Just by way of a quick follow up regarding the post immediately below, I did want to post this snippet from last weekend's "Lunch with the FT" feature, with Zbigniew Brzezinski. He states:

I push him further on Obama. Shortly before our lunch, the president returned from Australia where he announced plans to deploy 2,500 Marines there to shore up alliances in Asia. This is exactly the kind of move that baffles Brzezinski. What’s wrong, I ask, with Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia? Doesn’t it make sense to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and shift attention to the rising east?

When Brzezinski feels strongly, he barely pauses between paragraphs. “I was not aware that Australia was about to be invaded by Papua New Guinea, or by Indonesia,” he replies. “I assume most people think Obama was thinking of China. What’s worse is that the Chinese will think he’s thinking of China and to define our engagements in the east in terms of China is a mistake. We have to focus on Asia but not in a manner that plays on everyone’s anxieties ... It becomes very easy to demonise China and they will then demonise us in return. Is that what we want?”

A good question. By the way, I have been very much wanting to post on the Republican primaries as well as an update on OWS (particularly Bloomberg's eviction action). I hope to have more soon.

(Updated Below)

Perhaps it is because I am writing this from Beijing, but I found it odd that this Tom Donilon (President Obama’s National Security Advisor) op-ed in a recent FT entitled “America is back in the Pacific and will uphold the rules” has not a single explicit mention of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) and/or the word “China” (save embedded within the obligatory reference to the South China Sea). Odd because really the entire piece reads rather like a thinly veiled warning shot to the PRC that the U.S. still ‘means business’ in the Asia Pacific region, will not ratchet down its security presence/umbrella there and will uphold “the rules” (Donilon is referring here to ‘free and fair’ trade, IP protections, “level playing fields” for businesses and, of course, “market-driven currencies”, but one wonders, whom precisely sets all these variegated rules, by what specific authority and for whom?).

The Obama Administration should be genuinely lauded for beginning to more convincingly re-calibrate its foreign policy to focus on critical going forward strategic theaters like the Asia-Pacific region, if it is still painfully bogged down in diminishing return side-shows like Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the quite striking omission of any concrete mention of the PRC struck me as arguably awkward and disingenuous in an op-ed which could well be construed by some--notably some PRC governmental constituencies--as risking enunciating something of a neo-containment strategy, if U.S. policy-makers would doubtless protest it is anything but.

Regardless, and beyond the broad merits of the policy sketched out in Donilon’s op-ed, what real strategic muscle is being brought to bear then? While laden with a decent amount of symbolism, the “rotational deployment” of U.S. Marines to Australia does strike one as a tad gimmicky (we are advised the basing is meant to “contribute to the security of sea lines)”. Still, Donilon speaks of the Australian deployment as only the “first manifestation” of a “future defense posture” in the region. Per Donilon, this will reportedly lead towards a “presence that is more broadly distributed, more flexible and more sustainable.” But nothing much more is said on this score in his piece, whether purposefully or otherwise I am not sure.

There was also a related pronunciamento by the President speaking in Canberra recently announcing the “strategic decision” that any looming defense cuts will cause “no diminution” of U.S. “military presence or capabilities” in Asia. Sounds good, but a skeptic could be forgiven pondering this in rather a more dubious context, say recalling Erskine Bowle’s recent pithy quip about U.S. defense commitments to Taiwan in the context of needing to borrow money from Beijing to deliver on such rather ambitious security pledges. (Incidentally, one also wonders ever more about the continued true relevancy of NATO, particularly in the context of this strategic re-balancing, note Donilon elsewhere in the op-ed has the obligatory reference to “renewed” ties respecting NATO, perhaps so that no European chancelleries become alarmed the alliance might get unduly short shrift amidst this Asia ‘pivot’).

Mr. Donilon closes his piece by stating that “each of our nations” (of which more below) will be more “secure and prosperous”, if only his prescriptions (or perhaps he means those of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, of which China is quite conspicuously not a member) are dutifully followed. While the “nations” remain unspecified I suspect quite a few in Beijing would beg to differ. Indeed, Donilon’s op-ed has caused something of a mini-kerfuffle here, if more rhetorically than substantively, but nonetheless with talk of renewed Cold War sentiments being unduly fanned, the Australians denying they are looking at a trilateral defense pact with the U.S. and India, and such type hand-wringing fare. Perhaps it is better instead to more forthrightly and candidly explore and deflect mutual areas of possible conciliation and contention, rather than engage in such an obvious omission in an otherwise well-written op-ed which appears to bury the real ‘lede’ disingenuously enough that it risks unduly stoking suspicion? (If the thinking was the Chinese would prefer they not be mentioned more directly as the 800-pound gorilla and bogey-man in Donilon’s equation, I would counter they are far too smart for this).

It is true China of late has flexed her muscles a bit too exuberantly given in part its very strong economy (albeit slowing some of late, see recent PMI data etc.), for instance over-playing her hand at times with various swash-buckling respecting territorial disputes directed at neighbors like Vietnam, the Philippines or Japan. These miscalculations probably were further spurred on by heightened confidence--in some quarters perhaps even incipient triumphalism--given the 2008 financial crisis and the body-blows it delivered “the mystique of Western economic prowess” with China “no longer [feeling] constrained by the sense of apprenticeship to Western technology and institutions” (as Henry Kissinger put it in his recent book On China). Indeed, some youthful student segments and/or PRC nationalist elements might even have begun to intuit deeper shifts in the distribution of power in the international system, creating an atmosphere rife with desire for regional aggrandizement, one more easily realizable absent the presence of a pesky U.S. security architecture.

Such variables certainly argue for an ‘Asia-pivot’ posture for U.S. policy, and the Administration has handled same with some aplomb. Still, the U.S. should be careful not to commit similar-type ‘overreach’ errors in return, even while we laud the Administration’s renewed strategic focus on Asia (Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to Myanmar neatly dove-tailing here too, further burnishing the theme that the gross Bush 43 era neglect is being at least partially redressed). After all, while it is fashionable of late to raise the specter of an indomitably rising China, Ezra Vogel in his recently published, excellent biography of Deng Xiaoping reminds us of the mammoth challenges that will continue to confront the PRC leadership moving forward, including (as quoted from Vogel’s pp. 711-713): 1) providing universal social security and health care; 2) redefining and managing the boundaries of freedom; 3) containing corruption; 4) preserving the environment; and 5) maintaining the government’s legitimacy to rule.
Adding to this heavy burden the possible suspicion of containment by the U.S. may, amidst the staggering challenges China will face in the coming decades—as well, make no mistake, equally staggering potential for great progress--result in mutual miscalculations to neither the PRC nor the United States’ benefit. (Henry Kissinger has broached a possible notion of ‘co-evolution’ as between the United States and China, something roughly akin to a Pacific Community on the model of the Atlantic one, where there is more of an integrated, structural collaborative approach, as opposed to a possibly messy descent into competing American and Chinese spheres).

Perhaps really this is what Donilon was trying to intimate, as his op-ed concludes: “By strengthening the international rules that must be the foundation of our shared future—and by ensuring governments abide by these rules—each of our nations will be more secure and more prosperous [emphasis added]. It is hard not to conclude that—even if Donilon leaves it unstated—the “each” Washington must be most concerned about is ultimately the U.S. and PRC, reinvigorated defense arrangements with an Australia apart, or diplomatic entrees in Yangon, and so on (though I of course in no way mean to downplay the critical import of countries like Japan and South Korea to regional stability as well). Perhaps better to be more open about the critical import of same, lest through miscommunication and burgeoning mistrust competing 'spheres of influence' trump attempts at fostering more promising avenues aimed at better institutionalizing joint consultation, which might also have the benefit of lessening the often louder, more hawkish voices in both Washington and Beijing. This is particularly true as the surreal political silly season gathers apace with the Presidential election in the United States heating up (aside from the relative sanity of Obama and Jon Hunstman), while keeping in mind too looming PRC leadership transitions. Particularly during such periods of flux (not to mention the grave sovereign debt crisis in Europe) it is even more important to ensure mitigating as best as possible breakdowns in communication respecting each parties basic intentions.

UPDATE: A couple items related to the above. First, it seems like I am not alone in some of my above concerns. From a Bloomberg piece:

"President Barack Obama’s administration has sought to enhance the U.S.’s stature in Asia this year, an initiative Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described as a “pivot” toward the region after a decade of American focus on war in the Middle East. As part of the approach, the administration is seeking a free-trade agreement with Pacific nations including Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore, and last month enhanced its security ties with Australia.

Global investors are skeptical of the U.S. effort, highlighted when Obama hosted the annual 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Honolulu last month and attended an East Asia Summit in Bali, Indonesia. Fifty-six percent said the campaign “will not enhance U.S. influence and end up antagonizing China,” compared with 30 percent who expect it to serve as an “effective counterweight” to Chinese power." [emphasis added]

There is nothing magical about an investor poll, of course, but it is nonetheless indicative of a reasonably informed group's prognostications on the matter.

Second, another Bloomberg story, w/ coverage of a trip to Beijing by a US Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy. Note she needed to publicly assure her Chinese hosts: "We assured General Ma and his delegation that the U.S. does not seek to contain China, we do not view China as an adversary." She also characterized the discussions as "very candid," which is likely diplomatic-code for quite spirited indeed, doubtless. As for General Ma, he stated: "the fact that the consultations took place as scheduled shows that both countries are sincere about maintaining military exchanges", suggesting there may have been quite a bit of discussion regarding calling off the meeting in advance of the U.S. visit, at least within certain PRC circles.

Occasioned by the recent mini-flurry of blogging activity below, I thought providing a brief update about the future of this site might be merited. I have been remiss in doing so for far too long and meaning to apologize to any regular visitors. As most of you have probably concluded, varied commitments have conspired these past several years allowing virtually no time to post here. These factors include family, professional development obligations, and perhaps more than anything, an exceptionally demanding work and travel schedule.

Indeed, given the dearth of fresh content posted on-line here, one might even on occasion have fairly asked whether the site was worth keeping up. The answer is that despite the aforementioned timing constraints set to continue going forward--as a dedicated observer of global public policy and numerous media sources--and to the extent I may have content worth sharing with a wider readership in the future, I will continue to post when able (while also exploring other alternatives to share content as well).

In the meantime, I again ask for forbearance respecting the highly irregular nature of posting to this ‘blog’, or perhaps better stated, a cyber-forum for occasional pieces, assorted shout-outs, or, of late, even amateur photography! I thank you for your continued interest, and suspect even in the context of the epochal events of the last decade (9/11, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, the financial crisis and Great Recession, etc.) we will, whether good or bad, also have a steady fare of major going forward events to grapple with in this new decade.

I stumbled on the initial Occupy Wall Street protest by accident back on its first day of September 17th walking through the financial district in lower Manhattan. While the group seemed quite inchoate and far smaller than the 20,000 thousand or so initially advertised, I’d been intrigued by the solidarity Occupy Wall Street had expressed with protest movements in Spain or even revolutionary episodes such as the pivotal events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the early days of the Arab Awakening. I overheard that day some bemused onlookers who may have been low-level financial sector workers mockingly saying--‘so, this is it?’—but could not help thinking I would be hearing more about Occupy Wall Street in coming weeks. Indeed, I’d long suspected the financial crisis, policy foibles, chronic unemployment, and general corruption of our politics would sooner or later fuel a measure of social unrest in this country as it has elsewhere. We are not immune to a deadening of hope fused with deep-seated suspicion of having been essentially swindled via policy decisions resulting from a politics that is largely broken and denies a sense of genuine progress and possibility. Almost immediately after espying this nascent protest movement I left for a three week business trip to Asia before returning to New York only yesterday, where incidentally, I was asked on several occasions overseas about the growing movement.

From afar in East Asia, I noticed Occupy Wall Street has done several things right, some a result of sheer luck (read: police over-reactions), others manifesting a measure of tactical skill. A couple of the initial pepper spray incidents went viral on YouTube, one showing very young women screaming hysterically while penned—or is the term for this ‘kettled’?—by bright orange police mesh. Here the ‘luck’ of brute force helped create outsize publicity by a media that had mostly ignored the going-ons up to that point. After all, it cannot help looking like a failure of our society when generally hapless young women are being sprayed in or near their faces by male police officers twice their age simply about behavior surrounding access to public places. These could be our own daughters, after all, and it offends basic sensibility (see the footage here). Another key moment in the growing tide of the movement was the incident of mass arrests in and around the Brooklyn Bridge (again, footage available here for those who are curious), partly a result of the confusion among some of the protesters (to be sure, perhaps a convenient confusion) about whether or not they had been granted access to the vehicular lanes rather than merely the pedestrian pathway on the bridge. Regardless of the merits, mass arrests on the order of some 700 or so individuals on an iconic New York landmark will engender healthy international headlines, boosting the nascent protest movement’s profile very significantly, with this event likely having constituted the break-out.

Then, of course, there is Zuccotti Park (which Occupy Wall Street have renamed Liberty Plaza, note Zuccotti Park's original name was Liberty Plaza Park), where the protesters have erected a steadily growing encampment, showing a canny resourcefulness, despite limitations on rights to pitch tents and such, as well as been denied access to more iconic locations such as the near-by actual Wall Street itself. Critically, the protesters have intuited from the get-go that they need to physically inhabit some patch of space literally around the clock, otherwise police will likely sweep in and deny them access, without the public relations boon of a forced deportation. The ‘occupy’ part is mission-critical to the branding of Occupy Wall Street, speaking to its passionate indignation, commitment and wherewithal to maintain a 24/7 presence, and its echoes to recent revolutionary episodes such as Tahrir Square as touched on above. Regardless their presence is being increasingly felt beyond Zuccotti Park, including their forays up towards Washington and Union Squares (intelligent tactically to garner more publicity, while testing how much the authorities will aim to restrict their movements) and of course the fact that the group has metastasized with outcroppings in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago among many other locales reportedly nearing at this writing some 1,000. Also, and not unlike Egypt, the use of social media is playing a major reinforcing role leveraging the efforts of those physically on the ground.

Some of Occupy Wall Street’s more recent tactics (or at least the actions of some associated with the movement) are probably the most controversial to date—leading to almost Bull Connor type imagery of harshly swinging nightsticks (I link some of the relevant footage here)—given some protesters reportedly are attempting to rush police barricades in coordinated fashion to gain access to sites they have been prohibited from to date, say, Wall Street or the New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”). The protesters should tread carefully here, and not overplay their hand, but why, one wonders, cannot a protest movement at least have intermittent access to such ‘sensitive’ locations, say the site of the first Presidential inauguration in this nation’s history, framed by George Washington’s impressive statue there, just across from the NYSE? Mayor Bloomberg of course has a town to run (ironically he is perhaps one of the only men competent enough in the entire country to help us through the dysfunctional political breakdown stoking these very protests via a credible third party bid) and there is always a premium to allow commerce to remain unfettered in this greatest of American cities, but one smells at least incipient whiffs of fear that, who knows, perhaps a more strategic location could be staked out and ‘occupied’, and so what then? Would a more violent eviction be required? What if the numbers grow exponentially? How many arrests could occur? What if more and more protesters replaced those arrested, indignant at the revolving mass arrests? Could blood spill? At very least one senses an increasing queasiness lurking in the back-drop among those happy to preserve the status quo. Where is this heading?

Indeed, with Occupy Wall Street, I believe some minded to be more wedded to the status quo may be more rattled than they have been to date by the Tea Party (which in its aim to minimize Government's role has an agenda often convenient to Wall Street's current mood). This is because they are directing their ire squarely towards the real elites of the country, rather than their mostly paid up for marionettes sitting in Washington. These elites are seen to have benefited from emergency large-scale existential rescues (all necessary exigencies to avoid a second Great Depression, our titular leaders would have it, and remind us often, including with respect to the precise manner by which the benevolence was proffered), with little accountability, genuine gratitude or fundamental change emitting from the financial sector post the Government's ministrations. Nor is the point whether TARP has been profitable or not, as some astoundingly shallow journalists have suggested, even if it could arguably be construed as something of a wash to the American taxpayer. Lest we forget, the TARP windfall (given the fungible nature of cash) also served to better allow for convenient de-levering on the Government’s dime (of course in part this was the point), the occasional strategic acquisition, and hundreds of millions for lobbying, advertisements and campaign contributions. With no convincing tracking of TARP funds, similar to the opaqueness around the Federal Reserve’s policy decisions whether with respect to repeated bouts of money-printing, or the Fed’s unprecedentedly generous emergency lending operations, one cannot help feeling something has become well rotten in Denmark. Given this backdrop, Occupy Wall Street, cleverly, is squarely aiming its attentions at the realer powers behind the supposed throne, that is, where the money is.

