I will be live tweeting the debate at 8pm EST tonight. You can also stream all of the debate tweets with the Blogs of War GOP Debate monitor at http://gopdebate.blogsofwar.com.

Romney, Gingrich, and Huntsman should have informed positions tonight. Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Santorum will continue to be irrelevant. Rick Perry is essentially a wild card. I don’t expect him to do particularly well but if he can find his groove he could still score points. Perry will do best if he sets his sights on Newt. Newt is the political equivalent of a Gaddafi motorcade in the desert – a big fat juicy target.

Recommended on Twitter: @newtgingrich – Newt Gingrich’s official twitter account.

Follow all the developments in the 2012 presidential race with the Blogs of War 2012 Monitor at http://2012.blogsofwar.com.

It’s time for yet another debate that Rick Perry can’t afford to flub. Foreign policy issues and pre-season debates are a disaterous mix but half of you will be watching in anticipation of just that anyway. Between Cain, Perry, and Ron Paul you’re probably in for a treat. Don’t be surprised if Perry comes into this one wound up and closes the show by bellowing “This is Sparta!” and running wildly off the set in the direction of Iran. They’re going to come up an awful lot tonight.

I suspect Romney could win this one just by keeping quiet and looking at most everyone else like their half-crazy because, well, they are.

You can follow the debate chatter live on the Blogs of War 2012 Monitor.

Regarding possible military dimensions:

43. The information indicates that Iran has carried out the following activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device:

• Efforts, some successful, to procure nuclear related and dual use equipment and materials by military related individuals and entities (Annex, Sections C.1 and C.2);
• Efforts to develop undeclared pathways for the production of nuclear material (Annex, Section C.3);
• The acquisition of nuclear weapons development information and documentation from a clandestine nuclear supply network (Annex, Section C.4); and
• Work on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of components (Annex, Sections C.5–C.12).

44. While some of the activities identified in the Annex have civilian as well as military applications, others are specific to nuclear weapons.

45. The information indicates that prior to the end of 2003 the above activities took place under a structured programme. There are also indications that some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device continued after 2003, and that some may still be ongoing.

Page 8 Section G.43

On the evidence:

“As indicated in paragraph 6 above, among the information available to the Agency is the alleged studies documentation: a large volume of documentation (including correspondence, reports, view graphs from presentations, videos and engineering drawings), amounting to over a thousand pages. The information reflected in that documentation is of a technically complex and interconnected nature, showing research, development and testing activities over time. It also contains working level correspondence consistent with the day to day implementation of a formal programme.”

Annex Page 4 Section B.12

On Iran’s lack of cooperation:

“Iran has acknowledged certain information reflected in the alleged studies documentation. However, many of the answers given by Iran to questions posed by the Agency in connection with efforts to resolve the Agency’s concerns have been imprecise and/or incomplete, and the information has been slow in coming and sometimes contradictory. This, combined with events such as the dismantling of the Lavisan-Shian site in late 2003/early 2004 (see paragraph 19 below), and a pattern of late or after the fact acknowledgement of the existence of previously undeclared parts of Iran’s nuclear programme, have tended to increase the Agency’s concerns, rather than dispel them.”

Annex Page 4 Section B.15

On missile integration

“The alleged studies documentation contains extensive information regarding work which is alleged to have been conducted by Iran during the period 2002 to 2003 under what was known as Project 111. From that information, the project appears to have consisted of a structured and comprehensive programme of engineering studies to examine how to integrate a new spherical payload into the existing
payload chamber which would be mounted in the re-entry vehicle of the Shahab 3 missile.”

Annex Page 11 Section C.11.59

From the summary:

“The Agency has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. After assessing carefully and critically the extensive information available to it, the Agency finds the information to be, overall, credible. The information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. The information also indicates that prior to the end of 2003, these activities took place under a structured programme, and that some activities may still be
ongoing.”

Page 10 Section K.53

You can download the full IAEA report from ISIS.

Recommended on Twitter: @IAEAorg. Official accout of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In isolation this would have been embarrassing but wouldn’t have left a mark. But when you’ve stumbled in every debate, and pundits are repeatedly declaring that you have just one more chance to get it right, this is pretty damaging. I am sure that this will be the defining moment of Perry’s campaign, the moment everything ended, but things have been unraveling from the start. This has been Romney’s race for some time and looks to stay that way.

@MajorEChirchir – Major E. Chirchir is a Kenyan military spokesman.

@KareemLailah – Writer, Musician, Human rights activist and Freedom fighter. Editor-in-Chief of Syrian revolution newspaper.

@ArmsControlWonk – Jeffrey Lewis is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

@FBIPressOffice. Official FBI Press Office feed.

@ShababLibya – The Libyan Youth Movement is a group of Libyan Youth, both in and out of Libya, inspired by Egypt and Tunisia.

@IAEAorg – The latest news and updates from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

@ArmyTimes – Your online source for everything Army: Army news, benefits, photos, news from Iraq, military community.

@azelin – Aaron Y. Zelin is a research associate in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University. He is interested in Islamic intellectual history, Tunisia, and Yemen.

@Hamza_Africa – Hamza Mohamed is an independent Journalist currently with BBC. He specialises in Sub Saharan Africa.

@dianawueger – Diana Wueger writes about & analyzing small arms, foreign affairs, natsec.

@Sm0k34n0n – Anonymous account and original source of the threat against the cartels.

@opcw – Official twitter account of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

@allthingsct – Leah Farrall is an ex-counterterrorism analyst; returned academic type w/ background in IR.

@AnonOps – Frequent updates on Anonymous activities.

@billroggio – Editor of The Long War Journal & Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

@Africom – U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), is one of nine Unified Combatant Commands of the U.S. Department of Defense.

This isn’t an iPad app but it is designed to cleanly cram a lot of national security tweets into a smaller tablet-sized format. There are a total of nine streams available under the NatSec, CyberWar, and Arab Spring tabs.

NatSec
Tracking US national security, the intelligence community, and terrorism discussions.

CyberWar
Tracking cyberwar chatter, hacker groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec, and Infosec discussions.

Arab Spring
Tracking Arab Spring, and Arab Revolution discussions and several involved countries.

You can access version from the main menu of the full version of the crisis monitor or at http://ipad.blogsofwar.com

I’ve thrown together a presidential address monitor for tonight’s speech. There are live Twitter streams for Obama and reaction to his address. You can also find links to the White House and up to date unemployment data. I’m also testing out a new split screen view that will allow you to watch the speech while monitoring reaction on Twitter.

International media has been slow to react and Mubarak has attempted to silence the population but Twitter just keeps rolling. Here are some of my favorite sources from every angle of this developing story. Whether on the ground in Cairo or observing from afar they’re all informative. Follow them.

There’s far too many to list here. I’m streaming live #Jan25 tweets on this page (along with links to live video streams, twitter lists, and other resources). You’ll find even more people to follow there.

3arabawy – Abdurahman Warsame. Broadcast Journalist @ Al Jazeera English.

AJELive – Al Jazeera English. Coverage of live & breaking news events.

AJEnglish – Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel, is headquartered in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

Alaa – Alaa Abd El Fattah. Frequent updates.

AlArabiya_Eng – Al Arabiya English. The English site of the Arab world’s leading news station.

AlecJRoss – Alec Ross. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Senior Advisor for Innovation.

AmgadRezk – Amgad Rezk. An Egyptian citizen, other than that I am nobody!

Arabist – The site on Arab politics and culture.

AymanM – Ayman Mohyeldin. Ayman is a Correspondent for Al Jazeera English.

