Several more positive steps have recently been made in support of the elections. First, the Americans have decided to put 12,000 more troops in until after the election (at least). Second, Allawi is on another campaign to get support for the election. This time he is in Jordan. Jordan now says it backs the early elections. In Jordan he is meeting with many Sunni leaders, party and otherwise. These include some of the Sunni tribal leaders with whom he has had past relationships. They evidently find it more comfortable in Jordan these days.

There have been some interesting new ideas about how the elections might be carried out in stages, so-called "rolling elections". After the first elections in the safer areas, security forces would be brought in for short periods in one area after another until people had had a reasonable chance to vote everywhere. While people elected in the first round would meet before the completion of the process, it is thought that they might agree to dealing with non-binding measures that could easily be changed when they meet after the completion of the process.

Many academics continue to believe that we have lost already in Iraq, partly because of the record there and partly because of the general proposition that insurgencies like this do not fail. This is a respectable argument. However, my judgement is that this election will take place regardless. If it does get a reasonable turnout most places, or is repaired some way, then we will be faced with a new situation \emdash a government now considered legitimate by more than 50% of Iraqis will be the enemy of the insurgents. Clearly, many cases in the past, such as Sri Lanka, suggest this is not the end of the story, but it should certainly change the parameters.

The "Fride" research organization in Madrid has provided a useful rundown on the elections in Afghanistan, recent and future. In the presidential election, the fact of significant opposition was important, as was the estimated 70% participation. The campaigning was short and not very meaningful, with most attention being given to trying to obtain concessions from Karzai as a price for withdrawal. Still, some important regional personages opposed Karzai, and two or three overwhelming won in their local areas. The fact, however, that they were largely unknown outside their home territories gave a tremendous advantage to Karzai. The results showed good turnout countrywide, and for women it was higher than expected, except in a few extremely conservative southern areas. Karzai generally did especially well in urban areas. He also won Herat, a surprise (although throwing out Ismail Khan a few weeks ahead of the elections may have accounted for the difference between results here and in the areas won by the Uzbek and Hazara leaders). The Tajik leader Qanooni did not win any large areas, but won 95% in the Panjshir, the center of the resistance against both the Soviets and the Taliban.

Looking toward the elections later this year, the analysis points out that the irregularities in the election that were insignificant with Karzai's overwhelming victory, would not be insignificant in closer elections. 2005 elections will be for district councils, provincial councils, and the lower house of parliament. Since none of these institutions exist at present, carrying out such elections successfully presents quite a challenge. There is a real danger that the local militias of the warlords and captains of the drug trade will be able to capture too large a proportion of the positions for the health of the society. Karzai has shown himself adept at making deals with local powers. Let us hope he can change his approach to get beyond this point. Nevertheless, recent polls show a great deal of popular confidence in the system and the process. Let us hope that the international community can help them attain the brighter future that they expect.

Tuesday, the Times reported another CIA report from Baghdad, supposedly secret. (The leak proofing of the Agency does not seem to have helped. It judged that the security situation was bad and likely to get worse. The main impediments were the lagging ability of the Iraqi security forces and the inability of the government to get economic development going. It has evoked a rejoinder from the Ambassador who says we are doing much better than this estimate. But in military and intelligence circles there is a lot of support for the individual who composed it upon leaving his position in Baghdad. The American government continues on the surface to be upbeat about everything.

The latest news is that the effort of the Ayatollah Sistani to bring the different Shiite parties together for the election seems to be failing. A group of parties calling themselves the "Shiite Council have decided to break away from the United Iraqi Alliance that Sistani has sponsored. The disputes are over which parties get the higher positions on the election lists. Most of the people we have heard of before, including Chalabi and Muqtada al-Sadr are staying with the Alliance that is dominated by the Dawa and Sciri parties (the two older wings of the Shiite world in Iraq, the latter being a party considered dominated by Iranians. The Council's chief objection seems to be that there are too many foreigners or exiles in the Alliance list. Although many parties are in the Council, their makeup is unclear. They seem to be more nativist and antiforeign than the main stream, but this is just an impression. Postscript: The next day the report is that the parties have made up, and indeed the project of having one large list including nearly everyone is back on the burners. It is also reported that several Sunni parties are preparing their lists even after they had opposed going ahead with the January elections.

Kristof in today's op-ed piece takes aim at the Administration's campaign claim that it has the support of many countries in Iraq. Thirty countries have soldiers in Iraq now, although this number will be down to 27 by next month. Eight of our partners have less than one hundred soldiers involved. To get a feeling for what was going on, Kristof talked to the Estonians in the government and outside. He found that they do not intend to increase their force above the 55 they have there now. The major reason is that the population is very opposed to the war. They allow the mission only because they feel it is an insurance policy in case Russia threatens them again. Kristof's belief is that except for Blair's British support this is pretty much the case in the rest of the Coalition. They are just making a show in support of a cause they do not believe in. In fact, many Estonians think the Americans are as bad as the Russians, but better for them because further away.

Two members of the Defense Intelligence Agency have reported to their Agency, who forwarded the report to the Pentagon, that prisoner abuse has apparently continued long after Abu Ghraib was exposed. Last June they saw prisoners being brought into a detention center in Baghdad with burn marks on their backs and damage to their kidneys. They saw a prisoner being badly beaten up. When they complained to those in charge of the detention center, the DI officials were threatened by those in charge, their photographs confiscated, their car keys impounded, their email screened, and they were warned never to report the information. Reports have also surfaced that the FBI has severely criticized coercive techniques that continue to be used at Guantanamo Bay.

It appears to me that prisoner abuse, often including torture by any definition, has become so much a part of standard operating procedure in some American interrogation and detention facilities that it will take a major effort to change the picture. Abuse and cruelty has become an integral part of the working culture of those inflicting the punishment. If we do not go beyond the surface and attack this problem honestly soon, then America’s reputation will continue to take heavy blows, and unity within the country as well as our erstwhile alliances will be still further eroded.

Friedman’s Op-Ed in yesterday's Times offers an interesting hypothesis on the origin (or at least one origin) of the suicide bombers, of which there seems to be an endless supply in Iraq. He sees the problem beginning with the terrors of the Saddam regime, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and then the ten years of economic decline under Western sanctions in the 1990s. Iraq went from being the country with the most developed middle class in the region to a country of unemployed, without hope, a country from which the middle class and opportunity had essentially emigrated. The result was that when we attacked, we were faced with an already deeply humiliated and hopeless population, one who young people in their desperation had in many cases turned to extremist religious movements, either Shi'a or Sunni. He points out that unlike the situation in Palestine, these bombers commit suicide anonymously, indicating to him the extremity of their desperation. Our worst intelligence failure in his mind is the failure to understand this development in the minds of the people that we attacked. It suggests the complexity of understanding either friends or foes, a complexity that goes far beyond "understanding the culture" in the sense that this understanding is imparted in graduate schools.

So much of the world continues to be convulsed by struggles for independence, freedom and rights. We see these struggles as struggles for "democracy", but that is more often our spin than that of the people involved. Frequently, "good government" and "security" are higher priorities than we might expect. But in the realm of individual opportunity, of individual lives rather than nationalistic romance there is a calculus that runs the other way, toward entrance to wider world rather than encasement in small independencies.

Yesterday's paper offers democratic and independent Armenia as an example of a people that "got what it wanted" and yet the people today do not feel they have what they wanted. Independent Armenia drifts. Young people feel trapped in an unimportant place without prospects. Many, young and old, look back to a time when they belonged to the Soviet Union, and they could look forward as individuals to playing a much more positive role in Moscow than they can now. They even treasure the fact that they were educated in Russian and could contribute to that culture. Many people in small European countries have had similar feelings as they emerged into independence. But now with the new Europe developing, their hope is in a new nationality and culture that transcends the limits of their small states. At least the new Europe helps. But Armenia has no such out. It is geographically trapped next to Georgia, another small country in a similar position, and Azerbaijan with which Armenians have little in common aside from mutual antipathy.

One can imagine that these same problems are apparent, or will be apparent, to many Iraqi Kurds as they consider their options. Many Kurds have participated in the larger Iraq society. Indeed, even now the foreign minister of the Interim Government is a Kurd. Yet Kurds want their freedom, their independence. Perhaps the solution would be for all the Kurds to carve out a greater Kurdistan, but this is an unlikely and dangerous perhaps.

One thinks of the dilemma of Taiwan. The Taiwanese are divided between those who developed a different culture with the help of the Japanese occupation in the first half of the twentieth century and those more purely Chinese who came from the mainland. To some degree these two regional cultures have melted together. Still, today, with the more purely Taiwanese in the majority the country strives for a future that is both Chinese and not Chinese. No longer do they see Taiwan as "China", with its aspiration to reclaim all of China (much as the Armenians dream of a greater Armenia and the Kurds of a greater Kurdistan). But now this ruling group strives for a separate state, a new country, with a different dialect and a different connection to the world. Unlike Armenians, and more like the Iraqi Kurds, the Taiwanese independence movement has little support from the outer world and faces a looming danger of invasion and absorption. If the United States were as dedicated to self-determination in our day as Wilson was in his, we would actively champion the Taiwanese independence movement, and perhaps even Tibetan and Uighur independence movements. Yet today we are more wedded to our relations with the great and looming China, for the sake of what we used to call "the mighty dollar" (which rings a little hollow now).

