FDD

Can Brad Be Far Behind? (CM)

Angelina Jolie writes:

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.

More here. 

This Is Not Even a Close Call (CM)

Sen. Mitch McConnell writes:

[O]n Feb. 16, the nation's terrorist surveillance law expired. At that moment, intelligence officials who spend their days listening in on phone calls between terrorists overseas were legally barred from following new leads without first following outdated and cumbersome warrant procedures — even if neither caller is calling from within the U.S.

The consequences of inaction are real. Today, if someone in a previously unknown terror cell calls an eager new recruit in London, our agents will have to hang up the phone, apply for a warrant and hope for the best.

If a Marine in Iraq captures a terrorist from a previously unidentified terror group, our agents will not be free to call the phone numbers in his laptop right away.

If calls placed to these numbers are routed through U.S. phone lines, our agents will have to apply for a warrant, even though the people on the other end are overseas and the terrorist with the laptop is not an American.

Me: Most Democrats know this is wrong and would cast their votes correctly. The problem is Nancy Pelosi and, one presumes, other House Democratic leaders. Democrats need to put pressure on them – rather than attacking those who are calling attention to this problem.

McConnell’s piece is here.

Dug In For Retreat (CM)

Charles Krauthammer on progress in Iraq, those who deny it and seek to undermine it – and why.

He writes:

Despite all the progress, military and political, the Democrats remain unwavering in their commitment to withdrawal on an artificial timetable that inherently jeopardizes our "very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

Why? Imagine the transformative effects in the region, and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the United States and victorious over al-Qaeda. Are the Democrats so intent on denying George Bush retroactive vindication for a war they insist is his that they would deny their own country a now-achievable victory?

Much more here.

A Reaganite’s Support for Incentivizing Fuel Compeition (CM)

Robert McFarlane, who served as President Reagan’s national security advisor supports the case that Robert Zubrin, Anne Korin, James Woolsey, I and others have been making:

We spend $500 billion each year on our military forces. One of their most vital missions is to protect the flow of Persian Gulf oil which fuels the global economy. The disruption of those oil flows -- such as by terrorists disabling a major Saudi processing terminal -- would bring down economies throughout the industrialized world.

Here again, one can conceive a strategy for neutralizing this threat. It involves moving urgently to introduce a profoundly different national energy policy designed to do the following:

• Provide market-based incentives to justify the essential re-tooling of our  automobile industry to enable it to produce flexible-fuel, plug-in hybrid electric cars and trucks, using carbon composite materials (as Boeing is doing in the new 787 airliner);
• Accelerate the commercial production of cellulosic ethanol, butanol and other bio-fuels; and
• License new nuclear power plants.

He makes many other solid points in this WSJ op-ed.

Mission Accomplished? (CM)

Eli Lake reports that top spy Michael McConnell has had second thoughts about the National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. If the goal of the NIE was to tie Bush’s hands, it succeeded marvelously. Eli writes:

The director of national intelligence is backing away from his agency's assessment late last year that Iran had halted its nuclear program, saying he wishes he had written the unclassified version of the document in a different manner. …

The release of the December 2007 estimate at best delayed American diplomatic efforts to pass a third U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran's uranium enrichment, an activity the mullahs have continued for two years despite warnings from all five permanent members of the security council. The estimate also drew rare rebukes from American allies, including Israel, France, and the United Kingdom who said their intelligence agencies did not concur with the American assessment that Iran had frozen its plan to produce an A-bomb.

More here.

Understanding Iraq (CM)

Tom Donnelly writes:

One can only hope that the success of the surge over the last year has, in addition to improving the security situation in Iraq, pried open that little bit of the American brain that can accommodate facts a little wider. The facts are somewhat more convenient: the war is winnable, but it's not yet won. If it is won it would be a genuine demonstration of American virtue, but of the sort that reflects the often-ugly business of irregular war. The facts of losing--and the war is losable as it is winnable--remain extremely inconvenient and would almost surely increase the number of crimes against humanity.

Ultimately, fictions about war are only briefly self-serving: until we can see this war clearly, we cannot really know how to fight it. "The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make"--yes, there is a Clausewitz quote for any occasion--"is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature."

More here.