Author: Spencer Ackerman

All it took was a) shots fired at Afghan civilians on a Kabul road; b) bribes to foreign officials that amount to hush money; c) credible accounts of unlicensed weapons shipping; d) secret raids alongside the CIA on suspected insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan; and of course e) heavy collaboration with the Joint Special Operations Command to attract some real Senate scrutiny of Blackwater, the much-renamed private security firm that according to its founder is a CIA cutout. The Senate Armed Services Committee just announced a hearing on “contracting in a counterinsurgency: an examination of the Blackwater-Paravant contract and the need for oversight.” It gets underway next Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 9:30 a.m. (Paravant is a Blackwater subsidiary working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan.)

As far as I’m aware, this is the first Senate hearing exclusively devoted to Blackwater. The previous big Blackwater hearing came before the House oversight committee in 2007, and it mainly resulted in forcing the State Department’s conflict-of-interest-laden inspector-general, Cookie Krongard, to resign in disgrace after misrepresenting his ties to the company before the panel.

From the looks of the witness list, there may be some real disclosures: Paravant’s ex-program manager, John R. Walker, is slated to testify, as is its ex-vice president Brian C. McCracken. So are a host of retired military officials, including the former head of the effort to train Afghan security forces, retired Col. Bradley Wakefield. A former Blackwater vice president for contracts, Fred Roitz, has been invited, but it’s unclear whether he’ll appear.

It’s worth pointing out that to the best of my knowledge, there was no Senate hearing devoted to scrutinizing Blackwater’s multi-million dollar contracts with the government after its guards shot and killed 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in September 2007.

On the heels of the Mullah Baradar arrest, Sami Yousafzai and Mark Hosenball report that the Taliban’s shadow governor in Kunduz, Mullah Abdul Salam, has been arrested in Pakistan. They’ve got Taliban sources saying this:

According to the Taliban sources, at the time of his capture Mullah Salam was preparing to travel to meet Mullah Baradar. Some sources suggested that the arrests of the two insurgent leaders might be linked, though this could not be confirmed in Washington.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that the Baradar arrest came after U.S. intelligence successfully tracked Baradar’s communications. Whether that has anything to do with Newsweek’s Sunday report about a massive communications surveillance windfall after an al-Qaeda operative was detained in Oman — well, that I don’t know, but it’s an intriguing possibility.

This is probably the result of Website neglect, but still. The Defense Department’s official tally of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (PDF) lists only 139 Iraq deaths from “combat operations.” The remaining 4,227 U.S. troop deaths are considered the wages of “Post-Combat Ops.” In other words, every soldier, Marine, airman, sailor and Coast Guardsman who died in Iraq after May 1, 2003, as well as the 13,499 who were too wounded to return to duty, are not considered to have taken part in combat operations. After all, President Bush declared the mission accomplished on May 1, 2003, so a nearly seven-year war clearly only existed for its first three months.

Here’s that chart:

According to the Pentagon, Pfc. Adriana Alvarez, 20, of San Benito, Texas, died Feb. 10 in Baghdad. She is the most recent (announced) U.S. soldier to lose her life in Iraq. On the official release of her death, it says that she died of “injuries sustained while supporting combat operations.” Maybe it’s time to adjust that Website tally?

Whatever’s happening with the Baradar capture, President Obama convenes his national security team today for what I think is the first all-hands meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan since the December West Point speech. The (very long) guest list:

The Vice President

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (via videoconference)

Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)
Lieutenant General Dave Rodriguez (via videoconference)

Lietenant General William Caldwell (via videoconference)

Vice Admiral Michael LaFever (via videoconference)

Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence

CIA Director Leon Panetta

Deputy Secretary of Treasury Neal Wolin

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, Special Assistant to the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Robert Nabors, OMB Deputy Director

Adm. LaFever, if you didn’t recognize the name, is the Pentagon’s man in Pakistan.

According to the Center for American Progress and Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research, 55 percent of likely voters favor getting rid of the prohibition on openly gay military servicemembers. And that support cuts across most political demographics:

Among likely voters, 68 percent of Democrats, 55 percent of independents, and 41 percent of Republicans support repeal. What’s more, 56 percent of voters in House of Representatives battleground districts and 56 percent in Senate battleground states support repeal.

That support doesn’t diminish even if the military opposes the repeal. But that may be a non-issue. McClatchy reported yesterday that Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an opponent of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” has yet to encounter any resistance from the troops to getting rid of the ban.

(Full disclosure: In 2008, I was very briefly a CAP employee.)

I read The Times’ piece about Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar’s arrest and kept getting tripped up by all the Pakistani officials quoted and paraphrased in a state of outrage that they weren’t invited to any negotiations with the Taliban. (”On the one hand, the Americans don’t want us to negotiate directly with the Taliban, but then we hear that they are doing it themselves without telling us,” a senior Pakistani intelligence official told reporters Carlotta Gall and Souad Mekhennet.) And I thought to myself, “What negotiations?”

As it turns out, AFP may have an answer.

According to the wire service, representatives from the Karzai government and the Taliban met last month in the Maldives at a “holiday resort” to discuss terms.

