(Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Last week, I referred to the remarkably high level of anti-Americanism in Turkey in the context of H.R. 252 - the House Resolution accusing Turkey of committing genocide against Armenians in 1915 that passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee last Thursday.

The widespread distrust of the United States (14% of Turks view the U.S. favorably according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey) in Turkey is somewhat surprising given the strategic alliance that has bound the two states together since President Truman's pledge in 1947 to protect Greece and Turkey from communist subversion.

The roots of this phenomenon are multifarious, but a new paper by Ioannis Grigoriadis in The Middle East Journal offers some insight into why Turks view the United States so negatively.

Grigoriadas distinguishes among several types of anti-Americanism and concludes that anti-Americanism in Turkey is best understood as the "sovereign-nationalist" variety. This means essentially that Turks disapprove of the United States because of "what we do" in the region rather than the values that make us "who we are."

In other words, Turks object to our foreign policy in the Middle East. More specifically, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was immensely unpopular in Turkey because of its destabilizing impact on the Turkish-Iraqi border and the perception that the invasion exacerbated Turkey's "Kurdish problem." The importance of the Iraq war is underscored by this graph, which shows that the United States' unfavorable numbers rose dramatically from 54% to 83% from 2002-2003 and remain at 69% as of the 2009 survey.

In addition to the unpopularity of American foreign policy, there is a more nuanced but no less important aspect of this phenomenon.

The division in Turkish politics and society between the secular elite composed of the military, judiciary, and bureaucracy and the more religiously-inclined, conservative majority personified by the ruling, "moderately Islamist" Justice and Development Party (AKP) is the defining feature of Turkish politics.

Unfortunately, many Turks on both sides of this divide seem to believe that we are supporting their political rivals. While these claims are exaggerated, the perceptions have real consequences.

On the one hand, the United States' support for Turkey's European Union membership is perceived by many secular Turks as support for political Islam in Turkey and as legitimizing the AKP government. More importantly, circumscribing the military's role in politics is a key element of the European Union accession criteria. Therefore, many secular Turks blame Washington and Brussels for providing political cover for the arrests of scores of high-level military officials over the last several years.

At the same time, many supporters of the ruling AKP government are suspicious of the United States' long-standing ties to the Turkish military. As Grigoriadis points out in his paper, these suspicious were underscored - after the Turkish Parliament voted on March 1, 2003 not to allow the United States to open a northern front along the Turkish-Iraqi border - by this ironic statement from U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who ostensibly supported the invasion of Iraq in order to bring democracy to that country:

Many of the institutions in Turkey that we think of as the traditional strong support...were not as forceful in leading in that direction...particularly the military. I think for whatever reason they did not play the strong leadership role on that issue that we would have expected.

This not-at-all-subtle call for the military to meddle in Turkey's politics was widely perceived as hypocritical and was resented by the government and many of its supporters.

To be fair, managing the internal conflict within the Turkish political system is a supremely difficult task and a dilemma for which there is no quick and easy solution.

However, what Washington can do is refrain from taking steps that will exacerbate the problem. Last week's Foreign Affairs Committee vote on H.R. 252 will likely strengthen anti-American sentiment across the Turkish political spectrum.

-- Ben Katcher

This is a guest post by Lawrence B. Wilkerson exclusive to The Washington Note. Wilkerson is the former Chief of Staff at the Department of State during the tenure of Secretary of State Colin Powell, for whom Wilkerson was a 16 year aide. Wilkerson is a member of the Director's Council of the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

David Corn (in Mother Jones, "Rove Protects the Rear") has already responded to Karl Rove's comments reported this week in several places and coming from his new book, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. Corn takes Rove to task, as well he should.

The taking-to-task is over Rove's cavalier contention that President Bush likely would not have gone to war in Iraq if he had known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D.? I doubt it", Rove writes. Rove then goes on to say that "Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat."

According to Karl Rove, then, the intelligence about Iraq's WMD that was cherry-picked, manipulated -"fixed around the policy", as the Downing Street Memo recorded - and otherwise tampered with was thus treated so that Congress would support the war.

Yet I agree with Rove that the President did not lie outright. He, like the vast majority of the members of the U.S. intelligence community led by the cock-sure Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, actually believed Iraq had WMD. As a result, any cherry-picking of, manipulation of, or tampering with the evidence (as Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office did daily), was acceptable because once the invasion occurred, WMD would be found. There was simply no doubt about that among this majority or among the President's team.

In fact, there was no doubt about it among the several intelligence communities around the world with whom the U.S. regularly did business, including those of Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, and Britain. This, as in the case with France, despite the contrarian rumblings of certain of their political authorities.