Beyond this, they are likely smarter and with more idealistic energy than their Tea Party analogues. Ranging from younger near anarchists to older protesters with almost Eisenhowerian politics (repulsed by income disparities reminiscent of the 'robber baron' era) they are a disparate bunch, to be sure. Part of what brings them together shares certain common elements, I'd suggest, such as the majority of the population wallowing in dire economic straits amidst a materially shrinking middle class, chronically elevated unemployment, career prospects for youth that have to be described as dangerously poor at present (all the while as college tuition sky-rockets), not to mention seemingly endless, vast pools of wasted monies on fundamentally flawed wars of choice, and to top it off, the perceived injustices of TARP and such banker-welfare largesse. Speaking to several of these protesters today, I met MBA students who cannot find jobs (one even told me his GPA at business school, a respectable 3.2) and law students in a similar predicament. As money gets wasted in epic fashion overseas for desperately flawed ‘provincial reconstruction teams’ in Iraq and risible ‘Government-in-a-Box’ initiatives in Afghanistan, these kids are staring at mountains of debt and an equally daunting lack of viable employment prospects (the MBA student was underemployed working as a barista at Starbucks). So there are intelligent faces and voices in these crowds—not just aimless rabble-rousers out for a rise—and I can sense this movement becoming more contagious (for instance, I detected among several of the more junior police officers perhaps some degree of sympathy for the protesters). To some extent, after all, these are our young screaming out in need, meriting not kettling and reprimands, but job prospects and dignity.

All this, incidentally, is rather a sad development for the Obama Administration. When Obama inherited a nation in deep crisis in November of 2008, with his race alone a historic pivot that inspired legions, I suspected then many hungered for true transformational change, something evocative of a Teddy Roosevelt domestically crossed with a transformational Mandela type figure on foreign policy. He largely squandered this opportunity, though I will certainly allow for the complexities of governing. Still, with respect to domestic policy, "change" means something beyond just issuing cheap populist rhetorical pot-shots about ‘fat cat bankers’ but rather cutting to the nub of the real issues (hint: not a diluted Volcker Rule--itself a half-way house short of more dramatic steps like resurrecting Glass-Steagall--and/or a politics-infused, mostly theatrical Buffett tax, and perhaps breaking up some of the larger banks that still remain too big to fail, indeed are now even bigger post-ingesting the spoils of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia). As for international affairs, many in the country hungered for bolder progress than simply constraining the excesses of the neo-con wing and preventing the outrageous adventurism that would have accompanied a McCain Administration (though make no mistake, this was critical, and Obama does deserve due credit at least for this), but real "change", such as fulfillment of the pledge to shutter Guantanamo, pursuing serious investigations respecting how torture became acceptable Government policy, not allowing the Arab-Israeli peace process to ingloriously decay into near nothingness, or more than anything, cutting more forcefully our failed experiments in nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq.

None of this having occurred, we are hearing a plaintive cry similar to that echoing amidst the Arab Awakening, that is to say: “Enough!” (not too dissimilar, really, from Occupy Wall Street's chant: "We Are The 99%!"). I mean, how can it be, after the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression, involving very large doses of financial chicanery indeed, that nothing really of substance vis-a-vis legally actionable import came of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (who even remembers its name, in sharp contrast to Pecora)? Or that the ‘too big to fail’ issue has now only been aggravated further? Or that the CEOs of many of these banks could not even today explain to their own shareholders what products twenty-something employees are peddling, or indeed trading, not necessarily just the SocGen and UBS follies which speak more to criminal activity by specific perpetrators (albeit with likely gross negligence by higher-ups) but respecting complex derivative products that I would bet large swaths of varied C-Suites have nary a clue about (to Paul Volcker’s appropriately sardonic point about financial innovation and the ATM being its apogee). Is it any wonder people believe some of the banks are still too large to be effectively managed, still pose systemic risk, and still require more disciplined regulation than what will doubtless prove a materially watered-down Volcker rule (not to mention Dodd-Frank), given the President is apparently more focused on money-raising in Manhattan than laudable use of his bully pulpit a la Roosevelt?

The point is not that all bankers are evil. They’re not, far from it. However, they do need to be better steered away from their own worst instincts on occasion, putting it somewhat mildly. This is particularly so given a dearth of true leadership amidst too many precincts within the financial community. Unfortunately, the face of Wall Street’s leadership has appeared too mercenary and obsessed with maximization of profits above all else (such as their bloated proprietary operations), too often forgetting banking is essentially a sell-side business where client interests must always be kept uppermost in mind. We have lost our golden age of ‘advisory’ investment bankers, represented by men such as Felix Rohatyn of Lazard Freres. Bankers like Rohatyn--beyond tours of civic duty like helping stave off New York City's bankruptcy in the 70's and serving as Ambassador to France--were always highly attentive to the needs and desires of their clients, remembering that theirs was first and foremost an advisory business and such trust and focus was sacrosanct. (It is also perhaps worth noting that, with the United States having been enmeshed in the longest war in its history in Afghanistan, and with young Americans dying a decade on for no viable strategic aim, few if any among our plutocratic classes deign to waste the merest breath on such topics. This possible factor in the breakdown in respect for our elite financial institutions--really a dearth of public leadership save when they have skin in the game--should not be forgotten either, supposed great men should comment on the great events of the day, after all, but rather they seem far too small, myopically focused on 'league tables', or perhaps more, the vagaries of carried interest taxation levels or Basel III capital requirements).

While I will readily confess I find it odd as something of a Burkean that I am sympathetic to these protesters, they are not looking to trot out the guillotines, in the main (although I did spot a "Behead the Fed" sign!), but rather, they have smelled the radicalism of the blows dealt the integrity of a representative democratic system poised by the almost unfettered oligarch-like behavior among too many elites wholly disconnected from, yes, the 99% they speak of. They are acting to secure conservative aims of re-balancing a society that is becoming dangerously unmoored and increasingly bent asunder. They want accountability and dignity and prospects. Their leaders have failed them. So they have taken to the street to lead themselves. It will not be easy in the months ahead (the encroachments of winter alone will prove a big test), but they have started something that has real potential, and should be lauded for it, and indeed urged to carry on. If so, they may accomplish something, even possibly something historic. In this goal, in my view, they should not immediately fall prey to pressure that they must issue some long laundry list of ‘demands’ that might risk ideologically ring-fencing them some and/or stealing the spontaneity of their movement, while resisting too close associations with old-line standard-bearers of the left like the unions. They have created something quite new on the American political scene, and should stoke it during these early days in a manner strictly of their choosing.

Unfortunately little time for detailed commentary, but watching this YouTube video (via Al Jazeera's 'Syria Live Blog') of protests in Homs earlier today, we clearly see that Bashar al-Assad's credibility is eroding with immense rapidity. This is what happens, after all, when you order your security forces to kill your own civilians. Bashar has been heard to infer he will not be another Ben Ali or Mubarak. But is he planning a Gaddafi type strategy instead? This is not 1982 in Hama and regardless Tom Friedman's 'Hama Rules' are being re-written before our eyes. And while this YouTube is less graphic than others circulating on the Internets, the brutishness of the security crackdown and desperation of those attempting to assist the wounded is nonetheless arresting (and damning to the regime). It is impossible to predict with certainty, but I cannot see a turning back now or restoration of calm. The genie of increasingly insistent protests seems out of the bottle, and one now wonders whether Bashar is ultimately willing to kill, not scores, but thousands, in a desperate gambit to cow his populace, a terrible eventuality that will only lead to the regime's ultimate demise regardless, in my view.

There is the below video too, shot in the town of Deir-ez-Zor, where Basel al-Assad (Bashar's late brother, and Hafez al-Assad's favored son) statue is being burned. The rage (and accompanying profanity) are palpable. A Syrian student has Tweeted that "Syria is running out of statues". The real live leaders may not be far behind, as I suspect their days are increasingly numbered. While speculative, but certainly given the promises of reform (for which we've been waiting ten years plus, incidentally) are proving instead horrifying rivulets of blood on the streets of myriad cities, towns and villages through Syria, it seems highly likely protests will gain in size, breadth and insistency, shortly spreading to the downtowns of Aleppo and Damascus. In short, we are witnessing a tremendously incendiary situation, especially keeping in mind Syria's complex ethnic and sectarian make-up (Sunni, Alawi, Druze, Christian, Kurds, etc). Unfortunately too, it is hard to imagine a denouement as (relatively) peaceful as what we witnessed in Tahrir Square several months back in Egypt. As Anthony Shadid reports a Syrian protestor stating: "There is no more fear. No more fear...We either want to die or to remove him. Death has become something ordinary.” It did not have to be so, but it is now with dozens across the country felled today. This is not Syria's shame, as its people courageously take to the streets to reclaim their most basic dignities, but it is most assuredly her leadership's.

The relatively little-noticed recent Senate testimony of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns (the third highest ranking official in the State Department, now slated for the number two slot, Deputy Secretary of State, a rarity for a career diplomat, even of his exceptional caliber) represents perhaps the most comprehensive statement of the United States’ view of the dramatic revolutionary events roiling the Middle East. Burns closes his testimony with an arresting statement:

“…this is one of those moments that come along only very rarely in the course of human events. It is full of historic opportunities, and some very large pitfalls, for people in the Middle East, and for the United States. It is a moment which demands our attention and our energy, and as much creativity and initiative as we and our partners around the world can generate.”

Doubtless most readers would agree with his assessment, however, what tangible policy recommendations does Mr. Burns—on behalf of the Obama Administration--really provide us in his testimony (and this, as mentioned, the most thorough seen to date)? Burns sketches out four core priorities: 1) support for peaceful democratic change; 2) buttressing economic stabilization/modernization; 3) active pursuit of comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace; and 4) advancing our “huge and enduring stake in regional security” (interestingly, Burns’ highlights here not only the usual suspects—combating terrorism, staving off Iran’s nuclear program, seeing through Iraq’s transition—but also “strengthening ties to the GCC States”, of which more below).

I will take each of these four key tenets of Burns’ strategy in turn--but given the veritable whirlwind racing through the region daily-- it is the first I wish to focus on most here. Keeping in mind that this testimony was on March 17th (a couple weeks is a long time these days!), we can ferret out some differentiating factors Burns attempts to sketch among various countries impacted by the sweep of events. Burns begins by grouping together Egypt and Tunisia, the post-revolutionary states as it were, stating we have a “deep stake in stable transitions”, lending particular import to Egypt which he (rightly) describes as the “traditional bellwether for the Middle East” and thus “vitally important” to the region and ourselves. By way of concrete recommendations, he speaks of support to “civil society voices”, related, supporting “thoughtful sequencing” of the constitutional referendum and election process to ensure the “time and space” necessary for real political choices to take root, an acknowledgment and cooperative nod to the Egyptian military’s “valuable role” in “overseeing the transition process” (albeit with a cautionary note that we will “hold” the military to its commitment to “genuine reform”), and last positive noises made about the private sector’s role. While all this seems to make a good deal of sense, the reader is left to ponder how the United States would react to events such as a withering of civil society components in favor of a more stolid Islamist ascendancy, or the military stifling real reform as balanced against a “stable transition”, and so on. Put differently, we might almost describe this as a ‘wait and see’ strategy, if in fairness it seems at least more than one of let’s ‘hope for the best’, as well Burns is very careful to issue cautionary warnings to counterbalance those tempted by blind optimism.

Next, Burns lumps together in his next designated grouping Bahrain and Yemen. Somewhat delicately, Burns alludes to “witnessing escalating protests” (some might less charitably say disingenuously, Bahraini security forces killings in and around the Pearl Roundabout began as early as February, more than a month before Burns’ testimony, and the same applies to Yemen) however all that is mustered here is that we will “continue to press vigorously for serious political reform” and “productive dialogue” between governments and the opposition. Since this testimony, Shi’a Bahrainis have seen little by way of productive dialogue, unless Saudi tank turrets count, and Yemenis have witnessed savage killings in the streets of Sanaa with at least forty-five dead a day or two after Burns’ testimony. Burns as a highly gifted diplomat with long experience of the region is certainly alive to the subtleties of the issues at play here, for instance, quite purposefully messaging to the Sunni leadership of Bahrain that the situation is not simply about restoration of “law and order” at whatever cost, given the deepening sectarian divides that would result and “only lead to decreased security over the long term.” However one cannot help feeling we are seeing events in Bahrain and Yemen mostly through the lens of possible Iranian adventurism (regarding the former) and al-Qaeda risks if the state becomes even more of a failed one (the latter). This may be an acceptable realist stance, all told (especially, say, given the 5th Fleet’s presence in Bahrain, Saudi and U.S. concerns about contagion impacts into eastern Saudi with its tremendous oil reserves, and so on), but it strikes me as every bit as reactive as the posture described above regarding Egypt and Tunisia, if unfortunately more morally dubious.

Next Burns speaks of countries “working to stay ahead of the wave of popular protests”, here he lists Morocco and Jordan (perhaps “trying” may have been a more apropos opener here). We are advised both Kings are pursuing “significant reform initiatives”, and that “timely reform is the best possible antidote to subsequent upheaval.” Quite true, but as for the U.S role here? The United States will “emphasize the importance of taking reform seriously now as a way of creating positive avenues of citizen engagement and avoiding sharp conflicts later on.” Rather thin gruel, but better than nothing, I suppose.

And, last if not least, as they say, Burns speaks of the “sad and violent” case of Libya, where we “support the courageous Libyans who have risen up to regain their rights” (it might be noted, this ostensibly runs directly contra Burns’ very first policy tenet, namely to support “peaceful democratic change", albeit the savage primitivism of Qaddafi must be taken into account, of course). Burns, back on the 17th, spoke of “moving as rapidly as we can in New York to see if we can get additional authorization for the international community to look at a broad range of actions”, that very night, UNSC 1973 was approved at Turtle Bay, and we have been involved in a highly significant military (kinetic, is it?) action since.

Were one to try to espy some ‘grand strategy’ amidst this mini-gaggle of country groupings and policy recommendations, one might well end up flailing with respect to uncovering any disciplined strategy that convinces an overarching policy direction has yet been staked out. No no-fly and/or no-drive zones have been proffered in Yemen or Bahrain, looming challenges like Syria and possibly Lebanon are left unspoken, Egypt and Tunisia are mostly ‘wait and see’, and we are likely not doing particularly much new, really, in terms of Morocco and Jordan. This is not a criticism, per se, some world events in scope and velocity overtake any policy-making apparatus, and I would certainly happily acknowledge that this is one of those times. Also, a ‘less is more’ strategy might be advisable (ex-Libya, that is!), were we even able to command more influence, itself frankly a dubious proposition.

Libya, understandably given the blood and treasure now at risk and/or being expended, has garnered the most ink. We are told our mission has already been accomplished, as a ‘no-fly zone’ is already largely in effect (Obama, taking an early victory lap in his recent Libya speech (less substantive than Burns' testimony, in the main, and this apart from the obligatory politicking therein) declared somewhat presumptively, and in quite professorial mien: “(t)o summarize, then: in just one month, the United States has worked with our international partners to mobilize a broad coalition, secure an international mandate to protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre, and establish a No Fly Zone with our allies and partners.” Splendid, and Nicolas and David will take it from here, bien sur! We shall see. Looming challenges beckon, including certainly without limitation, rebels hitting civilians (we will retaliate against them too, it has been proclaimed, given we apparently worship at the altar of a quite highly selective humanitarianism!), the “flickers” of al-Qaeda amidst the rebels, which may prove more like bona fide sub-components of certain rebel elements, or still, NATO warplanes erroneously hitting rebels, as reportedly a couple days back, and so on).

