The Wonk Room

Kagan: What I Previously Defined As Failure Now Equals Success»

Speaking to Hugh Hewitt on Monday, surge architect Fred Kagan — who just last year wrote that “setting hard-and-fast timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. forces… is equivalent to accepting failure in Iraq” — explained how the new security agreement setting a hard-and-fast timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces is equivalent to a huge U.S. victory over Iran.

Kagan said “the Iranian leadership has been pulling out all the stops to get the Iraqis not to” sign the status of forces agreement.

The Iranians are desperate for Iraq not to align itself strategically with the United States, and they have been literally trying to bribe everybody they can bribe in Iraq, and running a fantastic information operations campaign in Iraq to make this an unpopular and hard thing to do. And the Iraqi government has done it anyway. And that is actually a great accomplishment for us, and it tells us a lot about where this Shia Iraqi government actually stands on whether it wants to be aligned with the United States, or whether it wants to be aligned with Iran.

As we’ve written before, the new Iraqi government is dominated by Shia parties which either have a longstanding supportive relationship with Iran (the Da’wa), or were drawn into an alliance of convenience with Iran (Muqtada al-Sadr), or were themselves founded in Iran, under Iranian auspices (ISCI, whose leader, Abdul Aziz la-Hakim, actually okayed the security agreement from Tehran). It’s patently ridiculous to claim, as Kagan does, that an agreement concluded with such a government represents a “defeat” for Iran, especially when that agreement happens to contain provisions that Kagan himself previously warned would represent American failure.

The Three Nos From CNAS: Sloganeering Is No Substitute For Actual Policy»

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In a recent post, our good friend Ilan Goldenberg over at the National Security Network recommended the “three nos” on Iraq advanced by the Center for a New American Security as a guide to U.S. policy: no regional war, no al Qaeda safe havens, and no genocide. This of course has a lot of rhetorical appeal – who can be in favor of those three things? The problem is that the three no’s really aren’t very helpful when it comes to addressing the challenges posed by Iraq and examining ways to advance U.S. national security interests globally.

The overall problem is that the three nos framework constitutes mostly a wish list not unlike the Bush administration’s early fantasies of a secular, pro-Israel democracy on the Tigris. As the old saying goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Beyond this basic conceptual problem, there are three main problems with the three nos.

First, it ignores the fact that large scale sectarian cleansing, if not outright genocide, has already occurred in Iraq and is even occurring TODAY, with the U.S. troop presence at its likely maximum. Most people are aware of the Sunni-Shi’a sectarian cleansing that happened at the height Iraq’s civil war in 2006-2007, which led to the murders of tens of thousand and displacement of millions — even while the surge was being implemented. But less visible is the plight of Iraqi minority groups, particularly Christians. Just last month sectarian violence forced large numbers of Iraqi Christians from Mosul, their last major safe haven. Canon Andrew White, the vicar of St. George’s church in Baghdad, estimates only 200,000 Iraqi Christians of a population of 800,000 remain in the country. All of this has occurred despite the presence of 140,000-plus U.S. troops in Iraq; the three nos ignore the fact that massive sectarian cleansing has already occurred despite the presence of hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq –- and this of course raises the question of how useful the three no’s framework is beyond a rhetorical device and mantra Americans can repeat to make themselves feel better. The tough work is actually in crafting a policy that simultaneously advances U.S. interests and actually improves the situation for Iraqis. More »

Sistani: SOFA Must ‘Win Support Of All Iraqis’»

As I noted yesterday, the assent of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was essential for the passage of the status of forces agreement, as it is for almost any significant political issue in the new religious Shia-dominated Iraq.

Today, Sistani reiterated his position in favor of strong political consensus, indicating in a statement issued by his office in Najaf that the pact would only be viable if it secured the “restoration of full sovereignty and the realization of Iraq’s stability and security,” and that it had to “win the support of all Iraqis and their main political groups.”

[Sistani] did not suggest that he wanted it passed unanimously, instead using the Arabic word for “accord,” or support by a large and representative number of lawmakers.

“Any agreement that does not meet those two demands … cannot be accepted,” said al-Sistani, who called on lawmakers to “rise to their historic responsibility before God and the people.” […]

Al-Sistani’s comments did not constitute a change in the cleric’s position on the agreement, but the timing and the tone of the statement suggested that he may have lingering concerns.

The lingering concerns probably have to do with resistance to the agreement from other Iraqi nationalist trends, such as the Sadrists and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party. Sistani’s first-order goals have always been the security of the Shia community and the maintenance of that community’s relationship to its clerics, and the unrest that could very likely result from the perception that the SOFA was passed through legislative trickery would not serve those goals. Sistani is also probably wary of the challenge to his own authority that may arise if an agreement which he has approved fails to pass the legislature, so he’s hedging a bit.

Here, in part 2 of my interview with CNN’s Michael Ware, we discuss the continuing role of Sistani in Iraqi politics, as well as some developments which may eventually pose just such a challenge, such as the growing political power of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). We also talk about the relationship between the Iranian-backed Special Groups and the mainline Jaysh al-Mahdi, and Ware’s belief that JAM could be back on the street “in the blink of an eye.”