I was at the CIA's headquarters at Langley, Virginia, for five days and nights sequestered with Mr. Tenet and his gang of analysts and had an earful of these different but unanimous intelligence entities around the globe, as well as Mr. Tenet himself and his "WMD experts". After these deliberations, I too believed that Saddam Hussein had WMD.

So the administration - led by Cheney and Rumsfeld - had worldwide support in twisting the truth, exaggerating the findings, and pushing bits and pieces of them without any context.

Today I am even quite certain that, under Vice President Cheney's expert guidance, certain members of agencies of the US Government, or contractors working therefor, tortured people at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere in an attempt to reinforce the already twisted intelligence message with the smoking gun of high-level al-Qai'da testimony that connected Baghdad and the tragedy of 9/11.

And the torture worked - in the only way torture ever works. They got confessions. They got their smoking gun. Of course, like the confessions that torture produces for draconian regimes all over the world, it was all false information.

But it didn't matter then because everyone knew that Saddam Hussein had WMD - Rumsfeld told us that several times and Cheney was utterly dogmatic about it - so what did it matter if the intelligence were manipulated a bit because, in the end, we would invade and find the WMD and all would be right with the world.

It was the same with al-Qa'ida: there just had to be a connection with Baghdad. The expert Cheney knew it. The fact that for the moment the administration had, through torture and otherwise, largely invented such a connection was thus irrelevant; the real connection would be discovered after the invasion.

There are, of course, several problems with this sort of leadership from Washington.

First, as a soldier, I have to object to the cavalier manner in which Mr. Rove dismisses the fact that we went to war for a purpose that was false, whether his boss intentionally made it so or not.

How do we relay this message to the families of the 4,380 dead Americans and the more than 31,000 wounded Americans, some of them horribly scarred for life? How do we convey this message to the families of the allied soldiers who have met similar fates? How do we square this with the deaths of a quarter million Iraqis who have perished and the millions of Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, and elsewhere?

How to couch that message? "You would not have lost your son, daughter, brother, sister, wife, husband - if the intelligence had been right." How terribly comforting!

"You would not be in Jordan now, having expended your life's savings and with no place to go - and be destabilizing Jordan by your presence - if the intelligence had been right."

Mr. Tenet, wherever he is hiding, must feel the burden of nearly all the evil done in the world in the last decade resting upon his shoulders. Mr. Rove has indirectly characterized it so.

This is what happens when the President, and the men and women who advise him, are utterly disconnected from the realities accompanying their fateful decisions to send young men and young women into harm's way for state purposes.

And Mr. Rove wants to burnish his former boss's legacy on such a note?

Second, how do we reconcile Mr. Rove's message with the certain knowledge that the critical national security decisions in the first Bush administration were not being made by the President but by the Vice President?

Cheney's reason for invading Iraq was oil, plain and simple. Yes, he believed there were WMD. Yes, he believed it was time for Saddam to go. But he had believed that for years without advocating an invasion of Iraq by US armed forces.

Cheney changed his mind because of his work with the President's Energy Task Force early-on in the administration. Cheney knew where the price of oil was headed; he knew the growing doubts about Saudi Arabia's ability to continue to do America's work with regard to these oil prices; and Cheney knew how much oil was in Iraq - in proven reserves and in potential. It was oil, and all its many manifestations - to include the many political and financial supporters of Bush and Cheney in the oil community - that drove Cheney to reverse himself and push for Baghdad.

It is clear from just the excerpts of Rove's book that have been revealed that Mr. Rove believes he put Bush in the Oval Office in the election of 2000. And indeed he did - for superficial purposes.

Because the man who was really making the decisions that counted was Cheney.

And it is quite clear that Cheney lied. Not about WMD. Not about connections with al-Qa'ida. These things he only cherry-picked, twisted and manipulated, fully expecting to be vindicated after the invasion, not in the particulars but in the overall picture. Cheney actually believed these things to be true.

What Cheney did lie about was the real reason he decided to invade: oil.

To this day no national security decision document that records President Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq has been found.

That's because there isn't one. He did not make the decision.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

This article originally appeared at Al Jazeera English.

Joseph Biden, the US vice president, left on Sunday for a head-scratching trip to the Middle East and many are wondering what he is up to.

After all, the vice president has a lot on his plate already.

Biden has been the person behind the White House scenes who has helped nudge forward the tenuous deals between Shia, Sunnis and Kurds which secured Sunday's historic elections in Iraq.

Almost as hard for Biden was brokering a truce between Ray Odierno, the commanding general of US forces in Iraq, and Christopher Hill, the US ambassador to Iraq, who had more than a few turf scuff-ups.

