Shutting Down For the Weekend

I hate to do this but I'm pretty sure that I won't be posting Friday or this weekend. I apologize for the inconsistency but obligations at home require my attention. Nothing bad...actually quite good, preparing for our son's baptism. We are also expecting visitors from Guatemala. I'm also frustrated because I wanted to post something from the Proceedings the journal of the US Naval Institute and it won't let me log in! Oh well...again my apologies.

Iraq Round Up - Interrogations and Iraqi Troops

In a 90-9 vote the Senate voted for limits to interrogation. Sen. McCain's led the charge in this effort. W. meanwhile is talking up the Iraqi Security Forces.

IV Follow Up: Iran in Iraq, Schroeder Stepping Down & Korean Food Supply

The involvement of Iran in Iraq has moved from rumor to sourced comments. A Brit official has accused Iran of providing explosive technology to insurgents. As I asked last time, what are we going to do about it? Somehow the WashTimes was able to hide its glee but Schroeder and Angie will meet today and Schroeder is expected to step aside. N. Korea insists that it had a bumper crop this year and that is why they don't need the UN's help to feed its people. Journalists were taken on a Potemkin tour recently to see all this surplus foodstuffs.

.Turkey and the EU

NYT climbs on its high horse and tears into Austria for complicating things for Turkey. While reading the editorial I broke out laughing twice. The first time was bashing Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel for trying to play politics since the the "overwheliming majority of the Austrian public doesn't want Turkey in the EU. When was the last time NYT ripped a EUnuch head of state for playing politics for not supporting US efforts in Iraq despite public opinion? The second time I lost it was when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government was referred to as "reformist". Turkey could do a whole lot worse than Erdogan but his idea of reform is nudging Turkey away from secularism and towards Islamism.

Predictably on the WashTimes continues to be the only paper honest about the issues surrounding Turkey's efforts to join the EU:

Turkey, with 5 percent of its land mass and 10 percent of its people on the European side of the Bosporus and 95 percent of the country and 90 percent of its population in Asia Minor, wants to become a full-fledged member of the European Union. This would give EU a common border with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, a notion that has already given Europeans an acute attack of Turkophobia.

EU membership negotiations, scheduled to start this week, are to last 10 years. By then, Turkey's population will have increased from 71 million to 82 million, making a Muslim country the largest in the 25-nation European Union. That's why it isn't going happen. But the European players, eyes blazing with insincerity, have to convince the spectators that if the negotiations succeed, and Turkey agrees to all European demands, preconditions, codicils and 80,000 pages of EU law, membership, strongly endorsed by the U.S., will follow.

A thorny issue not discussed by WashTimes but brought up by WaPost is the Kurdish problem. The good news on this front is that the Kurds seem to be tiring of fighting and Erdogan answer to the impasse is "more democracy". Kurds are forming a new party, Democratic Society Movement. The trouble here is that instead of replacing PKK it seems to (me to) be modelling itself after Sinn Fein/IRA and Euskal Herritarrok/ETA as a political arm to a terrorist organization.

Iraq: Old Rules Are the New Rules

Succumbing to pressure from the US and the UN the Kurds and Shiites went back to the discarded rules for the referendum.

American Interest Has to Pick Up the Pace

AI contd, the blog for the the American Interest, just realized that that The American Prospect wrote a story about them. I linked to the same story last week. If you are going to blog pick up the pace a little bit. I don't expect AI contd to be into every little thing, but they should at least know when someone writes about them. If I sound bitter it's because I am...I still haven't recieved my first issue.

Election/Democracy Watch: Liberia and Azerbaijan

Liberia has its own "Iron Lady", Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. If she wins the elections scheduled for later this month she will be Africa's first female president. In Azerbaijan a group of young opposition candidates are tilting at windmills and aiming for President Ilham Aliyev.

Civilian Use My A...

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has placed control of the Islamic Republic's nuke program in the hands of his cronies from the Revoulutionary Guard.

A "Rolling Coup d'Etat"

That is how President Bolanos of Nicaragua describes what former President Aleman and Castro Mini-Me Version 1.0 Daniel Ortega are doing to him. NYT follows up on the yesterday's op-ed in the WaPost with a report on Robert Zoellick's mission to Nicaragua. By the way how rotten is a country when 92 of 100 legislators are willing to ignore public opinion and support the corrupt bargain that is el pacto? Anyway all of Nicaragua is aflutter with Zoellick's tough talk and his blasting of the "criminal and corrupt" Aleman.

