sifted through homicide records in border cities like San Diego and El Paso, both heavily populated by Mexican immigrants, both places where violent crime has fallen significantly in recent years. “Almost without exception,” he told me, “I’ve discovered that the homicide rate for Hispanics was lower than for other groups, even though their poverty rate was very high, if not the highest, in these metropolitan areas.” He found the same thing in the Haitian neighborhoods of Miami. In his book “New York Murder Mystery,” the criminologist Andrew Karmen examined the trend in New York City and likewise found that the “disproportionately youthful, male and poor immigrants” who arrived during the 1980s and 1990s “were surprisingly law-abiding” and that their settlement into once-decaying neighborhoods helped “put a brake on spiraling crime rates.”

The article quotes other researchers who found similar things. And even David Brooks has noted that as illegal immigration surged in the 1990s, the violent crime rate fell by 57 percent.

There are plenty of alternative explanations for doubters. Perhaps the effect of immigrants was simply overwhelmed by other factors, like the booming economy. One such critic also notes that illegals are less likely to report crime, thus masking the true crime rate in immigrant neighborhoods.

But that doesn't truly explain experiences like this:

In June, Sampson and I drove out to a neighborhood in Little Village, Chicago’s largest Hispanic community. The area we visited is decidedly poor: in terms of per capita income, 84 percent of Chicago neighborhoods are better off and 99 percent have a greater proportion of residents with a high-school education. As we made our way down a side street, Sampson noted that many of the residents make their living as domestic workers and in other low-wage occupations, often paid off the books because they are undocumented. In places of such concentrated disadvantage, a certain level of violence and social disorder is assumed to be inevitable.

As we strolled around, Sampson paused on occasion to make a mental note of potential trouble signs: an alley strewn with garbage nobody had bothered to pick up; a sign in Spanish in several windows, complaining about the lack of a park in the vicinity where children can play. Yet for all of this, the neighborhood was strikingly quiet. And, according to the data Sampson has collected, it is surprisingly safe. The burglary rate in the neighborhood is in the bottom fifth of the city. The overall crime rate is nearly in the bottom third.

Sampson's theory is that many Mexican immigrant communities are tight-knit, with neighbors watching out for neighbors. He also notes that Mexican immigrants are more likely to be married than either blacks or whites. In short, they're more socially conservative, even if they are here illegally.

Two more interesting things researchers have found. One, second-generation immigrants are substantially more likely to commit crimes than their parents; and third-generation immigrants are even more likely still. So the more Americanized they become, the more criminally inclined they become.

Second, one reason why immigrant neighborhoods are linked to crime in the public eye:

The experiment drew on interviews with more than 3,500 Chicago residents, each of whom was asked how serious problems like loitering and public drinking were where they lived. The responses were compared with the actual level of chaos in the neighborhood, culled from police data and by having researchers drive along hundreds of blocks to document every sign of decay and disorder they could spot.

The social and ethnic composition of a neighborhood turned out to have a profound bearing on how residents of Chicago perceived it, irrespective of the actual conditions on the streets. “In particular,” Sampson and Raudenbush found, “the proportion of blacks and the proportion of Latinos in a neighborhood were related positively and significantly to perceived disorder.” Once you adjusted for the ethnic, racial and class composition of a community, “much of the variation in levels of disorder that appeared to be explained by what residents saw was spurious.”

In other words, the fact that people think neighborhoods with large concentrations of brown-skinned immigrants are unsafe makes sense in light of popular stereotypes and subliminal associations. But that doesn’t mean there is any rational basis for their fears.

When something is this counterintuitive, I'm reluctant to accept it at face value. But it's something to consider, at any rate.

crime, immigration, race, politics, midtopia

Ethics committee rebukes GOP over Foley

That's a sexy headline, but for the most part there's nothing here we didn't already know. The GOP leadership knew about the relatively tame e-mails, and evinced roughly zero curiosity over them. A failing, to be sure, but an understandable one. When you hear about a friend of yours being friendly with the kids, your first thought generally isn't "I wonder if he's a pedophile?"

This is not to let them off the hook. As the full report (pdf) states, on Page 74:

The Investigative Subcommittee does not conclude, however, that the e-mails sent to the former Alexander page were merely "overly friendly", as they have often been described... When read carefully and in context, the e-mails reflect inappropriate communications... (the committee) finds no merit to any of hte suggested justifications by Rep. Foley or anyone on his staff for the tone or content of the e-mails....

