Via Mark Goldberg, it looks like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is making the sensible suggestion that our funding priorities shouldn’t tilt so dramatically in favor of the Defense Department, “Funding for non-military foreign-affairs programs has increased since 2001, but it remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military and to the importance of such capabilities.”

He makes a whole bunch of good points, and it’s genuinely rare in Washington to see anyone suggest that any other agency’s mission is important and deserves more money. That said, this is still in the “talk as cheap” neighborhood. Rare as it is to see someone suggest that someone else’s budget ought to be higher, it’s by the same token very easy to suggest that someone’s else’s budget ought to be cut to increase spending elsewhere. What would be really revolutionary would be a Secretary of Defense who not only recognized the point Gates is making here, but who was willing to see the needed money come out of the Pentagon’s pocket. Until that time comes, we’ll need to rely on Lawrence Korb and his Unified Security Budget for the United States reports:

The shift recommended in this report—$56 billion in cuts to spending on offense and $50 billion in additional spending on defense and prevention—would convert a highly militarized 9-to–1 security ratio into a better balance of 5-to-1.

In the real world, no proposals of this sort are going to go anywhere unless Democrats are provided with substantial political “cover” by Republicans, so it probably does all hinge on whether or not people like Gates are willing to follow their insights where they lead instead of just vaguely suggesting that the State Department needs more capabilities. Still, this is a definite sign of progress.

I keep forgetting to link to Spencer Ackerman’s excellent column on the folly of proposals to “export” the “Anbar Awakening” model to Pakistan. You can tell Spencer knows what he’s talking about because he uses so many damn acronyms just like a real defense guy:

In Pakistan, nothing like this exists. The FATA tribes show no sign of tensions with AQSL. The Times reported that many of the same tribes that would form the basis of a FATA Awakening still actively fight alongside the Taliban — as do elements within the Interior Ministry that would be responsible for nurturing the Awakening. Within SOCOM, which has developed the proposal, analysts have no idea whether the tribes would accept or reject American support. In short, the basic strategic condition that allowed the Anbar Awakening to exist — a split between Iraqis and al-Qaeda — isn’t in evidence here. All sorts of other potential problems arise: for one, this potential paramilitary tribal force, with its minimal control by Islamabad, wouldn’t augur well for the internal stability of a nuclear-armed country. But without the basic FATA/AQSL split, it makes no sense to consider such second-order questions. And in that case, flooding the FATA with money and guns is about as wise as making a blank check out to Osama bin Laden.

I agree. Spencer further argues that the development of this deeply unsound strategy from within the military’s special operations command reflects a kind of “Iraq Syndrome” effect:

This Daily News article on Hillary Clinton’s hawkish advisors doesn’t advance the ball very far, but it’s good to see the issue bubbling into less-elite circles. It’s also noteworthy for the fact that Lee Feinstein, the top foreign policy guy on the campaign staff and thus presumably in job for a second-tier nationals security post, has a very silly response to these complaints:

“A lot of Obama’s advisers thought this was a stupid war in 2002, and a lot of Hillary’s advisers thought it was a good idea in 2002,” said one Democrat with a national security résumé. “That’s the original sin which causes people to make some choices.”

“The campaign’s advisers reflect a broad spectrum of opinion within the Democratic Party,” countered Clinton national security guru Lee Feinstein. “The candidate makes her own decisions about her foreign policy positions.”

Uh huh. Of course she makes her own decisions. But that’s the point — she decided that invading Iraq was a good idea, and her team is mostly made up of people who agreed with her. The concern isn’t that Dick Holbrooke and Feinstein are controlling her mind. The concern is that she’s working with the people she’s working with because their thinking reflects her own thinking. And advisors are worth taking a look at, because “experts” tend to lay their ideas out in the press in more detail than do politicians. Clinton, for example, just hasn’t clearly said one way or another whether or not she believes unilateral preventive war is a good basis for non-proliferation policy. But she did authorize the use of force against Iraq, and several of the people working for her on a high level have taken clearer stands in favor of preventive war, so it’s natural to refer to them in raising the issue.

Simply noting in response that Clinton makes her own decisions (of course she does!) doesn’t dispel one’s doubts that she’s not being clear about these issues because her beliefs on these matters aren’t things Democratic primary voters will agree with.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I sure do like me this Attack Mode Joe Biden lighting into Rudy Giuliani:

Sure there is, but with these guys, he knows so little about foreign policy he confuses terrorists cells and organizations with countries. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before this war. Al-Qaeda became a Bush-fulfilling prophecy. It didn’t exist until Bush went to war. Even our own intelligence community says that. But these guys buy into this silliness that if you don’t fight them in Baghdad you’re going to fight them in Boston. Give me a break.