Look, I think I understand—if not approve of--Obama’s ultimate decision to involve ourselves in this operation and perform something of an extremely rapid-fire about-face in the process, and where we have seen the liberal hawk wing resurrect itself in the counsels of power. But as someone who worked in the Balkans, I have taken the Benghazi as looming Srebrenica analogies in candor with a grain of salt (Srebrenica a particularly grisly culmination of a multi-year ethnic cleansing campaign by Bosnian Serb forces significantly backed up by the JNA military from rump Yugoslavia, with Qadaffi perhaps not on the cusp of actually consummating some massive massacre in Benghazi--rather than say threatening same to cow the populace of this almost one million strong city--contra the conventional wisdom in various quarters same was definitively and nobly staved off), however admittedly I am not privy to any intelligence, and Qaddafi’s ‘house to house’ rhetoric was indeed highly noxious and alarming, particularly given his oft-brutish background. There is also apparently a school of thought, apart from the potential humanitarian calamity, that to allow Benghazi to have fallen would have been tantamount to inviting other Middle Eastern rulers to run roughshod over their people, particularly given Libya’s newfangled ‘strategic’ position between Egypt and Tunisia. But to date whatever robust action we are in the midst of in Libya has not dissuaded other Governments such as Bahrain, Yemen and now Syria from resorting to force. There is also the no small matter—as alluded to above--of whom these rebels really are, ultimately, and what their manifold agendas may ultimately be, as well as questions surrounding the territorial integrity of the Libyan state, and what the West might (or might not) do were say Tripoli turned into a raging 1975 style Beirut scenario, or Qaddafi continued to rule over a truncated statelet, among other possible scenarios (there is also the no small matter of 'mission creep', but that would need to be the subject of a wholly separate post).

For now, we hope for the best, I take it, with a dash of jingo fervor in the Potomac air (even Defense Secretary Gates, heretofore ostensibly the paramount Libya intervention skeptic, advised on a recent Sunday gab-fest that, were he Qaddafi, “I wouldn’t be hanging any new pictures if I were him.” Nice sound-bite, if it speaks more to regime change than a mere no-fly zone, and one almost suspects poor Mr. Gates felt compelled to turn up the rhetoric a notch or so). Frankly, flicking the pages of the Wall Street Journal a couple days back, and seeing a front-pager on the return to vogue of subprime bonds and an op-ed by John McCain and Joe Lieberman making the usual points about Libya (we are all Benghazians now, before substitute Tbilisians, Baghdadis, Teheran's residents and so on, but never, say, the residents of Ramallah!) I had a distressing sense of déjà vu. Little has changed, really, since the worst financial crisis since the ‘30s and arguably the largest foreign policy blunder in contemporary U.S. foreign policy (Iraq). This despite the passions engendered by the Obama candidacy, where instead of deeply transformative fare, what can be said is at least his victory prevented the wild excesses of a McCain-Palin odyssey (for Odyssey Dawn—where do they pick these fantastically lame monikers?--substitute deepest Alaskan night).

Turning back to Burns’ testimony, he stresses as the second of his four strategy prongs economic stabilization, which is indeed critical, but all the varied initiatives trotted out (Enterprise Funds, OPIC, Global Entrepreneurship Programs) don’t amount to a fraction of TARP, say, or certainly a Marshall Fund. Regardless, as we are all painfully aware, the United States is not hugely aid disbursement-rich of late (putting it gently), so not suited for impressive shows of economic patronage hither dither. Perhaps more realistically in terms of tangible return on investment, Burns rightly speaks of “trade liberalization initiatives, ideally in cooperation with the EU”, as well as the Qualified Industrial Zone (“QIZ”) program (duty free entry for some Egyptian products into the US)—as other promising prongs of economic initiatives we might pursue--however, this is all ultimately quite unconvincing fare in terms of jump-starting truly meaningful economic growth in a country with the staggering needs of, for instance, an Egypt. This is not meant as a criticism but rather a reality check given our resource constraints and the gigantic needs, particularly in the context of the demographic boom of millions of young Arabs under the age of thirty hungering for productive work, dignity and a sense of a tangible future, like the Tunisian fruit vendor whose attempted self-immolation helped unleash these world-historical events.

Third, Burns speaks of the Arab-Israeli peace process and the imperative thereto, and I have little friendly to say, frankly. We have been at best lackluster in truly prodding the parties to make meaningful progress here, and this portion of the testimony reads more as if we should simply be grateful it was even included, lest the ‘peace process’ be ingloriously and wholly rubbished in the proverbial dustbin. So yes, we can certainly agree, as Burns puts it, that: “the status quo between Arabs and Israelis is no more sustainable than the sclerotic political systems that have crumbled in recent months. Neither Israel’s future as a secure Jewish, democratic state nor the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians can be secured without a negotiated two-state solution.” And yet, what truly is being done, where’s the beef results-wise regarding the “day-in-and-day-out” efforts Burns says we are making? Further, even in this section ostensibly about resuscitating the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese peace process tracks (the last two even more moribund than the first), Burns seems to be almost as anxious about at least salvaging the current position, highlighting, and I quote again: “We are committed to ensuring that political changes on Israel's borders do not create new dangers for Israel and the region, and we welcome the Egyptian leadership's rapid and repeated reaffirmation of its international treaty obligations.” Translation: the aforementioned references to the Egyptian military respecting its “valuable role” certainly extend to preservation of the Camp David Accords, another “bellwether”, so to speak, likely above many other priorities indeed, and one Foggy Bottom it would appear is not wholly sanguine about (sadly likely rightly, in the middle-term march of history, and if Israeli irredentism persists).

Last Burns turns to our “huge and enduring stake in regional stability”, yet somewhat disappointingly, this section is almost entirely about, you guessed it, Iran (little to nothing is said about even the other regional security priorities he mentions, say “strengthening ties to the GCC states,” though given the indignities of Bahrain perhaps better less said, or still, anti-terror priorities) in favor of something of a boilerplate vituperation respecting Iran: “the truth is that nowhere in the region is the disconnect between rulers and ruled any greater than it is in Iran. The hypocrisy for Iran’s leaders to profess their enthusiasm for democratic changes in the Arab world while systematically denying them to their own people is clear to all, including Iranian citizens.” This is arguably true, but not a slam-dunk statement in terms of its prima facie persuasiveness (why, what about Libya!), and regardless, in the context of the overall testimony reads a bit more like the obligatory jeremiad towards the evil Mullahs than particularly cogent analysis (though it doubtless provided the Hill coteries ‘on message’ comfort), whilst too betraying a measure of self-defensiveness given how much of an assist we’ve provided the Iranians by displacing their foes on both their eastern and western borders. Burns then goes on (in arguably overly self-congratulatory manner) to laud the Administration’s tactical successes in sharpening Iran sanctions (no disrespect meant to former Undersecretary Stuart Levey’s efforts), yet to what truly tangible, successful end to date? And left unsaid, what impact on regional security say a Sunni-run military Government would have in Syria, or an intractably divided Libya, or a Yemen that descends into greater ‘failed state’ status, or even—given all the airtime devoted to Iran—what the Administration makes of its supposed possible proxy-involvements in Bahrain, say?

So I would agree with soon to be Deputy Secretary Burns that we are living through “moments that come along only very rarely in the course of human events” and that they present both “historic opportunities” and “some very large pitfalls.” I hope he will be able to marshal his position as Secretary Clinton’s Number 2 to deepen our thinking on these critical matters, as I am not sure we have our bearings wholly in place, to include paying enough attention to the possible "pitfalls". This is not Europe 1989, or 1848 for that matter, sadly we are not dealing with post-Enlightenment societies, so the challenges are likely to be even more persistent, certainly than 1989’s largely peaceful denouement. And so, to borrow Burns’ phrase, what shall we do if “the peaceful, homegrown, non-ideological movement surging out of Tahrir Square” doesn’t simply “offer a powerful repudiation of al-Qaeda’s false narrative that violence and extremism are the only ways to effect change”, but metamorphoses into new directions, some of which prove hugely challenging for U.S. policy? And if “helping these countries’ reformers to achieve their goals is as important a challenge for American foreign policy as any we have faced since the end of the Cold War”, don’t we need to hear more than why Obama changed his mind over Libya as we navigate these treacherous waters, which the commentariat has almost solely been focused on? Burns is a veteran diplomat and is well alive to these questions and dangers, and I am sure much thought is being given to these cascading conundrums. But more needs be, and quite urgently. Fundamentally, how do we square our interventionist stance in Libya with our relative non-interventionism in the Bahrains and Yemens (putting aside the obligatory retort from Adminstration defenders that much work is occurring behind the scenes trying to forge a rapprochement between the Bahraini opposition and Sunni leadership, I believe a less than convincing talking point)? And is it time perhaps to retire at least somewhat the easy resort to the perennial Iranian bogey-man in favor of a more creative, recalibrated posture? And too, what contingency planning is afoot, if any, were Eastern Saudi to erupt, given the grave economic implications to the West?

More broadly, it is incumbent on this Administration to craft and enunciate a coherent and compelling narrative that couples our two overarching policy goals in the region and beyond namely, on the one hand, supporting the forces of democratic freedom (more carefully defined for starters, but here reference the ostensible rationale for a no-fly zone in Libya) and on the other hand, our less idealistic national security interests (say hedging our bets in Bahrain vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia and Iran with a strong bias towards the former). While there is a strong element of 'country-by-country differentiation' that is necessitated in case-by-case policy-making decisions during this tumultuous time, the overall policy nonetheless needs to be better rationalized within the framework of these two possibly competing policy goals. Put simply, the Administration has yet to define its overall policy coherently, and I am afraid this portion of Obama’s speech does not a convincing Obama Doctrine make:

"There will be times, though, when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are. Sometimes, the course of history poses challenges that threaten our common humanity and our common security -– responding to natural disasters, for example; or preventing genocide and keeping the peace; ensuring regional security, and maintaining the flow of commerce. These may not be America’s problems alone, but they are important to us. They’re problems worth solving. And in these circumstances, we know that the United States, as the world’s most powerful nation, will often be called upon to help. In such cases, we should not be afraid to act -– but the burden of action should not be America’s alone. As we have in Libya, our task is instead to mobilize the international community for collective action. Because contrary to the claims of some, American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves. Real leadership creates the conditions and coalitions for others to step up as well; to work with allies and partners so that they bear their share of the burden and pay their share of the costs; and to see that the principles of justice and human dignity are upheld by all."

This is mostly feel good humanitarianism fused with multilateral bonhomie, not a grand strategy befitting the challenges before us (it is also factually misleading, as whatever Qadaffi might have pursued in Benghazi, a genocide was not in the offing, definitionally).

Later, Obama closes:

"I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms: our opposition to violence directed at one’s own people; our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people."

Until we better enunciate our sometimes conflicting goals into an overarching framework (perhaps grand strategy is too laden and ambitious a phrase) such sentiments will be just that, risking mostly ringing hollow to far too many in the region and beyond, with accusations of hypocrisy--if often glibly and unfairly--lobbed in our direction as well.

The post-Tunisia eruption of massive protests in Egypt has felt tectonic in scope and wide-reaching geopolitical implications. Not since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran has a Middle Eastern event galvanized with such magnitude the Arab Middle East and, indeed, the world. While the situation remains tremendously fluid, we do know that the self-immolation of an under-employed 26-year old Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor has helped set off historic events of immense consequence. Now aided by hindsight, we can almost hear the collective wail of despair and frustration that shook mass swaths of the populace in cities like Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and points beyond, namely, if relatively small Tunisia can rid herself of her ruler with such dispatch, surely the great, ancient nation of Egypt can accomplish the same?

And so the fuse of a spontaneous eruption against Mubarak was lit, with the fundamental drivers of course the increasingly sclerotic state of the Egyptian polity under his leadership, a demographic boom of youth fed up by chronic unemployment, corruption and cost of basic staples, as well as other currents of frustration to include some foreign policy-related grievances, all conspiring with the aforementioned national pride to set off this mighty conflagration.

The first victim this uprising has claimed is undoubtedly “tawrith”, or ‘inherited rule.’ Whether Gamal Mubarak is holed up somewhere in Egypt, or as far likelier and rumored in London, or indeed elsewhere, and despite his father’s reticence as of this hour to state unequivocally and publicly that his son will not stand in going forward elections, this is now a foregone conclusion. Country-by-country specifics differ, so this development is not necessarily a death knell say for Bashar Assad in Syria, but one can be well assured this development has been well noted, from Yemen to Syria, Libya to Jordan (with regard to this last, one sees implications even for monarchical systems, if somewhat more muted for the time being, and we might well include Saudi Arabia on this list while we're at it).

Beyond this, the long reign of Hosni Mubarak has effectively come to an end, with the only question as of this writing the timing of same, as well as whether this denouement will be able to occur without large-scale violence beyond that which we have witnessed so far. Will Mubarak’s departure be some eight months away, in so far-away September, in the context of the unbridled passions roiling great Egyptian metropolises such as Cairo? I highly doubt it, given the street’s incessant demands, depending: “the people want to depose Mubarak”, or “we will not leave, you should leave”, or more simply, “get out, get out”. It appears the genie is well out of the bottle and nothing less than an extremely high-profile defenestration I believe can quiet the passions unleashed.

However, one should not underestimate Mubarak, even if he looks increasingly tired, mournful, mummified even, now a thing of the past being bombarded by blaring megaphones, Facebook posts, and myriad Tweets in a brave New Middle East that is metamorphosing before our eyes in real time. His move to place Omar Suleiman as Vice President was important, not only in that it was his first appointment of a Vice President in memory (even if Suleiman is a loyalist, this implicitly signaled Gamal and tawrith were being sacrificed), but arguably more important, this was doubtless the result of urgent discussions with the military urging Mubarak to do same. The point, however, is that Mubarak is staying in the arena, and not in anyway yet signaling he is prepared to leave imminently.

Omar Suleiman, incidentally, is worthy of a few sentences here. I have seen depictions of him on the cable networks describing him as a “shadowy spymaster”, and such, a caricature which might get one’s inner Kremlinologist pulse aflutter, but is not a particularly apt description. More apropos, he is a bit sui generis in the Middle Eastern fabric, many nations in the region have relied on heavy-handed Interior Ministers over the years to tackle Islamists and ensure domestic ‘order’ in combating such threats (real, perceived, or manufactured), and Egypt of course has had its own cast of Interior Ministers over the years. Suleiman, however, ultimately oversaw not only this critical dossier as a kind of supra-Interior Minister, but also was the lynchpin and critical player in sensitive transnational discussions with players like the Israelis, Palestinians, and say Turks, particularly when major security issues/overlays were implicated (more so than the Foreign Ministry). In addition, of course, he played critical roles in his 'official' capacity dealing with intelligence issues. A very sophisticated player, he provides strategic comfort and a sense of continuity to key capitals, however alas, there is one major problem with all this: the street views him as little more than an alter ego to Mubarak (largely correctly) and he will not be ultimately acceptable to them as a successor (of which more below).

Another issue to flag, particularly as Suleiman--like Mubarak--is a man of the past, is that revolutions, even in this post-modern era, need leaders. The incipient Egyptian Revolution, if we might call it that, does not have a wholly convincing one as of yet, I’m afraid. As the scope of the spontaneous outbreak of massive protests that began a week or so back became clearer, both possible leaders and the street began to examine each other and make their respective real-time calculations. So far, there seems to be some coalescing around Mohamed el Baradei, faute de mieux, as we are all aware. However, this is a man who has spent little time in Egypt, is not particularly charismatic himself (and at 68, while notably younger than Mubarak, of reasonably advanced years), while in candor having come off as a bit overly removed at times. Notably, during the attempted million-man protest of a day or so back, el Baradei was a no-show (reportedly some in his camp had said there were security concerns, and he had been in the square on other days). As an Al Jazeera correspondent noted wryly the day of said particular protest, el Baradei was giving interviews from the “greenery of his garden”, rather than being “in the square.”

Regardless, a tacit agreement and coalescing around el Baredei seems afoot given the protesters likely intuit he is largely ‘acceptable’ to broad international constituencies, with his Nobel credentials and diplomatic demeanor (despite the tiffs with the US over Iraq that had the Boltons so peeved back in the day) and this also serves to facilitate the Muslim Brotherhood—at least to date—occupying and being satisfied with a more low-key profile. And if el Baraedi can act as a 'vessel' for various interests to merge towards a national unity government that minimizes the haunting specter of large-scale violence, he would have done a great service to his country indeed, particularly if the end result biases towards a convincingly democratic direction, rather than a new authoritarian situation, under whatever banner.

