Obama as Nobel Laureate

The Peace Prize? The man has done little to draw down troops in Iraq, he’s toying with increasing the troop commitment in Afghanistan, and he’s still moving very, very slowly to shut down Gitmo. Now this is not to say that it’s inconceivable that Obama will merit the Peace Prize at the end of four or eight years – the man moves slowly on everything it seems – but so far the evidence is just not there. It’s also not to say that I would support anything that the party of Beck and Palin would offer up in 2012. Obama is still probably the best choice from among the serious contenders in the 2008 election.

This award for Obama is akin to giving a promising freshman their university degree on account of their potential. Worse, I fear that this takes pressure off of Obama to get serious about shutting down the legal vacuum of Gitmo and deciding how best to extricate his country’s soldier’s from two nasty conflicts where there is little evidence that they can effect much change.

Bleak Outlook for Afghan Mission

Today we have further confirmation of the longstanding suspicions of many progressives, namely that the NATO mission in Afghanistan is likely doomed to failure. The report leaked to WaPo indicates that US Gen. McChrystal has serious doubts about the ability of NATO to overcome the Taliban insurgency. The one caveat he does give is that success (however he is defining it) could be secured by adding troops.

More troops from where?

Most NATO countries, including Canada, are lukewarm to the idea of pouring more forces into Afghanistan and the US itself still has major commitments in Iraq. In the meantime the accusations of corruption inside Afghanistan likely do little to invigorate anyone in NATO with the idea that democracy or human rights are being defended. Karzai is looking more and more like your average Western-backed pseudo-democratic puppet dictator.

We need to seriously ask what, if anything, we can do for Afghanistan.

The Lies that put the US in Iraq

Juan Cole has a post on the false statements that paved the path to war. According to the study cited by Cole, there were some 935 false statements made by the Bush administration.

Searching for something intelligent to say

I must confess that I don’t know much about Kenya – a bit more than Mel Lastman perhaps, but not much. As a general comment though, I’ll observe that in the past few years we’ve really had a problem with countries thrown together by European imperialists. Iraq contains three groups that don’t like each other, Kenya appears to be in a similar situation and in Pakistan the problems with the Afghan border seem to be derived in large part from the fact that an arbitrary British line slices Pashtun lands in half.

Iran Not Going for the Bomb

This story has been floating around the blogosphere quite a bit: it appears that the Iranian government abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. While the American intelligence community has been pretty damaged by the Iraq fiasco, but the pressure was undoubtedly on the CIA et cetera to show that there was a bomb being built.

Here’s some speculation: 2003 was the invasion of Iraq, could it be that once the American military did away with Iran’s greatest existential threat, Saddam and his alleged weapons programs, there was no good reason to develop a deterrent.

Why don’t they report the good news?

Sadly it looks like the festering cholera problem is getting worse in Iraq. I don’t recall new epidemics as being one of the promised benefits of an invasion back in 2003. I suppose, just like with every other problem that’s happened in Iraq some neocon will now sit down in front of a camera and explain that of course we should have expected outbreaks of disease – it’s a sign that democracy marches on! Just like civil war and ethnic cleansing!

Let slip the dogs of war (again)

Turkey (now with the support of Syria!) is authorizing its military to conduct incursions into the Kurdish areas of Iraq. I don’t know what to say, but Turkey may be at the vanguard of far more open involvement of other regional powers in pursuing their interests in Iraq.

Iraq Can’t Expel Blackwater After All

It turns out that the Maliki government needs them too badly. It appears that Iraqis are stuck with the hated private security firms running around the country above the law. This is one more grudge in a country already full of them.

They Hate Us for our Mercenaries

Blackwater is back in Iraq, wow that’s some sovereignty that the Iraqi government has. BAGnewsNotes has some glamour shots of Blackwater personnel posing in Iraq. The post also has this interesting line:

“What I also can’t understand, — given the average Iraqi’s distain for this outfit — is why Blackwater has the aerial presence in the first place. In reference to the offensiveness, the newswires currently also offer a number of file shots of Blackwater helicopter buzzing Baghdad mosques.”

I’m sure if a unit from the US military repeatedly and obviously pisses off the locals for no reason there is at least the hope that a competent commander will reprimand them (though I’m sure some of them just hush things up). With Blackwater it doesn’t appear that anything can be done. Is it any wonder that they can escalate their behaviour to shooting at random locals?

Whatever you do, don’t talk to them!

Juan Cole has linked to an article that states that the Bush administration is pressuring Iraq leaders not to have the Iranian president visit them. Real leaders never talk to their enemies, right Ronald Reagan? Oh… Never mind.