NDN Blog

Coming to terms with the Middle East of today

Taken together press accounts from the Middle East and new stories here at home all remind us that no matter happens with our troop levels in Iraq, the troubles of today's Middle East and the Muslim world are among the most urgent foreign policies challenges facing the nation, and are likely to be with us for a very long time.   As the Iraq Study Group implored, America needs to fashion a diplomatic, economic and military for the region, not just Iraq.  It needs to be a long-term, patient strategy, and it is going to cost our nation and the rest of the modern world a lot of money.  

I think it is time that the Democrats, who have done so much to force a much needed dose of realism into the Iraq debate, start doing the same for the region and the rest of Muslim world - for we should have little doubt that for all the money we've spent, the lives lost, the injuries sustained and prestige damaged, this region of the world is much more dangerous and unstable today than prior to 9/11.  Our failure in Iraq has been an epic one, as it has unleashed forces we little understand and certainly cannot control. 

Consider this passage from a front page New York Times piece from Monday:

The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.

Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders that government officials acknowledge they struggle to control. But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions. In the Jordanian airport plot, the authorities said they believed that the bomb maker flew from Baghdad to prepare the explosives for Mr. Darsi.

Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.

Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of the Internal Security Forces in Lebanon, said in a recent interview that “if any country says it is safe from this, they are putting their heads in the sand.”

Last week, the Lebanese Army found itself in a furious battle against a militant group, Fatah al Islam, whose ranks included as many as 50 veterans of the war in Iraq, according to General Rifi. More than 30 Lebanese soldiers were killed fighting the group at a refugee camp near Tripoli.

The army called for outside support. By Friday, the first of eight planeloads of military supplies had arrived from the United States, which called Fatah al Islam “a brutal group of violent extremists.”

The group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi, was an associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed last summer. In an interview with The New York Times earlier this month, Mr. Abssi confirmed reports that Syrian government forces had killed his son-in-law as he tried crossing into Iraq to collaborate with insurgents.

A Danger to the Region

Militant leaders warn that the situation in Lebanon is indicative of the spread of fighters. “You have 50 fighters from Iraq in Lebanon now, but with good caution I can say there are a hundred times that many, 5,000 or higher, who are just waiting for the right moment to act,” Dr. Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident in Britain who runs the jihadist Internet forum, Tajdeed.net, said in an interview on Friday. “The flow of fighters is already going back and forth, and the fight will be everywhere until the United States is willing to cease and desist.”

Or this passage, from another Memorial Day front page story:

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.

“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”

But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

“I thought: ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”

Or this story from a few days earlier about new findings from the newly liberated Senate Intelligence Committee:

Most of the information in the report was drawn from two lengthy assessments issued by the National Intelligence Council in January 2003, titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq," both of which the Senate report reprints with only minor redactions. The assessments were requested by Richard N. Haass, then director of policy planning at the State Department, and were written by Paul R. Pillar, the national intelligence officer for the Near East, as a synthesis of views across the 16-agency intelligence community.

The report includes lists indicating that the analyses, which were reported by The Washington Post last week, were distributed at senior levels of the White House and the State and Defense departments and to the congressional armed services and appropriations committees. At the time, the White House and the Pentagon were saying that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, democracy would be quickly established and Iraq would become a model for the Middle East. Initial post-invasion plans called for U.S. troop withdrawals to begin in summer 2003.

The classified reports, however, predicted that establishing a stable democratic government would be a long challenge because Iraq's political culture did "not foster liberalism or democracy" and there was "no concept of loyal opposition and no history of alternation of power."

They also said that competing Sunni, Shiite and Kurd factions would "encourage terrorist groups to take advantage of a volatile security environment to launch attacks within Iraq." Because of the divided Iraqi society, there was "a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so."

While predicting that terrorist threats heightened by the invasion would probably decline within five years, the assessments said that lines between al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world "could become blurred." U.S. occupation of Iraq "probably would boost proponents of political Islam" throughout the Muslim world and "funds for terrorist groups probably would increase as a result of Muslim outrage over U.S. actions."

So, here we are.  Iran has become a regional hegemon and made great strides towards nuclearization.  Lebanon's government is no longer in control of its own country.  Iraq is a failing state that is exporting its chaos throughout the region.  Scared by the Shia revival so eloquently described by Vali Nasr, Sunni Arab states are now treating Al Qaeda as a legitimate ally in its fight against the Shiites.  After all these years Bin Laden is still on the loose.  Our great ally, Pakistan, also now fearful of Iran, is helping revive the Taliban.   Two groups America considers terrorist organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas, were elected to power in the region in elections our government sanctioned.  Israel, one of our nation's most important allies in the world, has been weakened by a war that I believe they fought because of their perception that America has become an ineffective actor in the region. 