Given this back-drop, what is to be done? First, worth noting, I would say the Administration so far and generally should get high marks for its handling of this crisis. Emotions are running high, and sympathies during this historic pivot point are clearly on the side of the demonstrators, but to wholly throw Mubarak under the bus more forcefully than we have navigated to date I do not believe advisable, keeping in mind the context of a decades-long alliance (this assumes no Mubarak-authorized brutish, large-scale crackdown). Also the decision to dispatch Frank Wisner to Cairo (full disclosure: a close family friend), was an inspired one, not only because of his prior service as Ambassador to Egypt, but also given his overall diplomatic took-kit, which is highly impressive indeed (incidentally, and related to my post of a month or so ago, Wisner was Richard Holbrooke’s best friend). I would suggest the following actions as a matter of urgency:

1) Message in no uncertain terms that Government instigated provocations leading to greater violence as possible pretext for a crackdown could lead to a possible U.S. aid cut-off;

2) Request that Mubarak step down as very soon as possible more forcefully, however with assurances he be allowed to stay in Egypt, with the Army guaranteeing his security (important I think for the man’s own sense of his personal dignity in the context of his perceptions of long service to country);

3) Related, Hosni Mubarak makes an explicit, public statement that Gamal will not seek the Presidency going forward, a statement which would be echoed by his son in due course;

4) Have Suleiman take over the Presidency position, however expressly state this is for a transitory period through September, and that he himself will not run then, but is serving the nation during this delicate transition period given the highly grave challenges an Egyptian implosion or whole-scale breakdown in social cohesion would pose;

5) As further assurance Suleiman is viewed purely as a transitory figure, have key military actors form a coterie (read: not a junta) of spoke-persons through this period further highlighting Suleiman is more a vessel for the Army to ensure order, not that Suleiman is a new Pharaoh controlling the Army; and

6) Focus very intently on helping move towards a national unity type Government in September that includes all key political factions, not only Western-leading ‘reformists’, but also the Muslim Brotherhood (this must include on an urgent basis economic reforms, both emergency relief and more structural).

Regarding this last, if it was not clear before, and if the U.S. and international community might better assist the Egyptians in avoiding anarchic break-down scenarios, we must spend the next months better assessing the Brotherhood (possible schisms between older and younger members, differentiation among the Egyptian vs other regional variants, willingness to respect the Camp David Accords, etc) with a view toward actively ensuring American diplomats have a far better sense of the movement, so deeply entrenched in the fabric of Egyptian life, though to what extent somewhat overstated given the rich and diverse Egyptian polity. Regardless, it means in this post-authoritarian Middle East that apparently is in the making (or so we hope, lest new dictators loom!), we will need to reach out to new players taking on a more prominent role, which most assuredly will include Islamists of various stripes, but we must be careful to differentiate them and not ‘cry Mullah’, 'Iran ‘79’ and/or ‘al Qaeda-lite’ each time they take on greater political power.

Last, a plea for humility. We have seen the usual suspects gripe and moan that ‘we should have supported Person X more’, or ‘Who Lost Egypt?’, or still, ‘See, Bush was Right!’, and so on. This is mostly clap-trap from journalistic, think-tank and other like-situated congeries busily settling old grudges and trotting out tired stereotyped narratives that, worth noting, tend to grossly overstate the impact the U.S. can or cannot really have amidst fast-moving historical currents. The bottom line is events underway in Egypt are epochal and manifestly of gigantic implication, bigger than any one Administration, or whether we prodded Mubarak the right amount on say the Ayman Nour issue a few years back (as Nour himself noted from jail during the entire Condoleezza Rice ‘will she, won’t she' saga: “I pay the price when [Rice] speaks [of me], and I pay the price when she doesn't”), and regardless, certainly bigger than increasingly discredited mastheads ascribing blame for perceived missteps, by say, a heartlessly overly 'realist' Obama.

The bottom line is that history is in the making, and it is being made by Egyptians, in the main, and more quickly than we likely realize now. Put simply, we have less power to influence events than some of us might hope, and more should reckon with this reality, as well somewhat related, the edict: 'first, do no harm'. Meantime, however, my 1-6 above are meant to distill some possible policy recommendations I think the US Government—via the President, Secretary of State, Frank Wisner, our Ambassador on the ground—among doubtless many others—should be assiduously pursuing, both in public and private fora, and with a real sense of urgency, if in calibrated manner given this is such a delicate period littered with varied mine-fields.

It is with genuine sadness that I wanted to briefly make note of Richard Holbrooke's death. When I first heard of the tear in his aorta, I feared the worst, indefatigable as he is (it's hard to write "was") and knowing full well he'd doubtless put up a valiant fight. Still, it seemed the 'Bulldozer' had taxed himself too hard this last time given his advancing age, marathon work days, and incessant travel to what has come to be called (inappropriately, in my view) 'Af-Pak'.

I can almost picture the scene where, turning blush red, he would have very much been wanting to make just one last point to Hillary Clinton on the 7th Floor at the State Department, with her instead wisely ordering him into the elevator to get rushed to the hospital. A passionate and tireless advocate, he blocked and tackled to the very end, in service to his country.

I was already well familiar with Holbrooke's storied career pre the Dayton Accords, whether getting an Assistant Secretary slot (East Asia) at the ripe age of 35, prior service as Director of the Peace Corps (for Morocco), and his journalistic forays at respected venues like Foreign Policy. But it was as a humanitarian worker between college and graduate school based in the Balkans that I came to develop immense respect for the man. Our policy in Bosnia had been floundering--feckless and directionless--and I saw the resultant human toll first hand, devastating and enough to leave one aghast (the fall of Srebrenica a particularly harrowing low-point).

Finally, and necessarily willing to negotiate with the likes of Slobodan Milosevic (whatever dishonor to his victims the moral quandary of negotiating with him posed was amply alleviated by the opportunity to spare perhaps many more lives looking forward), Holbrooke did what only he could do: push, corral, lecture, hector, harangue, strong-arm, charm, remonstrate, cajole, scream and, yes, generally 'bulldoze' men like Milosevic (needing to bring along Karadzic and Mladic), Franjo Tudgman (with his own maximalist Herzegovian Croats to deal with), and an indecisive and sometimes feuding Alija Izetbegovic and Haris Silajdzic. It was no mean feat, and I believe history will see this dogged and intrepid peacemaking as well more than a footnote, given the wider implications the conflict, if left to its own devices for longer, could well have had for wider European stability (like most deals, this one was imperfect for various stakeholders, and still contains to this day the seeds of future risks, but it was cobbled together with fierce energy and in a manner that has withstood a decade and a half plus).

Richard (or Dick, as his friends knew him) was not one to only partner with ideological bed-fellows. As the Dayton Accords were being hammered out, for instance, he reached out to Richard Perle, knowing the Bosnian Federation (composed of Bosnian Croats and the Bosniaks themselves) would require assistance combing through the military annexes of the Accords, as well needing guidance on the 'train and equip' program for Federation forces, a counter-point to Bosnian Serb and rump Yugoslavian military superiority (in today's hyper-polarized and infantilized Washington, such cross-party collaboration even on matters of national security is virtually unheard of). This policy initiative was pursued in the interests of stability, rather than revanchism, an effort I assisted with during a prior career. Holbrooke was a pragmatist, willing to work across ideological divides (knowing Perle could add value in this effort), or to negotiate with people who we didn't like, or more, were noxious and indeed bona fide war criminals (as with Milosevic), if a greater good could be achieved. A complicated man, perhaps with many neo-Wilsonian humanitarian stripes, ultimately I believe he was something of a hard-boiled realist (not in an overly academic or doctrinal way, but certainly possessing a clear-eyed view of the world).

One of the several occasions I was lucky enough to spend time with him I asked if he could write a brief dedication to my copy of his book regarding the Bosnian War, which I had obviously read with great interest: "To End a War". Ever playing to his audience, he scribbled a kind and generous note he knew would flatter a young man who had served in the region, writing in part: "With the knowledge that you will know what's left out of this story". A typical Holbrooke touch, even amidst the cacophony of his manic energy, bluntness, and imperiousness, he made gestures that resonated and I am sure were a helpful component of his overall diplomatic tool-kit. So while I would be remiss not to make mention of his human shortcomings which are the stuff of legend, friends and detractors alike cannot but admit that diplomats of this caliber come rarely indeed, a handful or so per generation. He will be sorely missed. And while I have a different view than was his of the ultimate advisability and strategic rationale underpinning the current war in Afghanistan, regardless, I must note his passing presents yet another set-back to the war effort.

I am told that some of his friends and fans were sending messages his staff were actively collating for him to read when he "woke up", perhaps after the second surgery. It was not to be. Farewell, Ambassador, you did many proud, and your achievements were real. My thoughts are with his family during this difficult time.

PIMCO's Mohamed El-Erian, writing recently in the FT, attempts to bridge the divide between the two warrings camps:

The two sides are both right, and wrong. Their impasse will persist until both understand that the debate is incomplete. In particular their discussion takes too narrow an historical perspective, looking excessively to the past experience of industrial countries as opposed to also reflecting that of emerging economies.

As a general rule industrial countries need to adopt both fiscal adjustment and higher medium-term growth as twin policy goals. The balance between the two will vary. Some, like Greece, need immediate fiscal retrenchment. Others, like Germany, the US and Japan have more room for manoeuvre. But no one should pursue just one of these objectives.

To begin to achieve both, countries must quickly implement what were once known in the emerging market lexicon as "second generation structural reforms". Basically these involve enhancing the longer-term responsiveness of western economies that have had their comparative advantages eroded, and now see their populations stranded on the wrong side of significant global changes.

Squaring the circle of growth and fiscal stability needs policies that focus on long-term productivity gains and immediate help for those left behind. This means first enhancing human capital, including retraining parts of the labour force, and increasing labour mobility. Then new emphasis on infrastructure and technology investment is needed, with greater support for scientific advances that promise increased productivity. Finally all nations must begin an honest assessment of the social frictions coming in the next few years. In some countries (like the US) this means an urgent bolstering of social safety nets. [emphasis added]

I post this less for El-Erian's cogent observations generally, to include his apt recycling of "second generation structural reforms" in a non emerging-market context, more for his mention of "social frictions" to intensify in coming years. I suspect this is an issue that merits more attention than it has garnered to date, to include here in the U.S., as El-Erian suggests in his parenthetical.

Amidst the reams of commentary on the General McChrystal fiasco, I found this snippet from George Will worth noting:

It is difficult, and perhaps unwise, to suppress this thought: McChrystal's disrespectful flippancies, and the chorus of equally disdainful comments from the unpleasant subordinates he has chosen to have around him, emanate from the toxic conditions that result when the military's can-do culture collides with a cannot-be-done assignment. In this toxicity, Afghanistan is Vietnam redux.

I would echo Mr. Will's observation. In Afghanistan we are enmeshed in a strategic blunder on par or worse than the Iraq debacle (incidentally, for those who have declared the Mesopotamian morass a victory, here's some level-headed reportage worth a gander lest we delude ourselves Dubya (or Petraeus, about whom more below) erected a Babylonian utopia in Baghdad, Fallujah, Najaf, Basra, Kirkuk, and Mosul. As for Will's Vietnam analogy, we might beware the perils of too easy historical analogizing, but with the Afghan war nearing a decade, it's certainly not an unfair comparison. I would add the following commentary on the McChrystal episode, piggy-backing on Will's apercu:

• It is profoundly sad that it is only McChrystal and crew's sophomoric dishing (President Obama "uncomfortable and intimidated" amidst all the beribboned military brass, Vice President Joseph "Bite-Me" Biden, the "clown" at the NSC, Dick Holbrooke, he of the scatological E-mails not worth opening, Karl Eikenberry, merely covering his behind for the history books, and, bien sur, the so lame and "gay" French), which collectively conspired to belatedly cause a genuine kerfuffle over matters Afghanistan. This is what has the print commentariat and cable pygmies aflutter, not that young Americans are dying in increasingly large numbers for a futile misson devoid now of even a smidgen of strategic sense? A sad testament, to be sure, on a variety of levels not worth detaining the reader with here. Suffice it to say empires die during periods of such obscene myopia.

• Equally, if not more disheartening, are that McChrystal's 'legacy issues' (to use a phrase in vogue) are evidently less concerning to most than the aforementioned juvenile aspersions from a liquored up gaggle at a tourist-trap Irish pub in Paris. That it has taken a young free-lancer from Rolling Stone to help sketch out the fundamental futility of the Afghan mission is, among other things, rather an indictment of a journalistic class increasingly propagandistic (whether purposefully or through languorous cluelessness might make an interesting thesis topic). But beyond this, McChrystal's prior indiscretions are arguably even more serious, to include presiding over such penal exuberances as Camp Nama ("No Blood, No Foul"!), or say, the parsimonious amount of information doled out up-front around the Pat Tillman episode. Are we to be surprised by the entrenched contemptuousness and disdain of civilian authority surrounding this physically courageous, but profoundly flawed, General? But no, warning signs are ignored, and instead, such conduct paves the way for promotions these days, or alternatively, audible yawns among our titular arbiters of appropriate conduct.

• Obama had to fire McChrystal (Eliot Cohen, whom I rarely agree with it, put it well in the Journal recently), though for a moment I'll confess I had to wonder if Barack had more Adlai Stevenson than Harry Truman in him (albeit a decision not to relieve him of command of the Afghan adventure would inevitably have been cloaked in 'team of rivals' soi disant self-confidence). This said, while Obama will doubtless garner some points for "decisiveness" and such banalities now, so that we must steel ourselves for a mini-season of such articles (charitably at best a stretch, as the BP debacle, watered-down financial sector reform and 'Runaway General-out, Petraeus-In' hardly constitute Churchillian fare, Sangerian stenography and self-preservationist Rahmian boosterism apart).

• The season of COIN-on-steroids beckons, as the think-tank apparatchiks dutifully chronicle whether Petraeus can turn Marjah from "bleeding ulcer" to Hamiltonian hamlet, before charging Kandahar and enlightening locals how to better run their jirgas, with the civil procedure treatises parachuted in. Apologies for the sarcasm, but my point is this: the war in Afghanistan, already Obama's, is now exponentially so. Having now demoted the American architect of what passes for modern-day counter-insurgency theory ("Government-In-A-Box"!) , as well the storied 'surge' proponent from Iraq, from CENTCOM to the field (in actuality, however, it will be increasingly perceived as a promotion, with the war elevated in stature too, and per the Washington echo-chamber, the 'war on terror'--or whatever moniker du jour--largely in Petreaus' hands), the die has now been well cast for this ill-fated Afghan fiasco to drift along at least through Obama's first term. Put differently, with the gloried Petraeus at the helm, we're now all-in in Afghanistan. And for what, there are perhaps, per Leon Panetta, 50-100 al-Qaeda operatives in the entire country, even fewer perhaps, and we have 100,000 or so men nation-building there? (For thoughts on why I view the Afghanistan mission as devoid of real strategic purpose, see for instance here).

• I stumbled on this letter of George Kennan's while re-reading his excellent memoirs, as he passes through Iraq in June of 1944, I believe on his way to Moscow:

So much for the handicaps; what of the possibilities of service in Baghdad? A country in which man's selfishness and stupidity have ruined almost all natural productivity, where vegetation can survive only among the banks of the great rivers which traverse its deserts, where climate has become unfavorable to human health and vigor.

A population unhygienic in its habits, sorely weakened and debilitated by disease, inclined to all manner of religious bigotry and fanatacism, condemned by the tenets of the most widespread faith to keep a full half of the population--namely, the feminine half--confined and excluded for the productive efforts of society by a system of indefinite house arrest, deeply affected--and bound to be affected--by the psychological habits of pastoral life, which has ever been at variance with the agricultural and industrial civilization.

This people has now come just enough into contact with Western life so that its upper class has a thirst for many things which can be obtained only in the West. Suspicious and resentful of the British, they would be glad to obtain these things from us. They would be glad to use us as a foil for the British, as an escape from the restraints which the British place upon them.

If we give them these things, we can perhaps enjoy a momentary favor on the part of those interested in receiving them. But to the extent that we give them, we weaken British influence, and we acquire native politicians. If they then begin to do things which are not in our interests, which affect the world situation in a ways unfavorable to our security, and if the British are unable to restrain them, we then have ourselves at least in part to blame and it is up to us to take the appropriate measures.

Are we willing to bear this responsibility? I know--and every realistic American knows--that we are not. Our government is technically incapable of conceiving and promulgating a long-term consistent policy towards areas remote from its territory. Our actions in the field of foreign affairs are the convulsive reactions of politicians to an internal political life dominated by vocal minorities.

