It’s a good thing that Republicans are so appalled at Obama’s decision to send 34,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.  After all, it’s smaller not as big as insignificant compared to significantly larger than the Bush surge of 21,000 troops in Iraq.

Maybe they’ll have the chance to fix it someday.  After all, as Dick Cheney reminded us today, it’s not like it’s their fault or anything.

In a 90-minute interview at his suburban Washington house, Cheney said the president’s “agonizing” about Afghanistan strategy “has consequences for your forces in the field.”

“I begin to get nervous when I see the commander in chief making decisions apparently for what I would describe as small ‘p’ political reasons, where he’s trying to balance off different competing groups in society,” Cheney said.

“Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?”

. . .But Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

These guys really have entered an Orwellian alternate reality, where torture is the rule of law and failure is success.

Vote Republican — it’s all for the double plus good.

Photo:  Two guys who have absolutely no responsibility for the mess in Afghanistan.  Really.  We swear.  Via Wikipedia

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When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced this morning that it was awarding President Barack Obama the Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” Obama became only the third sitting president to receive the honor.  The other two were Woodrow Wilson, who received the honor in 1920 for his futile efforts to establish the League of Nations, and to Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 for his negotiating peace between Russia and Japan.

Only nine months into his administration, Obama apparently won the Prize for his tone in reaching out to Muslims, exemplified in his ground breaking speech delivered in Cairo earlier this year; his urging to the international community to address pressing global problems such as climate change and the reduction of nuclear weapons, when he recently addressed the UN General Assembly.

But those are as much aspirations as achievements; no one can argue that Obama won because of anything he’s done.  In fact, as Charlie noted on Twitter, it would be a mistake to think Obama got it just because he wasn’t Bush (though let’s not kid ourselves — that most definitely was part of Committee’s thinking).  It’s more accurate to say that Obama is being honored for turning the supertanker, so to speak — moving the United States away from the disruptive role it played in world politics and back toward its more traditional role as leader and partner.

Now, as the old saying goes, the proof will be in the pudding.  The pressure on Obama to deliver on Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East peace, climate change, and nonproliferation has just gotten significantly — perhaps exponentially — greater.  And then there is that sticky issue of human rights, which seems to have taken a back seat to realism in this administration.  More to come on that last point later.

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Kimberly Marten, a professor of political scientist at Barnard College and Columbia University is researching the role of war lords in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had a piece last week in the International Herald Tribune and the  New York Times asserting that the Obama Administration and Afghan government had adopted a policy to pay tribal militias to maintain security during the elections, but now wrongfully plan to make it permanent.

I agree with Marten.  She makes a strong case that this policy, initially promoted by David Kilcullen (an Australian who was the senior counterinsurgency advisor to Gen. David Petraeus), is a return to the British colonial military practice of paying Pashtun tribal members in the geographical areas that would later become Pakistan (although Pashtuns live on both sides of an arbitrary colonial-era border between Afghanistan and Pakistan).

Marten argues that by injecting outside money into Pashtun tribal politics, the British disrupted not only local Pashtun tribal politics, but also undermined equality of all Pashtun men, which had been embraced for centuries.  British intelligence officers charted sub-tribes and leaders, known as “maliks” and paid them more.  This practice became entrenched for decades, thus upon independence in 1947, Pakistan not only continued it, but enshrined it in the Pakistan constitution.  The Pakistanis feared the maliks, who were threatening to secede and establish an independent Pashtunistan.

In these Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, which buttress Afghanistan’s porous southern boundary, the maliks work with federal agents, control budgets, set priorities, administer laws and dispense patronage.  According to Marten, corruption abounds and until recently, only maliks could vote. Astonishingly, the British colonial punishment system remains in effect.

Marten notes that those who have been left outside of the malik system (and have not benefited from its patronage) have become a breeding ground for al Qaeda and support for the Taliban.  Poverty-stricken young people, with no prospect for jobs or educational opportunities, have found jihad to be the only outlet available. It is no coincidence that this is now al Qaeda’s home base, creating a major security headache not only for Islamabad, but also Kabul and Washington.

I can think of two other good reasons for not paying the maliks in Afghanistan.  Marten believes that the Afghanistan National Army is the one Afghani institution that instills pride and a healthy sense of nationalism.  Why pay maliks $150 per month when the U.S. objective is to build strong security institutions, enabling Afghanis to eventually assume these responsibilities from ISAF? Let’s put our money to its most effective use in what is already a too costly eight-year war.

Second,  Marten argues that Gen. David Petraeus pursuit of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq was based upon Kilcullen’s hypothesis that the best practice in any tribal situation is to recruit local leaders to enforce the community’s laws and practices.  This is how Petraeus worked with the Sunni sheiks in central Iraq: by paying them, creating the equivalent of another malik system.  Due to the rise of sectarian violence in Iraq and reported targeting of these leaders by the Shiites, it remains to be seen if this practice has indeed been successful.

Why start up another such system in Afghanistan when the evidence of such practices in Pakistan are clearly problematic and the jury remains out on whether the Iraq policy has effectively worked?

Marten is right when she argues that sustainable economic growth is not possible without a stable and secure environment.  Most expatriates I know in Afghanistan, work in compounds, going from compound to compound and having simply not enough direct contact with Afghanis because the security situation is so unstable.  By paying militia, the U.S. recreates a British colonial military policy that undermines its efforts to build an effective Army and police forces,  This policy only reinforces the power of regional war lords, who have long been part of the problem and not the solution in advancing a stable Afghanistan.

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Back in the 1960s, MIT’s Sloan School of Management developed something called the “beer game,” which — much to the dismay of MIT students — did not involve shot glasses, ping pongs, or even beer.  The purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate the challenges of managing a supply chain, and how inputs into one part of the chain could radically affect (usually negatively) decision-making elsewhere.  It is a classic demonstration of systems theory, the idea that everything is interrelated and that you can’t make a decision in isolation without it having an impact on a variety of other matters beyond your horizon.

Management guru Peter Senge, explained the importance of systems theory in The Fifth Discipline (which, despite the fact it was written for business leaders, should be read by everyone interested in American politics and U.S. foreign policy):

From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world.  This apparently makes complex tasks more manageable, but we pay an hidden, enormous price.  We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic connection to a larger whole.  When we try to “see the big picture,” we try to reassemble the fragments in our minds, to list and organize all the pieces.  But as physicist David Bohm says, the task is futile — similar to trying to assemble the fragments of a broken mirron to see a true reflection.  Thus, after a while, we give up trying to see the whole altogether. . . .

Business and other human endeavors. . .are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often takes years to fully play out their effects on one another.  Since we are part of that latticework ourselves, it’s doubly hard to see that whole pattern of change.  Instead, we focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get solved.

With the obvious exception of the global economy, there are few systems bigger or more complex than the way governments interact with one another (and the way our government responds to those interactions).  If a President wants to achieve his/her foreign policy goals, s/he must understand how his/her decisions have an impact on events over the horizon.

The Bush Administration never quite understood this.  Its foreign policy tended to have a very limited horizon, and it failed utterly to think through the impact of its actions.  To cite the most obvious example, it invaded Iraq thinking it would send a message to state sponsors of terror and nuclear club wannabes that the United States would not tolerate their misbehavior.  The Bush team never really thought through the unintended consequences of the invasion: the radicalization of Muslims around the world; the anger of allies heretofore willing to let the U.S. take the lead in the fight against terrorism; the implosion of America’s image; the costs (in terms of both human and financial resources) of fighting an insurgency after the success of the intitial invasion; the erosion of military capacity; and the impact of diverted resources and attention on the war in Afghanistan.

