Atlantic Sentinel

Author: Daniel DePetris

  • Everybody Loves Robert Gates

    Whether the characterization is fair or not, many Americans have labeled the George W. Bush Administration as the most incompetent American presidency in the past thirty years. But if that is true, Robert Gates should be considered the sole survivor — indeed the sole exception — to the generalization.

    Even before Washington was ready to absorb Bob Gates into the Pentagon’s senior ranks, the Beltway was intimately familiar with his intense work ethic and focused personality. Gates is a Washington veteran in every sense of the word. He has served a total of six presidential administrations over a time span of forty years.

    His first Washington gig took the form of a low level CIA analyst, where he was responsible for assessing classified information on anything and everything Soviet.

    But his low status didn’t last very long. After a short eight year stint at the agency, he served on the staff of President Gerald Ford’s National Security Council, only to return to the CIA a few years later as a top analyst in the agency’s Strategic Evaluation Center. Little did Mr Gates know that his hard work would eventually earn him the attention and respect of an American president. Two years later, he was nominated by George H.W. Bush to be his top official in the Central Intelligence Agency. (To date, Gates’ is the only employee in the agency’s history to have climbed the entire CIA career ladder.)

    All of these accomplishments should be noted. Indeed, a normal person would probably find it tempting to quit after a grueling period as CIA chief. But Bob Gates is no normal person. He’s a worker, a highly respected intelligence leader, and a savvy bureaucratic infighter. He also happens to be someone who can reach across the partisan aisle on a tough issue and extend a hand when the country needs a burst of unity.

    In hindsight, perhaps this is why George W. Bush would ask Gates to lead and revive a defense establishment that was losing morale amid two frustrating wars.

    Rewind to the latter months of 2006. President Bush’s party just got trounced in the midterm elections; the war in Iraq was spiraling out of control; America’s credibility in the entire Muslim world was at an all time low; and the Taliban was starting to make a comeback in Afghanistan. Hundreds of American troops were dying in combat every month. To say that the Defense Department was looking for someone who could calm things down and bring everyone together would be an understatement.

    The United States was at a turbulent point in its history. It didn’t stop Robert Gates from accepting the job of defense secretary.

    Four years later, we can now sit back and reminisce about how great of a job Gates has done. Thanks in part to his temperate leadership style and his complete trust in his commanders, America’s most contentious foreign policy challenges are now starting to simmer down to a somewhat tolerable level.

    An Iraq that was once labeled as an unwinnable quagmire was gradually becoming less violent as a result of a new strategy. Sunni insurgents that were wreaking havoc on Iraqi society were now becoming marginalized by a broad sector of the Iraqi population. Iraqi civilians once hostile to American forces were now responding to a little military concept called counterinsurgency. A certain degree of trust was rebuilt between American troops and Iraqis, resulting in information that would crack down on insurgent operations. Meanwhile, Gates was shielding General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker from congressional scrutiny, which allowed the duo to take risks that were required to turn the situation around.

    Now, one administration later, Secretary Gates has expressed his desire to leave public service and move on with his life. In an exclusive interview with Fred Kaplan, the Washingtonian commented that he is quite happy with what he has accomplished and would be content on retiring next year if President Barack Obama didn’t ask him to stay on.

    You may recall that Gates said a similar thing at the end of the Bush Presidency. But incoming President Obama found the secretary to be so transformative and so connected that he asked him to continue his job for another year. Six months later, Gates is not only still part of the Obama team but one of the most popular members of the administration.

    Does the secretary really want to retire? If so, will President Obama let him? At a time when the United States are still active in Iraq, escalating in Afghanistan and fighting a covert war in Pakistan, Obama may not feel comfortable in letting him go.

    Either way, the Obama Administration better start searching for replacements. Lord knows it’s going to be extremely difficult to fill Gates’ shoes.

  • Where’s the Love for Pakistan?

    When natural disasters strike at the heart of a society, the world tends to unite to ease the human suffering. In fact, throughout history, governments and private organizations often work in tandem by donating money, personnel, and resources to mitigate the damage. The 2004 tsunami that resulted in the deaths of some 250,000 people rallied a world traditionally fractured by religious, ethnic and political differences, all for the sake of compassion. Arabs, Jews, Iranians, Americans, Brazilians, Turks, Chinese, and Indians poured in hundreds of millions of dollars for lifesaving operations. Food, makeshift tents and help were all given to those whose lives were damaged indirectly, as well as to those who lost their businesses, homes, livelihoods, and entire families. Celebrities and musicians put on performances and benefits for the victims, and national governments actually found themselves competing with one another for the title of “top donor.”