Watch it:

Ware On SOFA Negotiations: ‘Tehran Was In The Room’»

On Saturday, in what has become one of the rituals of Iraqi politics, a delegation of Shiite lawmakers and government officials met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to review the latest changes to the status of forces agreement. According to “an official in Sistani’s office who spoke on the condition of anonymity,” Sistani “gave the Iraqi side the green light to sign it.”

On Sunday, Iraq’s cabinet “overwhelmingly approved a proposed security agreement that calls for a full withdrawal of American forces from the country by the end of 2011.” The agreement now moves to the full parliament, where it is expected to be voted on by next week.

Earlier today, I sat down with CNN’s Michael Ware, who has been reporting from Iraq for the last six years, to discuss the cabinet’s approval of the status of forces agreement. Specifically, I asked Michael to respond to the idea that the cabinet’s approval represents a “defeat” for Iran, as former Coalition Provisional Authority adviser Dan Senor argued this morning on Fox News.

Watch it:

WARE: I would argue that it could potentially be a victory for Iran. In some ways you can argue that these [the SOFA negotiations] have been a form of indirect peace talks with Iran to end that part of the conflict.[…]

Iran has a whip hand, or a key hand at least, within the political framework there. So during these negotiations between Baghdad and Washington, Tehran — whether we like it or not — was in the room. Tehran, in some ways, in some fashion, is a party to this agreement. And you’ll see that some of the sticking points and some of the nuances within the negotiations were issues that were very close to the heart of Tehran….Iran is in a position where it didn’t get everything that it wanted, but then neither did Washington — and indeed neither did Baghdad — but Iran still will feel that it has something of a comfort zone as a result of this in the form that it should hopefully pass the Iraqi parliament.

Meanwhile, NRO’s James Robbins thinks it’s funny that Muqtada al-Sadr has been “making firey demands that the US agree to conditions for the status of forces agreement that both sides had pretty much agreed on anyway.” I think it’s more funny that Sadr has been making these demands for years, that Maliki managed to steal some of Sadr’s nationalist thunder by adopting those demands and then getting the Bush administration to agree to them, and that Robbins thinks this represents a victory for the Bush administration.

Still Looking For The Pony In Iraq»

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In a short piece for his website critiquing the two main competing ideas for President-elect Obama’s future Iraq policy –- the Center for a New American Security’s ‘conditional engagement‘ strategy and CAP’s own Strategic Reset strategy -– the normally astute Reidar Visser makes two critical errors. While we largely agree with his critique of the CNAS strategy, Visser subtly misreads CAP’s strategy while proposing a course of his own that does little to remedy the deficiencies of those he critiques.

First, Visser argues that CAP’s recommendation to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq as rapidly as possible is based on a possibly mistaken premise: that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will only make compromises if it no longer can rely on the United States to shield it from the consequences of its actions. But our proposed strategy is not premised on using withdrawal as “leverage” against Maliki; it is rather premised on withdrawal changing the political incentives for Iraqi political actors. Whether or not Iraqis act on these changed incentives is left up to the Iraqis themselves. Rather than presenting a substantive criticism of the logic of CAP’s strategy, Visser relies on the prediction that Maliki will not change his overall behavior. While this continuation is possible, it is beside the point -– as we point out in our recent report on Iraq’s political transition, the United States needs to recognize its limited leverage and accept suboptimal outcomes. We argue that changing Iraqi political leaders’ incentives through the withdrawal of U.S. troops stands the best chance of the remaining bad policy options of leading to broad political accommodation in Iraq.

Second, Visser argues for “singling out the 2009 parliamentary elections as the key to reform and Iraq’s last chance to repair itself.” This advice ignores the failures of 2005, when the Bush administration based its Iraq policy on the premise that elections would serve as a panacea to the country’s violent power struggle. He further advocates that the United States somehow ensure free and fair elections by maintaining a large troop presence in Iraq. Again, if the United States could not accomplish free and fair elections in 2005 with equal numbers of troops, how will things go any different this time? Additionally, Visser posits that ensuring free and fair elections will somehow make the United States “quite immune against accusations of meddling in Iraqi affairs” when ensuring free and fair elections is precisely meddling in Iraqi affairs!

Moreover, Visser ignores his earlier critique of CAP’s strategy that Maliki has consolidated enough of a power base to resist reform. If Maliki indeed has consolidated such as base, will he not also be in a position to win even “free and fair” elections? In the end, Visser’s own recommendation to stick around Iraq just a bit longer -– echoed by so many in the Washington establishment -– suffers from the same problems he identifies with CAP’s strategy, only it provides no incentives whatsoever for Iraqi politicians to campaign or act on accommodationist platforms. It is no more than another attempt to “find the pony” in Iraq.

PNAC: Palin’s Pentagon In Waiting?»

It looks like Bill Kristol may be making good on his threat to revive the Project for the New American Century. Since May, visitors to PNAC’s website were informed that “this account has been suspended,” but now the website is back up, though it does not seem to have been updated with any new material.

PNAC’s militaristic ultra-nationalism is implicated in some of the worst mischief of the Bush years, from the “global war on terror” to the invasion of Iraq to President Bush’s support for Israel’s refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians. Many of its members served as advisers to John McCain’s presidential campaign. Bill Kristol is still listed as PNAC’s chairman, and is known to be “exceptionally close” to the senator. McCain’s top foreign policy aide, Randy Scheunemann, serves as PNAC’s project director. McCain spokesperson Michael Goldfarb is also listed as a PNAC research associate.