I know my man Ezra Klein’s been touting Biden as a potential Veep pick for his attack dogging skills, which seems like a pretty poor idea to me (one needs a VP who understands that the Presidential candidate is supposed to do the bulk of the talking…) but this is good stuff.

Peter Beinart pens a very smart analysis of why Barack Obama’s had trouble gaining traction with his foreign policy critique of Hillary Clinton: His arguments about forward-looking Iraq policy make him look “like he’s splitting hairs,” the Senate resolution on Iran Clinton voted for “was rewritten to avoid any suggestion of military force,” and most of all he “runs smack into America’s strange indifference to the past. Recent American history is littered with candidates who were right about war and weren’t rewarded at election time.”

But Beinart misses another problem with Obama’s strategy. When he tries to engage in an intra-party argument about foreign policy, people like Peter Beinart who’ve gone so far as to write a book about intra-Democratic disputes about foreign policy issues ignore what he’s arguing in favor of making arguments about why his arguments aren’t penetrating.

But that still leaves us with the question: Whether or not the voters care about a vote that happened five years ago, should they care? Not necessarily. But in combination with the fact that her posture toward Iran seems more aggressive, that she’s less optimistic about the possibility of achieving a “grand bargain” through diplomacy, that her forward-looking Iraq policy seems more focused on a continuing military role, that she’s been more cautious on America’s nuclear arsenal, that she’s attacked her primary opponents from the right on foreign policy issues, that seems to have a more hawkish cadre of advisors, and that has every incentive at the moment to minimize the appearance of a difference between her and Obama, I think all the evidence points in one direction: Obama would pursue a more restrained foreign policy, more inflected by the strains of realism and internationalism that have come to predominate among the dovish camp in American politics whereas Clinton would pursue a more militarily expansive one, more in line with the thinking of the establishmentarians who got us into war with Iraq and have since come to kinda sorta regret but don’t really think they were wrong.

Can I say with 100 percent certainty what that’ll amount to at the end of the day? No. Presidents have a habit of re-evaluating their foreign policy approach while in office. But it seems to me that the role of a journalist who’s attuned to the small ins-and-outs of these debates is precisely to convey to readers things they might not otherwise pick up on, not to merely explain that people aren’t picking up on stuff. And there’s the rub, the differences in the positions Clinton and Obama have staked out have been subtle, but the differences keep lining up the same way.

Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf is stepping down from his post as head of the army, ready for a new civilian life as a . . . well, dictator. But a civilian dictator. General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani will take over as head of the military, and he’s someone who’s liked in American defense circles since he went to Fort Leavenworth, etc., and “has played a prominent role in cooperating with the United States in the fight against terrorism in Pakistan and is expected to continue that policy.”

This sounds a bit like meet the old boss, same as the old boss, but wearing a slightly different uniform, but what do I know….

I’d stopped reading Roger Cohen, but Marty Peretz’s denunciations of Cohen’s latest column made it sound . . . insightful! And, indeed, it’s really good:

His best hope in Annapolis may be the Texas connection. If Bush gets behind Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister who attended the University of Texas, things may move. But he has to stick with him. [...] Fayyad is right. A return to the 1967 lines, plus or minus agreed swaps, is the only basis for a two-state accord. An Israeli settlement freeze is the first step to a Palestinian buy-in. A timetable is the anchor all the talking needs.

Meanwhile, if I read him correctly, Peretz’s view is that Israel shouldn’t reach an accommodation with the Palestinians, because the Palestinians might break the agreement: “Does he really want Israel to give up the West Bank on the wager that rockets will not be aimed at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as they are — daily — from Gaza onto Sderot?” A Palestinian who reads this kind of “pro-Israel” political commentary is going to have to reach the conclusion that there’s no point in conducting talks with Israelis about a two-state solution. Their mentality is that the existence of any kind of Palestinian state is an intolerable threat, since such a state could be used as a launching pad for rockets. That Palestinian is going to reach the conclusion that the only possibility for his people to achieve their national aspirations is going to be through the destruction of Israel.

And through such logic, conflicts would never end. Among other things, Israel would still be threatened by a hostile Egypt at its door and vice-versa. But, really, no compromise and no diplomacy would ever be possible. In the real world, though, there’s nobody to make peace with but your enemies. And there’s nothing to be gained unless you’re willing to at least not rule out in advance the possibility that negotiations might produce a mutually beneficial agreement.

