Given the increasingly heated rhetoric between India and Pakistan, two questions come to mind, one obvious, the other not so much.  Will this spiral out of control and lead to war, including perhaps a nuclear exchange?  And what will China do?  Specifically, what happens if China comes in on Pakistan’s side?

Remember that the First World War began when a small group of Serbian nationalists committed an act of terrorism on Austrian soil (or at least Austrian-controlled soil).  But things didn’t get out of hand until Russia came in on Serbia’s side and Germany did the same in the case of Austria-Hungary.

If I were President-elect Obama, I’d get Hillary on a plane now, preferably on a joint mission with The Condi.  We can’t wait until January 20th to allow this thing to get completely out of control.  Because the current crisis is no more about terrorism than it was in 1914.

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President-elect Obama named his National Security team.  No surprises.

That extends to the reaction:  the MSM is focusing on the “team of rivals” meme, and the netroots are debating whether they should be concered that “centrists” will hold the three key positions.  I think both are missing the key story here, which I and others outlined last night in reaction to the NYT story on the Obama Administration’s plan to mount the most ambitious restructuring of U.S. national security institutions since the Truman Administration.

I’ll have more later on ten key posts, beyond the Deputy Secretaries and Deputy National Security Advisor, to watch for as the transition moves forward.

One other note:  Obama’s press conference reflects the reality that the terrorist attacks in India haven’t really percolated to the top of people’s thinking about U.S. national security.  Yes, Obama did mention it, but in the context of terrorism and not its potential impact on Indian-Pakistani relations.  Equally importantly, nobody in the press bothered to ask a follow-up question.

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So Jack Bauer, America’s favorite torturer and all around sociopath, is back!

Jack will spend the next 24 hours in the fictional African country of Sangala “saving the children” from what looks like a vicious child soldier-recruiting rebel.  That, of course, will make up for all the horrible stuff he’s done in the past.

So the new and improved Jack. . .

• is now killing caricatures of Africans rather than caricatures of Arabs;
• doesn’t have to worry about beating the hell out of people because he’s in Africa, which of course doesn’t have laws or something;
• can shoot people while standing in the middle of a crowded African street and not worry about hitting innocents;
• loves the kids, even if it means having to shoot people in front of them;
• cannot, even with all his powers, get a nasty American official to open the damn gate.

Wait a second.  Wasn’t last year supposed to be Bauer’s redemption?  Didn’t they even name it “24: Redemption”?  How many times can this guy  be redeemed?  Will next year be “24:  Jack Gets an Indulgence from Pope Innocent IX”?

Instead of “24: Exile,” They should just call it what it is: “24: We Know the Whole Torturing Arabs Thing Doesn’t Seem to Be Working Anymore.”

Of course, rehabilitation of Wacko Jacko doesn’t mean that the producers have completely abandoned their neoconservative conspiracy theorist ways:  Bauer refuses to return to Washington to testify before a Senate committee investigating his past crimes, and it looks like one of the villains, as Diplopundit notes, is the most officious, insensitive foreign service officer in history.  He not only hates Jack, he hates the children.  The bastard.

My only hope is that this storyline will so bore the hell out of the American people that they will flee from “24: Exile” like. . .well, like everyone flees from Jack Bauer whenever he pulls out a gun.

Then, at last, our long national prime time nightmare finally will be over.

UPDATE:  This is actually from Charlie, not Chris.  Not quite sure how that happened, but I can’t change it.

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Over the years, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in India, but not much in Mumbai.  That said, like any visitor to India’s financial and creative capital, I made sure to the Taj Hotel, which is a national treasure.

Now it’s on fire.  At least 80 people are dead, and countless more are wounded.  My thoughts and prayers are with everyone in that fair city.  I can only hope my friends there are okay.

Right now a domestic group known as the Indian Mujahideen has claimed responsibility, but some analysts think it may be al Qaeda.

Three things to watch as events unfold:

1.  India-Pakistan.  If it turns out that Pakistan-based militants are behind these attacks (or even worse, that the Indians discover evidence linking Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency to those responsible), it could spark a major regional crisis and perhaps even war.  And since both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, that means a major international crisis as well.