Today's paper carries an Op-Ed by two experts on World War II's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) that was headed by William Donovan. Interested readers can find a somewhat fuller discussion on-line at this web site.

The main thrust of the argument is that intelligence was much more productive when it was run by a bunch of skilled amateurs who really had the goals of the effort in view, as contrasted with their personal advancement in a large bureaucratic organization. The OSS grew out of an effort by President Roosevelt to improve the foreign intelligence available to him at the beginning of World War II. Then, as now, intelligence was riven by many feuds among agencies, and none of them wanted to share their sources or power with upstarts. The FBI and the military service intelligence groups were the main culprits. Up to the end of the war, this new agency that was supposed to be handling intelligence gathering directly for the President was not granted access to information coming from the breaking of most Axis codes, it had no role in Latin America, and was largely frozen out of the Pacific Theatre of operations by the opposition of leading admirals. Nevertheless it persisted, and did good work developing working relations with the British. It also had a research and intelligence branch that recruited the best and the brightest from American universities, allowing the country to have a much better idea of the enemies they were facing. The OSS also developed an action unit that conducted a wide variety of secret operations behind enemy lines. At the end of the war, Truman was quick to dissolve OSS. Donovan had a poor reputation as an administrator, hated bureaucracy, and was personally disliked by Truman. Since Donovan relied so heavily on the Ivy League for his staff, it is possible that there was a cultural gap here as well (which continues today between the Midwest and Southwest and New England).

But what seems most useful today in thinking about how intelligence should be restructured goes back to the thirties when Roosevelt began to use Donovan as a personal "reporter" on what was going on in the world. He sent him to England to see how resilient they might be, and so forth. The reports back were directly to him. It seems to me that in the highly bureaucratized Washington of today with everyone with their own personal as well as ideological and national agendas, this model might be useful as a supplement. If a President could find a group of five or so persons of different political persuasions who would work silently for him throughout the world as his eyes and ears and personal advisors, he would be in a much improved position to make informed decisions. These advisors should be essentially nameless. They should either be beyond retirement age or have other professions they could easily go back to. One of their tasks should be to find out what people in the existing intelligence communities in this country and elsewhere "really think". They should be able to move comfortably through a variety of cultures and political systems, reporting back what they think is going on or likely to go on. They should be able to have informed opinions on the capabilities of action agencies or military services that might be enlisted in performing needed secret or nonsecret operations.

The Shi'a coalition is back together apparently. Their new list, which includes Kurds and a few Sunnis, is referred to as "The Alliance". It has now ranked its list. Number 1 is al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI, the mainline organization with Iranian connections — although it denies any such connection. Number 7 is Shahristani, a spokesman for Ayatollah Sistani. Chalabi is Number 10, a remarkable transformation for an exile (since 1958) who was the darling of the Pentagon before the war, then condemned, and later accused by the Interim government of crimes. Some Al-Sadr candidates are also in the top 25 positions. One can assume that Dawa leaders make up many of the others in this elite group. It is assumed that much of the government that will be established after the election will be made up of persons in the top 25.

Dr. Sharistani, the spokesman for the new Alliance at yesterday's press conference, showed the group's moderation by discussing for the first time in these circles the difficulty of holding an election in Sunni areas with violence at a high level. Suggestions are being made that perhaps there could be a rolling election in which the election in certain areas would be delayed while security forces are brought in temporarily. Another sign of moderation was the presence of Sunni Arabs and Kurds on the platform as the Alliance was announced. One of the seven persons on the platform was Fawaz al Jarba, who is a former Iraqi army major, a Sunni Arab, and leader of the Shamar tribe, one of the largest in Iraq.

Two experts in the American security community, apparently with Iranian backgrounds, offer in today's Times an appraisal of the growing role of the Revolutionary Guards in the Iranian power structure. (Ironically, the Revolutionary Guards seem to have developed in parallel with the Republican Guards of Saddam Hussein. They serve much the same purpose: an elite military force with special responsibility for preserving the regime in power — in this case the ruling clergy of Iran.) Over the last fifteen years the Guards have gradually increased in number and equipment, and now have even their own navy. Making up about a third of the numbers of the regular army, they appear to be the most formidable force in the country. The Guards control the development of the missile programs and it is thought that the Guards are the ones guiding the development of nuclear weapons and opposing anything that would restrict this development. Their political power has been growing in tandem. Former members make up a third of the parliament elected this year. One of their leaders may run for President in the up-coming May election. And they oppose further development of the regular army. And like many armies in the less developed world, they have considerable business interests.

The conclusion of the analysts is that there are real and potential fissures between the Guards and their one-time creators, the establishment clergy, as well as between the Guards and the other armed services. They advise the United States to develop a "nuanced policy" that exploit these and other potential rifts.

For the first few chapters I thought that Anonymous was just another self-important spook who wanted to tell the world how musch he knew and how wrong everyone else is. On, finishing the book I conclude that he is that, but that he is also much else. His thesis is wrong-headed in many respects, but it deserves being taken seriously.

A principal contention is that we are in a war with the Islamic world led by Ussama Bin Ladin. We need to recognize that this is a war and fight it with no holds barred. To Scheuer, this means a Sherman to the sea approach. We failed in Afghanistan evidently because we did not kill enough Afghanis. Only if we are absolutely unconcerned with the death of Americans and Muslims will we succeed in this bitter fight. To do otherwise, is to succumb to the weakneed pacifistic, internationalist lobby that enervates the country. This is a position that we must all understand, but reject. It is also a position many Americans hold, and that the interrogators that flaut the Geneva Conventions clearly hold.

He also argues that Bin Ladin should not thought of as a terrorist. He is a military and spiritual leader who has made clear his goals. he is not out to destroy our freedoms. he couldn’t care less. He made a consistent list of demands, including especially get out of the Middle East and stop supporting Israel as well as the non-Islamic tyrants that rule over Muslims in the area. He believes that Ussama is right that we have carried out an anti-slamic policy in the region and that we have been foolish to continue in this direction. But he says, we are a democracy, we can decide what policies our leaders folly in the area. Therefore, we are as a people behind the policies that both bin Ladin and Scheuer find abhorrent. In a sense, in his eyes, he is justified in attacking the twin towers, just as we would be justified in bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age (assuming it was not there already). This a position that I can agree with to a limited degree: our policies are a major case of what bin Ladin is attacking. In today’s news, for example, a new tape has bin Ladin calling for attacks on the Saudi leaders and the destruction of the oil fields in Saudi Arabia.

Where Anonymous goes most seriously wrong in where he believes himself to be most knowledgable: his understanding of Islam. He sees us loosing the war with Islam in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact he sees Iraq as the greatest of gifts to bin Ladin. For it reinforces the idea that the “Crusaders” are out to destroy Islam. He notes that Bin Ladin refer continually to the responsibility of every Muslim to fight for God against the oppressor. He notes that Muslims cannot accept or understand the idea of a separation of the tate and church because in Islam they are the same. This is a correct reading of Islamic texts, but a misreading of history. In the year and a half I spent studying Islam I came to realize the great gulf between the theoretical Islamic world and the real Islamic world. It is commonly supposed that the Ayatollah Khomeini was reestablishing a true Islamic state with his concept of the “Faqih” as the true ruler of the ‘Umma. However, what is remarkable in Islam is that Khomeini had almost no historical precedent. The mixed group of secular strong men, princes, and military leaders ruling Islamic countries today is much closer to the historical record of Islam. Islamic theorists have always reiled against the people in power as unislamic and they have had almost no effect. Regardless of how bloody minded the Muslim extremists are, and they also have had historical precendents such as the Assassins of the Middle Ages, they have seldom been able to win over the general population -- and it is quite likely they will fail again. For a fuller discussion of Scheuer’s book see the accompanying review.

One of the primary problems afflicting "our side" in Iraq is the difficulty we have in controlling the movement of insurgents. Unlike insurgents of the past, most of this movement is by car or light truck. One example of the seriousness of the problem is the report that the insurgents regularly pay Iraqis for making attacks with money that is brought in regularly from Syria (from which much of the war is directed). Another example is the report of two very destructive suicide vehicle attacks in Najaf and Karbala yesterday. The assumption seems to be that the vehicles involved came from the southern edge of the "Sunni Triangle". Without knowing what measures are in place or planned to control such movement, let me make a suggestion.

We control the air, and with few trees in Iraq and little cloud cover, we could regularly and effectively see from the air every vehicle in Iraq, stationary or in movement. The proposal is to require that every vehicle in Iraq be required to be (1) registered and (2) have on its roof in paint that can be seen at night the registration number. After a month period during which all vehicles would have to be registered and emblazoned with their registration numbers, air reconnaissance could start rapidly building a data base containing the location of every vehicle in the country. Once this database is established, planes patrolling over the country, and especially along the more important ways in from Syria and above the road systems of the "Sunni Triangle" could establish the location of every vehicle, updating this regularly whenever movement is noted. It should be possible to gin up a computer program to distinguish standard movements from suspicious, reporting the latter down to units on the ground that could then check suspected vehicles. The use of false identification could be reduced by continuous monitoring that was able to note any vehicles that had unrecorded numbers or duplicate numbers. Vehicles operating not in accord with the law would be subject to impoundment.

Critics might raise many objections. The suggestion is certainly in need of many refinements, especially those that experience would suggest. In any event, the system would obviously be perfected over time.

