The Second-Guessing of Obama

Before reading Jackson Diehl's latest editorial, I had come to two basic opinions in relation to the current set of accusations against President Obama: First, that the accusation that the President is indecisive on issues of military intervention is largely a canard. When the choice is to intervene or to refrain from intervening, and the U.S. refrains from intervening, you don't need a clear statement from the President, "We're not intervening at this time" in order to figure things out. Second, that the people who were criticizing the President for not being sufficiently decisive were, in fact, the same people who would prefer that our nation err on the side of military intervention.

I do concede that the President's messaging can be wanting, a problem that has existed from the start of his Presidency, as even when nuance and cautious explanation is warranted it can be better for a President's pronouncements on a conflict to be clear and definitive. "We're not intervening in [Nation] at this time because, [brief explanation], but we leave the door open to future intervention if [contingency]" -- for example, "We're not intervening in Iraq at this time, as we believe that our support for the Iraqi government and military, as well as for the Kurds, is sufficient to hold back ISIL, but we will reconsider our position if ISIL continues to advance in Iraq," or, "While we hope that the Iraqi Army will be able to protect the Yazidi people with our continued support, we will call upon our allies and engage in direct military action if that is what becomes necessary to prevent genocide."

Reading Jackson Diehl's editorial, my first thought was, "I doubt that's what the President actually said" -- at least in context. Sometimes a president will make statements in a speech, or in response to a question at a press conference, that don't make much sense -- that can happen to anybody. But the words Diehl ascribes to the President, while using rather inflammatory adjectives, immediately struck me as having been stripped from their larger context,

"What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision."

These words, marrying petulance and implausibility, were spoken by President Obama when he was asked, shortly after the beginning of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, whether he regretted withdrawing all U.S. troops from the country during his first term. "That entire analysis is bogus and is wrong," was his startling answer.

Here's the actual exchange:

What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.

And the Iraqi government, based on its political considerations, in part because Iraqis were tired of a U.S. occupation, declined to provide us those assurances. And on that basis, we left. We had offered to leave additional troops. So when you hear people say, do you regret, Mr. President, not leaving more troops, that presupposes that I would have overridden this sovereign government that we had turned the keys back over to and said, you know what, you’re democratic, you’re sovereign, except if I decide that it’s good for you to keep 10,000 or 15,000 or 25,000 Marines in your country, you don’t have a choice -- which would have kind of run contrary to the entire argument we were making about turning over the country back to Iraqis, an argument not just made by me, but made by the previous administration.

So let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis were -- a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq.

Having said all that, if in fact the Iraqi government behaved the way it did over the last five, six years, where it failed to pass legislation that would reincorporate Sunnis and give them a sense of ownership; if it had targeted certain Sunni leaders and jailed them; if it had alienated some of the Sunni tribes that we had brought back in during the so-called Awakening that helped us turn the tide in 2006 -- if they had done all those things and we had had troops there, the country wouldn’t be holding together either. The only difference would be we’d have a bunch of troops on the ground that would be vulnerable. And however many troops we had, we would have to now be reinforcing, I’d have to be protecting them, and we’d have a much bigger job. And probably, we would end up having to go up again in terms of the number of grounds troops to make sure that those forces were not vulnerable.

So that entire analysis is bogus and is wrong. But it gets frequently peddled around here by folks who oftentimes are trying to defend previous policies that they themselves made.

Let me also add that I appreciate Tom Ricks' evolution on the question of a residual force -- that at first he thought it would have been desirable to keep a residual U.S. combat force in Iraq, but as the situation has worsened he came to realize that such a force would have been inadequate -- and that the U.S. would have been forced to choose between a significant deployment of additional forces or withdrawing from the conflict, neither of which would have been positive outcomes. Obama's statement inclues a similar analysis. Diehl is among those who continue to quibble over the decision to withdraw combat forces, a decision that the President correctly notes was in fact made by the prior administration and was forced by Iraq's refusal to agree to an acceptable status of forces agreement -- and while it may be true that the President didn't go all-out to twist Maliki's arm to allow combat forces to remain, even in hindsight that does not appear to have been a bad decision. Unless, that is, you would prefer that we now have 50,000 combat troops in Iraq, actively fighting on behalf of Maliki in a renewed civil war.

The analysis that the President stated was "bogus" was the absurd notion that keeping a residual combat force in Iraq would have prevented the nation from experiencing the problems that it has experienced as a result of its poor governance under Maliki. Diehl, to his discredit, purports that the President said that it was "bogus" that it was his decision not to try to force Maliki and Iraq to allow for the continued presence of combat forces, or to maintain combat troops in Iraq as a hostile force that was neither welcomed nor extended any legal protection by the (supposedly) sovereign government of Iraq.

Given that Diehl criticizes the Bush Administration for "resist[ing] the conclusion that his toppling of Saddam Hussein had been a mistake and the subsequent occupation was disastrously managed", I thought I would take a look for a column in which he apologized for his own cheerleading of that war and admitted his own mistakes. The closest I found was this,

The 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has prompted plenty of analysis of the mistakes made there, along with a few tendentious claims that “the same people” who supported war in Iraq are now pressing for U.S. intervention in Syria. I’m one of those people. So, to paraphrase the polemicists: Did I learn nothing from the last decade? Do I want to repeat the Iraq “fiasco”?

Diehl then argues vociferously for military intervention in Iraq because he believes it will be different than the result iof intervention in Syria, speculating, "As in the Balkans — or Libya — the limited use of U.S. airpower and collaboration with forces on the ground could have quickly put an end to the Assad regime 18 months ago, preventing 60,000 deaths and rise of al-Qaeda." Students of history might object, "But, even acknowledging that they helped, it was not actually the air strikes that turned things around in the Balkans, and the aftermath of toppling Qadaffi has destabilized the region and created a host of new security and humanitarian problems." Diehl similarly waxes poetic about "The Surge" and what it supposedly accomplished, despite the fact that the reality is far more complex, and that it was local outreach that helped calm the civil war much more than more boots on the ground. Diehl sneers, "Like the failed U.S. commanders who preceded Gen. David Petraeus, Obama argues that 'there’s no American military solution' in Iraq", as if what we're seeing is an entirely new civil war, and not a civil war that had its roots in prior ethnic conflicts -- not just the civil war that occurred under U.S. occupation, but a history of ethnic, religious and tribal rivalries that started well before Iraq was even a nation state.

