Political MoJo

Readers may think that this New York Times headline today signals a lack of progress: "Iraqis Not Ready to Fight Rebels on Their Own, U.S. Says." (Conservative readers may wince at the word "rebels," imagining that if we could only call them "evil-bastard-baby-murderers" all our problems would be solved.) That headline is based on a new Pentagon assessment, not yet released. Nevertheless, this is actually good news. The Pentagon is finally taking steps to scrutinize very closely the progress of troop-training in Iraq, something I've been chafing about for a while now. Says the Times, "The assessment, which has not been publicly released, is the most precise analysis of the Iraqis' readiness levels that the military has provided." Whether people are thinking about an exit strategy or a plan for "victory" in Iraq, actually knowing what's going on seems like the fairly obvious first step here.

One thing to wonder about, however, is the ethnic and sectarian composition of the Iraqi security forces. Peter Galbraith in the New York Review of Books recently claimed that the only competent security forces hail from the Kurdish peshmerga, and the Kurds' loyalty is first and foremost to Kurdistan. (The claim, like most in Galbraith's essay, comes without evidence or citation, so take it for what it's worth.) And then there are the recurring reports that the Iraqi paramilitary units are nothing more than glorified Salvadoran death squads. And then there are questions surrounding civilian control of both the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense. It would help if the Pentagon was equally as forthcoming about all of these things, so that people could actually figure out what's going on in Iraq; otherwise, we're left with New York Times headlines of suicide bombings aplenty and that, quite obviously, looks like resounding failure.

Meanwhile, Galbraith thinks that the big problem in Iraq isn't the insurgency, but the coming quarrel between Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis. Indeed, our friendly San Francisco Chronicle had not-so-bright news along that line this morning: "Kurdish leaders have presented a redrawn map with a larger Kurdistan to the Iraqi National Assembly for consideration in the new constitution, a Kurdish party official said Thursday." Not only that, but one Kurdish official calls the boundary a "red line."

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In the American Prospect, Robert Dirnan surveys the alarming growth of the prison population in the United States, and the various problems that's quite obviously causing. The piece ends with a rousing call to arms: "The time to act is now." Okay, but what? My preferred solution is to focus on the parole process; according to a 2002 Justice Department study on recidivism, 51.8 percent of released prisoners get right back in within three years. And about half of those are put back in prison for technical violations of parole—oftentimes they don't even need to commit a crime, they can just miss a few meetings with their case officer. Pretty clearly, attacking this problem would be one of the easiest ways to keep the exploding prison population under control. The question is whether state budget crunches are going to lead governors and state legislatures to seek out actual solutions; but both inertia and vested interests augur for continuing to expand prisons without bound.

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By the way, a few weeks ago I cited Slate's argument that the GOP would never dare overturn Roe vs. Wade—it would become, after all, an electoral catastrophe. In light of the fact that John G. Roberts is about to ascend the Supreme Court bench, and push the Republican Party one step closer to that goal, should Stevens or Ginsburg retire in the next three years, it's worth saying: that idea is probably very much mistaken.

Overturning Roe would, in fact, be fantastic for the Republican party. First, it's true that the overwhelming majority of the United States supports Roe v. Wade. But if it was repealed, many of those women could still get abortions. (California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, for instance, would still keep abortion legal.) Women in many, many other states would be denied that choice, of course, but federalism could fragment the pro-choice electoral coalition. Meanwhile, the Christian right would stay mobilized and clamor for a national abortion ban in Congress. If it passed, I have no doubt that a Supreme Court that overturned Roe could find a way to uphold a national ban on abortion, even if it is logically inconsistent. Now the national ban probably wouldn't pass, because it would be difficult to ram through the Senate, but that recalcitrance would be enough to keep the conservative base foaming at the mouth for years to come. So yes, it is wishful thinking to believe that Republicans might be too afraid to touch Roe.

And it's worth noting that the only way to stop this, really, is to do what the Republicans have been doing and win elections.

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Seems that our counterterrorism operations in Somalia are causing a bit of a problem. This from the abstract of a new International Crisis Group report:

Since 2003, Somalia has witnessed the rise of a new, ruthless, independent jihadi network with links to al-Qaeda. Based in lawless Mogadishu and led by a young militia leader trained in Afghanistan, the group announced its existence by murdering four foreign aid workers in the relatively secure territory of Somaliland between October 2003 and April 2004. Western governments, led by the U.S., responded to the threat of terrorism in and from Somalia by building up Somali counter-terrorist networks headed by faction leaders and former military or police officers, and by cooperating with the security services in Somaliland and neighbouring Puntland. The strategy has netted at least one key al-Qaeda figure, and as many as a dozen members of the new jihadi group are either dead or behind bars.

Despite these successes, counter-terrorism efforts are producing growing unease within the broader public. Few Somalis believe there are terrorists in their country, and many regard the American-led war on terrorism as an assault on Islam. Unidentified surveillance flights, the abduction of innocent people for weeks at a time on suspicion of terrorist links, and cooperation with unpopular faction leaders all add to public cynicism and resentment. Without public support, even the most sophisticated counter-terrorism effort is doomed to failure.

As Stygius reminds us, the battle against al-Qaeda, such as it is, won't succeed so long as the Bush administration worries more about "rogue" states than it does "failed" states. Obviously it can do both, but the focus over the past four years has very clearly been on the behavior of state actors like Iraq, Syria and Iran. In Somalia, meanwhile, some counterterrorism operations are being conducted, but nothing connected to a larger project that transforms the country from a place where terrorists and other militants might gather into a stable and functioning government. Without that, it's hard to see any sort of long-term success here, as ICG notes. Thinking beyond al-Qaeda, you get people like Thomas Barnett who argues that the United States can either deal properly with these failed states now, or wait until they burst into some major conflict down the road. Handling a country—and that term's used loosely—like Somalia quite obviously isn't all strawberries and cream; all the same, as Susan Rice pointed out two years ago, the administration doesn't even seem to have a strategy for dealing with failed states.

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