2.  Reprisal attacks.  Although Hindus outnumber Muslims by a factor of more than six to one in India, that still means there are 150 million Muslims.  In the past, Muslim violence has led quickly to reprisal attacks against Muslim communities.  In 2002, for example, after a Muslim mob attacked a train in the state of Gujarat, riots by Hindus led to the death of over 2,000 Muslims.  In 1993-1994, Muslim-Hindu riots in Mumbai caused death of over 900 people.  Regardless of whether the instigators of today’s attacks turn out to be from outside India or not, chances are that we will see reprisal attacks in very short order.

3.  Domestic politics.  Currently, a coalition led by the Congress Party of India is in power, and its main rival, the Hindu-nationalist BJP, has been in disarray.  The attacks may change that, however, as BJP politicians have not hesitated in the past to use communal violence to whip up Hindu nationalist fervor.

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I’ve been holding off commenting on this story until I could hear about the results of the conference call the McCain campaign held this morning in response to this Washington Post article:

[S]ome of [Al-Qaeda's] supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to [their goals].  “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. . . .

In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting. . .suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.  “It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda,” said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. “Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America.”

In response, the McCain campaign got foreign policy spokesman Randy Scheunemann and raving right-wingnut ex-CIA director James Woolsey on a call with reporters and bloggers.  Of course, the very fact they were holding a call probably indicates that there’s a problem.  Dave Weigel reports on the results:

Schneuemann and Woolsey attacked the paper for selectiveness and unfairness, listing supportive things said by American enemies like Ghadaffi about Obama that the Post never covered. Plus, according to Woolsey, there’s no way a serious Al-Qaeda blogger could support McCain.

This individual knows that an endorsement by him is a kiss of death, figuratively. He is not trying to help John McCain.

The first question: If this was a bad faith comment meant to hurt McCain, how do we know comments from Ahmedinijad about Obama aren’t meant to hurt the Democrat?   Woolsey:

Any major organization, itself, will not take the risk to depart from the party line.

Okay, let’s dissect this a bit.  If you are to believe the Wingnut Twins, the the Post’s alleged failure to cover past favorable comments by Ghadaffi and Chavez somehow makes their coverage of Al-Qaeda’s commentary on McCain somehow illegitimate.  This defies logic for several reasons.

To begin with, other outlets, including the Associate Press, reported the story as well.

Second, the Post, like every other media outlet, has reported on stories where the McCain campaign (and others) suggested that foreign leaders’ preference for Obama made him unfit for office.  Post columnists like Charles Krauthammer have hammered this home again and again.  And that doesn’t even touch on the mini-controversy caused by the fact that a Hamas spokesman at one point said he would favor Obama.

Third, the standard isn’t whether the Post covered it, but whether the McCain campaign itself thought similar stories were newsworthy.  McCain and his surrogates have hammered Obama on both his “no preconditions” speech and the Hamas story, among others.  The campaign and its stalking horses in the blogosphere have even brought up favorable comments by Obama’s supporters, trying to use his followers’ statement to link him to Chavez, the Castros, Ahmadinejad, and even Che Guevara. Only now, when the tables are turned, is this somehow off limits.

Fourth, what do you think whould have happened if the press reported that al Qaeda actually preferred Obama?  Woolsey and Scheunemann would be frothing at the mouth, and Schmidt and company would have a new ad up saying Osama hearts Obama.

Fifth,  John McCain has repeatedly criticized Obama for expressing a willingness to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty to “take out” Osama bin Laden.  It is Obama, not McCain, who has promised to redirect resources currently used in Iraq to win the war in Afghanistan.  It is Obama, not McCain who poses the greater threat to al Qaeda.  So to suggest that this was designed to hurt McCain because he is the bigger threat is to ignore the facts.