Sunday's Times gave a good summary of what might be described as the "order of battle" for the insurgents. The current estimate is that there are 11,000 to 20,000 insurgents. Of these 2200 to 3300 are hard core supporters of Saddam and the Baath Party. Many of the leaders are in Syria. They are assisted by 6100 to 10,000 part-time supporters. These are often paid on a per-job basis for their attacks. Their goal is a strong government recreating the authoritarian, Sunni-Arab, Baathists past. The Islamic extremists are mostly Salafists, persons with views similar to the Wahhabi, but not now identified with them. Perhaps 700 insurgents are aligned with al-Qaida and al-Zarqawi, mostly in the Mosul area. One of the main leaders here is Muhammad Sharkawa, formerly a member of Ansar. Perhaps 2000 other extremists or Jihadists operate separately from this structure. The Islamic extremists hope to ensure a weak government that will eventually be replaced by a Taliban type regime. American also estimate that there are 2900 in al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, mostly in Baghdad. It seems doubtful that these should be seen as part of the insurgency now.

Today's paper reported a terrible day yesterday, with more than 60 killed. The targets were ordinary Shi'a in Karbala and Najaf and election officials in Baghdad. It seems clear that the major focus has shifted to killing Shi'a, thereby kindling a sectarian war that they are sure they can win, and killing Iraqis connected with the election effort. An encouraging sign is the fact that the going price for getting a person to fire a grenade at Americans has gone up from $50 to $200. But in all these figures, what one does not get is where the suicide bombers are recruited. This seems now to be the main tool of the insurgents, a tool used mostly against Iraqis. The insurgent decisions to concentrate on Iraqis may have a short-term pay off, but in the longer term it would seem bound to reduce sympathy for their cause.

Th reader may also be interested in looking at the American forces order of battle. It is interesting to reflect that the Coalition forces taken together, and assisted by the newly trained and sometimes feckless Iraqi government forces add up to well over 200,000. Given the stardard 1:10 ratio said to be required when fighting a guerrilla war, this should be an adequate force if deployed intelligently.

As I have referenced several times, Professor Juan Cole at Michigan offers perhaps the most informed and useful blog on the Iraq war from an academic viewpoint. He knows Iraq well, particularly the history of its Shi'a community.

It is encouraging to find that his most recent posts seem to have a different tone from those earlier in the year. He is more friendly and supportive of the American effort than he has been in the past. Reading on, this seems to reflect the decision by the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi Shiites to support the electoral process. He is scathing in his denunciation of the statement by Khomenei of Iran that the Americans and the Israelis were behind the attacks in Najaf and Kerbala. He points out once again that the Iraqi Shiites are uninterested in such statements. They are Iraqis and do not take kindly to outside Iranian interference. It is his thought that the insurgency has all along been primarily a Baathist effort, and that the attacks in the holy cities should also be ascribed to the Baathists. These attacks were, incidentally, also denounced by the leading Sunni clerics association.

Cole remains bothered that there is too much violence for the elections to be held in January. If large numbers of Sunni Arabs voters are kept away from the polls, this will make any constitution that came out of the process suspect in the eyes of many. However, unlike the New York Times which in its recent editorial called again for a postponement in view of our evident inability to control the violence, Cole believes this has to be balanced against the strong support of the Kurds and Shiites for having the elections as soon as possible. As he says, "the U.S. has to make the Shi'a community happy". The growing closeness of the U.S. and the Shi'a is suggested by the following note: "The U.S. has been fighting Sunni Arab guerrillas in Babil province to stop their attacks on Shiite locals and pilgrims, an action warmly supported by Iraqi vice president Ibrahim Jaafari and other Shiite leaders."

Cole repeats a discussion with the Iraqi education ministry. Apparently the situation has improved quite a bit. Many Baathists who were formerly excluded from teaching are now back teaching again while a number of non-Baathists who excluded from teaching by the Baathists under Saddam are also now teaching. Many schools have been repaired and new ones are being built. There are 6 million students and 370,000 teachers, giving an overall ratio of 19/1, although some schools are still in want of teachers.

In the international relations area, the Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers are warning Iraq against the possibility of a sectarian state, while Iran has closed its borders because it thinks Iraq is too dangerous for pilgrims!

Do not misunderstand. Cole is still very down on the war, how it has been initiated, and how it is being carried on (he even has a note on where one can contribute clothing for our soldiers in Iraq). He points out the dangers. The chief one being that the Shiite leaders will not be able to continue to restrain their followers from striking back at the Sunni Arabs, thus inviting a more thorough explosion. He also points out the danger that Saudi Arabia will be hit with more attacks by al-Qaida, particularly of its oil lines. This may become particularly serious when a generation of battle-hardened Jihadists return from Iraq if and when things quiet down there.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies in one of its latest releases characterizes recent American steps, such as the invasion of Iraq, as well as its one-sided Middle Eastern policy more generally, as helping the al-Qaida recruitment (supporting the thesis of Scheuer recently discussed in this blog). Iraq may well be seen in retrospect to have been a valuable proving ground for Jihadists if they later fan out over the world in pursuit of globalist objectives. However, the report also points out that the ideology and focus of al-Qaida appears to be in flux. They have some positives, but also negatives. They are dispersed more than they were and seem to be less under the direction of the center. Many of the groups that work with al-Qaida, for example in Southeast Asia, have reason to work with it tactically, but they do not have the global goals of the parent organization. This has two implications. First, such groups can be dealt with on a bargaining basis. Second, they are unlikely to be interested in using weapons of mass destruction.

The report believes that efforts against al-Qaida have reduced its effectiveness in the short run. However, in the longer run it sees the need for a change in U.S. policies that will make it less possible for al-Qaida to picture the West as an eternal enemy of Islam (again Scheuer's thesis). This needed change is referred to as moving toward more emphasis on "soft power" rather than "hard" (this is not an argument Scheuer would make).

On a sober-sided talk show the other day, a retired military officer was interviewed on the subject of how long we would be in Iraq. His answer was that it would be ten or fifteen years before our soldiers could leave. The argument was that the violence was simply not going down and the Iraqis we were training showed no signs of being able to pick up the slack. This argument has three possible bases.

(1) A lack of understanding of the war. The authority has not yet realized the extent to which the insurgency in Iraq is a response to the presence of foreign troops as much as to any other factor. He also has no concept of the extent to which the American population is tired of the war and is bound to grow increasingly tired if the promised elections lead to no change in our commitment.

(2) A confusion of the war in Iraq with the war against al-Qaida. The authority believes firmly that what we are fighting is primarily a Islamic Jihadist movement aimed at the United States. This being the case Iraq is just as good a place to engage the enemy as any other.

(3) Imperialist dreams. The authority is really entranced by the idea that we need to establish at least a semi-permanent base in the Middle East from which we can coerce the entire area while we convert the area through force and persuasion the area to democracy.

The fact is we are fighting a well financed Iraqi nationalist and Sunni Arab insurgency. This being the case, one of the primarily preconditions for ending the insurgency is the withdrawal of American forces. This may not end the insurgency, but without it, there is no way to end it. Accepting this analysis, once the Americans leave, the Kurds and Shi’as will have to work out a modus vivendi with these Baath forces or continue an endless fight against them. The eventual answer may be a de facto or de jure splitting up of the country, Yugoslavia style. In either case, we should not see preventing this or solving these relationships as our problem. (Many in the world may say “You broke it, you fix it”. But I do not think most Iraqis will feel this way. They want once again to be the decisive force in their country.) These are Iraqi problems and we should encourage them, possibly with international assistance, to solve them.

The United States will never recapture its role as the last resort for the preservation of world peace as long as it is identified with Iraq and our forces are tied down there. The American people are only prepared to do so much. And with a commitment anything like that we have today in Iraq, we are neither able to defend adequately our interests nor world interests in the many hot spots that fizz and bubble around the world.

If we have not already begun the process, we should begin talks with the political leaders of Iraq (and this includes the Ayatollah Sistani in spite of his disclaimers) about a time table for our orderly withdrawal. We should complete the training of Iraqi forces now in the pipeline and improve the performance of forces already “trained”, but then let them take over as we withdraw. The new parliament will write a constitution. By the time that is completed toward the end of 2005, we should announce victory and retire.

Last night Zbigniew Brezezinski, one of my personal heroes, was interviewed on the Lehrer show as to what he thought was going to happen in Iraq. Unfortunately, he seemed to have it all wrong. First, he thought that there was little chance that a successful election could be held under the circumstances. Second, he thought that the system that emerged if the process went forward would be a theocracy that would be a long way from being a democracy. Walter Russell Mead, another foreign policy expert that sat with him demurred. He said, rightly, that the situation was more hopeful and that it was unlikely that the Shiites would set up anything like what they had in Iran. The fact is that the doubters, the good guys that opposed the war, have allowed their opposition to get in the way of their judgment. The bloody mess is just that. But it does not mean that it is hopeless. It may well be that Iraqis have become so inured to killing over the last generation that their response to the daily toll in their country is not as overwhekming as it would be for more fortunate or pampered Americans. It certainly does not mean that we are fighting Islam in Iraq, in a version of Sam Huntington’s war of civilizations (a common belief of many pundits), nor that the bad guys will necessarily win. What it does mean is that a lot of blood is yet to be spilled.