We should consider what PNAC’s possible revival means for the future of Sarah Palin. Palin was first “identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause” in June 2007 when the Weekly Standard’s annual summer cruise docked in Juneau. Several editors — including Bill Kristol — had dinner with Palin. Scott Horton reported that in the following months, the Standard published a number of laudatory items about Palin — “starting with a paean entitled ‘The Most Popular Governor‘ that ran right after” the dinner.

Among those associated with the McCain campaign, Kristol, Scheunemann, and Goldfarb are known to have been three of the biggest Sarah Palin boosters. It was reported that Scheunemann had even been fired by the campaign after it was discovered that he was leaking information favorable to Palin to the press. Goldfarb later denied that Scheunemann had been fired, but “told reporters that Scheunemann’s Blackberry had been confiscated in the days before the election,” and that his email had been cut off.

After lobbying McCain to pick Palin as his VP, Kristol then used his prominent position as a New York Times columnist to promote Palin and criticize the McCain team’s handling of her. Given that Kristol’s faction began to close ranks around Palin in the waning days of the campaign, and given how deeply leveraged Kristol’s reputation is in her future success, it will be interesting to see what role the revived PNAC plays in continuing political adventures of Governor Sarah Palin.

Digg It!

Iraqis on the SOFA: Definitely Maybe!»

The New York Times’ Alyssa Rubin declares that the election of Barack Obama “is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.”

Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”

Buried in the middle of the article is what I think is a more accurate rendering of the scene:

Mr. Obama’s election also coincided with the American negotiators’ acceptance of many of the changes Iraqis demanded in the agreement, which created an overall picture that was easier both for the Iraqis and their neighbors — Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia — to accept.

The American negotiators sent a new version of the agreement to Iraqi leaders on Thursday that included many of the changes Iraqis had demanded. In public, Iraqis said merely that they were studying the document.

By contrast, the Washington Post reports that Iraq’s chief spokesman said with unusual forcefulness Thursday that his government will continue to insist on a firm withdrawal date for U.S. troops, despite American demands that any pullout be subject to prevailing security conditions.”

“Iraqis would like to know and see a fixed date,” spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an interview in which he also reiterated Iraq’s position that American forces be subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction in some instances.

Iraqi officials, who see President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appear to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions.

While I think there’s little doubt that Obama’s election has had an effect on the calculations of Iraq’s political leaders, and strengthened their position against the Bush administration, there’s a danger in overstating the amount of influence that U.S. leaders themselves have in Iraqi politics, a consistent problem with Bush’s approach.

The SOFA in its previous form was effectively scuttled by prominent Shia clerics with influence on Iraq’s leading Shia parties, and it remains to be seen whether the changes accepted by U.S. negotiators will be enough to satisfy the ayatollahs. Unsurprisingly, several Sadrist leaders have already indicated that they are not.

The Bush administration has wasted a huge amount of time and political capital basically bargaining with Iraqi government to stay in Iraq. Rather than accept the inevitability of a U.S. exit, and then leverage that withdrawal to pressure Iraqi leaders to confront the difficult political issues which still persist, President Bush instead clung to a fantasy of a long-term military presence in Iraq, and now finds the impending arrival of a new administration being used as leverage against him.

Hiatt: Still Trying To Get That Damn’d Spot Out»

Fred Hiatt certainly isn’t the only person in Washington looking to rehabilitate his reputation by rehabilitating the Iraq war’s. But he is the only such person who is also the editorial page editor of the Washington Post, which is how we end up with editorials that seem to have been transmitted from a mirror universe:

Simply put, the situation in Iraq has been transformed in the past two years, and voters recognize it. While 63 percent said in a November 2006 poll reported in Newsweek that the United States was “losing ground” in Iraq, 53 percent said in a New York Times-CBS poll last week that the war was going “somewhat well” or “very well.”

The irony is that the reversal of fortunes came about after President Bush ignored the message from 2006 voters and the Democratic congressional majority they elected. Instead of withdrawing U.S. troops, Mr. Bush launched the “surge” for which Republican John McCain had been pressing. Yet the biggest beneficiary of its success is not Mr. Bush, whose popularity is as low as ever, or Mr. McCain, but Democrat Barack Obama. Mr. Obama gained traction early in the Democratic primary campaign by stressing his opposition to the war and support for a 16-month withdrawal timetable. By the time his general election competition with Mr. McCain began, Iraq had faded as an issue. Mr. Obama’s withdrawal proposal, which would have triggered a catastrophe in 2007 and still looked irresponsible a few months ago, now does not sound that different from what the Iraqi government and the Bush administration have lately been negotiating.[…]

But today is not the day for detailed policy advice. Suffice it instead today to be grateful that the president-elect will inherit a war that has gone from the brink of disaster to a path toward success.

By any definition, what happened in Iraq in 2007 was a catastrophe. The Iraq war has been a catastrophe. I don’t think it’s unfair to argue that the surge helped avert an even worse catastrophe. I’m not entirely convinced of this, but it’s not an unfair argument. It is, however, an argument that dwells now and forever in the realm of conjecture, whereas the actual catastrophe that did occur in Iraq between 2003 and 2007 dwells in the realm of fact.