President Hamid Karzai’s envoys met with at least seven members closely connected to the Taliban to discuss national reconciliation ahead of the January 28 London meeting of world powers to discuss Afghanistan.

“The meeting took place at the Bandos resort island, but the Maldivian government was not directly involved in the discussions,” a source close to the Maldivian administration told AFP, asking not to be named.

That’s a pretty detailed account, although “detailed” isn’t the same thing as “true.” There’s no further detail, though, on what specifically was discussed or what the alleged talks yielded. It’s also not exactly the same account that Pakistani official gave to Gall and Mekhennet, since the official suggested the U.S. negotiated with the Taliban — which is unreported and may be wrong — but this is at least in the ballpark. And it also follows a pattern of alleged Karzai-Taliban talks that go nowhere and which the Taliban deny ever took place.

The New York Times has a (somewhat disorganized) story co-written by its very knowledgeable reporter Carlotta Gall that suggests the arrest of top Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar by a U.S.-Pakistani team last week might convince the Taliban that there’s no hope in peace talks with the Karzai government in Afghanistan. While there’s a bunch of contrary evidence in the piece as well, a number of sources ostensibly close to the Taliban say that Baradar, who was reportedly in the peace camp within the Taliban’s inner circle, represented the best chance of bridge-building between the old and new Afghan governments. Alternatively, the piece reports, Pakistanis — who apparently aided in the arrest out of pique over being shut out of negotiations with the Taliban (which may not be happening!) — may have taken in Baradar precisely to negotiate with him, or to send a message to the Taliban through Baradar. (Although a U.S. official derides this as a “conspiracy theory.”) Confused yet?

The explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But they may be less important than their effects. Consider this quote:

“Mullah Brother can create change in the Taliban leadership, if he is used in mediation or peace-talking efforts to convince other Taliban to come over, but if he is put in jail as a prisoner, we don’t think the peace process will be productive,” said Hajji Baridad, a tribal elder from Kandahar.

If so, simply keeping Baradar in prison and using him for intelligence on Taliban whereabouts would be a short-sighted gambit. Separating detentions from diplomacy usually turns out to be a mistake, as the British remember from their unhappier times in Ireland.

By the way, the Obama administration, the military and the CIA isn’t saying a word about Baradar on the record.

Forgive me if this reads like I’m greasing a source, but as part of the holds on administration appointees released by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) last week, Douglas Wilson became the Pentagon’s new assistant secretary for public affairs. Why’s that significant? Because at a time when global skepticism about U.S. military power is still in evidence — and when U.S. troops are still engaged in a war in Afghanistan — Wilson stands out as a decades-long veteran of public diplomacy efforts at a variety of agencies. He spoke to me last year when he was up for the top public-diplo spot at the State Department, a job that ultimately went to Judith McHale of the Discovery Channel. He’s also the rare senior communications official who’s put together a concerted interagency strategy for public diplomacy, which you can read about in this post.

This is a bit flashbacky, but in June 2002, John Yoo, then the deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, considered the question of what acts a U.S. citizen might commit that would indicate an implicit renunciation of his or her citizenship. Apropos of my piece today about radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — and pointed out to me by NYU’s Karen Greenberg, a source for that story — Yoo didn’t mention al-Qaeda or terrorism, but the category of behavior described here would appear to encapsulate membership in al-Qaeda:

An individual who voluntarily “enter[s], or serv[es] in, the armed forces of a foreign state” (13) may be expatriated, “if (A) such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States, or (B) such persons serve as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer.” 8 U.S.C. § 1481(a)(3). Nonetheless, no person may be expatriated unless he acts “with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality.” 8 U.S.C. § 1481(a). That said, although the performance of an expatriating act cannot be used as “the equivalent of or as conclusive evidence of the indispensable voluntary assent of the citizen,” such conduct “may be highly persuasive evidence in the particular case of a purpose to abandon citizenship.” Terrazas, 444 U.S. at 261 (quotations omitted).

Voluntary service in a foreign armed force that is engaged in hostilities against the United States has frequently been viewed as a particularly strong manifestation of an intention to abandon citizenship. As Attorney General Clark once opined, “it is highly persuasive evidence, to say the least, of an intent to abandon United States citizenship if one enlists voluntarily in the armed forces of a foreign government engaged in hostilities against the United States.” 42 Op. Att’y Gen. at 401. See also 22 C.F.R. § 50.40(a) (although “intent to retain U.S. citizenship will be presumed” when an individual “naturalize[s] in a foreign country” or “take[s] a routine oath of allegiance,” no such presumption is provided “[i]n other loss of nationality cases”).

So a couple of things here. First, al-Qaeda isn’t the agent of any state, so it’s unclear whether al-Qaeda would fall into this framework. Second, even if it does, al-Awlaki is not necessarily a member of al-Qaeda. Third, at the time Yoo wrote this memo, the Bush administration had three American citizens in its custody that it contended were agents of either al-Qaeda or the Taliban: Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla and John Walker Lindh. (Hamdi later claimed to renounce his citizenship.) And it did not claim any of them implicitly renounced their citizenship. While I think Yoo’s 2002 memo is technically still operative, it hasn’t been a guide to either the Bush or Obama administration’s behavior. I’m referencing it just to show that the citizenship-and-counterterrorism question has been around for years now.