Today’s paper has a fascinating piece on the reactions of minorities in northeast Syria to the chance for democracy in Iraq. Minorities in this case mean Armenians, Assyrian Christians, and Kurds. It even included repressed political minorities such as the communists (what an irony that they should be looking to us to bail them out). The reporter was amazed at the optimism of their leaders. What they saw was a chance for democracy not only in Iraq, but in Syria as well. They believed that events in Iraq had already started to weaken the controls they have been living under. (Remember that the other branch of the Baath party has been in control of Syria for more than a generation now.) The goals of these leaders are quite different. The Kurds are rejoicing in what they see as a chance for an autonomous Kurdistan. There has already been dancing in the streets for this goal (suppressed of course by the police). The Christian groups, on the other hand, see the possibility for a more democratic Syria in which they would have something more like equality than what they have had.

At this point, it is only a dream, a spark likely to be extinguished. But it does show that the ideological team behind Bush, with its dream of a democratic Middle East emerging from Iraq, is not as foolish as most regional and foreign policy experts here and abroad have believed. Of course, there is still a long way to go.

The juxtaposition of initiating an open-ended war without adequate international support in Iraq and the cutting of taxes while the deficit and trade balance were carrying the country toward a fiscal cliff led me about a year ago to recommend that we place a surcharge on the U.S. income tax. This would have the double effect of reducing our fiscal haemorrhaging while making all Americans feel a part of what was going on in the Middle East. To me there was an eerie sense that we were hiring the young to go off and risk their lives while most Americans went on “living it up”. The Indian Ocean Tsunami seems to me to have some of the same urgency about it. If we as a country are serious about helping the millions of people affected around the Indian Ocean, then we should be willing to act as a community, a community in which all contribute, to help those who need assistance in the short or long term. It would do the Americans good to have it announced that a surcharge would be placed on this year’s income tax for all Americans. All the money raised by this surcharge would be used to replace the money needed now to help the affected people. We need to have symbolic gestures like this to make us all realize we are one people united in serving not just our own pleasures but the greater world around us. The gesture might also improve our reputation as a people, especially if placing such special occasion surcharges on the income tax were to become a standard part of American tax policy.

Today’s Times brings back the discussion of the Kurdish independence movement in Iraq. It describes the three largely Kurdish provinces of Iraq’s northeast, governed by the Kurdish Regional Government, as to all intents and purposes an independent country. They have been independent in one way or another since 1991 and today are more unified and stronger than ever. Their security forces are the most effective non-coalition forces in the country. They have managed to preserve near total exemption from the violence in the rest of the country. Investment is pouring in, especially from overseas Kurds, but also from Turkey. The reporter said that he saw very few flags of Iraq but Kurdish flags were everywhere. It is a largely secular society with a booming economy. A new luxury hotel is going up in the capital, Erbil.

Kurdish leaders speak of the desire of the Kurds to remain in Iraq in a loose federal system. But one gets the impression that this is just the diplomatic discourse of leaders who know that the United States is unlikely to accept greater demands. The attitude and behavior of the people suggests they will accept little less than effective independence. Meanwhile, these same leaders are demanding that Kirkuk, an important city because of its surrounding oil fields, be turned over to them. They speak of the need to have an accepted right to the oil resources of the region, a right that the defense minister for the regional government says would allow them to triple the size of their forces (to 240,000!). At least 100,000 Arabs have been driven out of the Kirkuk area by the Kurds since the defeat of Saddam. This was simply payback for a Saddam expulsion of Kurds in the recent past. Kurds are reoccupying their old houses and lands. But it has generated a resettlement problem.

The flash point could come very soon. In the U.S.-initiated constitution that Iraq lives by now, the Kurds are guaranteed a right to veto any provisions they do not like (such as reducing their autonomy). But the Shiites have suggested that these rules cannot last beyond the January election. They have indicated they want a country at long last that they will rule and the Kurds must stay in it. The United States and other powers, near and far, have indicated there should be Kurdish autonomy, but this seems in the words of Condoleezza Rice and others to be more like the autonomy of California than what the Kurds have in mind.

But what do the Kurds have in mind? There is no example that I know of in the world that really fits their idea of autonomy. We could look at Albania and Montenegro in Yugoslavia/Serbia, but these hardly seem to be viable examples. A better example, ironically, might be Taiwan, a country that the world has decided to treat as part of China, but is able to maintain itself as an independent state in spite of that. What the Kurds, sheltered behind a seasoned and successful armed force of their own, and with enough money to maintain it, seem unlikely to accept is a country “occupied” by a largely Arab army answerable to Baghdad.

Ambassador Galbraith, a person who has worked with the Kurds independently and for the American government for years, and served as Ambassador to Croatia after it separated from Yugoslavia advises us here to support an essentially autonomous Kurdistan, covering it with the fig leaf of federalism. He argues that geographically separate and distinct peoples cannot be forced to live together in a unified state, a fact he says he found out in Yugoslavia. Yes, we all found it out. But where does that leave federalism? He appears in his heart to want Kurdish independence, but he believes the unwillingness of Turkey, Iran, and Turkey, all with large Kurdish minorities striving for autonomy, to accept true Kurdish independence makes the achievement of anything more than a very limited autonomy impossible. The long and bitter Kurdish struggle in Turkey had its roots in a communist movement, and has resulted in extreme violence on both sides. The Turkish army is naturally apprehensive about an independent Kurdistan. In Iran, the short-lived Kurdish Mahabad Republic after World War II was briefly supported by the USSR. Their leadership was essentially nationalists and tribal; their leaders were from the same family that rules in half of Iraq's Kurdistan today. There does not seem to be a strong nationalist movement in Iranian Kurdistan now, but the population is Sunni and is apparently quite opposed to Shi'a rule from Tehran. An independent Kurdistan in Iraq could be a spark that could blow apart the current regime in Iran.

Some parting thoughts. The outside world overwhelmingly accepts the idea that the Kurds should not be allowed to secede from Iraq. One small chink in the armor is an Australian Senator who argues for complete independence. It must also encourage the Kurds to find that Turkish companies have been more than willing to engage in the reconstruction of the country. On this front, the Kurdish leadership has been most accommodating, resisting any idea that they would help the struggle of the Kurds in Turkey for independence. On the other hand, there is a large Kurdish population in Mosul, a city now partially occupied by Kurdish forces but outside the area they normally claim, and perhaps a million Kurds continue to live in Baghdad. In any messy breakup of the country Kurds outside Kurdistan could suffer, or at least there could be large population exchanges.

My feeling is that the United States should think long and hard about supporting an independent homeland for the Kurds. We have supported the independence of Israel under much more doubtful circumstances, and we have come to feel that Israel is our only true ally in the region. Kurdistan and the Kurds, if we stay by them and do not abandon them again, could become another long-term ally in the region. Of course, we have our eye on the larger prize of a stable, pro-American, democratic Iraq. Maybe so. But in the pursuit of this dream, we should not lose site of the current reality of a secular Kurdistan that wants to be in our corner.

Today’s paper points again to the extreme difficulty of controlling opium production in Afghanistan. The country has now become the leading producer of opium in the world. Only three percent of its irrigated land actually produces opium, but return from this crop can be as much as thirty times that of wheat, the traditional crop. The results are what we have noted in many other hard drug producing countries, particularly in South America. In Colombia, drug production and the drug trade have made impossible the institutionalization of democracy and the “freeing” of the country as far as the majority of the rural people are concerned.

The drug trade in Afghanistan has produced hundreds if not thousands of instantly wealthy persons, and provided them with armed retinues. In the province on the southwestern tip of the country discussed in today’s paper, the whole economy has been essentially taken over. The trade here is primarily through Iran into Europe. The Iranians are doing their best. They have financed the building of many Afghan police stations on the border to help. But whatever successes the control programs have, the drugs keep coming. The warlords controlling much of the country outside the cities are financed in large part by drugs. And as fast as drug/war lord is replaced or removed others take his place. Kabul has said that it will move energetically against the trade. With the help of the British they are eradicating crops and arresting growers and traders. The problem is that facing hunger, eradication makes more enemies than friends, both for foreigners and the government.

Out of a population of 30,000,000, nearly 80% live an essentially subsistence existence in rural areas (perhaps 2,000,000 of these are still refugees, primarily in Pakistan, but most will return to rural areas). Twelve percent of the country is listed as “arable”, but much of this has returned to desert in recent years due to overgrazing, erosion, and drought. The average rainfall is twelve inches. Dry farming with this rainfall at this level on rocky soils often fails. Small irrigated patches along creek beds provide the major sustenance. Only three percent of the country remains forested. An agricultural revival program is being pursued with foreign assistance, irrigation channels are being reopened. More of this should be done. But for most Afghans it won’t be enough to give them a living even in spare Afghan terms.

We must come up with an approach that does more than eradicate opium or try to force people back into growing cotton or subsistence crops. The first fact that must be faced is that most rural Afghans do not have enough land to support themselves in an average year raising food crops. They need a cash crop to make it through the hard years. Second, Afghanistan does not have enough water or arable land (nor a good enough transportation system nor viable potential markets) to make possible another cash crop with anything like the return of opium. The solution for Afghanistan must come through a rapid change from a barely functioning rural subsistence economy to a rural economy based on small manufacturing (as a first step to an eventual change from a rural to an urban society). This is obviously easier said than done. But the Afghan government and its friends should not keep butting their heads against the geographical facts of the country. If we were not so enamored of a free trade regime that transfers production from the wealthy countries primarily to China, we could conceive of ways to guarantee markets for certain chosen items for, let us say rural Colombians and Afghans, with the European Community, Russia, and the United States buying predetermined amounts of what is produced. We then could invest in getting such production started and building the required infrastructure. (The next job is to figure out what production might be viable.)