Azelin – Aaron Y. Zelin. Research Assistant, Department of Politics, Brandeis University.

Bencnn – Ben Wedeman of CNN. Great updates from Egypt.

Demaghmak – Demagh MAK. Cairo.

Dima_Khatib – Dima Khatib. Arab journalist and eternal rebel. Al Jazeera’s Latin America Correspondent. My tweets don’t reflect Al Jazeera’s views.

Eacusa – We are a group of Egyptians and Egyptian Americans committed to Egypt’s democratic, political, social, and economic reforms.

EgyptUpdates – Breaking news out of Egypt.

Elazul – Based in USA and Cairo. Frequent updates.

ElBaradei – Mohamed ElBaradei. On the ground in Cairo and attempting to join the protests. Under house arrest at the moment.

Evanchill – Evan Hill. Online producer at Al Jazeera English in Doha by way of San Francisco by way of Wisconsin. Professional cynic. C is my middle initial. All views are my own.

Habibh – Habib Haddad. Founder @Yamli & @YallaStartup, entrepreneur, activist, frequent traveler and a big believer – Young Global Leader, GAC on Innovation.

Intelwire – J.M. Berger. High-volume terrorism/security feed.

Jonjensen – Jon Jensen. Writer, reporter, producer. Based in the Middle East.

Litfreak – Things I have survived: Saudi Arabia, Texas, 9 months without Conan. Thing I am attempting to survive: Grad school.

lars_akerhaug – Lars Akerhaug. News reporter. Interested in war and terrorism, Arabist at heart.

Monaeltahawy – Mona Eltahawy. Columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues.

Monasosh – Blogs at http://ma3t.blogspot.com/.

Octavianasr – Octavia Nasr. Editor of http://OctaviaNasr.com Founder of Bridges Media Consulting.

RamyRaoof – Ramy Raoof. Human Rights Defender| Online Media| Digital Activism| Digital Security| Editor of Egyptian Blog for Human Rights.

Rzabaneh – Rania Zabaneh. AlJazeera English Producer in WestBank, oPt. MS Journalism, Columbia-USA & MA Democracy and Human Rights, Birzeit-PS. Tweets are mine; not AlJazeera’s.

Salmaeldaly – Salma el Daly.

ShereefAbbas -Born in Cairo raised in the UAE, studied Pol.Sci@AUC, Researcher @ Al-Ahram Center for Pol. & Strategic Studies.

ShmpOngO – Frequent updates.

SultanAlQassemi – Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is a columnist for The National.

Telecomix – The Telecomix News Agency aims to inform about the telecoms package, ACTA, data retention, net neutrality and censorship within EU and the rest of the world.

Tharwacolamus – Ammar Abdulhamid. Dissident, heretic, democracy activist.

Themoornextdoor – Quid novi ex Africa? North Africa, foreign policy & American Muslim issues.

TweetsintheME – Andrew Lebovich. Learning and writing about the Middle East, North Africa, France, and all sorts of other things.

Umm_Issa – Mother, Aston Villa fan and Middle Eastern history fanatic.

Webaddy – Mauritanian activist, focused on civil rights in the Mideast and North Africa.

Joshua Foust is a fellow at the American Security Project, a columnist for PBS Need to Know, a contributing editor to Current Intelligence, and he blogs about Central Asia at Registan.net. He’s the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. You can follow him on Twitter @JoshuaFoust.

John Little: Let’s talk about The Unforgivable Horror of Village Razing. In that post, which details the destruction of a booby-trapped Afghan village with 49,200 lbs. of ordnance and what you feel is the unsympathetic response to the resulting suffering, you drop some pretty heavy ordnance of your own:

Look, war is hell. I have no illusions about that. But what is happening right now in Southern Afghanistan is inexcusable. There were rumors of this policy of collective punishment in the Arghandab before (see this overwrought Daily Mail story that stops right before the village actually was destroyed for an idea of what is going on), and I’m really struggling to see how such behavior does not violate Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—that is, how this behavior is not a war crime, especially given the explicit admission that such behavior is merely for the convenience of the soldier and not any grander strategy or purpose.

This sort of abhorrent behavior is not limited to the Arghandab, either. Broadwell explicitly states that it has the Petraeus stamp of approval, and Pahjwok has reported U.S. Marines in Helmand province explicitly warning local villagers of collective punishment if insurgents hide out in their settlements. It is probably a safe assumption to say that this is a widespread phenomenon.

A lot of people would say “Look, this may have been clumsy, inefficient, and lazy on our part but a Taliban outpost was cleared, civilian and friendly causalities were avoided, and we’re going to help the civilian owners rebuild. Relax Mr. Foust. This is war, not a war crime.”

So, with a few days to reflect, do you still think this event might point to an illegal policy of collective punishment? Can you see any merit at all in arguments of those who support the military’s casualty minimization strategy?

Joshua Foust: With some further reflection, I think I was right to struggle with whether destroying villages like this is a war crime. Some friends helped me wrap my head around what actually constitutes a violation of the Fourth Convention, and I don’t think this qualifies as such. However, the reason I feel comfortable with that struggle is this is the sort of thing we should question.

In that link to the Daily Mail story about another village facing this same fate, the soldiers seem to be threatening the villagers with the destruction of their homes if the villagers don’t turn in more IEDs. There are two ways to interpret that story (and the one here, about the Arghandab). Either the soldiers are punitively destroying entire settlements in punishment for not resisting the Taliban, or they’re communicating—incompletely—that if they can’t remove the Taliban from these areas, they have no way of removing the bombs and IEDs left over except by detonation.

From everything I’ve read about these incidents, and from speaking with people close to one of them, it’s probably bad communication being compounded by a false sense of urgency and action bias. These are not large villages—maybe a few dozen houses at the most. There’s no compelling, strategic reason for the U.S. military to literally burn a hole through them once the Taliban have run off. If the Taliban are gone, then we can ponder defusing and decontamination at a deliberate pace (the village razing incident is written in a way that suggests the decision to burn the village was made quickly, for the sake of battle momentum). There’s no need to rush in with B-1s dropping tons of explosives on them.

So I didn’t intend, and I still don’t intend, to accuse anyone of malice. I stand by my charge of laziness, however. Look at the aftermath: this is rural Afghanistan. No one has land deeds or property records. The soldiers are giving the local sub-governor a pot of money and the power to issue now-official land deeds. There is no way in hell people will be compensated appropriately for what they lost (which is required under Article 40 of the Afghan constitution). There will be winners and losers, and the U.S. is funding the picking of winners and losers—a dangerous situation, and one I frankly think is impossible to solve without massive corruption. This is not a hopeful result, in other words. And the callousness with which both the soldiers and that researcher writing about them discuss it—up to sniffing that the Afghans should thank us for rebuilding, as if destroying a family’s possessions is perfectly okay so long as you replace it later—led me to assume the worst. I don’t see how this is a better, more humane option that will create fewer headaches in the long run than attempting to defuse and decontaminate mined villages.

Either way, and whatever more details emerge as these people try to explain themselves, we should be up front in asking hard, probing questions about the deliberate erasure of entire communities. I’m frankly shocked at how many people reacted against that. Our conduct in Afghanistan should never be above question.