The Christian Science Monitor carries an interview with an anonymous and recently retired senior Pakistani intelligence official, who tells us to expect more arrests like that of top Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar:

[T]he emerging relationship is built on reciprocity. After the US killed Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud last August as a favor to the Pakistan government, analysts predicted that Pakistan would do more scratching of America’s back in turn.

The biggest payoff so far was the arrest of Mr. Baradar near the port city of Karachi about 10 days ago, which was announced late Monday. Baradar is the most senior Afghan Taliban official arrested since the war began and a man the US has been hunting for years.

“The numbers are always fluctuating. Some work in other US agencies like USAID, others operate exclusively for the CIA,” says the retired intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They obviously work closely and it is not one way — it is mutual. Sometimes they need our support, sometimes we need the support they give us. Sometimes they do things not known to us.” Often the CIA will pay local operatives handsomely to carry out their work, he says.

With respect, that’s a pretty badly contextualized quote. Is this guy saying that there are intelligence officials masquerading as USAID officials? (Wouldn’t be unheard of.) Even still, it’s rare that the United States gets to see what the intelligence partnership looks like through Pakistani eyes.

According to the AP, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy commander and military leader, was captured in Pakistan ten days ago, which would be on or about February 6. Since then, as Adam Serwer reminds us, a former Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen, chided President Obama for not capturing enough terrorists. (Soon afterward, he got a column in The Washington Post.) Dick Cheney, quite naturally, told ABC News that the Obama administration was “slow” to reach “that recognition that we are at war, not dealing with criminal acts.” Add to that additional politicized criticism from Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Newt Gingrich and even former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) beat the buzzer by a few days, but the entirety of the GOP attack has been to establish in the media bloodstream the narrative that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing on counterterrorism. All of this happened while the Obama administration and its Pakistani partners had unquestionably the most important Taliban prisoner in the eight-year Afghanistan war in their custody. Simultaneously, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber of Northwest Airlines Flight 253, cooperated with interrogators after his Mirandization and humane treatment. And add to the mix this weekend’s new Afghanistan offensive in Marja. Is there any aspect of the conservative critique of Obama on national security that bears any resemblance to reality at all?

Newsweek has intelligently re-posted the transcript of an interview Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar — the captured Taliban leader — granted the magazine late last year. A lot of what he says is boilerplate propaganda, but in light of U.S. and Pakistani intelligence reportedly collaborating on his capture, this bit takes on some salience:

What about reports that Pakistani intelligence is advising you not to enter into peace talks at this time?
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is independent and sovereign in its decisions and agreements. It is not taking any dictation from any group or government.

Do you fear that Pakistan would stop you from using its soil?
They have not given us permission to use their land even now.

Always correct or just prematurely correct?

Marines fight insurgents on road to Marjeh, Helmand Province, Afghanistan (photo: DVIDSHUB via Flickr)

The Taliban’s military commander has been captured in a joint Pakistani-U.S. intelligence raid. A high-five to Langley: this is one serious motherfucking success. Now it’s really important we don’t screw it all up by abusing Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Apparently Baradar has been in custody since last week and is being interrogated by both the Paks and us. (This is why the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group exists.) The ultimate point of fighting the Taliban is to compel them to give up fighting and accept some version of a post-Taliban order in Afghanistan. Torturing Baradar — which the Pakistanis have been known to do — is counterproductive to that effort. If we treat the guy respectfully, in a demonstrated way, it might spur a reconsideration of Taliban goals. I am not counting any chickens, but any hope of a game-changing possibility will be foreclosed upon if we or our allies torture Baradar. Let’s be smart — and true to Obama’s stated principles/executive order. If there was any doubt whatsoever, the Abdulmutallab case proved we don’t need to torture to get good intelligence.

Last thing. Just weeks ago, American pundits were bemoaning how the Pakistanis weren’t taking any steps to go after the Quetta Shura Taliban. Hopefully they’ll have the decency to apologize to the Pakistanis. This longterm partnership has just paid a big dividend.

Boy, that Barack Obama sure doesn’t know how to deal with terrorism, huh?

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy to Mullah Omar and commander of the Taliban’s military forces, was captured by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence in Karachi last week. The news has now leaked out. While you’re not going to see any Paul Bremer-esque “We got him!” preliminay end-zone dances, Baradar’s capture is a big deal for several reasons. Why not do this listicle-style?

See the list after the jump…

1. We’ll know how regimented the Taliban is, and how much pain it can withstand before it sues for peace. The Taliban isn’t a Western-style Army, but most military analysis views its military wing as possessing a hierarchical structure. Baradar, the defense minister in Taliban-run Afghanistan, is at its top. Losing him is probably something the Taliban have planned for at some point, and so now will come a test of how much operational, tactical and even strategic capability the Taliban fighters in southern and eastern Afghanistan lose — or don’t lose — now that he’s in custody. Taliban fighting prowess is likely to be a lagging indicator — by most accounts Taliban tactical commanders have a fair amount of regional autonomy, although their logistics trail looks less certain — but over the next weeks and months, if U.S. commanders don’t notice changes in Taliban fighting patterns, the Taliban will prove to be an even more resilient enemy than the U.S. previously thought. Those emergent patterns will go a long way to telling Gen. Stanley McChrystal how much momentum the Taliban can lose before changing its calculations about reconciliation with the Karzai government.