It seems odd, to say the least, that Hiatt can praise voters with recognizing that the situation in Iraq has gotten better, but then scold them for not properly crediting this to supporters of the surge. Most Americans recognize that the war has been a huge, costly and counterproductive disaster, and I think it’s probably the case that they recognize that many of those supporting the surge were also those most responsible for selling them the war, and thus aren’t willing to forgive and forget the way that Hiatt seems to feel that they should.

As for being “grateful” that we are on “a path toward success,” I’ll just tell Hiatt what I told Peter Wehner.

Reasons To Stay In Iraq»

Considering the implications of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Robert Kaplan floats the novel argument that, for a progressive national security policy to succeed, it must be more conservative:

The problem is that both Iran and Al Qaeda… are invested in not just an American withdrawal, but a humiliating one at that.

I fear a measurable uptick in violence in Iraq if Obama wins on Tuesday. The uptick will be significant enough to muddy the results of the surge, and the president-elect, rather than respond vigorously, will be tempted to say “I told you so” and thus win the Iraq debate with his Republican critics. The upturn in violence, he will be tempted to argue, only means we need to get out of Iraq even faster.

But that would be a mistake. It would quietly telegraph weakness to our adversaries around the world…The last thing the incoming administration should want is to be seen as retreating in the face of adversity. That would embolden adversaries. […]

Getting out of Iraq is an art, not a science, and it would require Obama to move halfway to the McCain position the moment he is elected.

Interesting that Kaplan admits only that an uptick in violence would “muddy the results of the surge,” rather than admit the more obvious conclusion, which would be that the surge hasn’t worked.

To a significant extent, the whole debate about “the surge” is a function of American domestic politics. This isn’t to say that security hasn’t improved, or that life isn’t better now in Iraq than it was at the height of the sectarian civil war that the U.S. invasion helped facilitate, or that our troops haven’t performed admirably. It is to say that the idea that “the surge” represents anything more than a tourniquet on President Bush’s failed Iraq policy — let alone that it somehow vindicates or rehabilitates that policy — doesn’t have much resonance in places in the world that aren’t the U.S., much less in Iraq, where the war has transformed the country into something that many Iraqis no longer recognize.

As for this idea of not “telegraphing” weakness, I think having the U.S. military tied down in two wars with our soldiers stop-lossed into multiple tours of duty doesn’t “telegraph weakness to our adversaries around the world” as much as it describes those weaknesses in a handwritten letter delivered to their doors. If we’re supposed to wait to withdraw until such time as our enemies won’t point to that withdrawal as an American defeat, then we’ll be waiting a very, very long time. More »

McCain: Slander First»

In one of the more shameful episodes in the recent history of campaign flackery, Team McCain sent its blogger/spokesperson Mike Goldfarb out to shovel dirt at Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. After casually conceding that Khalidi received almost half a million dollars from the International Republican Institute back when it was headed by John McCain, Goldfarb proceeds to smear Khalidi as “unsavory” and an “anti-Semite” based on the fact that Khalidi happens to be an American of Palestinian descent and a critic of Israel’s policy of occupation and settlement in the West Bank.

Watch it:

New York University professor Barnett Rubin comes to Khalidi’s defense:

I actually find it demeaning, insulting, and depressing to have to defend Rashid. I could say, I know him, he has been a guest in my home in New York and in my rented house in Provence, he bears absolutely no resemblance to the image these despicable people are trying to project of him, and lot’s more. I could point out that I am Jewish and have VISIBLE JEWISH ARTIFACTS IN MY HOME, which did not appear to alarm Rashid, if he even noticed them, but it is all just so ridiculous I don’t know what to say.

I don’t want to treat these charges with the respect of a refutation. I just want to express my disgust with those who uttered them and my solidarity with my friend, Rashid Khalidi.

Scott Horton also speaks up for Khalidi:

Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights. He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies… He sees education and civic activism as the path to success, and he argues that pervasive military interventionism has historically undermined the Middle East and will continue to do so. Khalidi has also been one of the most articulate critics of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority—calling them repeatedly on their anti-democratic tendencies and their betrayals of their own principles.

A few years ago, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz “offered a large monetary award (payable to the PLO) for anyone who could actually come up with a quote by a prominent pro-Israeli writer who equated mere criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.” Given that Goldfarb is a former writer-editor for a prominent conservative magazine, I think Dershowitz owes the PLO some money.

Syria, Iraq, And The Misnamed War On Terror»

Partly as a result of the U.S. raid into Syria last weekend, the Iraqi government has decided to reopen negotiations on the U.S.-Iraqi status of forces agreement:

The call for changes in the proposed accord came as the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki criticized an attack by Iraq-based U.S. forces on alleged al-Qaeda operatives inside Syria last weekend. The cabinet now wants the agreement to include language to “confirm that Iraqi land would not be the center for aggression” against its neighbors, said Planning Minister Ali Baban, who attended Tuesday’s meeting.

Ministers also want the pact to grant Iraq more legal authority over U.S. soldiers accused of crimes, to harden a tentative 2011 departure date for U.S. troops and to allow Iraqi inspection of U.S. military shipments. The inspection demand, along with an explicit ban on attacks on neighboring countries, reflects concerns that the United States might launch an attack on Iran from Iraqi territory.

Bush administration officials have said repeatedly that the current text of the document, concluded just weeks ago after nearly eight months of difficult negotiations, reflects the limit of U.S. concessions.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh “said the Iraqis want the right to declare the agreement null and void if the U.S. unilaterally attacks one of Iraq’s neighbors.”

Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that he has also indicated fresh concerns with the agreement:

A statement issued by al-Sistani’s office said the Iranian-born cleric wants to ensure that “Iraq’s sovereignty not be breached” by the accord and that he was monitoring the situation “until the final content of the security agreement becomes clear.”

It’s unclear whether Sistani’s displeasure with a pact that he had previously signed off on is the result of the U.S. action in Syria, but it doesn’t seem unlikely.

Praising the Syria strike, Eli Lake declares that “we have entered a new phase in the war on terror.” More »

McCain Adviser Dismisses Evidence Of Bush’s Iraq Dishonesty As ‘Conspiracy Theories’»

Robert Kagan, a leading member of John McCain’s war cabinet, recently gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he was asked about the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq:

SPIEGEL: Isn’t it true that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld took advantage of the outrage over the 9/11 terrorist attacks to strike Iraq? Is it even possible anymore to deny that the war was based on manipulation, exaggeration and flat-out lies?

Kagan: That’s absurd.

SPIEGEL: It’s a commonly held view…

Kagan: The Bush administration’s intelligence on Iraq was the same as the Clinton administration’s, the German government’s and the French government’s before the war. We now know that Saddam wanted the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction — and the world did. […]

In retrospect, we have to admit that Washington could have waited a while longer. That’s a different question. But I think it’s about time we moved beyond this silly conversation and these absurd conspiracy theories.

This is ridiculous. It is now simply no longer a matter of serious dispute that the Bush administration manipulated, exaggerated and lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in order to build public support for an invasion. It’s fine to argue that the Bush administration’s intelligence on Iraq was the same as the Clinton administration’s, the German government’s and the French government’s, but the much more relevant point is that the Clinton administration, the German government and the French government didn’t spin that intelligence into a justification to attempt to reorder the Middle East.

As the decision to invade Iraq will continue to produce numerous unintended consequences that future American leaders will have to face, the manner in which that decision was taken and sold to the American people will continue to be relevant. We can “move beyond this silly conversation” when people like Robert Kagan cease pretending that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, et al were arguing in good faith about the need to invade Iraq, and stop dismissing the overwhelming evidence of their dishonesty as “conspiracy theories.”

Ayatollahs Sleeping On The SOFA»

Last week, two prominent Shia ayatollahs issued religious decrees (fatwas) regarding the proposed status of forces agreement between the U.S. and Iraq.

On October 21, Lebanon’s Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah criticized the security pact, saying “the Baghdad government has no right to ‘legitimize’ the presence of foreign troops,” and that any agreement should call for an unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces:

Fadlallah’s edict came in response to questions by some Shiite members of Iraq’s parliament who asked the cleric to give his opinion about the proposed security pact. […]

“No authority, establishment or an official or nonofficial organization has the legitimacy to impose occupation on its people, legitimize it or extend its stay in Iraq,” Fadlallah said in the edict released by his office.

Fadlallah was one of the founders of the Dawa Party in Najaf in 1957, along with his mentor Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr, a relative of Muqtada’s. Fadlallah also helped found Hizballah in Lebanon.

Fadlallah is the marja al-taqlid (source of emulation) for many in the Dawa — including Maliki — which means that they have chosen Fadlallah as a spiritual guide and committed to following his guidance in regard to correct religious practice. This, in and of itself, makes the SOFA in its current form basically a dead letter. More »

Responding To Iraq’s Refugee Crisis»

Our guest blogger is Natalie Ondiak, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The humanitarian situation for Iraqis is dire. Since 2003, about 5 million Iraqis have been displaced: more than 2 million of these Iraqis are refugees, the majority of whom are in the region and 2.8 million are internally displaced persons. This number of displaced Iraqis represents nearly one-fifth of the entire Iraqi population. This past weekend, 13,000 Iraqis Christians in Mosul fled their homes after several weeks of violence and intimidation and were forced to seek sanctuary in neighboring areas and, in some cases, Syria.

On September 30th, the State Department announced that 13, 823 Iraqi refugees had been resettled in the US in fiscal year 2008, exceeding their 12,000 person goal. While this suggests a concerted effort by policy makers to take action to help Iraqis, the 13,823 number is not sufficient. The US has been shirking its responsibility in the face of a displacement crisis in Iraq. The number of Iraqi refugees offered US resettlement has been woefully low. Between March 2003 and 2007, the US resettled fewer than 8000 Iraqi refugees. The State Department missed its resettlement figure targets in both 2006 and 2007. In 2007, the modest Iraqi resettlement target was 5000 people, but the US resettled only 1,608 Iraqis.

The February 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra marked the beginning of an increase in sectarian violence. As the conflict has devolved into a civil war, displacement has rapidly increased. In addition to violence and insecurity, the economic situation in Iraq has continued to deteriorate. Indeed, standards of living are below what they were prior to the war and unemployment is rampant.

The majority of displaced Iraqis since 2003 have ended up in nearby countries in the region. Syria and Jordan host the most Iraq refugees — about 1.5 million between them. However, many Middle Eastern countries are also hosting large numbers of Iraqis: More »

You Don’t Want This, Wehner»

Former Bush administration official Peter Wehner’s latest paean to the Iraq surge contains a lot of what we’ve seen before, but then steps seriously wrong.