    When all was said and done, the humanitarian response in its entirely was nothing short of remarkable. 1.2 million children were vaccinated to prevent disease, UNICEF helped rebuild 107 schools, 59 health clinics, and trained a total of 56,000 health specialists. A tremendous response, given the millions who were left homeless or stranded.

    This is only one example of the world casting aside its differences and uniting under the banner of humanity. Just six months ago, countries from every corner of the globe were quick to respond to the earthquakes that devastated Haiti’s already poor infrastructure. American citizens donated approximately $31 million simply through their Blackberrys and iPhones. International institutions like the United Nations and the World Bank donated millions more, giving Haitians a sign of hope in an otherwise terrible situation. Again, the world heeded the call of compassion.

    So why, after three weeks of the worst flooding in Pakistani history, is the world so silent on this latest natural catastrophe?

    The United Nations has estimated that over four million Pakistanis have been displaced, another eight million are in need of emergency assistance (food, clothing, shelter, drinking water), and a total of twenty million have been affected in one way or the other. Close to one third of Pakistan’s land mass has been flooded or destroyed; 1.6 million acres of cropland ruined; and key infrastructure like bridges and roads are inaccessible. The Pakistani population in the hardest hit areas is getting impatient, wondering why they are not seeing aid and trying to figure out why their own government is slow in delivering supplies.

    To make matters worse, the Taliban and other Islamic extremists in Pakistan have been quite willing to exploit the situation to their advantage. In some cases, Islamic charities are beating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to the punch, dishing out meals in a quicker and more efficient manner. The situation is getting so out of hand, says Senator John Kerry, that Pakistan is inching ever closer to full on violence if the United States and its allies do not pick up the pace.

    Indeed, the world is starting to get the message. Saudi Arabia recently announced that it would be donating $107 million to various humanitarian organizations on the ground inside Pakistan’s tribal areas. After a visit to the frontline, Senator Kerry announced that Washington would be increasing its own contributions by another $150 million. But even with this good news, emerging powers like Brazil, Russia, India, and China (informally known as the BRIC) have not fulfilled their “rising power” status. China has had double digit economic growth for the past three decades, yet the Chinese leadership has given a frugal $2 million to relief organizations.

    Which again brings us to the crucial question that’s on everyone’s mind: Why are people not stepping up and donating to Pakistan, as millions of people worldwide did to Sri Lanka and Haiti a few years ago?

    Some have suggested that perhaps the world is biased toward Muslims, so therefore relief donations are at a minimum. Others have claimed that Western countries are simply sick and tired of giving money to overseas ventures when their own economies are still losing jobs and struggling to maintain growth rates (although this is hard to belief. Western economies were in pretty bad shape a few months ago but that didn’t hamper aid to Haiti in any significant way). Many analysts cite America’s skepticism of the corrupt Pakistani government as a reason. On this very channel, Mosharraf Zaidi, a Pakistani journalist and a former political economy advisor to the UN, seems to think that negative stereotypes from Western media may have something to do with it as well.

    Yet all of these reasons are still unacceptable, because each justification seems to indicate that the world is punishing innocent Pakistani civilians for the actions of its government. This form of punishment is all the more disturbing when considering the general hostility that ordinary Pakistanis already possess toward their own civilian leaders. Making people suffer for the crimes and ineptitudes of their politicians isn’t exactly kosher, nor should it be a rationale for withholding aid that could serve millions of people.

    The United States have vastly outstripped other donors so far. But America could be doing a lot more by lobbying allies and making Washington’s demands clear. Stabilizing Pakistan after a natural or man made disaster is an urgent national security priority for the United States. Peace and stability in Pakistan is in many ways a precedent for peace and security for the entire world community.

    As a leader of that world community, President Barack Obama must work the phones and solicit all of the contributions he can get. Anything short of this effort would be cataclysmic for America’s battle against an unforgiving jihadist ideology, and a terrible crime to the entire nation of Pakistan.

