Tea Party's Obamaphobia

I don't generally post comments I've seen from other sources - in this instance, a comment appended to an article in today's WashPo.  But this one was too good to pass up:

To Tea Party Republicans: Please note that the Community Organizer; the Tan Man in the Black House; the wet-behind-the-ears innocent who has never worked a day in his life; the illegal alien who is ineligible for the presidency; the crook who lied about his educational background since he actually flunked out of college and only squeaked through law school on Affirmative Action; the happy-go-lucky boy who just wants to have a good time riding around on Air Force One while white people run the country; the Monkey Man who lives only to take goods from hard-working white people and hand it over to the darkies; Buckwheat, who should be cleaning the Oval Office and not sitting in it:
WON. 
PS: Every one of my descriptions above was taken from an online post about the President of the United States, who, it turns out, has earned a descriptor you-all Tea Party folks forgot: statesman.

These clowns have wasted billions of dollars, slowed down the economy, deprived thousands of federal workers of badly needed paychecks.  They claim to have done all of this as a matter of reclaiming some sort of high ground, in defense of regular Americans. For some of them, perhaps such considerations reflect their true motives.  But for many of them, and for thousands of their Confederate-flag waving, race-baiting, gay-hating, Jesus-is-my-strength supporters, it was all about an irrational, visceral hatred of a black president with an Arab middle name.

Shame on all of them.  And shame on us as a nation if we permit people of their ilk ever again to bring this country to such a low point. 

Thomas Friedman Misses the Elephant in the Room

Thomas Friedman's column "Hassan Does Manhattan" (catchy title, no?  Whoever created it seems intent on reminding us that Tommy has always been the brightest boy in the room) is all about Iran's politics, Tommy's chats with members of Mr. Rouhani's entourage, and what "we should do."  And what he suggests - in terms of what kind of deal Obama should offer Iran - is fine --- well within the mainstream of ideas that various onlookers have suggested.  But it what's Friedman leaves out that blows me away.

Not once - nowhere - in his essay does Friedman mention either of two words: "Israel" and "Netanyahu." Yet anybody who's been paying attention (and  I want to assume that Friedman numbers himself among that crowd) knows that Mr. Netanyahu is going to have a lot to say about all of this, and that what he's likely to say is not going to jive well with what Friedman thinks "we should do."  The last thing Netanyahu wants is a rapprochement between the US and Iran that leaves Iran with any semblance of political stature and respect on the world stage, and especially in the Middle East - which, in Bibi's mind and in the minds of Israel's hard-right establishment, is rightfully and properly Israel's stage, if not Israel's court.

Recently, Daniel Levy wrote a brilliant piece that Friedman really ought to read - or ought to have read before writing his latest.  I quote:

At the moment . . .  Netanyahu is signaling that there is no realistic deal that would be acceptable to Israel. For instance, a consensus exists among experts and Western officials that Iran's right to enrich uranium -- in a limited manner and under international supervision -- for its civilian nuclear energy program will be a necessary part of any agreement. Netanyahu rejects this.

 

If Iran is willing to cut a deal that effectively provides a guarantee against a weaponization of its nuclear program, and that deal is acceptable to the president of the United States of America, why would Netanyahu not take yes for an answer?

 

The reason lies in Netanyahu's broader view of Israel's place in the region: The Israeli premier simply does not want an Islamic Republic of Iran that is a relatively independent and powerful actor. Israel has gotten used to a degree of regional hegemony and freedom of action -- notably military action -- that is almost unparalleled globally, especially for what is, after all, a rather small power. Israelis are understandably reluctant to give up any of that.

 

Israel's leadership seeks to maintain the convenient reality of a neighboring region populated by only two types of regimes. The first type is regimes with a degree of dependence on the United States, which necessitates severe limitations on challenging Israel (including diplomatically). The second type is regimes that are considered beyond the pale by the United States and as many other global actors as possible, and therefore unable to do serious damage to Israeli interests.