This appears to be the answer to his second question, "Do I want to repeat the Iraq 'fiasco'?":

The problem here is not that advocates of the Iraq invasion have failed to learn its lessons. It is that opponents of that war, starting with Obama, have learned the wrong ones.

Frankly, that non-answer was foreshadowed by his use of scare quotes around the word "fiasco". There's nothing in his editorial that suggest that Diehl learned anything from the Iraq intervention, or that it has at all colored his apparent predisposition to shoot first and ask questions later. Although a year later he seems more willing to suggest that the Iraq invasion was "a mistake" for which others should take responsibility, I see no sign that he's reconsidered his own pro-war stance.

Diehl closes with this:

This is not to argue that Obama should dispatch hundreds of thousands of U.S. ground troops to the region. The point is that a doctrine whose first priority is avoiding U.S. engagement is bound to fail. The goal must be offensive: to defeat those forces that are destroying Iraq and Syria, from the Islamic State to the homicidal regime of Bashar al- Assad. That can be accomplished only with U.S. military and political leadership. And it will require Obama to accept the conclusion he still bitterly resists: that he was wrong.

So... Diehl wants the President to admit that he was "wrong" to not somehow force the presence of a continued combat force in Iraq, or to maintain such troops in the absence of a status of forces agreement? Yet he offers nothing to refute the President's expression that the presence of a combat force would not have rendered Maliki's government any more effective, or Ricks' concerns about an ultimate forced choice of "retreat or take sides and escalate" in the face of civil war?

Leaving aside for the moment that there's far more evidence of error by Diehl than by Obama, whether we're talking about Diehl's urging war in Iraq, his errors of history, or his misrepresentation of the President's statement, Diehl offers here an argument, not a valid conclusion. Diehl falls into the category of pundits who argue that if the President [did something] then we would be looking at an outcome that is better than what we are presently experiencing. This brand of pundit is awful at explaining what the President should have done, or why it would be expected to bring about a better outcome. Let's say that the President had followed Diehl's wish that he topple the Assad regime and assume that what followed would be more stable and more friendly to the west.

Should we recall that ISIL, the entity that moved into Iraq and has renewed that nation's civil war, was a powerful enemy of the Assad regime? Does Diehl truly believe that weaker entities in Syria would have been able to unite and stabilize the country and militarily defeat groups like ISIL? Why should we believe that the attacks Diehl desired would not have led to the same sort of destabilization and fragmentation that we saw in the former Yugoslavia, but with much more profound consequences for the region? In the same sort of military and humanitarian crises we've seen following the intervention in Libya? In the rise of ISIL as the dominant military and political force in Syria, with its tendrils extending into Lebanon and Iraq? Wherever you may find answers to questions of that sort, it won't be from Diehl.

Middle East Blowback and Syria

Jackson Diehl and I have different ideas of what constitutes "blowback". I see "blowback" as the unintended consequence of foreign policy and military actions. He sees it as... I'm not quite sure.

At best, Libya will be a steady, low-grade headache for Obama in his second term. But the worst blowback from his policies will come in Syria. What began as a peaceful mass rebellion against another Arab dictator has turned, in the absence of U.S. leadership, into a brutal maelstrom of sectarian war in which al-Qaeda and allied jihadists are playing a growing role. Obama’s light footprint strategy did much to produce this mess; without a change of U.S. policy, it will become, like Bosnia for Bill Clinton or Iraq for George W. Bush, the second term’s “problem from hell.”

Diehl complains that President Obama's approach to Libya resulted in Gadhafi's fall from power, but showed little concern for what would happen to the nation afterward.

[A] Rand study concludes that stabilizing Libya will require disarming and demobilizing the militias and rebuilding the security forces “from the bottom up.” This, it says, probably can’t happen without help from “those countries that participated in the military intervention” — i.e. the United States, Britain and France. Can the Obama administration duplicate the security-force-building done in Iraq and Afghanistan in Libya while sticking to the light footprint? It’s hard to see how.

Diehl does not appear to be arguing that we should now occupy Libya, disarm its mlitias, and rebuild the nation from the ground up. He presents no argument that U.S. policy in Libya contributed to the civil war in Syria.

The U.S. is faced with four choices in Syria: Cease all current efforts and let the chips fall where they may, keep on the current course of sanctions and selective support for certain resistance, escalate into a Lebanon-type limited military engagement designed to cause Assad's regime to collapse, or invade, occupy and rebuild. Obama's "light footprint" policies in Libya did nothing to produce the mess in Syria. Diehl seems to be choosing loaded language, irrelevant to the situation, to try to make the Obama Administration responsible for Syria's civil war, and then to convince his readers that the only responsible action that can now be taken is an Iraq- or Afghanistan-style occupation and "bottom up" nation building.

Does Diehl actually believe that's plausible given our nation's recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, even under a different President? Even if we weren't still in a painfully slow period of economic recovery? Can Diehl at least explain why "It will be different than what happened the last two times we invaded and attempted to reinvent predominantly Muslim nations as progressive democracies," or "It will be different from our most recent incursions in nations that are dominated by warlords"? Because if not, the blowback isn't what would be leading us into the conflict - it would be what we would experience if we follow Diehl's counsel.

Few outside of Iran, the Putin Administration and Assad's inner circle want his regime to survive, but policy on how to achieve that end and what might follow should be predicated upon more than wishful thinking and an implied blank check payable by the U.S. taxpayer.

Democracy Building According to Jackson Diehl

First, you replace the non-democratic government of the targeted nation with a... dictatorship. Ah, but not just any dictator. A benign dictator. A philosopher king, if you will. And then you charge him with keeping the peace while he assembles the nation's various political factions and they collectively write a constitution. And then they work together to engage the middle class such that, when the election occurs, it's the nation's wealthier members, manufacturers and merchants who choose the next government, not the unwashed masses. Seriously folks, this is the real Deihl:

"This administration has been at best lukewarm towards our cause of democracy," Saad Eddin Ibrahim, one of the most respected Egyptian opposition leaders, told me Thursday.

