Beautiful Horizons

Coming into focus -- a couple of must reads from the week after the death of OBL

As the politically irrelevant squawk over whether President Bush deserves credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, somewhat understated in the whole affair has been the steady hand that CIA chief Leon Panetta has brought to the nation's top intelligence agency.  Time Magazine's Massimo Calabresi has a very worthy read on the CIA's efforts and it's remarkable turnaround with Panetta at the helm.  

As the layers of the operation peel away for public review, we are learning more and more of America's very difficult relationship with Pakistan.  Perhaps one of the best reviews is this exceptionally candid article from Pakistani academic Pervez Hoodbhoy, carried in Sunday's L.A. Times.  Here's an excerpt:  

Gen. Pervez Musharraf was army chief when Bin Laden's house in Abbottabad was being constructed. Back then, Pakistan's political pundits used to speculate about which Al Qaeda or Taliban leader would be miraculously "found" on the eve of some important U.S. military or political leader's visit to Pakistan. And one was usually produced. Important arrests included those of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Kuwaiti-born senior Al Qaeda leader who was arrested in Rawalpindi, and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a Taliban leader arrested in Karachi. The American visitors generally left pleased.

It is quite possible that Bin Laden was being kept in reserve by the army, the ultimate trophy to be traded in at the right time for the right price, either in dollars or political concessions.

Alas for Pakistan's army, American Navy SEALs have now killed the golden goose, and a potential asset has turned into a serious liability. For officials to appear joyful would infuriate the Islamists, who pose a real threat to the state. On the other hand, to criticize the killing would suggest that Pakistan had knowingly hosted the king of terrorists.

Read the whole piece, here.

A certain clarity that we didn't get from "Rosebud"

"Longtime U.S. diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke, whose relentless prodding and deft maneuvering yielded the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia - a success he hoped to repeat as President Obama's chief envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan - died Monday in Washington of complications from surgery to repair a torn aorta. He was 69...

"As Mr. Holbrooke was sedated for surgery, family members said, his final words were to his Pakistani surgeon: 'You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan.' "     (From Mr. Holbrooke's  Washington Post Obit.)

Richard Holbrooke, RIP

None dare call it "sabotage"

Except...uh...GOP elder statesman Brent Scowcroft. 

Eisenhower's Farewell Address

With a nod to James Fallows, who favorably compares the philosophy and grace notes to President Obama's speech at West Point, I'm putting Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation, delivered nearly 50 years ago, beneath "the fold."  Consider Eisenhower's world view in the context not just of President Obama's approach to foreign policy, but the radical rupture with contemporary Republicans:

An Israeli voice

Former Knesset member Yossi Sarid has an excellent opinion piece in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, advising President-elect Obama on the Israel-Palestine crisis:

200 American historians were asked to sum up the term of their 43rd president and to rank him on the scale of presidents. He was ranked last, at the end of a close race with James Buchanan, leaving behind him a shorn superpower.

Four days from now the 44th president will be sworn in and the entire world has sky-high expectations; but not in Israel. Here they expect him to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, to go nowhere, to stagnate. President George W. Bush liked to drag his feet, to chew gum, without being preoccupied with superfluous thoughts.

You, Barack Hussein Obama, are our last chance, and if that too fades - and evil is determined against us, all hope is lost. We are the prisoner who is stuck in a cell; without the help of others, we will never succeed in extricating ourselves from the bonds of our natural fear and the historical accounting. And there are no "others" except for America, for which no substitute has been found, even in its time of weakness.

The Israeli politicians - the singers of all the wars - will try to feed you "direct negotiations" and "without external pressure;" these refrains are groundless. Ask your advisers, Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, and they will tell you.

They were sold the same stories for too many years. Have they learned their lesson? I wish I was sure of that. After all, under their noses settlements and outposts cropped up and multiplied like poison mushrooms after a shower of government promises. And if it turns out as time goes on that those advisers haven't learned anything and have forgotten everything, you will be better off doing without their services before they cause you to fail as well, and rush to write their belated memoirs and insights.

And don't get too upset by the Israeli lobby in Washington, whose voice is that of Benjamin Netanyahu and not necessarily the voice of Jacob, nor is it the representative voice of the large Jewish community in America. It is hard to be black, who knows as well as you; it is hard to be a Jew, we know; and it's somewhat easier to be a professional Jew in the Diaspora of Washington, D.C., who is more of an Israeli patriot than many Israelis, and no less of one than Evangelist clerics, who are preparing from afar for Armageddon.

Tail wags dog...

Here's a report in the New York Times that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert successfully pressured the United States from voting in favor of a UN resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire that was drafted by Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice.

“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”

Israel opposed the resolution, which called for a halt to the fighting in Gaza, because the government said it did not provide for Israel’s security. It passed 14 to 0, with the United States abstaining.

Mr. Olmert claimed that once he made his case to Mr. Bush, the president called Ms. Rice and told her to abstain. “She was left pretty embarrassed,” Mr. Olmert said, according to The A.P.

The State Department disputed Mr. Olmert’s account.

The Mind Reels

So let me get this straight: if John McCain were president at?nd if say, Morocco were to invade Spain and Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty were to be invoked, would McCain commit US troops, yet refuse to speak to the head of Spain's government?

This is the man who's the foreign policy expert?

Creeping Militarization of Foreign Policy? More Like Stampeding!

Both Boz and Dan Drezner mention recent comments by Defense Secretary Robert Gates about the "creeping militarization" of US foreign policy. Let's be clear and unambiguous: it's been stampeding, not creeping for the entirety of the Bush administration.

The military should be an absolute last resort of US foreign policy after all diplomatic options have been exhausted. While I agree with Secretary Gates about funding more civilian initiatives in foreign policy and applaud him for making that argument, I cannot help but feel two distinct feelings:

• He's essentially swimming against the current. The Bush administration is still busy saber-rattling with regard to Iran, notwithstanding the overextended military. While the news about the opening of the interests section in Teheran is encouraging, it's also being done less so for outreach to the regime.
• I also cannot help but feel a political element to his position. If the military was not as overextended as it is, would the Bush administration sanction such public positions?

I don't think so.

By the Company He Keeps

One of the most compelling reasons not to vote for John McCain - aside from the obvious ones - is in this article by Matt Bai in the New York Times Magazine:

“As far as people who advise me,” McCain went on, though I still hadn’t asked a question, “probably one of my most trusted advisers for the last 30 years is Henry Kissinger, not known as a hawk or a neocon.” [Italics in original]

Principally known as a foreign policy realist, who, frankly didn't care how many people suffered as long as a lefty  - even an elected lefty - got thrown out of office. Dan Drezner must have missed that comment.

In any event, read the entire article and you get the imression that this is less about McCain actually believing in something, than merely taking a stand and sticking to it, even when it's going to hell in the proverbial handbasket. We're on the tail end of 8 years of that thinking. We don't one day more let alone 4-8 more years of it.