Clinton: "Don't worry Barry, I got it"

  

It was, to put it mildly, odd.

A sitting president calls in a former president to address a press gaggle at the White House. During this briefing the current president lets the whole world know that he's late for a Christmas party, so he heads out, leaving the press - and the country - in the hands of a former president.

After a few minutes, Obama seemed to conclude that he would be better served by being out of the picture than as a bystander. "I've been keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour, so I'm going to take off," he said.

Clinton responded, "Well, I - I don't want to make her mad. Please go."

One of the results was the awful visual above - an image of a president turning away from the podium during time of war and recession - a picture just this side of abdication.

Whomever came up with the idea for this press conference ought to hand in their resignation post haste. It was unprofessional and decidedly presidential. Really, you're the president, the party isn't going to start without you and surrendering your podium and your presidential seal in your press room in your White House sends a terrible signal.

Ironically, the deal that Obama negotiated with congress to extend the Bush tax cuts while cutting payroll tax and providing a default stimulus could be an outstanding political coup for the administration.  

 

 

Obama's Middle East End Game, ctd.

Introduction: On the Brink

Like Sisyphus, Obama is moving his grand strategy for the Middle East closer to the top of mountain. It's possible he's walked Israel back their coming war with Iran, he's made Russia responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear program - and Russia does not want a nuclear Iran - and he's begun a "deck clearing" for building a regional security alliance to contain Iran.

Israel Decides to Dance With the One that Brought 'em

Earlier this summer I was one of a cacophony of voices who believed that Israel was probably on the verge of striking Iran's nascent nuclear program. I even ventured to guess that Israel would do with the tacit approval or even active support of the U.S. and the Gulf States.  I assumed that Israel really did not trust MAD to keep them secure vis-a-vis a nuclear Iran and I assumed that once the Gulf States got on board it was only a matter of time before the JDAMs started falling.

I was probably wrong.

Obama has always pursued two strategies WRT Iran; one was to get them give up the bomb peacefully, the other was to build a regional alliance to contain Iran once they went nuclear. Now, given that Iran lives in a really bad neighborhood, with nasty neighbors who harbor terrorists - including Bin Laden and Mullah Omar - it's logical for Iran to want either an actual warhead or at least break out capacity.

So that leaves containment.

But getting containment right involves building a security alliance for the Middle East ala NATO in Europe (just imagine the day those Gerrys and Frogs work together! Madness I say,  Madness!). And getting that security alliance involves getting the Arabs and Israelis to clear the deck -so-to-speak- when it comes to the two generations of animosity they share (it's a bullshit argument that there has "always been war in the Middle East, the regions has enjoyed long stretches of peace punctuated by periods of violence following imperial decline and everything we've seen since WWII is fallout from the British, French and German empires running out steam).

So, for the time being at least, Israel appears to be ready to gamble on with Obama towards some better greater Middle Eastern end-state.

Clearing the Deck

In this context, clearing the deck means putting the Palestinian issue to rest, thus providing top cover for the Saudis to finally recognize Israel's right to exist. To that end the talks that Obama announced late last week couldn't be more important to the future of the region.        

Make the Switch: A 2011 Meme in the Making

Biden out, Hillary in as V.P.?

But this, this is madness!

Madness? This. Is. Old news! 

But there's a flip side to the good news. Once his midterm penance is finished Obama will have to return to the job of governing, and he'll have to do it with a vice president who is pretty clearly out of step with one of the key tenants of his foreign policy. From Biden's perspective, he'll know just what his boss actually thinks of him and everyone in town will know nothing Biden says carries any weight what-so-ever.

It seems that the best solution would be, after the mid terms, Biden and Obama should both to begin quietly hinting that the V.P. may be considering retirement in December of 2012. From there either elevate Hillary or go outside the box and appoint Petraeus.

