Krauthammer, Defending the Spin Offensive Posted by Michael Signer

I want to step back from Administration's spin offensive on Iraq.  Everyone has noted how distracting and unreal and Vietnam-like it is.  But I want to talk instead about how it's dangerous.  I don't think our collective national mind can contain the two opposing ideas of (1) it's going fine and we're gonna win, (2) it's not going fine and we need an entirely new goal.  For this reason, by concentrating the national mind (or by attempting to) so intensely on #1, the Administration is actually hurting us and the Iraqis.

When you start caring mostly about a political win -- as in the President's current five-day long political campaign to turn around public opinion on the war (and, in doing so, to attack the media) -- you stop attending to events.  Opinion and events, like oil and water, don't mix.  The aesthetic of the win -- of massaging and pushing and pulling public opinion -- becomes your paradigm, the way you see the world.  It becomes binary -- your friends and foes -- with a sliding scale between (people who you can persuade to become a friend).

To anyone who's worked on a campaign, all of this is so absorbing -- so seductive, in a way -- that it occludes any other way of thinking.  Put another way -- you cannot try and win public opinion and govern.  We think they're the same, but they're not.  At most, they coincide, overlap, cross-pollinate.  But they are fundamentally different behaviors.

The American people aren't stupid.  Spin does not create opinion, not really.  Policy does.  If the Administration's spin offensive consisted of transparent, hard thinking about practical options, they would start to "win."  Even if "winning" is no longer a sensible way of thinking about the conflict.

All of this is apparent in a startling op-ed in today's WaPo by Charles Krauthammer.  Over my morning coffee, I looked at the headline -- "Of Course It's a Civil War" -- as a great, cracking, evolutionary step forward in this neocons' perspective, a policy parallel to Fukuyama's very public recent admission of neocons' flaws.

Christian Peacemakers Released Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Great News:  The three remaining Christian Peacemakers taken hostage nearly four months ago have been released. Sadly, Tom Fox, the sole American among them, did not live to see this day. His body was found on the streets of Baghdad on March 9.

This is a wonderful turn of events for everyone, but especially for Christians--like the Mennonites, Quakers and Church of the Brethren--who see reconciliation as part of their religious mandate.  I have worked for years with the Quakers (who have one of the most consistent and effective congressional presence in town) and with the folks at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding--among the foremost activist/scholarly centers in the nation.

Israeli Elections: How Liberal is Liberal? Posted by Gayle Meyers

Five days before Israel's parliamentary elections, polls are indicating another flip-flop.  This time, the good news goes to left-of-center Labor and its prime ministerial candidate, Amir Peretz.  Peretz is an unusual candidate for Israel's top job.  He joined the parliament after leading the Histadrut, the country's powerful labor federation, but he has never held a cabinet-level post.  His opponents have made much of his inexperience, suggesting that he is not prime ministerial material. Peretz addresses these charges directly in one of his campaign ads, in which he repeats the accusations leveled at him and shows that they could also have been leveled at Israel's legendary first prime minister, David Ben Gurion.  Lurking under the question question of experience is the question of whether Peretz, who comes from the country's disadvantaged Moroccan sector instead of its European-origin political elite. 

On national security issues, Labor's platform is one that mainstream Democrats can support, but it would not satisfy more pro-Palestinian segments of the progressive movement.

Vegetarians: Our counter-terror stealth force Posted by Lorelei Kelly

One of these things is not like the other ones. One of these things just doesn't belong...
Hanta, Plague, Ebola, Crutzfeld Jakobs, Avian, Nepah, West Nile, Rift Valley, Anthrax, Norwalk, SARS, Marburg. Give up? The only one of these disease outbreaks since 1993 that does NOT come from from animals is Norwalk virus. The other ones are transboundary illnesses...not boundaries like the one between Canada and the USA...more like trans-species boundaries. These are called "zoonatic" diseases. I learned this at a Capitol Hill briefing last week given by a Vet named Dr. Lonnie King from Michigan State. Upon coming home that evening, I gave a long sigh when my pup Folly greeted me at the door. "Its you or me, babe", I said to her. A skeptical little mutt, she ran and hid from me under the coffee table.  Here she is pretending that things between us are same as always.

The end of internationalism? Posted by Derek Chollet

Ok, so the header is intentionally over-the-top.  But after reflecting on the Administration’s latest PR offensive on Iraq – it seems like they roll out a new one every other week, but the polls keep slipping – and how their unrelenting happy talk veers further and further away from reality, I’m in a gloomy mood.

In today’s New York Times, Anthony Cordesman, Washington’s straightest shooting military analyst, nails it.  "The problem with the [Bush] speeches [on Iraq] is they get gradually more realistic, but they are still exercises in spin…They don't outline the risks. They don't create a climate where people trust what's being said."

I very much agree with Heather’s thoughts below that many Americans are simply, in her word, “done” with Iraq, and that this fact makes our realistic options rather limited.  Most things in foreign policy always seem to fall into one of three categories – breakdown, breakthrough, or muddle through, and Iraq is clearly a muddle.

As if the news of the day weren’t depressing enough, what is just as concerning over the long term is the last point Cordesman raises: the erosion of trust that Americans have in their government -- and both the Bush Administration and the Democratic opposition -- when it comes to national security.

Green Eggs and Troop Withdrawal Posted by Heather Hurlburt

So President Bush says US troops will be in Iraq after his term ends.  He says that we are drawing them down proportionally as Iraqi troops are ready to "stand up."

Yet his Pentagon says that we will be out of the cities by the end of this year, and down to 100,000 troops or so by the fall elections.