2. The Pakistanis will go after the Quetta Shura Taliban. Remember all those hand-wringing newspaper stories about the Pakistanis refusing to go after their old proxies in the Afghan Taliban? So much for that. Notice that Baradar wasn’t captured in the tribal areas, but in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. That means he believed he could travel around Pakistan and be untouchable. No longer. If the so-called ‘Quetta Shura’ Taliban led by Omar thought the Pakistani military and intelligence service still had its back, that’s over, in a very dramatic way. And that almost certainly will impact Omar’s calculations on what the fight will require. Again, that’s not the same thing as expecting him to give up; just that the Taliban can no longer count on shelter by the Pakistani security apparatus.

3. The U.S-Pakistan relationship is working. Amb. Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, declined last December to publicly pressure the Pakistanis to go after the Quetta Shura Taliban. He said instead that a long-term relationship, with Pakistan confident that the U.S. was addressing its legitimate interests, would pay dividends. Here’s a very big dividend. The Baradar capture vindicates the Obama administration’s decision to hug Pakistan tightly, with a big new aid package and less public pressure, in the hopes of yielding complementary Pakistani security moves against the Taliban and al-Qaeda (more even than the bloody Swat and South Waziristan campaigns last year) down the road. If analysts were looking for a big, clear sign of Pakistani strategic intent — keep the Taliban on hand as an Afghan Plan B or throw in more heavily with the Americans? — here’s something big and clear.

4. Of course, Barack Obama is soft on terrorism. No, of course not really, but we’re sure to hear this from the Republicans. First Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is read his Miranda rights and treated humanely and — against every piece of conservative counterterrorism conjecture — he cooperates with interrogators. Then a former Bush speechwriter says Obama shouldn’t be killing so many terrorists with drone strikes; he should be capturing more of them. Well, look at what just happened! Which Republican will be intellectually honest enough to credit the Obama administration here? And who will jump to say the administration has just proved — somehow — it doesn’t know how to handle terrorism?

5. Will the Obama administration allow Baradar to be tortured? As I wrote on my personal blog, it’s crucial that the U.S. and the Pakistanis show that a high-level Taliban commander be treated respectfully if it hopes to induce more surrenders and impact the Taliban’s calculus on continuing to fight. Interrogations of Baradar are, reportedly, a joint Pakistani and U.S. venture. But the Pakistanis torture. Will the Obama administration, in its first big overseas capture, successfully convince the Pakistanis to treat Baradar humanely?

Update: Also see smart analysis from Jason Burke, Josh Foust and Gregg Carlstrom.

Anwar al-Awlaki (Muhammad ud-Deen at en.wikipedia)

In the (unconfirmed) event anyone in the Obama administration is trying to annul the citizenship of any American recruited by al-Qaeda in order to kill him without legal encumbrance, the evidence is (mostly) clear: you can’t.

“If you’re an American citizen, we don’t take away your citizenship,” said Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University, a think tank largely devoted to studying the constitutional implications of counterterrorism.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

The question, hypothetical as it might be, arises largely because of one man: Anwar al-Awlaki. A New Mexico-born American citizen who served as a Muslim cleric in Virginia, Awlaki moved in the last few years to Yemen, where administration officials believe he assists al-Qaeda in recruiting potential attackers targeting the United States. Awlaki has admitted ministering to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber of Northwest Airlines Flight 253, but he has denied any culpability for the attempted strike.

Additionally, he allegedly was in contact with the accused Ft. Hood murderer, Nidal Malik Hasan, ahead of the November shootings. Awlaki has denied all involvement in terrorist activities, but defended the targeting of American civilians by terrorists last week, telling al-Jazeera, “The American populace is living within a democratic regime and they hold the responsibility of its policies; the American populace elected the criminal Bush for two presidential runs, and they elected Obama who’s not different from Bush.”

In a public discussion rare for such a sensitive topic, Dennis Blair, the director for national intelligence, told a congressional panel earlier this month that the Obama administration has in place a procedure to discuss potential military strikes targeting American citizens believed to be involved with al-Qaeda. While Blair did not specifically discuss Awlaki, the cleric survived one such airstrike in December.

But in subsequent interviews with Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball, anonymous current and former U.S. national-security officials revealed that no such special procedure need occur if a strike does not specifically target an American citizen, even if an American dies in the process, raising questions about whether the administration sought to evade the constitutional prohibition on summarily killing Awlaki that his citizenship entitles him to receive. Steve Clemons, who directs foreign policy studies for the influential New America Foundation, blogged last week that a “senior Pentagon official” was curious about the legal hurdles to annulling the citizenship of American terrorists in order to kill them.

Obama administration officials would not comment for the record, but one said that such an option was not under any serious discussion. Moral and legal considerations aside, Greenberg said it’s not possible — at least not for citizens born in the United States.

