How Many Terrorists Does One F-16 Get You?

Fred Kaplan tries to teach BushCo a lesson about cooperating with unsavory regimes by pointing out the central role Pakistan played in yesterday’s big terrorist bust.

There’s a broader lesson here, and it speaks to the Bushadministration’s present jam throughout the Middle East and in otherdanger zones. If the British had adopted the same policy toward dealingwith Pakistan that Bush has adopted toward dealing with, say, Syria orIran (namely, it’s an evil regime, and we don’t speak with evilregimes), then a lot of passenger planes would have shattered andspilled into the ocean, hundreds or thousands of people would havedied, and the world would have suddenly been plunged into very scaryterritory.

This is not one of Kaplan’s strongest articles. He makes an important point about our relationship with Syria and Iran, sure. But to play up BushCo’s short-sightedness on Syria and Iran, Kaplan pretends that only Britain cooperated with Pakistan’s ISI on this terrorist bust. Kaplan thereby ignores that the US–in both this bust and the war on terror more generally–has precisely the kind of relationship he would advocate, one cognizant of the fact that, "the concept of morality in international relations is more complex than President Bush sometimes seems to recognize." Indeed, I have a suspicion that Pakistan’s involvement here may raise some very challenging questions about our cooperation with them on the war on terror.

Consider how Pakistan itself describes its involvement in this terrorist bust.

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Pat Lang's Four Questions and Hezbollah

What a dirty trick Pat Lang played, sending his friends a list of four issues with the US-French peace plan, but not addressing those four issues himself.

  1. France and the United States are not at war with each other.  They cannot agree to end the fighting.
  2. Hizbullah thinks it is winning both tactically and strategically.Why will it agree to anything other than a cease-fire in place?
  3. Such a cease-fire will be a victory for Hizbullah.
  4. Who will disarm Hizbullah if it accepts such a cease-fire?

I’m with Pat in doubting the feasability of the peace plan, as far as I understand it, and for some of the same reasons. I mean, Condi can’t even get Olmert (much less Peretz) to keep a straight face when she makes requests of them. Presumably Bolton was closely involved in this, and presumably he has more sway with Israel. But thus far the US has seemed unwilling and possibly unable to pressure Israel to play nice.

And France, as a stand-in for Hezbollah? I could see Chirac speaking with and for Rafiq Hariri’s Lebanon before his death. But Lebanon’s government has been all but castrated by the Israeli assault. So unless you’ve got a surrogate for Hezbollah, or preferably Hezbollah itself, you’ll be left with the problem of getting Hezbollah to agree to a plan it had no part in. Until Hezbollah is brought into the process, I assume they will answer, as they seem to be already, "Yeah, who’s going to disarm us? You and whose army?"

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Lamont's "Single Issue" Voters

The Q-Poll shows that 44% of Lamont’s supporters support him mainly because of Lieberman’s stance on the Iraq war. And Markos anticipates a bunch of pundits frowning on the large number of "Single Issue" voters.

For a pundit to suggest the Iraq war is a "Single Issue" simply betrays their ignorance of the impact that war has and will continue to have on this country and the rest of the world.

Some are opposed to the war because they’re opposed to 2,500 Americans dead, 18,000 Americans wounded, perhaps 100,000 Iraqis dead, untold wounded. Some oppose the war simply because it uses violence to solve problems that should be solved using other means.

Some are opposed to the war because it has ruined our military. Two-thirds of our active army and three-quarters of our National Guard face readiness problems because it needs to replace equipment used in Iraq. Extended deployments and lowered recruiting standards are having bad effects on the military, their families, and our mission. The Iraq war–sold as a way to make our country safer–has only exposed it defensively.

Some are opposed to the war because it has thoroughly destabilized Iraq, and threatens to destabilize the entire region. By almost every standard, Iraqi quality of life is worse today than it was under Saddam.

Some are opposed to the war because it has created precisely the problem that it was cynically sold as a way to prevent. Iraq is creating terrorists, at a time when the threat of terrorism remains very real.

Some are opposed to the war because it has turned us into an international pariah. Some countries no longer trust us. Others want nothing to do with our aggressive ways.

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Pressure Politics

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The Pause That Is Not a Cease Fire

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Bush League

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