John Little: Paula Broadwell, the author of the piece that triggered all of this, has since offered some clarification. There’s nothing earth shattering there though. It is exactly along the lines of what one would expect:

The Taliban had laden the roads, compounds, everywhere with booby traps. In the commander’s assessment, the deserted village was not worth clearing. If you lost several KIA and you might feel the same… SOF had tried to clear the village and had several EKIA but also lost two guys. Afghan commandos had attempted to take the village and got hammered by the IEDs and HEMsas well…

[T]he villagers told all of these visitors {Petraeus, an ABC news crew] that Flynn was their hero and they wanted him to move into the village with them. They express great gratitude for helping them claim security in their river valley and push the Taliban out. Sure they are pissed about the loss of their mud huts (look at the picture again) but that is why the BUILD story is important here.

Your counter-argument, if I can attempt a summary, is that even if we accept the military’s version of the story it still seems to indicate poor execution of our counterinsurgency strategy. You point to a naivete that, if systemic, is quite troubling:

The gullibility of Americans is also something I thought we would have moved beyond in 2011, but it still remains. In civil wars, locals—that is, non-combattants—are always friendly to the guys with guns. In the passage above Paula expresses dismay, and toys with feeling little sympathy for, villagers who accepted money rather than violence to leave their village. That is worse than calloused, and it’s the kind of glib attitude that comes, depressingly commonly enough, from the zombies living in the military’s COIN bubble. I’ve seen elders in Afghanistan smile warmly at me, talk about how much they hate the Taliban, and so on… only to, mere days later, be caught passing information along to a local insurgent commander because they were scared witless by a night letter tacked to their door. Christian Bleuer explored this years ago—in Kapisa, of all places—and it really is a universal phenomenon. Displaced villagers will warmly greet armed groups… especially if those groups are handing out money as well. It means nothing beyond that, however. We should not be this gullible still. But we are, and that’s really sad to see.

Do you think that this is a broader issue? If so, can it be addressed with better training or do you think that inherent flaws in strategy are coming to light in stories like this?

Johsua Foust: I think it’s absolutely is the broader issue. The military still is, by and large, operating in total ignorance of not just local issues, but a basic acceptance of the humanity of Afghans. I shy away from complaining they misunderstand culture—and I say this having made my income for several years through coaching the Army on cultural issues in Afghanistan—because it doesn’t require specialized knowledge to see that poor people have bad housing, and that they are exceedingly vulnerable to displacement during conflict (to keep it confined to this one issue). So in this case, I’m baffled at the complete lack of empathy toward the villagers who were given a choice: resist the Taliban and suffer, or take some cash and flee.

As for addressing it, I lose my way a bit. I’ve seen what counts as “cultural training” within TRADOC, and at CGSC under General Caldwell. It’s a mixed bag, like most training is. You will always have good students and bad students, guys for whom this sort of mindset comes naturally and guys who either struggle with it or reject it outright. I am not knowledgeable enough about the Army’s training system to say how that can be remedied, or if it even can be.

But here’s part of the problem in discussing all of this: none of us were there. Frankly, Paula Broadwell wasn’t there when they burned this village to the ground. So already we’re working on filtered experiences, and that introduces a lot of bias that’s difficult to sift through when trying to figure out what happened. I’ve also never worn the uniform (at least, as a soldier), nor have I led men into combat—so I get really uncomfortable complaining about a bad decision made in defense of soldiers’ lives. And most people are—understandably, and appropriately, I think—hesitant to second-guess the decisions of a commander leading his men in combat.

However, there are some things that are worth questioning, even if it’s painful, and even if it ends up going nowhere. The decision to raze a town should be one of them. You don’t call in almost 50,000 pounds of bombs on a single target without a lot of signatures up the line of command. So this wasn’t a rogue decision, and it wasn’t done in the spur of the moment—this was a deliberate, considered, approved decision. And so far, from all the tiny amounts of data we have on it, it is an appalling decision. So in that sense, I think we really do need to keep pressing on the issue to try to figure out what really happened.

John Little: Based on your experience do you believe that there is willingness, at the command level, to look at events like this and identify opportunities to enhance the approach or is there just overwhelming pressure to execute, to maintain momentum?

Joshua Foust: I’m sure there is willingness somewhere in the chain of command. The problem is, General Petraeus knows this is going on—he hosted an ABC camera crew viewing the rubble—and we have no data to suggest he thinks the approach is flawed or could be improved. I do know there is pressure—implicit pressure, in a lot of ways, but pressure nevertheless—to “execute a counterinsurgency strategy” in the south. And that can easily lead to bizarre or inexplicable behavior getting sold as COIN.

John Little: Given the challenges (many of which originate in powerful neighboring states) do you think it’s possible that the current state of affairs is about as close to success as we’ll get? Is Afghanistan doomed to remain a problem to be managed rather than an emerging modern state that can be nurtured or incubated? Could it even be said that in the end our footprint there is less about Afghanistan and more about countering a long list of troublesome regional forces?

Joshua Foust: I think there can definitely be some improvement to the current state of affairs. I’d love to see us go back to cooperating with Iran in tracking down Taliban figures, as we were in 2001-2 (there are rumors the Iranians coordinate some counter-drug operations with the U.S., but no one wants to talk about that). I really do think that we can lessen the problem emanating from Pakistan by exploring a way to guarantee their interests in a post-America Afghanistan, and that one way we can do that is with beginning political reconciliation with the Taliban.

None of those developments means militancy will go away or the war will end. And in that sense, I don’t think management means “doom” in the sense of it being a negative thing. A reduced American footprint, combined with increased regional engagement, has the potential to be a net improvement for the country. It could also blow up in our face—which is the challenge with any course of action.

John Little: So is COIN only useful in the sense that it buys time until we negotiate a political solution with Pakistan and other regional players? If and when that agreement comes do you think that it will publicly acknowledge Pakistan as the guarantor of Afghanistan’s stability? Does it require that commitment and acknowledgment to succeed?

Joshua Foust: I don’t get the sense that COIN is a delaying tactic. A lot of people at the top—including General Petraeus and his fan club—genuinely believe COIN is the best thing, ever, for all things in Afghanistan. I obviously don’t share that assumption, but I do think they believe that honestly and aren’t playing a shell game. I also don’t have any indication that the top leadership has any real interest in political solutions with Pakistan and other regional players (which would, by design, have to include Iran, only Iran is excluded from NATO summits on the topic).

Now, I happen to think that we must publicly acknowledge and at least make a good-faith effort to secure Pakistan’s interests in post-America Afghanistan. I also am not aware of any push within the U.S. policy community to do that. Everything remains focused on “breaking” the Taliban, of severing Pakistan’s relationship to it, and so on. I’m not at all hopeful those counterproductive ideas will be reversed by the 2014 “withdrawal” date.

John Little: Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that something resembling a withdrawal occurs in 2014. We’ll also assume (and this is probably the safer assumption of the two) that the current military and diplomatic approaches will continue on their current tracks with little or no change. Where does that leave Afghanistan and where does that leave the region? What does 2015 look like?

Joshua Foust: I don’t see any evidence that we’re actually going to withdraw in 2014. Even Joe Biden, who had been consistently and vocally supporting “drop-dead” withdrawal dates, just told Hamid Karzai that we’ll be sticking around past 2014. So from where I sit, that leaves Afghanistan largely unchanged—there might be some withdrawal, but probably not to the extent that even people like CNAS advocate (which would be down to near-2005 levels, or around 25,000-30,000 troops). There will also be an increasingly shrill wing of the commentariat that will cry bloody murder at the thought of reducing our presence without catastrophic victory, regardless of ground conditions—which is exactly what’s happened with the July, 2011 date.

So, 2015? It will probably look much more like 2008 than anything else. And that ain’t good.

