The Pakistani military finally got serious, more or less, and launched a big offensive into Talibanland in South Waziristan. But this important LA Times story says the results have been something less than dazzling:

Pakistani military commanders say that after five weeks of fighting, they are in the final stages of their offensive aimed at crushing Islamic insurgents in South Waziristan, a rugged expanse of mountains and plateaus that for years has served as the primary base of operations for the Pakistani Taliban and as a sanctuary for Al Qaeda fighters.

When the offensive began Oct. 17, Pakistani military leaders said they faced a fighting force of as many as 10,000 battle-hardened militants. Thus far, however, the army has put the number of militants killed at 500.

None of the Pakistani Taliban's top leaders have been reported captured or killed. And accounts from villagers in nearby districts suggest that many militants simply fled South Waziristan.

The story quotes Pakistani officials saying that simply dislodging militants from their hideouts throws them into disarray and weakens their networks. Here's hoping. An important question is whether Pakistan means to follow through and make sure this is the case, or whether this offensive will amount to sweeping dirt under the rug.

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It's hardly convenient for the White House to see Pakistan's prime minister* president on the brink of toppling just as Obama rolls out his new(er) strategy for Afghanistan, which we care about in large part because we want to see a stable Pakistan. That said, Zardari has been a hapless and ineffectual prime minister president, and it seems that the military basically holds Pakistan together anyway. Dictatorship under Musharaff wasn't exactly a noble condition, but democracy hasn't fared much better.

*Correction: In haste, I called Zardari Pakistan's prime minister; I know better than that. Apologies.

Presumably the rulers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi are currently locked in negotiations regarding the exact terms that will be attached to a “bailout” for Dubai World. We’ll never know the details but if, as seems likely, the final deal involves creditors taking some sort of hit (perhaps getting 75 cents in the dollar, at the end of the day), does that matter?

Dubai probably has around $100bn in total liabilities, if we include off-balance sheet transactions, so total credit losses of $30-50bn need to be assigned. The direct effects so far seem small. HSBC leads the pack, in terms of exposure, but our baseline estimate is a 3 percent loss relative to its equity--not good, but manageable (and the stock already fell 5 percent on the news). The impact among other financial institutions that lent to Dubai seems fairly spread out and mostly within continental Europe.

Korean construction companies and Ukrainian/Russian steelmakers are also affected by the likely fall off in construction activity, but the broader boom in emerging markets is unlikely to be disrupted. The repricing of risk so far does not apply significantly to East Asia or Latin America.

However, there is a worrying impact on Ireland.

• John Boehner Is Tan, Rested, and Ready--Well, at Least He’s Tan, by Michelle Cottle
• The Downside of 'Smart Power': What Is the Right Role of Humanitarian Aid in Foreign Policy? by Jesse Zwick
• Time to Lower Your Expectations for the Final Health Care Bill, by Jonathan Cohn
• How to Fight Extremism With Civility, by E.J. Dionne Jr.
• Cheney 2012?!? What on Earth Is Jon Meacham Talking About? by John B. Judis
• Is It Possible to Be Moved by the Palestinian Plight and Still Be Sympathetic to Israel’s Predicament? by Benny Morris
• Washington Diarist: The Best Reason to Get Circumcised by Leon Wieseltier
• When Dubai Sneezes, Does the U.S. Get a Cold? Implications of the Emirates Debt Crisis. by Noam Scheiber
• Benefit of the Doubt: How Progressives Can Woo Indecisive Voters, by Ed Kilgore

As always, be sure to check out economic news on The Stash, environment and energy coverage on The Vine, the latest on health care at The Treatment, metro policy debate on The Avenue, and Marty Peretz's The Spine. Also be sure to take a look at TNR's new blogs by William Galston, Simon Johnson, Ed Kilgore, Damon Linker, and John McWhorter.

Jon Meacham is clearly an intelligent person and skilled writer, but his judgment about America and what America needs is somewhat inferior to that of my cat Lexie. Last November, he was telling us that the election affirmed the nation’s conservatism. Now he is urging Dick Cheney to run for president in 2012.  It would be “good for the country,” he argues, “because Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people.”  

Let’s leave aside dated comparisons to leftwing parties in Europe urging stark choices between left and right in the hope that the right would discredit itself, and let’s just talk about America. This country has functioned best when there is a widely shared worldview about Constitutional government (e.g. separation of powers), equality (e.g. safety net for those at the bottom), and America’s role in the world (e.g.  important, but not imperial). Think of America under Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy, for instance. Much of our current woes – epitomized by the sheer craziness of the Republican Congress after 1994 and of George W. Bush’s two terms – is the result of the erosion of that consensus from the right, and the emergence of a frankly supra-Constitutional nationalism on the right.  Cheney began his career as the rightwing of the Old Guard Republicanism of Gerald Ford, but he became sometime during the ‘90s a spear carrier for this new, dangerous right.

It amazes me that someone who has written books about American history, and presumably knows something about the subject, would assume that stark choices between left and right bring about a plausible middle-ground. Politics doesn’t work like mathematics.  Having Barry Goldwater on the ticket in 1964 didn't lead to a more sensible centrist foreign policy, and George Wallace's candidacy in 1968 or 1972 didn't encourage an affirmation of civil rights.   Instead, stark choices embitter and skew and polarize our politics and give credibility to notions that can only bring disaster to the country. Let Cheney enjoy the pleasures of retirement, and let the country enjoy a respite from his dreams of unitary executive and a pre-emptive imperial power.