Last but not least, the CIA, among others, has noted that Osama bin Laden’s 2004 video, released four days before the Presidential election, played a significant role in pushing a number of undecideds toward Bush — which was exactly the result bin Laden wanted.  If, as Scheunemann and Woolsey would have you believe, al Qaeda fears McCain more than Obama, wouldn’t it make sense that they would avoid taking an action that would tilt the election toward McCain?

The McCain campaign can’t have it both ways.  They can’t argue that other foreign nutjobs’ apparent support for Obama proves he is unworthy to be President and then claim that these nutjobs’ support for McCain proves that he is the bigger threat to terrorism.  You also can’t suggest that al Qaeda’s support for you is fake and that Ahmedinejad, Chavez and others’ support for Obama is sincere.

Oh. Wait.  It’s the McCain campaign.

Inconsistency and double standards are their preferred tools.

Never mind.

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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 Elisa Massimino.  You can find the previous posts here.  Thanks again to Heather Hamilton and Eric Schwartz for making the cross-postings happen.

Tonight, many Americans will tune in to watch Senator McCain and Senator Obama face off in the final presidential debate before the 2008 election. With just twenty days left in the campaign, the candidates are relentlessly focused on highlighting their differences. But the fury of this final round of sparring should not drown out the sound of a particular silence: there is no debate going on between the candidates about whether the United States should continue to allow the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody. Last month, in the first debate between the two parties’ nominees, Senator Obama and Senator McCain agreed that the United States must end the use of torture, which has stained our national honor and undermined the ability of the United States to lead.

Restoring our nation’s commitment to the rule of law must be a top priority for the next president of the United States. What the next president says will be important in this effort. In the early primary debates, both nominees condemned torture rather than extol the supposed heroism of 24’s fictional Jack Bauer or call for a doubling of the size of Guantánamo, as some of their opponents did. Hearing more from the two candidates tonight about the particulars of how they plan to restore the rule of law would be instructive. But, because of the way the current administration has sought to distort, obscure and evade the clear language of the law, words alone — from the candidates now or from the new president in January — will not be enough. After all, President Bush has repeatedly asserted that “we do not torture,” meanwhile privately authorizing conduct like waterboarding that our own military has long considered to be war crimes. It will be the actions of the next administration that will either confirm Vice President Cheney’s assertion of a “new normal,” or will prove him wrong.

The next president should prioritize a return to the rule of law in two key areas: enforcing the prohibitions on torture and other cruelty; and abandoning the failed experiment at Guantánamo in favor of the proven effectiveness of our federal criminal justice system. Taking these steps will go a long way toward restoring the essential moral authority of the United States as a leader for human rights and will strengthen national security by contributing to a more effective counterterrorism strategy.

The next president will have a window of opportunity to signal to the American people and the rest of the world that the policies of the last seven years were an aberration and that the United States is serious about restoring the rule of law, upholding our Constitution and respecting the international rules our country played such a central role in formulating.

Here’s the 12-step program to get us back on the straight and narrow:

• Renounce torture and official cruelty, ideally in the inaugural address.
• Enforce existing bans on torture and cruel treatment.
• Repudiate and rescind all orders, memoranda and legal opinions authorizing cruel treatment or secret detention.
• Release publicly all documents authorizing cruel treatment, secret detention, or rendition.
• End secret prisons and the practice of holding “ghost prisoners.”
• Put a moratorium on extraordinary renditions and direct the National Security Advisor to undertake a 90-day review to assess the use of diplomatic assurances and issue new regulations to ensure we are not sending people to places where they are likely to be tortured.
• Announce the intention to empty the Guantánamo detention facility within one year.
• Suspend pending military commission proceedings and terminate Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Boards.
• Direct the Attorney General to review Guantánamo cases for federal court prosecution.
• Direct the Secretary of State to perform individualized risk assessments and review remaining cases for transfer to prosecution, repatriation, or resettlement.
• Direct the Attorney General to identify secure U.S. detention facilities capable of housing detainees identified for federal court prosecution.
• Establish a bipartisan commission to investigate U.S. government detention and interrogation operations, assess the strategic impact of these operations, identify lessons learned, and make recommendations to avoid future abuses.

