I’m more and more convinced this is Dick Cheney’s design. Failure in Afghanistan, which might lead to the collapse of Pakistan’s western-friendly government, which might lead to a regional war between Sunni and Shiite.

Ashdown told The Observer that Afghanistan presented a graver threat than Iraq.

‘Theconsequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq,’he said. ‘If we fail in Afghanistan then Pakistan goes down. Thesecurity problems for Britain would be massively multiplied. I thinkyou could not then stop a widening regional war that would start off inwarlordism but it would become essentially a war in the end betweenSunni and Shia right across the Middle East.’

‘Mao Zedong used torefer to the First and Second World Wars as the European civil wars.You can have a regional civil war. That is what you might begin to see.It will be catastrophic for Nato. The damage done to Nato inAfghanistan would be as great as the damage done to the UN in Bosnia.That could have a severe impact on the Atlantic relationship and maybeeven damage the American security guarantee for Europe.’

What other logic is there–besides pure stupidity–for ignoring nuclear-armed and increasingly extremist Pakistan–while ratcheting up war against Iran? Wasn’t this whole Middle Eastern fuckup supposed to be designed to prevent Al Qaeda from getting nukes? But here we are, ignoring the events in Pakistan, treating them as a PR offensive rather than a military one, so as to drum up further war? And if Afghanistan fails, as the British generals fear it might–then all of a sudden the Europeans are worried about their own security, not just bringing stability to the Middle East and South Asia.

Frankly, the internal debates on Iraq are even becoming a distraction. We’ve got to start solving Afghanistan and Pakistan–or else Iraq won’t matter, whether we’re there or gone.

ThinkProgress had a piece the other day about Stephen Hadley visiting the Hill and blaming the military for the failure in Iraq.

Two weeks ago, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) shifted his position on Iraqin a speech on the Senate floor, where he called for a reduction of theU.S. military presence. After the speech, National Security AdviserStephen Hadley attempted to “calm Republican waters” over Iraq with avisit to the Hill, but his efforts “failed and appeared to some GOPlawmakers to be an effort to put the blame for Iraq War failures on the military.”

Stephen Hadley … Stephen Hadley. Isn’t he the guy who was supposed to be doing all the things the new Iraq War Czar has now been doing? As I recall, neither Hadley nor his former boss could hack that job.

So here we are again, 3 years later, trying to appoint someone inNational Security Council who can do what the National Security Advisoris supposed to do. Sure, this time it’s Stephen Hadley, and not hisformer boss, Condi, who is not up to the task. But the reason is thesame.

We taxpayers pay a National Security Advisor to make sure thatsomeone mediates the opinions and agendas of the many strong-willedpeople running our foreign policy. We pay that person to make sure thatour foreign policy is managed well. But once again, the person in the position is not up to the task.

At some point, we need to face the overriding management issue. Isthe problem that Condi and Hadley are incompetent (yes, partly)? Butthis constant shuffling, this search to find someone who can put unityto our foreign policy approach, suggests another problem. It’s not justthat Condi and Hadley are incompetent. It’s that Bush himself can’t seethe issue with the requisite clarity to empower his National SecurityAdvisor to do the job well.

In fact, you could say the Iraq failure rests most heavily on Hadley’s and Rice’s shoulders.

Very brave of him, blaming this one the military.

James Fallows repeats a fascinating story Gary Hart and Lee Hamilton told him about the Hart-Rudman Commission.

Early in 2001, the commission presented a report to the incoming G.W. Bush administration warning that terrorismwould be the nation’s greatest national security problem, and sayingthat unless the United States took proper protective measures aterrorist attack was likely within its borders. Neither the presidentnor the vice president nor any other senior official from the newadministration took time to meet with the commission members or hearabout their findings.

The commission had 14 members, split 7-7, Republican and Democrat,as is de rigeur for bodies of this type. Today Hart told me that in thefirst few meetings, commission members would go around the room andvolunteer their ideas about the nation’s greatest vulnerabilities, mosturgent needs, and so on.

At the first meeting, one Republican woman on the commission saidthat the overwhelming threat was from China. Sooner or later the U.S.would end up in a military showdown with the Chinese Communists. Therewas no avoiding it, and we would only make ourselves weaker by waiting.No one else spoke up in support.

The same thing happened at the second meeting — discussion fromother commissioners about terrorism, nuclear proliferation, anarchy offailed states, etc, and then this one woman warning about the loomingChinese menace. And the third meeting too. Perhaps more.

Finally, in frustration, this woman left the commission.