In a New York Times story on Pakistan and Afghanistan, David Sanger writes:

Inside the Pakistani Army and the intelligence service, which is known as the ISI, it is an article of faith among some officers that the United States is deceiving them, and that it will replay 1989. If that happens, some Pakistanis argue, India will fill the void in southern Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan surrounded by its longtime enemy. So any talk of exit strategies is bound to reaffirm the belief of some Pakistani officials that they have to maintain their contacts with the Taliban — their hedge against Indian encroachment.

According to Matt Yglesias, this makes no sense because:

[It] seems in tension with the other popular theory that we need to stay in Afghanistan because a Taliban takeover would destabilize Pakistan. Or perhaps it’s better to say that the reasoning is circular. To win in Afghanistan we need to convince the Pakistanis that we’re staying forever, since otherwise they’ll back the Taliban and we won’t be able to beat the Taliban which we need to do as a favor to the Pakistanis. See!

I don't see the circularity. Yglesias is assuming that if we leave, and if the Pakistanis decide to once again back the Taliban, that decision will be in the best interest of Pakistan. In fact, as Pakistan is learning all too well, supporting the Taliban can boomerang, and weaken Pakistani security instead of fortifying the country against India. What makes us so confident that this same cycle will not repeat itself?

What's the meaning of football in American life? Over the years, TNR has not been silent on the subject. Read our best archived pieces on the game:

"The Moral Equivalent to Football" by Wilcomb E. Washburn. July 23, 1977. Why football reflects the true--not the ideal--nature of the American character.

"Goodbye to the Bear" by Howell Raines. January 24, 1983. The football coach who was segregationist George Wallace's alter ego.

"Football Morals" by T.S. Matthews. November 26, 1930. College football is not a game. It is war, and every college its own barbarian state.

"Linebacker Labor" by Nicholas von Hoffman. November 1, 1982. Football strikes, capitalism, and American life.

"Becoming a Pro" by James Cramer. November 12, 1977. At the Eagles' training camp, meritocracy really works.

Today is Thanksgiving, the holiday in which Americans count their blessings by binge eating, seeing family, and watching television. But we aren’t the only ones who mark time with massive feasts. Click through this TNR slideshow to see holidays from around the world in which other cultures stuff themselves.

It’s hardly a secret or an accident that much of politics revolves around the elimination of doubt among voters on public policy issues. Base-mobilization strategies for elections typically involve convincing people with clear preferences but weak civic engagement (or doubts about their own “team”) that any given trip to the ballot box is of epochal importance. Swing-voter persuasion strategies also tend to focus on efforts to convince the undecided that one’s party or candidate will make the country a much happier place. And while doubt’s evil twin, fear, most definitely has a place in both base and swing strategies, it’s still aimed at convincing voters there is a clear and unambiguous, if largely negative, difference between the consequences of voting this way or that.

I mention the dubious political status of doubt in the context of a long and fascinating piece I just published on The Democratic Strategist by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, director of The Progressive Project, entitled “Zero For Thirty-One: Lessons From the Loss in Maine.” A veteran of the struggle for LGBT rights and marriage equality, Beach-Ferrara concludes that ballot measures to stop gay marriage keep winning in no small part because equality advocates don’t talk much to conflicted voters, particularly those for whom religious dogma pulls them away from their own personal sense of fairness--i.e., non-bigots who are lumped in with bigots in most LGBT-rights strategies.

Based on her first-hand interviews with torn voters, Beach-Ferrara contends that marriage equality activists would do well to spend some time convincing such voters to reflect their true convictions by conscientiously passing up the opportunity to make a choice they aren’t prepared to make. In other words, rather than pushing people to come down on one side or the other, activists should have looked at doubt as a political asset.

There has been a lot of talk lately about whether Obama is or is not losing support among independents.   Charles Franklin, writing at Pollster.Com, insists there is no evidence of defection among independents or Democrats. “There is no evidence that any group of Democrats, especially liberal Democrats, are unhappy with Obama,” Franklin writes. But the most recent Gallup Poll shows significant signs of defection among independents and Democrats.  Obama lost 18 percentage points – from 62 to 44 percent approval – among independents. 

And what about Democrats? The figures here are disturbing. Obama has increased his approval among non-white Democrats from 90 to 92 percent over the year; but his approval rating among white Democrats has dropped from 87 to 76 percent, and his overall approval among whites by 22 percentage points. If you put these figures together with a 19 percentage point drop in approval among people who have attended college, but don’t have post-graduate degrees, it looks very much like Obama is hemorrhaging support in the middle and upper reaches of the white working class, where he had some trouble in the primaries against Hillary Clinton, and where Democrats have been vulnerable since 1968. It’s the McGovern problem. Obama can, of course, regain enough of these voters by 2012 to win re-election, but it’s still a danger sign for him and the Democrats.

From the A.P.:

ELLENWOOD, Ga. -- Someone made off with loot from a Georgia church but also left behind an apology. A note scrawled on the wall said: "Sorry but I'm poor. Forgive me Lord." The Rev. Roger Davis tells WSB-TV that expensive equipment including microphones and a laptop containing important records were stolen over the weekend from Berean Baptist Church. The robber broke locks and the church's safe, but it was empty.

It was the fourth time the church in Ellenwood, southeast of Atlanta, has been robbed in two years.

Davis joked he's considering putting up a note of his own telling potential robbers to call him instead and the church will take up a collection for them.

I detect a serious moral hazzard problem with this scheme.