The misguided embrace of indefinite detention, torture and deeply flawed military commissions has greatly damaged the reputation of the United States, fueled terrorist recruitment and undermined international cooperation in counterterrorism operations. Repairing our reputation as a nation committed to the rule of law will require bold action. That must start with finally closing the detention facility in Guantánamo and demonstrating — in deed, not just in word—an unequivocal commitment to treating all prisoners humanely.

Elisa Massimino is the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights). Elisa is the organization’s chief advocacy strategist, an expert on a range of international human rights issues and a national authority on US compliance with human rights law. She testifies frequently before Congress, writes extensively for legal and popular publications, and serves as one of the organization’s primary spokespeople with the media. She is Human Rights First’s point of contact with U.S. government leaders, international diplomats, and human rights opinion leaders and decision makers.

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Those of you who have read my blog since its origins know that I’m a gamer (if you don’t know what that means, you might as well stop reading now).  Lately, I’ve been trying out Spore (meh), but I’m sure that I’ll soon return to my first love, World of Warcrack Warcraft, especially now that Blizzard is putting out the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, right after the election.

Little did I know, however, that playing WoW actually makes me a potential terrorist:

The American military and intelligence communities are increasingly worried that would-be bin Ladens might gather in a virtual world, to plan a real-life attack. But the spies haven’t given many details, about how it might be done. Now, a Pentagon researcher has laid out how such a terror plot might unfold. The planning ground is World of Warcraft. The main target of this possibly nuclear strike: the White House.

There’s been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. But online spaces like World of Warcraft are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous. They imagine terrorists rehearsing attacks in these worlds, just like the U.S. military trains with commercial shoot-em-up games. They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world. But, mostly, virtual worlds are nerve-wracking to spies because they’re so hard to monitor. The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global. The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies’ employees aren’t exactly level-70 shamans.

In a presentation late last week at the Director of National Intelligence Open Source Conference in Washington, Dr. Dwight Toavs, a professor at the Pentagon-funded National Defense University, gave a bit of a primer on virtual worlds to an audience largely ignorant about what happens in these online spaces. Then he launched into a scenario, to demonstrate how a meatspace plot might be hidden by in-game chatter.

If you play WoW, you’re gonna love the scenario, complete with graphics, that the Pentagon researcher put together.

Two World of Warcraft players discuss a raid on the “White Keep” inside the “Stonetalon Mountains.” The major objective is to set off a “Dragon Fire spell” inside, and make off with “110 Gold and 234 Silver” in treasure. “No one will dance there for a hundred years after this spell is cast,” one player, “war_monger,” crows.

Except, in this case, the White Keep is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “Dragon Fire” is an unconventional weapon. And “110 Gold and 234 Silver” tells the plotters how to align the game’s map with one of Washington, D.C.

Here’s a set a maps he put together.  For those who don’t know the game, the terrain is a part of WoW’s virtual world and the discussion to the right is supposed to be two players chatting in-game:

Okay, looks perfectly normal.  But wait — it’s actually Washington, DC:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Oh man, Pentagon, you’re killing me.  I want to work at a think tank that lets me play WoW all day.

Three observations.

1.  I think the Pentagon just might have better things to do.  For example, they might want to think about trying to raid that real-world StoneTalon Keep known as Osama Bin Laden’s freaking cave.

2.  Warning:  Geeky WoW insider stuff follows.

If you’re going to create a scenario where terrorists are using WoW, you might want to know something about WoW.  I just checked Thottbot (the WoW geek version of Google), and there is no such thing as a White Keep.  Same with the Dragon Fire spell.  Nobody in the game talks about gold and silver numbers because the game is randomized in such a way that you don’t know how much gold and silver the mobs drop.

Furthermore, since Stonetalon is a fairly low-level zone, there is no freaking way there’d be that much cash there.  If they wanted to use numbers like that, they’d just use map coordinates.  Oh, and there’s no freaking way that Blizzard wouldn’t notice a guild trying this kind of stuff.

While Stonetalon is fairly low-level, it’s not level 1.  The terrorists would have to play for about three weeks before they could go into Stonetalon without getting pwned (and you can’t even see the map in Stonetalon without having explored it).