There are again many discussions of the fact that violence is not abating as the elections come nearer. Violence directed at all those involved with or guarding the election process seems actually to be increasing in intensity in the Sunni Arab areas. Iraq’s President has discussed the possibility of postponement; the defense Minister has talked of it in Cairo; the Prime Minister even spent time on the phone with Bush discussing the problem. It is hard for the Americans to allow a delay as long as the Ayatollah Sistani says no. What the Americans face is that they now have the Kurds and most of the Shi’a on their side, and these groups, particularly the Shi’a leadership, are counting on the January elections giving them control of the country. Even a follower of Muqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City is now campaigning for a new ticket that will support al-Sadr’s cause if elected (this in addition to the twenty or so Sadrites already have on the list of the more general Shi’a establishment). Delay, and we may begin losing them. Hold the election, and we will at least look good to this large “constituency”.

The problem with delay is that a short delay is unlikely to change the situation very much. On the other hand, a long delay would reinforce the idea that we are simply an occupying power, that we have no intention of actually leaving. This idea would be easy to sell in the already anti-American Sunni Arab world, and might start being believed elsewhere as well. Meantime, the Coalition determination to stay no matter what would be weaken as time passed. What, then, could be done to make a short delay more useful?

Perhaps the place to start would be to make a much greater effort to seal the border with Syria while at the same time putting more pressure on Syria to stop the movement of men, materiel, and money into Iraq. The Syrian government might even be encouraged to arrest or expel some of the Iraqi Baath leaders in Syria that are maintaining the violence. Another approach would be to allow Shi’a militias to be reactivated. These could be used to guard main thoroughfares and squares in Baghdad, as well as being deployed along major transportation arteries. They could be paid for their efforts: in the past they have consisted largely of unemployed young men. Of course, they would not be the best of troops. But they might do as well as, and be able to supplement usefully, the police forces that are now the weakest reed in the election protection effort. These two measures, along with the already occurring increase in American forces, could conceivably bring the violence down immediately before and during an election held in April instead of January.

The discussion of the apparent ability of the Republican Party in the last election to capture the “values” issue has confused and alarmed many democrats. Slowly most Democrats are coming to realize that in fact the election was not won on the basis of the adherence of voter’s to “family values”. It probably had much more to do with a perception that George W. Bush was more of a leader. (Now, dear Democratic reader, set aside your own visceral reactions to the President. The important issue here is what the average voter thought. Bush seemed more decisive. So he makes mistakes, but don’t we all.) In fact, in state and local elections the Democrats came out slightly ahead of the Republicans.

What is most curious about the discussion is this insistence on the importance of “family values” when speaking within a political context. As far as politics are concerned, the important values are not family, but “community” or “civil”. Those involved in political affairs at the national level have traditionally assumed that the issues appropriate to families are within the purview of individuals or families, and are most appropriately dealt with there. When these values are not up to the task of socializing successive generations, then there is a network of personal or family counselors, religious or secular, to help define and instill family values that alone make this process succeed.

To turn to the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan on which this blog has concentrated, the problem is not that the Iraqis or Afghanis have insufficiently developed “family values”. What they lack is a sense of responsibility and commitment to wider national communities. We will help in these countries in so far as we assist in the development of community and civil values, even sometimes at the expense of family values.

Political systems exist because there is a need for a mechanism or institution to deal with common issues that go beyond what individuals and families can do acting separately. This concept that there is a higher community interest is what makes it imperative that all people pay their taxes, vote in elections, respect the laws of their community and nation, and serve on juries when called upon. It is also imperative that the community, or in the large, the nation-state, considerable the welfare of all its members, all its citizens, and when they see they are in need of better security, better health services, or better schools, that they pool together community resources to provide these. In recent years, this common responsibility, this set of community values, has been most commonly espoused by the Democratic Party. This is why this is the party that believes in the strengthening of welfare, educational, environmental, and health systems that benefit all people and all generations — even if this requires repealing tax cuts, thereby increasing over the short-term the “pain” of a few.

When the nation-state is no longer the appropriate institution to deal with issues that transcend its borders, then other mechanisms and institutions must be developed to deal with issues on the trans-national level. That is why we have the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and a plethora of other international bodies. These are imperfect institutions, but they are increasingly necessary institutions, and the development of more encompassing community and civil values are the only ways in which we will as the human community be able eventually to make these institutions serve the purposes of all. This is why the Democratic Party believes that the United States should play a responsible leadership role in the growth of the institutions of the World Community, even if this means compromising at times the absolute sovereignty of the American state.

Much of what is said here would not go over well with all constituencies in the United States. But it is the responsibility of Democrats to define what they stand for, to define the values that lie behind the policies they applaud. Only then can they embark on the great educational effort that any campaign, political or otherwise, requires.

In today’s Op-Ed, Thomas Friedman takes a highly realistic, but somewhat questionable view of what we are about in Iraq. He essentially says that the freedom we are bringing the Iraqis is the freedom to kill one another if they wish to. He argues that what we have now is Iraq is a civil war. Essentially our job now is to get through the election so that we might transfer the full job of fighting the civil war to the Iraqis where it belongs. If the Iraqis cannot put together a civil compact that will allow them to end the war, then God help them. We do not have the responsibility of staying until they are up to the task — which may be never.

Friedman asks "What kind of a majority are the Iraqi Shiites ready to be — a tolerant and inclusive one, or an intolerant and exclusive one? What kind of a minority do the Iraqi Sunnis intend to be — rebellious and separatist, or loyal and sharing?" Unfortunately, these questions already have their answers. Neither side, nor the Kurds to the side, will be all that idealistic. If we rely on their kindness and good faith, the game is lost. How they will view the pros and cons of not so promising alternatives is another matter, one that Friedman does not go into.

But this raises the question again, "By What Right Did We Launch This War"? If as Friedman says, the Iraqis did not want liberation in our sense, and if we cannot make them want it, then what was a achievable goal that made the war worth it to the Iraqi people and the Americans? Yes, Saddam was terrible. He killed lots of Iraqis, he held them down. But within this shell many lived reasonably successful lives. We had it in our power to keep Saddam away from weapons of mass destruction and improving marginally the standard of living of average Iraqis. It would have cost less for all concerned. We should make these calculations again when we are faced with a similar temptation to end tyranny. (By the way, I believe life in North Korea is a good deal worse than that in Saddam's Iraq. So here we go again. . . )

This morning's paper tells us that 325 non-Iraqis have been captured in Iraq. It goes on to say that these persons are not considered by the American Government to be "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions. It is proposed and assumed that they will be warehoused in yet another Guantanamo-like detention facility. Leaving aside the torture and mistreatment that has been reported at these facilities, the continuation of the Guantanamo approach leads to some alarming consequences. (For readers who wish to go into this discussion at greater length, consider the following excellent discussion produced by the International Committee of the Red Cross.)

The United States is playing fast and loose with the definitions and standards that have been developed through the Geneva Conventions and international practice. In fact, there is no category of persons that are assumed by the Conventions to be completely "not protected". What has been done is suggest that there are no protections for captured persons who are not engaged in lawful combat but yet acting against our interests in a war situation. These include spies, military or not, civilians casually attacking our forces or interests, or combatants not in uniform or under the organized control of an opposing army. A lawful combatant is one fighting us in a normal military situation. An unlawful combatant is one attacking us outside those parameters. The Geneva Conventions do assume that an unlawful combatant is not imprisoned in the same manner as a regular soldier. His care is not subject to the same standards. And, unlike a normal Prisoner of war", he is subject to trial for his actions, often a military trial. During World War II, the United States captured some German saboteurs landed by a Uboat. They were tried and executed. The Supreme Court affirmed our right to do so, and it is this precedent that has been used to justify recent governmental actions against unlawful warriors.

There are two problems with the approach. First, because the persons captured are not regular prisoners of war, international law does not thereby give us carte blanche to do anything we wish. International rules against torture and the mistreatment of persons in custody still apply. Second, persons detained outside the normal rules for prisoners of war have the right to a trial. There is no right to indefinite incarceration without trial in either American or international law.

The American government argues that in a world of terrorists, the whole world is the battlefield. Therefore, it would be most imprudent to allow persons suspected of being terrorists back onto this new field of battle. There is some justice in this argument. Yet it conflicts with the opinion of much of the watching world that believes that persons innocent of any provable violent actions should not be jailed indefinitely without access to lawyers and due process. The fact that the U.S. government appears to agree with this position if the person is an American citizen appears to support the international view. American citizens in Guantanamo are being given lawyers and trials, if slowly and reluctantly.

In spite of the antipathy of the Administration and, unfortunately, a large part of the American public, to international institutions, the eventual solution to this problem must come through the development of international means of processing the cases of these persons. This may require a new kind of court and new kinds of international detention facilities. It may also mean that some persons are let out into the world to commit more mayhem. But our system of justice allows this to happen frequently with those processed by our courts. And the alternative of not treating this running sore in international relations, and maintaining ever-growing facilities incarcerating persons whose crimes have never been adjudicated, may be a much worse alternative.

Whatever happens, the opponents of American policy in this regard, whether domestic or foreign, need to get beyond just criticizing what is occurring and start working toward a resolution of what is a real problem.