The emails clearly provided sufficient basis to at the very least confront Rep. Foley.

So while resignations aren't in order, severe shaming and political beatings are.

There is, however, the matter of the far-more-lurid instant messages. The IMs were highly incriminating. If anyone knew about them and did nothing, they should be sanctioned.

But on page 75 the report flatly states that there is no evidence anyone in the House knew of the IMs prior to their publication by ABC.

Finally, who provided the e-mails and IMs to ABC? The e-mails are easy; they had been circulating among media outlets for nearly a year, to the poitn that by this summer Foley's office assumed that every reporter they talked to knew about the e-mails. It was only a matter of time before someone -- in this case, ABC -- published them.

And the IMs? There was a lot of speculation that they were released by Democratic sources. but it turns out it was simply a former page (see page 62 of the report). The IMs had been circulating among the pages for years, but none of them thought to send them to the media until the e-mail story broke.

And so the story ends. The GOP leadership gets slapped around, but they already received most of their comeuppance at the polls. And all the Republican conspiracy theories about a Democratic "October surprise" prove false.

corruption, Foley, politics, midtopia

What does this say about terror?

Police have foiled a plot -- and I use the term loosely -- to "blow up" a Chicago-area shopping mall, as the AP headline breathlessly reports.

A Muslim convert who talked about his desire to wage jihad against civilians was charged Friday in a plot to set off hand grenades at a shopping mall at the height of the Christmas rush, authorities said.

Blow up a mall? He wanted four hand grenades, and planned to set them off in garbage cans. Not particularly nice, but a far cry from "blowing up" a mall.

Let's note two other things about this case:

1. As usually happens, he never got close to carrying out his plan. He was arrested when he met with an undercover agent to trade stereo speakers for the grenades.

2. He was caught through old-fashioned police work: a tip from an acquaintance, followed by a police sting operation.

Thus this case demonstrates two things:

1. The low threat actually posed by terrorists. Most of the people we've been arresting lately are low-capability loons. We haven't sniffed a serious domestic plot since shortly after 9/11.

2. Law enforcement is the proper venue for catching and punishing would-be terrorists, with a supporting role provided by the military and intelligence agencies. And they don't need to dramatically curtail civil liberties to do it.

I'm not suggesting that terrorism is something to be taken lightly; far from it. We should take it very seriously indeed, as these police did. Beyond catching bad guys, we should take reasonable and prudent security measures to make us less vulnerable to attack in the first place. And the perps should be punished severely.

But we do not need to overreact.

For more detail on that approach, check out "Terror: a military or a criminal problem" in my sidebar, under "Notable Posts".

civil+liberties, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Xenophobia

Where does the "War on Terror" end and simple racism begin?

In Texas.

A plan to build a mosque in this Houston suburb has triggered a neighborhood dispute, with community members warning the place will become a terrorist hotbed and one man threatening to hold pig races on Fridays just to offend the Muslims.

What did the Muslims do? They bought an 11-acre parcel for $1.1 million, on which they plan to build the mosque, and asked a neighbor to stop pasturing his cattle on it. He got mad and vowed to do pig races.

It could all be a misunderstanding:

Baker ... mistakenly thought the Muslims also wanted him off the land his family has lived on for more than 100 years.

Except Baker still seeks his revenge.

Though he now concedes the Muslims are probably not after his land, Baker said he is obligated to go through with the pig races, probably within the next few weeks, because “I would be like a total idiot if I didn’t. I’d be the laughingstock now because I’ve gone too far.”

Meanwhile, another resident has set up an anti-Islamic Web site that claims residents will have to listen to a call to prayer five times a day, keeps a running tally of terrorist attacks since 9/11 and provides the home addresses of some of the Muslim association members.

And the Sheriff has been fielding calls like this one:

Cynthia Blackman wrote Radack that the center was a security risk: “Would you and your family safely and comfortably live next to this 11-acre Muslim mosque and facilities?”

Xenophobia really brings out the stupid in people.

racism, Islam, religion, politics, midtopia

Bush on ISG: Don't hold your breath

In response to the Iraq Study Group's report (which I blogged about here), President Bush today essentially blew them off.