 

Israel's leadership would consider the emergence of a third type of regional actor -- one that is not overly deferential to Washington but also is not boycotted, and that even boasts a degree of economic, political, and military weight -- a deeply undesirable development. What's more, this threatens to become a not-uncommon feature of the Middle East: Just look at Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or Egypt before the July 3 coup, or an Iran that gets beyond its nuclear dispute and starts to normalize its relations with the West.

 

There are other reasons for Netanyahu to oppose any developments that would allow Iran to break free of its isolation and win acceptance as an important regional actor with which the West engages. The current standoff is an extremely useful way of distracting attention from the Palestinian issue, and a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran would likely shine more of a spotlight on Israel's own nuclear weapons capacity. But the key point to understand in interpreting Netanyahu's policy is this: While Obama has put aside changing the nature of the Islamic Republic's political system, Israel's leader is all about a commitment to regime change -- or failing that, regime isolation -- in Tehran. And he will pursue that goal even at the expense of a workable deal on the nuclear file.

 

Netanyahu's maximalism does not represent a wall-to-wall consensus within the Israeli establishment. There is another Israeli strand of thinking -- notably among retired security elites like former Mossad chiefs Meir Dagan and Efraim Halevy and former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin -- that holds that the challenges posed by Iran can be managed in different ways at different times. Others inside Israel's establishment acknowledge that the current period of unchallenged hegemony is unsustainable and that adjustments will have to be made. Some understand the efficacy of having an Iran more tied into the international system rather than isolated from it -- a deal on Iran's nuclear program, for instance, could also have its uses in limiting the maneuver room of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

 

But Netanyahu has rejected these positions. The prime minister is nothing if not consistent: He was similarly intractable when the Palestinian leadership and the Arab League put forth pragmatic proposals. While the PLO's leadership accepts Israel's existence, the 1967 lines, and an accommodation on Israeli settlements (including in East Jerusalem) by way of land swaps, Netanyahu has shifted the goal posts -- rejecting the 1967 lines and refusing to take yes for an answer. With the Arab League's "Arab Peace Initiative" offering recognition of Israel and comprehensive peace in exchange for withdrawal from the occupied territories, Netanyahu is again following this pattern of rejectionism.

 

Netanyahu is a deeply ideological leader with an unshakeable belief in a Greater Israel and regional hegemony. If this reading of him is accurate, it bodes ill for Israel's reaction to the nascent diplomacy between the United States and Iran. In the coming weeks and months, Netanyahu will likely dedicate himself to derailing any prospect for a diplomatic breakthrough.

 

In that mission he is, of course, not alone. He will be joined by American hawks and neoconservatives, Republicans who will oppose Obama on anything, and some Democrats with a more Israel-centric bent. Their efforts will be concentrated on escalating threats against Iran, increasing sanctions, and raising the bar to an impossibly high place on the terms of a nuclear deal. All this will serve -- intentionally, one has to assume -- to strengthen hard-liners in Tehran who are equally opposed to a deal.

 

 

Of course, the Iranian forces ranged against Rouhani's pragmatism do not need encouragement from Washington. But absent encouragement, they are not in the ascendancy -- and crucially, Rouhani appears to have the backing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for his diplomatic outreach. Currently, the difference among the three capitals -- Washington, Tehran, and Jerusalem -- is that only in Jerusalem does a representative of the hard-line faction, rather than the pragmatic camp, hold the most senior political office.

 

None of these considerations receive any mention in Friedman's wide-eyed prattling about democracy breaking out in Iran.  Yet it beggars belief to assume that none of them occurred to him.  The fact of the matter is that Netanyahu may indeed want to bully Obama into backing away from Iran - at least far enough, and for long enough, that Khamenei and Iran's still-powerful hard-liners get fed up and decide to rein in Rouhani.  

And Bibi has a bunch of bullies lined up alongside him.  I speak, of course - and Levy mentions them as well - of the Obama-baiting, Iran-hating GOP congressmen in his back-pocket.  They are already poised to bring the federal government to a shut-down and heap the blame on Barack Hussein Obama.

Bibi would be glad to give them a two-fer.