I’m not doing a page-by-page analysis but I’ll point you to three excellent posts:

Al Malahem’s Inspire 4: Crusades Rhetoric and Tactical Updates In A Feedback Loop by @crabbyolbastard

and

al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s al-Malahem Media releases Inspire Magazine Issue #4 by @Azelin

and

Awlaki Breaks Silence In New Issue Of Inspire, Builds Links To History Of Jihad by @IntelWire

There are a few interesting things to note about this issue. First, the production quality has improved significantly. This is looking less like your office newsletter and more like a professionally produced print publication every day. This is especially interesting when contrasted with the extremely limited thinking evident in their discussions about “Open Source Jihad”. In short, the strategic masterminds behind some of this content have more experience making things look FABULOUS than they do killing people. I’m reminded of this for some reason:

Now, I’m not minimizing the long-term threat of their approach here. There is reason for concern. I just continue to think that they are, thankfully, executing poorly. Declaring man will set foot on the moon is a visionary idea. Looking for the best horse to take him there is poor execution of that idea. This is the current state of open source Jihad.

There is another significant development in this issue that others have touched on but that I don’t want to elaborate on here. I will say that I will not be surprised if, eventually, elements of this production team are discovered and authorities (or perhaps some independent ethical hackers) credit this issue with the breakthrough.

Download: Inspire 4 (PDF)

Described as “a rising star in the counterterrorism community” by the International Herald Tribune, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is the Director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Gartenstein-Ross’s writings have appeared in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, and The Journal of International Security Affairs, among others. He has also written or edited seven books and monographs. The accolades that Gartenstein-Ross has earned for his policy work include being named a 2010 Senior Fellow at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, and being selected for the Claremont Institute’s Lincoln Fellowship. You can follow him on Twitter @DaveedGR.

John Little: Let’s start with recent events – specifically the situation in Egypt where a Coptic Christian church was bombed and Christians there responded with quite a bit of understandable anger. Attacks on minority Christian communities seem to be on the rise. This is certainly not a completely new phenomenon but it does feel like there is additional momentum and purpose behind recent attacks and threats. Are we seeing a shift here? Is fueling inter-religious violence increasingly a priority for al-Qaeda?

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: Yes, the targeting of Christians is increasingly a priority for al Qaeda affiliates and for the group’s sympathizers. As you mentioned, this is not a new phenomenon — which I emphasize because some commentators take an ahistorical perspective on these matters. Egypt’s Copts were frequent targets of Islamist attacks during the 1990s. Indonesian Christians have been periodically targeted for violent assault by Islamists. And sometimes the targeting of Christians has ranged into the West. For example, in January 2005 I exposed a radical Islamist web site called Barsomyat.com. This site was devoted to systematically tracking Christians who were active in debating Muslims on the Internet chat service PalTalk. One representative page from Barsomyat featured photographs of a Syrian Christian who then lived in Canada. Barsomyat’s users posted personal information about him and made clear that they were trying to track down his current address. Subscribers also posted explicit warnings, such as: “Laugh, oh Christian, and soon you will see a big hit.” To be clear, the targeting of Christians in the West has not been comparable to what Christians in Egypt, Indonesia, and elsewhere have been through; I raise the issue of Barsomyat primarily because it is some precedent, from six years ago, for the Shumukh al-Islam threats that I’ll discuss momentarily.

But though we have previously seen the targeting of Christians, it is in fact increasing. You will recall that on Halloween 2010, al Qaeda-linked militants seized a Baghdad church, an event which resulted in 58 deaths — one of a number of attacks on Christians in Iraq last year. The many attacks prompted Juan Cole to bluntly declare: “The attacks on Christians in Iraq are serious, and hold the danger of ethnically cleansing that community.” Not only did al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) threaten Christians in that country with more of the same carnage that we saw in the Halloween attack — saying “we will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood” — but it also threatened the Coptic Church in Egypt. Its threats against Egypt’s Copts were based on scurrilous rumors that the Coptic Church was holding Muslim women as captives. Thus, a statement from AQI declared that “all Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the mujahidin wherever they can reach them.”

And now we’ve seen the Alexandria bombing, along with threats against Christians in the West. More than 100 Arab Christians living in the West (including in Canada, Germany, Austria and elsewhere) have ended up targeted by al Qaeda-affiliated web site Shumukh al Islam because they are allegedly attempting to convert Muslims. Officials are taking these threats seriously. One tragic irony I should point out is how Christians, living in the predominantly Christian West, are being targeted for death because of their efforts to convert Muslims — when Islam is also an openly evangelistic faith that targets Christians for conversion worldwide.

The question of why we are seeing this shift toward more attacks on Christians is harder to answer. Is it based primarily on anti-Christian animus, and religious intolerance more generally? Or is it serving another strategic goal? The answers are not crystal clear.

John Little: Even if there wasn’t a greater strategic goal driving the recent attack on the Coptic church in Egypt it would seem possible that the cycle of retribution kicked off by that event would lead Islamists to re-focus their efforts in this area. Isn’t this cycle of violence an ideal outcome for them? If one relatively small attack contributes to the destabilization of the state, burdening it with expensive and impossible security challenges, and creates an engine for radicalization/recruitment you have to think we’re in for more of the same.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: First, to be clear: at this point we still do not know that the Coptic attack was perpetrated or inspired by al Qaeda (though there has been some suggestive evidence in this regard). Second, I disagree with the premise of this question that the attack has led to a “cycle of violence.” There were days of protests and riots, including some relatively minor violence between Christians and Muslims and Coptic vandalism of a mosque. (There has also been more positive news about Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt since.) Though that unrest could return, this isn’t like Iraq where some devious — but strategically useful — al Qaeda in Iraq attacks managed to set off waves of reprisal attacks between Sunnis and Shias. Christians represent only about 10% of Egypt’s population. To put it bluntly, if you had actual waves of reprisals as you did in Iraq, the Copts would get slaughtered.

Nor was I implying that there was no strategic purpose to this attack. One relatively small attack has indeed contributed to the destabilization of Egypt; to the perception that the state cannot protect its minority populations; to unrest by the Christian population; to deteriorating Muslim-Christian relations; and to increasing security expenditures. This may have been the precise strategic goal of the attack. The reason for my caution in saying that the strategic goal was not clear is that sometimes we assume the intention behind a terrorist attack before we have sufficient evidence to really determine that intention. I am well aware that, in this case, I have insufficient information.

John Little: I do think there is a tendency to assume strategic intent, or see signs of grand strategy, where there may be none. There are troubling signs here but, as you point out, evidence is lacking. Do you think there are parallels here to the fears about Mumbai style attacks? I know that I wrote about my concern that a simple swarming attack model would gain favor even before events in Mumbai. Analysts and pundits have written volumes on the subject since, warnings have been issued (as recently as this week for Europe), and security forces around the globe have trained and prepared for just that scenario. But while there’s no doubt that we’ll see the model employed with devastating results again in the future I think most analysts would have expected to see more examples of this over the past few years. Counterterrorism efforts deserve a lot of credit here but the bottom line is that any moderately competent individual or small cell could evade detection with this model so why aren’t we seeing more of this?

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: To be frank, we would be far better off had we done more over the past decade to figure out what al Qaeda’s strategy is. Many of the U.S.’s policies designed to defeat al Qaeda have in fact played into the group’s hands, as I addressed in an article I wrote for Foreign Policy in November, precisely because we have not asked the right questions about the group’s strategy. So I’m not offering a generalized argument against looking for our opponents’ strategy. Instead, I’m being cautious about what I know with certainty, and what I don’t. For the record, if I were betting on this one, my money is on there being a strategic purpose to the Alexandria attacks.