  • Obama Nuking His Own Nuke Policy

    For all of the foreign policy challenges that the Obama Administration is attempting to manage and resolve, none seems as important to the president personally than the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Nuclear nonproliferation continues to be the backbone of Barack Obama’s security policy, and an issue that the president himself has worked extensively hard on over his first eighteen months in office.

    Two months ago, the United States hosted the very first “Nuclear Security Summit” which was designed to find and lock up loose nuclear material around the world before international terrorists could get a hold of these dangerous components. The summit was a great illustration of the president’s appeal across the world at that point in time. Forty-seven national leaders chose to make the journey to Washington DC to participate in the discussions. And when all was said and done, all 47 produced a collective communiqué outlining the urgent need to find and secure nuclear material for the sake of global security. Nuclear nonproliferation was once again an issue on the world stage.

    But the summit was only the start of the administration’s campaign. Around the same time, the White House shocked the Washington establishment by diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in American foreign policy. The United States would no longer point its nuclear arsenal toward the direction of nonnuclear weapons states, even if American interests were directly threatened (although the actual wording of the National Security Strategy excluded Iran and North Korea from this promise). In an extreme transformation from the Cold War era, the National Security Strategy (NSS) prohibited the offensive use of nuclear weapons in an armed confrontation. Last but not least, the NSS stressed that America’s large and powerful nuclear stockpile was to be used only for defensive purposes. Or as Washingtonians like to say, for deterrence purposes.

    But perhaps more important than the actual directives of the NSS was the way the strategy itself portrayed nuclear weapons: outdated, expensive, dangerous, and useless for the twenty-first century.

    The central aim of both events was to demonstrate to the world the extent of Washington’s sincerity. The NSS and the summit were also political moves which administration officials hoped would convince other states to back America’s stance on the Iranian nuclear program.

    That was then. The world has changed markedly over the past few months, and as a consequence, the United States has changed its stance on the nuclear issue.

    In the latest case of American knee buckling, Washington recently signed a nuclear cooperation deal with Vietnam that would in effect spread nuclear technology to East Asia. To be fair, the deal is not entirely unprecedented. Under President George W. Bush’s administration, the United States enacted a similar agreement with India. President Obama largely followed the Bush blueprint by approving a nuclear sharing pact with the United Arab Emirates in 2009 (which Congress later signed into law). Like previous agreements, the American-Vietnamese deal focuses solely on the peaceful development of nuclear energy, which officials hope will show other states that nuclear transparency is the better option.

    However, there is one vital difference that could damage President Obama’s entire nuclear nonproliferation policy. As the American-Vietnamese nuclear agreement currently stands, the Vietnamese government would still be allowed to enrich its own uranium, rather than importing it from the world market.

    To some in the administration, the clause may not seem to be such a big deal, particularly given Vietnam’s quick transformation as a responsible actor in the international system. But the omission of a “gold standard” in the Vietnam deal is in fact significant in a number of respects.

    First off, the gold standard omission portrays to the world an America that is both unsure of its own nuclear policy and a nation that is all too willing to make exceptions to those labeled pragmatic or strategic. In essence, Washington is saying one thing and doing another. “If your country is in an unstable environment or is a reluctant partner, then don’t expect the United States to support your right to domestic enrichment.” Iran clearly fits in this camp, as do Jordan and Saudi Arabia, albeit at a much smaller scale. “If, however, your leaders comply with American demands, then Washington will drop its objections.”

    Is this the type of message that the United States want to send to the developing world? If the Obama Administration truly wants to improve American credibility in areas that are traditionally hostile to American objectives, then the answer would appear to be no. A “my way or the highway” mentality can hardly be labeled constructive within the broader campaign of international outreach.

    Why the Obama Administration decided against following the India-UAE example with Vietnam is anyone’s guess. Perhaps this was the only way the United States could finalize a very profitable business contract. Perhaps the Vietnamese were unrelenting during negotiations. Or perhaps Washington is not concerned about the Vietnamese getting the Bomb.

    Whatever the reason, the American-Vietnamese agreement is not going to sit well with the Iranians. Tehran has been trying to exert the very same nuclear enrichment rights that the Vietnamese were privileged enough to squeeze out of Washington.

    What is more, the United States may have also established a dangerous precedent in future nuclear negotiations. Countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt may now insist that they be granted the same nuclear enrichment rights. This not only puts the United States in a tough position with members of the developing world, but also ruins Obama’s strategy of an eventual “world without nuclear weapons.”