Iraq Round Up

The UN is unhappy with the rule change for the referendum on the draft constitution. As mentioned yesterday the new rule makes it so constitution will fail only if two-thirds of registered voters - rather than two-thirds of those actually casting ballots - reject it in at least three of the 18 provinces. Most believe that this makes passage a foregone conclusion. Ironically Reuters is reporting that there appears to be widespread support for the measure, even in Sunni areas. So the rule change may undermine the legitimacy of the constitution even though it may pass under the old standard. By the way the holy month of Ramadan has begun and a slice-of-life piece the WaPost notes that in Iraq things aren't as festive they once were. The US has finally gotten over its skittishness of launching attacks during the holy month and has started an offensive in western Iraq. Seriously how ridiculous was our sensitivity over fighting during this period? Can you think of a better time to fight than when your opponent is supposed to be fasting? Back at home new reports of abuse toward Iraqis have been reported to John McCain.

Four More for the Wish List

Here are a couple of more writers that I would like to see come down for the Miami Book Fair International:

• Victor Davis Hanson, A War Like No Other : How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War - Because any realist worth his salt can't read enough about the Peloponnesian War and Thucydides.

• George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God and God's Choice : Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church - Granted I don't usually agree with him but being theCardinal I of course have a vested interest in issues involving the Church.

• Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy - I'm always eager to see or hear from other realists, even if I don't agree with them.

• Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century - Another guy I don't always agree with but he is always original and thought provoking. This book is actually over a year old, but shouldn't there be a paperback coming out soon?

By the way you can already get your tickets to the Book Fair...yes they will be charging this year but it will actually make it better. The Fair was getting so crowded that it felt like Calle Ocho but with fewer tattoos. At $5.00 the Fair is still a bargain for bibliophiles but should keep the loafers out.

Cheney: Why Sept. 11 Happened

I believe that Cheney is more right than wrong on this:

"The terrorists came to believe that they could strike America without paying any price. And so they continued to wage those attacks, making the world less safe and eventually striking the United States on 9/11," Cheney said.

The vice president highlighted seven occasions when he said he felt the United States did not hit back strongly enough. The first -- the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans -- resulted in U.S. troops being withdrawn from the city by the Reagan administration. Many of those killed came from Camp Lejeune, members of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. Cheney said the American response was also inadequate after the killing of U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993; the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York the same year; the car bombing at the Saudi National Guard Training Center in Riyadh in 1995; the killings at Khobar Towers, which housed U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia, in 1996; the destruction of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998; and the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

"Time and time again, for the remainder of the 20th century, the terrorists hit America and America did not hit back hard enough," he said, rallying the crowd. "As President Bush has said, the only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon our mission."

My only problem of course is with what we mean by "mission." Does it mean sticking around in a Iraq until they have a fully functioning democracy?

Problems With the PA

After a wild prostest by security protests the PA legislature dissolved Abbas' Cabinet.

Democracy/Election Watch: Germany, Haiti, Mexico & Nicaragua

In Germany Schroeder may be seeing the light hinting at giving up his bid to remain Chancellor. The November 20 date set for elections in Haiti now seems unlikely as more candidates are declared ineligible. In Mexico the ruling PAN (in Spanish) is closer to finding its nominee for President after Felipe Calderon won the second of three rounds of voting. Calderon (en espanol) also won the first round over the favorite Santiago Creel who was rumored to be Pres. Fox's choice. All this is probably an excercise in futility because it would take a miracle for Calderon to repeat this miraculous comeback when facing AMLO. Being quixotic I'm pulling for Jorge Castaneda (not in English). Meanwhile in an op-ed the WaPost is justly concerned over what is going on in Nicaragua:

Many people outside Latin America probably assume Daniel Ortega's political career ended 15 years ago when his ruinous attempt to install a Marxist dictatorship in Nicaragua ended with an election he decisively lost. The slightly better informed might suppose that his two subsequent electoral defeats, the allegations of corruption and child molestation that haunt him, or his single-digit rating in opinion polls have made him a marginal figure in Nicaraguan politics. Sadly, the truth is otherwise: Thanks to the weakness of the country's new democratic institutions, Mr. Ortega is close to regaining power and to broadening the Latin alliance of undemocratic states now composed by Cuba and Venezuela.