So, what exactly has gone right over there these past 7 years? Perhaps a trillon dollars spent, a terrible degradation of our military, tens of thousands of casualities, a dangerous lost of our prestige and ability to project power and a Middle East more unstable than before.  What in our history can compare to this extraordinary set of miscalculations and mistakes?  But more importantly, what do we do now?

As essential as setting deadlines for a troop withdrawal may be, it is time for Democrats to begin confronting this broader reality, and start the process of fashioning a much deeper and long term strategy for what has become the most important and troubled region in the world today.

Intelligence reports predicted Iraq chaos

In my recent interview with Vali Nasr, we talk at lenght about the notion that what is happening in Iraq today - the breakdown of civil society, the rise of Al Qaeda, the sectarian fighting, the regional ascension of the Shia, including Iran - in hindsight was perhaps the most likely outcome of our toppling of Saddam.  

A new report from the Senate Intelligence Committee reveals that many inside the Administration believed this to be so:

Most of the information in the report was drawn from two lengthy assessments issued by the National Intelligence Council in January 2003, titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq," both of which the Senate report reprints with only minor redactions. The assessments were requested by Richard N. Haass, then director of policy planning at the State Department, and were written by Paul R. Pillar, the national intelligence officer for the Near East, as a synthesis of views across the 16-agency intelligence community.

The report includes lists indicating that the analyses, which were reported by The Washington Post last week, were distributed at senior levels of the White House and the State and Defense departments and to the congressional armed services and appropriations committees. At the time, the White House and the Pentagon were saying that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, democracy would be quickly established and Iraq would become a model for the Middle East. Initial post-invasion plans called for U.S. troop withdrawals to begin in summer 2003.

The classified reports, however, predicted that establishing a stable democratic government would be a long challenge because Iraq's political culture did "not foster liberalism or democracy" and there was "no concept of loyal opposition and no history of alternation of power."

They also said that competing Sunni, Shiite and Kurd factions would "encourage terrorist groups to take advantage of a volatile security environment to launch attacks within Iraq." Because of the divided Iraqi society, there was "a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so."

While predicting that terrorist threats heightened by the invasion would probably decline within five years, the assessments said that lines between al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world "could become blurred." U.S. occupation of Iraq "probably would boost proponents of political Islam" throughout the Muslim world and "funds for terrorist groups probably would increase as a result of Muslim outrage over U.S. actions."

In the immigration debate a clear consensus on a path to citizenship has emerged

For those of us who have been working to fix our broken immigration system, this has been a very good week.   The new Kennedy-Kyl bill made significant headway through the Senate.  Bad amendments were defeated.   Good amendments, particularly the Bingaman amendment limiting the new guest worker plan to 200,000 a year, passed.

Perhaps overlooked in what was a busy week is how the opposition to what is the central provision of what has been called Comprehensive Immigration Reform collapsed, and how a clear national consensus to offer undocumented immigrants legal work status and a path to citizenship has emerged.  This is no small accomplishment, no small development in what has been a very difficult debate, and must be seen as a tremendous victory for Senator Kennedy and those advocating sensible reform.

This opposition, which now includes Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, while it has had many components, has been led since late 2005 by Congressional Republicans.  Their goal was to defeat any bill that had legalized the work status and offered a path to citizenship to the 12 million undocumented immigrants and their families.  Ten of millions of dollars of ads were run in races across the country demonizing Hispanic immigrants and supporters of sensible reform, and in many cases, the ads compared Mexican immigrants to Muslim terrorists.   It was a central plank of virtually every Republican campaign in the nation, from Rick Santorum to JD Hayworth.  While the President and some Senators, led by John McCain, opposed this strategy, they failed to persuade their colleagues and the ads and the campaign continued.

This strategy, of course, didn’t work, and I believe was one of the most significant political miscalculations of a political party in the modern era.  The Republicans demonization of immigrants, reminiscent of Pete Wilson’s efforts in California in the 1990s cost their Party in three ways: first, it has tremendous opportunity costs.  The hundreds of millions of dollars of paid and free media they invested in the issue gained them little or nothing politically.  This money and time and message could have been spent much more productively for them in other ways.  Second, it deeply angered Hispanics, the fastest growing part of the American electorate.  Hispanics swung 20 points to the Democrats and their turnout went up 33% from 2002.  And finally, it reinforced the central argument of the Democrats in 2006 – that Republicans were more interested in politics than solving the big problems facing the nation.  The national GOP whipped up a national frenzy around our “broken borders,” never offered a cogent solution to what is a very real problem and then blocked a sensible bi-partisan effort that would have gone a long way to mending our broken immigration system.