In contrast, it looks like the Obama Administration recognizes that its decisions can have consequences far beyond the immediate challenge at hand.  Obama’s trip to Europe (and Iraq) demonstrated the degree to which he is trying to weave different challenges into what Senge calls a “fabric of interrelated actions.”  His bilaterals with Russia and China were crucial to success at the G-20.  He had to balance humility and leadership if the G-20 and NATO summits were to demonstrate progress.  He couldn’t have a bilateral with Medvedev without also visiting Prague to reassure America’s East European allies that they wouldn’t be forgotten.  He couldn’t visit to Turkey to talk about better relations with the Islamic world without also recognizing Turkey’s desire to be part of the EU.  He couldn’t ensure a shift in emphasis to Afghanistan without visiting Iraq and reassuring our troops there that a change in focus does not mean their efforts are not as important.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Obama achieved everything he set out to do, or that the Administration’s application of systems theory is without flaws or mistakes.  We won’t know for some time whether Obama’s trip will be as successful substantively and it was stylistically.

But over-focusing on details (such as the continued unwillingness of the Euro zone to support additional economic stimulus) obsfucates a larger picture:  Obama took on a number of issues — the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, U.S.-Russian relations, U.S.-China relations, NATO, arms control, IFI governance, American relationship with the Islam world, terrorism, Turkey’s membership in the EU, and U.S. support for its new allies in Eastern Europe — and highlighted repeatedly their interconnection.

A good example of this is a story in Der Spiegel on the G-20 meeting (h/t The Agonist) that received almost no attention in the U.S.:

Berlusconi now spoke to [Obama] directly: “I would like to extend my congratulations to Barack Obama,” he said, adding that the economic crisis had begun in the US. “Now he has to address it,” he said and looked towards Obama. “We wish him all the best for the citizens of the US and the entire world.” . . .

“It is gratifying to see that good work has been done here,” Obama began. “Ten, twenty, thirty years ago, it was not a matter of course that countries which were traditionally enemies solved problems together. After the Great Depression, a similar group did not convene until 1944. . . . It is important that we do not sell short the results of this summit. The press would like us to have conflicts. Instead we have attained great achievements. And it is important that we exude confidence.”

He then lowered his voice: “It is true, as my Italian friend has said, that the crisis began in the US. I take responsibility, even if I wasn’t even president at the time.” And he underscored how important it is for him “that we now genuinely make progress. Thank you.” Applause.

The others couldn’t believe their ears. Was that really a confession of guilt from the US? Was it a translation error, or at least an inaccuracy? Afterwards, this sentence fueled long discussions among the members of the German delegation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was so impressed by Obama’s statement that she rushed to tell her finance minister, Peer Steinbrück. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso reacted immediately: The proposal to hold the next summit not in Japan, but rather in the US, is something that he no longer rejects, he says, “now that the US has shouldered responsibility.” . . .

The fact that Obama has now admitted [responsibility] sends a strong signal of hope to the world, perhaps the strongest to emerge from the G-20 summit in London last Wednesday and Thursday. Such an admission could begin to pave the way towards rectifying the situation.

This is a particularly good example of the kind of systems thinking necessary to deal with the complexities of the world today:  Obama recognizes that he cannot achieve a range of goals — more NATO troops in Afghanistan, a common agenda on Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon, etc. –  without first acknowledging American responsibility for the current financial crisis.   They’re not separate challenge — they’re part of one big problem that cannot be broken down into small parts if we want to solve it.  Taking it apart may look easier, but in reality, doing so only makes solving the larger problem more difficult.

One of the most important parts of the Der Speigel story is Obama’s warning that “The press would like us to have conflicts.  Instead we have attained great achievements.”  Now look at what Senge says:

Conversations in organizations are dominated by short-term events. . .The media reinforces an emphasis on short-term events — after all, if it’s more than two days old, it’s no longer “news.”  Focusing on events leads to “event” explanations:  “The Dow Jones average dropped sixteen points today,” announces the newspaper, “because low fourth-quarter profits were announced yesterday.”  Such explanations may be true, but they distract us from seeing the longer-term patterns of change that lie behind the events and from understanding the causes of those patterns.

[T]oday, the primary threats to our survival. . .come not from not from sudden events, but from slow, gradual processes:  the arms race, environmental decay, the erosion of a society’s public education system. . .are all slow, gradual processes. . . .Learning in organizations cannot be sustained if people’s thinking is dominated by short-term events. . . .  Maladaptation to gradually building threats to survival is. . .pervasive.

Senge wrote that twenty years ago, before the 24-hour news cycle, before the internet, before text messaging, iPhones, Twitter and all the other technologies  we now use  to keep up to date.    If anything, what was already true then is blatantly obvious now:  as a society — not just as a nation, but as an increasingly interconnected world — it is almost impossible for us to stop reacting to immediate events and start responding to systemic challenges.

From what we’ve seen so far, Obama understands system theory.  He and his team have not succeeded in applying it across the board — his foreign policy advisors seem to understand it better than his economic advisors, for example — and he will still have to respond to (and have his long-term planning affected by) short-term events.    But the signs so far certainly can offer hope to those who have watched administration after administration react as if each isolated event exists in a vacuum.

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Obama has a number of enormous challenges facing him:  fixing the economy; reestablishing American credibility abroad; closing Guantanamo and ending unlawful interrogation (which goes beyond just torture, by the way); health care; climate change; changing direction on energy consumption.  You get the picture.  It’s a huge number of big honkin’ problems that aren’t going anywhere.

And yet none of them — not even the economy — are as fraught with danger as the Administration’s (meaning Bob Gates’s) attempt to rewrite the rules on defense budgeting and procurement.  And with the exception of the economy, none could have a big a long-term benefit to the health, safety, and prosperity of the United States.  It takes cojones to take on these guys, and Gates (and Obama) deserve huge props for even trying, especially in the middle of so many other challenges and crises.

But the military-industrial complex and their friends in Congress aren’t going to make it easy.  In fact, they’re going to make it near impossible.

Some advice to my friends in the peace community: you should support Gates’s reforms with everything you have.  It may not be disarmament, it may not end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it will do a hell of a lot more to change the culture in this country than your utterly useless efforts to create a Department of Peace.  Gates is going to need every ally he can find.

Here’s hoping that the good guys win.

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This hasn’t been a good week for the Obama Administration, with the Daschle mess, the ongoing battle over the stimulus bill, and the progosphere’s unhappiness with his choice of Senator Judd “just because the guy’s giving me a job doesn’t mean I’m going to vote for his bill” Gregg for Commerce.  The one good bit of news about it, though, is that none of these messes has involved anyone really going off on the Obama team (well at least anyone other than bloggers and pundits).

Until now.  This one is so bad it is both a SNAFU and completely FUBAR.  It’s our FUBAR SNAFU of the week.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of Central Command, a man not known to exaggerate — and someone who was an early and vocal supporter of Obama — has told both The Washington Times and the Foriegn Policy that the Obama team had told him that he was going to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Iraq — a job now said to be going to Christopher Hill, a foreign service officer currently serving as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs (and someone with zero Iraq experience).

Guess what?  Zinni is, how can I put it, just a wee bit unhappy about this:

When retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni told the Washington Times that he was offered the job of U.S. ambassador to Iraq before being passed over in favor of diplomat Christopher Hill, he did not say that one of the outrages of the experience was that his friend of 30 years, fellow former Marine Corps commandant and now national security advisor James L. Jones, had offered him the job, and then failed to tell him when the decision was changed.

“Jones had called me before the inauguration and asked if I would be willing to serve as ambassador to Iraq or in one of the envoy jobs, on the Middle East peace process,” Zinni told Foreign Policy. “I said yes. . . . Then two weeks ago, Jones called,” Zinni continued, “and said, ‘We talked to the secretary of state, and everybody would like to offer you the Iraq job.’ I said yes. . . .

“[Hillary] thanks me, asked me my views on Iraq,” Zinni recalled. “She said to [Undersecretary of State William] Burns and [Deputy Secretary of State Jim] Steinberg, ‘We’ve got to move quickly, Crocker is leaving, we’ve got to get someone in there and get the paperwork done and hearings. . . . Lots to do to get ready to go.”. . .