He has also been working hard on the less sexy parts of President Obama's national security vision - tying together key international stakeholder agreements to help contain the spread and actually reduce nuclear weapons materials and other WMD relevant assets globally. Obama will host a summit in April built on work that Biden has done.

Biden and his team have also done a great deal of prep work on the Obama economic plan's jobs and infrastructure components - topics that for the first year were largely ignored by key economic policy architects Timothy Geithner, the treasury secretary, and Lawrence Summers, the national economic advisor.

Biden and his chief economist, Jared Bernstein, have struggled hard on the employment challenge and offered suggestions on small business financing, a variety of hiring incentives for firms, smart grid infrastructure development, high speed rail investments, and have done some very good work advocating a new 21st century, jobs and infrastructure-focused "industrial policy" (two words which seem to be taboo in government now).

Showing face?

Of all Obama's senior level cabinet members and advisers, Biden has exceeded expectations and performed better than virtually any other member of the team in generating ideas and pushing the policy needle.

And now he is off to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan.

Why is he adding this issue to his plate when there is a specific presidential envoy, George Mitchell, tasked with working to get the Palestinians and Israelis back on a credible negotiating track towards a two state solution?

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and Obama tried hard to kick-start an arrangement that would get some sizzle by forcing the Israelis to stop all new settlement construction in the Occupied Territories. That did not work out so well.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, General Jim Jones, the national security adviser, Robert Gates, the defence secretary, and others have been giving the Israel-Palestine portfolio a lot of time and have made many a trip to the region.

Nothing much has happened as of yet - so it makes one wonder whether dispatching Biden to the region is just doubling down and throwing more of America's diminishing credibility at a failed approach.

Is Biden just a big personality to "show face" in the region and to try to assure regional leaders that the US still cares?

Alternatively, Biden may be there to really do something, or at least try.

Biden is emerging as the Obama administration's fixer - the person who can quietly walk into a situation and survey it in a dispassionate, smart way in order to think about a new approach.

As James Traub wrote in a recent New York Times Magazine profile about Biden, quoting this writer in part, Biden straddles two worlds of foreign policy - that of the values-driven idealists, on one hand, who want to do good in the world and who tend to ignore realistic assessments of interests and the costs and benefits in securing those interests; and on the other, the pragmatic, do what it takes approach to foreign policy that focuses on the prioritisation of hard policy choices.

Global fault line

The Israel-Palestine process has broken down. And George Mitchell does not understand that the time he keeps asking for is time the region does not have.

Behind closed doors, Mitchell tells foreign leaders and ministers about his experiences negotiating with the parties in Northern Ireland. What he does not realise is that that terrible conflict could have lasted through a couple more centuries of his patient deal-making and the world would still be getting on.

The Israel-Palestine standoff is a globally consequential fault line that will blow sooner rather than later if the problems and pressures there are not seriously addressed.

Biden gets this. But I have no idea which direction he will go in his discussions during the trip.

Ultimately he knows that resolving the Israel/Palestine situation is a necessary requirement to confronting Iran and robbing Iran of room to run and meddle in the Middle East.

A deal on an Israel/Palestine two track reality is also a vital part of demonstrating to a doubting world that the US can achieve the objectives it sets for itself and is able again to be a sculptor of global affairs.

Obama did not mention much about foreign policy in his State of the Union address this year and did not mention Israel-Palestine at all. We hope that "Biden as fixer" is the mission - rather than using Biden to just put in face time with a region that doubts Obama's commitment as of late.

Hopefully, Biden can help create opportunities and momentum in a region that poses a defining challenge for the US - even though most of his Obama administration colleagues seem for all of their efforts to be out of ideas and out of steam.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm traveling this week, but still paying close attention to Iraq's parliamentary elections, where it seems things are holding fairly steady despite the fears of instability before the election and heinous terrorism up to and on election day itself.

Iraq has a long way to go, and the outcome of the elections for Iraqi and American policy are far from clear. But it is heartening not only to see the determination of the Iraqi people to resist violence in order to make their voices heard, but also the steadfastness of President Obama in refusing outside pressure to change our timeline for withdrawal.

In the coming days, I will be getting much of my news on Iraq from The Middle East Channel, a fantastic and brand new joint venture of the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine.

Managed by my colleagues Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah in cooperation with scholar, blogger and Middle East expert Marc Lynch, this new venture will provide an important forum for informed, needed comment on Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine, and many other issues of vital importance in today's policy debates.