Stabilizing Syria Means Engaging Iran

Both al-Monitor and Barbara Slavin (at al-Jazeera America) have published analyses that make it clear: In the absence of any effective military option, the only possible path to calming the situation in Syria is negotiations.  And those negotiations must include Iran.  As al-Monitor notes, 

Unless the US commits all-out to regime change in Syria, which Obama said he has no intention of doing, a strategy to end the war necessarily involves diplomacy with adversaries as well as allies. The NATO air campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo, often and rightly considered successes for US policy, included intensive direct diplomacy with all parties, including Yugoslav dictator and war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. You need a cease-fire by all sides to stop the killing. It was the Yugoslav government, after the Kosovo war, which arrested Milosevic and transferred him to the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia. There should be several lessons here for Syria.
Terrorism in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and maybe even Egypt would likely continue to surge even after a US strike absent a diplomatic strategy to end the war and address the now-rejuvenated terrorist threat in Syria.
It is the continuation of the war, the destruction of Syria, the rise of jihadists, the spread of terrorism to Syria’s neighbors and the waves of refugees that are the threats to US interests, and these are best handled by an immediate cease-fire and the start of negotiations — not by taking sides in the war. 
The administration could seize the opportunity of the congressional debate to lay out the endgame in Syria with some clear benchmarks, beyond missile strikes in response to chemical weapons use, including: a channel with Iran; calling out both the Assad regime and the opposition, and especially their respective regional patrons, to enact a cease-fire immediately; urgently convening the Geneva II conference to include both the Syrian government and non-jihadist opposition forces, no exceptions; and a crackdown and some accountability on those US allies which directly or indirectly support the flow of jihadists to Syria. . . .
Iran, more than any other power in the region, is the “dynamo” and broker of either war or peace.  It is time to put Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the test and bring the Syria war to a close.

But bringing Rouhani (and, by extension, of course, Khamenei) into a negotiation can happen only if Mr. Netanyahu is willing to give Mr. Obama the political space to reach out to Iran.  As the two reports note above make clear, some of that outreach has already begun.  But it can only go as far as Netanyahu and his confederates - both in Jerusalem and in D.C. - will let it.  Bibi has invested enormous energy and cubic-yards of hot air in demonizing Iran (even referring to Rouhani recently as a "wolf in sheep's clothing") and its "existential threat" to Israel.  Any attempt by Obama to bring Iran into putative cease-fire negotiations over Syria automatically lends respectability and legitimacy to the Iranian regime.  It also undercuts not only Bibi's demonizing of Iran, but also his insistence that the threat of a military strike against Iran needs to remain unholstered.

Yet, as is becoming clear, damping down Syria's violence and refugee flow - both of which have destabilized the countries bordering Israel and threaten thereby to impact Israel itself - is going to require Iran's acquiescence at the very least.  That means reaching out and offering Iran some kind of role partnering with other countries that are interested in restoring some modicum of stability within which Syria - or whatever "Syria" is to become - can be sorted out.

Is Bibi up to keeping his finger off the bash-Iran button?  Giving Iran a chance to help restore some peace to the heart of the Arab world just might win Israel a few friends therein.

Syria Needs a Political Solution, Not John Wayne

Excellent post, with links, at Qifa Nabkihttp://qifanabki.com/2013/08/31/syria-the-political-solution/ on the uselessness of trying to use military force to impose a settlement in Syria.  I might add:

1. Obama needs to walk back his "red line" misspeak . . . and the commentariat needs to let him, even encourage him, to walk it back.  He screwed up, and I'll bet he knows (and has been reminded umpteen times by his staff) that he screwed up.  That a lot of innocent Syrian people are likely to be made collateral damage just because a president chose his words poorly is a war crime in itself.

2. John McCain and any putative nuevos amigos need to get it through their heads: this is no longer a John Wayne America.  The US has no duty or prerogative - or, as Iraq and Afghanistan showed, capacity - to "get into the fight" and make the world right.  Too many of my generation still have their heads shrink-wrapped around the heroic World War II America of "Sands of Iwo Jima" or the crusading (early) Vietnam War America of "The Green Berets."  Asad is neither Tojo nor Ho Chi Minh (nor are Asad's backers - Vladimir Putin and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - Leonid Brezhnev).  The US can't "fix" Syria with military might.  

