President Obama's choice about Afghanistan isn’t getting any easier. Last week Matthew Hoh, a senior State Department official in the country, resigned to protest U.S. policies there. Hoh said he didn't "see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war." This is not the first time a policymaker stepped down over choices made in Washington. Click through this TNR slideshow to see some historical wartime resignations.
Shortly after Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou took office last fall, he learned that he’d inherited a massive booby prize: a budget deficit that was twice the amount the previous government had disclosed. But, when Papandreou came clean and promised to address the problem, the financial markets reacted violently. Interest rates soared, adding billions in debt-service costs to an already dire budget picture.
Jeff Goldberg has the analytic scoop:
That would make one less “special envoy” in the president’s service, which couldn’t be bad.
According to Jack Khoury in Ha’aretz, the information came from “an Arab political source,” unidentified but published in Hadith a-Nass, a Nazareth-based daily (responsible, I’m told).
Say what you want about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but “he knows how to work a room.” So claims Flynt Leverett, the contrarian Iran analyst who, with his wife Hillary Mann Leverett, paid a visit to the Iranian president in New York City last fall. During the sit-down at Manhattan’s InterContinental Barclay hotel with a group of invited academics, foreign policy professionals, and other Iranophiles, the Leveretts marveled at Ahmadinejad’s attention to detail as the Iranian took copious notes and strove to pronounce their unfamiliar names correctly.
And you should come, because we’ve put together a truly impressive lineup. Click here for more full details and email this address (events@tnr.com) to RSVP. Just as a thumbnail: It’ll take place at the National Press Club on Tuesday, February 23, from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m.
Poor Eric Holder. The fact is that he is none too smart ... and none too versed in constitutional issues. Although Ronald Reagan did appoint him Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia! Ah, those were the days when Republican presidents appointed Democrats to judicial office and Democratic presidents appointed Republicans to same. Actually, aside from his graduation from Stuyvesant High School in New York City, "second rate" is what comes to mind when you hear Holder's name.
Hey, Janet Reno wasn't so brainy either.
Last month marked a turning point in the United States-Iraq relationship. American influence is waning, while Iraq is taking steps to get on its feet economically. We suffered no combat deaths in December, and continue to reduce our presence, expecting to withdraw all combat troops by August. And Iraq concluded a major round of production deals with oil companies.
On the night of December 1, shortly after Barack Obama announced plans to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, retired Lt. Colonel John Nagl appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow was dismayed by Obama’s new plan, which she called “massive escalation,” but, when she introduced Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert who has long called for a greater U.S. commitment to Afghanistan--even if it means raising taxes and expanding the military--she was surprisingly friendly. And, after Nagl spent the segment praising Obama’s plan, which he said would throw back the Taliban and enable more civil and economic development, Maddow may have remained skeptical--but she was also admiring. “It’s a real pleasure to have you on the show, John,” she said.
Jews usually go out to the movies on Christmas ... and then they go out to eat "Chinese." I've spent it writing. Below is my harvest. I wish you all good cheer.
Here are the motifs of my writing day. Alas, none of them cheery.
1. THE REAL GRIM REAPER: HOLY DAY VICTIMS IN IRAQ AND PAKISTAN
2. COLD COMMON SENSE ABOUT IRAN FROM, MIRABILI DICTU, "THE NEW YORK TIMES"
3. A WISE EUROPEAN FOREIGN MINISTER: "WE SHOULD SHUT UP ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST"
4. A SOBER "TIMES" PIECE ON ISRAELI MILITARY DOCTRINE
5. THE SON OF THE MAN WHO WAS KILLED BY TERRORISTS IN THE WEST BANK: "REVENGE IS NOT FOR JEWS"
6. THE PRESIDENT AND ONE DUMB JEWISH WOMAN, THE ANTI-ANTI-SEMITISM CZARINA IN WASHINGTON
7. COPENHAGEN AND THE UNSEATING OF AMERICA AS A GREAT POWER
8. THE CHRISTMAS TERRORIST
So here goes:
1. THE REAL GRIM REAPER: HOLY DAY VICTIMS IN IRAQ AND PAKISTAN
From the hills outside Mandalay, Burma’s second city, the vista resembles a postcard of Asian serenity. Monks climb stone steps to a hillside shrine, where local men and women leave offerings of flowers and fruit. But the placid scene conceals one of the most repressive states in the world--a state that the Obama administration has decided may be more worthy of American friendship than American threats.
For more than four decades, Burma’s junta has persecuted its population. In conflict-torn eastern Burma, the army reportedly employs state-sanctioned rape of women and girls, conscription of local children, and the burning of villages. Nearly one million Burmese have fled to neighboring countries, while those who stay are sometimes press-ganged into forced labor, during which, numerous reports reveal, they may be beaten or even killed. Dissent, of course, is virtually unthinkable. According to the documentary film Burma VJ, which chronicles the monk-led 2007 Saffron Revolution, troops raided monasteries after the protests, beating monks and tossing their dead bodies into creeks. The junta, meanwhile, has run the economy into the ground, while the regime’s senior leaders live in opulence.
Laura Rozen reports on a troubling report from retired general Barry McCaffrey and commissioned by Centcom commander David Petraeus:
"The international civilian agency surge will essentially not happen ---although State Department officers, US AID, CIA, DEA, and the FBI will make vital contributions. Afghanistan over the next 2-3 years will be simply too dangerous for most civil agencies."
