It looks like the first Washington Post reporter killed in Iraq may have been killed by a member of the “Anbar Awakening,” the group of Sunni insurgents who we’re now paying to stop attacking American soldiers. It’s a poignant reminder of how crazy the current version of our policy — basically help equip anyone who’ll accept our help and kind of hope for the best — has become. Since the “surge” failed to produce the kind of political reconciliation that was its goal, reconciliation and political objectives more generally have just been defined out of sight.

But a military campaign with no coherent political objectives is just a slow-motion disaster. It’s not saying anything against our troops to observe that when their orders don’t have any larger purpose beyond keeping the them deployed in Iraq that they can’t possibly succeed. After all, what could they be succeeding at? Note the fundamentally paradoxical character of administration claims to have crushed al-Qaeda in Iraq. Since AQI was only ever a small group of people whose importance existed primarily in administration rhetoric, why shouldn’t we be able to crush them? But at the same time, while Bush would like to claim a success on this front, officials are quick not to claim too much success, lest that success suggest that it’s time to pack our bags and go home.

Basically, if the policy’s failing, that means we must continue it. And if it’s succeeding, that means we must continue it. Meanwhile, GOP politicians are all running in terror of Freedom’s Watch where they want us to believe that “victory is possible.” But what victory? For whom? For the insurgents who kill Post reporters? For the Shiite militias who are pushing Sunnis out of Baghdad? For the PKK?

Andy McCarthy reads about factional divisions within Hezbollah, reflecting in part differences in priorities between Syria and Iran, as well as tensions between Hezbollah’s desire for autonomy and its Iranian sponsors’ desire for tighter control, and then offers this pearl of wisdom:

I’m not sure this apparent dispute among our enemies about priorities makes a great deal of difference to us. Their entire agenda, after all, is nothing but trouble. But it’s interesting to see dissension in the ranks.

Sigh. I’m once again astounded by the contemporary world’s ability to make me nostalgic for Richard Nixon when people on the right understood that disputes between enemies most definitely made a difference.

I’ve noted this before, but reading Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy manifesto in Foreign Affairs is once again a reminder of how nice it would be for politicians to give us some idea of what they mean by terms like “vital interests.” When, for example, Clinton says that she will “use force to protect . . . our vital interests” she’s not telling me very much. I’m pretty sure all the candidates would use force to protect the interests that they consider vital. The thing they’re going to disagree about is which interests those are.

Beyond that, though Clinton’s essay is similar to her Democratic rivals’ in most respects, she gives a couple of hints that she’ll take a more hawkish approach than some. One such hint is her odd way of joining John Edwards and Barack Obama in their endorsement of the Kissinger/Perry/Shultz/Nunn call for the United States to commit itself to verifiable worldwide nuclear abolition as a goal:

Neither North Korea nor Iran will change course as a result of what we do with our own nuclear weapons, but taking dramatic steps to reduce our nuclear arsenal would build support for the coalitions we need to address the threat of nuclear proliferation and help the United States regain the moral high ground. Former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Senator Sam Nunn have called on the United States to “rekindle the vision,” shared by every president from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton, of reducing reliance on nuclear weapons.

Given that the op-ed actually called on us to “rekindle the vision shared by Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev,” namely “an agreement to get rid of all nuclear weapons.” I’m not sure exactly what she’s trying to signal by means of this characterization, but I’m not thrilled with it. On Iran, instead of offering normalization of relations in exchange for better behavior, she says that “if Iran is in fact willing to end its nuclear weapons program, renounce sponsorship of terrorism, support Middle East peace, and play a constructive role in stabilizing Iraq” then in exchange we “should be prepared to offer Iran a carefully calibrated package of incentives.” Again, I’m not exactly sure in what way (if any) that differs from I would have liked her to say, but the intent seems to have been to shade the position in a slightly-more-hawkish direction. Similarly, while she takes a generally praiseworthy line on multilateral institutions, she seemed to me to be straining to work in a swipe about Sudan being on the UN Commission on Human Rights. I was very glad to read this:

Getting out of Iraq will enable us to play a constructive role in a renewed Middle East peace process that would mean security and normal relations for Israel and the Palestinians. The fundamental elements of a final agreement have been clear since 2000: a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank in return for a declaration that the conflict is over, recognition of Israel’s right to exist, guarantees of Israeli security, diplomatic recognition of Israel, and normalization of its relations with Arab states. U.S. diplomacy is critical in helping to resolve this conflict. In addition to facilitating negotiations, we must engage in regional diplomacy to gain Arab support for a Palestinian leadership that is committed to peace and willing to engage in a dialogue with the Israelis. Whether or not the United States makes progress in helping to broker a final agreement, consistent U.S. involvement can lower the level of violence and restore our credibility in the region.

In particular, that last sentence shows a healthy awareness of the reality that too many people are inclined to ignore — that America’s attitude toward the Palestinians is central to how we’re going to be viewed in the Middle East. That’s not the kind of statement Democrats have been incredibly inclined to make, but it’s very true.

Broadly construed, I think Clinton accomplished her goals here: She’s laid something out that I think most people will regard as indistinguishable from what her rivals have put on the table but that contains subtle signals to people paying close attention that she’ll probably govern more hawkishly than they will. That said, I keep meaning to write a post noting that campaign rhetoric has, historically speaking, been a terrible guide to how presidents actually conduct foreign policy so I sometimes have my doubts as to whether or not close readings of these kind of texts are actually worth anything.