"Clinton's statement on Tuesday reflected what the policy has been for two years," Ibrahim said. "The second statement was a bit more balanced. But it is still not balanced enough for our taste. What we hope for is explicit support for the demands that are being put forward by the people in the streets."

Those demands are coherent and eminently reasonable: Mubarak should step down and be replaced by a transitional government, headed by ElBaradei and including representatives of all pro-democracy forces. That government could then spend six months to a year rewriting the constitution, allowing political parties to freely organize and preparing for genuinely democratic elections. Given time to establish themselves, secular forces backed by Egypt's growing middle class are likely to rise to the top in those elections - not the Islamists that Mubarak portrays as the only alternative.

I recognize that it takes valuable seconds to find demographic information on nations like Egypt, and that people like Diehl probably have better things to do with their time than to see if the facts support their arguments, but it seems worth asking: In what sort of democratic election will Egypt's middle class be able to define the outcome? Egypt has 9.7% unemployment (a long-term problem, with the official figure likely understating the reality), 20% of the population lives in poverty, and the population is 90% Muslim. Close to 30% of the adult population is illiterate - a 17% male illiteracy rate and a 40.6% female illiteracy rate. One third of the population is under the age of 14. The median age is 24. This may strike Diehl as odd, but those demographics do not suggest to me that a secular middle class will be able to control the reform process.

Diehl criticizes the Obama Administration for standing behind Mubarak instead of... I'm not sure what. I guess, telling him to resign and appoint a philosopher king as his successor.

Thus began what may be remembered as one of the most shortsighted and wrongheaded policies the United States has ever pursued in the Middle East. Admittedly, the bar is high. But the Obama administration's embrace of Mubarak, even as the octogenarian strongman refused to allow the emergence of a moderate, middle-class-based, pro-democracy opposition, has helped bring the United States' most important Arab ally to the brink of revolution.

There are two ways of looking at this, of course. Diehl's way, that within days Mubarak's regime will fall and a forward-looking, secular, democratic regime will take over, reform the nation of Egypt and uplift its people, and leave its people angry that the U.S. wasn't more supportive at the onset of their revolution. Or that the Mubarak regime will prove sufficiently stable to withstand the protests. But since Diehl is suggesting that Egyptians resent President Obama's supposed abandonment of the Bush-era "freedom agenda", it's worth stepping back a few years to see how Bush treated Egypt and Mubarak. And who better to give us that history than Jackson Diehl?

So Democrats have to start by "reclaiming our own ground," [Will] Marshall says. His book proposes two important ways to do that. First, Democrats can clean up the crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the CIA's secret prisons, and restore America's reputation as the world's foremost defender of human rights. They can also end Bush's cynical policy of demanding democracy from enemy regimes such as Iran and Syria while tolerating the continued autocracy of such friends as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Were Diehl attempting to be fair, he would also acknowledge how the Bush Administration insisted upon elections for the Palestinian Authority then reacted in horror when the wrong party won. Diehl appears to share that sense of "democracy" - he doesn't want elections in Egypt now, implicitly acknowledging that Islamic factions would win an election. He wants the nation ruled by the benign dictator until secular parties "establish themselves" and we can be pretty sure that "secular forces backed by Egypt's growing middle class are likely to rise to the top in those elections". Should Diehl get his wish, one wonders... will Diehl call for elections if, six months or a year from now, it still looks like Islamic parties would prevail in an election? No, actually one doesn't. It looks like Diehl's "freedom agenda" is that of Bush: it only counts as freedom if the correct person or party comes out on top.

We can also play the game of "Which Secretary of State is Diehl attacking"?

But her aims are utterly different from those with which Bush began his second term - such as the "freedom agenda" he restated in Prague. Democracy promotion in the Middle East is out, replaced by a belated but intense effort to broker a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. Even more strikingly, the "regime change" strategy that once marked Bush administration policy toward North Korea has been dropped in favor of an all-out effort to negotiate a rapprochement with dictator Kim Jong Il.

vs.

Bland, carefully balanced statements were issued by second- and third-level spokesmen, while [she and the President] - who regularly ripped Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - remained silent.

Condi vs. Hillary. Yes, that first comment was directed at Condoleezza Rice. Except when Rice walked away from the "freedom agenda" and embraced tyrants Diehl saw her moves as "bold new strategies" - "No wonder, perhaps, that the secretary hasn't bothered with directives about dissidents."

Diehl's primary mistake lies in his hallucinatory belief that the U.S. can control events in Egypt - or is it that he believes he can control the events through some form of extremely powerful wishful thinking: That the U.S. could do something that would inspire Mubarak to resign and appoint Mohamed ElBaradei to be his temporary successor. That the masses would accept Mohamed ElBaradei as the leader, and would accept his initiative to draft a constitution establishing Egypt as a secular democracy. That the various political factions involved would cooperate in creating such a constitution, and the factions Diehl wants to see marginalized or excluded from that process would acquiesce. That secular political parties would flourish - but perhaps just two or three of them, such that they could reasonably form a government. That the middle class would overwhelmingly and successfully elect a secular, democratic government. And that all of this could be achieved within six months. As Daniel Larison has observed,

The administration could tell Mubarak that. Instead of the increased criticism it has already promised, the administration could threaten Mubarak with its “wrath.” Would this entail merely the suspension of aid, or would it involve more serious penalties? In other words, what exactly should the administration be threatening to do to Mubarak and his allies if they do not comply? It’s all very well to bluster and make threats, but Mubarak knows that our government is not going to risk seriously undermining the current government. He will assume that the administration is bluffing and playing to its domestic audience, and he will probably be right. If the administration is not bluffing, it genuinely risks making the same mistake that Carter made in his handling of the Shah and domestic opposition to his regime.

Larison continues with an explanation of why it's unrealistic to expect the Muslim Brotherhood to remain on the sidelines. Larison predicts, quite reasonably,

By the end of the week, it looks as if the Brotherhood will have officially joined the protests as well. The protesters cannot be neatly separated into the “good” secular democrats here and the unacceptable Islamists over there. For that matter, there is as yet no evidence that any of the protesters object to the Brotherhood’s participation.