Here's part of Lynch's election analysis from today:

The other main headline of the Iraqi election campaign has to be the overwhelmingly nationalist tone of all major politicians and the marginal American role in the process. The election campaign (as opposed to the results, which we still don't know) showed clearly that Iraqis are determined to seize control of their own future and make their own decisions. The U.S. ability to intervene productively has dramatically receded, as the Obama administration wisely recognizes. The election produced nothing to change the U.S. drawdown schedule, and offered little sign that Iraqis are eager to revise the SOFA or ask the U.S. to keep troops longer. Iraq is in Iraqi hands, and the Obama administration is right both to pay close attention and to resist the incessant calls to "do more." This doesn't mean ignoring Iraq -- the truth is, the Obama administration has been paying a lot more attention to Iraq than the media has over the last year. It means moving to develop a normal, constructive strategic relationship with the new Iraqi government, with the main point of contact the Embassy and the private sector rather than the military, and adhering in every way possible to the SOFA and to the drawdown timeline.

Stay tuned.

-- Steve Clemons

Politico's Laura Rozen paints a disturbing picture of the chain of events that ultimately led the House Foreign Affairs Committee to pass the Armenian "genocide" resolution last Thursday.

Until last week, it appeared that the White House had made a calculated decision not to ask House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman to refrain from bringing the resolution to a vote. Previous administrations have often made such requests in order to prevent damage to the U.S.-Turkey alliance.

The decision to acquiesce to the vote appeared to be motivated by politics and the administration's desire to keep Obama's campaign promise that he would recognize the Armenian genocide.

But, as Rozen details in her piece, the story is more complicated. Secretary of State Clinton called Berman last Wednesday night - the evening before a vote that had been on the legislative calendar for a month - to indicate that the vote could jeopardize U.S-Turkey relations. But it was too late. Berman called the vote and it passed by a single vote.

Rozen's sources suggest that the White House simply dropped the ball. The only other plausible explanation I can conceive is that Clinton's last-minute phone call was a purposefully ineffective ploy designed to persuade the Turks that the administration tried to prevent the vote. If that is the case, it is not working.

It is worth nothing that State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley indicated Saturday that the White House opposes bringing the resolution to a full House vote.

Another aspect of this story that is important to emphasize - and that Center for Strategic and International Studies Turkey Project Director Bulent Aliriza makes toward the end of the clip above - is that the impact of last weeks' vote cannot be found on any one specific issue such as the United States' use of Turkey's Incirlik airbase or Ankara's diplomatic cooperation on Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan.

Rather, the effect will be broader and more difficult to measure. Votes of this kind will likely strengthen anti-American elements within the Turkish political system and make it more difficult for the Turkish government to undertake unpopular decisions in support of American objectives.

-- Ben Katcher

Jonathan Guyer, who blogs at Mideast by Midwest, is the official toonist for The Washington Note.

The Obama administration's flirtation and probable decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a military tribunal -- which even the military thinks is a bad idea -- has been one of the many issues that has Guyer on the edge of wanting to break up with Obama.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest note by Parag Khanna, a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The Second World: How Emerging Powers are Redefining Global Competition in the 21st Century (Random House, 2009).

Fly American - Unless You Know Better: Geopolitical Humor for the Oscar's

In "Up in the Air," George Clooney portrays uber-frequent flier Ryan Bingham, who reaches ten million American Airlines miles--without ever leaving the United States. American Airlines is portrayed as the grand old silver lady of flying, and that's precisely the problem. It's certainly old, but far from grand. What does Clooney's Oscar hit have to do with U.S. foreign policy?

Most Americans simply don't realize just how "brand America" no longer carries much weight in the world unless you are looking for an iPhone or a Hollywood blockbuster.

Our cars, political system, and economic practices have become a joke, and the Obama glow wore off before his administration's one-year mark. Our ignorance is best captured by the same American Airlines linked Mastercard's apparent policy to block usage of the card as soon as you commit the crime of trying to use it in a foreign country. Yet we still think we're the best because we don't know much about the rest.

American Airlines is a great metaphor for America itself.

A recognizable brand that provides plenty of connections, but whose value and quality of service is greatly diminished. Its 757 planes rattle like roller-coasters, the in-flight entertainment system constantly conks out, and it's so loud in the cabin that Bose noise-cancelling headsets are no match. And try making a booking over the phone or online without the agent's keyboard freezing or system crashing.

Meanwhile, emerging market airlines from the UAE's Emirates and Etihad to India's Jet Airways are providing better services at lower prices. Their flight attendants dress in style, their food is hot, and they arrive on time.