As to Mumbai-style urban warfare attacks, I think you’re drastically overestimating the ease with which they can be executed (i.e. “any moderately competent individual or small cell could evade detection with this model”). First of all, the actual Mumbai attackers received training and gamed out the attack using models of the relevant geographic space. They did advance scouting, and put together a decent command-and-control capability. They weren’t just moderately competent, but rather were well prepared and well coordinated. Second, a number of attackers who appear to have been competent were thwarted late last year while planning to execute urban warfare attacks across Europe. In October, I wrote a lengthy analysis of how the Europe urban warfare plots indeed represented a real threat. The example of these European plots demonstrates that avoiding detection is more difficult than you’re giving credit, and also that there has been not just a clear terrorist intention to execute further Mumbai-style attacks, but actual efforts to do so as well.

John Little: I do not want to go too far down the road of publicly discussing how terrorists can do their job better but forget Mumbai specifically. With that event I thought we were witnessing a progression towards attacks that are simple, more immediate, and more likely to avoid sophisticated counter-terrorism measures. Mumbai, for the reasons you mentioned, seemed like a transitional event. I’m referring to attacks that do not require training in foreign locations, the assistance of subject matter experts (bomb making for example), exotic weapons, the transfer of significant funds, or sophisticated planning. Just killing people is, unfortunately, quite easy. Is the relative lack of effort in this area indicative of other priorities?

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: I actually think we have seen a move in that precise direction. This is not just propelled by the example of the Mumbai attacks but also another factor: the September 2008 collapse of the American economy. The economic collapse fundamentally changed the jihadi war against the West, in my judgment, because it made the U.S. seem mortal. It created the appearance of a country teetering on the edge of a precipice, such that a smaller attack could finally push it over the edge. The rhetoric of jihadi spokesmen makes clear that they are in fact trying to encourage other Muslims to carry out smaller, more frequent attacks. For example, in a March 2010 video Adam Gadahn praised Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, and encouraged other Muslims to follow his example. “The mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, by the grace of Allah and with a single thirty-minute battle, singlehandedly brought the morale of the American military and public to its lowest point in years,” Gadahn said. “The mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, lightly armed but with a big heart, a strong will and a confident step, again brought into sharp focus the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of America.” Gadahn also put his finger on a point that many figures within the jihadi movement have noticed: even failed attacks can help the jihadis by “bring[ing] major cities to a halt, cost[ing] the enemy billions and send[ing] his corporations into bankruptcy.”

Since September 2008, we have in fact seen two successful jihadi attacks that employ the exact model you’re speaking of: the Fort Hood shooting, and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad’s fatal shooting at the National Guard recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas. (If you expand this to non-jihadi terrorist attacks, there have been even more, including Joseph Stack’s suicide plane attack on an IRS building in Austin, Texas; the June 2009 shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and now the reprehensible shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and several bystanders at her “Congress on Your Corner” event in the Tucson, Arizona area.) So I think we have moved in that direction. But for a variety of reasons — including the relatively low pull al Qaeda has for American Muslims — this doesn’t mean that you’ll see someone get gunned down by Islamic militants every week.

John Little: So if American Muslims are overwhelmingly moderate, overwhelmingly good citizens, then aren’t we heading into dangerous territory with things like congressional hearings on Muslim radicalization and preemptive strikes on Shariah? Are we pushing American Muslims away when we should be more engaged than ever? Homeland security and counter-terrorism efforts obviously still need to proceed at a furious pace but should elected officials and concerned citizens be searching for more opportunities for positive engagement? Is the current landscape contributing to radicalization rather than preventing it?

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: First, I don’t think we have proof that American Muslims are “overwhelmingly moderate.” I said previously that al Qaeda has a relatively low pull for American Muslims, but that’s a different conclusion. A couple of studies made the claim last year of overwhelming moderation. One of them, Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans, is one of the worst studies that I read all of last year, sloppily researched and either incompetently or else dishonestly argued. I did not have the same objections to the other study, Brian Michael Jenkins’s Would-Be Warriors, but it did overreach on this point, claiming: “There are more than 3 million Muslims in the United States, and few more than 100 have joined jihad — one out of every 30,000 — suggesting an American Muslim population that remains hostile to jihadist ideology and its exhortations to violence.” On this point, I agree with a thoughtful critique that Drew Conway provided when Jenkins’s study came out:

We know … that this final assertion is not true; specifically, with regard to the numbers. The numbers, at best, only support the claim that domestic radicalization is very rarely observed. It does not suggest anything about the internal disposition of American Muslims. While this may actually be the case, simply … not observing a phenomenon cannot support this claim. The cliché, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” is particularly applicable to small N problems.

So I think my initial claim that al Qaeda has a relatively low pull for American Muslims is accurate, but we don’t know that the community is “overwhelmingly moderate.”

I do think that American Muslims are currently facing an elevated level of societal discrimination, and this isn’t helpful to our counterterrorism efforts. With respect to preemptive strikes on sharia, I assume you’re referring to the legislation that passed in Oklahoma. That legislation is almost certainly unconstitutional, on both free exercise and equal protection grounds, as it prohibits Muslims from doing what adherents to other faiths are free to do: enter into marriage or other consensual contracts stating that the relationship should be governed by religious law. Of course, there are aspects of dominant interpretations of sharia — such as its non-recognition that there is such thing as marital rape — that would be disturbing to allow people to contract into. However, the court system would almost certainly find such contractual interpretations void as against public policy.

As to Rep. King’s proposed hearings, there is a right way and wrong way to investigate radicalization within the American Muslim community. To give a plug to my recent Bloggingheads appearance, Matt Duss and I just discussed this issue. I haven’t been fond of the optics surrounding this hearing thus far, but that doesn’t mean the subject should be off limits. I hope the hearing is sufficiently nuanced, and that it’s successful, because it’s likely to do a lot to set our nation’s CT priorities for the next couple of years.

This tragic story continues to unfold. I’m tweeting new developments and have live tweets about this event streaming on this page.

It’s far too early to speculate on motives. Here are the facts (subject to change) as they’re known now:

Eyewitness reports state that a male in his 20s-30s approached her at a campaign event (which she tweeted about here) and shot her in the head at close range. He than began firing indiscriminately killing at least 6 people and wounding 12-15 others. The attacker was tackled by a bystander is reportedly in custody.

Again, the story is evolving rapidly and the details may change. Whatever the facts, this is a tragic day for those involved and for America.

Update
6:32PM CST – 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner has been identified as the shooter. The Arizona Daily Star has a pretty thorough profile.

6:30PM CST – Surgeon “Very Optimistic” About Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s Condition

1:35PM CST – Congresswoman Gifford’s death was “confirmed” by various media sources at the time of posting but that is already in question. This story will be fluid for some time.

Resources
KOLD News in Arizona is streaming live video
Congresswoman Gifford’s Web Site
Google News results for “Gabrielle Giffords”

Follow them at @SenJohnMcCain and @Sn00ki – if you have a strong stomach. For what it’s worth @Sn00ki is the more conservative of the two.

“The first story in this series generally tells us a lot of what was already known—the national security bureaucracy is large, redundant and lacks the nimbleness to respond to threats posed to our nation. The first installment somewhat overstates the problem of intelligence growth by conflating intelligence and defense activities, but it supports my long-held belief that the answer to addressing threats to American security won’t come in the form of a larger intelligence bureaucracy. It will come from building a streamlined and integrated national security community that is capable of quickly responding to current and emerging threats.