That was me, back on July 15th. Now Douglas Wilder has taken up the meme:

During Biden’s June trip to Florida, for example, the presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink, was so upset that she told POLITICO the whole trip was a “screw-up” and she was “embarrassed” by his speech. The Democratic Party is trying to elect this woman governor of a swing state — one Obama will need in 2012 — during the middle of the oil spill crisis in the Gulf. No vice president should leave such ignominy in his wake.

A few weeks later, Biden comes south and says at a fundraiser, “[T]he heavy lifting is over,” and now the campaigning can begin.

Really? Has the crude oil off the Gulf Coast disappeared? Is the unemployment rate back to its mid-1990s lows? Is the deficit magically under control? Are the president’s approval ratings in the mid-60s? Do large majorities of Americans believe we are on the right track?

I don’t think so. But none of that seems to matter to Biden. People around this country are hurting, and Biden has told them Democrats in Congress and the White House have done all they can or will for them.

As BP chief executive, Tony Hayward said he wanted his life back, then went off on his yacht. The BP board wisely replaced him. What’s so different about Biden saying, in the middle of several crises, that he wants to get back to politics when the people are craving leadership?

Has Biden ended these 18 months with the stature of a man ready and able to be president should the moment call for it? The answer, sadly, is “no.”

I say none of this to detract from Biden’s service to the people of Delaware through his many years in the Senate. But these times demand our country’s best. If Democrats and the president don’t see this, the people will look elsewhere.

Can all the president’s political ills be laid at Biden’s feet? No. But Obama must look through his administration and make a wholesale change. The vice president should not be immune.

Clinton is better suited as the political and government partner that Obama needs.

I suggest this as one who vigorously supported Obama over Clinton in 2008. In fact, I campaigned across the country and engaged in spirited debates with former colleagues. I don’t regret any of that. Yet, now I think Clinton brings bounty to the political table that few can match.

If both John McCain and Obama were given a sip of truth serum, both would admit they made serious mistakes in choosing running mates in 2008.

McCain can’t do anything about his blunder. Obama can and should

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40523_Page2.html#ixzz0vc2DSGkK

My thoughts, almost exactly. I think Wilder downplays the apparent daylight that exists between Biden and Obama when it comes to the war in Afghanistan, but overall I think Wilder is correct that the time has come for Joe Biden to step back and for Hillary Clinton to step up.

It is highly unlikely that Clinton would want another turn at Foggy Bottom, so that leaves both the SECSTATE and SECDEF jobs will have to be filled during the next Obama administration. It only stands to reason that Biden could take over at either the State Department or the Pentagon and Clinton could easily slip into the V.P. slot.

 

The NYT Rethinks the Strategic Assumptions of the Bush Administration

In June, I had a post I called "Rethinking the Strategic Assumptions if the Bush administration", in which I argued that:

But both things can be true: Bush was a bad president; he was also right about Iraq versus Afghanistan in 2002. He was right that Afghanistan would turn out to be un-winnable.

In short, I argued that all the assumptions about Bush's policies towards Afghanistan missing some opportunity in 2002 or 2003 were probably wrong, and that in hindsight taking out Hussein remains a pretty good bet given the alternative of doubling down in the 'Stan.

Now, the NYT's David Sanger seems to be coming around to my point of view:

Removing the Taliban from power in 2001 was deceptively easy, leading Washington to believe that the Afghans could largely take it from there. Fewer than a thousand American troops and C.I.A. officers, some on horseback, joined with the indigenous Northern Alliance to chase the Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his forces out of Kabul. That would have been the moment, it is argued, to put 20,000 to 30,000 American troops — and perhaps a similar number of NATO forces — into the country as a stabilization force.

But Mr. Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, wouldn’t hear of it. “The consensus was that little could be accomplished in Afghanistan given its history, culture and composition, and there would be little payoff beyond Afghanistan even if things there went better than expected,” Richard Haass, a senior official at the State Department in the Bush administration who advocated the insertion of a far larger force, wrote recently. “They had no appetite for on-the-ground nation building.”

Gee, I wonder why?