“To make a long story short, I kept getting blown off all week,” Zinni said. “Meantime, I was rushing to put my personal things in order,” to get ready to go. “Finally, nobody was telling me anything,” Zinni said. “I called Jones Monday several times. I finally got through late in evening. I asked Jones, ‘What’s going on?’ And Jones said, ‘We decided on Chris Hill.’ . . .I said, ‘Really,’” Zinni recalled. “That was news to me.”

Jones asked him if he would like to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Zinni said. “I said, ‘You can stick that with whatever other offers,’” Zinni recalled, saying he had used more colorful language with Jones. Asked Jones’s response and if he was apologetic, Zinni said, “Jones was not too concerned. He laughed about it.”

Whoopsie!  Sorry about that Gen. Zinni!  No hard feelings, okay?  Okay?  Bueller?

There’s some speculation that this might have been Richard Holbrooke’s doing, but that doesn’t make sense:  Holbrooke’s brief is Pakistan-Afghanistan, not Iraq.  I have no basis for this, but I wonder if Gates had something to do with it.  Another possibility is that Burns told Clinton that she needed to throw a bone to the foreign service.

Regardless of who was responsible, this was handled really, really badly.  Rule one of job searches is that you never give someone the impression that they’re your top candidate, even if they are — both because you haven’t made a final decision and because you don’t want to give them leverage in the subsequent final negotiations.

Rule two is that you always call other finalists the minute that someone else accepts the job.

Whoever was responsible for managing this — Jones, Clinton, one of their subordinates — broke both those rules.  No, I take that back.  They didn’t break them.  They threw them over a cliff.

Good luck getting Zinni back on board, guys.  I hope they’re already scheduling the calls from Clinton and Obama.  This is not someone you want showing up on CNN (or even worse, Fox) dissing the Administration.

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Last night I attended a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations featuring CFR fellow Stewart Patrick and his new book.  The Best Laid Plans takes a look at the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations’ efforts to establish international institutions in wake of the Second World War.

I’ll have more on the book once I read it, but I wanted to highlight last night’s discussion, which focused on the lessons that the Obama Administration could learn from that time.  In particular, I wanted to share something Patrick said last night that is the best summation of neoconservatism that I’ve ever heard:

Neoconservatives are Wilsonians who don’t believe in international instutitutions.

John Bolton, white courtesy phone please.

As Patrick noted last night, Roosevelt and Truman wanted to build international institutions that would support and strengthen American exceptionalism, not operate separately from it.  That involved an act of hubris as significant as any undertaken by the Bush Administration, but it was done in a way that actually ceded significant American power in return for which international organizations (IOs) largely followed the U.S. line.

Over time, however, those institutions, particularly the United Nations, have evolved away from that standard — to the point that for many Americans, the UN and other IOs represent part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

The neoconservatives’ answer to this development was to attack or ignore the institutions and champion American “ideals,” often at the cost of international cooperation and comity.  The neocons also proposed new institutions, such as the League of Democracies, to replace the UN.  Of course, such organizations are merely an attempt to create a more exclusive club open only to those who would accept their brand of exceptionalism.

The Obama Administration has made it clear that it will move in a different direction, one that emphasizes cooperation rather than confrontation.   But much as his predecssors did, Obama will soon learn that good intentions do not always produce good results.  Although UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has expressed his desire to work more closely with the Obama Administration, there is only so much he can do to rally other nations behind him.

The irony, of course, is that the very institutions designed by the U.S. to ensure that its views would triumph — the Security Council veto, the General Assembly, the then-Commisison on Human Rights (now the Human Rights Council) are the main obstacles to greater U.S.-UN cooperation (and to a more effective UN).

During the Bush Administraiton, many felt that was a good thing. But it’s important to remember that the UN also opposed the U.S. intervention in Kosovo, leading the Clinton Administration to work around it and through NATO.  In fact, many analysts have pointed out that the Bush Administration adapted the Clinton argument on Kosovo in justifying its own intervention in Iraq.

Obama’s challenge will be to walk the fine line between those who believe that the United States should always defer to the UN and those who think the U.S. can do fine without it.  That’s not going to be an easy task, even if Bolton and other exceptionalists are out of power.  The first time American interests clash with those of the UN, he will have to decide whether to choose a similar path as Clinton and Dubya, or to find another way to engage the UN and encourage its cooperation/participation.

And that may be one of the biggest challenges he faces, certainly greater than Iraq and perhaps as daunting as the economy.

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I haven’t seen much discussion of this on the intertubes, but Matt Lauer raised two foreign policy issues in his pre-Super Bowl interview with President.  Unfortunately, they may represent some of the stooooooopidest questions ever asked a sitting President.  Here’s part one of the interview, including both questions:

The first starts at about  3:14.  Lauer actually asks the President whether, if we were to get access to the same intel briefings Obama gets, “how much less sleep would we be getting?”  To his credit, Obama adroitly swats the question away, providing an appropriate non-answer answer.

What exactly did Lauer think Obama would say?  “Well, Matt, we’ve actually crunched the numbers on this and we think it would be 12.2 minutes if Americans read the summary and 41.7 minutes if they saw the raw data.”  And even if Lauer had framed the question a little better, did he actually think that Obama would be dumb enough to scare the living crap out of every American watching by providing an honest answer?  “Well, Matt, most Americans would be scared to death.  But they should just set that aside and enjoy the game, which I should add, faces at least six credible and fourteen potential terrorist attacks.”

Obama may have only been President for twelve days (as Lauer repeatedly likes to remind him), but he wasn’t born yesterday.

The second, slightly less stooopid question begins at about 4:13.  Lauer asks whether Obama can promise whether a substantial number of those serving in Iraq “will be home in time for next Super Bowl Sunday?”  Because, you know, that really should define our withdrawal timetable.  Because by next year, General Petraeus won’t just be doing the coin toss, he’ll be coach of the next Super Bowl champions, my Tampa Bay Buccaneers (hey, he’s based in Tampa — he wouldn’t even have to move).

Unfortunately, Obama bites on this one.  He says yes.  I think that was a mistake, not because I disagree with his plan, but because as he himself has said, a timetable is predicated not just on getting troops out, but getting them out the right way.  Furthermore — and not to pick nits here — some of those troops will be in Afghanistan and others will be in Germany, Korea, and other overseas bases.  Of course, just as was the case with the first question, a completely honest answer would not have necessarily endeared Obama to the people for whom the question was asked.

I know that Matt Lauer is no Katie Couric, but can he at least try not to be Mary Hart?  I mean sheesh, the opening question (what’s it like to be living with your mother-in-law?) was bad enough, but can you please at least read a magazine or book before you ask such stooooooooooopid questions?

Apparently the election of a smart President has done nothing to raise the intelligence of the MSM.

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If I can put my serious face on for a second, let me agree with Midwest and Rick Perlstein that we should not celebrate an assault on a sitting head of state, no matter how hilarious it is.

So do as I say and not as I am about to do.  Because sometimes the snark is just too good not to pass on.

A friend in the diplomatic community suggested a way that the White House could reframe Shoegate as a positive:

Look at it this way:  there’s nothing more personal than a shoe.  They could argue that this is not unlike the days when women would toss their knickers at Tom Jones.  It was a compliment, a couture mash note.

Except, of course, Tom Jones didn’t have to duck.

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In consultingland this morning, but had to add this to the whole shoe mess:

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For the record… let me affirm my belief that no one should ever throw anything at the president. It is bad.

But since President Bush is OK, the whole incident is now kinda funny. Right? Well. Maybe “funny” isn’t the right word. As Hilzoy wrote, “I also wondered whether Bush would have had any sense at all of how angry a lot of Iraqis are had this not happened. I’m not saying that that makes it OK; just wondering.”

The first thing I thought of was the song “Good Old Shoe” from “Wag The Dog.’ Take a look:

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I wonder whether, now that Dubya has flown to Iraq one last time, we can convince the Maliki government to grant him asylum.

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Ezra Klein on whether the new alliance between foreign policy liberals and realists can hold:

[T]he post-Iraq consensus between liberals and realists. . .will hold as long as the question is Iraq. But what if the topic changes? If China triggers a confrontation over Taiwan or a threatening genocide cries out for a swift intervention? Where does Gates, or Jones, stand then?