Marc Ambinder flags a press account of Bill Clinton claiming to have been against the invasion of Iraq:

“Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning,” said Clinton, “I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers.” Clinton has long been critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and called it a “big mistake” as far back as November of 2005.

Marc notes that this is likely to muddy Hillary Clinton’s message. Nor does it seem, um, accurate to me. Probably the best example of Bill’s contemporaneous thinking on Iraq is his March 18, 2003 Guardian op-ed “Trust Tony’s Judgment.” Here, Clinton makes it clear that he sees Blair as having spent the past year navigating a wise middle course between regime change hawks in the US and die-hard anti-war types on the continent. Blair, with great finesse, had used threats of force to move the inspections ball down the road until we reached the point of mid-March. Clinton paid no note to the fact that the inspectors were on the ground saying there was no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Indeed, Clinton contributed to some extent to the smokescreen of war by clouding this issue, writing “Saddam has destroyed some missiles but beyond that he has done only what he thinks is necessary to keep the UN divided on the use of force. The really important issues relating to chemical and biological weapons remain unresolved.”

Thus the central plank of the argument for war — that it was necessary to invade in order to halt Saddam’s advance nuclear weapons program — was swept under the rug at just the point where it was becoming clear that this talking point was false. Clinton regret the outbreak of war, but put the blame for it squarely on the shoulders of France, Russia, and Germany, arguing that “if a majority of the security council had adopted the Blair approach, Saddam would have had no room for further evasion and he still might have disarmed without invasion and bloodshed. Now, it appears that force will be used to disarm and depose him.” Clinton endorsed the view that Saddam’s alleged WMD arsenal was a terrorism threat, “There is, too, as both Britain and America agree, some risk of Saddam using or transferring his weapons to terrorists.” Then he concluded:

I wish that Russia and France had supported Blair’s resolution. Then, Hans Blix and his inspectors would have been given more time and supprt for their work. But that’s not where we are. Blair is in a position not of his own making, because Iraq and other nations were unwilling to follow the logic of 1441.

In the post-cold war world, America and Britain have been in tough positions before: in 1998, when others wanted to lift sanctions on Iraq and we said no; in 1999 when we went into Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing. In each case, there were voices of dissent. But the British-American partnership and the progress of the world were preserved. Now in another difficult spot, Prime Minister Blair will have to do what he believes to be right. I trust him to do that and hope that Labor MPs and the British people will too.

What Blair believed was right was, of course, invading Iraq. Obviously, it’s possible that Clinton wrote a March 18 op-ed urging blind faith in Tony Blair’s leadership, then when Blair invaded Iraq a few days later was shocked to see him make such a mistake, but then decided he better not say anything about the wisdom of the invasion until years later, but it’s not very plausible. For all intents and purposes, Clinton’s public statements on the Iraq issue (like those of Colin Powell and Tony Blair) were part of the push to round up “moderate” support for the war. I remember this stuff. I was one of the millions of Americans who thought that, sure, George W. Bush must be a maniac but if Bill and Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright (and other Clinton-era officials like Ken Pollack) and Joe Biden and so on and so forth think it’s a good idea, maybe I should have some more confidence. Obviously, that was a stupid, stupid mistake. But I find it really offensive that people who abused the trust of citizens who admired them by selling us on this mess now want to turn around and do it again by pretending that never happened.

It’s hard to know what to make of the new that Hillary Clinton is telling people she’d like to appoint Colin Powell to do something or other related to improving America’s standing in the world. Powell’s obviously a knowledgeable, experienced guy and I suppose it would make sense for a new President to talk to him and get his perspective on things. Maybe even send the message that it’s not just Democrats who think the country’s taken a totally messed-up course over the past few years.

But then again, if Clinton’s looking to assuage people’s doubts about her foreign policy judgment, this seems like a terrible way to do it. A lot of Clinton’s pro-invasion advisors are too obscure for most people to recognize. But Powell was the public face of the Iraq sales pitch. He’s also a man who did have enough independence from his commander-in-chief to undermine her husbands efforts to bring gay equality to the military when Bull Clinton was president and Powell was in uniform. But as Secretary of State he raised some skeptical questions about the war, heard some answers, and then not only hopped on the bandwagon, but used his leverage as someone with a reputation for skepticism to make the sales pitch all the more effective.