Befitting the legacy of Commentary magazine’s longtime editor Norman Podhoretz, Wehner is less concerned with actually considering the practical implications of the moralistic national security policies he champions than he is with wielding that moralism as a bludgeon against his political enemies. Consequently, you will find no mention in Wehner’s article of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed and maimed as a result of the glorious war that Wehner supported and shilled for. No reference to the cleansing and displacement of more than 4 million Iraqis as a result of the invasion and occupation that he continues to insist, in stone defiance of overwhelming, if not conclusive evidence to the contrary, is a foreign policy success. And certainly nothing of the jihadists who are now returning home — better trained, and more deeply indoctrinated — from the front that Wehner would have us believe represents a victory against global jihadism.

Wehner’s purpose is not to consider the Iraq war’s effects on America’s overall national security, but to hail the surge. But even here he stumbles. His assertion that violence in Iraq has returned to almost “normal” levels is accompanied by an unintentionally ironic footnote, which informs us that “’security incidents’ in Iraq are at levels not seen since early 2004.” Speaking at the Heritage Foundation earlier this month, General David Petraeus noted that attacks had decreased from a high of 180 per day in 2007 to 25 per day. 25 is better than 180, certainly, and our commanders and soldiers deserve recognition for that. But 25 terrorist attacks a day is not normalcy.

Obscuring that point is all in a day’s work for a partisan propagandist like Wehner. It’s part of his job to spin the winning of twenty dollars after the loss of a thousand as proof of George W. Bush’s poker acumen.

But Wehner also writes something that I think requires special attention. More »

McCain Spokesmen: Al Qaeda Endorsement ‘Ludicrous’»

Listening to Team McCain’s press call reacting to today’s Washington Post’s story about a pro-McCain posting on an Al Qaeda-affiliated website, I think Attackerman is right. Panicked is an understatement.

The Post reported:

Al-Qaeda is watching the U.S. stock market’s downward slide with something akin to jubilation, with its leaders hailing the financial crisis as a vindication of its strategy of crippling America’s economy through endless, costly foreign wars against Islamist insurgents.

And at least some of its supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to continue that trend.

“Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush.

Scheunemann responded that “while these jihadists are posting gleefully about the financial crisis, the Post barely found time to mention that it’s only Senator Obama [who has] said for financial reasons we need to withdraw from Iraq. John McCain will spend what it takes to win, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.”

Earth to Randy: Drawing the United States into interminable military conflicts in the Muslim world is part of bin Laden’s stated strategy.

Woolsey wasn’t having it, insisting that “it is ridiculous to believe that in its heart of hearts, Al Qaeda wants John McCain to be president. It’s ludicrous.”

If one takes one individual Islamist blogger from one terrorist Islamist blog who has come up with this statement, that it would be good to have McCain in the White House, I think one has to consider the motives. This individual knows that the endorsement of people like him is a kiss of death, figuratively and literally. So it seems to me pretty clear that by making this statement that it would be a good thing for John McCain to be president he is clearly trying to damage McCain, not speaking from his heart. So I must say the overall structure of the debate as one analyzes it this story taken at face value is quite remarkable.

It’s funny how this sort of reverse-psychological strategery applies only when extremists endorse conservatives.

Asked whether Al Qaeda was actually in Iraq before the invasion, Woolsey said that anyone “would be hard put to argue that there was no connection of any kind in a general way between Al Qaeda and the Ba’athist regime.” No, but of course it would be quite easy to argue that there was no substantive cooperative relationship between Al Qaeda and the Ba’athist regime.

As to the question of whether the invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped Al Qaeda, Woolsey only admitted — presumably with a straight face — that “as a result of the way the Bush administration fought the war certainly a lot of hostility has built up to the United States.” Because the manner which we bombed, invaded and occupied their country was just too intrusive, I suppose.

What was most striking to me is the way McCain advisers James Woolsey and Randy Scheunemann simply refused to accept or even seriously address the idea that policies supported by John McCain could have possibly benefited Al Qaeda. The press call was intended to beat back the idea that Al Qaeda might prefer the policies of John McCain, but I think Woolsey and Schuenemann only succeeded in reinforcing why that could be.

Yglesias, Eric Martin, and Democracy Arsenal have more.

America Must Finish With Its Iraq Delusions»

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

It is ironic that, in their USA Today article entitled “How to Finish in Iraq,” authors Ann Gildroy and Michael O’Hanlon never actually tell us how to finish in Iraq.

The first and perhaps most glaring error in the op-ed is the authors’ assertion of equivalence between support for the Iraq invasion and support for the surge, when in fact the latter was simply an effort to ameliorate some of the worst consequences of the former -– making up for past mistakes and lost time.

The authors write:

War critics often claim that despite other progress, Sunni-Shiite reconciliation is unworkable, underscoring the failure of U.S. strategy. The actual situation is much more complicated and more promising, if also still fraught with danger.

This misses an important point. It’s not that reconciliation among Iraqis is unworkable, period.

Rather, it is unworkable so long as the US maintains a military presence that prevents competing Iraqi factions from testing the limits of their power and work out power-sharing deals on their own terms — as we argued in our September report, Iraq’s Political Transition After the Surge.