Bush and Rumsfeld's first instincts on Afghanistan were correct. Iraq was an easier - and likely more successful - venture in nation building. Also, the doctrinal changes that occurred during the tough slog in Iraq allowed American to build a skill set that can be applied to the Af/Pak theater.

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, pt 2

 

The breaking wikileaks scandal has the possibility of becoming a true Katrina moment for Barack Obama, depending on how things shake out.

But as the early-viewing New York Times reports, WikiLeaks presents a new depth of detail about how the U.S. military has seen, for six years, the depths of ISI facilitation of the Afghan insurgency. For instance: a three-star Pakistani general active during the 80s-era U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi sponsorship of the anti-Soviet insurgency, Hamid Gul, allegedly met with insurgent leaders in South Waziristan in January 2009 to plot vengeance for the drone-inflicted death of an al-Qaeda operative. (Gul called it “absolute nonsense” to the Times reporters.)

Other reports, stretching back to 2004, offer chilling, granular detail about the Taliban’s return to potency after the U.S. and Afghan militias routed the religious-based movement in 2001. Some of them, as the Times notes, cast serious doubt on official U.S. and NATO accounts of how insurgents prosecute the war. Apparently, the insurgents have used “heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft,” eerily reminiscent of the famous Stinger missiles that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided to the mujahideen to down Soviet helicopters. One such missile downed a Chinook over Helmand in May 2007.

Typically, NATO accounts of copter downings are vague — and I’ve never seen one that cited the Taliban’s use of a guided missile. This clearly isn’t just Koran, Kalashnikov and laptop anymore. And someone is selling the insurgents these missiles, after all. That someone just might be slated to receive $7.5 billion of U.S. aid over the next five years.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/wikileaks-drops-90000-secret-war-docs-fingers-pakistan-as-insurgent-ally/#more-28442#ixzz0un4c3UlL

If it comes out that the Obama administration has been a.) actively covering up Pakistani involvement or, b.) So incompetent as to have overlooked obvious Pakistani involvement, then these documents could have a real impact on the already weakened Obama administration.

Obama's post presidency is fast approaching, and the most important thing for him to do with that time is to plan to fail in Afghanistan. 

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 11: The "Fail" meme goes viral

Glad to see the NYT is now accurately reporting about our real enemy in Afghanistan - Pakistan:

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports to be made public Sunday.

The documents, to be made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside Al Qaeda to plan attacks. Experts cautioned that although Pakistan’s militant groups and Al Qaeda work together, directly linking the Pakistani spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with Al Qaeda is difficult.

The records also contain firsthand accounts of American anger at Pakistan’s unwillingness to confront insurgents who launched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the frontier, and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety.

The behind-the-scenes frustrations of soldiers on the ground and glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials, looking to sustain a drone campaign over parts of Pakistani territory to strike at Qaeda havens. Administration officials also want to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan on their side to safeguard NATO supplies flowing on routes that cross Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Read the whole thing. 

Pakistan is not our friend. Pakistan is a rouge nation - the enemy of the both the United States and of Globalization's Rising Core-  and they will have to be dealt with, sooner or later. When something goes thump in the night - see the recent almost attack in Time Square - we will have to face the fact that Pakistan is not merely home to a loose nit collection of non-state actors but is actually actively supporting terrorists that kill American troops and undermine our foreign policy goals in South Asia and around the world.

The U.S. has not dealt with a situation like Pakistan since the end of the Cold War. Because not since the Soviet Union collapsed have we been forced to deal with a nuclear armed, heavily militarized nation that was actively supporting notoriously anti-America elements around the world. Since 1989 the U.S. has faced small powers - Iraq, Panama, Serbia - who did not posses nuclear arms. Meanwhile,  we dreamed of hypothetical wars with potential super powers, China, Japan, a resurgent Russia, while we engaged a series of non-state actors during peace building and counter insurgency operations. But Pakistan is a different story. Handling Pakistan might wind up looking a lot like handling the Soviet Union - we'll have to go back to containment (not of "Islamism", etc, but of Pakistan) by building a security alliance with like minded - or at least like interested - nations such as India and Iran. Over time, we'll have to hope that Pakistan's internal contradictions will rip it apart without allowing their nukes to fall into the wrong hands.