“They can’t do this with al-Awlaki. He is an American citizen, born in New Mexico. They can’t take away his citizenship,” Greenberg said, after tasking her legal staff to research the question in response to a query from TWI. However, she added, there are options available to the government to strip citizenship for naturalized citizens within the first 10 years of citizenship. Usually those options are exercised in immigration cases and lead to deportation.

Awlaki, or any other U.S. citizen, would have to formally renounce his citizenship in order to lose it, Greenberg continued. “Formally, you can write a letter” to the Justice Department, she said, informing it of such renunciation.

In June 2002, John Yoo, then a lawyer for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, assessed that U.S. citizenship was no obstacle to the government detaining a suspected terrorist and providing him with a trial before a military commission. “[T]he President’s authority to detain an enemy combatant is not diminished by a claim, or even a showing, of American citizenship,” Yoo wrote. But even Yoo did not consider the more radical claim of stripping American citizenship from a suspected terrorist for the purpose of legally killing him; and President Obama formally annulled Yoo’s memorandum in an executive order within days of taking office.

photo: KCIvey via Flickr

Your moment of total facepalmitude today is courtesy of The New York Times piece on Attorney General Holder’s political missteps over the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial. Cue Rahm Emanuel:

Mr. Emanuel, who favored a military trial for the Sept. 11 detainees, said his disagreement with Mr. Holder is rooted in different perspectives, not personalities. “You can’t close Guantánamo without Senator Graham, and K.S.M. was a link in that deal,” he said, referring to Mr. Mohammed.

Be charitable to Emanuel and assume he’s counting Senate votes on funding the Thomson-purchase and believes that Graham is the sixtieth vote. Even so: juh? The money for buying Thomson and shutting Guantanamo down is in the Afghanistan “supplemental.”* Your strategy there has to be holding the chairmen of the relevant committees’ feet to the fire on not stripping it out, because the “supplemental” is the hardest funding bill for Congress to obstruct.

More directly: Lindsey Graham is one of 41 Republican senators. He has the capacity to be reasonable. And yet when he’s faced with people who know more than he does, he acts like a baby, as with his petulant treatment of longtime FBI counterterrorist Ali Soufan last year. He is not the chairman of anything. He is not the ranking member of anything. He controls no money. If you believe he has the power to rally along GOP votes, ask how that climate change bill is coming. There is absolutely no legal or procedural way that the road to shutting Guantanamo down runs inexorably through Graham’s office. That’s a political choice.

And while I suppose it’s kindhearted in the Broderian sense — not that Broder would ever credit Rahm for such a thing — it’s also a unilateral disarmament. If Emanuel really believes that it’s more appropriate to try KSM in a military commission, he’s not listening to John Brennan, who knows a hell of a lot more about this shit than Emanuel, nor to Eric Holder or to Joe Biden. There is absolutely no metric under which military commissions are more successful than federal prosecutions — not conviction rates; not legitimacy; not intelligence “leaks”; not crazypants defendant yelping. The attacks on federal trials for terrorism cases are groundless. And that’s why you’d be fooling yourself to believe that anyone allegedly trading “GTMO for KSM” is acting in good faith here. All you’ll get is two agenda items unraveled because of unforced political errors.

*I put “supplemental” in quotes because functionally it’s a supplemental funding request but there’s also another supplemental to fund the extra 30,000 troops for Afghanistan. This “supplemental” is called an Overseas Contingency Operations Fund, the New Normal for requesting war money and distinguishing it from the Pentagon’s so-called base budget (non-war expenses). It’s entirely possible I’ve created confusion where none previously existed.

Sen. John Kerry chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (photo: Chad J. McNeeley via Dept. of Defense)

This isn’t just a great speech. This is the speech that should have been given to the Muslim world by President John Kerry in 2005. In the time between then and now, Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has evidently had a lot of time to think about what a mature, balanced relationship between America and Islam looks like. It’s the rare speech — Cairo was one of them — that actually offers a synthesis of many of the seemingly intractable problems within that relationship and cleverly adjudicates a positive-sum path forward. I could excerpt Kerry’s speech to the U.S.-Islamic World Forum all day and not do it justice, so I’m going to put the full text after the jump. For now, check out this section, about what won’t be solved by a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine:

I know that everyone here understands the urgent need for peace.  But peace alone will not solve all the region’s problems. Ask yourselves:  If peace were delivered tomorrow, would it meet the job needs of the entire region?  How many more children would it send to school? Who really believes that Iran would suddenly abandon its nuclear ambitions? So we know that Israel/Palestine is central but we must develop a much more practical partnership that extends well beyond regional conflicts.

Saying those words to this audience takes both balls and brains. And the whole speech is like that. Not cheap, not oppositional, but frank and thoughtful and constructive and penetrating. It should be distributed widely, so, after the jump, the full text. I’ll close my remarks by saying that it’s a bit of a parlor game among progressives to quietly breathe a sigh of relief that Kerry lost the 2004 election, so that the horrors of the interceding four years avoided a potential decimation of the progressive agenda. After this speech, I think all that ends.