Mr. Ortega's comeback has been accomplished through a brazenly corrupt alliance with a former right-wing president, Arnoldo Aleman, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2003 for looting the national treasury. Mr. Ortega's Sandinista Party supported the prosecution, then abruptly switched sides and formed a pact with Mr. Aleman against President Enrique Bolanos, a member of Mr. Aleman's Liberal Party who bravely chose to tackle government corruption. The left-right alliance has used its majority in the National Assembly to rewrite the constitution and stack the Supreme Court. In the past week it has begun stripping the members of Mr. Bolanos's cabinet of immunity so that they can be prosecuted before Sandinista judges on bogus charges. If this power play succeeds, Mr. Bolanos will be next. Meanwhile, Mr. Aleman, who stole tens of millions from one of Latin America's poorest countries, was freed from house arrest last week.

The WaPost is also underwhelmed with the administration thus far:

Compared with Mr. Chavez's aggressive intervention, attempts by the Bush administration and other outsiders to save Nicaraguan democracy so far look feckless. The new secretary general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, tried to broker a political compromise but pronounced himself frustrated when Mr. Ortega ignored his appeals to stop undermining Mr. Bolanos's government. The Bush administration managed to win congressional passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement this summer, but Mr. Ortega has blocked its ratification by Nicaragua.

Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick is due to visit Managua this week in what officials say will be an attempt to bolster Mr. Bolanos and persuade Mr. Aleman's right-wing supporters to abandon their self-destructive alliance with the Sandinistas. As happens so often in Latin America during the Bush administration, high-level intervention arrives late. It does have one thing going for it: Eighty percent of Nicaraguans say they oppose the Ortega-Aleman pact. Nicaragua's rescue will depend on people power, inside or outside the polls.

Katrina Efforts Hindered by Iraq

W and Company need to face up to the fact that the Katrina disaster was made worse by Iraq. Granted I think that the reason that the military was so desperately needed was because N.O. and Louisiana officials proved to be incompetent and ineffective but that does not excuse the federal government for its slow response. The Independent (UK) got a look at a DoD report on Katrina:

The confidential report, which has been seen by The Independent, details how funds for flood control were diverted to other projects, desperately needed National Guards were stuck in Iraq and how military personnel had to "sneak off post" to help with relief efforts because their commander had refused permission.

Why the Iraqi Constitution Will Pass

WashPost reports that U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is still working on getting changes to the Iraqi Constitution. If it passes it will probably have more to do with the fact that Shiites and Kurds have changed the rules for passage. Under the new rules, the constitution will fail only if two-thirds of all registered voters - rather than two-thirds of all those actually casting ballots - reject it in at least three of the 18 provinces.

EUnuchs Talk to Uzbeks

For those of you that were not aware there was a massacre in Uzbekistan not too long ago. The government claimed that 187 Islamists were killed but the opposition estimates that there were about 400 killed and that they were peaceful protestors. The EUnuchs are talking tough and have issued an arms embargo. This will hold until the Uzbeks have something of value to offer. The Reds killed a whole lot more at Tiananmen and the EUnuchs can't wait to sell them weapons.

The EUnuchs and Turkey Begin Talking

Good news for the EUnuchs! Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had warned that the EUnuchs could end up being a "Christian club" if they did not start talks on Turk membership. Thank goodness that the talks are now on track. There are a couple of things wrong with the PM's analysis. First is the obvious, if you tally up church attendance in Europe (excluding Poland) it would be difficult to qualify anything in Europe as Christian. Second the region formerly known as Christendom seemed to do just fine after expelling the Moors from al-Andalus and standing up to the Ottomans in Vienna. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that intellectually, socially, politically and economically the Arab Islamic countries suffered a steep decline starting in the 15th century. If not for oil we would not even care about what went on in that part of the world. Anyway I digress, but if you want to read more about the "Christian club", the EU and the Turks pick up The Cube and the Cathederal. You can find a review here. It is a sparkling essay but it's point of view should come as no surprise since it is penned by a Catholic theologian.

Obviously I've gone off on a tangent here so back to business...The trouble over the start of the Turkey talks was a roadblock thrown up by Austria. According to the WashTimes though, the US also had to sweet talk Turkey to agree to come to terms for the talks.

Book of the Month: China, Inc.