But what it could do - if certain parties would allow Obama the domestic political space - is lead an effort to get all parties to come together and make some hard deals.  That means Iran, and Russia, and the Saudis, as well as Asad's people and representatives from the Syrian opposition, both Arabs and Kurds, both Islamists and not.  It means the UN.  It means the Arab League.   Optimally, it ought not mean hard-line jihadists like Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS/ISIL (what exactly IS the appropriate acronym?), but with their presence now so firmly entrenched it would be difficult to shut them out completely.

And especially, it means the neighboring countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, including reps from the KRG) that are now straining under the humanitarian burden and responsibility of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugess.  Syria's fragmentation is probably too far along for even the most skilled political negotiations and daring compromises to patch together a unitary country.  Notwithstanding, the focus now needs to be on ending the violence, from all sides, damping down sectarian anger, and healing devastated bodies, spirits,  and communities.

On the Destruction and Revival of the Egyptian Revolution

At Pandaemonium, Kenan Malik publishes a superb piece that locates the 3 July military coup that overthrew the government of Muhammad Morsi, and Al-Sisi's crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood, within the long history of the Muslim Brotherhood's treatment at the hands of Egypt's series of military-backed regimes since Gamal Abdul Nasser.  

He sums up:

So what of the future for Egypt?  What the past few weeks have revealed is the weakness of all sides.  The Muslim Brotherhood is being crushed without too much resistance, exposing its lack of popular support. Liberal secularists, organizationally weak and politically incoherent, having failed to topple on Morsi on their own, have put faith in the military to do the job for them. The USA, and other Western powers, have discovered that they no longer possess much leverage over Cairo.  The power of the Egyptian military has certainly been entrenched, but largely because of the weakness of other social forces.

 

The revolution might have been strangled, but the yearning for democracy and freedom remains. If that yearning is eventually to be harnessed to help create a new, democratic Egypt, revolutionaries must learn the lessons of the current debacle. The real destruction of the Egyptian revolution did not come when the military seized power. It came when liberals and secularists backed the coup and justified the repression that followed. Democracy and freedom cannot be wielded in a sectarian fashion. And no one but the people themselves – not the military, not a foreign power – can be the harbinger of change.

Indeed.  But it has been well noted that Hosni Mubarak's overthrow by "the people" in 2011 was "allowed" by the military, who were concerned that he was grooming as his successor his son Gamal, whose penchant for neo-liberal economic reforms would have imperilled their well-entrenched domination of parts of the Egyptian economy.  Now "the people" need to regroup if they are to have any hope of reviving their revolution.  Yet the Islamist element of "the people" have been labelled "terrorists" and are being systematically crushed by al-Sisi and his junta - as Malik notes, largely courtesy of liberals/secularists who'd two years ago been their compatriots in Tahrir Square.  It stands to reason, does it not, that if they now - very belatedly - try to organize against the junta, the liberals/secularists will in their turn be smacked down.

So much for that "harbinger of change"?

 

John Robertson: Why Kerry's "peace talks" will go nowhere

My latest essay for Your Middle East . . .

 

John Robertson: Why Kerry's "peace talks" will go nowhere

"There's no way Kerry/Obama can insist on halting the settlement/colonization enterprise"

 ISRAEL-PALESTINE

 Daniel Kurtzer and Gilead Sher have co-authored in LA Times an essay subtitled "It's hard to resolve Israeli-Palestinian disagreements without the U.S. defining a path."

You know what's driving me nuts about this entire enterprise? The fact that they're absolutely right, but also that there's no way the US can (or rather, will) do that at this point. Why?  Because, at the very least, if this "peace process" is to have any chance to succeed, Israel has to stop - COMPLETELY - its ongoing colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (And in a truly just and righteous world - a world that actually abided by…what do you call it? Oh, yeah, international law - it would also uproot every Jewish settlement, including the massive settlements blocs, from the West Bank and bring all those settlers inside the 1967 borders. But let's not go any farther down that path right now.)  