President Bush said today that the United States needs "a new approach" in Iraq, but he implicitly rejected a key recommendation of a bipartisan panel that issued a hard-hitting report yesterday: the holding of direct talks with Iran and Syria independently of other issues.

Beyond that, he continued to insist on "victory" in Iraq, despite rising criticism -- including from the ISG -- that his definition of victory is unachievable.

He also refused to acknowledge that his strategy has failed.

That's his right, of course, but those are not the words or actions of man who is open to major changes of course.

To be fair, it can be very hard for anyone -- and most especially someone with Bush's stubborn personality -- to be told that their plan has failed. It's doubly difficult when the message is delivered clearly, in public and in some measure by his dad (through family proxy James Baker).

And it doesn't get easier when Baker throws doubt on one of Bush's orginal reasons for invading.

Both Baker and Hamilton also questioned one of the Bush administration's original premises for the 2003 invasion -- that going into Iraq was necessary to defeat al Qaeda and other terrorist groups following the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

Asked directly by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) whether Iraq was central to the war on terror, Baker said "it may not have been when we first went in," even though he felt "it certainly is now."

Ouch. And I'd even dispute the "certainly is now" line. Sunni Iraqi leaders are already miffed with the foreign jihadists; once we leave those jihadists will be persona non grata in large parts of Iraq. Al Qaeda simply does not have much popular support among Iraqis of any stripe.

Administration officials said Bush will make a decision on Iraq strategy in the next few weeks. Let's hope his eventual decision is more promising than his initial reaction.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Quran dustup, revisited

A followup on the "controversy" over Keith Ellison's plan to be sworn in on a Koran.

Not only are Jewish and Muslim leaders alike demanding that Prager apologize; we have yet more examples of how he's simply wrong historically.

In his Nov. 28 column, Prager claimed that all members of Congress, including Jews, use a Christian Bible for the swearing-in ceremony.

However, members of Congress are sworn in together in a simple ceremony that only requires that the representatives raise their right hand. Individuals may carry a sacred text, but its presence isn't required. Representatives can bring in whatever they want, said Fred Beuttler, House of Representatives deputy historian.

In his column, Prager also claimed that no "Mormon official demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon." In 1997, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon), a Mormon, carried a Bible that included the Book of Mormon to his swearing-in ceremony. But Ellison's use of a Quran isn't without precedent. In 1999, Osman Siddique became the first Muslim to serve abroad as a U.S. ambassador, and he took his oath using both a Quran and a Bible.

I hope he continues to refuse to apologize. It's fun beating him black and blue with his own ignorance.

Keith Ellison, Dennis Prager, Islam, religion, politics, midtopia

The second battle of Pearl Harbor

The New York Times came up with the best Dec. 7 story, hands down -- a never-published article by their wartime correspondent on the astonishing salvage work after the Japanese attack.

The discussion of how they refloated the battleship West Virginia is incredible -- filling the gaping holes in her hull with concrete, attaching cofferdams to slowly raise her, gingerly moving her into drydock, then blasting the concrete out with dynamite so they could get to work on repairs. It was more of rebuilding than a repair, and came with its own hazards -- like the discovery of an unexploded 1,750-pound bomb deep in the ship's guts.

It's a classic story of the unheralded side of warfare, which is as moving and dramatic as any story of battlefield heroism.

Pearl Harbor, war, history, politics, midtopia

"Sink or Swim" in Iraq

It took me awhile, but I've finally read the entire ISG report.

There's nothing earth-shattering in their analysis of the current situation -- though they flatly reject "stay the course" and note that terrorists are a small part of the problem -- and nothing paradigm-shifting in their proposed solutions. But both are very solid, very reasonable. I came away with two impressions:

1. The report's biggest contribution may be a shifting of the debate, because it rather authoritatively makes assertions about various things that have been bones of contention for years. War opponents will be unhappy with its conclusion that Iraq is of critical interest to the U.S.; war supporters will be unhappy with a whole slew of things, mostly relating to the reality on the ground and the prospects for certain pet strategies. The analysis will be familiar to anyone who frequents centrist sites. So in a way, the ISG report is another triumph for moderates.

2. The fact that the conclusions are obvious, reasonable and workable says volumes about the alternate reality the Bush administration has been living in. Because it didn't take a genius or an expert to write this report; many, many bloggers and other observers have come up with many of the same recommendations. This is common sense stuff -- and the administration somehow missed it.