As salaam alaikum. Thank you for the kind introduction. I want to thank the Brookings Project for convening this important discussion. I’m grateful to His Excellency Prime Minister Hamad bin Jasim, Strobe Talbott, Martin Indyk, and all those involved in putting this Forum together. And I am pleased to be here with Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey. There are an extraordinary number of thoughtful, experienced leaders from many different walks of life assembled here, and I am privileged to share my thoughts with you. We gather at a time when many have serious doubts about whether real progress has been made since President Obama’s historic speech in Cairo. We can’t speak honestly at a Forum like this without recognizing the widespread frustration many people feel. Much of it is justified. Some of it is not. But it is important to remember where we began. For a decade, our relationship was framed by trauma and terrorism, by two ongoing wars and political conflict—and the fallout only polarized us further. Many Muslims perceived the United States as an aggressor – projecting its power solely to protect its own security and economic interests, usually at the expense of Muslim countries. Too many in western societies implicitly, and at times explicitly, blamed an entire religion for the unholy violence of a few. This left many Muslims angry and alienated and complicated the task for leaders in the region. At the same time, suicide bombers and extremists dominated the daily news. While credible and respected Muslim voices did publicly condemn the fanaticism and violence, their actions received little attention from the media and policymakers. Too often, the extremists defined an “us versus them” discourse, and all of us suffered for it. Since President Obama took office, we have witnessed a dramatic shift. While expectations were perhaps too high that the world would change overnight, we know that his words and our subsequent actions were just the beginning of a long road. Major challenges remain for all of us in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. We also have to collectively address poverty and stand up for democratic values and human rights. It is especially important that we remain united in preventing Iran’s nuclear program from setting off an arms race in the region. Make no mistake. Iran is not being singled out — it has chosen to defy an international nonproliferation regime that is in all of our interests to enforce. President Obama has joined many others in calling for a world free of nuclear weapons. Believe me, the road to zero does not run through a nuclear-armed Tehran. Undoubtedly the most crucial and most vexing of all issues is how we can revitalize a Mideast peace process that delivers peace—not just process—because if we don’t do it now, the door may well shut forever. And no one can overstate the dangers of another generation growing up knowing only conflict. The truth is we have in these past months taken some important steps. Today, we are in a fundamentally better place than we were a year ago. Quiet accomplishments and new attitudes and polices have put our partnerships on firmer footing. Let me be specific. First, America is striving to think and talk differently about Islam. We reject—publicly and categorically—the demonization of a religion and recognize our need for deeper understanding. Our values and our history remind us constantly that religious bigotry – whether it is anti-Semitism or Islamophobia – has no place in our public life. America was founded by those seeking freedom of religion, and all Western countries need to recognize that banning burqas or minarets is contrary to our shared values. It builds unnecessary walls between Muslims and the rest of society. It’s insulting, and it only exacerbates tensions. Second, we must acknowledge that a serious debate is now underway within Muslim communities over how best to address extremism and combat prejudice. This is an important development because ultimately, it is those communities that are best positioned to find solutions that resonate. I want to commend His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan for his signature work in promoting Muslim-Christian dialogue through “A Common Word” initiative, which attracts more signatories every day. I want to also recognize His Majesty King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for promoting interreligious dialogue. And of course, the Qataris deserve great credit for hosting forums like this one. Third, the United States is reaching out to the next generation and cultivating people-to-people relationships. President Obama has created new science envoys and exchange programs. Our space program, NASA, is welcoming Muslim students from around the world and financing a research program in the Gulf. And Secretary of State Clinton has appointed a Special Representative to Muslim Communities who is focused on people-to-people engagement, Farah Pandith, who is here with us today. All of these initiatives add up to a different attitude and a different approach. Let me share with you a story that embodies one important aspect of this new partnership. Before last year’s Hajj, there were warnings of a potential pandemic outbreak of H1N1 flu. So the United States sent Dr. Osama Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American public health expert at our Centers for Disease Control, and four other Muslim-American doctors to Mecca. His team worked with their Saudi hosts on a cutting-edge program to contain the flu using smart-phones for real-time disease mapping. And guess what? It worked. Defying the odds, there was no spike in H1N1 flu cases after the Hajj. Dr. Ibrahim’s hosts were so moved that they invited him and his colleagues to stand in the holy places and perform the Hajj themselves. And this kind of outreach goes in both directions. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Islamic Relief charity delivered aid to 60,000 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Just last month, the Red Crescent and other humanitarian groups from Muslim-majority countries again rushed to deliver aid to Haitians in desperate need. I want to extend a special thanks to Prime Minister Erdogan for sending Turkey’s excellent search and rescue teams to Haiti – a 7-year-old girl and many other Haitians owe their lives to those Turkish efforts. So all of these are concrete actions, which individually may seem insignificant to some, when taken together, make a tangible difference. They point a way forward, and we need to create more partnerships just like them. I know in your working groups you will be doing just that. For my part, I intend to work to create a new, long-term exchange program between the United States and Muslim-majority countries. This will involve public-private partnerships—funded jointly by governments and companies so that Americans and citizens from Muslim-majority countries can work together in fields like science, journalism, business, arts, and culture. This idea is in the early stages, and I welcome your expertise and support in defining it as we go forward. That’s one small step in building bridges. But ultimately, and particularly if local leaders do the right thing, our relationship will not be defined in religious terms nor should it be. It will be defined by our success in tackling the traditional issues we all face – how to put people to work, how to provide healthcare, and how to educate our youth. Nothing will be