Oh, and nobody talks in real time — they talk in server time.  Don’t ask.

What a n00b.

End Geeky WoW insider stuff.

3.  WoW players can be divided into three categories:  fourteen-year-olds, twenty-something punk/thrash/hardcore/metal fans, and ex-Dungeon and Dragon geeks (like me), most over thirty years old (with apologies to Ta-Nehisi Coates).  These people hate n00bs and would just waste these guys, metaphorically speaking.

I may have to eat these words someday, but I seriously doubt that terrorists would have either the patience or the knowledge of pop culture to survive long enough to pull this off.  The Chuck Norris jokes in Barrens chat alone would be enough to drive them away.

And as I noted earlier, the Pentagon should a hell of a lot less time wandering around Outland and a whole hell of a lot more time trying to take down that real-life level 70 warlock living in a cave somewhere in Waziristan.

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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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At least 40 dead — with the number likely to increase significantly.

You can find additional photos here.  It looks like the entire hotel went up in flames.

The New York Times quotes one of the leaders of the democratic opposition that helped push out Musharraf:

A prominent Pakistani lawyer, Athar Minallah, said: “It’s the 9/11 for Pakistan. It’s an attack on Pakistan, an attack on the people of Pakistan.”  Mr. Minallah, a leader of the lawyers’ movement that protested against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, said the extremists “have crossed the limits. . . . There cannot be any justification for this,” he said. “It is for the people of Pakistan to join hands and sort out this menace. They are enemies of Pakistan.”

Back when I regularly traveled to Pakistan (almost 15 years ago), that’s where I stayed in Islamabad.  If memory serves me, security at the hotel was pretty extensive, so I have to wonder whether this was an inside job.  I also can’t help thinking about the fact that most of the people on the lower floors would have been local staff, not foreigners.

This is the second major terrorist attack in three days (the other was the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen).  There’s a good chance that this was undertaken by an al Qaeda affiliate.  I think it’s important to ask whether the two attacks’ proximity in time was planned or merely a coincidence.

Our thoughts go out to the victims and their families.

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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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You may not have heard, but the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen was attacked today, apparently by a group known as Islamic Jihad in Yemen.  Reports differ as to whether they are affiliated with al Qaeda.

At least sixteen people — six Yemeni police officers, six of the attackers, and four civilians died as a result of the attack.  None of the Americans or foreign nationals working at the embassy were harmed, but this does represent the second time that the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa has come under attack.  In March, the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda fired mortars, missing the Embassy and instead hitting a nearby girls’ school.

Here’s what the embassy spokesman said after the attack:

The first explosion happened about 9:15 a.m. Wednesday (0615 GMT/2.15 am ET) and was followed by several secondary blasts, said U.S. Embassy spokesman Ryan Gliha. . . . Gliha was at the embassy at the time of the attack and said he felt the compound shake.

“We were all ordered to assume what we call a duck-and-cover position which is a position where we guard ourselves and bodies from potential debris,” Gliha told CNN.  “From that vantage point, I can’t tell you much after that except we did feel several explosions after the main explosion that shook the ground.”

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said during his daily briefing today that the attack had the goal of breaching the Embassy’s walls.  Jeff Stein at Spy Talk notes that, given the number of people involved, at least one former intelligence agent thinks that the purpose may have been not to kill those working there but to take hostages, along the lines of what happened in Iran in 1979:

It seems like the team was large enough to do more than just blow something up. Tactically it would have been interesting: Think Tehran-like embassy takeover, in the middle of a presidential election, hostages being executed on live TV.  It would have to be a resolved by an assault, which the Yemenis are not trained to do.

As I’ve said before, I have long believed that Americans fail to understand or appreciate the heroism and courage of our foreign service officers.  The same goes for the foreign nationals who serve so ably in every American post.  As McCormack noted in his briefing today,

People understand, as we’ve seen today, that American personnel serving overseas serve in some dangerous places or places that have the potential to be dangerous. We’ve seen that borne out once again today. But we manage that risk. And we’re not going to take any steps or do anything that we think unduly puts any of our personnel or their family at risk.