    No one said the foreign policy business was going to be easy. But it may be a lot easier if the United States exerted some consistency on a major security issue.

  • Lebanon Braces for Judgment Day

    Five years ago, a former Prime Minister of Lebanon and longtime American ally, named Rafiq Hariri, was assassinated by a car bomb in the heart of Beirut. The incident fueled a popular uprising of Lebanese civilians commonly referred to as the “Cedar Revolution,” which would quickly pressure Syrian forces out of Lebanon after decades of occupation.

    Yet the removal of Syrian troops from Lebanese territory was not the only aftershock of the Hariri killing. The United States government under President George W. Bush would later blame Syrian authorities for orchestrating the attack on a moderate and Western Arab politician. Washington would sever all diplomatic ties with the Syrians until five years later, when President Barack Obama entered the Oval Office. The Shiite militant movement Hezbollah, which was already on the American security radar for past terrorist attacks, would bear the brunt of America’s attention.

    Now in August 2010, after that intense and tumultuous time in Lebanese politics, a UN investigation will release its final judgment on the Hariri murder. Syria has been exonerated from any wrongdoing. That leaves Hezbollah operatives as the main instigators of the attack.

    On the eve of the judgment, with everyone preparing to finger Hezbollah for the crime, Lebanon is once again bracing for a political firestorm that could quickly turn violent. The irony is that Rafiq Hariri’s son, Saad Hariri, is now the man who has to keep the lid on the simmering pot.

    Unfortunately, this is going to be exceedingly difficult for the younger Hariri to accomplish. He is in a tough position regardless of who is blamed for his father’s murder.

    Prime Minister Hariri can either put his firm weight and political support behind the commission’s ruling, making his position known to the world but hurt his appeal with the majority of the Lebanese population (who happen to be Shia and highly supportive of Hezbollah as a social organization). Or he could endorse Hezbollah’s position and denounce the results. He may also choose to order the creation of a new independent commission aiming to uncovering evidence that may have been previously overlooked by the original investigation. This move, however, would hurt him with the United States and Israel at a time when Lebanon is already experiencing a harsh rebuke over the Israeli border incident.

    So what can Hariri do?

    So far, he’s been trying to straddle both sides by largely keeping his mouth shut and letting the tribunal do its job. This is what Hariri is probably going to do until a verdict is reached.

    If Hezbollah isn’t fingered, Hariri has dodged a bullet. But if Hezbollah is in fact implicated, then Hariri may choose to call another investigation in order to keep a potentially violent situation from getting out of control. The Lebanese government’s main concern is to limit a potential civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. The best way to do that is to divert pressure to an outside actor.

    This is all speculation of course. In either event, Hariri Junior is going to strain some relationships.

  • US Military: Give Us More Time

    There is a potential revolution in the making going on within America’s Afghanistan policy, and it’s not emanating from where you might think.

    Instead of the White House pushing the American military to change its approach and to change its tactics — which is something that Democratic presidents have traditionally embraced throughout American history — it’s the armed forces that are now starting to take that role. The issue in question is none other than Afghanistan, where whole squadrons of junior officers are lobbying the president hard on his July 2011 pullout date. “Too fast and too soon,” say these military leaders. “Don’t abandon Afghanistan like you did in the early 1990s.  Don’t withdraw American forces while the Afghan Security Services are still weak and ineffectual. But most of all Mr President, please refrain from terminating a war policy that has yet had the chance to prove itself.”

    In more ways than one, the marines and soldiers voicing this opinion are absolutely right. When President Barack Obama spoke at West Point last December and announced his decision to send an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, most in the audience assumed that the current administration was unveiling a brand new strategy to curtail the Taliban and turn the situation around.

    The brand new strategy was called counterinsurgency, an approach that combines the traditional aspect of killing the enemy with the untraditional task of building local governance, promoting economic development, and showing the local population that the United States and the Afghan government were a better alternative to the Taliban. “Winning hearts and minds,” is the catchphrase that Washington has used to describe counterinsurgency, but the strategy is actually much more complicated than that. It’s more like “winning hearts and minds,” sustaining a relentless campaign of violence toward the insurgency, and swallowing your tongue when local residents frustrate your efforts.