Larison relates the observation of Jonathan Wright that one of the reasons the Islamic Brotherhood has remained in the background is likely because its involvement "would frighten off some of the other groups" and that with its open involvement "the government will feel free to use much more brutal methods to disperse protesters". If Mubarak falls and a new government is to be peacefully formed, the Islamic Brotherhood will demand a seat at the table.

Throwing Money at Internet Freedom

Jackson Diehl is concerned that, although money has been earmarked for use to subsidize sites that allow the residents of foreign nations to avoid state censorship, both the Bush and Obama Administrations have been slow to spend it. I can think of three reasons why that would be the case:

1. Just because I claim to have a good system for helping people avoid state censorship doesn't mean I'm necessarily a good target for $millions in taxpayer dollars. A company offered those $millions is likely to take the money, sure, but it may not use the money wisely - or its backers may pocket the money and run.

2. Just because a system is up and running doesn't mean that it's actually secure. Funding the wrong program could helptyrannical regimes identify dissidents.

3. The U.S. Government is concerned that it would be subsidizing tools used by criminals and terrorists to operate in ways that avoid detection and impede tracing by U.S. authorities.

Jackson Diehl Misquotes Abbas

I am cynical when I read an editorial that claims to be supported by a source that could be easily linked and discover, upon checking, that the source cited says something different. I am amazed when the author of the editorial provides a link and is contradicted by his source.

Jackson Diehl proposed something in his column on Israel-Palestinian peace talks that simply didn't ring true:

Netanyahu wants the implementation of Palestinian statehood to be phased, even if its final terms are agreed upon in advance. Initially at least, Israeli forces would patrol Palestine's eastern border with Jordan, and perhaps some settlements on Palestinian territory would remain in place.

But it's worth noting that Abbas, following his first extended private conversation with Netanyahu in Washington, spent the subsequent days giving interviews to Arab media in which he publicly rejected each of those terms. Palestinians, he said, will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state; they will not allow Israeli forces to remain in the West Bank. In fact, if he's pressured to make any concessions, he told the al-Quds newspaper, "I'll grab my briefcase and leave."

It's easy enough to click the link, right? So what does Diehl's source actually say?

[Abbas] told the daily that he would halt negotiations if construction in West Bank Jewish settlements is resumed. He also said he has no intention of discussing recognition of Israel as a Jewish state with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Israel can call itself what it wishes," he said.¹

Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit joined in the criticism of Israel's demand for recognition as the state of the Jewish people, explaining that the issue raised concern regarding the status of Israel's Arab population, even asking whether they would remain in the country or be expelled.

So what Abbas ruled out was having Netanyahu condition a peace deal on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish State, to the potential detriment of Israel's Palestinian population. Nothing in that position retreats from the P.A.'s recognition of Israel as a state. For that matter, why is the question of how Israel defines itself vis-à-vis its ethnic and religious minorities a matter for these talks, as opposed to a matter of internal Israeli politics?

Polls do suggest that

...after reaching a permanent agreement on all issues of the conflict, [60% of Palestinians believe that] there should be recognition of Israel as the state for the Jewish people.

The issue here turns in no small part on semantics - a "Jewish state" versus "a state for the Jewish people". Given the presence of extremists like Avigdor Lieberman in the Netanyahu cabinet, though, I can understand getting hung up on semantics. Support for Israel as a state for the Jewish people is not inconsistent with an expectation that it will treat its minority populations as equal citizens, not try to find ways to diminish their rights, pressure them to emigrate, or carve their population centers out of the country, but even if you assume Netanyahu's intentions are good the words "Jewish State" implicate a long history of distrust and mistreatment of Israel's Palestinian population and amplify the rhetoric of people like Lieberman.

As for the presence of Israeli forces, it can hardly be a surprise that after four decades of occupation the Palestinians would want a peace deal to actually end the occupation. The Palestinians have for decades proposed that Israeli occupation forces be replaced by peacekeepers from another nation, even the United States. There's no indication that Abbas is suggesting that foreign forces cannot be present on Palestinian land to help ensure stability and to protect and preserve the peace - just that he wants those forces to be from nations other than Israel, as is the case in Lebanon. To the extent that Diehl believes that Palestinian public opinion favors the continued presence of Israeli troops on Palestinian land once a peace deal has been struck, I would very much appreciate his identifying the poll. I very much doubt it exists.

So contrary to Diehl's suggestion, Abbas has not ruled out recognizing Israel as a Jewish State - just that such a demand is not an appropriate part of the present negotiations. Opinion polls do suggest that Palestinians would support softer language, and there's little reason to expect that language along the lines of what is reflected in those polls cannot be negotiated as part of any peace deal that is reached.

Further, there is no reason to believe that Abbas would be opposed to the presence of peacekeeping forces in a future Palestinian state. There is no reason to believe that there is any appreciable support among Palestinians for the presence of Israeli troops, past, present or future. And if the demand from Netanyahu is "Peacekeeping forces must be Israeli or we cannot negotiate," it is not Abbas who is being unreasonable.

The biggest threat to peace talks, of course, is a resumption of construction in Israel's West Bank settlements, something Netanyahu has promised will soon occur. Diehl somehow forgot to even mention the issue.
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1. This choice of words reminds me of Netanyahu and his spokespersons in relation to a Palestinian rump state:

[T]he first Israeli government to talk about a Palestinian state, to even mention the words, was the ultra right-wing Netanyahu government that came in 1996. They were asked, “Could Palestinians have a state?” Peres, who had preceded them, said, “No, never.” And Netanyahu’s spokesman said, “Yeah, the fragments of territory that we leave to them, they can call it a state if they want. Or they can call it fried chicken.”

Obama's Not Happy Enough?

I've read editorials that are more shallow, more superficial, often with Fred Hiatt's imprimatur, but not recently. Fred Hiatt cherry picks some quotes to suggest that the President is insufficiently enthusiastic (by Hiatt's measure) for the job.

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago when Obama confidant David Axelrod, noting that the president always makes time for his daughters' recitals and soccer games, told the New York Times, "I think that's part of how he sustains himself through all this."

Really? Is the presidency something to sustain yourself through?

Yes, Fred, it is. Take a modern President at random, let's say on inauguration day. Take a look at his picture. Now take a look at his picture when he left office. Would you call that normal age progression?