“In 2006, as chairman of this committee, we examined this issue and issued a report that found problems with bureaucratic growth at the top and a lack of urgency and direction within the intelligence community. It is frustrating that years later, others are looking at this issue and finding the exact same problems.

“Congressional Republicans have pushed for years to address these issues, by seeking to limit bureaucratic growth at our intelligence agencies and focusing scarce national security dollars towards operations and away from agency headquarters. Republicans also have fought successfully to cut pork-barrel spending in the annual intelligence bill by eliminating the earmarks that fuel some of the unnecessary growth and don’t offer the American people the transparency they need or deserve for directed spending.

“Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee will continue to push to get resources and funding to our intelligence professionals in the field and out of Washington. As we have in the past, we will continue efforts to limit bureaucratic growth, redundancy and earmarks in future intelligence bills to get money where it is needed most—providing for the security and protection of our nation.”

Brought to you by the same folks who created the Tiger Woods accident recreation. This is, on many levels. a frightening turn for journalism but it’s just too funny to pass up.

In short, the dispute between President Truman and Gen. MacArthur was more substantive than what we saw between President Obama and Gen. McChrystal. During the Korean War, after the Chinese invaded Korea to force advancing United Nations troops away from its border, MacArthur agitated in public to attack the Chinese mainland. Truman refused to entertain the idea of a wider war, or the use of nuclear weapons. Contrast that heady dispute with a Rolling Stone article in which administration officials were insulted for not understanding the challenge facing the military: It doesn’t exactly measure up.

In fact, President Truman avoided firing MacArthur for a long time. The General was practically running for the White House from Korea. Truman suffered insults, backbiting and sneers from the revered general. During one meeting, MacArthur greeted his commander-in-chief with a handshake instead of a salute. Truman wisely ignored the slight. (Granted, the war was going well at that point and MacArthur was wildly popular in the U.S.) Truman acted only when MacArthur sent a letter to a congressman that questioned the president’s limited war strategy, which was read on the floor of the House of Representatives. That was impossible to ignore—and the world was watching.

True, McChrystal’s conduct is fairly tame compared to MacArthur’s but in both cases the world was watching. Hendrik Hertzberg makes an excellent point about the impact of McChrystal’s conduct in a wired world:

Just as important, frontline troops nowadays are also online troops. They are plugged in to the Internet, to Facebook, to blogs, to e-mail and Skype. They talk to each other in chat rooms with little or no supervision from the brass. It’s all instant and it’s all in their face. And that, I hasten to add, is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. But it makes the morale of the troops that much more fragile, that much more apt to be affected by relative trivialities. The fact that General McChrystal, along with his “Team America” posse of adjutants, understood none of this was reason enough to send him packing. His “conduct” wasn’t just a disservice to his President; it was a disservice to the men and women under his command.

Peter Roff finds another interesting contrast in the men who fired their generals:

Let’s stipulate, using what some see as the obvious example, that McChrystal is no Douglas MacArthur. True enough, but Obama is no Harry Truman, who was a vigorous and effective commander-in-chief during the earliest days of the Cold War. Obama’s feckless leadership in the war on terror bespeaks a leader who does not want or know how to win the fight we are in. It is notable, for example, that it took nearly 10 months for Obama and McChrystal to meet face-to-face–via a video uplink–after the general called for a significant infusion of troops into Afghanistan. It only took about 10 hours for a meeting to occur once McChrystal’s comments leaked out.

A Portland massage therapist gave local police a detailed statement last year alleging that former Vice President Al Gore groped her, kissed her and made unwanted sexual advances during a late-night massage session in October 2006 in a suite at the upscale Hotel Lucia.

The woman told investigators that she informed two friends and kept the clothes she wore that night, including her black pants with stains on them. But Portland police didn’t contact any of the woman’s friends, obtain the potential evidence or interview anyone at the hotel, records show.

The juicy bits:

While giving Gore an abdominal massage, she said he demanded that she go lower and soon grabbed her right hand and shoved it under the sheet.

“I felt like I was dancing on the edge of a razor,” she told Detective Molly Daul.

She tried to use an acupressure technique to relax Gore and thought she may have nearly put him to sleep. She went into the bathroom to wash up and came out to pack up.

That’s when, she says, Gore wrapped her in an “inescapable embrace” and fondled her back, buttocks and breasts as she was trying to break down her massage table.

She called him a “crazed sex poodle” and tried to distract him, pointing out a box of Moonstruck chocolates on a nearby table. He went for the chocolates and then offered her some, cornering her, fondling her and shoving his tongue in her mouth to french kiss as he pressed against her.

She said he tried to pull her camisole strap down.

She said she told him to stop it. “I was distressed, shocked and terrified.”

She said she was intimidated by his physical size, calling him “rotund,” described his “violent temper, dictatorial, commanding attitude” — what she termed a contrast from his “Mr. Smiley global-warming concern persona.”

Later, she said, he tried to lure her into the bedroom to hear pop star Pink’s “Dear Mr. President” on his iPod dock. She said Gore sat on one end of the bed and motioned for her to join him.

Suddenly, she said, he “flipped me on my back, threw his whole body face down over a top me, pinning me down.”

She said she loudly protested, “Get off me, you big lummox!”

There’s absolutely nothing funny about assault but, crazed sex poodle? That nickname is going to stick. But that’s the least of Al’s problems since the National Enquirer (which broke the story) says it looks like criminal prosecution isn’t out of the question:

In a statement just released by Multnomah County (OR.) D.A. Michael D. Schrunk, the official reveals that “our office was notified by the Portland Police Bureau that further investigation of this matter had been conducted by it in 2009 and we were provided with the reports from that further investigation.”

Schrunk goes on to add: “If the complainant and the Portland Police Bureau wish to pursue the possibility of a criminal prosecution, additional investigation by the Bureau will be necessary and will be discussed with the Portland Police Bureau.”

You can read the police report here.

Reaction:

Outside the Beltway
So: We have four-year-old allegations that police didn’t think credible at the time from a woman who apparently was more interested in profiting from a civil suit than prosecuting. That’s pretty thin grounds for believing Gore committed a crime. Still, it’s pretty clear that Gore was in a hotel room with a woman not his wife. And it appears that Mrs. Gore believes something illicit was going on in that room.

Jammie Wearing Fool
For shame, Manbearpig, for shame.

Wonkette
But if there is something to it, then it’s just more gross behavior from the super-rich gross people who either rule over the nation or make gazillions telling the nation to stop farting because it is killing the planet. (Those are the talking points for AM radio tomorrow. You’re welcome!)

Marbury
The only bit that made me wonder about her report was this: She…described his “violent temper, dictatorial, commanding attitude” — what she termed a contrast from his “Mr. Smiley global-warming concern persona.” Wait – his global-warming persona is dictatorial and commanding, isn’t it?

Weasel Zippers
I’m not saying it’s 100% true, but the National Enquirer has been sued so many times in the past their lawyers don’t let anything go to print unless they have something to back it up. If not, they would have gone out of business by now. Plus they did earn some credibility breaking the John Edwards affair…

No surprises here:

President Barack Obama accepted the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal “with considerable regret” and nominated Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command. The moves come in the wake of the revelation that Rolling Stone magazine would publish politically explosive remarks made by the general and his aides about key administration officials.

While it’s hard to argue with McChrystal’s reported positions on his civilian leaders it’s also hard to argue that the behavior captured in the Rolling Stone piece is acceptable. This is an unfortunate end to an honorable career.

NY Daily News: NBC News reported that Duncan Boothby quit his role on the general’s public relations team. According to a senior military official, he was “asked to resign.”