But there's no way Kerry/Obama can insist on halting the settlement/colonization enterprise, because they know that the Republican-dominated House of Representatives - as well as a large portion of the US Senate - would stand by it. Remember, this is the same US Congress that only a few years ago practically led Netanyahu into its august halls on the back of a donkey and strewing palm fronds and hosannas in his path. And the Israel lobby, AIPAC, CUFI, the Washington Post editorial board, the Council on Foreign Relations (well, Elliott Abrams for sure) would scream bloody murderer and label Obama, Kerry, et al. anti-Semites, mullah-lovers, new-Holocaust mongers . . . any and every of the multitude of awful names and characterizations that people have come up with for people perceived not to "stand with Israel."

Kerry's peace talks are a charade

And this, despite the fact that many of Israel's leaders - perhaps even Bibi himself - recognize that without the creation of a viable, prosperous Palestinian state, Israel itself has no chance of remaining a truly democratic, Jewish-majority unless it either simply forces West Bank Palestinian Arabs into apartheid status or else forcibly expels them.

The White House is facing a GOP-controlled House of Representatives whose members (especially those of the Tea Party extreme) nurture almost exuberantly an entrenched hatred of the president and the person that is Barack Hussein Obama, who must deal with their opposition - and must try to find a way forward - on issues ranging from health care, to immigration, to combating climate change.  Obama is not about to wave before their eyes the new matador's cape that a demand for complete stop to Israel's creeping annexation of the West Bank would be.

As part of his legacy, Obama will be able to say years from now that at least, via his secretary of state, he "tried" to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perhaps some of the Democratic faithful will even believe him.

But Kerry's peace talks are a charade. If he's lucky, the participants will close their talks with an announcement of some new "principles" or "understandings" for future discussion. 

Smiles, handshakes, expressions of gratitude and hope all around. But the beat(-down) for the Palestinians will go on. And the settlers will continue to grab their land.

Thoughts on Egypt's Coup, David Brooks, and Egypt's Countryside

This essay appeared in Your Middle East several days ago . . .

Egypt's Coup, David Brooks, and Egypt's Countryside

This Guardian piece (co-authored by the superb Martin Chulov) about the ouster of Muhammad Morsi and the crucial role of the Tamarod petition drive in bringing it about leaves me with more questions about what's happened.  It mentions that the Tamarod "coffee-shop" organizers were able to put on-line a petition calling for Morsi's removal.  People could then print it out, sign it, and then hand it over to a Tamarod volunteer.  Wonderful idea, no doubt.

But, what about the thousands of Egyptians with no access to a computer, or a printer?  I have to assume that many such people would have learned about Tamarod and then somehow found a way to have a copy printed for them.  But what about the hundreds of rural villages where, I assume, computer access - not to mention basic literacy - is in short supply?  Aren't these generally very traditional and conservative villagers among Morsi's - and the Muslim Brotherhood's - biggest supporters?  In all the euphoric coverage of Morsi's removal, are their voices being heard, their wishes accounted for?  Are any of those admittedly brave and intrepid reporters whose accounts and tweets have been sustaining us all getting any feedback from what the city-dwellers who are getting all the coverage might think of as the boondocks?  If I'm not mistaken, during the overthrow of Mubarak in 2011, Islamist groups were bussing such people into Cairo, and they made their voices heard.  What about now?