Those few Americans who remember something of the pioneer life of their own country will find it hard to view these deserts without a pang of interest and excitement at the possibilities for reclamation and economic development. If trees once grew here, could they not grow again? If rains once fell, could they not again be attracted from the inexhaustible resources of nature? Could not climate be altered, disease eradicated?

If they are seeking an escape from reality, such Americans may even pursue these dreams and enter upon the long and stony road which could lead to their fruition. But if they are willing to recall the sad state of soil conservation in their own country, the vast amount of social improvement to be accomplished at home, and the inevitable limitations on the efficacy of our type of democracy in the field of foreign affairs--then they will restrain their excitement at the silent, expectant possibilities in the Middle Eastern deserts, and will return, like disappointed but dutiful children, to the sad deficiencies and problems of their native land. [emphasis added]

And imagine what this singular American diplomat would have made of Afghanistan, let alone Iraq, and coming out of our Great Recession (with a double-dip a real and present danger post the orgy of stimuli, bail-outs, so-called quantitative easing etc.)!

Moving beyond all the immediate events of last week, we are left to reckon with President Obama too. He said in his statement relieving General McChrystal something to the effect that war is bigger than one man, and he is right. So is the future of countries, polities, and empires. In the recent election, he defeated a Senatorial baron and fabled war hero as an African-American junior Senator fresh from a stint as a community organizer, an amazing feat for the history books, to be sure. Why? People were desperate for change, deep in their guts, after the catastrophic bungles wrought by George W. Bush. And yet, have we gotten said change? Do those who listened to his speech in Cairo still believe in it (assuming they ever did, though certainly there were some elevated expectations), a year or so out? Those who felt the 'moral Chernobyl' of Guantanamo required urgent closure of the detention facility? Those who hungered for financial reform that went after the root causes, such as shoddy underwriting and unmoored leverage, rather than the chaotic sausage-making emitting from Barney Frank's office? Or a bona fide restoration of the letter and spirit of habeas corpus, against the corrosive erosions of 'prolonged' detention, and so on.

Of course, Obama was dramatically, astoundingly even, better than the alternative, who'd have had us warring in Teheran and Tbilisi by now, with Sarah Palin regaling us with discourses about off-shore drilling job creation initiatives. But for some who held out the promise for more profound transformation, we are left with the underwhelming feeling, as Edward Luce put it a few weeks back in the FT, that a 'new and improved' stamp was simply affixed on the same fundamental narrative, no? A pity, for him, for the country, indeed, for the entire international community. Perhaps he is wiser than us, playing his cards and biding his time, being careful to secure a second term, and than wowing doubters with a more historic, transformative agenda. But I smell too much of a cautious, deferential institutionalist in him. In short, the man's story has been great, but the man may not be great himself.

After all, who serious can laud his approach to Afghanistan, with the almost dutifully subserviant default to a "surge", but one married to a supposed hard end-date for drawing-down, an awkwardly disjointed policy borne of a too long and divisive inter-agency review, with no one trusting the supposed end date for commencement of meaningful troop withdrawals regardless, especially with the ante upped with Petraeus now in. And if 'Government-In-A-Box' doesn't take root in Marjah and Kandahar (let alone the great one we have in Kabul, this one presumably specially gift-wrapped for us!), then what? Meantime, men are dying and our power is whittling away every day, as history increasingly occurs on other key stages far from this storied graveyard of empires where Obama, it seems, is essentially doubling-down, rather than seriously thinking of responsibly closing out this latest ill-fated chapter in American adventurism.

Much ink has been spilt about the so-called flotilla fiasco these past days, a botched Israeli commando raid of the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara vessel in international waters transporting, depending on who you ask, committed Gandhi-like humanitarians, or per others, hardened al-Qaeda linked terrorists. Amidst the cacophony of YouTubes with yellow highlighted arrows emblazoned about, helpfully highlighting metal poles and “objects”, stun grenades and firebombs, or talk of ‘Khaibar’ chanting miscreants flush with a million Euros, as well myriad spent non-Israeli bullet cartridges allegedly causing manifold gunshot wounds, or per other (equally heated) retellings, something of a pre-planned massacre by beastly IDF goons simply for the sport of it, not too much is yet definitively clear save that tragic loss of life occurred in an illegal operation (or one of dubious legality at very best), so that the Israeli mission was undeniably a failure operationally, tactically, and strategically. Let us take each in turn, though it is the last which is most important.

Operationally, it’s largely no-brainer fare what went wrong, as various military experts have opined ad nauseam. Why was the intelligence about the ‘activists’ on board so sub-par, to include presuming a more docile reaction to airborne commandos crashing the party at an ignoble pre-dawn hour? What of the somewhat surreal tidbit about paintball rifles, as the FT reports typically “used to bruise and mark suspects for later arrest”, as if either of these crowd-dispersal techniques on a sea-borne vessel make any sense whatsoever? Instead, with the intelligence badly flawed from the get-go, and thus the operational capabilities required fundamentally misconstrued, it was all too easy for live ammunition to be too liberally employed in the initial chaos leading to fatalities (nine and counting, with regardless even one death too many for a boat full of non-combatants, which contra the always enterprising musings of Alan Derschowitz, where he says that the flotilla’s passengers “fit uncomfortably onto the continuum of civilianality that has come to characterize asymmetrical warfare”--I suspect instead most leading public international law authorities would ultimately conclude, 'continuums of civilianality' or not, that these individuals were not rendered bona fide combatants simply because the ship was attempting to break a blockade, and given the totality of the circumstances).

Short to mid-term tactically, the operation was similarly a blunder. I don’t necessarily disagree with many Israeli commentators who contend that the Mavi Marmara’s nautical intrusions were less about delivery of humanitarian aid, more about breaking the blockade (I am however fatigued by the sophomoric rhetoric emitting from Prime Minister Netanyahu that the Mavi Marmara wasn’t the "Love Boat", or the less sophomoric, and more crudely propagandistic fare, say, that the mostly Turks on board were hell bent on helping set up an “Iranian port”, the better for Ahmadi-Nejad to ship in the processed uranium). But here’s the rub, assuming the activists were more minded to break the blockade than anything else, the fact that Israel’s botched operation caused major loss of life and widespread international outrage will now only intensify further the international pressure to end this very same blockade. Already there is talk about modifying the extent of the blockade even in Washington, and the NYT reports the Israelis are “exploring new ways” of supplying Gaza. As Washington is ultimately Israel’s only die-hard friend--if a tad more halting one of late—this is hardly a surprise.

But it is the strategic failure however which depresses most, and for many reasons. First, and perhaps most important, the Israeli-Turkish relationship has deteriorated dramatically, even dangerously. I am reasonably confident that had the Israelis not immediately repatriated all the Turkish individuals in their custody Ankara might well have truly contemplated terminating diplomatic relations. That’s really rather stunning, when you think of it, given the longevity of these ties. Related, deepening defense cooperation is still at real risk looking forward depending on Israel’s next moves regarding the blockade (as is restoration of full Ambassadorial-level diplomatic ties). And of course you have Prime Minister Erdogan’s statements—which cannot be wholly discounted as fiery rhetoric in the aftermath of the emotional death of Turkish civilians—that “nothing will be the same” in the context of Turkish-Israeli relations. While one senses, at least as of this writing, that both parties have pulled back from the brink some, the situation is still fraught with real tension and the bilateral dynamics are highly problematic to say the least.

Second, this all comes at a highly sensitive time geopolitically in the region with Turkey having sought to broker (along with Brazil) a deal respecting Iran’s nuclear program (incidentally, I hope the subject of a separate post soon). These efforts, whatever their merits, and having been rebuffed rather too high-handedly (or, alternatively, in too rushed and defensive a manner?) in various quarters, will have as a result the Turks likely intensifying their reach out to the ‘East’, especially given Washington’s tepid reaction to date on the flotilla incident (certainly from Ankara’s vantage point, witness but a proposed U.S. observer for an Israeli-led investigation into this fiasco!). In short, and post the Iraq War with its materially negative implications respecting the US-Turkish relationship, it is fair to say Israel’s botched intervention on the high seas has only made the sledding all the harder respecting helping calibrate Turkey’s evolving role in the neighborhood better from Washington’s perspective.

Related, this ill-fated operation was a blunder too as it will only render more complicated Israel’s objectives respecting the sanctions end-game at the United Nations on the Iran dossier, doubtless making it easier for the assorted ministrations of Brasilia, Ankara (as well other emerging powers) to work on peeling away Beijing and Moscow’s support for anything emitting from Turtle Bay that might have had real teeth vis-à-vis Teheran (to the extent these capitals were really minded to ultimately sign on to a robust U.S. draft to begin with, a dubious proposition ultimately, nor am I a fan of sanctions for sanctions sake, ineffective as they typically are, whether of the ‘smart’ variety or otherwise, so that we should be more focused on long-term containment initiatives likely).

Third, this presents yet another set-back likely to the mostly moribund launch of so-called ‘proximity talks’ George Mitchell has been pursuing for so many long months, a thankless task if there ever was one (if an important one nonetheless, given no credible, more ambitious initiatives are underway). Any setbacks to these fledgling diplomatic initiatives provide a shot in the arm to Hamas, further make life difficult for whatever assorted Fatah moderates in Ramallah, while putting more pressure on Cairo, Amman and possibly Riyadh, to the benefit of Damascus and other less conciliatory players.

And last, while there are still other strategic setbacks besides, the continued de-legitimation of Israel among large swaths of global opinion coming out of the ’06 Lebanese conflict, the dismal Operation Cast Lead, the Goldstone Report, and now this latest debacle, is worth highlighting as well. I know, I know, everyone would be beating up on Tel Aviv anyway, we are told by those who are always at the ready to provide carte blanche style rationalizations for whatever conduct Israel might deem appropriate, and with whatever the consequences, but this seems too easy a retort, no?

Meantime the mood in Israel, in the main, seems to be one of mostly defiance and rallying around the flag. There are vehement criticisms about the operational missteps, but few question the tactical wisdom of the operation itself with respect to the preservation of the blockade, fewer still the strategic challenges the botched operation have raised to the forefront per the above. Yes, something has changed in the Israeli public’s mood these past years, a thriving polity known for its rancorous and hard-fought debates across the political spectrum, not least when it came to national security issues. The rancor is still there, to be sure, but save outlier parties like Meretz a broad Likud-Labor-Kadima consensus has apparently congealed, one with little patience for the niceties of world opinion, international law, persistent diplomacy, and painstaking alliance-building. This extends beyond the political class itself, as some roughly 95% of the Israeli public polled believed the vessel needed to be stopped, ostensibly come what may.

The reasons are many, I suspect. The long campaign of suicide bombings engendered much hatred of the 'other' amidst the Israeli public. The fact that rocket attacks continued from Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal frustrated keenly, ‘what more can we do’, many asked? And legendary figures from the Israeli national security firmament are no longer with us, most notably, Yitzhak Rabin, so that the nation likely feels somewhat unmoored with only more second-tier players available. And yet these very sources of frustration are evocative of a lack of self-reflection among too many Israelis, one fears. If you withdraw from Gaza, but after an election Hamas wins (like it or not) cut back on the amount of basic goods allowed in--and then even more so after the ejection of Fatah from the Strip--is it any wonder frustration will mount within Gaza helping fuel further bouts of violence, for instance?

As for the current crise du jour, less about the flotilla (as symptom) ultimately than the blockade (as cause), can Israelis not better appreciate that acting as self-appointed commissars authorized to calibrate the precise amount of food aid, medical supplies and other goods allowed into Gaza (with nutritional issues still arising nonetheless, and post-Cast Lead rebuilding efforts hugely stunted), with what types of specific goods per detailed lists of authorized and non-authorized fare, offends sensibilities, indeed mightily, and in many quarters? Or that the communal punishment of 1.5 million people, for the acts of an off-shoot group of the Muslim Brotherhood which also incidentally provides varied social services (and with which frankly the U.S.—or a proxy—should open channels too given their key position within the Palestinian polity), similarly perturbs many fair-minded persons? Or, still, that the constant discussion surrounding a single IDF soldier, one Gilad Shalit, while heartbreaking for him, his family, his unit and Army, and indeed perhaps too the Israeli nation more generally, is nonetheless perhaps discounted in ‘net’ import some by those looking at the plight of well over a million Palestinians by comparison (Netanyahu has listed this single soldier as one of three key variables weighing on Israel’s posture vis-à-vis the blockade)?

I could go on, but this mood of national testiness, dearth of self-reflection, default to non-conciliatory postures, and easy resort to militarism is proving ever more debilitating to Israel’s overall position and future in the region, and indeed globally. More than anything, the tactical obsession with eradicating enemies (as if one even could every last Hamas or Hezbollah adherent), rather than more seriously moving forward towards an overarching peace settlement with the Palestinians (as well the Syrians and Lebanese) is what strikes me as most short-sighted. What is needed is more strategic patience, realism and wisdom among Israel’s leaders, as reminiscent of the aforementioned Yitzhak Rabin. Mssrs. Netanyahu and Barak have not mustered same, alas, certainly not of late.

Last, however, we would be remiss not to mention Washington in all this, which has proven overly halting, passive and cautious in its approach to this issue, despite its ever growing costs as strategic liability to the United States. President Obama needs to become more personally involved in pointing the parties towards the final parameters of a convincing settlement, while playing ‘honest broker’ more forcefully, and in out-of-the- box fashion (yes, I know, he’s rather busy, and more seed-work is required by Clinton and Mitchell). This means bold acts (at least by our paltry standards) to shake up dynamics some, like having a vigorous international investigation into this incident with, who could imagine, Turkish and Israeli observers, say, rather than simply Israelis running the investigation with a token US observer who will be widely viewed by the world as a white-wash enabler, or moving to engage Hamas (likely indirectly via EU proxies at first), or still skipping over proximity talks in favor of the real thing, meaning direct talks under U.S. mediation (by exerting adult supervision and real pressure on the parties to get them to the proverbial table). Did we vote for change? Real change? Well, where is it, one too often wonders, across a variety of areas. Except, really, this isn't really revolutionary change, it's called basic, robust and slightly more risky and creative diplomacy, which this nation has employed in the past on occasion, if not too often in recent memory.

In short, and as often, another dismal episode emitting from the Middle East, lots of noise and protestations and shrieks resulting, and little by way of intelligent, concrete policy-making apparently in the offing from any governmental quarters (like, say, more forcefully sketching out in Quartet, UN and other international fora the key parameters that everyone is aware are needed for an overall peace deal, while pursuing outreach to portions of Hamas that would be willing to renounce violence on the basis of a meaningful peace settlement). This also begs questions regarding how a ribald, Tweeting (Palin-style), special interest-laden, and hugely dumbed-down cable news addled mass democracy manages to run a serious foreign policy, but that topic is perhaps better left for another day.

...last weekend, with Rory Stewart. I blog the lunch interview really for this snippet:

Since arriving at Harvard in June last year, he has been consultant to several members of Barack Obama’s administration, including Hillary Clinton, and is a member of Richard Holbrooke’s special committee for Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. “I do a lot of work with policymakers, but how much effect am I having?” he asks, pronging a mussel out of its shell.

“It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...’” [my emphasis]

Incidentally, Stewart had not unrelated thoughts in the LRB a month or so back.

It was Henry Ford II who reportedly said of Robert McNamara: "In our business, we are lucky if we make the right decision 51% of the time. What I have noticed about Bob McNamara is that he makes an awful lot of right decisions." And yet, of course, he also made some profoundly wrong ones too, most notably, with the gross misadventure of Vietnam. The below video captures some of the spirit of the man, both the good and the bad, if still a stubborn doggedness and recalcitrance, also greater appreciation of historical nuance and moral ambiguity, certainly at least in his older, more reflective years.

Regardless of history's verdict of him, which doubtless will be almost wholly about Vietnam, and thus mostly negative, this was nonethless a sharply penetrating, urbane man, and importantly one who could admit a mistake, unlike say, the unreflective (and far less elegant) Donald Rumsfeld, the two having not infrequently been compared to each other.

As McNamara said in Errol Morris's excellent documentary "The Fog of War" (from which I believe the above video is excerpted):

We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better re-examine our reasoning.”

"War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.”

This last is probably what haunted him the most to his dying day.