Unfortunately, attacks like these will only make our diplomats’ jobs even harder.  After every such incident, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security finds ways to make it harder for terrorists to attack.  That’s a good thing — no one wants to endanger unduly our diplomats — but it also creates a new problem:  it cuts off our diplomats even further from the countries they’re covering.  The reality is that nothing will make our embassies completely safe.

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Has Bush just gotten us into another war?  According to a number of press reports today, the Pakistani Army has orders to fire on American troops should they cross the border from Afghanistan:

Pakistani troops have been ordered to fire on U.S. forces, if they launch another raid across the Afghan border, an army spokesman tells the Associated Press.

“The orders are clear,” Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas  said in an interview. “In case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire.”

And they’re our ally.  Led by the guy we wanted to succeed Pervez Musharraf.

It looks like Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has suddenly decided to vacation in Islamabad.

Meanwhile, Jeff Stein over at SpyTalk suggests some troubling parallels to an earlier American conflict:

Pakistan is beginning to remind me of Cambodia.

Just as Pakistan gives shelter to the Taliban attacking us in Afghanistan, not to mention Osama Bin Laden, Cambodia in the 1960s provided a haven for the North Vietnamese Army, which was killing us across the border.

Just as in Pakistan, we “secretly” bombed Cambodia to get the North Vietnamese, killing innocent peasants.  When Cambodia’s prime minister resisted American pressure to oust the North Vietnamese, he was overthrown by U.S.-backed generals.

When we next sent combat units into Cambodia, there was a quantum leap of death, havoc — and radicalization — in the countryside, just as in Pakistan today.  Cambodia’s communists now found the peasants to eager to sign up, just as Muslim extremist leaders are finding today in Pakistan. . . .

Is something like that in Pakistan’s future? Nobody can be sure.  We do know that the escalation of U.S. (and some Pakistani) military operations there, much ballyhooed here for killing a few al Qaeda captains, is turning more and more Pakistanis against us.  And that’s a quandary for which there are no immediate answers, much less easy ones.

But we do know there’s one big difference between Cambodia and Pakistan.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

The analogy isn’t perfect.  We fomented the coup that brought Lon Nol to Cambodia, but in Pakistan, our guy got overthrown.  And there’s a big difference between a massive bombing campaign and a few cross-border incursions.  But it does make you think.

Undip reader Midwest McGarry, who raised similar concerns, also asks why American incursions don’t trigger the War Powers Act.  One reason is that both the U.S. and Pakistan officials are pretending none of this happened:

. . .the Pakistani and United States military publicly denied any such incident on Monday, and a Pakistani intelligence official said that an American helicopter had mistakenly crossed the border briefly, leading Pakistani ground forces to fire into the air. . . . On Tuesday, American officials repeated their denials that such an incident occurred.

If there were no incursions, there is no need to inform Congress as required by the War Powers Act.

But there’s another, more important reason.  Back in 2001, shortly after September 11, Congress passed a S.J. 23, Authorization for Use of Military Force:

[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. . . .

SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

So you see, Midwest, the President already has the authorization he needs.

Am I the only one not comforted by that?

Maybe the October Surprise came a bit early this year.  So far, no new statements by either campaign.

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Just two days ago, I linked to and reprinted a phenomenal essay on September 11 written for The Atlantic about a year ago by David Foster Wallace, the noted novelist and essayist.   Today comes the very sad news that he died.

David Foster Wallace, the novelist, essayist and humorist best known for his 1996 [novel] Infinite Jest, was found dead last night at his home in Claremont, according to the Claremont Police Department. He was 46.  Jackie Morales, a records clerk at the Claremont Police Department, said Wallace’s wife called police at 9:30 p.m. Friday saying she had returned home to find her husband had hanged himself.

If you have not done so, make sure you read Infinite Jest. It is not the easiest novel to read — a huge chunk of it, including key plot developments, is written in footnotes to the main text, and I hated the ending — but there are few better — and funnier — critiques of contemporary American culture and the coming decline of American power.