"Her name was Lynne Cheney," Hart said. "I am convinced that if ithad not been for 9/11, we would be in a military showdown with Chinatoday." Not because of what China was doing, threatening, or intending,he made clear, but because of the assumptions the Administrationbrought with it when taking office. (My impression is that Chineseleaders know this too, which is why there are relatively few complaintsfrom China about the Iraq war. They know that it got the U.S. offChina’s back!) [my emphasis]

The story deserves wide exposure for two reasons. First, Bush and Cheney refused to meet with the Commission because they didn’t want a warning that would distract them from their mission: preventing China from ostensibly accruing as much power as the United States. (In other words, remaining the dominant empire in the world.) I never realized, though, that Lynne Cheney was sitting in on the early meetings. How does Bush get to claim plausible deniability about Hart-Rudman when Cheney’s wife was part of the Commission? Lynne was in the bunker on 9/11, after all–she’s the one who could have alerted the Administration to their myopia, and instead she shirked her duty.

But it’s also a testament to the way Emperor and Empress Fourth Branch work. As I pointed out after Cheney shot an old man in the face, his idea of a nice hunting weekend is to get together with the families that run the big contractors and oil companies, and plot world domination.

The manager of a ranch in neighboring Brooks County attended a quaillunch at the Armstrong Ranch headquarters midday Sunday with Cheney.Lavoyger Durham, manager of El Tule Ranch, said the luncheon talk wasof "North Korea, India, China, Taiwan."

It doesn’t matter if you’ve just shot a friend or if you’re supposed to be assessing the threat of terrorism. These guys are focused on their larger plan.

And that plan includes–but doesn’t stop at–Iran.

Does it bother anyone that–at a time when Pakistan’s Interior Ministry is raising concerns about the Taliban taking over significant chunks of Pakistan, the father of Pakistan’s nuke program is on the loose? [Thanks to Mimikatz for the spelling correction.]

Authorities have eased the virtual house arrest imposed on A.Q. Khan,the disgraced scientist who sold Pakistan’s nuclear secrets to Iran,North Korea and Libya, officials said Monday.

[snip]

However, two senior government officials told the AP that therestrictions were eased several months ago and that Khan could now meetfriends and relatives either at his home or elsewhere in Pakistan.

"He is virtually a free citizen," said one of the officials, who is attached to the nuclear program.

It just seems to me that the conjunction of these two events–Al Qaeda’s state ally taking over Pakistan at the same time as Pakistan’s chief nuclear proliferator goes free–that would raise the concerns of the same people who brought us to war against Iraq because of Saddam’s phantom nukes and phantom ties to Al Qaeda.

But apparently Dick Cheney (and the non-experts he’s got in charge of our Pakistan policy) has it all under control, and we don’t have to worry about countries that could give Al Qaeda nukes anymore. Gosh, that’s a relief.

I’d like to use the occasion of Al Gore’s op-ed in the NYT today to expand on something I said in my talk on Curbing the Imperial Presidency. In his book The Imperial Presidency, Arthur Schlesinger argued that the Imperial Presidency derived from foreign policy:

The Imperial Presidency was essentially the creation of foreign policy. A combination of doctrines and emotions–belief in permanent and universal crisis, fear of communism, faith in the duty and the right of the United States to intervene swiftly in every part of the world–had brought about the unprecedented centralization of decisions over war and peace in the Presidency. With this there came an unprecedented exclusion of the rest of the executive branch, of Congress, of the press and of public opinion in general from these decisions.

We would only need to replace the word terrorism for communism to apply this paragraph today–to describe how the rationale of crisis and fear justified the dangerous consolidation of power under the Executive. At the close of my talk on the Imperial Presidency, I said,

Finally, we have to use the Administration’s botchedpropaganda against it. It is clear to most, now, that the invasion of Iraq hadnothing to do with an attempt to prevent the proliferation of WMD, a desire tospread democracy, or a fight against terrorism. We need to keep refuting thosewho want to claim this war is part of the war on terror. But we need to takethat a step further and talk about the real reason the Administration didinvade Iraq: to prop up America’s threatened hegemonic position using a grandstrategy that is not only outdated and immoral, but guaranteed to beineffective in an era of global warming and peak oil.

Well, that’s probably hyperbole. But it does seem like things in Pakistan are getting pretty dire. So says a Pakistani report put together by its Interior Ministry, providing ominous warnings about the increasing power of the Taliban in the country.

The Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was warned this month that Islamic militants and Talibanfighters were rapidly spreading beyond the country’s lawless tribalareas and that without “swift and decisive action,” the growingmilitancy could engulf the rest of the country. [my emphasis]

The report provides details–including some that pose significant risk to American troops in Afghanistan.

The mention of lesser-known but potent Taliban figures by nameshows that the Pakistani government is aware of the far-reachingtentacles of the Taliban and other extremists but cannot do anythingabout them or chooses not to do anything, the Western diplomat said.