Which brings us to this week.  While we believe the new Senate bill needs further improvement, there should be little doubt that the Republican Party, Republicans in the Senate and the American people have joined the Democrats in embracing the central tenet of what progressives have fought for in this debate – a path to citizenship.  Opponents to the 2006 Senate bill like John Kyl have now embraced the citizenship provisions.  The new Chair of the RNC is a pro-immigration reform Hispanic immigrant, Mel Martinez.  And a new New York Times poll out today shows two-thirds of the nation now supporting a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/us/25poll.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin).

While there is a long way to go in this debate, their should be little doubt now that the nation and the leaders of both parties have come to consensus on one central tenet of the immigration debate – there must be a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.  For those of us in the trenches on this tough and important issue, we should sit back and recognize that for all the anger and contention significant progress has been made, and it is now much more likely that the lives of 12 million people will be dramatically improved this year. 

Finally, it should be noted that yesterday the Congress voted overwhelmingly to raise the minimum wage.  This has been a very high priority for NDN, and coupled with the progress made on immigration reform, demonstrates that this new Congress is taking the necessary steps to help improve the lives of those people in the United States struggling the hardest to get ahead.  If immigration reform passes this year, tens of millions of families will have had their lives directly affected, and improved, by the actions of this new Congress.  Given the inaction of recent years, these are no small accomplishments for Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi. 

Clemons on the battle in the WH over Iran

Steve Clemons has an interesting post up on the battle inside the WH over our policy towards Iran.  It is worth reading.

Towards a new American strategy in the Middle East - a special NDN interview with Vali Nasr

I just sent this email out. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment in the comment section.

-Simon

In recent days we've seen a very public and contentious debate over Iraq here in the US, continued fighting in Afghanistan and a new round of fierce fighting in Lebanon, public demonstrations against the Pakistani government, reports that the Administration has authorized covert action against Iran and a new UN Report suggesting Iran is making greater progress on its nuclear program than previously believed.

All of this new activity reinforces a main argument of the recent Iraq Study Group's report - that America needs not just a military strategy for Iraq, but a comprehensive diplomatic and political approach to this troubled region.

Of all the voices weighing in on what such a strategy would look like, few have been smarter or more persuasive to us here at NDN than noted Middle East scholar Vali Nasr. For many months I've been advocating to all I meet that they read his book The Shia Revival - How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future. This book has taught me more, and helped me understand more about the Middle East today than any other thing I've read in the last several years. If you haven't read it, a new paperback edition of the book is out now and available at your local bookstore or online.

To help bring the important thinking in this book to our members and friends across the country, I sat down and interviewed Professor Nasr two weeks ago here in Washington, DC. I hope all of you will take a moment to watch the interview, now on-line. Of all the arguments he makes, I believe the most important is his recommendations on how to engage and contain Iran.

In all my years at NDN I've never promoted a book or thinker the way I have Vali. All of us here at NDN would love your thoughts on the format, and execution of our "Nasr campaign." Please let me know directly by leaving a comment below.

Thanks for all this, and I hope you enjoy getting to know Vali and his thinking as I have.

Best,

Simon Rosenberg

Additional Links:

Watch Vali Nasr on The Colbert Report

Buy The Shia Revival

Read "When the Shiites Rise" from Foreign Affairs

Read related writing from NDN

Join the discussion on our blog

A consequential time - On the Middle East, Globalization and Immigration

This week marks a critical moment in the struggle of so many to move the nation from the disappointing era of Bush to a new and more hopeful era for the nation.  The Senate and House are working to craft a new and better approach to the Middle East; the House Democratic Caucus discussed the new trade deal Tuesday at its weekly meeting; and the Senate has begun a vital and important debate on how to best fix our broken immigration system. 