more crucial in this effort than addressing the demographic explosion of young people across the broader Middle East. This “youth bulge” will inevitably drive change in Muslim societies, and ought to drive our policy and partnership as well. When people see their governments fail to address their basic needs, when they see no hope for escaping from poverty and improving their lives, seemingly intractable problems will become truly insurmountable. On the other hand, if we find ways to work together—to improve governance, to help create worthwhile jobs, and to do a better job of integrating youth socially, politically and economically—then a new generation can also be a new opportunity for both sides to redefine our relationship. That’s why we should commend the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations in partnership with the State of Qatar for launching Silatech, a creative initiative that addresses young people’s critical and growing need for jobs and economic opportunity. But for societies to harness their full potential, we also need to address the aspirations of women. Countries cannot expect to be competitive if half the workforce is economically marginalized or denied rights and opportunities. While this effort sometimes runs hard up against cultures and traditions, as we in America learned with the election of our first African-American president, once a barrier has been broken, we wonder how it could ever have stood for so long. To fundamentally change the dynamic, however, we must address the one issue that has been at the emotional core of America’s relations with the world’s Muslims throughout my public life. We all know what it is: The need for lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And we all know that a two-state solution remains the only workable solution, and the only just solution—and America cannot and will not stop fighting for it. I recognize that many here are particularly frustrated with the lack of progress over the past year, as we are in America. I know the failure to achieve a complete settlement freeze in the last months has profoundly disappointed many in the Arab world. Let me make it clear: The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. But we are where we are, and we simply cannot allow this issue to become an excuse to point fingers or derail final status negotiations. Because as elusive as significant progress sometimes seems, the truth is we all know where the finish line is. All that is needed is the will and the leadership to get there. Remember that it was not so long ago, at the end of the Clinton Administration, when Israelis and Palestinians came closer than ever to defining a comprehensive peace agreement. Based on his intensive personal involvement, Bill Clinton set forth parameters that included tough sacrifices on both sides—and a compromise that was fair to all: A contiguous Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with land swaps; security guarantees for Israel; a capital for both states in Jerusalem; and significant compensation for refugees, with a right of return to Palestine and any resettlement in Israel subject to negotiation. Then in 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative, since endorsed by every Arab country, provided another key piece to the final puzzle: The promise for Israel that a comprehensive peace agreement would bring normalized relations with the Arab world. While new leaders have emerged, I believe the Clinton parameters and the Arab Peace Initiative still provide the only realistic basis for lasting peace and security – and I’m confident that deep down, most of the Israeli and Palestinian people understand this as well. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must reach an agreement, and live with the results. But America has a vital role to play as an effective broker, and we must remain deeply involved with a sense of urgency. Israel is one of our closest allies and always will be, but Israel is most secure when America is actively engaged. And I commend Senator Mitchell and this Administration for staying committed and refusing to cede the initiative to the extremists. To move forward, America must help the parties progress as rapidly as possible from proximity talks to direct negotiations with all of the issues on the table. Personally, I suspect that progress can be made most easily on the borders first, and significantly, this will help to resolve the issue of West Bank settlements and lay the groundwork for reaching agreement on other issues. And while America’s role is vital, let’s be clear: We must all be partners in this effort. First, Gulf states and the entire region must do more to support Palestinian state building. Prime Minister Fayyad has laid out a detailed plan for strengthening Palestinian institutions. This effort needs greater Arab support, and I urge you to find ways to deliver it. Second, the Arab world cannot simply wait for Israeli-Palestinian peace before improving relations with Israel. Building trust must be a step-by-step process, and the region must recognize Israel’s desire for acceptance and its fundamental need for security. And perhaps most importantly, the leading voices in the Arab world have a vital role to play with their people in creating the atmosphere for lasting peace with Israel. Finally, we must address the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza. One year ago, I saw firsthand the devastation there – and it is a tragedy that so little has been rebuilt since then. In southern Israel, I also saw the toll that Hamas rockets had inflicted in a barrage that no country would endure interminably. But our grievance is not with the people of Gaza. We will all benefit by finding ways to allow them to rebuild their homes and their lives without empowering those who seek violence. I know that everyone here understands the urgent need for peace. But peace alone will not solve all the region’s problems. Ask yourselves: If peace were delivered tomorrow, would it meet the job needs of the entire region? How many more children would it send to school? Who really believes that Iran would suddenly abandon its nuclear ambitions? So we know that Israel/Palestine is central but we must develop a much more practical partnership that extends well beyond regional conflicts. Out of this conference must come a broader commitment to the day to day challenges of the region. That is how we are ultimately going to define our relationships, not by the distinctions between religions, but by our common humanity, not by the Osama Bin Ladens of the world who are seeking to destroy, but by the Osama Ibrahims who are working to heal. Today we are all neighbors with more in common than could possibly separate us. We have a duty to engage with each other. The Abrahamic faiths—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam– have to find new meaning in the old notion of our shared descent. The good news I see is that, for all the challenges our differences present, all of the major religions do have a sense of universal values—a moral truth based on the dignity of all human beings. Gandhi called the world’s religions “beautiful flowers from the same garden.” Every religion embraces a form of the Golden Rule, and the supreme importance of charity, compassion, and human improvement. And if we remember those common principles, if we respect each other and work hard to bridge our differences then—inshallah, god willing—that is kind of partnership we can build.