Annapolis, Maryland (pictured above) sure looks like a nice place. And whatever else you’re going to say about George W. Bush, he certainly doesn’t seem like the sort of person inclined to sell Israel down the river. But not according to Frank Gaffney, who’s delivered what almost reads like a parody:

It is fitting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of today’s so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women.

The punchline, however, is that this paragraph is calm and level-headed compared to the ones that follow, in which we learn that this regional conference is essentially the same as the Munich conference etc., etc., etc. Now you’d think that a person who likes to go around publishing crazy things would be a totally marginal figure. Not the kind of guy who would be a frequent guest on CNN and so forth. Especially since his group is essentially just a front for defense contractors and their lobbyists rather than even a proper think tank full of crazy people.

Photo by Flickr user Billtex48 used under a Creative Commons license

Check out Daniel Levy’s thoughts on the Annapolis Conference.

Via an offended Shadi Hamid, Mansour Ijaz reports on Mitt Rommey saying something awfully strange:

I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that “jihadism” is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, “…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”

So because there are relatively few Muslims in the United States, Romney wouldn’t consider a Muslim cabinet official? Meanwhile, before Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State, she was UN Ambassador. Her successor at the UN was Bill Richardson who went on to become Secretary of Energy. His successor was Richard Holbrooke who was widely viewed as a likely Secretary of State in a John Kerry administration and, again, is a very likely candidate for that job in a Hillary Clinton administration. John Negroponte had the job before becoming Director of National Intelligence. George HW Bush had the job before becoming CIA Director. But Romney’s telling us that current UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is too Muslim to be so much as considered for a cabinet post? Really? How repugnant.

The general lack of attention US policy has given to the huge numbers of refugees from the conflict in Iraq has attracted some notice. This New York Times article on pressure to fudge the numbers on the number of Iraqis returning home hints at perhaps one reason why the humanitarian hawks don’t actually care about refugee well-being:

A United Nations survey released last week, of 110 Iraqi families leaving Syria, also seemed to dispute the contentions of officials in Iraq that people are returning primarily because they feel safer.

The survey found that 46 percent were leaving because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security.

Failing to provide for refugees, in short, drives returns to Iraq which helps bolster bogus arguments about improving conditions and thus bolster support for the war. It’s win-win, unless you’re an Iraqi refugee or an American citizen. Meanwhile, the returnees are re-enforcing the patterns of ethnic cleansing that seem to have been the primary drivers behind the decline in violence:

Underscoring a widely held sense of hesitation, many of those who come back to Iraq do not return to their homes. Clambering off the bus on Sunday, a woman who gave her name as Um Dima, mother of Dima, said that friends were still warning her not to go back to her house in Dora, a violent neighborhood in south Baghdad. So for now, she said, she will move in with her parents in southern Iraq.

That seems like a smart move for Um Dima. Am I the only one who remembers, though, that back in the summer/fall of 2006 this sort of thing — massive refugee flows and ethnic cleansing — was allegedly the reason we couldn’t leave Iraq? Withdrawal was supposed to have precisely the consequences that staying turned out to have, only staying has also impaired all kinds of other important American strategic objectives around the world.

“Top military leaders” at the Pentagon are bending LA Times defense correspondent Julian Barnes’ ear with all kinds of crazy nonsense. Some people think official military assessments of the situation in Iraq should reflect the full range of views held by senior officers, rather than the opinions of a single general. Others feel the President of the United States and the other civilian policymakers whose orders the generals follow ought to take responsibility for their own policy decisions.

One wonders why so many troops hate the troops. Must be phony soldiers. (Look! A MoveOn ad! How disgraceful!)

Spencer Ackerman translates the White House’s principles for perpetual occupation of Iraq out of the obfuscatorese:

A “democratic Iraq” here means the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The current political arrangement will receive U.S. military protection against coups or any other internal subversion. That’s something the Iraqi government wants desperately: not only is it massively unpopular, even among Iraqi Shiites, but the increasing U.S.-Sunni security cooperation strikes the Shiite government — with some justification — as a recipe for a future coup.

I’ll be interested to see what the Democratic hawks have to say about that. For a long time, they’ve been getting by with things like Shawn Brimley’s formula that “The next President will need options beyond simply ‘leave ASAP’ and ‘stay the course.’” This, though, relies on a strawman characterization of Bush’s policies to generate the sense of separation from the administration. The question here isn’t whether we should literally stay the course, the question is whether or not we should undertake an open-ended commitment to propping up whatever form of Iraqi government will agree to pay host to our military bases.