Foreign Policy News and Commentary Update January 2, 2008

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

--A senior Bush administration official (Summer 2002); cited in Ron Suskind, "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush" (New York Times, October 17)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html

2007: The Year in Videos (Reason Magazine)
http://reason.com/news/show/124104.html

The battle of ideas - Daniel L. Davis (Washington Times, January 1): It is imperative that our national leaders concede the fact that part of the reason we're not winning the global battle of the mind is our past behavior, our insistence on having things our way and our unwillingness to compromise on non-critical issues to our friends and allies.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080101/EDITORIAL/7409292/1013&template=printart

Old Habits: How the Giuliani method may defeat him - Elizabeth Kolbert (New Yorker, January 7): What Republican presidential candidate Guiliani calls his Twelve Commitments include "I will expand America's involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world" (No. 12). Giuliani carries the list on a laminated card the size of a driver's license; he says that he will keep the card on his desk in the Oval Office.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/07/080107fa_fact_kolbert

Turkey hits terrorist targets in Iraq -- what now? - O. Faruk Loðoðlu (Journal of Turkish Weekly, January 2): One task is to engage in sustained public diplomacy to ensure that international public opinion remains favorable -- or at least not opposed -- to Turkey as it continues to attack terrorist targets in Iraq. This requires sharing with the international community information about Turkey's actions, intentions and its reasons for fighting PKK terrorism.
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=51242

Dissident Saudi Blogger Is Arrested: Popular Internet Commentator Had Called for Political Reform - Faiza Saleh Ambah (Washington Post, January 1, 2008). Saudi Arabia's most popular blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, has been detained for questioning, an Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed Monday. Farhan's is the first arrest of a blogger in Saudi Arabia. Two Egyptian bloggers and one Tunisian are currently behind bars, according to Sami ben Gharbia, advocacy director for Global Voices, an international research group focused on the Internet and founded at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/31/AR2007123101915_pf.html

What Bhutto Was Worried About - Robert D. Novak (Washington Post, December 31): The assassination of Benazir Bhutto followed two months of urgent pleas to the State Department by her representatives for better protection. The U.S. reaction was that she was worried over nothing, expressing assurance that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not let anything happen to her.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/30/AR2007123002237_pf.html

Benazir Bhutto's Political Future: The murdered former leader may help Pakistani democracy more in death than in life - Shikha Dalmia (Reason, December 31): The great hope both in Pakistan and the U.S. was that Bhutto, as the leader of the closest thing to a genuinely liberal party in the country, the Pakistani People's Party (PPP), would unify Pakistan's secular forces ahead of the January elections and then win a voter mandate to beat back religious fundamentalists not just in mosques but in the nation's intelligence and armed services. This was not a baseless hope. But articulating the case for a secular democracy is not sufficient for actually producing one. Indeed, the biggest obstacles to the creation of functioning democratic institutions in Pakistan, as in other emerging nations, are corruption and ambition. Bhutto had both, in abundance.
http://reason.com/news/show/124146.html

Two Benazir Bhuttos - Anne Applebaum (Washington Post, January 1): "Given the choice, of course I would have preferred to see Bhutto leading Pakistan instead of Pervez Musharraf, let alone Mohammad Omar. Nevertheless, it was a mistake for Western governments to expect too much from her return to Pakistan."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/31/AR2007123101663_pf.html

What's Next for Pakistan - Laura Rozen (Mother Jones, December 27): A former Intelligence official says that the death of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, while tragic, won't necessarily plunge the country into the depths.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/12/6684_interview_with.html
http://www.motherjones.com/

After Bhutto: The White House's Pakistan plan is wrecked, but it now has a chance to get on the right side of history Editorial (Los Angeles Times, January 2): Washington should insist as a condition of future aid that Musharraf allow genuinely free and fair elections.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-pakistan2jan02,0,6726194.story?coll=la-opinion-center

On America's Watch - Roger Cohen (New York Times, December 31): President Pervez Musharraf, in power since a 1999 coup, has received about $10 billion in U.S. aid, much of it to reinforce the Pakistani military in fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban and global jihadism in South Waziristan and other tribal areas. If a U.S. policy was ever broken, this is it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31cohen.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Pakistan in a vortex - Arnaud de Borchgrave (Washington Times, December 31): Like it or not, the United States is now stuck with Mr. Musharraf again.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071231/COMMENTARY/444675342/1012&template=printart

Long-term instability? - Christine Fair (Washington Times, December 31): It seems many Pakistanis believe their country's slip into violence has been caused by Mr. Musharraf's alliance with Washington. Under these circumstances, it will be difficult for Mr. Musharraf to convince his polity that Pakistan is fighting for its future -- not his.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071231/COMMENTARY/380893902/1012&template=printart

False Messiah of Pakistan - William M. Arkin (Washingtonpost.com, December 31): Now, though Pakistan is seemingly on the verge of chaos, the U.S. should fight the urge to support the strongman. We need to forge a different future in Pakistan and stop looking to Musharraf as a savior.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/12/in_pakistan_the_us_is_immobili.html?nav=rss_blog

Demagoging Pakistan's crisis Editorial (Washington Times, December 31): The matter of most interest for the United States and Pakistan's neighbors India and Afghanistan continues to be this unstable government's nuclear-weapons arsenal in the context of the ugly flowering of radical Islamist groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071231/EDITORIAL/455751994/1013&template=printart

Rethinking our Pakistan policy - Ahmad Faruqui (San Francisco Chronicle, January 1): The United States should continue to support the democratic process in Pakistan but should avoid picking favorites, overtly or covertly. If last week's tragedy forces Washington to reinvent its Pakistan policy, some good may yet come of it.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/01/01/ED4VU6DQQ.DTL

