Fascinating stuff from Gallup. The under-30 cohort is pretty strongly anti-war, with 56 percent saying the invasion of Iraq was a mistake and only 41 percent saying it wasn’t. The slightly older thirtysomething cohort, by contrast, is the only one with a pro-war plurality — 48 percent say mistake, 50 percent say no mistake. The fourtysomethings are also relativley hawkish 52-47. All the over-50 cohorts are more anti-war than the under-30 cohort.

An excellent post from Tony Karon on recent seeming successes in Northern Ireland and the implications for the Israel-Palestine conflict:

The original Good Friday agreement ten years ago was brokered by very different parties to the ones who have now joined a unity government. On the Catholic side, it was the SDLP of John Hume who was the dominant voice at the table, while the Ulster Unionists of David Trimble represented Protestant loyalists. But the electorate eventually rejected those parties, and each community chose more uncompromising parties — the Sinn Fein on the nationalist side and the Democratic Unionists on the loyalist side — to represent them at the table.

The government of Tony Blair did not flinch or give up hope, it pressed on, pushing the chosen representatives of both communities into a process that led to agreement. And the agreement may be far stronger than its predecessor, in that it was brokered by hard men on both sides and that has left no significant rejectionist constituency on either side.

This is what makes the search for “moderate Arabs” generally and moderate Palestianians in particular so inane. If, by “moderate,” we mean something like “eschews violence” or “accepts the basic legitimacy of Israel” or both, then, obviously, those aren’t the people you need to strike a deal with. As Yitzhak Rabin put it, “one does not make peace with one’s friends, one makes peace with one’s enemies.” This was also what made Ariel Sharon’s term in office and the breaks — minor as some of them were — he made with the Israeli far-right so significant. Peace doesn’t need to be made by the very most extreme elements on both sides, but you can’t exclude any faction that has a non-trivial following simply on the grounds that that faction’s leadership isn’t moderate. It’s easy, after all, to broker a deal between moderates. The trick is to moderate the views of influential non-moderates.

Meet Barack Obama’s foreign policy people — they’re good people. They also might have added Dan Shapiro to the list.

A new initiative from the Center for American Progress. They say:

Middle East Progress helps develop and highlight practical approaches to and voices involved in managing — and resolving — the Arab-Israeli conflict, with a primary focus on achieving a sustainable, secure, democratic Palestinian state alongside sustainable, secure, and democratic Israel. We believe such action will improve U.S., Israeli, and regional security, and America’s global standing, and reflects the will and aspirations of a vast majority of Israelis and Arabs living the conflict every day.

I say: Good for CAP. If I have one major criticism of their organization it’s that it’s struck me as unduly reluctant to take on issues that provoke serious disagreement within the Democratic Party camp, with things related to Israel and things related to trade being noteworthy examples. Those kind of issues, however, are exactly the ones where the world needs more think tanking to be done.

Ray Takeyh makes the case for taking threats of unilateral military force off the table in The Boston Globe. I agree.