NB: McNamara actually misquotes T.S. Eliot at the end of the excerpted YouTube. The relevant portion is from Little Gidding (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets'), namely:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

McNamara mixes the placement of "exploration" and "exploring" (and has the second line erroneously as "and at the end of our exploration"), while also substituting "we will return to" for the original "will be to arrive". The meaning is essentially the same, if McNamara's erroneously tweaked third line impacts the emphasis some, as "we will return to" evokes a sense of volitional action (a tad too certain, even cocksure?), while "will be to arrive" speaks more to preordained fate exerting its will (more deferential?). Arguably too, there is a slightly more pessimistic bent to 'returning' to the same place, rather than a sense of 'arriving' anew. Given the arc of his life, perhaps neither variation is surprising, albeit somewhat incongruous, if nonetheless helpfully evocative of the man's contradictions.

Via the NYT this Sunday:

Plunging squarely into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. suggested on Sunday that the United States would not stand in the way of Israeli military action aimed at the Iranian nuclear program.

The United States, Mr. Biden said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week,” “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.”

"Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said, in an interview taped in Baghdad at the end of a visit there.

The remarks went beyond at least the spirit of any public utterances by President Barack Obama, who has said that diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program should be given to the end of the year. But the president has also said that he is “not reconciled” to the possibility of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon — a goal Tehran denies.

Mr. Biden’s comments came at a particularly sensitive time, amid the continuing tumult over the disputed Iranian elections, and seemed to risk handing a besieged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a new tool with which to fan nationalist sentiments in Iran.

What was not immediately clear was whether Mr. Biden, who has a long-standing reputation for speaking volubly — and sometimes going too far in the heat of the moment — was sending an officially sanctioned message.

Brian Knowlton's somewhat amusing description of Mr. Biden apart, what do readers make of the Vice-President's comments, in particular, whether they were deliberative and pre-vetted, or instead, non-coached and instinctive, perhaps cause for some wincing inside the Beltway today? Meantime, a related and not uninteresting piece in Haaretz.

Permit me a brief personal vignette. On a flight a year or so back, I bumped into a former Cabinet member from a previous Administration (he will remain nameless, and I won't even mention his exact post or what Administration he served, suffice it to say a prominent man quite well known still). Discussing Iran briefly, he looked at me with his shrewd eyes and said (relying on memory and so probably slighly paraphrasing): "Perhaps we'll let the Israelis do it". The comment was revealing I thought for a couple reasons: 1) the notion that somehow we would 'authorize' the Israelis, as if they were our proxy to so delegate out the mission; and 2) perhaps less surprising, the fact he thought an extensive bombing campaign of Iran not a bad idea, essentially apparently just a dusting off of the Osirak precedent, I thought without sufficiently appreciating that this operation would be materially more challenging several times over, for many reasons, to include two hot wars on both sides of Iran with hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in the neighborhood.

This little anecdote leads me to a further thought, I think Biden was essentially just trying to refute "1" above, e.g. the sense that it's up to us, thus stressing Israel is a sovereign state that makes up her own mind about such things, so that perhaps he was purposefully distancing the U.S. some from a possible Israeli action, whether in scripted or unscripted manner I'm not sure (I'd probably guess the latter). Of course, how the region and world interpret his comments could be as more of a flashing greenish light, even if that wasn't the intent. Of course too, no one in the region would believe--even were it true (which would be highly unlikely)--that an Israeli action didn't enjoy tacit American support/approval, a variable that we should keep uppermost in our minds (among others) when dealing with the Israelis on this issue/dossier going forward.

MORE: See Aluf Benn on this too, who sees this as more of a purposeful warning to the Iranians.

Apropos of my last post issuing something of a mea culpa given some of the purportedly overly tiresome neo-con bashing (meaning really too, I guess, all the incessant intellectual squabbling from those removed from the conflict generally, particularly when mostly descending into mere sloganeering, rather than as accompanied by constructive policy criticisms), I thought I'd provide two links from people who have either been on the ground (in Ramadi, Iraq), or have suffered tremendously as a result of a close relative being in theater. The latter piece is particularly compelling, indeed profoundly heart-wrenching, really. And reminds us that were it not for medical advances, the number of dead American soldiers resulting from the Iraq imbroglio would doubtless number well in excess of 10,000-15,000, and counting (the massive Iraqi toll is, of course, unconscionable, if less discussed). To be sure, the phrase 'traumatic brain injury' (or "TBI") deserves to be more widely known as one of the 'signature' wounds of this conflict.

I am not excerpting either article, as both should be read in full. John Renehan's serves as good counter-point to the constant intellectual battling and haranguing here, tacitly admonishing us that whatever one might make of the conflict, some are actually there having to deal with its moral ambiguities day in, day out regardless; while Bethany Vaccaro's piece likely served as something of an exegesis as she grappled with the horribly debilitating injury her brother suffered, and continues to daily, to include the attendant toll on her entire family.

(For some reason, the linked pieces made me think of Ezra Pound's short poem, "An Immorality". Anyway, I recommend both pieces be read in their entirety, particularly, as I said, Vaccaro's).

Jeff Weintraub writes (in an otherwise favorable review: “(e)ven so-called foreign-policy "realists" are sometimes startled and moved by actual realities. Here is a fine and eloquent outburst from Greg Djerejian...”) of a recent post of mine:

I will skip the rest, since it is not so much about Iran as about the ideological dogfights going on here in the US, in the punditocracy and the blogosphere, about how the US government and the rest of us should respond to that ongoing political drama in Iran. Those debates have generated some light, but more heat than light--that is, they have been excessively pervaded (in my view) by inter-sectarian point-scoring, score-settling, predictable sloganeering, ideological posturing, and reciprocal accusations of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty. (Yes, some of those accusations have been justified, to some degree, on all sides.) So I have mostly tried to avoid all that, and to focus on serious and potentially illuminating analyses of what is going on in Iran. With all respect to Greg Djerejian, I think (fairly or unfairly) that some of those critical remarks apply to at least some aspects of the non-quoted portion of his post (including the rather tiresome ritual "neocon"-bashing which is becoming too much of a reflex in some quarters). But not to all of them ... so anyone who is interested in considering the rest of his discussion can pursue it here.

I want to issue something of a mea culpa here. I have noted a tendency in this space with the passage of the years to engage in a decent amount of what might pass for neo-con “bashing”, whether ritual or otherwise. The reasons are many, to include:

1) the fevered overall tone of much of the blogosphere, where often ‘Fisking’ (itself a sophomoric moniker regrettably demeaning to a very talented journalist) another’s op-ed or posting serves as jumping off point for one’s own commentary;

2) in candor, writing on occasion as something akin to a shot at redemptive therapy, given that coming out of my experiences in the mid-90s in the Balkans I’d not infrequently made common cause with some of the neo-cons (looking for greater intervention by the West during the horrors of Bosnia), to subsequently include early support for our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq; and

3) at some point towards the second half of Bush’s second term, reaching a tremendous bursting point brought on by a confluence of Rumsfeld’s staggeringly poor stewardship of the Iraq War, essentially constituting criminal neglect, this followed by Dubya’s stubbornly childish and recalcitrant ‘Decider’ moment, before finally replacing a disgraced Rumsfeld with Robert Gates, as well the mind-boggling fiasco of Katrina and, of course, the horrific crimes that the top-down authorized torture apparatus authorized in far-flung outposts to include Guantanamo, black-sites in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, Bagram, and through Iraq, most notoriously (only because of the photographic evidence) at Abu Ghraib.

In short, I felt like we were living a period in American history where truly incredible blunders were being committed by national security miscreants on an epic scale, and so like many, and taken in conjunction with variables like “1” and “2” above, was using my little soap-box here to scream from the cyber-roof-tops, perhaps a bit loutishly at times, veering into polemics and arguably even ad hominems on occasion, or indeed as Jeff writes, generally engaging at times in: “inter-sectarian point-scoring, score-settling, predictable sloganeering, ideological posturing, and reciprocal accusations of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.” Do I regret it? Not really probably, all told, but still, I apologize for the sometimes overly fevered tone this space succumbed to, and indeed, may still going forward (I am only human).

But all this being said, let us return to the recent post where—in really charting out in the main my views on Iran—I did admittedly veer into reasonably lengthy commentaries about two of the most prominent neo-cons, namely Charles Krauthammer and Paul Wolfowitz. I must confess, I do remain truly stunned, not as much by Mr. Krauthammer (who I view as the more stubbornly incorrigible of the two) but more so Mr. Wolfowitz, that they continue to hold their heads up relatively high deigning to provide policy prescriptions after the manifold disasters that the Bush 43 policies precipitated. I can do little better than to quote Andrew Bacevich, writing in his well reasoned and very estimable “The Limits of Power” (here showing how Wolfowitz was becoming something of an increasingly untamed Paul Nitze on steroids):

So the aftermath of 9/11 found Wolfowitz venturing into precincts where Nitze himself had feared to tread, advocating a policy of “anticipatory self defense,” a euphemism for preventive war. Within forty-eight hours of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he was already declaring categorically that, in its response to 9/11, the United States had no intention of confining its actions to those directly involved in the terrorist conspiracy. Bringing Osama bin Laden and his associates to justice would not suffice. Rather, the United States was intent on undertaking “a broad and sustained campaign” against any and all states posing a terrorist threat. The aim went beyond targeting would-be terrorists themselves. The United States meant to deprive terrorists of sanctuaries or “safe havens” by nothing less than a policy of “ending states who support terrorism.” In NSC 68, Nitze had at least made a pretense of offering several options for consideration. For Wolfowitz after 9/11, there existed only a single option: open-ended global war…History will remember Paul Wolfowitz as the intellectual Svengali who conjured up the Bush Doctrine. In NSC 68, Nitze had rejected preventive war as “repugnant.” Wolfowitz now promoted it as permissible, essential, even inviting.

Absent in all this is a hint of a Niebuhrian humility Bacevich also cites in his discussion of Wolfowitz, that “the whole drama of history is enacted in a frame of meaning too large for human comprehension or management.” Instead, a cock-sure certainty prevails, despite the Iraq debacle (see the latest haughty pronunciamentos about what Obama should be doing in Iran).

Bacevich concludes his discussion here:

No doubt today’s Wise Men see themselves as devoted patriots. No doubt they even mean well. Yet that’s not good enough. As Paul Wolfowitz himself wrote, “No U.S. President can justify a policy that fails to achieve its intended results by pointing to the purity and rectitude of his intentions.” Much the same can be said of those who advise presidents and whose advice yields horrific consequences of the sort we have endured beginning on 9/11 and continuing ever since. They have forfeited any further claim to trust. [my emphasis]

Indeed, and coming from a man who lost his own son (to whom this somehow muted and dispassionate, yet very compelling, manifesto is dedicated) in the war in Iraq, this is a particularly compelling refutation, in my view.

As for Mr. Krauthammer, I don’t have much more to say, really. He is clearly no one’s fool, and has written some pieces considered important by some, such as The Unipolar Moment Revisited in the Winter 2002 National Interest. But it is perhaps instructive to take another quick peek at it now a half decade plus on. The overt triumphalist tone showcases well Krauthammer’s grandiose over-reaching.

Of Afghanistan, he wrote then, about the U.S. response to 9/11:

Being a relatively pacific, commercial republic, the United States does not go around looking for demonstration wars. This one was thrust upon it. In response, America showed that at a range of 7,000 miles and with but a handful of losses, it could destroy within weeks a hardened, fanatical regime favored by geography and climate in the “graveyard of empires.”

Would that it had been so easy! Here we are now some seven years into the Afghan conflict, embroiled in a hugely challenging counter-insurgency campaign that will drag on for many years yet, alas (I believe this mission all but doomed to failure, and have shared my views on occasion in this space, most recently here). But for Mr. Krauthammer it was mission accomplished by the late autumn of 2002!

Mr. Krauthammer has also not distinguished himself (indeed, you might say has disgraced himself) by becoming one of the more notable neo-con proponents of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, or stripped of the deadening conceit of this bland apparatchik Orwellianism, torture full stop. Like the abolition of slavery or habeas corpus rights, forbidding any use of torture has become a touchstone of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought and society, and screeds in the pages of the Weekly Standard about fanciful ‘ticking time bomb’ scenarios cannot be viewed as intellectually serious in the long march of history, even if many have leapt on this pro-torture bandwagon, right on down to the Kafkaesque imagery of possibly inserting a creeping insect into a confined space with a human being to maximize fears born of phobias about spiders or such, or inducing in them the feeling of being drowned, or as happened far too often, allowing some combination of extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation, and stress positions to lead to the deaths of scores of detainees in our custody. This is the legacy of the intellectual enablers of a pro-torture policy hoisted on a confused country enmeshed in fear and mourning after the ashes of 9/11. But this cannot be acceptable, staining so profoundly our honor and titular role as avatar of international human rights in the global system. As the English Law Lords had written in an opinion I’d previously cited in this space:

That word honour, the deep note which Blackstone strikes twice in one sentence, is what underlies the legal technicalities of this appeal. The use of torture is dishonourable. It corrupts and degrades the state which uses it and the legal system which accepts it. When judicial torture was routine all over Europe, its rejection by the common law was a source of national pride and the admiration of enlightened foreign writers such as Voltaire and Beccaria. In our own century, many people in the United States, heirs to that common law tradition, have felt their country dishonoured by its use of torture outside the jurisdiction and its practice of extra-legal "rendition" of suspects to countries where they would be tortured: Just as the writ of habeas corpus is not only a special (and nowadays infrequent) remedy for challenging unlawful detention but also carries a symbolic significance as a touchstone of English liberty which influences the rest of our law, so the rejection of torture by the common law has a special iconic importance as the touchstone of a humane and civilised legal system. Not only that: the abolition of torture, which was used by the state in Elizabethan and Jacobean times to obtain evidence admitted in trials before the court of Star Chamber, was achieved as part of the great constitutional struggle and civil war which made the government subject to the law. Its rejection has a constitutional resonance for the English people which cannot be overestimated. [my emphasis]

This dishonor, too, will irrevocably be part of the neo-con’s legacy (with such prominent neo-con adherents as Mr. Krauthammer, how can it not, even if some neo-cons here and there may have been opposed) and for this reason too, as Mr. Bacevich stated, they have “forfeited any further claim to trust.”

Mr. Krauthammer ended his National Interest article writing: "(t)he challenge to unipolarity is not from the outside but from the inside. The choice is ours. To impiously paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: History has given you an empire, if you will keep it."

It is instructive here to actually see what Benjamin Franklin said originally, and Scott Horton—if in a slightly different context--addresses this very well in Harpers here:

As Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention, on September 18, 1787, a certain Mrs. Powel shouted out to him: “Well, doctor, what have we got?,” and Franklin responded: “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Like many of the Founding Fathers, he was intensely concerned that the democratic institutions they were crafting would deteriorate over time. In particular, they were concerned—and talked ceaselessly during the convention about the risk that, under pressures and exigencies of war, a tyrant would collapse their system into something closer to the monarchy that they had just defeated. Over the intervening 220 years, the republic has maintained itself, though not without close calls. And today, while we face what may be the gravest challenge in the nation’s history, our media will serve up the next chapter in the life of Paris Hilton.

Mr. Krauthammer rather turns Benjamin Franklin’s logic on its head with his paraphrasing, quite “impiously” indeed, as many of the very policies Mr. Krauthammer advocates with such alacrity (an unbridled executive, use of torture, preemptive war) run directly contra Franklin’s admonition to fight to preserve a constitutional Republic.

Scott Horton goes on to quote the great jurist Learned Hand:

Near the close of the Second World War, Learned Hand–a man who embodies everything that constitutes a good citizen, a great judge and a patriot–made a powerful speech at the Great Lawn in Central Park. “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women,” he said, “when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Like many profound points, Hand’s description seems very obvious, even bordering on the banal. But it is a critical apercu. And it is what concerns me the most about present day America. In the (mostly) collective shrug about so-called ‘prolonged’ or ‘indefinite’ detention (a policy egregiously so afoul of the ancient writ of habeas corpus that, as with torture, I’d have thought essentially junking such a touchstone of post-Enlightenment societies, even if with some lipstick applied to the pig, could not be so uncontroversially countenanced across two political parties), in the general feebleness of refusing to mount a high-profile, relentless investigation into how a torture policy was allowed to encrust itself at the highest levels of the Executive of this great nation allowing for men to die in our custody in a veritable archipelago of detention centers worldwide, in the slothful obeisance to wars of choice dragging on possibly for decades, in all this do we not see liberty beating in the “hearts of men” less steadfastly than we’d hope for in a fabled democracy (one with many reasons to be prideful of its rich heritage, in the main)?