Tomorrow night's discussion will presumably center around China, Inc. : How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America by Ted C. Fishman. We all know that we'll go off topic at some point but that is what makes our discussions so much fun. I scoured the net for reviews and found some stuff.

The much maligned TNR site has one the better (and shortest) reviews. Noting the massive volume of facts and interviews used by the author but also the paucity of political analysis and discussion of controversial topics:

Fishman has compiled an impressive array of facts, figures, and anecdotes about China's business boom. And to his credit, he includes worthwhile interviews with everyone from shop sellers in a Shanghai knick-knack market to Patrick Lo, chief executive of networking equipment giant Netgear Inc. But while Fishman's range of reporting is impressive, his book could have benefited from an overriding argument--or rather, any strong arguments at all. Occasionally Fishman lets an opinion seep in, but only in the most cursory of terms. For instance, in his discussion of the Three Gorges Dam, the government's massive effort to block off a Lake Superior-sized reservoir along the Yangtze River, he laments briefly that the project will destroy much of the gorges and several cities, while displacing over a million people--quite a point for a mere aside.

By avoiding more controversial waters, Fishman reduces heated political debates to endless on-the-other-hand dialogues that would put Tevye to shame. In his chapter on piracy, Fishman says that China's vast counterfeit market constrains business innovators because they know any good idea will be ripped off. But he stops short of outright condemnation of piracy, explaining that the underground economy also provides an influx of much-needed cash to China. Then, moments later, he concedes that China's piracy robs the world of wealth. In his chapter on the valuation of the yuan, Fishman hedges again, noting both that the yuan's peg to the dollar falsely inflates China's competitive advantage and that if the yuan were unpegged, it would create instability. In other words, there are pros and cons to the current valuation of Chinese currency. You don't say.

The China Economic Review feels that China, Inc. is "written with tabloid principles in mind" but says that's "not a bad thing." CER notes that the message of the book that China is "big and growing fast" is beaten to death and not necessarily news to it's own readers. CER also feels that the analytical side of China, Inc. falls short failing to ask what happens next?

The Press Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York has a surprisingly benign review that does not criticize the Reds. Asia Times also has a perfunctory review that summarizes the book well but offers very little analysis.

Finally the Asian Review of Books has an intriguing review that launches broadsides at Fishman's thesis:

I feel Fishman stops his analysis one step too soon: he argues that China's underlying strength is its almost unlimited workforce, a workforce willing to work for subsistence wages. There are a few problems with this position: first, it may not be true indefinitely. There is already wage pressure and labour shortages in some industries and regions. Just this week, The Economist reports "Can China -- population 1.3 million - really be running out of people? In many of the most important parts of its booming economy, the answer, increasingly, is yes. Though China has a vast pool of unskilled labour, firms in the south now complain that they cannot recruits enough cheap factory and manual workers. The market is even tigher for skilled labour."Fishman also argues that China is competitive because it can swap out "million dollar machines" for low-cost human labour, i.e. turn back the clock on the last 150 years of industrial development. This is surely temporary, and cannot apply to everything: semiconductors cannot be made by hand, regardless of how cheap the labour is. This is not Fishman's only economically curious argument, for he also argues that China is inherently prone to over-investment and over-capacity, which is wants relentless depresses the "China price". However, this is an indication that China allocates its resources inefficiently, and in the long run, inefficient economies are not competitive.

Defending Karen Hughes

Here is something I did not expect - a piece in TNR defending Karen Hughes. TA Frank who also handles the outstanding regular feature "Today in Despotism" gives a hat tip to Hughes for bringing up the driving issue in Saudi Arabia. He also rips the left for criticizing her:

Isolationist conservatives generally take the position that it's not the proper role of American politicians to comment on another society's treatment of women. But liberals don't have that excuse. Instead, their dilemma is by now an old story: For the contemporary left, when any value--in this case, equal rights for women--comes up against the value of not judging other cultures, non-judgment tends to win. The left prizes tolerance so highly that it often refuses to condemn intolerance. (Europe, with a large population of immigrants who oppose the values of the society in which they live, has grappled with this problem for years.)

Alvaro Vargas Llosa on Lula's Troubles

Alvaro Vargas Llosa explains Lula's problems, why they happened and what it all means:

Lula's capacity to reinvent the left always hinged on something more than keeping interest rates high to stem inflation, maintaining a strong currency, riding on the high prices of certain commodities, and giving cash to poor families. He could either opt for simply managing the perpetual crisis or he could try to overhaul a labyrinthine political system that benefited certain pockets of industrial and agricultural production but keeps millions of people out of the realm of opportunity. He chose the former path.