On one level, it may not matter. Policy on pressing priorities is set from the top. Cabinet secretaries can either implement the agenda or resign in protest. There’s the question of advice, of course, but Samantha Power and Richard Danzig will be able to send Obama memos, too. That said, it does raise the question of tensions and divisions. The consensus around Iraq may or may not signal broad agreement on other foreign policy issues, but this will nevertheless be the team that faces down the full spectrum of foreign threats and crises. It will be a harsh test for the young bond between the two camps.

I don’t take issue with Ezra’s broader point, but if past experience is prologue, sub-Cabinet personnel will not have direct access to the President.  Not only will their own Department heads not approve, the entire NSC apparatus is designed to force consensus through carefully established channels (some would say stovepipes).  To put it bluntly, sub-Cabinet officers serve at the pleasure of the Department head, not the President, and while Obama probably could save their hide, he may choose not to do so (see Power, Samantha: primary season).

This is not to say that Obama won’t change the system.  He could, for example, set up something like the dissent channel at the Department of State, which gives junior foreign service officers the opportunity to raise policy concerns without risking their careers.  In fact, Obama should do just that, even if every member of his Cabinet fiercely opposes it.

But if he doesn’t, people like Power and Danzig are unlikely to have access to the President.  It’s one thing for an Assistant Secretary to have a direct line to the Secretary, bypassing the relevant Undersecretaries (and Deputy Secretary), but it would be a whole different order of magnitude for someone outside the White House to maintain direct contact with the President.  The obverse also is true:  if Presidents want advice from particular people, they put them on their own staff, not in a secondary position in a distant Department.

Perhaps the best example of this is John Bolton, who served as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control before being named U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.  Powell and Armitage hated Bolton and often avoided working with him, both because he didn’t understand even the most basic concepts of teamwork and because he was widely regarded as as Cheney’s spy at Foggy Bottom.  In fact, at the time of Bolton’s appointment to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., many analysts speculated whether it had as much to do with Rice’s desire to get Bolton out of the building as it did with the notion of assigning an attack dog to Turtle Bay.

If folks like Danzig and Power feel the need to reach out to Obama, they’re far more likely to go through someone they trust within the bureaucracy than to contact the President directly.

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Tonight ABC will run a new Charlie Gibson interview with Dubya (full transcript here).  Apparently, our President-in-name-only has finally found the portion of his brain called “regret,” and is ready to admit what the rest of us figured out oh, say, SEVEN FREAKING YEARS AGO:

GIBSON: What were you most unprepared for?

BUSH: Well, I think I was unprepared for war. In other words, I didn’t campaign and say, “Please vote for me, I’ll be able to handle an attack.” In other words, I didn’t anticipate war. Presidents — one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen.

GIBSON: You said you were not going to be in the business of nation-building. And so much of what you had to do was nation-building.

BUSH: Well, what I said was, in the course of a debate, I said the military shouldn’t be used to build nations. In this case, it turns out the military, in my judgment, was needed to remove threats to our security, and after that removal, the military, as well as our diplomatic corps, needed to help rebuild after tyrannical situations. . . .

GIBSON: You’ve always said there’s no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that’s not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

You guess?  You guess?  Oh. My. God.  I don’t even know where to start.

For someone firmly convinced that history will absolve him, Bush certainly seems to have forgotten that history is particularly unforgiving when you admit that you’ve completely screwed up.

Every time I think that Bush can’t sink any lower, he finds a new way to make himself look like an idiot.  Too bad Gibson didn’t ask him to explain the Bush Doctrine.  Something tells me he would have been more in the dark than Sarah Palin.

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The Connect U.S. Fund has launched a new two-year initiative to help shape debate during the upcoming Presidential transition.  As part of this effort, they’ve asked leading thinkers and advocates to talk about what should be the top two or three foreign policy priorities for the next President.  They’ve also kindly allowed us to cross-post the responses here.

Today, we’ll hear from Emira Woods.  You can find the previous posts here.  Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz for making the cross-postings happen.

With a global economic slowdown and a deepening food crisis, the biggest foreign policy priority for the next President must be building a global economy that benefits poor and working families in the United States and around the world.

The World Bank estimates that 100 million people have been pushed into poverty this year by rising food and fuel prices.  In the U.S. 13.3 million children live below the poverty line.  Throughout the world, 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day.  The statistics, already staggering, will only worsen with the current economic crisis.  Wall Street executives and their surrogates have accumulated wealth in unregulated markets at the expense of the poor and middle class.  Bold action is needed to reinvigorate economies, invest in people, and build the infrastructure of the 21st century.

First, the new President must invest in global development that brings health care and education for all. The challenges of global poverty can be met by prioritizing human security.  Health care, education, housing, decent jobs: these are the core building blocks of healthy communities.  Investing in these pivotal areas anchors our global village in the interest of lower income people and builds a safer, more stable world.  A just and responsible foreign policy would cancel the external debts of the poorest countries and eliminate “odious” debts of middle income countries.  It would advance fair trade regimes so that the resources of countries around the world can be directed towards the needs of the people. Strengthened communities can unleash the human creativity needed to meet the demands of a changing global economy.

Second, the next President must commit to a global green investment agenda. The U.S. must end its addiction to oil.  An economy based on fossil fuels has led to unnecessary wars, economic crisis, and environmental catastrophe.  The new President can use political leverage for technology transfer as well as private-public partnerships to advance solar, wind, and other renewable energies.  Creating innovative green jobs can sustain the environment while allowing countries in Africa, Latin America and other regions of the global South to leapfrog their development in creative new ways.  Manufacturing renewable technology equipment like wind turbines or solar panels could reinvigorate economies from Detroit to Dakar.  Similarly, building and improving public transportation systems like high-speed trains can create new jobs while protecting the environment.  Survival of the planet hinges on bold and immediate action by the next President.

The third and perhaps most urgent foreign policy priority for the next President must be ending the cycle of continuous war.  The overall U.S. military budget currently stands at $965 billion, nearly half of the world’s military spending.   According to a recent report produced by Foreign Policy In Focus, the ratio of U.S. funding for military forces vs. non-military international engagement is 18:1.  This dramatic imbalance in the foreign policy toolkit allows military objectives to drive international engagement, leaving development and diplomacy poorly resourced.  The next President must end the war in Iraq with its escalating human and financial costs; halt the expansion of U.S. foreign bases; curb the global arms trade by stemming the flow of U.S. weapons around the world; and rebalance global engagement to advance principles of peace and justice.   U.S. leadership on these initiatives will not only create a safer, more stable world, but will also unleash resources that can sustain the global green economy the world needs in this 21st century.

Emira Woods is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) is a think tank for research, analysis, and action that brings together 600 scholars, advocates, and activists who strive to make the United States a more responsible global partner.  The Institute for Policy Studies is a multi-issue research center that has transformed ideas into action for peace, justice, and the environment for over four decades. Ms. Woods is an expert on U.S. foreign policy with a special emphasis on Africa and the developing world.  She has written on a range of issues from debt, trade and development to US military policy.

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In the end, I think Obama gets the edge:  looked Commander-in-Chiefy, McCain looked condescending on at least four occasions, 45 minutes on the economy helps him, and I think he won the Iraq section of the debate.

But it was close.  Not sure yet who will benefit more.  My instinct is Obama because he looked like he could do the job.

Now debate amongst yourselves.

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Twenty questions I would like to see asked at the debate tonight:

1.  Are we at war with Pakistan?  Senator Obama, given your pledge to go into Pakistan, if necessary, to take out Osama bin Laden, do you support President Bush’s current counter-insurgency efforts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border?  And Senator McCain, when Senator Obama made those comments, you accused him of being reckless.  Do you now think President Bush is being reckless?

2.  Numerous reports have indicated that the State Department is woefully underfunded and understaffed.  Secretary Gates, among others, has urged Congress and the President to take steps to address these concerns.  Congress has largely been unsympathetic.  What would you do, as President to make the State Department more effective, and to give it the resources it needs to succeed?

