This afternoon, at Brookings, Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Quershi of Pakistan gave a speech entitled “Opportunities and Challenges in Pakistan’s Foreign Policy”. The address, perhaps unsurprisingly, focused heavily on the ‘Opportunities’ side of things, with talk of building a new and stronger relationship with the U.S., drawing closer to India, and ameliorating extremism-prone living conditions in the poverty-stricken north of the country. (more…)

When it comes to Iraq Sen. John McCain might as well be the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Every time he speaks on the subject it is a sound bite variation on “keep hope alive.” The U.S. strategy is working, the surge is successful. Every day, in every way, things keep getting better and better. 

Of course, McCain acknowledges that things weren’t always this way. His campaign website says:

At the end of 2006, four years of a badly conceived military strategy that concentrated American troops on large bases brought us near to the point of no return. Sectarian violence in Iraq was spiraling out of control. Al Qaeda in Iraq was on the offensive. Entire provinces were under extremists’ control and were deemed all but lost. At that critical moment, John McCain supported sending reinforcements to Iraq to implement a classic counterinsurgency strategy of securing the population. 

But that was then, this is now.

From June 2007 through March 2008, sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq was reduced by 90 percent. Civilian deaths and deaths of coalition forces fell by 70 percent…

Thanks to the success of the surge, Iraq’s political order is evolving in positive and hopeful ways. Four out of the six laws cited as benchmarks by the U.S. have been passed by the Iraqi legislature. A law on amnesty and a law rolling back some of the harsher restrictions against former employees of the Iraqi government have made it possible for Iraqis to move toward genuine reconciliation. The legislature has devolved greater power to local and provincial authorities, where much of the real work of rebuilding Iraq is taking place. 

Well, who could be unhappy about that?  Nobody, if that is the entire story. But, as his website goes on to say, “It is essential to be honest with the American people about the opportunities and risks that lie ahead. The American people deserve the truth from their leaders. They deserve a candid assessment of the progress made in the last year, of the serious difficulties that remain.” (more…)

On Saturday the Washington Post had an incredibly disturbing expose of the behind the scenes events surrounding Robert Mugabe’s decision to hold on to power and the ensuing reign of terror that his regime perpetrated in the lead up to the recent run-off elections.  This article revealed that in fact after Morgan Tsvangirai’s unexpected show of support during the first round of elections that Mugabe was actually prepared to concede defeat.  However, the military, lead by Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, responded that the choice was not Mugabe’s alone to make.  The article then proceeds to describe the brutal campaign of violence that government supported militias unleashed on the country.  Some opposition members died from crushed genitalia.  Women were beat so viciously that whole sections of flesh were ripped from their bodies. 

This most recent wave of violence is but one more example of the utter disregard this regime has shown towards its own people.  For several years Mugabe has slowly bled this country – a country that had been considered the breadbasket of African just ten years ago.  Independent estimates put the inflation rate at about 4 million percent.  A loaf of bread costs 30 billion Zimbabwe dollars.  Perhaps the only hope to reign in inflation in the country is the recent decision by the German company that prints the Zimbabwe currency, to no longer provide new bills to the country’s government.  If one were to buy a soda from a vending machine, it would literally require billions of coins (retailers did away with soda machines several years ago for obvious reasons).  The ridiculousness of the economic situation and the number of zeros required for even the most minor transactions could provide much material for late night comedians if it were not already so tragic.  (more…)

The new FISA Amendments Act of 2008 is not only an affront to privacy, it is a symptom of the leadership deficit currently afflicting the U.S. Congress. The bill, which passed the House last week by a landslide, makes two drastic changes to our current surveillance laws:

1. First, the bill generously grants telecommunications companies a broad immunity against financial and criminal liability for helping the U.S. government spy on domestic communications without a warrant or probable cause. There’s only one string attached: Telcoms must show that the government asked them to spy on Americans. Translation: Telcoms will get off the hook as long as they can rustle up some evidence that the government actually asked them to violate the law.

2. Second, if the bill is passed by the Senate, citizens will have no effective right to privacy in electronic communications because the government will always be able to claim that calls were intercepted in order to ward off a terrorist threat. Translation: As long as the “target” of the surveillance is reasonably believed by the government to be abroad, under this bill the NSA can intercept communications between that target and U.S. citizens without any form of judicial oversight whatsoever.

(Keep in mind that this second change is less extreme than some critics of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (“New Act”) acknowledge. Under the New Act, it is true that a traditional FISA warrant is not required to spy on a foreign person located abroad – even if that individual is communicating with a U.S. citizen. However, a judicial finding of probable cause will still be required to target an American person located abroad, regardless of whether interception occurs within or outside U.S. borders. This means that the New Act (i) expands the governments ability to (indirectly) spy on U.S. citizens if it can reasonably claim that the true target of the surveillance in question is a foreign party located abroad but (ii) actually restricts the government’s ability to target Americans that happen to be living or working overseas.)

What makes these changes so extreme? Consider our current surveillance regime. (more…)

At the Brookings Institution this morning, Shibley Telhami and Steven Kull each presented their findings on public opinion regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

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