Hiatt wants a President who schmoozes with foreign leaders "like President George H.W. Bush"... Um, because G.W. had such a reputation as a charmer? And G.W. managed to avoid having any "prickly" relations with the leaders of allied nations due to his "schmoozing?" Hiatt's source on this is his deputy editor, Jackson Diehl, who complains that Bush had close relationships with "Aznar of Spain, Uribe of Colombia, Sharon and Olmert of Israel, Koizumi of Japan". Not that I want to understate the importance of any of those allies, but isn't Diehl damning the man with faint praise? (And omitting schmoozing that is unseemly or betrays really bad judgment?)

Hiatt wants somebody who horse-trades and twists arms like Lyndon Johnson... Um, because there's been none of that from the White House?

President Barack Obama's treatment of lawmakers far exceeds the strong-armed tactics once employed by President Lyndon Johnson, a GOP senator argued Thursday.

As they say, it all depends on whose ox is getting gored.

Hiatt complains that Obama doesn't put "his feet up on his desk after a long day and chewing over events with aides", purporting that unnamed "insiders" describe Obama as preferring brisk meetings and spending time with his family. Um... one obvious response is in bad taste. Another... what's wrong with wanting brisk, efficient meetings, even if a few aides would like to spend more time face-to-face with the President? Another... who cares, other than Obama's aides and Fred Hiatt, how much face time they get with the President?

Hiatt admits that one of the things he likes (he says "we", but c'mon) about Obama is that he "doesn't get a kick out of adoring throngs", but nonetheless complains that Obama doesn't recharge by going to campaign events and wading into the crowd. "Obama will do that if he has to, to save his health-care bill. But he can't persuade us he gets much of a kick out of it." "We" like that about him - Fred Hiatt argues that it shows that he's a "secure, self-confident adult" - so, apparently, he should change his ways and start convincing Fred Hiatt that he gets a kick from campaigning? (Time to update the old Cole Porter song?)

We understand that, even without war and recession, it wouldn't be easy. His predecessor partied and stuck him with the tab. The Republicans are reliably obstructionist; his Democrats reliably unreliable. The media are carping, superficial and relentless. He is a prisoner of the Secret Service.

That superficial media... What's Hiatt's job, again?

Hiatt states that upon coming to Washington, "the Obamas and their circle spoke about the honor of service and the excitement of being in the nation's capital," but a year later, according to People Magazine - yes, the celebrity gossip weekly,

"It was their first interview of the New Year on Jan. 8 in the rose-colored library on the ground floor of the White House. President Obama spoke in such a hush about the loneliness of his decisions on war and terrorism that one could hear between his words the tick of an old lighthouse clock across the room."

Hiatt asks,

Do Americans really want to hear the tick of the old lighthouse clock? Or would they prefer the good cheer that we associate with FDR or JFK, the jauntiness with which they took over the White House and made it theirs?

Yes, Fred, you're right. The American people want to hear the President speak cheerfully and jauntily when he describes how he makes decisions on war and terrorism. Thank you for asking. You can go out and play now.

A Raw Diehl?

Again cheerleading a significant, long-term escalation of the war in Afghanistan, Jackson Diehl asks,

All that time, no one accused George W. Bush of dithering. So why does Barack Obama keep hearing the taunt as he deliberates about Afghanistan -- and why do even some who sympathize with his dilemma find it hard to shake the feeling that this commander in chief lacks resolve?

If you look at the people who are accusing President Obama of dithering, the answer is self-evident. Is there one among them who is not a staunch advocate of endless war in Afghanistan? They hope that their silly, hypocritical accusations of "dithering" (think Dick Cheney) will somehow embarrass him into doing what they want, and making Obama less likely to impose reasonable demands on Karzai's administration or have a clear end-game in mind before escalating the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

Diehl shows his cards with this claim,

One part of the answer is easy: Bush was renowned for summoning plenty of resolve, and not enough critical thinking. No one questioned that Bush's heart was in his bid for "victory" in Iraq.

He defines "resolve" as the willingness to make a war last forever if it means avoiding admitting a mistake, but (at least in relation to Bush) not as the resolve to commit the troops or forces necessary to win. Which leads us back to the real Diehl: he wants more troops not because there's a plan for victory, or a reasonable likelihood of victory, but because he favors the perpetuation of the war until his unarticulated fantasy version of "victory" is achieved.

(It would be interesting to read an analysis of how all of the pro-war pundits and commentators miraculously settled on a somewhat unusual word, "dithering", to describe Obama's failure to immediately dispatch tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan upon the request of General McChrystal, despite the vast improvement his administration has already brought about in Afghanistan following seven years of malignant neglect by Bush and Cheney.)

Budget Mendacity From the Washington Post

Have you ever seen Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory? Recall Gene Wilder's "protests" when the various naughty children engaged in acts that he knew would lead to very unpleasant consequences? Somehow Fred Hiatt's gang brought that image to mind with their argument that their acceptance of massive deficit spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is consistent with their insistence that healthcare reform be revenue neutral.

In principle, all wars should be paid for, just like all other federal spending. We criticized President George W. Bush for sticking with tax cuts rather than calling for national sacrifice after Sept. 11, 2001, and for failing to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So we start with a general statement of principle, with no indication that the Post has any interest in standing behind that principle. Hiatt's editorial board protested, Willie Wonka-style ("Oh! I wouldn't do that... I really wouldn't"), at some point in the past and, having given lip service to their principles, proceeded with full-throated advocacy of the wars and their escalation.

If Mr. Obama were to propose offsetting the cost of additional troops in Afghanistan with a gasoline or carbon tax, we would support it.

But not if he proposed such taxes to fund healthcare reform - for that, Hiatt and his crew want new taxes on the middle class. But take a step back in history to the budget surpluses G.W. inherited and frittered away on tax cuts for the wealthy and a ruinously expensive war of choice in Iraq - why not let some of those tax cuts expire to fund the war? Or to fund healthcare reform?¹

Hiatt and his crew then argue that the budget games they're using to avoid funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are analogous to arguments that future savings in healthcare costs should be considered when calculating the cost of a reform bill. An obvious flaw in this argument is that, at least in any modern western society, the state cannot avoid healthcare costs. It's perfectly appropriate in that context to consider how reforms might bring about savings, and how that will relate to future expenditures. When the government chooses to spend vast amounts of money on a war of choice, the baseline for spending is $0 and (unless you endorse some modern form of loot and plunder) there's no way to achieve "savings" by making that number negative.