3.  Do you support making USAID a cabinet-level agency?  Given the current financial crisis, can the United States afford to continue its foreign assistance programs?  Do you support reestablishing the US Information Agency or a similar construct to coordinate and strengthen our public diplomacy?

4.  Is the United States more or less safe and secure than it was on September 12, 2001?  Why or why not?

5.  Senator McCain, can you please tell me what the difference is between Russian incursions into Georgia and American incursions into Pakistan?  Don’t both involve a large power moving into territory controlled by a democratic ally of the United States?

6.  Some have argued that the American century is over and that China will soon be the world’s dominant economic and political power.  Do you think that is accurate?  Why or why not?  Would it matter if the United States wasn’t the biggest dog in the yard anymore?

7.  Senator McCain, five former Secretaries of State, including two who have endorsed you, have called for dialogue with Iran without preconditions.  You have stated your opposition, and your candidate for Vice President has suggested that such views are naive.  Yet when it came time for you to choose someone to brief Sarah Palin on foreign policy, you asked Henry Kissinger, one of those five, to do it.  Do you still believe that it is not possible for the United States not to talk to Iran?

8.  Senator Obama, are there any situations where you think it would be necessary to set conditions before meeting with a foreign leader?  In other words, is there anything that any leader can do that would make it impossible for you to meet with him or her?

9.  Senator McCain, your running mate has suggested that the United States should not second-guess Israel should it decide to attack Iran.  Is that your view as well?  Senator Obama, do you agree or disagree?

10.  Both of you have called on the Bush Administration to close Guantanamo and to end the practice of torture.  There is growing evidence that Bush Administration officials may have violated U.S. law as well as treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory.  Would you favor the investigation of such allegations and the prosecution of those, up to an including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, found to have broken American laws including statutes against war crimes?

11.  What can the United States do to strenghten the United Nations?

12.  Should the United States ratify the International Criminal Court treaty?

13.  What can the United States do to prevent genocide?  Would you favor military intervention by U.S. forces if it could help prevent a genocide?  Would you have intervened in Rwanda?  What are you going to do in Sudan?

14.  What is the one foreign policy issue that you think is currently under the radar but will have an impact on your administration?

15.  Most of the world has come to regard the United States as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.  What steps would you take to reverse that?

16.  Have we “lost” Latin America?  What steps would you take to reverse growing anti-Americanism in the region?

17. When this campaign started, no issue was bigger than Iraq.  Now it appears to be an almost forgotten issue.  Senator McCain, given Prime Minister Maliki’s outspoken desire to see American troops leave, why do you continue to oppose a phased withdrawal from Iraq?  Senator Obama, is there any situation where you can see American troops remaining in Iraq beyond the timetable you outlined?

18. Is the war in Afghanistan lost?  Would you favor a surge there along the lines of what happened in Iraq?

19.  Senator McCain, how can we afford to stay in Iraq and deal with the financial crisis at home?  Senator Obama, you have suggested moving troops in Iraq to deal with the growing crisis in Afghanistan.  Can we afford to do that as well?

20.  Given the fact that Russo-American relations have cooled considerably since Russia’s invasion of Georgia, what steps would you take to ensure continued Russian-American cooperation on anti-proliferation measures, including not only implementation of Nunn-Lugar, but also the situations in Iran and North Korea?

Add your own questions in the comments below.

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I’ve been a fan of Timothy Garton Ash since the days of his fine books about the end of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe.  He has a new piece in today’s Guardian worth reading.

The irony of the Bush years is that a man who came into office committed to both celebrating and reinforcing sovereign, unbridled national power has presided over the weakening of that power in all three dimensions: military, economic and soft. . . . The massive, culpable distraction of Iraq, Bush’s war of choice, leaves the US - and with it the rest of the west - on the verge of losing the war of necessity. Here, resurgent in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are the jihadist enemies who attacked the US on September 11, 2001. By misusing military power, Bush has weakened it.

Economically, the Bush presidency ends with a financial meltdown on a scale not seen for 70 years. The proud conservative deregulators (John McCain long among them) now oversee a partial nationalisation of the American economy that would make even a French socialist blush. . . . The decline in soft power - the power to attract - is also dramatic. . . . Iraq has been central to this collapse of credibility and attractiveness. When Bush denounces Russia for invading a sovereign country (Georgia), as he did again at the UN on Tuesday, a cry of “humbug” goes up around the world. Now American-style free market capitalism is taking a further hit, while some of the alternative models are looking better. . . .

At the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, you can still see the painted glass sign that president Harry Truman placed on his desk in the oval office: The Buck Stops Here. (On the back it says: I’m From Missouri.) The buck stops there. The contrast between the president from Missouri and the president from Texas is painful. Judgment, prudence, vision, patience, honesty - every quality that the 33rd president so signally possessed, as the US remade the world after 1945, has been signally lacking in the 43rd. . . .

For years now, we have seen those who hate the US abusing and burning effigies of Bush. The truth is, the anti-Americans should be building gilded monuments to him. For no one has done more to serve the cause of anti-Americanism than GW Bush. It is we who like and admire the US who should, by rights, be burning effigies. But now, at last, we live in hope of a better America.

Devastating and deadly accurate.  And, not coincidentally, a pretty good description of what would happen under a McCain presidency.

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Matt Yglesias on the cowardly decision by Congressional Democrats to support any bailout only if Republicans go along:

May I just observe that it’s distressing to see the news reports — and even worse, the rumors and gossip in DC — that have Democratic legislative leaders putting their primary emphasis on making sure that there are enough Republican votes for a bailout package to provide adequate political cover. Not only is it a mistake to put a primary emphasis on politics rather than on the merits of the bill, but focusing on trying to make sure that the Republicans don’t stick Democrats with the blame for a bailout guarantees a bad bill. . . .

[Democrats should] make Bush and the Senate Republicans choose between allowing a good bill to become law, or blocking a proposal that would prevent a financial meltdown. If they want to block a good bill and then pass a bad one with Republican votes and a handful of moderate Democrats, let that happen. Or if they want to let Democrats pass a good bill, let that happen. But why pass a bad bipartisan bill? And what makes you think you could get a good bipartisan bill? It doesn’t make sense. Congress shouldn’t be looking for “cover” for embarrassing votes; members should be casting votes they’re prepared to defend on the merits.

This is the problem with being a Democrat.  As much as I admire Barack Obama and about 15-20 Members of Congress, the rest of our Representatives, particularly in the House, are a bunch of spineless scaredy-cat scum-sucking surrender weasels.  They rolled over on Iraq, they rolled over on the Patriot Act, they rolled over on FISA, they rolled over on Alberto Gonzales — they’ve rolled over on everything.

If I were Barack Obama, I would make replacing Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid one of my top priorities should I get elected.  Yes, I know it doesn’t work that way, and yes, I know that Congress gets angry when the President starts trying to mess around with Congress’s prerogative to choose its own leadership, but this is freaking ridiculous.  We can do better.

Here’s a brief list of some of the Democrats whose spines would make them better Majority Leaders in the Senate, in rough order of my preference:

• Barbara Boxer (CA)
• Russ Feingold (WI)
• Jon Tester (WY)
• Jim Webb (VA)
• Amy Klobuchar (MN)
• Patrick Leahy (VT)

Pick one of these folks and you change the game in the Senate.  And notice that I’m not including Hillary, Schumer, Dodd, Kerry, or Durban on this list.  Perhaps Hillary could do the job, but I can’t help feeling that she would be part of the problem as well — and try to dictate Obama’s agenda.

Where is Hunter S. Thompson when we need him?

So who should we choose for the House?  My instinct is Rahm Emmanuel, but part of me is convinced that even with a strong spine, he would be too poisonous.  Jim Clyburn?  Marcy Kaptur?  There has to be somebody out there who knows how to run things and has the guts to make things happen.

Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Sigh.

Image:  Wikipedia, using a GNU Free Documentation License

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Two of my least favorite people in the world got together yesterday to have some laughs and share some good times.