While technocrats talk about a three percent rate of economic growth for Brazil this year and an export boom that has translated into a trade “surplus” of $40 billion, Lula’s voters are indignant at the corruption scandal. But the real point is that corruption has developed naturally in an environment of limited opportunities due to asphyxiating government interference. And the absence of adequate limits on the power of the political bureaucracy is in turn an incentive for corruption at the top level. The corruption of Lula’s government, therefore, should be seen more as a symptom than a cause. Ranting about corruption without removing the causes will only generate further frustration. Brazilians impeached President Collor de Mello in the 1990s but failed to change a system that ensured a party like Lula’s would fall into the same trap years later.

Brazil has often been a bellwether of Latin American political currents. It exemplified French-style authoritarian positivism in the early 20th century, centrally planned industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, and democracy in the 1980s. (It was not, however, one of the leading nations in the so-called free market reform wave of the 1990s). Lula’s demise is now strengthening the more radical left, which has been quick to blame what is happening on the President’s “betrayal” of his Marxist origins. The rest of the Latin American left is watching.

A Bad Idea for Iraq

A WSJ op-ed said that proportional representation is the wrong thing to do in Iraq. Germany is used as an example of what can go wrong. Granted Germany is a mess right now but it was the model of consistency during the Cold War. A better posterchild would have been Italy. Here is what is wrong with PR (proportional representation not Puerto Rico):

Germany's system of almost pure PR has consistently produced coalition governments and now, for the first time, a situation in which no party constellation can produce a government with a coherent program for much-needed reforms. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's reform of Britain's sclerotic economy wouldn't have been possible with PR and cooperative federalism; nor could one imagine Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi accomplishing anything similar in Japan.

The more subtle but ultimately more insidious problem is that PR--unless balanced by plebiscitary institutions such as a directly elected, powerful executive--tends to be constitutionally unstable. Instead of institutional checks and balances, PR constitutions resemble temporary peace pacts among contending interests, classes or warlords. The structure is only as stable as the underlying constellation of forces; or it is stabilized by nonpolitical means.

Saudis Are a Bunch of Camel Jockeys and the Kurd/Shiite Schism

It is good to speak the truth, it can even be quite liberating. Yet sometimes it is best to hide your true feelings, obfuscate and even lie. That is probably what you should do if you are an Iraqi pol and you are talking about the Saudis. Unfortunately the Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr got a little irritated by Saudi comments about the Shiites in Iraq and he chose to respond by taking the road less traveled and spoke the truth:

"This Iraq is the cradle of civilization that taught humanity reading and writing, and some Bedouin riding a camel wants to teach us. This talk is totally rejected," he said.

He also took a swipe at the Saudi monarchy.

"There are regimes that are dictatorships. They have one God. He is the king, he is God of heaven and earth, and he rules as he likes," Mr. Jabr said. "A whole country is named after a family. If we open these topics without inhibitions, it is neither to our benefit, nor to theirs."

Of more importance is an item mentioned later in the article - the Kurd/Shiite split on the future of PM Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite. An associate of the President Jalal Talabani has called for Kurds and Shiites to explore the possibility of dropping al-Jaafari.

Newsflash: Michael Barone is Not Depressed

Michael Barone would like for us to know that despite appearances the world is not coming to an end:

A world spinning out of control: That is what the old-line broadcast networks seem to be showing us. But I see other patterns. George W. Bush has consistently asserted that one reason for removing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was to advance freedom and democracy in the Middle East. In spite of the improvised explosive devices, that seems to be happening.

Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution" was as inspiring an example of people power as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Libya has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction. Egypt, by far the largest Arab nation, had its first contested election this month, and, as the Washington Post's David Ignatius writes from Cairo, "the power of the reform movement in the Arab world today ... is potent because it's coming from the Arab societies themselves and not just from democracy enthusiasts in Washington."

Which is evidence that Mr. Bush was right: Muslims and Arabs, like people everywhere, want liberty and self-rule. Afghanistan has just voted, and Iraq is about to vote a second time this year. Violence continues, but the more important story is that democracy and freedom are advancing.