Do we not see in swaths of our society a country that risks—only too happy to, say, revel in a doubtless dystopian populism characterized by huge ignorance as with the Palin wing of the GOP, with say another terror attack and less capable political leadership than we enjoy at present—a descent into a populist form of authoritarianism infested by the moronic pensees and discourse we witness nightly on the network gab-fests? I am fundamentally more optimistic than this, not least given the hugely important Obama victory over McCain, but still there is a calcification in outlook on even totemic issues that has taken root across large swaths of the polity that gives fear (in its easy certitudes that, so self-contented, verge on the morally corrupt), so that it is not merely a matter of one political party over the other. But at very least, let us move away from some of the intellectual enablers of the worst of the excesses, as we fight for a brighter future! And so, I will apologize to readers who, like Jeff Weintraub, felt I may have succumbed too readily to sloganeering and intellectual posturing on occasion, but that said, I hope this post helps clarify the ‘why’, if you will.

Speaking of apologies, a final thought. Another reason many of us find the behavior of the neo-conservatives galling and offensive is, not only how wrong-headed their policy prescriptions were and are, but also that they have been so roundly unapologetic, indeed unrepentant and as stubbornly bull-headed as ever (save notable exceptions who broke early like Francis Fukuyama, who anyhow are now post-schism not regarded as one of the club by the residual die-hards a la Krauthammer and, evidently, Mr.Wolfowitz). Michiko Kakutani, in a book review of Bradley Graham’s Donald Rumsfeld biography, notes:

Asked to assess Mr. Rumsfeld’s tenure, Mr. Graham reports, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger gave him “high marks as a secretary of defense trying to revamp the U.S. military but scored Rumsfeld low as a secretary of war,” noting that the same was true of Robert S. McNamara, the only other Pentagon chief with an equally controversial term in office. Mr. Graham points out that both Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. McNamara came from the corporate world, both had keen analytic minds and “insatiable appetites for data,” both sought tighter civilian control of the military and both presided over long, costly and unpopular wars.

The big difference between the two men, Mr. Graham adds, is how they ultimately viewed their own tenures: “despite his public cheerleading for the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara privately became dubious about its wisdom and effectiveness while still in office” and came to recognize “that he had failed as defense secretary because of mistakes he and others had made in Vietnam.” In contrast, Mr. Graham writes, Mr. Rumsfeld “did not leave office doubting his handling of the Iraq war” and “has acknowledged no major missteps or shown any remorse on the subject to date.” [my emphasis]

No acknowledgement of missteps (actually, with Rumsfeld of late, it is worse, more a disingenuous acknowledgement essentially seeking to remove himself from direct culpability). But yes, overall, no acknowledgements of material mis-steps. Democracy not necessarily a "default condition to which societies would revert once liberated from dictators" (as Stephen Holmes observes in a penetrating piece from the LRB back in '06)? Too much of a bovine tendency towards "over-personalizing any 'regime' that they dream of destabalising, identifying it with a single reprehensible ruler", as Holmes also flags? Perhaps a truer more genuine reconsideration of the initial troop levels in Iraq, rather than now simply roundly feting and cheerleading a terribly belated 'surge', occurring so late that the damage done by any reasonable cost-benefit metric was already titanic enough so as to counsel strongly against prolonging a terrible misadventure. And so on. All this, with no remorse either, to Bradley Graham's point of the differences between McNamara and Rumsfeld.

Let me be clear, this is not a request for some Inquisition-style auto-de-fe , accompanied by protracted bouts of public flagellation. But to be a purported Wise Man or foreign policy expert, you must be able to recalibrate and learn from one’s mistakes. Instead, as David Rieff once quipped to me: “(l)ike the Trotskyists of yore, these people are never wrong if only they had been listened to and allowed to follow their mad utopian schemes to their limit.” This failure to learn from experience, this rigid ideological lock-step (indeed they essentially look to double-down even post the Iraq debacle, now with some calling for bombing Iran), in my opinion, displays a lack of character that is very worrisome and frankly reprehensible, especially given the human and other costs (of which more in a subsequent post). Forgive me therefore for not trusting their policy suggestions on Iran, or any other issues, for that matter. And forgive me too for on occasion having gotten overly hot-headed in the cyber-pages of Belgravia Dispatch, to Jeff Weintraub's point, which provoked this post.

President Obama's statement:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

This is basically pitch-perfect. And shows real conscientiousness in its drafting, for which kudos are in order. To deconstruct some, keying off the key phrases:

1) “The world is watching”—A powerful admonishment to the Iranian regime as they calculate how severe a crack-down they can afford to contemplate and/or pursue, one issued personally by the world’s most prominent leader (and also a statement that will provide something of a back-door morale boost to the protestors, albeit accomplished indirectly via the more direct, explicit warning the statement portends to the key players around Khamenei);

2) “We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost”, not just ministerial fare, but rather showing this Administration is sensitized to the growing humanitarian toll;

3) A call on the Iranian Government to “stop all violent and unjust actions” against its people, as Andrew Sullivan has pointed out, the word “unjust” will resonate strongly on the ground, but still, this carefully parsed language is calibrated enough that it cannot easily be portrayed as incitement by a foreign power;

4) “The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights”. “Must be respected” risks sounding somewhat diktat-like, but this is softened by a reference to “universal” rights (and although Obama further risks sounding overly vague here, he is nonetheless careful in specifying the rights of ‘assembly and free speech’, which of course carry a clear import for Moussavi’s supporters, but while again being wisely couched in the language of the general rights of man);

5) Next, a nod to the Cairo speech, and that suppression of ideas “never succeeds in making them go away”, essentially linking the events in Iran to his key-stone speech to the region a fortnight or so earlier, in this way, further highlighting the historic import of the events underway in Iran;

6) “The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government”, very able again, in its ambiguity (what actions is he speaking of precisely?) as here he appears to be both a) staking out a U.S. position less hectoring than some European states who have weighed in too far I believe on the falsity of the electoral results, by more properly suggesting in the absence of internationally approved election monitors and the like having been on the ground the Iranians themselves will need to sort out electoral adjustments, if any, but also, and more likely his meaning here b) this is of course referencing too the crackdown, another warning shot across the bow that the Iranian public will be judging events, buttressed further by his next line: “(i)f the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.” (dignity is a very well chosen word in this context);

7) The MLK quote is splendid, as our first African-American President it resonates all the more to quote him, as “(t)he arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, could well describe how someone like Obama could ascend to the great office he holds today, given the long, painful struggles with slavery, Jim Crow, civil rights and so on in this country;

8) He reinforces and personalizes "7" immediately above, given again the dramatic heft these lines are given by the man delivering them, by stating: “I believe that”, and then without sounding the least bit presumptuous, stating the international community does too;

9) Perhaps the most important line, in terms of signal to the regime in Iran, “we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth” to which he stresses again, we will continue to “bear witness”, as bearing witness is not the same as crudely intervening, an important signal really to all the players there (including too the protestors, who after all, must not be led on that the cavalry is coming as they make their courageous internal calculations in the coming days), and regardless, is all told the most we could offer at this juncture, while also affording the regime an opening to step back from the brink (though I doubt they will); and

10) Last, I can’t help saying it, what a relief to have some competence back at the helm, and if I shudder some to think at the Bush 43 statement that would have been issued, I shudder far more at the quasi-crazed meanderings a McCain-Palin Administration would have had us sketching out here, helping scuttle possibilities of avoiding more of a large-scale Tiananmen event (though alas we may still face one, but at least not yet) and rendering even more incendiary a hugely fraught situation.

Let’s admit it, we are all damn lucky Obama won, with many of his (increasingly frothing & rabid-like) opponents simply deeply envious of his extremely strong political talents and gifts. Worth noting too, I am all but sure he personally drafted and/or reviewed in depth this statement, which again shows real care and high intelligence and sophisticated understanding of history, to include the current Iranian situation, and regional sensitivities. Yes, he is very, very good. Frankly one of my few concerns as he goes about implementing his policies (both foreign and domestic) is that he not get overly cock-sure on occasion, there are flashes of conceit here and there (a conceit perhaps that by his very transformative being, perhaps, dramatic changes might more easily occur in forlorn spots around the globe, or for that matter, states nearing 15% U-3 unemployment like Michigan), but then again, we have Michelle for this!

This place is Iran, a country on the cusp of possibly an even larger-scale violent crackdown than as of this hour (writing Saturday mid-afternoon, New York time), another revolution, or some alternative denouement unknown to us at this hour. With the howling cries of ‘Allah-o-akbar’ in the background, in a YouTubed video reportedly made Friday evening in Iran (via The Lede) the subject caption above is spoken by what sounds like a young female narrator (at the 1:35 mark). A hauntingly beautiful and arresting line--one which she breaks into tears uttering—seems to distill much of the spirit of the ‘silent’ protests of the Moussavi movement.

How can we not fail to be moved by her achingly sincere yearnings? How can our conscience not demand something be done? After all, aren’t these ardent cries of help aimed squarely at us here, meaning leading players in the international community? And then now this Saturday we are seeing the first flare-ups of more wide-spread and protracted anti-demonstration crackdowns. Via Andrew, another heart-wrenching YouTube (if in far more direct, brutish vein) here:

Of course we are deeply repulsed and outraged at this senseless and cruel violence. And so is it any surprise there is something of a zeitgeist increasingly taking root (accelerated of course by Ayatollah Khamenei’s deeply disappointing speech yesterday) that something need be done by these United States? That somehow President Obama himself needs to ‘step up’, meaning, say and do more?

For example, and as if on cue, the Washington Post allowed for a dual-pronged assault at the supposedly callous Obamaian realism, featuring Charles Krauthammer and Paul Wolfowitz. Meantime, youthful apparatchiks from the Dubya administration, painfully naïve but positively brimming with self-importance, counsel varied initiatives that need be undertaken in the pitiable, yellow-press editorial pages of the WSJ. There are saner, more sophisticated voices counseling for more action too, however. Roger Cohen, with typical passion and elegance, demands same here. And one senses that Andrew Sullivan, intensely enmeshed in his nonpareil coverage of the ongoing events in Iran, is nearing a breaking point, despite his wise disparagement of the reckless policy prescriptions of the incorrigible neo-conservatives that Fred Hiatt publishes with great gusto (Mr. Hiatt risks increasingly appearing rather the sheepish lap-dog of late, whether the unseemly defenestration of a notable blogger at that paper—interestingly shortly after this very blogger, the well regarded Dan Froomkin, raised Mr. Krauthammer’s ire--or the tiresomely repetitive neo-con boilerplate he allows be published with abandon in his opinion pages).

I mean, what can one say about Charles Krauthammer that hasn’t been already, a mendacious ideologue who writes with the assured certainty of a zealot? From his op-ed: “All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None.” What does Mr. Krauthammer suggest we do? Send in the dough-boys into Enghelab Square? He wants fire and brim-stone and really, he is a parody of some vague notion of Schumpeterian creative destruction, roll the dice, and just hope the brown-skins from Beirut to Lahore sort it out OK (and always in a manner befitting right-Likudnik conceptions of Israel’s security, of course, ironically actually serving to weaken Tel Aviv).

Mr. Wolfowitz himself has always been more subtle, and actually has been a policy-maker, rather than a perennial back-seat driver pissing on the pratfalls of those who must govern, rather than merely turn out a column a couple times a week or stare lugubriously into a Fox Studio camera to spoon-feed a wildly credulous audience rife with ignoramuses. But for his part, it must be said, Mr. Wolfowitz is very selective in describing some of his public service as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under George Schultz, where he pushed for stronger condemnations of the Marcos regime at the time (Update: Matt Steinglass has more worth reading on the Wolfowitz/Philippines angle). It is almost as if he is engaging in revisionist burnishing of his own background, taking the Iran events as convenient launching pad, and omitting some of the (arguably more) relevant take-aways of his more immediate professional past. He writes:

No two situations are identical. But the reform the Iranian demonstrators seek is something that we should be supporting. In such a situation, the United States does not have a "no comment" option. Coming from America, silence is itself a comment -- a comment in support of those holding power and against those protesting the status quo. It would be a cruel irony if, in an effort to avoid imposing democracy, the United States were to tip the scale toward dictators who impose their will on people struggling for freedom. And if we appear so desperate for negotiations that we will abandon those who support our principles, we weaken our own negotiating hand.

Mr. Wolfowitz can play pretend this is soi disant about desperation to preserve negotiations. But, of course, this is rather about the screamingly obvious fact that were Obama to wade into this domestic fire-storm by too nakedly taking sides, say cheerleading Moussavi, it would represent the immediate death-knell of this movement. Veteran diplomats like Henry Kissinger get this (having recently complimented Obama on his handling of the situation), as do other distinguished foreign policy practitioners of the right like Richard Lugar and Dick Armitage. But not Mr. Wolfowitz, still the noble warrior on behalf of “freedom” after all these years. Of course, nothing if not clever, he goes on:

That does not mean that we need to pick sides in an Iranian election or claim to know its result. Obama could send a powerful message simply by placing his enormous personal prestige behind the peaceful conduct of the demonstrators and their demand for reform -- exactly the kind of peaceful, democratic change that he praised in his speech in Cairo.

But these are weasel-words. Obama has more or less already lauded the courage of the protestors. Tell us Mr. Wolfowitz, what exactly you’d like said, and how, rather than airily condemn Obama’s inaction? If not, this op-ed lacks any substance, and is more feel-good nostrum, I'm afraid. Or, better yet, recalling recent inglorious pass-throughs at the World Bank and as Rumsfeld’s Deputy, Mr. Wolfowitz might consider staying on the side-lines more, lest such quotes spring too easily back to mind, ’03 vintage to a House Committee:

There has been a good deal of comment - some of it quite outlandish - about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army - hard to imagine.

Wildly off the mark indeed, as are Mr. Wolfowitz’s Iran musings half a decade on today.

Instead what is very clear to most sane observers is Persia’s long history of being deeply skeptical, at best, of foreign involvement in its polity given, as the Economist puts it this week, that she was “buffeted between imperial rivals—Russian, Turkish, British and American—for more than a century”. Add to this the perennial Sunni-Shi’a rivalries of the region, closer to fever-pitch post the Iraq fiasco, that feed an ongoing sense of Iranian isolation to their West in a predominantly Sunni Arab Middle East, manifested too by Iran’s own long war with Iraq. Then there is the sense of encirclement with U.S. troops in the tens and hundreds of thousands on Iran’s Western and Eastern borders, with all the loose talk of regime change to boot emitting from Washington for years, and with memories of the U.S. role in the Mossadegh coup hugely fresh in the national consciousness of almost all Iranians still.

Taking this all in, is it not something of a total no-brainer to conclude Obama is right to be prancing somewhat delicately here and not interjecting himself, and this country, more full-square into the ongoing tumult? What a gift the Supreme Leader (yes Mr. Krauthammer, that is his title), to the Basij, to other reactionary elements, were Obama to proclaim that Moussavi was America’s candidate, and that we are firmly pitching our tent alongside his (make no mistake, despite attempting to elide this, this is what some of the neo-cons, at least those who purport to give a damn about the Iranian people—unlike the Ahmadi-Nejad cheer-leaders preferring a simple narrative to get to ‘bombs away’ asap—are essentially advocating). How much more quickly and easily would Moussavi and Co. be tarred foreign agents, with a possibly more gruesome crackdown by emboldened reactionaries likely resulting!

Apart from the neo-cons, there are more refined, sensitive voices like George Packer and the aforementioned Roger Cohen who are, and not to pigeon-hole, commenting arguably from something more of a ‘liberal hawk’ vantage point. Mr. Cohen writes:

A man holds his mobile phone up to me: footage of a man with his head blown off last Monday. A man, 28, whispers: “The government will use more violence, but some of us have to make the sacrifice.”

Another whisper: “Where are you from?” When I say the United States, he says: “Please give our regards to freedom.”

Which brings me to President Barack Obama, who said in his inaugural speech: “Those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

Seldom was a fist more clenched than in the ramming-through of this election result. Deceit and the attempted silencing of dissent are now Iran’s everyday currency. In this city of whispers one of the whispers now is: Where is Obama?

The president has been right to tread carefully, given poisonous American-Iranian history, but has erred on the side of caution. He sounds like a man rehearsing prepared lines rather than the leader of the free world. A stronger condemnation of the violence and repression is needed, despite Khamenei’s warnings. Obama should also rectify his erroneous equating, from the U.S. national security perspective, of Ahmadinejad and Moussavi.