If we took Gildroy and O’Hanlon’s advice, the US would remain stuck in a balancing role in some of Iraq’s internal conflicts (I say some because conventional analysis on Iraq tends to overstate the impact of US troops — we are not meaningfully present in many parts of the country like Diyala or most of the key southern provinces).

So the authors really never tell us “how to finish,” they simply tell us how to continue what we have been doing for years now — treading water and deluding ourselves that a continued over-investment of national security resources is necessary to keep America safe and give Iraqis a chance to determine their own futures. The exact opposite is the case.

The real question is when our country will decide to let go of these delusions.

Lieberman: ‘Our Enemies Will Test The New President’»

Yesterday Team McCain held a conference call to try to make an issue out of Joe Biden’s assertion that an international crisis would “test the mettle” of the new president.

On the call, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani responded to Biden by insisting that “it is not uniformly the case that the mettle of American presidents is tested…Senator McCain would not present that same risk that Joe Biden seems to be worried about.” Giuliani also called Biden’s statement “extraordinary.”

Senator Joe Lieberman, one of John McCain’s closest allies, disagrees. Appearing on Face the Nation back in June, Lieberman insisted that “our enemies will test the new president early.”

Watch it:

Another remark, this one from McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, provides a good insight into McCain’s perception of foreign policy. Scheunemann stated that “in foreign policy, it is weakness that is provocative.” As I wrote last week, these sorts of arguments about credibility and reputation are inherently subjective. Sure, weakness can be provocative. But strength can also be provocative.

For example, after 9/11, Scheunemann and McCain were among those who helped sell the Iraq war to the American people as a way of “showing strength” in response to an attack on our homeland. Amazingly, it turned out that “showing strength” by invading and occupying Iraq turned out to be both incredibly provocative and disastrous for America’s security, attracting thousands of militants to Iraq, fueling unprecedented levels of anti-Americanism around the world, and bleeding the U.S. of resources for the last five years, with more to come.

The neoconservative obsession with “strength,” which McCain clearly shares, is thus not particularly relevant or useful except inasmuch as it bolsters my theory that all neoconservatives were picked on as kids. The correct question is not whether a president is “strong” or “weak,” but whether his policies are effective. There is a general consensus among analysts that Al Qaeda will, at some point, attempt another attack here in the U.S., and that attack will likely be generated from Al Qaeda’s new base in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Dealing effectively with tomorrow’s threats will require the next administration to use the full range of U.S. power — diplomatic, economic, and military — and eschew the focus on military solutions that has resulted in an intact and active Al Qaeda, seven years after 9/11.

Iraq’s Christians And Religious Cleansing In The Middle East»

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

One issue swept under the rug by the cheerleading about how the Iraq “surge” has worked is the plight of religious minorities in Iraq.

This weekend, National Public Radio’s Corey Flintoff reported on the pervasive climate of fear among Iraq’s Christians in northern Iraq. In recent weeks, thousands of Christians have fled Mosul in the face of attacks and persecution, seeking refuge in villages north of the city in the Ninevah Plain.

This religious persecution is part of a wider problem that has led to internal displacements and the exodus of tens of thousands Christians from Iraq –- a phenomenon noted last year in this op-ed from Center from the American Progress associates just as the 2007 surge was being implemented:

While conservatives in America have warned of a cultural war against Christians by liberals and secularists in the United States, an actual war of attrition on Christians is unfolding in Iraq. Indeed, the plight of Iraq’s Christians points to a cruel irony — an American president whose tight grip on conservative Christian voters at home helped propel him to the White House has stood by and watched the destruction of some of the world’s oldest Christian communities.

An editorial in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times underscores the religious cleansing that is taking place not only in Iraq but the broader Middle East -– in places like Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, Christians feel less welcome and less secure. More »

SOFA Maneuvers»

The Washington Post reports that the U.S.- Iraqi status of forces agreement has run into serious opposition from members of Iraq’s powerful Shiite religious bloc:

The change sought by the influential United Iraqi Alliance would harden the withdrawal date for U.S. troops. A draft bilateral agreement completed this week would require American forces to leave by December 2011 but would allow for an extension by mutual agreement.

The Shiite bloc, which includes Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party, also insists that Iraqi officials have a bigger role in determining whether U.S. soldiers accused of wrongdoing are subject to prosecution in Iraqi courts, said Sami al-Askeri, a political adviser to Maliki. That proposal has been resisted by the Pentagon.

On Saturday, tens of thousands — Sunnis and Shiites — turning out to demonstrate against the SOFA in Baghdad.

Last week, General Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said in an interview “that American intelligence reports suggest Iran has attempted to bribe Iraqi lawmakers in an effort to derail” the SOFA. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki responded harshly, saying in remarks were aired on state television that Odierno “had risked his position” with the accusations. (It’s unclear whether, or how many of, the tens of thousands of Iraqis protesting against the agreement last weekend were bribed by Iran to show up.)

Last week the AP ran this story on the growing divisions between Maliki and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which has been an important ally for Maliki’s as he has sought to establish his independence from the Sadrists, whose support allowed him to become prime minister in 2006. Relations between ISCI and Maliki’s Da’wa Party “began to sour after al-Maliki grew stronger and more assertive following a series of political and military successes” this Spring:

Ties further strained after al-Maliki sought to compete with the Supreme Council for influence in southern Iraq, luring tribesmen with cash and jobs to form “Support Councils” — government-backed groups designed to extend support to security forces in their provinces. […]

Al-Maliki may soon announce an alliance between his party and the estimated 30 independent Shiite lawmakers to contest next year’s balloting.