The economy isn't so bad either:

Polls show that most Americans think the economy is in dreadful shape, even though almost all the numbers are good: Inflation and unemployment are low, and growth is robust despite the exogenous shocks of Sept. 11 and Katrina. After a generation of almost constant low-inflation economic growth, perhaps we Americans are only satisfied when we have bubble growth, as in the late 1990s, and are unimpressed when the American economy proves once again to be amazingly resilient.

This is all the more astonishing when you consider that we are going through a time of increased competition and change, as China and India, with 37 percent of the world's population, are transforming their economies from third world to first world. Such a large proportion of mankind moving rapidly upward has never happened before and will never happen again.

Couple this with the facts that Japan seems to be growing again, after 15 years of deflation, that East Asia and Eastern Europe continue to grow robustly, and that major Latin countries like Mexico and Brazil are growing as well, and the economic picture around the world looks pretty good, despite nongrowth in Western Europe and continued poverty in Africa.

But even if things are going well, isn't America hated around the world? By the elites and chattering classes of many countries, yes, and by much of the American elite and chattering class as well. But we are not competing in a popularity contest. In a unipolar world, the single superpower will always arouse envy and dislike.

The relevant question is if we can live safely in the world; the French may dislike us, but we can live comfortably with France. The recent Pew Trust polls showing diminishing support for Islamist terrorism in Muslim countries indicate things are moving in the right direction. The increasing weaving of China into the international economy suggests China may not be a military threat. A world spinning out of control? No, it is more like a world moving, with some backward steps, in the direction we want.

Book Pages: No True Glory

I've been anxiously awaiting the publication of No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah by Bing West. West is a Viet Vet who also served in the Reagan Admin. as an assistant Secretary of Defense. He has the rare ability to give raw reports from the frontlines giving us an understanding of what goes through a soldier's mind yet still sit back at the end of the day and reflect on the political implications of what they do and how politics got them there. In the book West seems to exalt in the work done by the Marines and excoriates politicians and the media. CSM reviews the book and likes it:

The soldiers' accounts are harrowing. Readers will feel the emotions of the chronic exposure to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and randomly targeted mortar rounds, the discovery of the torture chambers, and the crowded tenement districts awash in deadly weapons. It's a stark reminder of the diabolical nature of counter-insurgency in an unfriendly land.

To his credit, West leaves most of the editorializing to the final chapter that bears the book's name. He then offers sweeping critiques of the war's execution, drawing significant parallels to Vietnam, the conflict he knows best. A divided chain of command with Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority on one side and Abizaid's military on the other was a "systemic flaw."

"The singular lesson from Fallujah is clear: when you send our soldiers into battle, let them finish the fight," he writes. "Ordering the Marines to attack, then calling them off, then dithering, then sending them back in constituted a flawed set of strategic decisions. American soldiers are not political bargaining chips. They fight for one another, for winning the battle, and for their country's cause."

West also criticizes the press. In Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq, America's fighting men barged headfirst into insurgent-infested houses and walked through enemy fire to drag their wounded and dying comrades from the battlefield. West feels that this bravery has gone underreported because the Western media remains conflicted about the morality war itself. "The focus of the press was upon [soldiers'] individual deaths as tragedies," he writes. "This was an incomplete portrayal. The fierce fighting at Fallujah attested to the stalwart nature of the American soldier. Unsung, the noblest deed will die."

The Blasts in Bali

Bali has been hit again. Considering the population of Indonesia it does make sense but you'd think that Islamists would prefer to hit targets in Europe or the US. This is just an example of al Qaeda taking whatever they can get.

Book Pages: America and the World

David Ignatius reviews three books for WaPost's BookWorld, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy by Stephen M. Walt, New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy by Ralph Peters and finally The Collapse of Globalism: And the Reinvention of the World by John Ralston Saul. Ignatius likes Walt's book best and tosses aside Saul's. This is understandable since Walt's is the more serious book and the other two seem to be dressed up political tracts. I says seems since I have not read them yet.

According to Ignatius Walt declares that the US is "the mightiest state since Rome," enjoying "a position of power that is historically unprecedented." So what should we do about it?