2007 is America's deadliest year in Iraq - Allegra Stratton and agencies (Guardian, December 31)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2233698,00.html

Lessons from the surge - Michael Barone (Washington Times, January 1): Some of George W. Bush's critics seem to have relished the prospect of American defeat and some refuse to acknowledge the success that has been achieved. But it appears they have "misunderestimated" him once again, and have "misunderestimated" the competence of the American military and of free peoples working from the bottom up to transform their societies for the better.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080101/COMMENTARY/176823416/1012&template=printart

Make-or-Break Time in Iraq? What the U.S. Decides About Post-Surge Troop Levels Could Prove Decisive - Jackson Diehl (Washington Post, December 31): The next six to 12 months are not crucial because of what will happen in Iraq -- where, at best, violence will continue to decline incrementally, while Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds make painful and partial progress toward political settlements. The test will come in the United States -- where first the Pentagon and the White House, and then the country, will decide whether to invest enough resources in Iraq to keep the hope of eventual success alive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/30/AR2007123002238_pf.html

The Five Iraqs - Scott Ritter (Truthdig, December 30): Nothing the surge has accomplished so far remotely approaches a solution to these enormously destabilizing realities: a largely disaffected Sunni population which finds the current Shiite-dominated government of Iraq fundamentally unacceptable; a decisively fractured Shiite population torn between an Iranian-dominated government on the one hand (controlled by the political proxies of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI, itself an Iranian proxy) or an indigenous firebrand, Muqtada al-Sadr; and a false paradise in Kurdistan, where the dream of an independent Kurdish homeland corrupts a viable Kurdish autonomy and threatens regional instability by provoking Turkish military intervention.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071230_the_five_iraqs/

Libya's Inconvenient Truth - Mohamed Eljahmi (Washington Post, January 2): It is ironic and heartbreaking that the Bush administration says it cares for freedom, yet the State Department quietly suggests that courageous reformers should stage apologies to dictators. With Washington offering wholesale concessions to Tripoli, Gaddafi has little incentive to improve human rights.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/01/AR2008010101299_pf.html

Top 10 Challenges Facing the US in the Middle East, 2008 Juan Cole (Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion, December 31)
http://www.juancole.com/2007/12/top-10-challenges-facing-us-in-middle.html

Why We're in the Gulf: The world would be a much more dangerous place without America as a policeman - Walter Russell Mead (Opinion Journal from The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, January 1): America's Persian Gulf policy is one of the chief ways through which the U.S. is trying to build a peaceful world and where the exercise of American power, while driven ultimately by domestic concerns and by the American national interest, provides vital public goods to the global community. The next American president, regardless of party and regardless of his or her views about the wisdom of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, will necessarily make the security of the Persian Gulf states one of America's very highest international priorities.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110011063

About That Peace Process Editorial (New York Times, December 31): Next week President Bush will make his first trip since taking office to Israel and the Palestinian territories. His aides should use the time before then to press both sides to set up those working groups and lay out a calendar for negotiations. Annapolis was photo-op enough. Mr. Bush should use this visit to get real work started.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon2.html?ref=opinion

US Casualties in Afghanistan Hit Record - Jason Straziuso, Associated Press (Truthout, December 31): US military deaths, suicide bombings and opium production hit record highs in 2007. Taliban militants killed more than 925 Afghan police, and large swaths of the country remain outside government control. But US officials here insist things are looking up: The Afghan army is assuming a larger combat role, and militants appear unlikely to mount a major spring offensive, as had been feared a year ago. Training for Afghan police is increasing.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010108Y.shtml

Overall Sino-U.S. ties stable in 2007 Wang Wenfeng (People's Daily, Beijing, January 1): http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6327031.html

Kosovo train-wreck warnings - James Lyons (Washington Times, January 2): The U.S. seems intent on letting the Serbian province of Kosovo break away and apparently sees the issue of no great importance. Russia on the other hand, sees the situation very differently. Moscow has warned it will not accept independence for Kosovo. Mr. Putin has put his prestige on the line. He cannot afford to back down as Boris Yeltsin did. And therein lies the crisis.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080102/COMMENTARY/244153955/1012&template=printart

Crisis in Kenya: The government's apparent manipulation of election results prompts a violent backlash Editorial (Washington Post, January 1): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/31/AR2007123101770_pf.html

A Chance to Defend Themselves - Thomas B. Wilner (Washington Post, December 30): As they approach the end of their sixth year of imprisonment, the Guantanamo detainees have been denied even one fair hearing. If we observed this conduct by any other country, we would be appalled.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/28/AR2007122802446_pf.html

A Happy New Year! 2007 was hardly an annus horribilus for Americans - Irwin M. Stelzer (Weekly Standard, January 1): The world got what it wished for: a decline in the U.S. trade deficit. So BMW is laying off thousands of workers as the dollars it gets for the cars it sells in America no longer buy enough euros to meet its payroll; Italian designers are reduced to using cotton where once they would consider only silk; and European hotels and restaurants are pining for a return of the gauche but high-spending Americans who have switched vacation plans to American resorts, where the dollar is still king.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/537irbqk.asp

Electronic Passports Raise Privacy Issues - Ellen Nakashima (Washington Post, January 1): The federal government will soon offer passport cards equipped with electronic data chips to U.S. citizens who travel frequently between the United States and Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean. The cards can be read wirelessly from 20 feet, offering convenience to travelers but raising security and privacy concerns about the possibility of data being intercepted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/31/AR2007123101922_pf.html