I have quibbles with some of their points, and questions about the workability of others, but the overall strategy looks solid -- and it's in large part the Democratic "fixed timetable" strategy, though I prefer to think of it as the "Sink or Swim" approach.

The report calls for "enhanced" (read "serious") diplomacy with Syria and Iran to tamp down the chaos in Iraq, along with efforts to resolve the overall Israeli-Arab conflict and reach a comprehensive peace involving Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Israel. Specifics include Israel returning the Golan Heights to Syria, Syria ceasing aid to Hezbollah, Syria ceasing to meddle in Lebanon, and Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist.

It calls for gradually pulling out U.S. combat forces while increasing the number of troops embedded with Iraqi units. At the same time, the Iraqi government must meet certain milestones to show that it is progressing toward a time when it can stand on their own. The intent is to send a message to the Iraqi government: we are pulling out regardless. We will continue to support you if you show yourself willing to take on your responsibilities, but we will not make an open-ended commitment of troops. And if you fail to meet the milestones, we will reduce our support accordingly.

Side benefits would include an increase in the resources available for Afghanistan (a tacit admission that the invasion of Iraq did, in fact, divert resources from Afghanistan), a lessening of the Arab anger provoked by our presence and a cost structure that the American people are more likely to support.

The specific milestones ISG recommends are laid out on pages 62 and 63 (overall, pages 80 and 81 of the pdf). They envision a legal dismantling of militias by May 2007, followed by provincial elections in June. Security-wise, it calls for Iraq to take over the Army in April, take control of all provinces by September, and be self-reliant (with U.S. support) by the end of 2007.

Given the pace of developments up until now, those are very ambitious goals, but I can support them. Best of all, the ISG suggests adhering to the withdrawal timetable even if Iraq doesn't meet its milestones. The net effect is that U.S. combat forces would be gone from Iraq by the end of 2007, leaving only advisors and trainers behind.

Some of the more explosive conclusions in the report involve intelligence and civilian-military relations.

The report gently but clearly states that the administration is in the habit of ignoring the advice of its generals, and making it clear that contrary views are unwelcome. Recommendation #46 reads: "The new Secretary of Defense should make every effort to build healthy civil-military relations, by creating an environment in which the senior military feel free to offer independent advice not only to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon but also to the President and the National Security Council, as envisioned in the Goldwater-Nichols legislation."

The commentary on intelligence is more scathing.

On readiness: "We were told that there are fewer than 10 analysts on the job at the Defense Intelligence Agency who have more than two years’ experience in analyzing the insurgency."

On telling the truth: "There is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases. A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

In other words, the administration set up the system to produce results it liked, rather than results that were useful.

Lots to chew on. My prediction: The Democrats will embrace the ISG plan and use it as a blueprint. Politically it's a godsend for them: a credible, bipartisan group coming up with a proposal that looks a lot like what many Democrats have been suggesting. War supporters will use the "cut and run" rhetoric at their peril now that the idea of a fixed timetable has received the imprimatur of the Baker Group. Bush will be hard-pressed to resist them, since "stay the course" clearly isn't working and his credibility on Iraq is about zero.

Some specific quotes and interesting points from the extended report, along with comments from me:

CURRENT SITUATION
In general: "However, the ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing. Many Iraqis are embracing sectarian identities. The lack of security impedes economic development. Most countries in the region are not playing a constructive role in support of Iraq, and some are undercutting stability."
Comment: Yep.

How important is Iraq? "Iraq is vital to regional and even global stability, and is critical to U.S. interests. It runs along the sectarian fault lines of Shia and Sunni Islam, and of Kurdish and Arab populations. It has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves. It is now a base of operations for international terrorism, including al Qaeda."
Comment: I'm not sure critical is the right word. No more critical than Israel, for example. If we pull out we will still have an interest in Iraq, but our national interest is not imperiled by a pullout. And I strongly disagree that Iraq will become a base of operations for terrorists. The Iraqis will clean house on those jokers once they don't have us to shoot at. Shiite Iran and the Shiite majority in Iraq simply have little use for Sunni fundamentalists, and the Sunni Iraqis tend to dislike extremist foreigners.

What about the terrorists? "Al Qaeda is responsible for a small portion of the violence in Iraq."
Comment: Demonstrating once again how badly the administration has debased the word "terrorist."