    Yet seven months later, the situation in Afghanistan is still dire. Hundreds of insurgents have been killed by coalition forces, but the thousands more are still strong enough to coordinate attacks in every corner of the country. Afghan President Hamid Karzai remains an unreliable American partner at best, and large portions of his government are still occupied by corrupt figures. Little headway has been made with the training of Afghan police, despite Washington’s hope that there would be close to 130,000 cops on the beat by July 2011. And America just experienced its deadliest month in the nearly nine year-old war, with 66 American soldiers killed in action by small arms fire, roadside bombs, and suicide attacks.

    As a consequence, lawmakers in Congress are getting a little antsy. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is demanding that the Obama Administration stick with its timetable of withdrawal, and an increasingly high number of House Democrats are questioning the very notion of funding the soldiers that are already in the warzone. As Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, and David Sanger wrote in The New York Times, more than a third of the Democratic caucus voted against financing the war, sending a clear signal to Obama that his own party is distancing itself from the entire effort. In other words, Afghanistan in 2010 looks a lot like Iraq did back in 2006: violent, desperate, and a place where hope is in short supply.

    Will Obama cave into pressure in order to appease his own party on the war? Or will he listen to a growing number of commanders that are asking the president to give the military more time to make the counterinsurgency strategy work? These are the important questions that will not only determine the course of the war, but also America’s credibility in South Asia well into the future. Afghans and Pakistanis still distinctly remember how the United States packed up and left after its covert intervention against the Soviet Union ended in 1989. The result of that departure was nothing short of a long and brutal civil war in Afghanistan, culminating in the rise of a Sunni fundamentalist movement that drove the United States back into the country twelve years later.

    American generals want to get Afghanistan right. But they cannot kill Taliban, beef up a central Afghan government, pave roads, and build schools all before the summer of next year. The mission should be given more time to fulfill these objectives. Otherwise, the United States should either ditch counterinsurgency for a more limited counterterrorism plan, or get troops out altogether.

  • Local Elections Canceled in West Bank

    Last month, Palestinians in the West Bank were supposed to vote on a new set of local politicians. To Americans and Europeans, municipal elections aren’t such a big deal. But for people who haven’t had a taste of democracy in years, just the slightest chance of waiting on line to cast a ballot is an exhilarating experience. For Palestinians — a people under persistent occupation, divided between two political factions, and separated in two geographical areas — this exuberance would have been even more fulfilling.

    Sadly, the elections were canceled by the Palestinian Authority, which argued that they would have fragmented Palestine’s national identity and diverted attention away from the more pressing problem of Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe.

    Little do they know that Palestinian identity hasn’t been unified for quite a long time. Hamas and Fatah have been battling it out for the past four years. 1.5 million Palestinians in the slim coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip are separated from another 2.5 million in the West Bank. And if you want to get mired in technicalities, the Palestinians don’t even have a national identity. The lack of a Palestinian state kicks the “national” right out the door.

    Something else is at work here. The cancelation had nothing to do with Gaza, and it certainly had nothing to do with efforts at unity. Instead, fear of who would win and who would lose was most likely the culprit. And in some strange way, the United States is partly to blame for Palestine’s increasingly authoritarian behavior.

    Back in 2006, the United States encouraged Palestinians to come out and vote for their next national government. At the time, it was an historic moment; the first elections since the death of longtime leader Yasser Arafat and the beginning of a new era in Middle East democracy. But when the elections were over, and the winner was announced (Hamas), encouragement in Washington quickly turned into despair and disappointment.

    The right thing for Washington to do was applaud the Palestinians for their trust in democracy — even if the United States didn’t necessarily like the results. Such a positive response could have served as a precedent for further elections into the future.

    Unfortunately, the Bush Administration took the opposite approach. The same democracy that Washington trumpeted beforehand quickly turned into an embarrassment. Due to Hamas’ place on Washington’s terrorist list, the United States refused to declare the contest legitimate. The administration dug itself deeper by not engaging Hamas at a low level, which would have at least shown Palestinians that America meant what it said about democratic institutions.

    Four years later, what we have in the Palestinian territories is a powerless legislative branch, a Palestinian president ruling by decree, and an authority that is divided internally between old-time technocrats and upwardly mobile moderates.

    We are still suffering from that disastrous 2006 experience. Just as America was afraid about the results back then, the PA is afraid about what’s on the minds of Palestinian voters today. Canceling the elections gives them more time to delay the inevitable.