Walt argues that the Bush administration has unwisely adopted a strategy of global hegemony. "This image of global dominance is undeniably appealing to some Americans," he writes, "but the history of the past few years also demonstrates how unfeasible it is." The administration's unilateral strategy of preventive war has frightened America's friends without deterring its enemies. Indeed, says Walt, friendly states "have been distancing themselves from the U.S. foreign-policy agenda," while enemies such as Iran and North Korea "have become more resistant to U.S. pressure and more interested in acquiring the ability to deter U.S. military action" -- in other words, nukes. The administration's bold hopes for political transformation in Iraq have instead led to a "costly quagmire."

Walt says the United States could return to President Clinton's approach of "selective engagement," but he thinks that was also too forward-leaning -- with too much engagement in places like the Balkans and Haiti and too little selectivity about where to intervene. Instead, he argues for what he calls "offshore balancing." That's an overly abstract term for an idea that's actually fairly simple: Walt argues that the United States should basically mind its own business and deploy "its power abroad only when there are direct threats to vital U.S. interests." This approach wouldn't be isolationist, he insists, because America would remain engaged through international institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and NATO. Standing offshore, American power would be less worrisome for the world, and as Walt puts it, would give us the coquette's advantage of "playing hard to get."

Hmmmm. Sounds to me like Walt has been hanging out with Ivan Eland. Off-shore balancing is great for rising, buck passing powers and equally competitive powers but if you are a great power that has invested itself in global security and stability it makes little sense. Let me be clear that I am not advocating a unliateralist going it alone strategy. We need to be actively engaged with our allies and work with collective security organizations and other international bodies not sitting at home waiting for a call for action. It may make little sense to be the global sheriff, but it makes less sense to be the world's emergency response team.

I had not planned to read Ralph Peters' new book but the less than glowing review made me think that I might like it. According to Ignatius Peters' slams the French, pointy headed east coast elitists and Donald Rumsfeld and his posse at DoD:

But Peters's most pointed diatribe is directed against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his neoconservative aides at the Pentagon, including Douglas J. Feith and Stephen A. Cambone. "Convinced that they were smarter regarding military affairs than those who had dedicated their lives to uniformed service," he writes, "the Rummycrats humiliated generals and colonels in front of their subordinates, dismissing them as fools." He describes Rumsfeld's team variously as "notorious bullies," "Chinese court eunuchs," "commissars," and ideologues "who more closely resembled the early Bolsheviks than any predecessors in the American grain." To Peters, the Rummycrats were arrogant bureaucrats who bought fancy weapons to fight a bloodless, high-tech war rather than body armor for the troops. "Our policies killed our soldiers, as surely as the terrorists and insurgents did," he writes.

Peters sounds the first notes of a chorus that undoubtedly will swell as America retreats from Iraq. As with Vietnam, an unhappy uniformed military will argue that it was the Pentagon civilians (along with the French, the journalists and those ice-cream-cone lickers at Rand) who sold out our troops. It was a stab in the back. Peters's answer is to leave war to the soldiers. "We wish to wage war with tweezers, but combat remains the province of the ax," he writes.

Peters is right to flay the Pentagon leaders for their poor planning for Iraq, which is a scandal. But he understates just how hard a military problem America confronts in Iraq. The generals never came up with a winning counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam, and if they have one for Iraq, they are sure keeping quiet about it. Peters talks as if flattening Fallujah last fall was the way to break the Sunni insurgency. Sorry, but it's hard to see the evidence for that.

Maybe Fallujah was the way to go, but it was a one time operation that could not possibly be sustained. You can't knock it if we don't actually try it.

Finally this is Ignatius on Saul's book:

The least interesting of these three extended essays on the state of America and the world is John Ralston Saul's The Collapse of Globalism. It's a series of meandering rants gathered around one central rant about globalization. Saul, the author of Voltaire's Bastards , argues that the very soul of the U.S.-driven global economy -- free trade -- is itself of dubious benefit because it spins goods around the world without creating real wealth. Certainly that case can be made, as it has been eloquently by William Greider in One World, Ready or Not . But it's not made well in Saul's book, which pops off in so many directions that a reader loses track sometimes of just what he's denouncing. (A favorite passage: "The common call today is for an examination of values. I am not clear what this means." Join the club.)

Two Weeks and Counting

In two weeks the Iraqis will vote on the constitutional referendum there's no telling if it will pass but at some point the Iraqis are going to have to take care of themselves. The WashTimes has a report on how American troops are preparing the Iraqis for that eventuality. What it seems to boil down to is the Iraqis are in better shape than they were last year, but still have a ways to go.