Ahmadinejad is Iran’s Mr. Nuclear. He has rapidly advanced the program and, through preaching in every village mosque, successfully likened it to the nationalization of the oil industry as an assertion of Iranian nationalism. By contrast, Moussavi has not abjured the program, but has attacked Ahmadinejad’s “adventurist” and “delusional” foreign policy. These are essential distinctions.

Obama should think hard about whether this ballot-box putsch is not precisely about giving Ahmadinejad and his military-industrial coterie four more years to usher Iran at least to virtual nuclear-power status. He should also think hard about the differences in character: Ahmadinejad is volatile and headstrong, the interlocutor from hell, while Moussavi is steady and measured.

Shrugging away these distinctions like a dispassionate professor at a time when people are dying in the streets of Iran is no way to honor this phrase in his Inaugural Address: “Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”

I admire Mr. Cohen and I can only imagine how one’s heart must stir reporting from the ground in Teheran these past weeks. But I must dissent from this caricature-like portrayal of an almost hapless, Adlai Stevenson like Obama speaking ineffective, academic-sounding sweet nothings from the sidelines. Nor was I as outraged by Obama mentioning that Moussavi’s policies—particularly on aspects of international policy to include the nuclear dossier—might not be hugely different than Ahmadi-Nejad's. Mr. Cohen can describe Ahmadi-Nejad as “Mr. Nuclear”, but Mr. Moussavi was essentially present at the creation of that program, and will not simply agree to junk Iran’s nuclear program, far from it. Indeed, he would arguably find it harder to make significant concessions here than Ahmadi-Nejad, with many hard-line clerics and others badgering him for any concessions from his right. And at the end of day, unless we are literally living a revolution as I write this that will unseat the Supreme Leader himself, let us recall he is ultimately the man who makes decisions on matters of maximal import like the nuclear issue. All this said, of course I would prefer Moussavi in power, the atmospherics surrounding the substance of the negotiations would improve, and this is not negligible. And to have an end to the noxious Holocaust questioning by Ahmadi-Nejad would certainly be very welcome. Not least, the people in Iran would have renewed hope for their future on myriad levels regarding the domestic policy front. But again, to side too openly with Moussavi is only to help the more reactionary elements!

Last, in comments to my own earlier post on Iran, there is a commenter who advocates more action, but more shrewdly, more here from a realist posture. This is perhaps the most compelling commentary I’ve seen advocating for a more proactive U.S. stance (though ultimately I remain unconvinced):

The Obama administration may not be able to prevent any of this. What it can do is take advantage of the political problems the Iranian regime has brought on itself. This doesn't just mean deploring violence and expressing admiration for large peaceful demonstrations. It should also mean pointing out the things that helped make undermine Ahmedinejad domestic popularity -- for example, his incompetence in managing economic policy -- and which America had nothing to do with. It should mean noting the divisions among senior Iranian clerics, some of whom were major figures in the revolution and who have called the election results illegitimate. It should above all mean depicting Iran's ruling powers as the people seeking trouble inside Iran and out. A month ago this would have been impossible. Right now it's imperative. There is some risk in the current situation for the United States, but there is more opportunity. A regime hostile to this country has put the ball on the ground; it's fine to look around long enough to figure out where the ball is, but the Obama administration needs to pick the damned thing up.

But I ask this commenter, what will our highlighting “divisions among senior Iranian clerics” do for the protestors on the ground, and the larger reform movement? Or even remonstrating Ahmadi-Nejad for having an incompetent economic policy (we here in the U.S. are running a spectacular one, of course!). And what of this commenter’s contention that: “(i)t should above all mean depicting Iran's ruling powers as the people seeking trouble inside Iran and out.” Haven’t we been doing this, already, for years and years, indeed, a score and half? And what a wondrous policy it has been, highly effective too! So I’m happy to “figure out where the ball is”, and “pick the damned thing up”, but in what specific manner, and to what specific ends?

At the end of the day there are issues of major national import, to include the Arab-Israeli peace process (see Hamas/Hezbollah), the nuclear issue, Iraq, Afghanistan, and more, that we need to discuss with the Islamic Republic of Iran. I ask you, can we afford to put aside any dialogue for another four long years? If Ahmadi-Nejad prevails, and we engage in a a strong, sustained condemnation of this regime, won’t we risk essentially closing the door to any discussions, and thereafter, essentially being on a war-footing? Is this good for us? For the Iranian people? For the region? The world? True, the carnage could reach such proportion we conclude a major suspension of possible talks is in order. As of this hour, we are all taking in the already grotesque, and possibly growing carnage in Iran. We are deeply repulsed and saddened, but we must exert caution admist these horrific events.

Meantime, some Europeans, notably the French perhaps most stridently so far, are screaming from the roof-tops about the election (which, hate to say and still at this late hour, none of us, I don't think, know for absolutely sure was rigged, or if so, to what extent), but as Philip Stephens points out in the FT, the Europeans are of course chomping at the bit in “inverse proportion to their willingness to act”, given the ultimate fecklessness we are drearily accustomed to when it comes to EU foreign policy, despite the frequent, merrily entertaining show-boating. Congress too is in a brewing tizzy, passing resolutions as a matter of great urgency (was it Molly Ivins who once quipped she could always tell when the Texas legislature was in session because every village in the state reported its idiot missing?). None of this hapless jaw-boning is surprising, of course, but it's worth noting only to point out none of it is helping the protestors on the ground any, and could yet come to hurt them.

No matter. As the blood flows in the streets of Teheran, the pressure will continue to build on the Obama Administration to do something more. Make no mistake, if a Tiananmen style crackdown ensues, we must condemn it, and loudly. We must reappraise the timing and manner of going forward negotiations. Iran policy will need to be re-calibrated on multiple fronts. And I will be even less hopeful for any going forward diplomatic successes, with an increasingly sclerotic, repressive, insecure regime hanging on now well beyond its time. But we should not be, in a fit of ennobled but deeply misguided passion, engaging in actions like having President Obama directly contact Moussavi, or delivering a taped message to the Iranian people, and so on. For these actions will be turned on the backs of the people like the young woman massacred in cold blood today, and in short order. While those here advocating something be done might feel morally superior as they spout such prescriptions from the comforts of far-away New York and Washington, the greater blood likely to be spilled should such policy routes be followed will be on their conscience, not those of us counseling against such shallow recklessness masquerading as plausible foreign policy.

Last, to answer this tortured woman’s hauntingly beautiful query which is the subject line of this post, ‘where is this place that we are only screaming to the world with our silence’? It is, to be sure, a horrible place tonight, but let her and us seek some solace in knowing that the behavior of the ruling Mullahs today will ultimately likely help precipitate the death of this regime, if not immediately, with the passage of some time. And, ironic and hard to accept during this emotional time as it may be, we will hasten that time likely by doing less, rather than more. Again, an edict to keep in mind here: first, do no harm. The President, I believe, understands this. Hopefully more of his fairer critics will too in the coming days, which will be highly charged ones, I know.

MORE: My quick takes on Obama's statement here.

Before turning to a brief analysis of some possible scenarios in Iran going forward, let us begin by acknowledging none of us (really, it is true!) can genuinely know what exactly is happening in Iran now several days into this remarkable crisis. Iranian politics have always been tremendously opaque, and the situation unfolding now, despite so evocative, hugely moving scenes we are all witnessing through the vistas of blogs, YouTube, and Twitter (indefatigably being collated with unparalleled passion, at least in the U.S. blogosphere, by Andrew Sullivan), is no exception. No one can yet say definitively, for instance, that Ahmadi-Nejad didn’t win the election, even comfortably. This is not to say he might not have won by a much smaller margin, but regardless we cannot know with certitude as of this writing. On the other hand, it is possible that Mir Hossein Mousavi took this election by a mammoth land-slide, and this was the most brazen electoral theft and effective coup d’etat we have yet to witness in the new millennium. Again, we cannot know with unimpeachable definitiveness either way or whether even it was more an outcome somewhere in between, as is likelier.

Still, we can strive for some educated analyses and/or guesses, despite some of our strong suspicions arising only from what is more by way of circumstantial evidence, at this stage, than concrete determinative fare. The fact, for instance, that Mr. Mousavi is of Azeri background does render his relatively weak performance in certain Azeri areas of Iran suspect (if not a slam-dunk case of foul play, as has been pointed out not unfairly here, as Ahmadi-Nejad speaks Azeri quite well, has served on behalf of some of these provinces, and has proven a skilled campaigner with this population segment on occasion). Ditto some of the strong Ahmadi-Nejad polling numbers in the larger, urban centers raise suspicion. Analysts like Juan Cole, among others, have made reasonably strong cases here, to include debunking some the related notion of some massive schism as between North versus South Teheran, say, with Karim Sadjadpour making similar points. And yet, as credible and recent polling data showcase, Ahmadi-Nejad has, like it or not, continued to enjoy strong support among large swaths of the Iranian polity, though here too, Gary Sick makes the very fair point the poll in question was taken somewhat in advance of the purported Mousavian Green Wave (or was it a “surge”, that word again?). Then there is as well the sense that much of Iran’s youth would be far less inclined to vote for Ahmadi-Nejad, but here again, the record is mixed as this op-ed (related to above linked poll) discusses.

My point? Not only are Iranian politics notoriously byzantine, but parsing these electoral tea-leaves is no simple matter. All the above being said, however, my gut and heart and yes, even head, tell me this election, if not stolen, was a whole lot closer than the regime tried to have interested parties believe, at minimum (though I must confess sometimes I think Ahmadi-Nejad might have, only just, eked out a slight victory, though the ostensible gross rigging should render any such victory, had it even occurred, null and void, at least in any equitable system). And while Iranian elections have always been subject to such machinations, there was something here that smelled too brazen and over-the-top, not only to us here in the arm-chair classes sitting in far-away Manhattan and Georgetown, but much more important, to many thousands if not millions on the ground itself, living daily this tumult, contributing apparently to a quite persuasive feeling among many on the street that the regime was treating them like credulous, half-asleep ‘sheep’.

Why was this handled so ham-handedly, one wonders? While speculative, this is perhaps because some of the more ultra-conservative key Governmental interests were possibly seeing in the late-breaking electoral momentum a material and rapid up-tick in Mousavi’s support, and not least given the seeming ‘color revolution’ undertones (or counter-revolutionary, I guess), through the resultant over-reaction, gamed the election far too crudely (one senses the street protests would have been less massive and protracted, after all, the worst such disturbances in Iran since the 1979 Revolution itself, had the more typical Persian penchant for subtler action been taken, via say Ahmadi-Nejad only the victor by a thin margin, even if fraud were suspected, rather than this far cruder spectacle that seems for well too many to have appeared a grossly large-scale, overly blunt, and particularly galling gaming of the results).

Beyond this, one can’t help feeling that, mostly perhaps as a result of the sheer demographics of the mushrooming youth quotient in Iran, there is increasing fatigue with the now 30 year old Islamic Revolution, so that something profound has changed in the country. Put colloquially, there appears to be, certainly in large swaths of towns like Teheran, Isfahan and Shiraz, a collective shriek emanating: "enough, basta, no more”! Indeed, one senses real fear among some harder-right quarters of the regime, despite the Supreme Leader’s brave face on ‘divine victory’ and Ahmadi-Nejad’s smug (but still somewhat nervous) body language of late. Indeed, it was very revealing to witness the Supreme Leader’s abrupt volte-face with the recount ordered (albeit only a partial one) by the Guardian Council, if of course we can be far less sure of how transparent such a soi disant recount will prove. In short, we are sensing here an increasingly sclerotic regime, growing clumsy in this new age of Twitter and Facebook, being forced to back-track some after what was likely a gross over-reach born of these growing insecurities.

What of the road ahead? Very likely this recount is just a ploy for time, with elements in the regime hoping the streets quiet after the immediacy of the purported mass fraud fades. We know already they will begin complaining of “foreign” elements intruding on the election, the better to unleash false bogey-men and help fan the flames for a greater clamp-down (this despite the Obama Administration’s quite expert balancing act so far—imagine Sarah Palin weighing in on Meet the Press!--albeit I am not sure I would have personally had State Department officials, even junior ones, reaching out to Twitter and asking them to push back a regularly scheduled maintenance, as while apparently a routine, not hugely controversial intervention, it could nonetheless become fodder for propagandists in Teheran, but perhaps I am making too much of this). Also, overly strong allegations by too many international powers that electoral modalities were corrupt (at least without better proof) will serve to render more defensive a regime already quite insecure, which in turn could lead to much more bloodshed if a wider crackdown is ordered, so again, I would caution mostly silence be our watchword as events play out here (absent some Tiananmen scenario in Teheran, at which time all bets are off and we must be very clear in our denunciations, though alas, perhaps not wholly cut off the prospects of a re-positioned negotiation track on issues critical to our national security sometime in the future), as this is a matter in the main for the Iranian polity to sort out, not us here, despite the so justifiable passion these profound events cause many of us witnessing important, and often inspiring, history.

While we will all doubtless monitor these twists and turns in the coming days and weeks (other possible scenarios include a power-sharing arrangement coming out of a recount, with Ahmadi-Nejad and Mousavi sharing key portfolios, or far less likely, a huge retreat by the regime handing the election, on further reflection--or recount, so to speak--to Mousavi), one thing appears certain, there is a confluence of new elements in Iranian society (not only youth and students, but some in clerical, labor and security circles) that do not necessarily owe any profound allegiance to Ayatollah Khamenei, so that one espies something of a generational struggle underway, with an acute desire for greater change gaining strength among many (to be sure current players like Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, reportedly caucusing with some key clerical actors possibly minded to be anti-Ahmadi-Nejad, or nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, so far evidently continuing to signal fealty to Khamenei, remain key actors in all this, meaning veterans on the scene are certainly playing their roles too).

And while Mousavi would toe the nuclear line pretty much every bit as hard as has and would still Ahmadi-Nejad (let us not forget this amidst all the dramatic events), on wide-ranging domestic policies, and at least the atmospherics surrounding Iran's international diplomacy, a material change would result, though any dialogue w/ the U.S. would remain very hard slogging. Regardless, none of us have a crystal-ball, and cannot know yet how these events will unfold, whether a dramatic dimunition in some fashion of Ahmadi-Nejad's power (and thus Khamenei's, despite whatever face-saving measures would be employed), or more depressing, a return to some variant of the status quo ante.

Still, something has changed, permanently, and it appears the days of the Islamic Revolution, at least in its current increasingly outdated, reactionary form, might well be numbered, with Mousavi and the social forces he’s unleashed something of a Thermidorian reaction, against the excesses of Ahmadi-Nejad’s overly aggressive international stances which have caused significant isolation, crude populist policies that have proven, in the main, economically self-defeating, and increasingly belligerent and dismissive domestic postures, causing ever growing resentments to fester and now erupt. To allow this positive process to take further root, my strong instinct again to stress is that we resist very much here in the U.S. cheerleading sharper epingles being aimed at the Supreme Leader from President Obama’s bully pulpit (for make no mistake, criticism of the handling of election is direct criticism of him), lest this back-fire on us, or worse, the people bravely protesting on the streets.

Last, and I hope related so as not to be tangential, just a few words on the raging debate in the blogosphere. I have seen friends and/or writers with whom I very often agree, notably Andrew Sullivan and George Packer, deride Flynt Leverett (and his wife Hillary Mann, whom full disclosure I am acquainted with) as “Ahamadinejad’s useful idiot” (Andrew), or accusing that their widely read op-ed is rife with “perverse interpretations, narrow legalisms, and ill-informed suppositions” (George). Perhaps the unfortunately shallow, cheaply provocative title of their op-ed helped lead to such broad-sides "Ahmadinejad won. Get over it", but I must say, I find it highly unfair to compare the Leveretts' in the same breath as, say, the execrable Marty Peretz, as George seems to here. The true villains, when it comes to Western bloviators, are those only too happy to see Ahmadi-Nejad win as it keeps the ‘narrative’ dumbed-down for facilitating the objectives of the ‘bomb Iran’ crowd, and they are quite a few of them, or somewhat related, assorted merry ignorants chastising Obama for having bungled his “3 A.M. moment”, not only getting the advisable policy prescription so deathly wrong, but also, to boot, resurrecting a particularly moronic portion of the recent campaign, which one might have hoped would have better been relegated to the dust-bin.