Marines fight insurgents on road to Marjeh, Helmand Province, Afghanistan (photo: DVIDSHUB via Flickr)

This is not how Gen. McChrystal wanted the Marja operation to start. From an ISAF press statement:

Two rockets from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launched at insurgents firing upon Afghan and ISAF forces impacted approximately 300 meters off their intended target, killing 12 civilians in Nad Ali district, Helmand province today.

ISAF Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal conveyed his apologies to
President Hamid Karzai for this unfortunate incident.

“We deeply regret this tragic loss of life,” said McChrystal. “The current operation in Central Helmand is aimed at restoring security and stability to this vital area of Afghanistan. It’s regrettable that in the course of our joint efforts, innocent lives were lost. We extend our heartfelt sympathies and will ensure we do all we can to avoid future incidents.”

According to the release, McChrystal suspended the use of HIMARS. This is awful. For a mission predicated on protecting the population, it’s doubly so. At least McChrystal and ISAF didn’t follow in the footsteps of some of their predecessors and stall/make excuses/deny responsibility for the error. This is in the spirit of Defense Secretary Gates’ (much neglected) “first apologize” rule from January 2009 about what to do in the event of Afghan civilian casualties.

graphic: Lance Page-Truthout.org; adapted: Joe Gratz, Paul Keller, Hkuchera

At some point, if it wants to win this argument, doesn’t Obama have to make an argument about why the military commissions are inappropriate for the 9/11 conspirators? I wonder:

The trouble is that the administration has also embraced military commissions. So conservatives can just as easily say: Why should the most important al-Qaeda detainees get civilian trials but some kid who threw a grenade at a U.S. soldier at the Taliban’s behest get a military tribunal? And that’s not a question the administration wants to answer, given the emphasis it placed last year on revamping the commissions. If the administration replies, Well, it’s important to display the strength of American justice internationally, then it can’t very well continue to defend the military commissions. The easiest thing to do here, if the administration really believes in the commissions, is to give the GOP what it wants.

Adam Serwer worries that it’s going to go the other way, and Obama’s just going to acquiesce to the commissions in the face of pressure from the right. Maybe. If Obama won’t make an argument against the commissions that he’s embraced, then… yeah, probably. But the fact that this is a problem from the administration just points to the crucial need, still unaddressed by Obama’s counterterrorism policies, to finally break with the ad-hoc, process-challenged, internationally-dubious and vastly less successful military commissions. The politics of fear can’t be harnessed; they have to be confronted.

Marine on security patrol around Combat Outpost Viking, Iraq (photo: DVIDSHUB via Flickr)

Since I got the shit beat out of me in comments, let me try to refine what I meant to say. (I thought I said it this way, but I guess not.) I never ever would suggest that there is no “Iraq Syndrome” in terms of PTSD, which is all too painfully real. What I meant was that, very improbably, and in part because of Obama’s handling of the withdrawal, advocates of a less imperial or less militaristic foreign policy are not getting tarred with the dismissive suggestion that they suffer from an “Iraq Syndrome” as happened after Vietnam. The idea that there was a “Vietnam Syndrome” afflicting peaceniks led to, among other things, the Second Iraq War. We appear to have dodged that bullet.

For the commenter who sensibly asked what I think the lessons of Iraq are, as I’ve been writing for years on this blog and its predecessors: Time for a less imperial and less militaristic foreign policy. Never presume that you understand a foreign culture better than the locals. Never presume you should dominate a foreign culture. Never occupy another country, particularly not a Muslim country. (There’s a difference between the occupation of Iraq and military actions in Afghanistan, which are blessed by repeated resolutions of the UN Security Council.) Build the collective-security institutions of the international community to prevent conflict before it percolates. Do not demonize the opponents of war. How’s that for starters?

Are we really going to get out of Iraq? From everything Obama has said, and indicated, about abiding by the SOFA: Yes, in every substantial way that matters. A big embassy staffed with maybe a couple hundred military and political advisers — and I’m just speculating, not reporting here — is probably appropriate given the scope of Iraq’s ongoing troubles. Is Blackwater going to stay? It’s an election year, but Interior Minister Jawad Bolani said just yesterday he wants to kick out everyone who even used to work for Blackwater. Can I see into the future? I can’t. But the evidence to date is pretty fucking positive. I would say I have some credibility here, having written a 4000-word investigative report in 2006 about base construction in Iraq; we’re leaving those bases now.

And to anyone who questions my integrity: sorry guys, I write this shit because I mean it.