The good news is that Pakistan is a poor nation with little industry. Unlike the Soviet Union, Pakistan is not capable of global or even regional "Pakistani block" nor are they capable of building up a military with global reach. What they are capable of is ruining our plans for Afghanistan and triggering a regional war with India. And that is why we must plan to fail in Afghanistan while building a strong strategic relationship with India.

5GW: What Kind of Day Has It Been?

Note: I've set this post to update automatically at ~ 8:00 am EST on July 20th, 2010, but I'm writing it over the weekend. Because I'll be traveling on business on the 20th, I won't know what other bloggers - my coauthors - are posting about the Handbook of 5GW, but I will say that the following blogs are certain to have some interesting posts at some point on July 20th about our book:

TDAXP

Zenpundit

Purpleslog

Coming Anarchy



Introduction

Aaron Sorkin - easily one of the top two or three living screenwriters and a writer that has had a huge impact on my life - ended the first season of each of his three series; Sports Night, the West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, with an episode entitled "What Kind of Day Has It Been?" In each case the season finale tied up a number of story arcs and set up new story arcs for the next season.

And so today we face a similar event in the blogosphere with the release of the Handbook of 5GW, from Nimble Books, edited by Dan Abbott. The Handbook of 5GW is supposed to be, in my opinion, the 'end of the beginning' of the debate about 5GW, the same why the season finale of the first season of a T.V. series is the end of one story arc and beginning of another. Having watched this project evolve - thanks in no small part to the editorial work of Dr. Abbott - I really think that we have the beginning of a good conversation about less kinetic and more dispersed warfare.

Some Thoughts on My Chapter, 1 Year Later

My contribution to the Handbook of 5GW was a chapter entitled The War for Robert Taylor is about a 5GW counter insurgency operation that was conducted by the city of Chicago against the Black Kings in a public housing project in Chicago. The COIN operation I describe destroyed the insurgency by radically altering the human terrain of the area. This approach to COIN differs from 4GW ideas about COIN, such as David Killcullen's concept of the Accidental Guerrilla because, rather than trying to understand and leverage the primary loyalties of the population - which is what both the Anbar Awakening and the current tribal engagement strategies in Afghanistan do - Chicago's COIN operation set out to destroy and reorient the population's primary loyalties, away from the close to home "tight network" family-community (hood) dynamic to a "loose network" individual-state dynamic. Perhaps counter-intuitively in our anti-government, pro-entrepreneurial society, the government's COIN operation in Chicago was specially designed to destroy private sector relationships (although black market) and replace them with a dependency upon the state. This was done because state dependency was considered the lesser evil when considered against its black market alternative.

When considering my contribution to the 5GW discussion, we should consider the ratio of horizontal to vertical relationships in a human terrain area (be it a nation-state, sub culture, community, etc). In this context horizontal relationships describe "organic" human-to-human relations. This means blood relatives, spouses, extended family, friends, coworkers, community, etc. On the other hand, vertical relationships describe a relationship between the individual and the Leviathan - the state in most cases. In the case of Chicago the horizontal relationships had grown too strong - creating a classic insurgency controlled temporary autonomous zone within the inner city - and needed to be broken by a reassertion of the authority of the Leviathan. So what the city figured out was how to use a 5GW to break horizontal relationships and force individuals to turn to the vertical relationship offered by the state. This type of warfare may have wide ranging implication, from destroying narco-terrorists like the Black Kings to engaging in various social engineering projects. Indeed, the bulk of Lydon Johnson Great Society may have been 5GW operations that tried to destroy more informal, horizontal networks that were designed to help the poor and replace them with a vertical relationship with the state.

Conclusion

Read the book.

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