And speaking of Islamists . . . .  David Brooks' ill-considered NYT diatribe against political Islamists leading governments has drawn lots of attention, much of it deservedly negative.  To assert that Turkey is among those cases that supposedly prove that "radical Islamists" cannot run a government is absurd; Erdogan is hardly a radical (if Brooks thinks so, he needs to get out more), and his base of support in the AKP consists largely of pious, God-fearing, middle-class businessmen - the same kind of people whom Brooks customarily identifies in an American context as the rock-ribbed foundation of our glorious republic.  But for Brooks to have taken it further and stated that Islamists don't have the "mental equipment" to run a government?!  That's just stupid (again, see Mr. Erdogan) - and, as some have noted, could be construed as racist.  Brooks might also note that some of the worthies currently serving in Congress are every bit as "Christianist" as Morsi is Islamist."  Some of them - Louie Gohmert and James Inhofe spring to mind - to my way of thinking lack the "mental equipment" to run a government, largely because they're "Christianist."  But could you imagine Brooks or his ilk lying down if someone said so in print?

Finally, the more I read, the more I'm inclined to conclude that the obituaries for Islamism - and the Muslim Brotherhood - as a political force, and for Islamists as potential leaders of a modern government, are decidedly premature.  Morsi's downfall seems to me largely the product of his own inexperience and political obtuseness - which add up to incompetence - and to the shambles of an economy and infrastructure that he inherited.  Egyptians have fallen on extremely hard times in recent decades.  Morsi and his people did nothing to make that better, but I don't see anyone waiting in the wings ready to sweep in and craft the brilliant policies and make the tough calls needed to resurrect the economy.  Egypt now has to import a major proportion of its all-important wheat supply; its educational system, especially at the university level, teeters on the brink; and its population is choked with millions of young people with inferior education and correspondingly dismal prospects.

Whoever might be elected president next will likely be permitted to come to power only if he can secure the generals' stamp of approval.  Nonetheless, he will be confronted with the same harsh realities, will be expected to fix them, will likely find the challenge insurmountable, and will fail to make much (if any) progress.  As recent events have made crystal-clear, the Egyptian people have run out of patience.  They know how to organize protests and make their presence felt in the streets and on the blogosphere.  But will the generals take kindly to their rising up against their approved man?

At times like this, I've become fond of channeling General David Petraeus' famous question.  I'll do it again. Tell me how this ends.

But I'd beware of anyone who says they know.

Why is Libya Considered a Win in Obama-Land?

Paul Pillar's take on the elevations of Susan Rice and Samantha Power (inside whose head James Mann tries to crawl in this WaPo piece) raises a point that has dropped off Americans' collective radar: Why have we chalked up the Libya intervention as a win?

The notion that this intervention [which both Rice and Power supported] was wise appears to rest on the idea that the target was a dictator nobody particularly liked and that in the civil war that was then ongoing people were getting hurt, as is always the case in civil wars. The notion also rested on the myth, unsupported by evidence to this day, that Qadhafi was planning some sort of genocidal bloodbath in eastern Libya and that failure to intervene would mean Rwanda all over again. The dictator was swept aside with U.S. and Western help, at minimal material cost to the United States, and so the episode gets casually put in the win column.

The actual balance sheet on Libya is far more extensive than that. The disliked dictator had already, through an enforceable agreement with the United States and Britain, given up his unconventional weapons programs and gotten out of international terrorism. He was still a quixotically inconvenient and sometimes disagreeable cuss, but he was not a threat. What we have had since he was ousted is extremist-infested disorder in Libya that has given rise to a flow of arms to radicals in the Sahel and incidents like the fatal encounter at a U.S. compound in Benghazi. (If Rice were being nominated for a position requiring Senate confirmation, this is the aspect of the Benghazi incident she ought to be grilled about, not some manufactured silliness about talking points.) We also have sent a very unhelpful message to the likes of the Iranians and North Koreans and have perversely affected their motivations regarding the possibility of reaching their own agreements with the United States.

 

It is remarkable that the Libyan intervention is so often considered a success. Let us hope that in the future when lessons are drawn from this episode—by either advocates or opponents of some future intervention—they will be drawn carefully, rather than in the simplistic manner that seems to have become respectable even among presidential appointees.