Death toll: "Attacks against civilians in October were four times higher than in January. Some 3,000 Iraqi civilians are killed every month."
Comment: That's 36,000 civilians a year by this conservative estimate. Saddam killed fewer people. And it's a huge number in a country of 26 million. Proportionally, it's as if 415,000 Americans were killed each year in political violence.

Scope of the violence: "Four of Iraq’s eighteen provinces are highly insecure— Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, and Salah ad Din. These provinces account for about 40 percent of Iraq’s population of 26 million."
Comment: And don't forget the 3.4 million internal and external refugees.

State of the Iraqi army: Units lack leadership, equipment, personnel, and support.

State of the Iraqi police: Substantially worse. Besides being riven by sectarian groups, they can't control crime and aren't equipped to deal with insurgents.

State of the Iraqi government: Riven by sectarian factions. Further, it appears uninterested in reform. "Maliki has publicly rejected a U.S. timetable to achieve certain benchmarks, ordered the removal of blockades around Sadr City, sought more control over Iraqi security forces, and resisted U.S. requests to move forward on reconciliation or on disbanding Shiite militias." And it's ineffectual. "The Iraqi government is not effectively providing its people with basic services: electricity, drinking water, sewage, health care, and education. In many sectors, production is below or hovers around prewar levels. In Baghdad and other unstable areas, the situation is much worse." Why? Five reasons. Services are sometimes provided on a sectarian basis; security is lacking; rampant corruption; not enough skilled technocrats; and a weak judiciary.
Comment: Which is why the government must prove it is both capable of governing and worth saving.

Economy: The good news: growing currency reserves, growing consumer imports, lots of new businesses and construction in secure areas. The bad news? tepid economic growth, 50 percent inflation, unemployment that is anywhere from 20 percent to 60 percent, and very little foreign investment. All if it worsened by corruption.

The region: "No country in the region wants a chaotic Iraq. Yet Iraq’s neighbors are doing little to help it, and some are undercutting its stability. Iraqis complain that neighbors are meddling in their affairs. When asked which of Iraq’s neighbors are intervening in Iraq, one senior Iraqi official replied, 'All of them.' "
Comment: It didn't help that when we invaded we openly boasted that a free and democratic Iraq would eventually transform the region. Guess what? The current players don't want to be transformed. That pretty much guaranteed they would oppose the venture with more vigor than they might have otherwise.

Iran and Syria: Generally supports the conventional wisdom that Iran is actively meddling while Syria engages in "malign neglect", looking the other way as weapons and fighters cross its border into Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and Gulf States: Haven't supported the Iraqi government in any substantial way.

Reconstruction aid: U.S. has committed about $34 billion to Iraq, but has gotten limited results and is reluctant to send more. International donors have pledged about $13 billion but so far delivered just $4 billion.
Comment: The foot-dragging from donors is traditional if detestable. In addition, the lack of security in Iraq makes reconstruction a difficult undertaking.

OPTIONS
Immediate withdrawal: Would be morally wrong, would produce greater sectarian violence, and could lead to regional instability.
Comment: The question, though, is whether staying will change that. Many observers think that a civil war is inevitable, almost necessary. If we pull out it will be short and very bloody. If we stay it will be drawn out and very bloody, with our troops caught in the middle and serving as a distraction. I agree with the "morally wrong" part, but on that basis I'm only willing to remain if there are signs the Iraqi government is shaping up.

Staying the course: "Current U.S. policy is not working, as the level of violence in Iraq is rising and the government is not advancing national reconciliation. Making no changes in policy would simply delay the day of reckoning at a high cost."
Comment: Smackdown!

More troops: "Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation.... Meanwhile, America’s military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence."
Comment: What they fail to say -- because they're looking forward, not back -- is that this could have been avoided if we had provided adequate security to begin with, post-invasion, and prevented those sectarian differences from being given voice through the barrels of guns. Now it's too late.

Split Iraq into three parts: "The costs associated with devolving Iraq into three semiautonomous regions with loose central control would be too high.... A rapid devolution could result in mass population movements, collapse of the Iraqi security forces, strengthening of militias, ethnic cleansing, destabilization of neighboring states, or attempts by neighboring states to dominate Iraqi regions."
Comment: It still might be the least bad option available. And it may end up happening naturally as a resolution of civil war. But I agree it shouldn't be a policy we consciously pursue.