No, I’m not talking about Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson.  In case you didn’t hear, Sarah Palin met with Henry Kissinger yesterday.  I wonder if Henry tried to pick her up?  “Vell Sarah, you are very pretty.  Have you ever done it with a war criminal?”

Ewwwwwww.

In any case, I happened to have an inside source at the U.S. mission to the U.N..  S/he was kind enough to make a list of all the questions the Sarahnator asked Hank the K:

1. What’s the difference is between a hockey mom and a Secretary of State?
2. Why can’t I see Afghanistan from my house?
3. Is a foreign minister kinda like a community organizer?
4. Do I have to read foreigners their rights before I talk to them?
5. Do I get to torture people personally the way Cheney does?
6. Are there foreigners I might mistake for moose?
7. Have you met John Bolton?  Is he as cute as everyone says he is?
8. Why does this Karzai guy wear those funny dresses?  Is he gay or something?
9. Why am I meeting with the President of Columbia University?  I never went to that college.
10. Why does the President of the United Nations go by the name Binky Moon?

Here’s the scary part.  Apparently a CNN sound tech picked up a small part of the conversation:

Kissinger: (something about a speech, not sure to whom he was referring) “And I’m going to give him a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia.”

Palin: “Good, good. And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.”

As I said yesterday, sometimes reality transcends satire.

Today, the fun continues.  Palin is meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Word is that she spent at least two hours last night just learning how to say their names.

Photo illustration:  New York Magazine

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Is it me, or is the proposed bailout (whether the Paulson plan, the Dodd plan, a hybrid, or another version we don’t know about yet) sound increasingly like a really, really bad idea? I’m getting this queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, like nobody — not Paulson or Bernanke, not Bush or Dodd or Frank or Shelby, not even McCain or Obama have any freaking clue what to do.

Lindsay Beyerstein over at Majikthise has many of the same doubts I’ve been having.

I’m troubled by the instant bipartisan consensus that the the government must bail out the investment banks. It reminds me of the run-up to the Iraq war when every discussion was framed in terms what should be allowed to happen before we invaded, not whether overthrowing Saddam Hussein could solve anything.

Remember that the Democrats are just as beholden to the financial services sector as the Republicans. It’s not coincidental that the options on the table all involve bailing out these companies. At this point, the Democrats are arguing for a bailout, plus executive pay controls, mortgage-related bankruptcy reforms, and maybe an economic stimulus package.

My question is this: What if the government were to take the $700 billion to $1.5 trillion set aside for the bailout and put that money into programs to help those hardest-hit by the meltdown and Americans in general[?]

For example, progressives often note that pension plans would be decimated without a bailout. If that’s the worry, why not invest in retirement security for our people directly? An extra $700 billion in the Social Security trust fund would cushion a lot of retirements.

These are our tax dollars. We can either invest them for our future, or we can buy a lot of worthless paper to bail out reckless banks. Ultimately, bailouts just set us up for more crises by proving, once again, that the government will cover the losses of big business.  Maybe a bailout is necessary, but I troubled that no one seems to be articulating the case explicitly or considering alternative options.

I don’t want this country’s economy to collapse, but do we have any guarantees that the bailout will prevent that?  Yesterday we had some indication of what might happen if the bailout does go through — oil had it’s biggest one-day jump ever, gold also went up significantly, and the dollar declined to a level close to its all-time low against the Euro.

If I’m not mistaken, those numbers were not the product not of jitters over a bailout not happening, but rather over fears that a bailout will happen. If we print $1 trillion in new money to fund the Paulson plan (and let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what we’re talking about here), we would seriously cut into the value of the dollar.  That in turn means that the price of commodities would skyrocket.  In other words, serious inflation.

But if we don’t pursue a bailout, the economy collapses, credit disappears, and, I presume, trillions of dollars of value disappear overnight.  That probably will bring on massive deflation, a run on banks, and the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s.

But wouldn’t the latter option at least leave us with the capital to try to restore the system?  Wouldn’t that $1 trillion then be available to fix the systemic problems in a way that dropping it into the black hole we’re calling the bailout can’t?

We have no guarantees that the bailout will solve the problems we face.  The people telling us it will are the same ones who, six months ago, went on national television and assured people, post-Bear Stearns, that the economy was sound.

I had hoped today to attend a meeting put together by Steve Clemons that is looking at these questions.  Unfortunately, some obligations on the consulting side of my life prevented me from doing so.  One of the people I wanted to hear was my friend Leo Hindery, one of the smarter guys around on these issues and an economic advisor to the Obama campaign.  Yesterday, Steve released a portion of what Leo plans to say today:

As we all know, the Bush administration is asking Congress to let the government buy $700 billion in troubled mortgages, which would raise the statutory limit on the national debt to $11.3 trillion from $10.6 trillion. This $700 billion is over and above the $85 billion already committed to AIG, the $29 billion related to Bear Stearns, and the very conservative $25 billion associated with the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The solutions being proposed are the most expensive combined bailout in the nation’s history and will sharply curtail the ability of the next president to push for tax cuts or new spending. And yet I believe they are not nearly enough, since they do not adequately cover the exposure associated with leveraged loans and, especially, the credit-default swaps market which has ballooned to a nearly unimaginable $45.5 trillion, from $900 billion in 2001.

This credit-default swaps market, which was developed by financiers who hired the best lobbyists they could to keep regulators away, is essentially nothing more than insurance on debt, but because there are now many more credit-default swaps outstanding than there are bonds for them to cover, it could potentially be a black hole of distress at least as large as the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Tens of trillions of dollars ago these swaps became nothing more than a way to gamble with almost no money down.

Leo clearly thinks that $1 trillion is little more than a shot in the dark  We’re standing on the edge of a cliff, throwing a rope over the edge, and hoping that it’s long enough to get us to the bottom.  But we really have no idea whether that’s true.

About eighteen months ago, I had dinner with Leo, Steve and a few others.  I told Leo that, sooner or later, we as a nation were going to face the equivalent of another margin call — some event that would demonstrate just how much trouble we were in.  Here’s a good short description of what that meant in 1929:

Margin calls played a role in the Great Depression. Speculators used leverage to play the market. They borrowed money, bought stocks, and put the stocks up as collateral. This only works when the stocks do not lose in value, so their price better go up. If it goes down, the value of the collateral will eventually fall below that of the loan. This is when the bank gets worried and sends you a margin call so that you close the gap.

Sound familiar?

Eighteen months ago I said that something would happen to produce a similar result.  I didn’t know what it was going to be  — an end to the real estate buble, a collapse of the dollar, another terrorist attack, China calling in its marker — but something was going to catch up with us and we would face real trouble when it did.

I think we’re there.  This is our margin call.  Not literally, of course, but the impact on the economy is going to be essentially no different from what happened in 1929.

If Paulson and Bernanke are wrong — again — and Hindrey is right, dropping $1 trillion now isn’t going to make a difference.  We would still have a meltdown, except we won’t have that $1 trillion available to fix the underlying structural problems that have caused this mess.

In addition, we would have a dollar worth considerably less than it is now.  We would still be dependent on foreign oil that now will cost much more than it does now.  We would still be stuck paying for a war in Iraq that is in the process of sucking an additional $1 trillion out of the economy. And we have no money to fix all the other problems we face — like a crumbling infrastructure, health care, a failing educational system, and social security and medicare insolvency, to name just four.

In other words, if the bailout fails to prevent the crisis, we would face an even worse scenario than what we do now:  massive inflation, a collapsing economy, and no way to fix it.  We’re talking Zimbabwe, Argentina, Germany in the 1920s.  That way lies madness and most likely dictatorship.

I’m not an economist, but it sure seems like we’re between a rock and a hard place here.  Tell me I’m wrong.

Tell me that these guys — the same guys who got us into this mess — know what they’re doing.

Tell me that we’re better off bailing these crooks out than we would be putting the money into saving social security and pension funds, investing in clean energy, fixing our infrastructure, developing a better health care system, and all the other things that are going to fall by the wayside if we use this good money to chase after bad.