The interviews with the two French journalists who were held for several months by the Islamic Army of Iraq is enlightening. They seem to be a mixed group of Baathists, former army and Jihadists with some training in Afghanistan. They claimed they were not the same group as Zarqawi's, but that they worked with them at times. The reporters noted that their captors seem well supplied with both money and weapons. They were amazed at how easily their captors seemed to be able to move through the countryside and towns both north and south of Baghdad. They were not all bin Ladenists, but some were. And their objectives are similar to his, except for the particular Iraqi aspects. Their captives saw bin Laden as wanting to overthrow the Egyptian and Saudi regimes, defeat the Americans in Iraq, drive a wedge between the United States and Europe, recreate an Arab Caliphate (remember the last Caliphate was actually Turkish), and carry out a long-term war with the West, but a war seen as essentially defensive.

Two pieces on today’s Op-Ed page continue to hammer away at what the authors assume to be the foolishness of holding the election this month. The general argument believed by many in the American opposition (including unfortunately Brezezinski) see our policy misguided partly because they assume that it will inevitably lead to a theological state, possibly one dominated by Iran. For regular readers here, I do not need to argue this issue again: a Shiite controlled state is not necessarily a theocracy. I do, however, believe that the Kurds will not allow this to happen in any event. Their leaders are quite secularist and would find such a state cramping, even if not theological.

A more serious argument against moving doggedly ahead is put forward to Larry Diamond, an old friend who had a part in the early arrangements for a democracy program in Iraq. Larry believes that an essential mistake was the idea to have only one district with proportional voting. He claims that he and many fellow experts on democracy opposed this. The decision came in part from the UN, but perhaps Bremer had a part in it. It was argued at the time that trying to divide the country into districts would be too time consuming and lead to too many political squabbles (which noticing what happens in the U.S. does not seem unlikely). There also was a desire by the Shi'a leadership to have many overseas voters, a desire hard to fulfill in a the country newly divided into geographical election districts.

What Diamond brings to the discussion that is new is the fact that many Sunni groups have been meeting regularly to develop a common strategy for getting the election postponed. One of their planks is to try to get the single district approach rescinded so that geographical representation based on districts might be instituted. They feel that if the election planners could do this, then after several months districts would have been created and voting could proceed district by district. In this case, the Sunni districts would receive the representation that the government records would show that they should get and not the representation given by a light vote. (That is, if Baghdad had 20% of the population but only 10% of the vote, it would still receive representation as though it had 20% of the vote with the geographical district approach.) He claims that the main Sunni leaders have agreed that if the voting is postponed for a few months and the districts established, then they will rescind their call for a boycott of the election. If all this is true, he makes a good case. Now we have to see if Allawi or the Americans currently calling the shots (pardon the expression) in Iraq will listen.

In yesterday's paper, William Powers writes that the failure of the Liberian state offers an opportunity for the international community to mount a long-term assistance program for Liberia at the same time that it permanently preserves the country's unique biological heritage. Most of the world has not realized it, but because of the lack of development, and in spite of the continual fighting among a collection of armed groups, governmental or otherwise, Liberia has managed to preserve a valuable stretch of West African rain forest.

Under his "Peace for Nature" solution (based on the more modest "debt for nature" approach that has been used in several countries), Liberia would agree to convert a large part of the country into a United Nations biosphere reserve, zoned for both strict preservation and multiple use. This would mean a commitment of the international community to at least a 20-year stabilization program that would preserve the peace and educate the people in peace-loving ways. The idea is attractive, but seems naive as presented. If only it was this easy to bring peace to an area.

Yet, perhaps the idea can be built on. The world is facing a crisis of "failed states" that includes Haiti, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly "Congo", then Zaire). There are a number of other possible candidates for this appellation, particularly in Africa. Taking an "environmental imperatives" approach to "failed states" or states with apparently intractable economic or political problems offers opportunities for long-term coordinated international assistance that might otherwise be lacking. The problems that would be addressed by the international guarantors are of two quite different kinds. First, in states such as Liberia and Congo, the program would be based on establishing large, internationally protected conservation areas, with high-return development activities concentrated in relatively small areas (what in the suburbs we refer to as "clustering" or "conservation zoning"). Second, the whole of states such as Haiti and Nauru would be defined as "environmental reclamation areas". Here the international community as well as many international private agencies would undertake to rebuild the country environmentally, socially, and politically.

After seeing "Hotel Rwanda" yesterday I was reminded of the situation of the Sunni Arabs in Iraq. With not more than 20% of the population, they have traditionally been the rulers of the area, a position magnified by Saddam Hussein, especially after the Gulf War. The assumption is that with the upcoming election the Sunni Arabs will lose this preeminence; the Shi'as are set to play the major role in the future. Given this judgment, the continuing violence of the Sunni Arab community (both Jihadist and secular Baath) would seem to be a hopeless attempt to reverse history. The Sunni Arabs do not see it that way, and there are many historical reasons not to agree with them.

Rwanda was traditionally ruled by the Tutsi with about 14% of the population. They ruled over the other 85% who were classified as Hutu. Supposedly the Belgian colonialists benefited through accepting this arrangement, but it is an error to imagine they created it. In 1959, three years before formal independence from Belgium, the Hutus revolted, killing and displacing Hutus. When Rwanda became independent, it was easy for them to cement their ascendancy through elections. During the next 30 years, they continued to press their advantage, killing thousands of Tutsi and driving hundreds of thousands out. By 1990, Paul Kagame had organized Tutsi refugees in Uganda into an army and invaded Rwanda. Peace agreements held for a few months, but they were followed by renewed hostilities in 1991 and 1992. A more enduring peace was then bartered with the help of a small U.N. force. Yet during the next two years Hutu extremists organized thousands into popular militias and instigated a hate campaign on the premise that all Tutsi deserved to be killed. They used the radio to help organize and recruit adherents. Then in 1994, the death of the Hutu President in a plane crash was blamed by the extremists on the Tutsi. This was used as an excuse to start a well-planned extermination campaign that between April and July 1994 killed over 800,000 Tutsi, as well as many thousand Hutu "traitors". This genocide led the Tutsi refugee army along the border to start a new offensive. In a couple of months they had conquered the country and driven out the army and the Hutu militia along with two million civilian Hutus (most of whom have since returned). Paul Kagame and his party easily won elections in 2000 and 2003, which I doubt were free and fair. But why should they be? They no doubt feel they have earned the right to once again rule over the Hutu.

The lesson I take from this is that popular majorities, such as the Shi'a, even when they are able to organize militias such as al-Sadr's "Mahdi Army", may be no match for more highly motivated, organized, and confident majorities such as the Sunni Arab community. Leading a few thousand people who believed they have the right to rule and are used to ruling, Paul Kagame was able to overcome a much larger majority community with both a national army and a large militia. The Sunni Arabs on the basis of their actions against American and Iraqi governmental forces may well be another minority community that cannot be denied (unless we stay permanently). It is true that they will be largely shut out in the upcoming election. But the leaders of the resistance know that and welcome it. They know that democracy is not the route that they can take to reestablish their community's power. It is rather through the better organization and institutionalization of their community that they can once more rise to the top. They may have a good shot at success.

In North Carolina, General Vines is training 10,000 military advisors for Iraq. He wants to teach them about Islam, and so has assembled a group of books that they are all to read before they leave. Unfortunately, among these books is Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington is a well-known Harvard professor and his recent work in this area has led to a great deal of commentary. The General certainly cannot be faulted for assigning such a book. However, assigning it is misguided, and along with a number of other recent writings by those who claim to be knowledgeable on Islam and what we are facing is likely to have a pernicious effect — particularly because of its Harvard origin.

In the book, Huntington predicted that the 21st century would be characterized by violent struggle between the civilization that had dominated the 20th century and those that were now rising up to challenge it. He particularly saw the Sinic and the Islamic as potential foes. Wars between Western Civilization and Islam, for example, were seen as all but inevitable. His predictions regarding the struggle of Western and Islamic civilizations has particularly struck observers because of the events of the last few years.

The problems with the Huntington analysis are many. First, "a civilization" is an arbitrary category difficult to define in space or time. The term was developed primarily to apply to ancient civilizations that at least had the terminological advantage of being separated more clearly in space and time than is the case today. Secondly, Huntington reads history in terms of the struggle of civilizations. A better way to read history would be to recognize that most wars were actually within civilizations, or along the periphery of civilizations against less civilized peoples (for example the story of how "the West" represented primarily by Rome moved northward to incorporate the British Isles and Scandinavia into its sphere). World Wars I, for example, was primarily within Western Civilization, with the rest of the world bit players. Third, at any one time, the peoples that are loosely lumped together as belonging to civilization X or Y are often quite diverse, speaking a variety of languages, believing in a variety of religions, and living on many different economic levels. Fourth, whatever may have been the situation in the past, today the leading sectors of all so-called civilizations are actually living more within the confines and assumptions of Western Civilization than those of their own. Paul, the manager of Hotel Rwanda, for example, did not take part in the massacre of Tutsis because he had culturally moved beyond that level. To him the calls to action by the radical Hutus were nothing but dangerous nonsense. People such as Paul are much more common in leading circles outside central Africa than they were in Rwanda. The leaders of many Muslim states are Muslims in little more than name. They hold on to their traditions just as many educated Christians or Hindus hold on to their traditions. But these traditions are not determinative of their actions in the real world. Even in Iran, a country often held up as an example of an implacable enemy, recent visitors find that the people in the street are more pro-American than anti-American. Certainly the lives they lead would be unrecognizable to the Ayatollah Khomeini. In Iraq, our main enemies are actually former Baath officers, representing a distinctly secular and anti-religious movement that only uses Islamic slogans to gain nationalistic support. The Kurds are under secular leadership. Surprisingly, the Shiites that are our best allies in the run-up to the election are also the community in Iraq with the best religious credentials.