Signs also are emerging that al-Maliki has been slowly mending fences with the 30-seat bloc in parliament that is loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as well as the 44-seat Sunni Arab alliance.

However one interprets the political maneuvering taking place, the fact remains that support among Iraqis for a “date certain” for U.S. withdrawal is the most significant issue around which there is genuine Iraqi consensus. It’s essential that the U.S. recognize and honor that consensus in order to enable progress around the other tough issues that currently divide Iraqis, as it continues to be clear that no genuine Iraqi political unity can develop while the Iraqi government continues to be underwritten by an open-ended foreign military presence.

As recommended in the CAP report “Iraq’s Political Transition After the Surge,” rather than bargaining with Iraq to let us stay, it would be better — for the United States and for Iraq — if we used the diminishing but still significant leverage that we currently have over various Iraqi actors to encourage them to make the tough compromises that are required for a sustainable political accommodation.

Albright: The “No Date Certain” Two-Step»

With reports that a long-negotiated draft status of forces agreement has been submitted to the Iraqi parliament, it’s interesting that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright chose this moment to come out against one of the agreement’s most significant planks, a target date for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops:

[Sec. Albright] said Thursday the Iraq war has created damaging consequences for U.S. diplomacy, but Washington should not agree to a specific deadline for withdrawing troops in the midst of conflict - something proposed last year by the candidate she now supports, Sen. Barack Obama.

“I never was for a date certain,” Mrs. Albright told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. “In Bosnia, we gave a date certain, and then we couldn’t get out and that undercut our credibility.” […]

Mrs. Albright called for “a plan to get out [of Iraq] in a systematic way.” She said she supports a timeline, which she insisted is different from a “date certain.”

Even recognizing what a subjective thing “credibility” is in debates about international politics, I’m unaware of any evidence that would support Sec. Albright’s claim that U.S. credibility was undercut by our not getting out of Bosnia by the appointed date.

As to the question of a “timeline” versus a “date certain,” didn’t we already do this dance with President Bush? First, no timeline because a timeline was tantamount to surrendering to Al Qaeda. Then, acknowledgment of a “notional time horizon” or some such. Finally, commitment to a timeline, with a half-hearted attempt to define the timeline as “not a timeline.” It’s now generally understood that we have a timeline, and that when that timeline ends in 2011, U.S. forces will be out of Iraq. Though the agreement still needs to be approved by the Iraqi parliament, it’s unclear why Sec. Albright is playing the sort of semantic games that even the Bush administration has effectively abandoned.

No one that I’m aware of suggests that withdrawal should take place without any regard to “realities on the ground.” What critics of a “date certain” never seem to recognize is that overwhelming Iraqi political opposition to a continued U.S. military presence — coupled with overwhelming Iraqi political support for a set date for withdrawal — represents a pretty significant reality on the ground. Very few seem willing to even consider that removing the U.S. military from Iraq is itself a prerequisite for sustainable Iraqi political accommodation, and that an open-ended U.S. military commitment — even one with some vaguely defined withdrawal date — acts a disincentive for necessary compromises.

Afghan Defense Minister: ‘Major Increase’ In Foreign Fighters To Afghanistan»

The New York Times’ John Burns reports on a statement by the Afghan Defense Minister that weakening of Al Qaeda in Iraq has resulted in “growing numbers of well-trained “foreign fighters” [going] to join the insurgency in Afghanistan instead.”

[Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak said] that the increased flow of insurgents from outside Afghanistan had contributed to the heightened intensity of the fighting here this year, which he described as the “worst” since the American-led forces toppled the Taliban government in 2001. American commanders have said that overall violence here has increased by 30 percent in the past year and have called for more troops.

The defense minister said that “the success of coalition forces in Iraq” had combined with developments in countries neighboring Afghanistan to cause “a major increase in the number of foreign fighters” coming to Afghanistan.

“There is no doubt that they are better equipped than before,” he said. “They are well trained, more sophisticated, and their coordination is much better.”

Back in February 2007, in testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, journalist Peter Bergen described how tactics used by Al Qaeda in Iraq had migrated to Afghanistan:

Suicide attacks, improvised explosive devices, and beheadings of hostages—all techniques al Qaeda perfected in Iraq—are being employed by the Taliban to strengthen their influence in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan. Hekmat Karzai, an Afghan national security expert, points out that suicide bombings were virtually unknown in Afghanistan until 2005, when there were 21 attacks. According to the U.S. military there were 139 such attacks in 2006. This exponentially rising number of suicide attacks is mirrored by other grim statistics—IED attacks in Afghanistan more than doubled from 783 in 2005 to 1,677 in 2006, and the number of “direct” attacks by insurgents using weapons against international forces tripled from 1,558 to 4,542 during the same time period. […]

Luckily, for the moment, the suicide attackers in Afghanistan have not been nearly as deadly as those in Iraq. As one U.S. military official explained, almost all of the Taliban’s suicide bombers are “Pashtun country guys from Pakistan,” with little effective training.

According to Gen. Wardak, that moment seems now to have passed. Shockingly, it turns out that invading Iraq and transforming it into an