Tell me.

I’ll try to believe you.

Photo: via Wikipedia, photo in the public domain

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David Weigel over at Reason magazine has an interesting and provocative piece up in which he argues that Obama represents a continuation of the liberal interventionist tradition in the Democratic Party — a development that he does not regard as a good thing.  Here’s the money quote:

Obama’s advisers don’t pretend that their candidate is moving very far from the legacy of Bill Clinton—a legacy of humanitarian interventionism that provided some of the moral and legal justifications for Iraq. The problems of this decade, in their view, came because the Bush administration looked at unilateral action as a first course of action and multilateralism as a patina, gathering allies after military decisions had already been made. That’s the reverse of what Obama says he wants: multilateralism first and unilateralism as a last resort. . . . Obama has taken what he likes from Clinton’s brain trust and welded it to his own vision of intervention. Plenty of likeminded liberals agreed with Obama about the Iraq war—that it was an aberration, an unusually bad war botched by a Republican president. They may not necessarily share his views about the next war.

I have several concerns with Weigel’s piece.  First, he argues that all interventions, humanitarian or otherwise, are wrong.  Unlike Weigel, I share the notion held by former Obama advisor Samantha Power (among others) that American military intervention can, if used wisely, help prevent (rather than cause) humanitarian disasters.  A unilateral blanket pledge that the United States would no longer intervene in such situations would almost certainly embolden dictators, warlords, and terrorists to commit more rather than fewer atrocities.

Second, expressing a willingness to use American power to advance American interests does not make Obama a liberal interventionist.  Were an Obama Administration to work through the United Nations, building consensus for such action, it would represent a significant break from the Bush Administration’s go-it-alone policies.  It also would demonstrate a strong streak of pragmatism in the Administration’s approach to foreign policy problems.  But even were Obama to act unilaterally, it would not necessarily be unilateralsim.  As Weigel himself notes, the Bush Administration essentially acted and then asked for help.  An Obama Administration not only would ask for help before acting, but would reserve acting alone as an occasional necessary evil.  Just because you don’t want to use a weapon doesn’t mean you eliminate it from your arsenal.  And conversely, keeping a weapon in your arsenal doesn’t mean you want to use it.

Last but not least, Weigel’s thesis is predicated on assumptions — such as the capacity of the United States to project its power when and where it wants — that no longer may be true.  Given the severity of the current financial crisis, future interventions may prove to be fiscally impossible.

Nonetheless, it’s worth your time to read Weigel’s analysis.  When you’re done, come back and share your thoughts here.

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By now my fellow bloggers have spilled plenty of bytes on the serious problems with the Administration’s bailout proposal.  I have nothing new to add to that discussion, but I do want to some thoughts on one provision of the bill that many people have overlooked.

If the current bailout proposal passes unamended, Congress will have just given Henry Paulson a degree of power that no Cabinet Secretary — or President for that matter — has ever had.  This is Section 8 of the bill as it now stands:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

This language represents nothing less than the institutionalization of the Cheney-Addington concept of an all-powerful, unitary executive that cannot be checked by either Congress or the courts.  It would represent the single greatest expansion of Presidential power in American history.  As written, not even the Supreme Court would have the authority to overturn it as unconstitutional:

As Congress prepares to act speedily on the grant of power to the Treasury Secretary to buy up $700 billion worth of bundles of bad mortage loans, the Supreme Court may watch in fascination, but it would have no power to second-guess the “bailout,” if enacted.  Given the sweep of the authority that would go to the Secretary, it might raise some constitutional questions. But there would be no way to test those in court.

According to press accounts, when Barnake and Paulson went up to Capitol Hill to brief Congressional leaders last week, they painted a terrifying portrait of economic collapse.  They warned lawmakers warned that we are teetering on the edge of a precipice, and that Congress needed to take urgent action to prevent a disaster.  Congressional leaders emerged from the meeting looking like they had been hit by a bus.

Sound familiar?  The Bush Administration used similar language to convince Congress to pass post-9/11 restrictions on civil liberties (most notably the Patriot Act); to authorize the invasion of Iraq; and to adopt both the Military Commissions Act (including the provision exempting CIA agents from laws banning torture) and the recent FISA bill.

To put it another way, every time this Administration has convinced Congress to adopt laws that expand executive power or erode civil liberties, it has scared Congress into going along it.  This time the threat is not terrorism but economic collapse.  But don’t kid yourself:  Section 8 could mark the beginning of the end of the separation of powers and the rule of law.

To me, all the other questions about this highly problematic bill pale in comparison.  Congress must not agree to this bill as long as Section 8 remains. If it does, it might as well pack up and go home.

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The Bush Administration is now suggesting that the $700 billion price tag for bailing out Wall Street may be off because some of the assets purchased could be resold at a profit.

Just remember that this is the same gang of idiots and liars who  told us that the Iraq war would start paying for itself within a few weeks of the invasion.

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This morning, The Washington Postdated confirms that yesterday’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was the work of a group known as the Soldiers’ Brigade of Yemen, an affiliate of al Qaeda, using techniques that they may have learned while fighting in Iraq:

[T]he first vehicle exploded near a guard post. Cameras then recorded attackers taking positions nearby, until a second vehicle packed with explosives detonated near a sidewalk. . . . The use of two vehicle bombs — one to breach the perimeter of a compound, a second to drive inside and explode — is a tactic used by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Matt Duss over at Think Progress demonstrates how this blows away yet another justification for the Iraq war — the “we’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here” idea, also known as the flypaper theory:

Those who have been following the Iraq debate might remember “flypaper theory,” which was one of the earliest exponents of the “incoherent post hoc justifications for the Iraq war” genre. The idea was that there was some limited number of terrorists in the Middle East, and the presence of an occupying U.S. army would lure them to Iraq, whereupon they could all be conveniently killed, presumably as soon as they stepped off the bus.

This plan was prevented from working only by the fact that it was staggeringly dumb. The U.S. occupation radicalized scores of young Muslims, many of whom traveled to Iraq, where they learned terror warfare and were galvanized in the global jihad. And now they’ve begun returning home, to share the tactics and technology developed in a laboratory we provided for them by invading Iraq.

Of course, that doesn’t even take into account the role of torture, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other such obscenities in helping to radicalize Muslims as well.

To put it another way, the Bush Administration have spent  billions upon billions of dollars on the Iraq War, largely based on the bankrupt theory that we are building an island of democracy that will de-radicalize the Middle East.  In reality, we have made things far worse than they would have been had we never invaded, so much so that we have unthinkingly created another generation of terrorists, in the process weakening ourselves to such a degree that we may not be able to fight back the next time the come “over here.”

Imagine how bad things would be if Bush had taken a similar approach to the economy.

Oh.  Wait.

Never mind.

Hat tip:  Obsidian Wings

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We’re trying out a new feature here at Undip:  “What You Might Have Missed,” which will highlight stories that other stories have kept off the front page.

Today, it’s the transfer of authority from Gen. David Petraeus to Gen. Ray Odierno in Baghdad.  Petraeus will now head Central Command, which oversees all U.S. military activity from Egypt to Pakistan, an arc that includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What I find particularly interesting about this story is that Petraeus and Odierno had completely different approaches to the occupation of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.  When Petraeus led the 101st Airborne, he was praised for applying counterinsurgency doctrine in Mosul in a way that helped keep the region calm — until he left.

In Mosul, a city of nearly two million people, Petraeus and the 101st employed classic counterinsurgency methods to build security and stability, including conducting targeted kinetic operations and using force judiciously, jump-starting the economy, building local security forces, staging elections for the city council within weeks of their arrival, overseeing a program of public works, reinvigorating the political process, and launching 4,500 reconstruction project. . . . [I]n the book Fiasco, Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks wrote that “Mosul was quiet while he (Petraeus) was there, and likely would have remained so had his successor had as many troops as he had–and as much understanding of counterinsurgency techniques.” Ricks went on to note that “the population-oriented approach Petraeus took in Mosul in 2003 would be the one the entire U.S. Army in Iraq was trying to adopt in 2006.”