This being the case, we should not be letting our soldiers be indoctrinated with the idea that Muslims are irrevocably against us by virtue of the fact they belong to another "civilization". Kipling said in another age that "never the twain shall meet", but in our age, they are meeting, they are living together, they are moving to America, becoming professionals, establishing relations with their relatives in Iraq. The vast majority of Muslims everywhere are individuals, pursuing individual goals, moving about, getting connected, going on line, and spending very little time thinking about how to destroy Americans.

The fact there is an al-Qaida that does want to attack us because they think we interfere too much in Islamic countries must be recognized and dealt with. We should realize there are many people who have adopted their ideas. But if we consider how little has really happened in the United States since 9/11, we might begin to appreciate the fact that the millions of Muslims in this country, even when mistreated by overzealous immigration and security personnel, are not about to sign up for a holy war. Some no doubt are, but so few that Bin Ladin has been unable to put them together long enough to carry out the continual series of attacks that he has promised and that alone should change the way we approach the world.

As the days toward the upcoming election drag on, we hear a steady drumbeat of reported assassinations, roadside bombs, attacks on police stations, attacks on anyone in any way connected to the election. Yet we also read of the continuing hope of the Iraqi people that the election will mean something. Seven to eight million are expected to vote in the country, another million overseas. It is now estimated that 2/3 of the people of Baghdad will participate. Half of these are expected to vote for secular parties; half for religious. Perhaps a million overseas Iraqis are registering at considerable expense and expected to vote. Among the overseas, there are few reports of killings or fears. Particularly in the United States, the Iraqis seem happy to have the opportunity. Fear does not stalk the community. For Americans, used to a soft, carefree life in the suburbs, it seems inconceivable that the potential Iraqi voters in Iraq could be this blasé about the dangers, so ready to face the possibility of death from unknown enemies. Candidates are campaigning, if only in secret. They are assisted by the fact that voters are voting for parties rather than individuals, thereby reducing candidate exposure. In the toughest areas they have decided to have registration and voting occur at the same time to reduce the exposure of the voters before election day.

My belief is that the vote will take place on January 30; in most of the country it will be a success; the Shi’a candidates will win overwhelmingly, but they will not be a unified force within the parliament; Sunni Arab and Kurdish leaders will be given a role in the resulting government. After this God only knows. It may all break apart again. Elections are by no means the end of the game. We can only hope that we can with a little urging from the new government find a graceful exit.

If this is pulled off, some heroes in heroic organizations need to be recognized. In Iraq, it is the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq and their thousands of employees working with the assistance of the United Nations. Outside Iraq, it is the International Organization for Migration, a group associated with the United Nations that has done a phenomenal job in just a few weeks. And again back in Iraq, it is the more than a thousand candidates that have allowed their names to be put on party lists, and finally it is the millions of individual voters willing to take a chance on democracy. I know, talking this way sounds too much like George, but we have to be prepared to admit that his foolish faith appears at this moment to be not entirely foolish.

Another way to look at this is to think back on the story in today’s paper of Iraqis coming as far as 900 miles to register in Nashville, only to have to come back another 900 miles in two weeks to vote. And think about their hopeful and relaxed attitude. One can draw two obvious conclusions. First, the Iraqi insurgency is extremely weak in the Iraqi community in the United States, so weak as to hardly make their opposition to the election known. Second, the international “enemy”, the al-Qaida that does have its supporters in Iraq has not been able to make much progress in extending its operations to this country. There is still the possibility of a couple of al-Qaida spectaculars in America (the inauguration is an obvious time of danger), but even if these are brought off, the American public can be reassured by the easy-going confidence of the Iraqis amongst us that the country is not a honeycomb of Islamic cells planning our destruction. If they are here, they are few and scattered, with limited long-term capacity.

Yesterday’s optimism surrounding the election discussion needs to be corrected in several regards.

First, the idea that there were going to be a million Iraqis voting outside the country was apparently wildly off. By today’s figures it appears the election board will be lucky to get 100,000. This changes the picture considerably. Does it mean that overseas Iraqis are uninterested? Does it mean there has been coercion in overseas communities? Does it mean that election organization (for example with only five places to register in the United States) was massively inadequate? I do not know.

Secondly, there seems to be a darker mood in Iraq than I was reporting. An Iraqi government official says that if not enough people vote (apparently he means Sunni Arabs), it is likely to lead to civil war. A U.S. intelligence report sees a great deal of violence after the election. The report also considers the probability of civil war to be substantial. At the same time, reports are that the Shiite parties are posed to demand from the Americans a time table for leaving after the election. Condoleezza Rice and other American officials say that there can be no time table. It depends on how well the Iraqis do in establishing their own security forces. Here, too, there is much dissension. Condi tells the Senate that we now have 120,000 trained Iraqi security forces; Senator Biden says that we are lucky if we have 4000. And so it goes.

What to do about China?

Zhao Ziyang, the head of the Communist Party of China in the 1980s, fell from favor with the real leaders of the country in 1989 because he favored treating the students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square less harshly. Since then he has been under house arrest and seldom allowed to be mentioned. Now he has died. His death has hardly been acknowledged, obituaries are not allowed, eulogies are erased from web sites and chat rooms in so far as the authorities can get to them. A private memorial is being allowed, but no one important can come. His long-time aide has been prevented from leaving his house to attend.

This is the China that much of the world is trumpeting as the coming leader of Asia and perhaps the world. This is the China where an amazing percent of consumer products consumed in the West are now being manufactured. This is the China where economic growth is supposed to be laying the basis for a transition to democracy. But life in China seems so far from democracy. Its leaders thumb their noses at demands for more civil freedoms, let alone political. The Western media are quick to criticize Putin’s Russia, but Russia today has far more freedom than China. The totalitarian practice of erasing history, of creating nonbeings, is no longer practiced there.

How do we get a handle on the problem of China? How do we help China become part of modern civilization before it gets any more powerful? I do not know. But we could begin by taking down a few bridges, by emphasizing the differences between Taiwan and China, and by reducing our interest in trade, free or otherwise.

If this election succeeds at all in the most challenged provinces it will be a true miracle. I hope the Bush team has his staff praying hard. 90,000 election kits are being sent out to 5500 polling places in the next few days. 200,000 poll workers have been trained. Each polling place consists of a room with a variety of tables that each person must come by. When it is over, the workers will sit down and count the votes, shipping the results (and the ballots?) to Baghdad over the next few days. Now each voter has to have his finger marked with a special dye that will last at least a week. This all in a country in which major roads even in the better areas are seldom safe, and where the insurgency has claimed that voters are traitors to the country and/or Islam. If you had seen insurgents active in your area, would you go to the polling stations? Would you take the chance that someone might stop you and demand to see your finger? One hopes that Iraqis are made of sterner stuff than you or I.

Richard Clarke of Congressional Hearing fame was the leading person in the war against terrorism before 2002. His book, now more than a year old, tells of his struggles within several administrations to get them to listen to him and his friends, a cabal within government that was obsessed with the danger to the country of terrorists, and particularly of Ussama bin Ladin and al-Qaida. He got further with the Clinton people than he did with the Bush, even though he was for a time allowed to continue his work alongside Bush's National Security Council. Bush's people never took him or his ideas seriously. There were many reasons, but one important one was that they simply did not accept ideas or issues or approaches that they associated with the Clinton years.

He is a harsh critics of many of the entrenched persons and approaches of the FBI and CIA, as well as the too predictable reactions of the Pentagon and the military brass. Many heroes from these agencies shine through the narrative, but the overall picture is negative. The CIA and the FBI and their subdivisions remain more interested in turf than in the national interest. The Homeland Security Department was a failure from the beginning: poorly planned, poorly staffed, given impossible jobs with no additional money and very little time to accomplish its objectives. His harshest criticism is of those in the Administration who came into office determined to conquer Iraq no matter what. For them, 9/11 was a handy excuse. This may have not been the case with Bush himself, but he sees Bush as an essentially unfocused figurehead unwilling to really try to understand anything. Our conquest and continued involvement in Iraq has enflamed the Islamic world and trained a new generation of terrorists much as the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan did. The reader has probably heard these opinions of Clarke from the news media and his appearances before Congress. On the negative side, in the book he appears self-interested, conceited, cocksure of everything. He no doubt overinflates his importance at critical junctures in the story. One might not like working with Clarke, but fundamentally he means well, is very knowledgeable, and should be listed to.

He believes the country should be spending a great deal more on homeland security than it does. Even the first responders have been starved for funds (NYPD had to reduce its police force after 9/11). New intelligence resources, even a new analytic agency should be developed, preferably separate from the CIA and the FBI, but possible housed within the latter. Someone has to deal intelligently with the intelligence stream and no one is! He would like to see us spend more on the propaganda wars, doing the kind of things that we managed to do in the cold war in our struggle against communism. He is a little too sanguine about efforts to reform Islam from the outside, but he is more helpful when he agrees with Anonymous on the necessity of modifying our actions in the Middle East in a way that will reduce hatred.

