Who is Bush kidding?

Doesn't it go without saying that the Annapolis Conference is just a really dumb idea? Bush, Olmert, and Abbas are all too weak to make anything meaningful happen. Shas and Yisrael Beyteinu are ready to bolt from Olmert's coalition at any mention of Jerusalem. Abbas does not have control of the Gaza Strip and barely has control of the West Bank. Even his Fatah faction is segmented. Add in a bunch of random countries (Senegal?!), 16 of whom do not recognize Israel. Syria is there on the outside chance Olmert will talk about the Golan Heights. (If you want to see Olmert's coalition partners sprint like an Olympic runner, just tell them he's giving the Golan back to Syria.) Hamas, not surprisingly, is threatening violence both if the talks succeed in a pact or if they fail. Everyone will be discouraged from future talks once these inevitably fail. Bush is sadly mistaken if he thinks now is the time to turn Clintonesque and challenge the sides to make up before his presidency ends. I dare you, Annapolis -- prove me wrong.

In advance of Annapolis

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced at the cabinet meeting yesterday that Israel will not build any new settlements in the territories, will stop expropriating land, and will dismantle illegal outposts, all according to the state's commitments in the first stage of the Road Map.

About time. They've said they'd do it for years, they should have done it even before then, and they still may not do it now. But at least now, the Prime Minister is saying that he will halt any new settlement expansion in the West Bank as a condition of the road map. Settlement construction has been one of the few areas of Israeli policy where Americans have given Israel an unwarranted free pass. The settlements certainly have not been the cause of Palestinian terrorism, but as a friend once said to me, "They're not helping." This is especially the case because according to Israeli government data, 32% of West Bank settlements are built on private Palestinian land. This is appalling. It's good to see the Israelis coming to grips with the fact that they can't maintain their current settler policy. While completely removing the IDF from Gaza may not have been wise in retrospect, evicting the settlers was a painful but necessary measure. There will likewise be other necessarily painful measures Israel must take in dealing with West Bank settlers. Hopefully Olmert will not go back on his word.

As for the Palestinians, their mammoth failures in meeting the Road Map conditions are too well-documented to even begin here. We'll save it for another time.

And now an update on our Persian friends

The news is mixed. As the Washington Post and others report, the US has begun seeking a third round of sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program. This comes on the heel of IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei’s update on Iran’s compliance with past UN resolutions on the program. Paradoxically, ElBaradei admitted that even while Iran was giving more information to the IAEA about its nuclear program, its overall knowledge of the program is “diminishing.” What the IAEA does know for sure is alarming: Iran is now continuously processing 3,000 centrifuges, a tenfold increase from a year ago. If each of them functions at peak capacity, they can produce enough uranium for a nuclear bomb in one year. While they are not at this point yet, if left alone they certainly will be.
The various Western powers with a head of sense on them are contemplating their next moves. Washington is pushing for sanctions, which would be backed in the UN Security Council by Britain and France, but probably vetoed at this point by, predictably, Russia and China. The so-called “EU 3”—Britain, France, and Germany—are also considering getting the EU to consider American-style sanctions that could deliver a big hurt to the Iranian energy sector, and thus Iran’s entire economy.
As a result of both economic and military threats, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is now under increasing pressure to muzzle Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and get him to cooperate more with Western powers. The sanctions have not stopped the nuclear program yet, but it is clear that they are influencing the opinions of the Iranian elite. Stepping up internal pressure is the only way to get Khameini to clamp down on the nonsense. This is why we should encourage complete divestment from the Iranian energy sector by all of our allies. It doesn’t get us caught up in a waiting game with Ahmadinejad and it’s less risky than airstrikes.

Obama, part deux

We have had a tendency to, to argue along the spectrum of you’re either a hawk or a dove. Either you’re willing to engage in military action and oftentimes think military action first and diplomacy second, or you’re a dove, you’ve got post-Vietnam syndrome, you’re suspicious of any military action. I think that the way we have to think about it is to say that right now we live in a dangerous world. There are times where we’re going to need to act militarily. We should not hesitate to act on behalf of the national interest. But we have to understand that we’ve got more power than just the military at our, our disposal, and that’s something, obviously, the Bush administration has forgotten.

More from the Meet the Press interview. Is this guy great or what?

Took the words out of my mouth

The Democrats . . . have not been clear about what an alternative foreign policy strategy would be, and, unless we present as a party a different vision about how we would approach national security, how we’d approach battling terrorism, I think that we are going to make ourselves vulnerable in the fall, and, more importantly, we’re going to be doing a disservice to the American people.

This is from Senator Barack Obama on Meet the Press last Sunday. He is a wise man, and any formal inexperience he has in foreign policy matters is offset by his wisdom. To take the title of a Dennis Ross book I've been meaning to read, Obama understands Statecraft, and How to Restore America's Standing in the World. They go hand in hand. Using all the tools of diplomacy (statecraft) by approaching each situation with an open mind and a sharp eye for the broad consequences of any diplomatic endeavor, America will re-gain the respect it commanded until say, 5 years ago. Hillary Clinton may also prove a capable commander-in-chief, but we should not dismiss Obama for having little international experience . . . other than, you know, having lived overseas.

Speak of supporting the troops . . .

It will surprise no one that United States Armed Forces veterans are more likely to wind up homeless. However, the numbers are astonishing. Even though veterans compose only 11% of the adult population in this country, fully a quarter of the homeless population on a given day is composed of veterans. The logical sequence to achieve this realization is not difficult: (1) Returning veterans are disproportionately more likely to have mental health problems, and (2) people with mental health problems are grossly overrepresented in the homeless population, so (3) veterans are disproportionately homeless.
Some in this country demand that all Americans "support the troops." But does supporting the troops not apply when they are not in combat? Do they only need support in Baghdad and Kabul? As the recent Walter Reed scandal and other stories have shown, too many of our soldiers are neglected on a number of fronts. One of the most serious of these is the lack of capacity at army mental health services. Even as soldiers are sent to multiple tours of duty in hositle regions of the globe, their mental health needs are not being adequately addressed.
The US Armed Forces owe its fighters the best care that it can provide. This means at a minimum, not sending patients with symptoms post-traumatic stress disorder into battle again. (This sounds fairly obvious, but to Army brass it is not, apparently.) If they provide better health services, maybe the Army's suicide total will fall from its record high in 2006. And maybe, just maybe, it could help fix some of the Army's recruiting problems.

A no-brainer

Waterboarding—“immobilizing an individual on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face to force the inhalation of water and induce the sensation of drowning”—is torture. Just ask former torturee Sen. John McCain, or at least 114 US law professors, or the US State Department’s own internal reports. Seems pretty simple, but Michael Mukasey’s refusal to declare waterboarding illegal is costing him, and rightfully so. It’s a shame that a guy who gave answers to 495 written questions, had a spotless judicial career, and seemed like a consensus pick for Attorney General after Alberto Gonzales’ disaster run is now in danger of not being confirmed. But it’s his own doing; he denounced the procedure multiples times, but something was holding him back from saying it was torture. The worst part is, Democrats weren’t out searching for something in his testimony to pick him apart with—they genuinely wanted to get the beleaguered Justice Department back on track with a competent Attorney General. Ah, such is politics.