Contrast that with Odierno’s time commanding the 4th Infranty Division during the same period:

Odierno’s tenure as 4th ID commander in Iraq and his unit’s actions there have subsequently come under criticism from several sources. Many officers from the 1st Marine Division were critical of 4th ID’s belligerent stance during their initial entry into Iraq after the ground war had ceased and the unit’s lack of a ‘hearts and minds’ approach to counter-insurgency. Several authors have echoed similar criticisms shared with them by other military personnel in the theater. In his unit’s defense Odierno strenuously argued that the situation was that such an approach was required and subsequent insurgent activity justified the actions of 4th ID as former insurgents began to join the fight against Islamic extremist groups, such as al-Qaeda, in 2007.

To this day, Odierno rejects these arguments, saying that the situation then required an aggressive approach.  That said, Odierno did spend the past few years helping Petraeus craft the surge, and it’s doubtful that Petraeus would support the choice of someone he thought could not build on his success.

There’s an old saying in sports that you’re much better off being the guy who replaces the guy who replaced the legend.  Odierno doesn’t have that luxury.  If he fails, he may find that he’s on a short leash, as Petraeus, Gates, and Bush are unlikely to let Iraq to fall back into chaos.

Photo: Outgoing commander Gen. David Petraeus hands over the Multi-National Force Iraq flag to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates as Gen. Ray Odierno looks on during a Change of Command ceremony at Camp Victory on September 16, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq. David Petraeus, the American general who presided during “The Surge”, the increase in American military presence believed to have been critical to reduced violence in the beleaguered country, handed over his command today to Gen. Ray Odierno. (Getty Images via Daylife)

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An excerpt from Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin tonight:

GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?

PALIN: But it is about reform of government and it’s about putting government back on the side of the people, and that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues.

She then changed the subject to energy.

But hold on a second, Governor.  You said that “putting government back on the side of the people. . .has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues.”  I’m willing to take you on your word on that — at least for the moment.  But I have a few questions for you.

1. Given that a majority of the American people believe that we should not have gone to war in Iraq, does that mean that you favor us getting out?
2. Given that a majority of the American people want the United States to be an international leader on climate change, are you willing to support much more aggressive measures to combat global warming, even if it means cutting back on the use of internal combustion engines, thus hurting your state’s economy?
3. Given that a majority of the American people support the end of torture, the closing of Guantanamo, and as you so quaintly put it in your acceptance speech, “reading their rights” to terrorist suspects, are you and Senator McCain in favor of ending the Bush Administration’s assault on civil liberties and the rule of law?  Would you prosecute those in the Bush Administration suspected of committing war crimes?
4. Given that a majority of the American people want the United States to work within the United Nations system and with our allies, would you and Senator McCain support reengaging with the United Nations in a meaningful way, including an end to the rhetoric we saw at the Convention attacking the UN?  And if so, can you explain the presence of John Bolton as an informal foreign policy advisor to the McCain-Palin campaign?

Because, Governor, that’s putting foreign poicy back on the side of the people.  Because that’s what a majority of the American people want.

I didn’t think so.

By the way, on Pakistan, she agreed with Obama and contradicted McCain.

And she thinks we should go to war with Russia if it invades Georgia again (or Ukraine).

Last but not least, Governor Palin might want to check out this page before her next interview.

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Here’s what the State Department’s most recent human rights report has to say about Libya:

The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is an authoritarian regime with a population of approximately six million, ruled by Colonel Mu’ammar al‑Qadhafi since 1969. . . .Qadhafi and his inner circle monopolized political power. . . . The government’s human rights record remained poor. Citizens did not have the right to change their government. Reported torture, arbitrary arrest, and incommunicado detention remained problems. The government restricted civil liberties and freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association. The government did not fully protect the rights of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. Other problems included poor prison conditions; impunity for government officials; lengthy political detention; denial of fair public trial; infringement of privacy rights; restrictions of freedom of religion; corruption and lack of transparency; societal discrimination against women, ethnic minorities, and foreign workers; trafficking in persons; and restriction of labor rights.

Now here’s what our favorite government blog, Dippynote said after The Condi finished her Weekend at Moammar’s:

Libya’s journey to rejoin the community of nations came after a long process of reengagement. Its historic 2003 decisions to voluntarily rid itself of its WMD program and renounce terrorism created the foundation from which Libya has today become a leader in Africa and a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. . . .Today, Libya is a vital partner in the fight against terrorism, helping to stem the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq. It works closely with its neighbors to combat the growth of terrorism in the Sahara and Trans-Sahel regions.

Libya is also a leader on the African continent. It maintains a humanitarian corridor that provides much needed supplies to the people of Darfur. Working with the African Union Contact Group, it is helping to mediate the conflicts in Chad and Sudan. Additionally, Libya provides development assistance to other African countries. . . .

The U.S. and Libya have shared interests, but have also differed at times on some key policy points and use of diplomatic tools. Naturally, we would prefer to have their support on some of these issues, but it is noteworthy that Libya — which serves as a model to others — voted in favor of placing additional sanctions against Iran for its non-compliance with international efforts to ensure the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.  Libya has come a long way in its transformation from an isolated pariah to renewed membership in the international community.

One of these things is not like the other.

By the way, this is the sixth consecutive Dippynote post on Libya.  That’s more than the total number of posts on Iraq (five) since the beginning of April — and equal to the number of posts on Afghanistan (six) since Dipnote began.  And they wonder why nobody takes them seriously?

Here’s the best part:  it’s very likely that the two statements above were written by the same person — Amanda Johnson, a Libya Desk Officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA).  Ms. Johnson is identified as the author of the Dippynote piece, and since there was no diplomatic presence in Tripoli at the time of the last human rights report, it probably would have fallen to Ms. Johnson to prepare the first draft of that report.

This is what drives me bananas about the State Department. I have no beef with Ms. Johnson, who in all likelihood is a fine foreign service officer.  But given her age (she says in the Dipnote piece that she was born in 1977), she is in all likelihood a fairly junior one.  And junior foreign service officers — those without tenure — might as well be party apparatchiks for all the influence they have on the policymaking process:  they either toe the party line or find themselves out of a job.

In Ms. Johnson’s case, that means writing something highly critical of Condi’s creepy stalker boyfriend wannabe, and then, eight months later, being told to write something highly complementary.  It’s no wonder that foreign service officers get cynical about political appointees — and about the U.S. government’s commitment to human rights.

So which one is right?  Let me offer you the following hint:  the happier the tone, the bigger the lie.

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Back when I was in graduate school, Chernobyl happened.  Being graduate students, we responded to this tragedy in the only way we knew how:  we threw a party.  We covered the walls with aluminum foil, replaced all the light bulbs with flashing red lights, and renamed the keg the cooling tower.  We had so many people there, that the floor almost collapsed and the heat generated by the foiled-up walls caused the air conditioning unit for the entire building to fail.

That was the last time I remember connecting nuclear power to dancing.  Until now.  If you’ve been watching the conventions, you’ve seen this commercial:

You may not have noticed it, given the awesome animation and Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown” playing in the background, but if you pause at 0:09, you’ll notice a couple of words down in the lower right hand corner:

YELLOW CAKE

So that’s where Saddam put it!  Canada!

And what is up with this ad?  Funkytown?  The happy shiny strip mining?  And the apparent argument that we should have nukes so that people can play Dance Dance Revolution in Shanghai?

So the ad is at least two years old.  The first version was in French.

You wouldn’t know it from the commercial, but after a check of The Googles, I found out that Areva is “a French public multinational industrial conglomerate that is mainly known for nuclear power.”

Oh.

Did I mention that the company also manages those yellow cake mines in Niger?  More happy shiny strip mining!

That means Areva played a role, albeit indirectly, in the whole Valerie Plame scandal.  And the Iraq war.  And, of course, the lies of the Bush Administration to justify both the war and the Plame leak.

Now that’s some serious funk.

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