THE WAY FORWARD
Diplomacy: "The United States should 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. This support structure should include every country that has an interest in averting a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq’s neighbors—Iran and Syria among them.... it is clear that the Iraqi government cannot succeed in governing, defending, and sustaining itself by relying on U.S. military and economic support alone."
Comment: Gee, maybe Bush shouldn't have flipped off the rest of the world three years ago when we invaded.

The Arab-Israeli conflict: Get a permanent peace based on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and the return of the Golan Heights to Syria.
Comment: This hasn't been settled in 60 years, so it seems like an unnecessary complication to try to settle it as part of our Iraq strategy. But the ISG is correct that the Israel issue is at the heart of many Arab grievances, and until that problem is solved we'll continue to have problems in the Mideast. Their proposals are conventional, but the underlying message is clear: we took our eye off the ball when we invaded Iraq; we need to get back in the Arab-Israeli game to prevent further deterioration.

Iraqi milestones: "It should be unambiguous that continued U.S. political, military, and economic support for Iraq depends on the Iraqi government’s demonstrating political will and making substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance."
Comment: Agreed.

Permanent bases: "The President should state that the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq."
Comment: That seems prudent. I wonder why we haven't done it already?

De-Baathification: "Political reconciliation requires the reintegration of Baathists and Arab nationalists into national life, with the leading figures of Saddam Hussein’s regime excluded. The United States should encourage the return of qualified Iraqi professionals—Sunni or Shia, nationalist or ex-Baathist, Kurd or Turkmen or Christian or Arab—into the government."
Comment: Let me translate that for you. "George, disbanding the military and throwing all the Baathists out of government was a stupid move."

Kirkuk: Essentially punts on this question, which is a no-win issue; everybody wants control of this city, which brings with it control of rich oil fields.

Iraqi police: "The entire Iraqi National Police [and Border Police] should be transferred to the Ministry of Defense, where the police commando units will become part of the new Iraqi Army."
Comment: This is an effort to defang the Interior Ministry, home of sectarian death squads. It's a good idea for that reason alone. Message: You break the rules, we take away your toys. The ISG also urges restructuring the Interior Ministry. This plan is somewhat offset by a further ISG proposal to put the Facilities Protection Service under Interior Ministry control. But that's a case of picking the lesser of two evils.

HERE AT HOME
Accounting for the war: "Costs for the war in Iraq should be included in the President’s annual budget request, starting in FY 2008: the war is in its fourth year, and the normal budget process should not be circumvented. Funding requests for the war in Iraq should be presented clearly to Congress and the American people."
Comment: Amen. Keeping the cost of the war out of the budget has served to hide the true cost of Iraq and paint an overly rosy budget picture.

Iraq Study Group, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Pelosi makes nice with Hastert

In a gesture to the opposition, Nancy Pelosi has apparently offered outgoing Speaker Dennis Hastert some primo digs in the Capitol:

A well-placed GOP source says that Pelosi, in a random act of bipartisan kindness that will surely irk Members on both sides of the aisle, has decided to reward Hastert with the plush and coveted Capitol office suite now held by retiring Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.).

Awww, isn't that nice?

The story's a little more complicated than that, of course.

For one thing, the reason Hastert is looking for a new office is because Pelosi is taking over his suite -- a suite that has been in Republican hands for 50 years thanks to previous acts of kindness by successive Democratic Speakers. But those decisions, too, were unusual -- and had a lot to do with Democrats liking their existing digs.

Things changed when a new visitor's center -- a project overseen by the GOP-majority Capitol Preservation Commission -- chopped up the Democratic leadership complex, forcing them to scatter all over the building.

By taking over the suite that has come to be known as "the speaker's office", Pelosi will be able to consolidate her leadership team in one place.

That's the way the game is usually played, and there are no grounds to criticize Pelosi for playing it. Pelosi's offer to Hastert, on the other hand, is unusual, unexpected and unnecessary. Which makes it simply nice. And refreshing.

(h/t: Centrisity)

Hastert, Pelosi, politics, midtopia

Beta Blogger

With some trepidation I've upgraded the site to Blogger Beta. I'll have to put a lot of work into the site at some point to take full advantage of the upgrade. For now, you should notice some little things, like the "Labels" links at the bottom of each new post (and old posts, too, as I get around to updating them). Let me know if things aren't working like you'd expect.

politics, midtopia