Further, the Post combines spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, suggesting that "savings" that may be achieved from possible troop reductions in Iraq could be applied to the increased budget for the war in Afghanistan, thus bringing about a net "savings". If the Post believes this argument, then it has justified in spades what it deems to be the "creative accounting" behind the healthcare reform bill. Further, money is fungible - why not apply the Post's imagined "savings" from Iraq to healthcare reform, and pass the Post's proposed new taxes to fund the war in Afghanistan? ("Did we just say we opposed sticking with the Bush tax cuts for those wars, so that we wouldn't run up huge deficits? Well, that was so five minutes ago.")

The Post continues with a similar quality of logic:

All this assumes that defense and health care should be treated equally in the national budget. We would argue that they should not be, for two reasons. One is that wars, unlike entitlement programs, eventually come to an end. A guarantee of health care for all, particularly in the context of steadily rising costs, will bankrupt the nation if not matched by a steady stream of revenue.

Sure, wars end... Even the Hundred Years War came to an end. I suspect, though, that the Iraq war would have wrapped up sooner or perhaps not been launched at all if G.W. had told the wealthy, "Sorry, you won't be getting those tax cuts after all, and estate taxes will not be reduced." The Post's tax proposals are consistent with this - they're big on picking the pockets of working Americans, but in relative terms the proposals they're presently endorsing will have a small impact on the wealthy.

Since wars do end, it's reasonable to ask "When will these wars end, and how much will they cost?" The best answer we're likely to get from Hiatt and his boys is probably Jackson Diehl's² "Nothing's anything like Vietnam" argument - a shrug. Who knows, who cares, it's probably best not to even ask - and don't mention long, costly wars we entered with no vision of how we would achieve victory or an exit strategy, because they're nothing like what will soon be our longest war ever with no end in sight."

The Post's slippery slope argument on healthcare costs is amusing, given the Post's strong opposition to the cheapest alternative to the status quo - a robust national healthcare plan, even a single payer plan. I find it childish to suggest that the inevitable consequence of providing health insurance to every U.S. citizen will be that the nation is bankrupted. It's not at the level of "death panels", but it's still a dishonest, fear-based argument.

The point hidden behind the hypocrisy and logical fallacy is actually a good one - when we're committing to an indefinite expenditure we should consider how we are going to pay for it. But the Post's definition of what expenditures are of a limited nature is reminiscent of how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution's provisions on copyright - anything that's less that indefinite in duration is "limited". When there's no end in sight to war spending, and no plan or strategy that will bring an end to that spending, the open-ended nature of the commitment makes it little different than entitlement spending - infinity is not so much different from "infinity minus one".

The Post's last argument is that wars are necessary to defend our nation and its people, while healthcare reform is not. Again we have dubious logic - that any money spent on wars and the military, no matter how spent, is necessary to the defense of the state. Would Fred Hiatt expand that "reasoning", Candian Bacon-style, to a war of choice against Canada? Some wars aren't all that important to our defense. Jackson Diehl just got through suggesting that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are less important "in its consequences for the United States" than was the Vietnam War - we ended the war, the North took control of the country, it's still a communist nation, and... Americans can easily and safely visit Vietnam as tourists, and we have normalized diplomatic and trade relations. How would that have been improved by giving the Vietnam War an indefinite³, deficit-funded blank check?

Combining the Hiatt crew's assertion, "the nation's security must be the president's first priority", with Diehl's insistence that our current wars are less important than Vietnam, would the Post endorse a decision to end both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars on the ground that they're less important than Vietnam and we did pretty darn well despite having ended that war with an outcome falling far short of victory? Or would we hear Diehl shriek, "Any analogy to Vietnam is imperfect - continue the war forever (less a day) if necessary to win!" With Hiatt chiming in, "At any cost... to the middle class and future generations."

Since we're focusing on the question of what bankrupts a nation, potentially leading to collapse, it seems reasonable to ask this question: In the history of the world, how many nations or empires have collapsed under the weight of healthcare costs (or any other public benefit), and how many have collapsed under the weight of costly wars and imperial overreach? Sometimes wars end because they bankrupt the proponent.

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1. Here, they may be channeling Lionel Hutz. It says we argued "No New Taxes'? They got that all wrong. It's supposed to say 'No! New Taxes!"

2. Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post.

3. Limited only by the Post's assertion that all wars eventually end.

A New Twist on Learning From History

From what Jackson Diehl has written, it appears that the new lessons of history are:

1. Unless the current event is exactly like the historical event, there's nothing to be learned from history.
2. If somebody has drawn a historic analogy that proves flawed, it conclusively proves that any comparison of the current event to the history event is flawed.
3. If somebody claims that a particular lesson is to be learned from a specific historic event, and you disagree, you can reject the idea that anything can be learned from the historic event.
4. Absent a perfect analogy, anybody who analogizes a current event to a historic event is being unhelpful.

Diehl is offended at the notion that the war in Afghanistan can be compared to the war in Vietnam, arguing "No military mission since Vietnam has come close to that war in the number of casualties, or in its consequences for the United States". Those are the only two measures that are relevant? And when Diehl suggests that the consequences of the war in Afghanistan are significantly less for the United States than the consequences of the Vietnam War, is he making an argument for withdrawal?

It's Brinksmanship

When heads of state clash over big issues, the question usually becomes "who blinks first?" Jackson Diehl whines that the Obama Administration took a maximalist position when negotiating with Israel over its expansion of settlements in the Palestinian territories:

Pressuring Israel made sense, at first. The administration correctly understood that Netanyahu, a right-winger who took office with the clear intention of indefinitely postponing any Israeli-Palestinian settlement, needed to feel some public heat from Washington to change his position -- and that the show of muscle would add credibility to the administration's demands that Arab leaders offer their own gestures. But, starting with a statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in May, the administration made the mistake of insisting that an Israeli settlement "freeze" -- a term the past three administrations agreed to define loosely -- must mean a total stop to all construction in the West Bank and even East Jerusalem.