Politico: Rolling Stone’s executive editor on Tuesday said that Gen. Stanley McChrystal did not raise any objections to a new article that repeatedly quotes him criticizing the administration.

HP: Afghanistan’s president believes that U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is the “best commander” of the nearly 9-year-old war and hopes that President Barack Obama doesn’t decide to replace him, the Afghan leader’s spokesman said Tuesday.

First Read: Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown Tuesday that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s critical comments about the White House were “a mistake” and “poor judgment.”

Thomas P.M. Barnett: I just read the Rolling Stone piece and found the tone of disrespect somewhat stunning.

It isn’t looking good for the general:

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been summoned to the White House to explain biting and unflattering remarks he made to a freelance writer about President Barack Obama and others in the Obama administration.

The face-to-face comes as pundits are already calling for McChrystal to resign for insubordination.

McChrystal has been instructed to fly from Kabul to Washington today to attend Obama’s regular monthly security team meeting tomorrow at the White House

It sounds like McChrystal wasn’t pulling any punches – and let his aides get far too friendly with a visiting reporter:

In the eight-page article, released to reporters on Monday ahead of publication, McChrystal appears to belittle Vice President Joe Biden and accuses Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, of undermining his war plan within the administration.

Asked by the Rolling Stone reporter about what he now feels of the war strategy advocated by Biden last fall – fewer troops, more drone attacks – the article reports that McChrystal and his aides attempted to come up with a good one-liner to dismiss the question. “Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal reportedly jokes. “Who’s that?”

Later in the article, McChrystal turns more serious when asked about cables sent last fall to Washington by Eikenberry. The cables called into question the major troop increase advocated by McChrystal’s team and the U.S.’s backing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai – views that the ambassador had not previously raised with McChrystal or his staff.

“I like Karl, I’ve known him for years, but they’d never said anything like that to us before,” McChrystal is quoted as saying. “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’”

McChrystal issued a statement last night:

He said he has enormous respect for the Obama administration, and the piece fell short of his principles of “personal honor and professional integrity.”

“I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened,” said McChrystal, adding that he remains “committed to ensuring” the successful outcome of the almost nine-year-old Afghan war.

Reaction:

Marc Ambinder
What in the heck was Gen. Stanley McChrystal thinking? I mean, I know what he was thinking: he was tired of being the victim of what he believes is a concerted effort on behalf of Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and others to undermine everything he was given 18 months to do. He was tired of being perceived in the press as a neoconservative killer, Dick Cheney’s hired assassin, or disloyal to President Obama and his staff. He was angry at being blamed for leaking the draft of his report to the President to Bob Woodward. (He did NOT leak the document). He was miffed that a large number of mid-ranking soldiers and battalion commanders and enlisted guys didn’t support his strategy.

The Moderate Voice
Relations between McChrystal and the White House have never been stellar. So let’s just say that now in the wake of this profile they are less stellar — a lot less stellar — than they’ve been ever before.

Hot Air
Compare and contrast the McChrystal/Eikenberry relationship with that of Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, whom Foreign Policy noted last year never allowed their disagreements to go public. This isn’t the first time McChrystal’s spoken publicly about matters the White House would prefer remained in-house, either. Remember last year when The One freaked out over his speech in London calling for more troops?

The Campaign Spot
Many people I know think highly of McChrystal, and he has earned his accolades. But a general in the American armed forces cannot, on the record, mock or deride thevice president and the U.S. ambassador, much less the president of the United States. You and I can; we’re just some schmoes; we don’t report to him in the chain of command. I’m sure many generals have thought many colorful expressions of criticism toward presidents over the years, but they cannot blab them to reporters.

Outside the Beltway
What happens to McChrystal at this point is up to Obama, but given the General’s public statements it’s hard for me to see how the White House and Pentagon can keep him in place. This is insubordination, and there’s really only one appropriate response.

He’ll bail this year according to the Telegraph. Apparently, Obama’s patchouli-scented inner circle just isn’t Machiavellian enough to appreciate Rahmbo:

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is expected to leave his job later this year after growing tired of the “idealism” of Barack Obama’s inner circle.

Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to “bang heads together” to get policy pushed through.

Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.

Leaving would also potentially free him up to purse an office of his own – Godfather of the Chicago syndicate (Mayor).

Reaction:

NewsBusters
Can the Obama administration’s inability to smoothly implement its agenda really be due to an excess of pragmatism? How will this change the makeup, perception, and workings of the White House?

Jules Crittenden
I enjoyed this bit: “Democrats have not stood behind the president in the way Republicans did for George W Bush, and that was meant to be Rahm’s job.” They needed someone to do that for the One? Whatever happened to the blinding righteousness? It’s like saying Jesus needed a ward boss.

Hot Air
The question of who replaces him will set the tone for the rest of Obama’s presidency. If he selects someone with more subtlety and diplomacy with both parties on Capitol Hill, then Obama may attempt to move back towards the center in a Clintonian fashion. If he picks another ideologue, expect the Obama presidency to run completely off the rails in its final two years.

Outside the Beltway
Emanuel’s departure, then, could be taken as a sign that the idealists have won the ground war inside the West Wing and there are some bloggers who are making the leap into assuming that Emanuel’s departure is a sign that Obama will be facing a serious challenger for the Democratic nomination in 2012 by a pragmatist.

Another Black Conservative
Something tells me that Rahm won’t be the only one looking for an exit after midterms. The oil spill has washed away any of the Hopey Changey hype of 2008. What is left will be pretty hard to defend going into 2012. Add on the inevitable circular firing squad that is sure to follow the massive Democratic losses in November and I am certain Rahm won’t be the only one looking for the door.

Wizbang
If Obama and his inner circle think Emanuel’s departure will solve their problems, they are in for a rude awakening. This administration is severing its carotid artery with its turn toward socialism, its apathetic reaction to the Gulf oil spill, and its outright hostility to our nation’s allies; applying a band aid will do nothing to stop the hemorrhaging.

Sister Toldjah
My gut feeling is that he’s not planning on leaving, seeing as he’s the guy who said shortly after the 2008 election of Barack Obama that you should never let a crisis go to waste. And considering the hot button issues on the front burner in America these days, this is the kind of political environment that a guy like Emanuel relishes.

Belmont Club
So this is how the message might read. “Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is threatening to leave his job later this year unless Barack Obama gets real. Rahm has made a lot of personal sacrifices to join the White House. He gave up being a congressman, Chicago deep dish pizza and being a father to his children for what? To be blamed as abrasive when the midterm disaster unfolds. No way he’s taking the fall for that.

Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday whether he was trying to “seize control or shut down” the Internet, Lieberman answered “no way” and added that “the government should never take over the Internet.”

Lieberman said the Internet was “constantly being probed by other countries for weaknesses and that “we need the capacity for the president to say to an Internet service provider, ‘We’ve got to disconnect the American Internet from all traffic coming in from this country.’”

He cited China, which has long been criticized for its Internet censorship, as an example. “Right now, China can disconnect parts of its Internet in times of war. We need to be able to do that too.”

China’s infrastructure and policies were put in place to manage and control public opinion, stifle free speech, block the flow of information, and identify critics for punishment. Citing China as an example is probably not the best way to address the concerns of your “misinformed” critics Joe.

Anyway, I suggest reading through the bill and supporting material:

Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act
Cyber Bill Supporter Quotes
Cyber Legislation Section by Section
Cyber Bill One Page Summary

“The Coast Guard came and shut them down,” Jindal said. “You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, ‘Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.’”

A Coast Guard representative told ABC News today that it shares the same goal as the governor.

“We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.

But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.