Caroline Wadhams and Lawrence Korb say all’s not lost (yet) in Afghanistan and propose a variety of steps the U.S. should take before we totally blow it there.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re no doubt familiar with the basic outline of Peter Bergen’s argument in this new piece on how Bush blew the fight against al-Qaeda, but Bergen does an excellent job of highlighting one important but often neglected aspect of this, namely the extent to which al-Qaeda was really on the ropes in early 2002. Al-Qaeda was never that big, had been dealt a major blow with the Taliban booted from power, and hadn’t a friend in the world. One can’t know for sure, but there appears to be every reason to think that a focused, determined, responsible effort to stabilize and secure Afghanistan while simultaneously deploying the dread “law enforcement and intelligence” against whoever might be hiding elsewhere could have crushed the organization.

Obviously, that wouldn’t have been an end to the troubles of the Muslim world or to have America’s problems vis-à-vis the broader Middle East. But it really might have been an end to al-Qaeda.

Instead, for reasons that remain murky, the administration decided even before Tora Bora to start focusing its resources (not just money and personnel and equipment but also diplomatic capital and perhaps the scarcest resource of all: attention) on Iraq, resulting in what James Fallows has brilliantly dubbed “Bush’s Lost Year”. Everything seems to flow from the fact that the Bush administration didn’t and doesn’t really take al-Qaeda in particular or transnational terrorism in general all that seriously as a problem. The administration campaigned on the idea that the Clinton administration lacked focus and didn’t mention terrorism as a priority that Bush intended to focus on. After the election, incoming Bush officials were briefed about the level of attention the outgoing Clinton team was giving to al-Qaeda from which they concluded that the Clintonites were too obsessed with terrorism. The Bush administration slow-walked Richard Clarke’s proposals to step-up activities against al-Qaeda.

And then after 9/11, it’s all been the same thing. Al-Qaeda is a super-important threat when the priority that has to give way to counterterrorism is something like the fourth amendment (warrantless wiretapping) or the sixth amendment (indefinite detention) or the eighth amendment (torture) or international or domestic law more generally, but when the competing priority is picking fights with Iraq or Iran or missile defense or Virginia Class submarines or tax cuts or West Bank settlers well then that’s a different story.

It’s maddening.

Via Chris Bertram, a fascinating Reason interview with Ayan Hirsi Ali in which we see clearly that while people certainly shouldn’t be killed or threatened with physical harm on account of their ridiculous views, nor should we simply valorize the views of anyone — no matter how ridiculous those views may be — merely because they’ve been threatened with harm on account of them:

Reason: Should we acknowledge that organized religion has sometimes sparked precisely the kinds of emancipation movements that could lift Islam into modern times? Slavery in the United States ended in part because of opposition by prominent church members and the communities they galvanized. The Polish Catholic Church helped defeat the Jaruzelski puppet regime. Do you think Islam could bring about similar social and political changes?

Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

This is crazy stuff, and it’s frightening that AEI has gone so far ’round the bend that they’ve decided these are the kind of views they want their institution to be promoting. I know Norm Ornstein doesn’t like it when people think he must be a hysteric promoting a violent clash of civilizations just because he works with a bunch of colleagues who busy themselves trying to promote a violent clash of civilizations, but that’s kind of what you get when these are your colleagues.

Mark Steyn joins the conservatives against containment chorus:

Choosing to “contain” the Soviet Empire over four decades did enormous damage not just in terms of the vassel populations and the millions of ruined lives (“stability” looks a lot better from the western side of the Iron Curtain than if you’re stuck on the eastern side) and the difficulties those societies are having in recovering (not least demographically) from half-a-century as a prison state, but also in the enervation of the free world and its decay into relativist mush. That’s one reason our “victory” in the Cold War is not felt as a victory by the populations of almost every Nato member state, although technically they “won” it. And it’s part of the reason why we’re disinclined to rouse ourselves for what the Administration calls another “long war”.

This is preposterous. Of course Cold War stability looks better from west of the Berlin wall than east of it. But the prospect of a massive war between the United States and the Soviet Union likewise looks a lot better from Mark Steyn’s armchair than it would have to anyone who would have been asked to fight in such a thing, or have his hometown turned into a battleground for it. The implication that the population of Eastern Europe just spent those decades praying for a snap American invasion is insane, but also reflective of the sort of mentality in which one needs to bother pointing out that few Iranians want the United States to attack their country.

Photo by Flickr user Edwin11 used under a Creative Commons license

Via Josh Marshall, Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji’s take on America and Iran. Here’s a bit of excerpt:

What could justify military action against Iran? Under international law, governments have the right to take military action to repel an armed attack and to preempt a certain and imminent attack. But the United States has not been attacked by Iran, and is clearly not in any imminent danger of armed attack. [. . .] Setting aside the sensationalist rhetoric of Iranian leaders, any realistic look at the Middle East and Iran must conclude that Iran’s military activities are primarily driven by fear and designed to preserve the regime. [. . .] The voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment by the Iranian government will only yield lasting results, however, if it is a part of a broad set of initiatives that guarantee security, peace, and economic development in Iran and the Middle East. Unilateral action against Iran in the absence of an overall plan for regional peace and security will be seen by most of the people of the region as aimed at safeguarding Israel’s supremacy and imposing an unjust peace on Palestinians and the broader Muslim world.

See also this account of a Norman Podhoretz book reading at a Barnes & Noble: “a lady stood to say that she had over a hundred relatives in Iran: Why do you want to kill them?!” Basically, Iranians aren’t enthusiastic about the prospect of their country being attacked by the United States of America and this sentiments seems to hold more-or-less entirely across the Iranian political spectrum. Which, of course, is about what you’d expect given that Iran is a country populated by human beings. But if you’d like to unite the population of Iran around the only national government it’s got, and push its regime toward firmer alliance with whichever enemies of the United States it can find, then war sounds like a great option.