His identifies the countries we should be targeting in the region as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. He considers Iran to have been and be much more important in the support of terrorism (Hezbollah especially) and the development of nuclear weapons than Iraq. This does not mean that we should invade Iran. It means that we should take it more seriously through an approach that would work both with the present leadership and work to replace that leadership. He agrees with Friedman (today's Op-Ed) that Iran has a large number of pro-Americans. We have to help them create a democratic state. But we must do it in a way that does not seem to make Iranian students into CIA agents. I agree, but it is a difficult proposition..

As hard as it may be for the many doubters of President Bush’s poorly planned adventure in Iraq to believe it, it appears now as though the election may come off reasonably well and that the aftermath will not be a disaster.

This last week apparently attacks tapered off. This is not much help to those still being killed, but it is a good sign. I assume violence will intensify again, with a crescendo on the actual voting days.

While all this takes place, Iraqi politicians are moving in surprisingly positive directions. The leaders of the top Shi’a parties have announced that if they win, they do not intend to set up a religious government of any kind. There will be no “turbans” in government positions. They intend to establish a secular state because that is what they feel the people of Iraq really want. This state will not require women to cover up as is the case in so many other Islamic states. These statements go considerably beyond what Sistani has suggested before. They seem aimed at pleasing the Sunni Arabs (who partly for nationalist reasons fear an Iranian state), the Kurds who have developed a quite secular way of life in their enclave and do not want to lose that, and of course the Americans who have all along feared the Ayatollahs taking over a la Iran (in spite of the assurances by such as Juan Cole that this is not what the Shi’as want). Now we should be careful. It almost seems too good to be true. We must remember that Khomeini was believed at first to want such a relatively secular state too. His first Prime Minister was a member of the old liberal opposition to the Shah. But this did not last long. Just a thought.

In the Sunni Arab community, some leaders are continuing to stand for election while others say their followers will not vote. However, most of them say that they will in any event have a hand in writing the Constitution. In other words, they are not rejecting the process of movement toward a new state that is to occupy 2005. How they will participate, and whether they will be satisfied with their part is another question.

With the possibility of an amicable development of relations among the major groups in Iraq it seems to me that thought should be given to developing a federal system. As readers will remember, I have always insisted that the Kurds should be allowed to have a state of their own. But without American support this seems unlikely.

A fallback position has always been strong autonomy for the Kurds within the new Iraq. Curiously, the interim constitution states that if any three provinces do not accept the constitution (meaning the amount of autonomy granted to the three) then the new constitution will be invalid. This clause was put into the constitution to satisfy the Kurds with their three provinces. But now it appears that the Sunni Arabs have noted that they dominate another three provinces, and that this clause also gives them a veto.

I would think that a good solution would be to have four regional governments, each with considerable autonomy. These would be the Sunni Arab provinces north and west of Baghdad, the Kurdish provinces in the Northeast, Baghdad itself, and the rest in a large Shi’a province in the center or south. (They may want more, so why not.) Regional governments are always in danger of being crushed by the center or flying off into independent states. So it is how to know how this would play out in the end. But there is a lot of inter-group hostility in the country and this might be a way to assuage it. The hardest problem would be to figure out what to do with the Peshmurga, the very strong militia that the Kurds count on to defend their interests. The Kurds would feel mighty exposed without it. But how would this fit into the new scheme of things?

The Bush doctrine as developed in his Inaugural Address on January 20 was a remarkable statement of his approach to the world. In many ways it mirrored long held beliefs of Americans. But it some ways it fell short of outlining the path to a free and peaceful world that he believed he was describing.

The first problem is that he does not go beyond the false assumption behind his policy and the thinking of many commentators that America is hated and attacked because the attackers live in tyrannies. As has been discussed here frequently, writers such as “Anonymous” and Clarke argue convincingly that it is because of American policy, particularly in regard to Israel and Saudi Arabia, that we were attacked. There is little suggestion in the speech that we are going to change our policies in these regards.

Another problem with the Bush doctrine is that it defines “freedom” primarily as democracy. It is true that “self-government” is mentioned, but this generally seems to be interpreted as the development of a democratic system for established states. The reason to make this point is that the Wilson doctrine which Bush has echoed concentrated on “self-determination for all”. This led to the breaking up of states, particularly in Europe. Wilson felt that all peoples should be able to govern themselves. He evidently also believed that peoples given this right would inevitably develop democracy, which unfortunately many did not (or their democracies soon collapsed). There is no hint in Bush’s statement or in the conduct of our foreign policy during his administration that we are going to stand up for the many peoples around the world that are struggling for self-government, whether or not this means democracy. This includes the Tibetans, the Uighurs, the Chechens, the Kurds, the people of West Irian and the Acheh in northern Sumatra or the people of Darfur. It includes many peoples scattered across Africa that never asked to be put into the states they now find themselves in. One doubts that Bush will move to “free” these peoples.

Confining himself to existing states, then, does Bush really mean that he is going to tell the leaders of the Gulf Sheikhdoms, of Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan, and so many other states with which we and or allies have developed a modus vivendi that they must change into democracies? No, he does not mean this. He means to say that we cannot have good relations with any state that does not treat its people “decently”. This is a good human rights standard with which few can quarrel.

Words have consequences, especially when they are American words. An expert on Iran argued that the reason the Shah caved into the opposition in the late 1970s, a retreat that led directly to Khomeini, was that the Iranians had listened President Carter’s affirmation of human rights, a affirmation that led the opposition (originally liberals) to believe they could test the regime as they had never before. If the same thing were to happen in Pakistan or China or Saudi Arabia, the outcome might not be what we would like. It also might not support the expansion of freedom in the long run.

My conclusion is that the speech was a surprisingly good statement of ideals. But using the forum that he did, it was perhaps too blunt, too likely to be misinterpreted. Once given, we must step back a little and tread lightly into the free new world.

The Department of Defense has let it be known that for some time it has been taking a direct role in the gathering of intelligence in front line situations such as Afghanistan and Iraq. The newspapers point out that this is part of a long-running turf battle between the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). It seems to me that what Defense is doing makes sense. If we have troops in an area, then the intelligence service most closely related to those troops should be the one that has responsibility for intelligence gathering for those troops. Ideally, each part of our defensive establishment, whether it be special forces or homeland security, whatever unit is meant to act offensively or defensively should be directly connected to an intelligence capability. The situation is quite different for strategic intelligence. Here the CIA and the Department of State’s intelligence bureau should be the main sources of intelligence. For in this case the intelligence gathered should go to the top and then back down to the action agencies.

Last night Juan Cole and another expert on the Lehrer news show suggested that the election would be a success if more than 40% of eligible voters participated (in the range of the “success” of the recent Palestinian vote). Considering the fact that at least half the Shiites and most of the Kurds are outside the violent areas, this suggestion seemed encouraging. The percentages that might be imagined are: 65% of Kurds (or 12% of total), 60% of half of the Shiites (or 20% of total) and 30% of half of Shiites (12% of total) and 10% of Sunni Arabs (or 2% of total). This should add up to a total vote of 46%. I expect that well less than a third of the potential “overseas vote” will actually come in. However, in my own calculations this doesn't mean much. There simply were too few polling places in most countries (5 in the United States for example). In spite of heroic efforts most people could not make this effort.

My hopes were raised when I noted that the areas of violence in Baghdad had greatly declined in Sadr City over previous months while holding the same in the rest of the city. However, by today’s paper we learn that al-Sadr’s lieutenants are telling their people not to vote (even though some of the Mahdi Army are on the lists). This strikes quite a blow at my confidence. So we will see. Generally these things turn out better than expected.

If the election is widely viewed as a failure, then there will be a demand on the American home front that we leave (the insurgents have this right).

Whatever results Sunday brings, many will be forced once again to do their moral calculus. Was it worth it? This has been the question throughout human history. Sometimes it clearly was not. World War I with its terrible slaughter of young men on both sides did not advance any human cause very far. World War II and the Civil War, on the other hand, are more complicated.

The immediate answers depend on who you are and where, on your fate and that of those closest to you. Some people in Iraq would take any chance, give up everything, even their own lives to get back at Saddam for what he did to them or their families. Others feel the same about the Americans. But neither of these feelings make a war “worth it” unless there is a real improvement in the lives of those who come afterwards. President Bush tells the Iraqi people that a broad and wonderful future is opening in front of them. Some believe it, especially it appears those Iraqis who live outside the country. But that American soldier’s family in Iowa, does it believe it? Do they care that much that the Iraqis have a chance to build a freer society? Were they willing to sacrifice their son? Is not the President pursuing the goals of a grand plan over the bodies of ordinary people who have not been adequately consulted? How does America conduct foreign policy in a world in which sometimes people will be killed on both sides without adequate consultation?

In spite of a great deal of sniping by some commentators (such as Herbert in the NY Times and Juan Cole in his excellent blog), the election in Iraq was a great occasion for Bush, for the Middle East, and for the Iraqi people. The defenses held. People went into the streets, and they voted. The heroism of people in much of the country was truly astounding — voting as the mortars went off in the background.

The most amazing renunciation, the one that got us to this point, was the order of the Ayatollah Sistani to his followers to not fight back when they were attacked. The result was that several insurgent attempts to ignite sectarian war got no where at all. The other was his order to all Shi’a to vote, an order that in Baghdad seemed to override the last minute attempt of some in the Mahdi Army to discourage voting.

Of course, we do not yet know the particulars. In some areas many Sunni Arabs voted; in others very few did. The statement of that overall 60% voted is subject to modification. It may