Gov. Bobby Jindal could lead the response in Louisiana effectively (he’d certainly keep this sort of stupidity to a minimum) but I can’t imagine that the Obama administration is eager to do anything that would boost an already rising republican star.

Reaction

The Corner
I have to wonder, when Churchill was evacuating the Brits and French from Dunkirk, did he let the Royal Navy stop ships so they could make sure there were enough fire extinguishers?

The Moderate Voice
We have been told the the oil spill is the greatest catastrophe in American history. We have been told this is equivalent to Chernobyl, and that the livelihoods of millions depends on rapid action using all available resources. No less than the President of the United States told us that this was war, and that we would do “whatever it takes”. Apparently, none of this means that barges that suck up the oil will be allowed to operate without Coast Guard verification of the correct number of life jackets and fire extinguishers on board.

Grim’s Hall
The Federal government is asserting veto power over state actions; it is reading that power in the broadest possible way, even in emergency situations. It’s unresponsive to the needs of the people of the state; but every piddling regulation (“How many fire extinguishers do you have on that oil-sucking barge?”) is put ahead of doing something about the emergency at hand.

Outside the Beltway
I’m not against martime safety, of course, but it strikes me as more than a little absurd that the Coast Guard it worry about life vests and fire extinguishers while the Governor of Louisiana is worrying about stopping the oil from entering the Louisiana marshes.

Protein Wisdom
Well, you see, Gov Jindal, the White House has a big problem with you. You’re a Republican.

Right Wing News
Consider the BP spill: the Coast Guard has shut down oil sucking barges. Who ordered that? Based on the way this regime does business, you know it had to come from someone within. No CG commander would even consider stopping the barges and face the public wrath.

Even MSNBC Can’t Believe How Bad Obama’s Speech Was
Well, it only took 4yrs of campaigning, but the left’s most moronic talking heads finally asked the same question that 2/3’s of the country has been asking, “Where’s the specifics?” President Obama tried to slow his melting poll numbers by addressing the nation, but all he did was give yet another campaign speech filled with promises, rhetoric, scapegoating, and anything and everything except…HOW he’s solving the problem of the BP oil spill.

Obama’s speech: There’s a Pipe Spewing a Gazillion Gobs of Oil into the Gulf, so Let’s Build More Windmills
The first two-thirds of the president’s remarks read just fine. By golly, we’ll get the money, we’ll clean it up, no matter how long it takes. But watching the president and hearing him was a little creepy; that early portion of the address was robotic, lacked real energy, enthusiasm. And worst of all specifics. He was virtually detail-less. After almost two months of waiting through continuously contradictory reports, an anxious American public wanted to know, HOW are you going to accomplish all this? Even Obama’s cheerleaders over at MSNBC were complaining. “Where was the How in this speech?” demanded Keith Olbermann. Seriously.

Obama’s Oil Spill Speech: Running On Empty
This is, by a long way, the most negative reaction I’ve ever had to an Obama speech. Even on Afghanistan, where I was dubious of his strategy and felt his address at West Point was technocratic and unconvincing, I thought his speech had at least a few redeeming features. But this one? There was just nothing there. I felt better about Obama’s response to the spill before the speech than I do now.

Where Have We Heard this Before?
The optimistic take, at least for environmentalists, is that this is the language and approach Obama uses when he really means to legislate. The pessimistic take is that Obama shied away from clearly describing the problem, did not endorse specific legislation, did not set benchmarks, and chose poll-tested language rather than a sharper case that might persuade skeptics.

Obama’s Speech by the Numbers
Barack Obama tried and failed to convince the American people tonight that he was on top of the oil crisis. He largely wasted his first speech from the Oval Office, delivered at prime time on every television station, delving too far into vague visions for the future and the politics of energy reform, rather than convincing his public that he was the man in charge.

Social Nets Wrap: Facebook, Twitter Reactions to Obama speech from Vitter, Thompson and Boehner
Obama wants to change the law and punish BP retroactively for the oil spill. Come on, Mr. President. Don’t you think BP should at least have the same rights under the law as Khalid Sheik Mohammed?

Barack Obama Embraces His Inner Jimmy Carter
Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter before him, has proven himself overwhelmed by the job, not up to the task, and looking for answers in all the wrong places. Let’s hope the nation can survive him.

Not Barackin’ The World?
He’s got nothing or, nothing good to offer. So, he’s left to try and play the politics right, as always, and tread his way across a sea of oil drowning his administration. And he’s already played the Czar card so matter of factly on other matters, I doubt Americans even see it as a big deal. In short, Obama is not Barackin’ the world. He’s out of tricks. And I don’t expect that to change any time, soon.

Stuck on stupid: Obama’s Czar Fetish
Here is the Obama Disaster Management Theory: In times of crisis, you can never have enough unelected, unvetted political appointees hanging around. Nearly two months after the BP oil spill, the White House will now name an oil-spill-restoration point person to oversee recovery efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. Too many czars have already spoiled this administration’s credibility. Might as well pile on another.

Obama Oil Spill Speech Reax: Epic Fail
Even with those very low expectations, though, this was a shockingly underwhelming speech. The few sound bytes I heard on NPR this morning were exceedingly week, even by George W. Bush standards. Moreover, even those on the president’s side were disappointed if not outright angry.

Worth Watching: BPGlobalPR

Protecting the Obama Brand
The president’s recent political missteps raise questions about what he’s doing for -or to- the Democratic Party

The Spill, The Scandal and the President
The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world’s most dangerous oil company get away with murder

Last Chance, Mr. President, to Go Big and Go Left
In a blur of post-election elation, over-confidence, an extended campaign mindset, barely-suppressed scorn for the ‘angry left’ and a futile dream of post-partisanship, the White House has slowly and steadily allowed the unthinkable to happen: George W. Bush’s image is improving. And genuine hope for a new progressive age is dying.

Obama’s Presidency Can’t Be “Transformative;” He’s a Democrat
By now, however, it is obvious that Obama’s personal boldness does not cross the blood/brain barrier into governance. By all indications, he simply does not (a) have a taste for upending existing preconceptions or institutions and (b) does not believe he has the right to do so even if he believes it should be done.

Worth Watching: DanHannanMEP

Etheridge has released a statement:

“I have seen the video posted on several blogs. I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved. Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response. I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.”

He is, apparently, a graduate of the Gran Torino school of public discourse:

Another political career ends:

At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

This one is catching many by surprise:

A lot of the insta-commentary has been to the effect that Blumenthal is just another sleazy politician. But this gets it wrong by a mile–for almost two decades, Blumenthal has been so pure, so revered throughout Connecticut that he has seemed to exist in a realm beyond politics. That’s not exaggeration. Everything about Blumenthal seemed to set him apart from the ordinary sleaze and compromise of big-time politics, especially in recent years as Joe Lieberman succumbed to narcissism and Chris Dodd’s sweetheart Countrywide mortgage tarnished him beyond redemption (or at least beyond reelection). For as long as I can remember, Blumenthal has been the crusading consumer advocate, humble, modest, unprepossessing, with that guileless Brylcreem haircut that somehow made him seem even more honorable–a throwback to an earlier era.

It seems like Blumenthal tried to walk a fine (although somewhat dishonest) line in describing his service. I know the media can distort these things, and they did get it wrong several times, but I can’t let him off the hook for that. When CNN implied that I was a solider (they never bothered to ask) I made it clear on Blogs of War that I was not. Any person of integrity, especially one who claims to care so deeply about those who served, would go to great lengths to set the story straight. Is he “just another sleazy politician“? I think so.