  • Obama’s Numbers in the Arab World

    I’m a big fan of Dr Marc Lynch’s work. In addition to being considered a respected professor in a top-tier American university (George Washington University), he is also one of the best versed in Middle Eastern culture and knowledgeable about virtually every issue in the Arab world. So whenever Dr Lynch writes a post about Arab public opinion or has something to say about American-Islamic relations, I tend to read it very quickly.

    Such was the case last Thursday, when Lynch devoted a post to the dwindling appeal of President Barack Obama in the eyes of ordinary Muslims. Technically, the Brookings Institution sponsored the poll and conducted the project, but it’s people like Lynch (not to mention Steve Walt and Tom Ricks) that make sense of the data and try to put it into some perspective.

    For a full look at Brookings’ results, click here (PDF). I highly recommend that you take a look at the raw figures, because it gives us a sense of what issues still ring true in the hearts of Arabs. But if you just want to get to the nuts-and-bolts, the results can be best described as quantification of America’s declining appeal, even in countries that are considered to be American allies. The poll not only reveals an unfortunate American decline in popularity, but also the deep frustrations that many Arabs hold over America’s inability to meet its promises and commitments. (more…)

  • Israel-Lebanon Border Skirmish Not All Bad

    The last thing the Middle East needs right now is another shooting war. But when gunfire erupted between Israeli and Lebanese troops along the border this past Tuesday, that is exactly what the Levant experienced for a few brief moments.

    The border between Israel and Lebanon has been relatively quiet ever since Israel and Hezbollah decided to stop fighting one another back in August 2006. A mutual ceasefire was signed to damper down hostilities, which called for the deployment of a sizable United Nations peacekeeping force along the green line in order to ensure that a violent incident wouldn’t spark out of control. As of that agreement, the Hezbollah militia has shown restraint along the frontier, even as its weapons supply has increased to an estimated 40,000 rockets. Knowing that another violent confrontation with Hezbollah would be a costly military campaign, Israel too is content with the status quo (although it worries about Hezbollah’s growing arsenal).

    But all of that changed in a split second when Lebanese soldiers fired on Israeli commandos when they were trying to trim down a tree along their side of the border. One high level Israeli soldier was shot in the head and killed. Israel responded by firing mortars and machine guns toward the Lebanese, killing two of their soldiers and a journalist.

    The incident was the most violent in four years, and many in the region are deeply worried that the situation could quickly spiral into another full fledged armed conflict.

    Fighting over a cypress tree is certainly a tragedy for both sides, especially when casualties are involved. But the incident could have been much worse. Hezbollah, with its vast arsenal of missiles, could have used the opportunity to provoke violence toward Israel’s northern frontier in the name of “protecting Lebanese sovereignty.” Thankfully, Hassan Nasrallah chose to stay on the sidelines during the dispute. This shows that Hezbollah is indeed weary of another violent confrontation with Israel, despite its growing military capability in Southern Lebanon.

    Both the Israeli and Lebanese governments are meeting with UNIFIL to resolve the incident and to make sure that nothing like it ever happens again. It’s only a start, but the move confirms that both sides would much rather hold a fragile peace together instead of resorting to another round of shooting.

    Another point to consider: Given that the UN have now confirmed that Lebanon instigated the shootout, will this force the United States to reevaluate its partnership with the Lebanese Defense Forces? Last year, Washington donated $162 million to the Lebanese Army, hoping that the money would be used to counter Hezbollah’s own military gains. Now that a violent spat has occurred, President Barack Obama may have to consider whether this policy can be sustained without strong opposition from Congress. Thanks to Daniel Levy of the Middle East Task Force for bringing this up, because it would have sailed over my head had it not been for his piece at Foreign Policy.

  • A Chance for US to Build Trust in Pakistan

    Pakistan cannot catch a break. As if daily killings from sectarian and terrorist groups were not enough to inflict mass casualties on innocent Pakistanis, tremendous rains have caused huge floods that continue to plague the country’s western frontier (that’s right, the same border where the Pakistani military and American drones are hammering extremist strongholds).

    Pakistani officials estimate that as of now, close to 1,200 people have died, with thousands more displaced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of houses in the tribal areas have either been damaged or swept away in the wreckage, which is prompting the Islamabad government to label this flood the worst in the country’s history.