Diehl complains that expecting Israel to freeze its settlements doesn't demand enough of the Palestinians (er... demands on the Palestinians are a separate issue), that it's unobtainable due to Israel's internal political issues, and that he believes it to be unnecessary. Yet (although I grant, a temporary freeze is pretty meaningless) look who's blinking first:

Israel would be open to a complete freeze of settlement building in the West Bank for three to six months as part of a broad Middle East peace endeavor that included a Palestinian agreement to negotiate an end to the conflict and confidence-building steps by major Arab nations, senior Israeli officials said Sunday.

Odds are Obama will work with that short-term freeze (or perhaps even one that's broader), and use the six months to try to build a larger deal.

Persistent criticisms of Obama from the left are that he's often reluctant to draw a line in the sand, and that he appears too eager for bipartisan solutions and is willing to negotiate pretty much anything. But as far as I can see, since he took office, there's not yet been a time when Obama drew a solid line where he turned out to be the guy who blinked. Obama doesn't pick fights unless he expects to win.

Down the Memory Hole

Although the editorial has disappeared from the Washington Post's website, I am reminded that some years back, when he was relying upon common sense rather than dubious "secret sources", Jackson Diehl made some good points about the Israel-Palestine peace process.

Getting Played

It is interesting, although unfortunately not surprising, to see a nationally syndicated columnist "getting played" by somebody who pretends to have inside information. Today's case study, Jackson Diehl. After telling us about Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's various failures, in relation to his failed negotations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Diehl shares the information he garnered from his secret source - obvious nonsense:

Worst of all, Abbas followed in a long tradition of previous Palestinian leaders by reacting to a far-reaching Israeli offer with an uncourageous demurral. Olmert has never publicly disclosed the terms he discussed with Abbas, but sources say he went well beyond what Israel agreed to at the Camp David talks of 2000, previously the closest approach to a deal. I'm told Olmert offered to support the groundbreaking concession of allowing thousands of Palestinian refugees to "return" to Israel over a period of years; he also agreed to divide Jerusalem between Israel and Palestine. Abbas, like Yasser Arafat at Camp David, refused to sign on to a compromise that the world would have hailed.

So we start with the assumption that an enormously generous offer was made - under a veil of complete secrecy - and was "demurred" by Abbas. That's an odd choice of words, as a demurral is not actually a rejection, but a reference to objection, doubt or hesitation. Without knowing more, it's childish of Diehl to be calling this "demurral" the "worst" reason the, well, fictitious offer was not accepted. On the other hand, the fact that Diehl either doesn't know enough about the conflict, or doesn't care enough about his credibility, to recognize when he's being gaslighted....

Let's step back for a moment in time, some eight years, to the collapse of the Camp David talks at the end of Clinton's presidency. The conventional propaganda twist on the failure is that Arafat received an exceptionally generous offer, the likes of which would never be seen again, and that all fault for the failure of the talks lies with the Palestinians. Israeli peace activists point out that the "generous offer" wasn't so generous, and former Clinton Aid Robert Malley points out that a different spin is possible:

The question is whether, as Barak claims, the Palestinian position was tantamount to a denial of Israel's right to exist and to seeking its destruction. The facts do not validate that claim. True, the Palestinians rejected the version of the two-state solution that was put to them. But it could also be said that Israel rejected the unprecedented two-state solution put to them by the Palestinians from Camp David onward, including the following provisions: a state of Israel incorporating some land captured in 1967 and including a very large majority of its settlers; the largest Jewish Jerusalem in the city's history; preservation of Israel's demographic balance between Jews and Arabs; security guaranteed by a US-led international presence.

What's also forgotten in this is that, even had Arafat accepted (and if we presuppose that the democracy in the Palestinian territories was a sham, such that the agreement could be foist upon the Palestinian people despite likely strong opposition to its terms), it's not at all clear that it would have passed in Israel's parliament, the Knesset.

But what is clear, and should be abundantly clear to even the most ignorant, tin-eared syndicated columnist, is that there is no chance that Olmert would have been able to pass a proposal equivalent to the Camp David offer, let alone one more generous. For goodness sake, Diehl just got through telling us about Olmert's impotence in restraining settlement activity in the West Bank,

Instead of a groundbreaking accord with Abbas or Assad, he will leave behind scorched earth in Gaza, a Lebanese front bristling with Hezbollah's missiles and an Israeli West Bank presence that has expanded rather than contracted during the past two years, with thousands of new homes for Jewish settlers under construction.

And how he lacked the spine to shut down even the flagrantly illegal "outpost settlements", whose residents have engaged in acts against Palestinians that are so atrocious that even Olmert describes them as pogroms. The man who gets all weak-kneed at the thought of standing up to extremists settlers who have almost no popular support in Israel is going to expand on Barak's offer, close down a number of full-scale West Bank settlements, and offer "thousands of Palestinian refugees to 'return' to Israel" and divide Jerusalem? Diehl believes that was promised, let alone that there was any chance of its being delivered? Even after observing,

Despite his bold intentions, Olmert proved unwilling or unable to stand up to the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank; his government failed to dismantle even those outposts it has repeatedly declared illegal.

How charmingly naive.

Further, were there even a hint of truth to the allegations, Olmert wouldn't be keeping it secret. In the manner of Barak, he would be trumpeting how his generosity was rebuffed, and how the Palestinians deserve their misery. It should also be noted that an agreement with Abbas would have no bearing on the situation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

I'm left wondering what would happen if I sent Diehl an email, pretending to have inside information that Olmert was prepared to turn the entire nation state of Israel over to Abbas, and that Abbas had still said "no". If I am to judge Diehl by his track record of credulity, my guess is it would be the basis of Diehl's next column.

Interventionist Foreign Policy As Imagined By Jackson Diehl

Jackson Diehl thinks that McCain's notion of a "League of Democracies" is a fantastic idea, because the UN is a poor tool to legitimize military intervention pretty much anywhere, any time.