Never mind ideology or preferred approaches to Iraq -- could someone please explain to me what he thinks those troops will be doing and where they will be doing it?  Not in the cities, not in place of Iraqi troops, not taking the lead to stop civil war, not in charge of rebuilding...

this is starting to remind me of Green Eggs and Ham.  (Not on a boat, not with a goat, not in the rain, not in a train... I will not eat them in a box, I will not eat them with a fox.)  And you remember how that ends...  ok, in case you don't, Sam comes to love green eggs and ham.  with nary a flash of embarrassment.

Iraq: Anniversary Waltz to the Exits Posted by Heather Hurlburt

We have had close to a week for the White House, the media and the blogosphere to wallow in Iraq:  Three Years On storylines.  I have yet to see a story that doesn't fall into the "are we winning/losing?" rubric. 

And I have yet to see what I think is the real story -- three years on, Americans across the political spectrum, including quite a few "experts" and "influentials" are done with Iraq.

Why do I say that?

The invaluable but inaccessible Wall Street Journal quotes GOP pollster Bill McInturff reading public opinon on Iraq thusly:

"For Americans, it looks more and more like...we can't stop or change it," Mr. McInturff says.

McInturff's most recent polling (bipartisan, with Peter Hart, for NBC/Wall Street Journal) says 52 percent of Americans say we’ve accomplished “all we can” in Iraq; 61% say we should reduce troop levels, a new high for that view.

But it isn't just the public which thinks this.  Did you catch Senator Hagel saying this weekend that

we have had a low-grade civil war going on in Iraq, certainly the last six months, maybe the last year. Our own generals have told me that privately.

Peggy Noonan wrote last week that President Bush had turned into Lyndon B. Johnson.  OK, so her immediate subject was the federal budget -- but she of all people knows the allusion she's making.

Then there's the strange case of Max Boot, who published an article in the National Interest asserting that we are winning and then, to his credit, headed off to see for himself.  He landed in Iraq just before the explosion at the Golden Mosque and its aftermath.  His experience led him to ask the following question:

Which is more important—the signs of progress that mostly pass unheralded, or the continuing woes splashed across newspaper front pages? I left Iraq more uncertain than when I arrived.

I submit to you that to ask that question is to answer it -- and it rings in the ears as one looks at the Administration's anniversary push of op-eds and speeches over the weekend.

Israeli Elections: Prisoners' Dilemma Posted by Gayle Meyers

Kadima jumped six seats in a poll released last week after the March 14 Israeli raid on a Jericho jail to extract six Palestinians accused of murdering an Israeli cabinet minister.  Political opponents are accusing party leader and acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of ordering the raid for political gain.  The accusations mirror those thrown at Prime Minister Menachem Begin for bombing Iraq’s nuclear reactor just before elections in 1981 and Prime Minister Shimon Peres for launching a raid into Lebanonjust before elections in 1996.  In spite of those accusations, there is a pretty broad consensus in Israel that the raid was the right thing to do, because Hamas had indicated it would free the prisoners. Likud also gained in the poll, adding two seats while Labor lost two. 

Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and ambassador to the United Nations, has been portraying himself as a tough leader experienced in national security, the only candidate qualified to meet Israel’s military challenges.  In rhetoric similar to President Bush’s 2004 election campaign, Netanyahu’s ads and speeches emphasize the threat.  One TV commercial shows a giant ball of fire, representing the threat of international terror, ready to engulf Israel, and another features the marching feet of Hamas brigades.  Having set up the problem, Netanyahu shows himself to be the answer.  He invokes his older brother Yonatan, who died while commanding Israel’s dramatic rescue of hostages at Entebbeairport in 1976, and reminds voters that while he was serving in an elite special operations unit in the army, Olmert did his mandatory military service as a journalist for the army newspaper.

Memo to Karen Hughes: New Public Diplomacy Recruits Posted by Suzanne Nossel

So here's an idea.  Karen Hughes and team are criss-crossing the globe trying to rebuild America's image with speeches, student outreach, and corporate programs.  Its a hard job made much tougher by near-daily revelations of mistreatment at Abu Ghraib, unauthorized wiretapping, the Dubai ports fracas and other policy debacles that undo the positive portrait Hughes is trying to paint.

While hers is nearly mission impossible right now one way to strengthen US public diplomacy efforts in future would be to mobilize former foreign ambassadors who have served in the US, turning the tables so that they represent the US as goodwill ambassadors to their home countries. 

Let's face it, no matter how hard she tries, Karen Hughes is a heavily accented Texan trying to forge instant, personal connections with skeptics in far-flung regions.   US diplomats face a similar problem:  they tend to be as apple-pie American as they come, and are discouraged from "going native" in ways that might help transcend cultural divides (will be interesting to see whether Khalilzad's example reshapes the ambassadorial model at all).

Former foreign ambassadors who have served in the US might help build what can often be a bridge too far for Americans working on their own.  Having worked with many ambassadors at the UN and some in Washington one thing stands out:  after a few years here, sometimes despite themselves and their governments, these people tend to get sucked into a long-term love affair with America. 

They start summering in the Hamptons, shopping at Whole Foods, scheduling around the Sopranos and - before they know it - they develop an abiding fondness for virtually all things American but for, in many cases, our policies.   The feelings are often strongest among those from poor countries where the quality of life contrasts are starkest.  I've never seen numbers collected, but a large number of these emissaries seem to send their kids to American colleges and graduate schools, often soldering permanent ties to grandchildren who are American. 

Both Washington and the UN in New York tend to be the very top posts available in foreign diplomatic services.  So unless an ambassador goes on to become foreign minister, the next step is often retirement from the diplomatic corps.   While some former envoys may squire lucrative private sector offers, most don't.  Accustomed to life as dignitaries, many have got to be bored with the adjunct teaching, lecturing and other opportunities open to them.  Why not put them on the U.S. government payroll instead?