Among the particulars, the document says the Taliban have recentlybegun bombing oil tank trucks that pass through the Khyber area nearthe border on their way to Afghanistan for United States and NATO forces.

I’m particularly curious about the politics behind the report. The Interior Ministry, after all, is led by a guy who almost got killed by militants several months ago.

Remember that superb article on foreign lobbying I described a while back? Well, apparently the two PR/Lobbying firms that got so badly taken by Ken Silverstein are now accusing him of being unethical.

My story in the July issue of the magazine details how two beltwaylobby shops I approached, on the pretense that I represented a shadyLondon-based energy firm with a stake in Turkmenistan, proposed towhitewash the image of that country’s Stalinist regime. Now, havingbeen punk’d (as PR Week put it), Cassidy & Associates and APCO are seeking to lie and spin their way out of the embarrassing situation in which they find themselves.      

Both lobbying firms have complained that my tactics were “unethical.” Now APCO has issued a press releaseacknowledging that it met with the Maldon Group–the name of myfictitious energy firm–but saying that it was never actually interestedin winning the contract to work for Turkmenistan. “If Silverstein hadbothered to have even a second meeting or to further engage, he couldhave found out that he would not make the cut to become one of ourclients,” the press release says.

It’strue there was no second meeting, but only because I rejected overturesfrom the firm to hold one. Indeed, APCO began cravenly groveling to winthe Turkmenistan deal immediately after my meeting with the firm at itsWashington offices in late February.

The whole incident gets more and more ironic (I’d laugh if I weren’t sure that these two firms hadn’t already sold our our foreign policy to the next biggest bidder). Because these "pros" in influence peddling and damage control are now doing a piss poor job of controlling the damage from the article.

Suffice it to say, our foreign policy has not only been sold out to the highest bidders, but it’s been sold out by incompetent hucksters. Now how’s that going to look on the gravestone of our great Republic?

Back when the Mearsheimer and Walt paper on AIPAC came out, I expressed my hope that they–or somebody–would catalog the way the foreign influence lobby works.

I’m disappointed, too, because I had hoped Mearsheimer and Walt  wouldprovide a sophisticated review of the way foreign lobbies influence ourgovernment. I made this point recentlyin response to the conflation of Bush’s NSA-related attacks onjournalists and the governments pursuit of leaks to journalists in theFranklin case. Our policy-making is unduly influenced by foreignpowers. In addition to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Malaysia, Dubai,and Iraq (in the form of ex-pats) have recently exerted influence overissues that impact American citizens in ways most American citizenscannot. And I was hoping (in this case, not naively, I think) that Mearsheimer and Walt would catalog how this influence works in enoughdetail so we could begin to do something about it. They do catalog it,but their treatment is uneven and unconvincing.

Ken Silverstein just wrote the article that I had wished Mearsheimer and Walt had written (hat tip Laura Rozen). Silverstein posed as the representative of a business group representing Turkmenistan and got two DC lobbying firms–APCO and Cassidy & Associates, both of which have done similar campaigns for nasty dictators–to propose a campaign to boost Turkmenistan’s image. He describes in detail what the firms proposed to do for their $400,000 to $600,000 annual fee. The proposals included:

• Meetings with key members of Congress (APCO claimed to be able to get to to Harry Reid through Don Reigle and Tom Lantos through Don Bonker).
• Development of a coalition–potential business partners, think tank experts and academics–who could speak for Turkmen from an apparently independent perspective.
• Trips to Turkmenistan for Congressmen or their staffers, laundered through a think tank or university to accommodate post-Abramoff lobbying regulations.
• Trips to Turkmenistan for academics and journalists, again laundered through an organization to hide the intent to influence. Silverstein names Ariel Cohenof The Heritage Foundation, Marshall Goldman of Harvard, and JimHoagland of the Washington Post as some who have taken similar trips in the past.
• Op-eds written by friendly authors, perhaps think tank "experts."
• A forum at a think tank built around a visit by a Turkmen official. Silverstein names The Heritage Foundation,the Center for Strategic & International Studies, and the Councilon Foreign Relations as three think tanks that sponsor such fora. If such a forum produced a paper, the firms could get a friendly Congressman to read it into the Congressional Record.
• An event hosted by Roll Call or Economist magazine organized around some related theme (in the case of Turkmenistan, for example, energy security). Such an event might be keynoted by an Administration official.
• Information shared from the State Department, NSC, and intelligence agencies.

Silverstein shows the cynicism of these lobbyists on several other points. He describes the team from Cassidy & Associates making a joke about Turkmenistan "shuffling" ministers–when in fact many of them have been jailed recently. Neither of the firms did any due diligence on Silverstein’s fake Turkmen front group, suggesting these firms will work with anyone. And both promised to sign confidentiality agreements which would effectively hide Silverstein’s ties to Turkmenistan.