In Iraq, the situation is rapidly evolving from a military problem to a governing problem:
In the rural outskirts of Baghdad, where the war seems distant in Iraq's new period of relative calm, a prominent Sunni tribal chief makes no bones about what is lacking in the drive to turn security improvements into lasting economic and political change.
The Iraqi government needs to take advantage of the new relative calm to give the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds reason to value the central government and their place in a democratic Iraq.
With al Qaeda in Iraq reeling and the Sunnis unwilling to fight us, it is good to see that the Shia thugs are weak:
Hundreds of followers of a radical Shiite cleric in Iraq have taken to the streets to protest a proposed security agreement between Iraq and the United States.
Hundreds? A randomly called protest in my home town could get hundreds to shout "no to America". This is the Mahdi "Army"? A weak battalion at best, I'd say.
Meanwhile in North Korea, negotiations seem to be making progress after years of squeezing North Korea that have resulted in North Korea teetering on the edge of collapse:
The agreement, reached after three days of talks, requires North Korea to finish disabling its main nuclear facility by the end of October. Meanwhile the United States, China and the other three nations taking part would complete promised deliveries of fuel oil and other economic aid.
Beyond that, the envoys agreed to a robust verification team of experts who will visit North Korean nuclear facilities, review its documents and interview its technical experts, said a press communique read out by China's envoy, Wu Dawei, at the end of the meeting.
Some specifics of the verification remained to be worked out, but experts and diplomats from the six nations hoped to agree on those steps by early September, said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill.
Verification--if our government over the next decade has the will to act on any violations--will be the difference between a real agreement and the sham 1994 Agreed Framework.
I have to wonder why North Korea has agreed to this route. I'd have thought that Pyongyang would have decided to wait for a new administration whose idea of change is to send Madeleine Albright back to North Korea to dance with the dictators. Could China have done something to get the North Koreans to agree to the verification process? Like in exchange for the US halting arms sales to Taiwan for a while?
This seems unlikely. What could China have done to pressure North Korea? Maybe the deal (sheer speculation here) is a US threat to end one Axis of Evil threat one way or the other by the end of President Bush's term and the Chinese looked the North Koreans in the eye and said they'd not stand in the way of an aerial campaing to defang North Korea of nukes. Or maybe North Korea [Oops, make that "China" and not "North Korea"] threatened to invade themselves with America agreeing to stand aside (or perhaps to limit any advance north to south of Pyongyang to de facto divide North Korea to give both China and South Korea buffer zones). Mind you, I'd rather squeeze the North Koreans enough to collapse their regime, but I'll settle in the short run for denuclearizing Pyongyang.
Iran, too, is weakened even if it is closer to acquiring nuclear weapons:
Iran is a mess. The economy suffers from growing inflation (over 25 percent) and unemployment (ditto). Jobs are more available to those who behave and avoid outspoken opposition to the religious dictatorship that has ruined the economy and made Iran an outlaw state in the world community. The government uses police state tactics to harass or imprison trade unions and media that speak openly about the incompetence and cruelty of the government. Thousands of "Revolutionary Guards" and guys who can best be described as "street thugs", are on the government payroll to intimidate or assault anti-government people, wherever they can be found. This sort of thing even makes many government supporters (about 20 percent of the population, mostly Islamic conservatives) uneasy.
Which is why my preference is to overthrow the Iranian government, hopefully by assisting a completely home grown movement, but provoked and led by sympathetic elements in the Iranian military and government if necessary. An Iraqi democracy on their border to provide an example will help this goal, I think.
But if Tehran gets nukes, Iran's mullahs may become untouchable. Sanctions could collapse based on bald nuclear threats or just terrorism threats issued from behind a nuclear shield. As much as I don't want to strike Iran, I don't want Iran to get nukes even more. A lot depends on how far away Iran is from getting nuclear weapons. We can afford to wait until the mullahs are about to field them. But I have no idea how far away Iran is and I have little confidence we can detect when Iran is "about" to go nuclear. And I don't know if a future president will have the will to strike even if Iran invites the media to photograph their nuclear missiles.
So the Axis of Evil is weakened and possibly on the verge of being destroyed or defanged, depending on the breaks.
Add in the Libyan and Pakistani defections from the nuclear proliferation path, the Syrian ejection from Lebanon, and the destruction of al Qaeda's aura of power in the Moslem world, and you have a good record against the Axis of Evil and associated powers.
Don't pretend we're losing when we're not. Take heart if you hate President Bush too much to give him any credit for steadfastly fighting our enemies. You may yet have a president who you can credit all this progress to even if you have to pretend it was all done in a few weeks--which is about how long it will take for our press to put this narrative of progress together if their chosen presidential candidate wins this November.
Not bad at all for government work, I'd say.