To help our community better participate in these consequential debates, we offer up the following:

On a new strategy for the Middle East – We are excited to release a recently conducted video interview with noted Middle East expert, Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival.  Professor Nasr, now of the Fletcher School at Tufts, has had a profound influence on our thinking about the Middle East.  You can learn more about his book, read his writing, watch his appearance on The Colbert Report or watch our in-depth and probing interview with him here

On Immigration Reform – NDN is proud to be part of the national coalition working to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.   On our site you can read our recent statements about the new bi-partisan approach to immigration, watch video of several informative immigration events, including our recent March event with Senators Reid, Kennedy, Salazar and Menendez, and watch and listen to the television and radio ads run by NDN and our affiliate the NDN political fund during the national immigration debate last year. 

On Globalization – On our site you can find the work of our Globalization Initiative, headed by former Clinton chief economic advisor Dr. Robert J. Shapiro.   There you can find our statement about the new trade deal negotiated by Chairman Charlie Rangel,  watch video of our public forums, including a compelling interview with SEIU’s Andy Stern, read a new paper which advocates putting “A Laptop in Every Backpack,” and review our many essays, reports and commentary that seek to craft a new economic strategy for America.

When the American people tossed the Republicans from power last year they were making a clear statement that they wanted their representatives in Washington to stop playing politics and work towards solving the great challenges facing the nation today.   We should be heartened at the progress made so far by the new Congress, and the eagerness of Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi to take on the hard things and not just the easy ones.  

But we should not be under any illusions – ushering in a new era of progress isn’t going to be easy.  Our community, which has contributed so much in the past, simply must stay engaged and active, and work to support in every way those leaders and initiatives working to repudiate the disappointing politics of the Bush era and help make this new century as exciting and successful for America as the one just past. 

ISG Report getting a 2nd look

The Post has an encouraging story this morning that the White House and other Republicans are giving the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group Report a 2nd look. 

While this story is encouraging, it is really hard to fathom how repeatedly stupid the Administration has been on Iraq for almost 5 years now.  Almost nothing they've done has been right, thought through, or in our national interest.  Their outright rejection of the simple and reasonable recommendations of this report - something we wrote about a great deal here - was another in an historic set of low moments for the American government.

If you haven't read the Report, you can follow the links in the story to find a link to it.  It is very much worth reading.

The Times offers an excellent editorial on immigration

The lede Times editorial today captures both the opportunity, and the challenge, of the coming Senate debate on immigration:

The immigration deal announced in the Senate last week poses an excruciating choice. It is a good plan wedded to a repugnant one. Its architects seized a once-in-a-generation opportunity to overhaul a broken system and emerged with a deeply flawed compromise. They tried to bridge the chasm between brittle hard-liners who want the country to stop absorbing so many outsiders, and those who want to give immigrants — illegal ones, too — a fair and realistic shot at the American dream.

But the compromise was stretched so taut to contain these conflicting impulses that basic American values were uprooted, and sensible principles ignored. Many advocates for immigrants have accepted the deal anyway, thinking it can be improved this week in Senate debate, or later in conference with the House of Representatives. We both share those hopes and think they are unrealistic. The deal should be improved. If it is not, it should be rejected as worse than a bad status quo....

Read the full editorial here.  You can read our statement on the deal here, and review some additional thoughts here.

Can the Republicans do the right thing on immigration?

A front page Post piece this morning looks at the GOP reaction to the immigration deal.  Not suprizingly many in the right are rebelling against the most important part of the new Senate deal - the process to legalize the status and provide a reasonable path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumenteds already here. 

While many on the progressive side - including those of us at NDN - have reasons to be concerned about the new immigration deal, it is important to realize how far the GOP has come on immigration, and how, in essence, they have as a national Party repudiated the strategy they used in 2006.  At the press conference on Thursday we saw many Republicans who had previous stayed away from the issue embracing this new construct, including the provision for the 12 million.   Given the rhetoric of the 2006 elections, the blatantly racist ads, the extraordinary obsession with the issue, it is remarkable how far they've come. 

As anyone who has been reading our stuff this past year knows we believe the Republicans made an historic strategic blunder on immigration in 2006.  It became one of the three defining issues for them in elections, after the war and economy/taxes.  They spent tens of millions of dollars on ads, countless hours of free press, and invested their core brand in a mean-spirited and often racist demonization of Hispanics.  It simply didn't work, and was not only ineffective, but had huge opportunity costs for their Party and did a great deal to damage their brand with the fastest growing part of America, the Hispanic community.  Most Republican campaigns closed with other themes as it never materalized as a salient voting issue, even though it had great saliency for a small number of passionate few in their base. 