Whether Obama or McCain, the next president will take office knowing that he inherits the messes in Darfur, Burma and Iran and also that new crises will erupt during his term. If he is unable to respond - if he, like Bush, ends up watching as tens or hundreds of thousands of people die in a weak or failed state while China and Russia block U.N. action - he will be harshly judged. That's why McCain has smartly begun to talk about his League of Democracies and promised early action to create it.

Because the militaries of the world's democracies are the equivalent of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, and we can magically zoom in and out of hot spots around the world, defeating the bad guys and establishing freedom within the space of a half-hour (kid's TV show) episode.

What is Diehl actually proposing? A new organization through which the U.S. can legitimize what would otherwise be unilateral military action? A means to coerce other democracies into participating in future "coalitions of the willing", so we can carry out large-scale interventions and invasions in the future without regard to cost or manpower issues - because that worked so well in Iraq? Diehl apparently has a "wish list" for U.S. military interventions over the next few years - and it apparently includes but is not limited to "Darfur, Burma and Iran". Perhaps he would do us the favor of sharing the full list, so we can get a good idea of just how magical his thinking is.

[The] Community of Democracies, founded in 2000, still exists but has been hamstrung by its initial decision to include numerous countries that are not, in fact, democracies -- such as Egypt, Jordan and Azerbaijan.

You mean, instead of relying upon democratic states like, say, Venezuela? This criticism brings to mind a legitimate question: What's so magical about democracy? Would Diehl truly prefer that Egypt hold free elections tomorrow, likely resulting in victory by a conservative Islamic party? Only then would he want Egypt to participate in this "League of Democracies"? He objects to Russia as blocking U.S. military action, so is he stating that Russia is not democratic enough to participate in this new group? What measure of "democracy" does he propose?

No Sense Of History

Jackson Diehl compares the problems of the U.S. in Sadr City to the problems of Israel in Gaza:

For months now, Israel has been mired in an unwinnable war against Hamas and allied militias in Gaza, who fire missiles at civilians in Israel and then hide among their own women and children, ensuring that retaliatory fire will produce innocent victims for the Middle East's innumerable satellite television networks. A growing number of the militiamen have been to Iran for training, and some of the missiles they launch are Iranian-made. Their objective is obvious: to exhaust Israelis with an endless war of attrition while making it impossible for Israel's government to reach a political settlement with the more moderate Palestinian administration in the West Bank.

Now U.S. forces have been drawn into a similar morass in Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood of 2 million ruled by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. As Iranian-made rockets rain down on the Green Zone and nearby neighborhoods, U.S. forces attempt, so far in vain, to stop the fire by attacking Shiite militants from the ground and the air. Hundreds of people have been killed, filling the satellite airwaves and handing a new argument to the "this war is lost" lobby in Washington.

The comparison is at one level reasonable (how do you deal with an enemy that melts into a civilian population) at at another level it's entirely specious. It also suggests that Diehl believes this is a new phenomenon, yet it echoes Israel's experiences with Hezbollah during its war with Lebanon.

So what part of Diehl's point is specious? His completely glossing over the goals of the militaries involved. Israel has given up any claim to Gaza. It has pulled out its settlers. It isn't trying to win hearts and minds, or create democracy. And it's in an ugly position - it knows that by the time its missiles strike the civilian neighborhoods where Hamas "militants" were launching rockets, the "militants" will almost certainly be gone. So they're striking civilian infrastructure (and perhaps civilians) because the alternatives are to either do nothing or send in ground forces, either of which probably worsens things for Israel and the latter of which generally kills and injures even greater numbers of civilians.

If the U.S. is following that model in an area where it is trying to win hearts and minds, and create democracy, it's foolish. Incompetent. But Diehl's piece seems largely designed to beat the war drums against Iran, so perhaps he's into foolish, incompetent military strategies.

The Democrats and Iraq

On a superficial level, Jackson Diehl makes some good points in his column, "Reclaiming the Democratic Agenda" - although the headline foreshadows its weaknesses. Diehl suggests that the Democrats should embrace an agenda to "win" in Iraq. Describing a book which outlines a possible agenda to bring some meaningful reform to the Middle East, Diehl laments,

Unfortunately, Pollack and his fellow Democrats acknowledge, no liberal policy in the Middle East will work if Iraq fails.

No liberal policy? Even having acknowledged "Bush's cynical policy of demanding democracy from enemy regimes such as Iran and Syria while tolerating the continued autocracy of such friends as Egypt and Saudi Arabia", Diehl provides no explanation for what type of policy (liberal, conservative, or other) would succeed in the Middle East if Iraq fails. No matter how cynical you may be, or even if you would view it as a sufficiently successful conservative policy, it seems unlikely that the next Republican presidential candidate will be pitching a "Replace Hussein with a good totalitarian despot" policy.

While Democrats differ over whether the invasion was right, notes an introduction by Marshall and Jeremy Rosner, both national interests and national honor demand that "we not abandon the Iraqi people to chaos and sectarian violence."

Maybe the candidate can pitch this new program as "victory with honor." That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? For that matter, is it necessary to speak of both "national interests" and "national honor", other than as a rhetorical tool to trap an opponent? After all, if a policy advances "national honor" but simultaneously undermines "national interests", sometimes you have to swallow your pride and do what is right for the country.

But seriously, why is it that only the Democrats are expected to formulate an advance a plan, while the Republicans are given carte blanche to propose the meaningless choice between "sticking it out" and "pulling out now"? If as the book Diehl endorses suggests, "President Bush and his team have mismanaged virtually every aspect of postwar reconstruction", aren't we continuing toward a point where "sticking it out" will leave us with no choice but to abandon Iraq, whatever the consequence to our national interests and honor?

Palestinian Elections?

In today's Washington Post, Jackson Diehl does a pretty good job of examining the benefits of holding elections in the Palestinian territories - and why they are not favored by either Bush or Sharon.
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Addendum: If only.... As time went on, Bush ignored warnings of the likely outcome and pushed for the inclusion of Hamas in Palestinian elections over the objections of the Israel, resulting in the election of Hamas.

Turn Left at the... er... make that right... um...

In today's New York Times, A Better Roadmap, Jackson Diehl suggests that a Middle East road map to peace should include a destination. (A plausible argument - would you buy a roadmap which included a lot of twists and turns, but ultimately did not define your destination?)

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