Today at CPAC, after declaring that “for those who felt the Obama administration would be friendly to Israel, it’s wake up time,” former Ambassador John Bolton was asked if, “when the Arab nations attack Israel,” which the questioner expected to occur “within six months to a year,” Bolton thinks the Obama administration will act to defend Israel.

Bolton responded to this question as if it were reasonable, saying “I don’t know what the Obama administration will do in response” to an attack by the Arab nations against Israel:

BOLTON: I would certainly hope they would come to Israel’s assistance, but I think there’s no guarantee of it. I think the more likely response is to appoint a special envoy and try to negotiate an end the hostilities.

Q: Your short answer then would be “no”.

BOLTON: I very much fear that’s right.

Watch it:

As should be obvious, the scenario presented is ridiculous. There is no analyst on the right or the left who seriously thinks that the Arab states are preparing to attack Israel. (Right now these states are much more concerned about Iran, and the extent to which Iranian power and influence in the region was greatly increased as a result of the Iraq war, which Bolton still insists was awesome.) But, if this never-going-to-happen scenario did actually come to pass, I think there is little doubt that the United States would come to Israel’s aid. (Though, as it has in the past, this aid would probably come mainly in the form of replenishing the arsenal of Israel’s military, the conventional dominance of which is a main reason why the scenario is nonsensical.) But Bolton doesn’t allow any of this to get in the way of trashing the Obama administration with shameless fearmongering about Israel.

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Today, the New York Times reports that President Obama plans to withdraw only two combat brigades from Iraq prior to that country’s next national elections, scheduled for late this year. While all “combat forces” would be withdrawn by August 2010, as many as 50,000 “advisors” would remain to train Iraqi forces and conduct counterterrorism missions. For some combat units, this shift to advisor role would amount to nothing more than a name change. According to the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq, this “transition force” would have to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

President Obama’s emerging plan for U.S. withdrawal fits in between his 16-month campaign pledge and the SOFA. Still, the president must be prepared to conduct a quicker withdrawal, whatever the situation on the ground in Iraq. Why? In order to pass the SOFA through the Iraqi parliament, a provision for a popular referendum by July 2009 was included alongside the agreement. If the referendum rejects the SOFA, the United States will have one year to completely withdraw from Iraq. But Obama’s plan doesn’t make a sufficient “down payment” on withdrawal prior to the referendum in order to convince skeptical Iraqis that the United States really does plan to leave Iraq on the timetable specified in the SOFA. So it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the United States could be forced to make a complete withdrawal from Iraq by July 2010.

Nevertheless, the Iraq debate in Washington continues to ignore the political realities in Iraq. As fellow Iraq blogger Eric Martin noted, many observers – including Tom Ricks – continue to make this same fundamental error. Even the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General Raymond Odierno, has intimated the possibility of U.S. troops in Iraq beyond the SOFA withdrawal deadline while officially hewing to the SOFA. And today, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, the Keystone Cops of Iraq policy, argue that the Obama administration should be willing to slow down withdrawals and in effect ignore the SOFA and the referendum. So once again the Beltway debate is being waged in favor of ignoring Iraqi realities in order to keep the U.S. military in Iraq while even John McCain admits the situation in Afghanistan keeps getting worse.

So what should Obama do? Read more

A recent ABC/BBC/ARD poll released earlier this month found that Afghans’ support of U.S. and NATO forces’ efforts in that nation is tumbling. Just 47 percent said they had a favorable view of the United States, down from 83 percent in 2005. Only 37 percent said that most people in their area support NATO and the International Security Assistance Force; 67 percent supported ISAF in 2006.

Today, ThinkProgress interviewed Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta. We asked him about the poll’s grim findings and how NATO and the Afghan government “can win back the hearts and minds of the Afghan civilians.” Spanta disputed the poll’s results, claiming that a majority of Afghans still support the U.S.-led international coalition:

SPANTA: Now, this is the opinion to places that you ask the people, the ordinary Afghans, the majority of all the Afghans still support the presence of the international community because they believe that the international community came to Afghanistan after two and a half decades of tyranny in my country…and the international community brought us liberation. This is still the perception of the people of Afghanistan

Watch it:

Spanta later said that Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Gen. David McKiernan, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, have agreed that Afghan forces will be more “involved” in the “preparation [and] implantation of military action on operations,” including “arresting Afghans in house searching” to ensure more respect for the culture of Afghans.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has suggested recently that the U.S. lower expectations for its mission in Afghanistan by “setting standards far below the sweeping desires of regional democratization that were a foundation of Bush administration national security policy.” Spencer Ackerman notes that, during a later event hosted by the Center for American Progress, Spanta criticized this new approach, calling it “reductionist” and warning that “any reductionist policy is bound to fail.”

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a speech on Afghanistan at the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. TP Wonk Room’s Matt Duss attended the event and asked McCain this question:

In November 2003, in discussing Afghanistan, you said that given everything else that was going on, we’d probably just “muddle through” in Afghanistan. Now given the rather ambitious set of goals that you’ve set out for us today, it seems that you’ve come to a conclusion that muddling through is not an acceptable outcome. Could you just briefly describe the kind of process in your thinking by which you arrived at this conclusion?

McCain disputed the premise of the question, claiming: “Well, obviously you are taking that statement out of context.” Watch it:

Duss responds on The Wonk Room with the video of McCain’s original statement in 2003:

MCCAIN: I am concerned about it, but I’m not as concerned as I am about Iraq today — obviously, or I’d be talking about Afghanistan — but I believe that if Karzai can make the progress that he is making, that in the long term we may muddle through in Afghanistan.

Watch it:

McCain’s new position is that the Afghanistan war is necessary. “I know Americans are weary of war,” he said yesterday. “I’m weary of it. But we must win the war in Afghanistan.”

The larger issue, of course, is that McCain — like the Bush administration — was so feverishly eager to go to war with Iraq after 9/11 that he largely neglected the issue of Afghanistan. Indeed, ABC News reported last year that, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain missed every single hearing on Afghanistan over the past two years.