    But it’s not all bad. Donations from a number of countries are pouring into Pakistan while humanitarian organizations have dispatched workers on the ground to deal with the swelling numbers of refugees that are making their way to displacement camps. For its part, the United States have given Pakistani authorities $10 million, over 11,000 pounds of supplies, over 200,000 meals and some kind words from Secretary Hillary Clinton herself.

    The aid sounds like a lot, but Washington could be doing much better.

    In fact, the floods should be perceived by the White House — and Congress — as a ripe opportunity to bridge the gaps between the millions of Pakistanis who view America as a hostile force and an American government whose dependence on Pakistan is growing by the day.

    If recent opinion polls are any indication, America needs all the help it can get to improve its image in the eyes of Pakistanis. According to the Pew Research Center (PDF), only 17 percent of Pakistanis are actually supportive of the United States, with 11 percent regarding America as a partner. Compare this with the 18 percent of Pakistanis who view Al Qaeda in a favorable light, or the 25 percent who support Lashkar e-Taiba (the group most famous for its 2008 attack in Mumbai).

    To put it mildly, the United States are not doing so hot in Pakistan — even among educated Pakistanis in urban areas. Pledging more than $10 million to the flood relief effort is a good start, but a concerted effort to put some American boots on the ground would add a human touch. Pakistanis need to witness Americans doing something for the Pakistani people rather than for the Pakistani government.

    It’s not going to solve all of America’s PR problems in that corner of the world, but it sure won’t hurt. Sometimes compassion can be a lot more effective than a monetary contribution. If Pakistan is as much of a strategic ally as Washington says it is, perhaps the United States should start acting accordingly.

  • Republican Resolution on Iran May Just Be Political

    My colleague Nick Ottens already touched upon this story yesterday, but because of the issue’s tremendous importance to the United States and the Middle East at large, I thought it would be appropriate to toss a few things into the debate.

    In case you happened to miss Nick’s report, a substantial portion of the Republican Party (mostly Tea Party members) in the House decided to introduce a resolution supporting a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.  Close to one third of House Republicans have already signed onto the resolution (PDF), which is a substantial number considering that the United States Congress has never in its history adopted a stamp of approval for preemptive force (and no, authorization for the invasion of Iraq doesn’t count).

    All of this comes at a time when the Iranian leadership continues to thwart its international obligations under both the UN and the IAEA. It comes only a few weeks after the United States, the UN Security Council, and the European Union passed through the strongest economic sanctions on Iran to date. And coincidently, this comes at a time when President Barack Obama is trying to get his “nuclear zero” policy off the ground.

    Yet despite the “impending doom” of an Iranian weapon, the resolution says more about the American political season than it does about a genuine support of Israel, or a real worry about Iran’s nuclear capability. In short, by creating this resolution (code named HR 1553), Republicans and the White House’s other political opponents are attempting to capitalize on the president’s stalemated Iran policy.

    The November congressional elections are fast approaching. Opponents of the president are trying to find any foreign issue — any at all — that could draw the support of American voters who are either ambivalent about foreign policy or who are weary of where America is going. And Iran could be the big ticket issue.

    Granted, there are other foreign policy priorities that Republicans can try to exploit. They could boast about Obama’s July 2011 timeline for Afghanistan, but those concerns already resonate with some in the president’s own party. Republicans could talk about Obama’s failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, but this would most likely spark a harsh retaliation from Democrats who would be quick to point out Bush’s own failure to solve the conflict. Bringing China into the mix is also a possibility, but a far-fetched one at that; most Americans really aren’t concerned about China surpassing the United States anytime soon.

    For Republican challengers — and Tea Party members running for Congress — Iran is the one issue that they can hammer the White House on. They can argue that the United States has alienated many of their allies (Turkey, Brazil, Israel, Russia) for a sanctions resolution whose effectiveness is in doubt. Some will probably argue that Tehran is actually in a stronger position than a year ago, thanks to Brazil’s and Turkey’s willingness to pick a fight with Washington over the pressure track. And as all politicians have done, Republicans can highlight Obama’s indecisiveness over his approval and then rejection of a nuclear fuel swap deal.

    Some of this is justified. Some of this isn’t. But you can be sure that all of it will be brought up during the campaign. The House maneuver is the official start of the midterm elections.