Honourable Mention

Preacher of US hyper-power Robert Kagan:

Hats off to President Obama for making a gutsy and correct decision on Afghanistan.

Bronze Medal

Bush Administration spinner Peter Wehner posts on the Commentary blog:

The fact that the remarkable [General David] Petraeus is (among others) overseeing things is a source of comfort and confidence.

Silver Medal

Military sychophant of the year David Brooks writes in The New York Times after his Pentagon-guided tour of Afghanistan:

The Afghans are warm and welcoming. They detest the insurgents and root for American success….We’re already well through the screwing-up phase of our operation….The people who work here make an overwhelming case that Afghanistan can become a functional, terror-fighting society and that it is worth sending our sons and daughters into danger to achieve this.

And the Gold Medal Goes To….

Michael Goldfarb blogs on the Weekly Standard website:

I asked the boss for a reaction to the Afghan speech. He said he would have framed a few things differently, but his basic response was: “All hail Obama!”

Mr Goldfarb’s boss is failed New York Times columnist Mr William Kristol.

Related Post: Mr Biden’s War? An Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy from 2007
Related Post: Two-Step Analysis of Mr Obama’s War Plan: Step Two in Afghanistan
Related Post: Two-Step Analysis of Mr Obama’s War Plan: Step One in Pakistan

Eighteen hours since Barack Obama laid out the strategy by which the United States will defeat Al Qa’eda and “terrorists” in Afghanistan, 24 hours after we projected both the Administration’s approach and the problems with it, I have to say….

We got it right.

1. BRING ON THE MAGIC
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Journalist Mark Ames offers observations and analysis of the Russian-Georgian conflict which are provocative (“America deftly organized and orchestrated the so-called Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2003), revealing (“foreign-desk editors back home have been demanding proof of Russian evil, after largely ignoring Georgia’s war crimes in South Ossetia”), and illuminating (“after years in which Russia rebuilt itself on the back of soaring commodity prices (today it’s the world’s largest producer of oil), our advantages in global power politics have started to tilt Putin’s way”).

It is his conclusion, however, that deserves most attention:

Russia…is as high as a Hollywood speedballer from its victory. Putting the two together in the same room — speedballing Russia and violently bad-tripping America — is a recipe for serious disaster. If we’re lucky, we’ll survive the humiliating decline and settle into the new reality without causing too much damage to ourselves or the rest of the world. But when that awful moment arrives where the cognitive dissonance snaps hard, it will be an epic struggle to come to our senses in time to prevent the William Kristols, Max Boots and Robert Kagans from leading us into a nuclear holocaust which, they will assure us, we can win against Russia, thanks to our technological superiority.

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Later today, Enduring America’s inaugural podcast will be on the following topic:

The Washington Post proposes, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, “a crackdown on terrorists”.

But how shall we crack down on terrorists? Certainly not by treating them as rational and thus understanding how they could justify these killings — for David Aaronovitch, “There isn’t anything – whatever the explanatists say – we can concede to the zealots of Faridkot that will persuade such people, once radicalised, not to try to kill us. ” Certainly not through any process of international law, enforcement, or co-operation, as Robert Kagan argues — apparently oblivious of the consequences, including the possible reinforcement of “terror”, of US bombing and targeted assassination amongst local populations — we should be “establishing the principle that Pakistan and other states that harbor terrorists should not take their sovereignty for granted”.

By treating the terrorists solely as men and women “brainwashed by an ideology of hatred”, we can adopt violent measure in response, set aside any notion of law, morality, and ethics, and conduct a war without end. Indeed, we can honour ourselves for doing so. As William Kristol advocates, we can “be vociferously praising–everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror”, be this through waterboarding, surveillance, rendition, and even assassination — ”but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points”.*

President Bush, in his apology which wasn’t really an apology this week, said, “I wish the intelligence had been different” on Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. If the intelligence had been different – in other words, if it could have magically produced those WMDs — then there would have been a rational basis for an invasion to overthrow the evil and irrationality of Saddam Hussein.

Maybe five years from now, an Aaronovitch or Kagan or Kristol — after there is more violence, more terrorism, more conflict — will admit some recognition that your enemy is rational and that he/she sees a cause for their violence. Maybe they will recognise that dealing with the cause, while it may or may not deter a particular individual from his/her path, will in long run drain the swamp that supports the mosquitoes.

Then again, probably not.

*Not-so-tangential note: Like Kagan, Kristol has a warning for those who aren’t patriotic enough to deal with the crazies in their midst:

“In a nation like Pakistan, the government will have to be persuaded to deal with those in their midst who are complicit. This can happen if those nations’ citizens decide they don’t want their own country to be dishonored by allegiances with terror groups. Otherwise, other nations may have to act.”