A great loss, not just for letters, but also for everyone who is willing to think critically about those things that our leaders want us to ignore.

If you missed it the other day, you can find the essay after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Don’t feel bad — I was too.  But meanwhile, the Administration continues its sightseeing tour of Pakistan’s NWFP.

The US military conducted another airstrike inside Pakistan’s lawless tribal agencies. The target of the strike was an al Qaeda-linked group called Al Badar, which is run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Unmanned Predator aircraft launched several missiles in the early morning at a target in the village of Tol Khel on the outskirts of Miramshah, the administrative seat of North Waziristan. Twelve members of Al Badar (or Al Badr) were reported killed and 14 were reported wounded in the attack, according to AFP. . . .

Hekmatyar runs the Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, a radical Taliban-linked faction fighting US forces in Afghanistan. He has close links to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, as well as the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.

The US targeted a Hekmatyar compound in South Waziristan on Aug. 13. Taliban commanders Abdul Rehman and Islam Wazir, three Turkmen, and “several Arab fighters” were reported in the strike. Reports indicated up to 25 terrorists were killed in the attack.

The US has conducted eight airstrikes and raids in North and neighboring South Waziristan since Aug. 31. Five of the strikes have been aimed at compounds in North Waziristan. Four of them were operated by the Haqqani Network. . . .

The Haqqanis are closely allied with the Taliban and al Qaeda, and have close links with the Inter-Services Intelligence. The Haqqanis run a parallel government in North Waziristan and conduct military and suicide operations in eastern Afghanistan. Siraj Haqqani, Jalaluddin’s son, has close ties to Osama bin Laden and is one of the most wanted terrorist commanders in Afghanistan.

Holy Bush Doctrine, Batman!

Looks like Bush is taking Obama’s advice.  Too bad it’s seven freaking years after he first should have done it.

Call me a cynic, but I can’t help believe that the Bush Administration (and the McCain campaign, for that matter) and trying as hard as they can to find and kill Osama before the election.

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. . .because I sure do hear the sound of flip flops.  More from the View:

The man is either delusional, high, suffering from memory loss, or a flat-out liar.  Think Progress has a list of forty-two issues where he has changed course.  Here are three off the list, all concerning the Bush Administration’s pursuit of the War on Terror at home and abroad:

Detention of Detainees

McCain Flips:

In 2003, McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham wrote a letter to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld urging him to resolve the issue of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The letter6/19/05] said that “a serious process must be established in the very near term either to formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals or to return them to their countries for appropriate judicial action.” In 2005, he told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that “I know that some of these guys are terrible, terrible killers and the worst kind of scum of humanity. But, one, they deserve to have some adjudication of their cases.” [Meet the Press,

McCain Flops:

In 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that detainees at Guantanamo are required to receive habeas corpus rights. McCain called the Court’s ruling “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” “Senator Graham, and Senator Lieberman, and I…made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that citizens of this country have,” he said. [Newark Star-Ledger, 6/14/08]

Torture

McCain Flips:

In 2005, McCain pushed President Bush to sign a bill that would, among other provisions, prohibit “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in U.S. government custody. McCain authored the torture ban himself. “We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists,” McCain said. McCain was also against waterboarding, saying during presidential primary campaigning “all I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today…It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.” [MSNBC, 12/15/05 & New York Times, 10/26/07]

McCain Flops:

In 2008, McCain voted against the Intelligence Authorization Bill, which requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding. [New York Times, 2/17/08]

Illegal Wiretapping

McCain Flips:

In an interview with the Boston Globe in December 2007, McCain was asked if, as President, he would ever authorize illegal wiretapping. “I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is,” he said. “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law.” [Boston Globe, 12/20/07]

McCain Flops

The New York Times reported that a letter from top McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that McCain believes that the Constitution gave President Bush the authority to wiretap Americans “without warrants.” The letter says that “neither the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001.” [New York Times, 6/6/08]

Kudos to Think Progress for their work on this.

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