The Iranian regime has never found itself more vulnerable. And, with this vulnerability, it has never leaned more heavily on its own narrative of history. This narrative, of course, has a central antagonist, a character conjured as the “Great Satan.” As this Koranic moniker implies, the Islamic Republic ascribes supernatural qualities to its adversary: From far away in Washington, D.C., the Great Satan has the power to send hordes of stooges to shout in the streets and the remarkable ability to manufacture every ill in Iranian society.
From today's State Department press briefing:
QUESTION: Regarding what you just said, the French newspaper Le Monde reports that the Secretary has called her counterpart Kouchner and asked for France to send 1,500 additional troops to Afghanistan. Do you have any comment on that?
MR. KELLY: She did speak to the French foreign minister. This was on Thanksgiving. In fact, she spoke to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten foreign ministers on Thanksgiving.
Hope she got some rest over the weekend....
After ten months of waiting, USAID finally has a new chief: Rajiv Shah, currently the agriculture department’s top scientist. Directing the country’s principal agency for administering foreign aid is a heady position for someone who is all of 36. And it’s going to be a difficult one. Shah is stepping into the middle of a struggle that has been quietly simmering for years in Washington.
Les Gelb thinks Obama's trip to Asia was a flop, and that the time would have been better spent on a Hawaii vacation. He also wonders whether, after a couple of foreign trips with little to show for them, Obama's foreign policy team is serving him well:
The WaPo's Rajiv Chandrasekaran reports that the Obama administration has decided to try a little tenderness with Hamid Karzai:
I agree with pretty much everything Paul Krugman writes in his column today about the Chinese and their currency shenanigans--especially the point that the Chinese have rigged it so that our bilateral trade deficit will spike once the recovery gets going. (And the point that the forces driving our trade deficit were only temporarily suppressed by the recession.)
The only thing I'd quibble with is the implication of these two paragraphs:
So picture this: month after month of headlines juxtaposing soaring U.S. trade deficits and Chinese trade surpluses with the suffering of unemployed American workers. If I were the Chinese government, I’d be really worried about that prospect.
Unfortunately, the Chinese don’t seem to get it: rather than face up to the need to change their currency policy, they’ve taken to lecturing the United States, telling us to raise interest rates and curb fiscal deficits — that is, to make our unemployment problem even worse.
I think the situation in China is slightly more complicated. For two reasons, both of which have to do with domestic politics there. On the trade deficit, I think the Chinese leadership understands the general need to "rebalance," so that the Chinese people consume more (and therefore import more), which would make their economy less dependent on exports. The problem is that investing in export-led growth, as they have for years, is a self-perpetuating cycle. It creates powerful domestic constituencies that go nuts every time you try transitioning to a different model. For example, one of the reforms China has flirted with is lowering the valued-added-tax rebate it uses to subsidize exporters. But the backlash has been intense. “You’re getting today in China industry lobbyists … coming in and screaming,” Steve Orlins, a former State Department official and investment banker who now heads the National Committee on U.S.-China relations, told me a few months ago.
On Friday, TNR Contributing Editor and Washington Times national security reporter Eli Lake published a blockbuster scoop about the National Iranian American Council, (NIAC), and it's founder, Trita Parsi. I recently wrote about Parsi's appearance at the J Street conference, where he waived away concerns about the Iranian regime's warnings about destroying Israel and compared such invocations to statements issued by the United States about Iran's nuclear program. Over the past several years, Parsi has built up quite the impressive profile in Washington, earning himself frequent appearances on cable television and on the pages of the nation's top op-ed pages, as well as the kudos of countless "progressive" bloggers, who relish his message of "engagement" with Tehran. In person and in writing, Parsi comes across as serenely reasonable even if the policies for which he advocates -- the lifting of any sanctions on Iran and the striking of a "grand bargain" with the Mullahs -- are actually quite extreme.
Well, it turns out there's a lot more to Parsi than what most people knew (or suspected). First, he isn't even American, which is strange considering the fact that the organization he heads is called the National Iranian American Council and claims to speak on behalf of America's 1 million Iranianis. Furthermore, Parsi admits that his group only has 2,500 to 3,000 members. Internal documents, uncovered by Lake, show that less than 500 people responded to a membership survey that the group put out last year. So, far from representing the views of any appreciable number of Iranian Americans, it is far more accurate to say that NIAC represents the views of Trita Parsi.
But what may really get Parsi into trouble is the accusation that he has been acting for years as an unregistered foreign agent for elements in Iran and, in doing, "may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws," according to law enforcement authorities whom Lake interviewed. Specifically, Parsi had worked to arrange meetings between Iran's ambassador to the United Nations and U.S. Congressmen:
I've been diverted with a print story so this is a little belated, but it's great news that the Obama administration has finally chosen someone to lead USAID. The vacancy of that post more than 10 months into an administration that has pledged to prioritize foreign aid was a minor scandal, even if the vetting process is a "nightmare."
Today at TNR.com, we've unearthed some fascinating Latin America pieces from our archives. Take a look:
"The Death of Che Guevara" A firsthand account of the notorious insurgent's demise.
President Obama’s choice about Afghanistan isn’t getting any easier. Last week Matthew Hoh, a senior State Department official in the country, resigned to protest U.S. policies there. Hoh said he didn't "see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war." This is not the first time a policymaker stepped down over choices made in Washington.
In case it doesn't and your memory needs refreshing, he's the career diplomat who resigned in protest from the State Department in 2003 on the eve of the Iraq War.