Pillar's take on the silliness of the (mostly GOP) hazing of Rice, Hillary Clinton, etc., in the wake of the Benghazi "scandal" is spot-on, and dovetails well with this Daily Beast report about how the GOP's stance on modernity - and its unending, give-no-quarter hectoring of the Obama administration - are costing it its future with the young, educated College Republican types whose support it surely needs to keep.  When a new GOP governor of Mississippi blames working mothers for illiteracy, and a  GOP senator from  Georgia attributes the US military's rape problem to hormones, can you blame the CR's for seeing what supposedly is their party as the party of stupid?

Stephen Walt on Obama and NSA

Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy nails it:

This situation gives those in power an obvious incentive to inflate threats. When no significant dangers are apparent, they will conjure them up; when real dangers do emerge, they will blow them out of all proportion. And having assembled a vast clandestine intelligence apparatus to go trolling for threats in every conceivable location, they can quell skeptics with that familiar trump card: "Ah, but if you knew what I know, you'd agree with me."

Boy George and his crew played this to the hilt after 9-11.  It gave us the disaster that was (and truly still is) Iraq, the slow-motion defeat that is Afghanistan, and a blow to American credibility overseas that will likely not be repaired in our lifetimes.

We also hoped for better - indeed, were promised better - by the shiny-bright Mr. Obama in 2008.  Instead, he has proved himself to be largely cast in the same mold as Mr. Bush, if not cut from the same faux-rawhide.  And to embellish the "if you knew what I know" trope to which Walt refers, Obama played the "gee, when I'm done as president, everyone's gonna want to see my emails - but do you see me whining."

Seriously?!

Afghan Soldier Kills 3 Americans - and They Won't Be the Last

As reported via NY Times.  ISAF spokesman says they expect more such attacks to come.  Constantly puts me in mind of John Kerry's famous statement to Congress during Vietnam War - about no one wanting to be the last soldier to die in a lost war.

And for any service vets or hyper-patriot chest-thumpers who might want to comment otherwise: yes, it is indeed a lost war. Sorry.

Qusair Means a Longer, Bloodier Road Ahead

Rami Khouri, spot-on as ever, makes it clear that the Assad regime's retaking of Qusair means that both Syria and Lebanon face an even longer, bloodier road ahead - if "ahead" is even an appropriate adverb in this context:

As Syria and its battles rekindle old tensions and create new ones, Hezbollah reflects the dramatic and dangerous new directions in which many Middle Eastern actors navigate through crumbling edifices of Euro-manufactured statehood, battle each other for survival, and cling to older, indigenous identities of sectarianism, ethnicity, tribalism and other sub-national configurations.

One day, they will all have to manage the hard task of rebuilding credible, secure and legitimate states. But that day is down the road.

Now is the time to fight, it seems, and Qusair was only a hint of the stupidity and waste that lies ahead.

 

Khouri also spotlights, however, that Assad was able to reclaim Qusair, and this apparent victory, only because Hezbollah came to his aid, in force, and because he had the military support of Iran and Russia as well as Russia running interference for him in the UN Security Council.  This suggests strongly that Assad's days are indeed numbered, but that the number of days just got higher.

All of which spells ever more death, devastation, and misery for the people of Syria . . . and, I should think, Lebanon.  There have already been strikes against Hezbollah targets in Beirut itself.  With Hezbollah so obviously sided with Assad, it now seems only a matter of time before Sunni-salafist militants, both regional and jihadist, turn their attention to Lebanon.  And, of course, they already have Iraq squarely in their crosshairs.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, sits with his "Do Not Pass Go" card clenched in his fingers.  And although the ascension of Samantha Power to become the US rep at the  UN puts a striking - and strikingly R2P - face on the US presence there, she likely will amount to little more than window dressing for an administration that will speak eloquently of universal human rights and self-determination, but restrain itself to little more than jaw-jaw as the wider Middle East swirls the bowl.

George W. Bush and History

Great essay by Dan Drezner at Foreign Policy, pushing back against pro-W encomiums recently appearing as George W Bush Library opening looms.

Money quote:

At best, George W. Bush was a well-meaning man who gave the occasional nice speech and was thoroughly overmatched by events.  At worst, he was the most disastrous foreign policy president of the post-1945 era.