There was never public or private polling data showing that the way the GOP played immigration in 2006 was going to work.  I always believed that the investment the GOP made in immigration was really because the rest of their agenda had collapsed, and they essentially had nothing to run on.  They had to dig into 2nd tier issues for their national positioning, ones that there was little evidence would work.  Immigration, because of the intensity of the issue in their base, was chosen for promotion to the 1st tier.  It was a terrible mistake, cost their Party dearly, and significantly contributed to their enormous electoral defeat in 2006. 

Up until a few days ago it was not clear that the national GOP understood how damaging this debate had become to their brand.  They had whipped up national concern about an important issue, then offered a wild, ineffective and often racist set of solutions to solve it.  The way they handled the issue played right into the Democratic indictment of the modern GOP - that it was more concerned with [playing politics than solving important problems facing the nation.  I have been quoted, and I still believe, that if the GOP had continued down the path they were on immigration that they were in essence turning the emerging America of the 21st century to the Democrats, as Pete Wilson turned California to the Democrats in the last decade. 

But this new Senate deal, and the appointment of Mel Martinez, a pro-immigration reform Hispanic immigrant, as RNC Chairman, shows that there reasonable elements in the Republican Party who are trying to change the orientation of their Party on this issue of extraordinary consequence.  As progressives we should welcome this change of heart and strategy, and hope that this week, in what will be a remarkable Senate debate on immigration, that the reasonable ones win the battle with the less than reasonable ones, and that we emerge with an immigration bill that shows that our leaders have what it takes to come together and solve the pressing problems facing the nation today. 

As progressives, while there is much we must fight to improve in whatever comes out of the Senate, we have to keep in mind that Senator Kennedy got the GOP to agree to what is the single most important provision in deal - to offer legal status and a path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumenteds already here.  If we can do this, and get a bill signed into law this year, and within a few months see millions of families come out of the shadows, it will be one of the most important accomplishments of our movement in some time, and one of the proudest moments of my time in politics. 

Friends there is much at stake here.  Let us ready ourselves for a debate of great consequence this week, and acknowledge for a moment how far we've come in the last two years on this vital and important issue.

Television leaves the Broadcast Age, continued

The Times offers a smart report from the "upfront" marketplace in New York.  It emphasizes two of the major themes of our work at NPI - that our most important media, television, is going though rapid and significant change, and that we are entering a media age much more participatory than couch potatoey. 

As the big agencies get ready for the biggest week of the year for the biggest advertising medium, changes are coming that can only be called, well, big.

The medium is of course broadcast television, which remains a powerful way to peddle products despite the recent inroads made by alternative ways to watch programs, which include the Internet, digital video recorders, cellphones, DVD players and video on demand.

Beginning today, the, er, um, big broadcasters will reveal their prime-time lineups for the new season in a week of lavish, star-filled presentations at Manhattan landmarks like Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden.

For years, the presentations during what is known as upfront week — so named because the agencies decide to buy billions of dollars of commercial time before the fall season starts — have remained essentially the same. Season after season, the spiels were mostly confined to rote reiterations of the value of buying spots on broadcast television.

But the growing popularity of the alternatives to watching TV on TV sets is forcing the networks to change decades of habits.

For instance, ABC is scheduled to describe at its upfront presentation tomorrow an extensive promotional initiative called “ABC start here” in which TV is just one medium among many. The campaign is intended to help guide consumers through the maze of devices on which they can watch ABC entertainment and news shows.

“It doesn’t matter — TV, online, iTunes, whatever,” said Michael Benson, executive vice president for marketing at the ABC Entertainment unit of ABC, part of the Walt Disney Company.

“They have control,” Mr. Benson said of viewers, “and we’re not going to fight that. We want to make it easy for them to get what they want, where they want, when they want.”

At the same time, ABC and the four other big broadcast networks are working on methods to hold the attention of TV viewers throughout the commercial breaks that interrupt the shows they want to see.

That is becoming increasingly important for two reasons. One is that more viewers are watching shows delayed rather than live, using TiVo and other DVRs. Research indicates those viewers are more likely to fast-forward through spots than those who watch live TV...

and...

“We do focus groups with consumers 18 to 34, the most desired demographic, the most tech-savvy, and their media consumption habits are changing,” said Michael Kelley, a partner in the entertainment media and communications practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “With that comes receptivity to new forms of advertising, provided the networks get closer to viewers’ interests.”

To do that, Mr. Kelley said, the broadcasters must change their focus to “engagement,” or involving viewers in ads, from “impressions,” the total audience exposed to commercials. He likened the challenge to how Google persuaded computer users that ads could be useful rather than annoying, by promising that only relevant ads would be displayed alongside search results.

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