In Europe - yes, the same socialist sclerotic Europe conservatives love to bash - there are twice as many airlines as there are EU member countries. Following on the success of Ireland's Ryan Air, imitators galore have sprung up, driving more connections at lower costs. Most of the price of any flight within Europe is taxes that maintain first-rate infrastructure, not airfare. And you don't have to pay for peanuts.

One year into the Obama administration the very necessary debate about our national competitiveness is taking shape. We are falling behind in educating future innovators, meaning our economic edge is fading fast. In web-tech, we have Google, Amazon, and Twitter, but local preferences are gaining ground in Asia (a fact which lies at the heart of the Google vs. China face-off), where 4G speeds make American mobile operators look like the equivalent of a rotary dial.

In bio-tech, we've ended Bush-era bans on stem-cell research, but new patents are pouring in from India and Korea where researchers are going after mainstream health problems and not just specialty drugs. And in clean-tech, save for some promising pockets of experimentation with electric cars and smart grids, we are the world's dirtiest per capita.

Globalization means that the gap between "Invented in America" and "Made in China" is shrinking rapidly. Technological know-how is spreading faster than ever--multinational corporations have to transfer the latest techniques and skills to foreign managers a condition of setting up shop overseas. It's no surprise that China just debuted the fastest inter-city bullet-train in the world just a few years after German industrial giant Siemens build China its first one.

Feel-good rhetoric can't reverse this greatest shift in geopolitical and geo-economic conditions: Globalization once extended America's edge, now globalization accelerates its undoing. America's share of the global economy is shrinking from close to an unnatural fifty percent at the end of World War II past the steady 25 percent mark held for about a decade towards a far more modest 20 percent.

We are not a big enough market to set global standards--instead we're somewhere between Europe, which raises environmental and industrial quality control regulations, and China which undermines them.

If we want to re-capture global leadership for the sake of our economic competitiveness and national self-esteem, it starts by flying overseas and learning how the world's new markets live: what they drive (smaller and cleaner), what they eat (organic and with trans-fat optional), and what their values are (not church vs. state but rather a community-based politico-economic-spiritual synthesis).

Today there are probably several thousand young and unemployed American MBAs making that trip to the booming Persian Gulf emirates, India, China, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and other emerging markets.

Maintaining America's vaunted capacity for self-renewal hinges on them coming back with fresh ideas on how to make in America and sell in the rest of the world. Any American who can afford to should follow their lead.

But start the trip right: don't fly American Airlines -- unless perhaps you are trying to get from Tulsa to Texas.

-- Parag Khanna

The defining personality of the George W. Bush administration was his Vice President, Dick Cheney. And the man who enabled Cheney and built out the architecture of "the dark side" of a nightmarish purgatory beyond American or international law was his chief of staff David Addington.

President Obama, his former White House Counsel Gregory Craig, and others on the Obama national security team promised to dismantle not only the institutions that Cheney and Addington built that are the antithesis of an American commitment to human rights and habeas corpus but to reverse the mindset that got us into Iraq to begin with.

Regrettably, with the news of Rahm Emanuel trying to cut deals with Senator Lindsey Graham resulting in the prosecution of GITMO detainees in military tribunals, we are seeing the affirmation of Addington and Cheney's work, not its dismantlement.

NPR's Don Gonyea captures this in the clip above in which this writer was briefly queried.

-- Steve Clemons

I just did this interesting interview with media investor Leo Hindery who also chairs the Economic Growth/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation.

Hindery spoke yesterday at a forum sponsored by the Center for American Progress and Apollo Alliance titled ""Picking a Winner: How to Make the U.S. a Leader in the Clean Energy Economy".

I particularly appreciated Hindery's focus on the need for a much more serious national economic strategy to promote manufacturing jobs as a necessary piece of any real green economy initiative.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo Credit: Ucumari's Photostream)

Turkey - a country that President Obama visited on his first overseas tour and referred to as a nation with which the United States enjoys a "model partnership" has recalled its Ambassador to Washington Namik Tan after the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed House Resolution 252 labeling Turkey's massacre of Armenian civilians during World War I a "genocide."

This is a significant development in bilateral relations between the United States and one of its most important allies.

Even before the resolution, the United States' popularity in Turkey was dismal. According to the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, only 14% of Turks view the United States favorably - a remarkable figure for a country that has been a major U.S. ally since the end of the Second World War. That number is sure to go down after today's vote.

Sorting out the historical grievances between Turkey and Armenia is an immensely complicated task - and it is certainly understandable that many Armenians feel that Turkey should do more to atone for what was undoubtedly a major tragedy.

However, it is difficult to fathom how today's developments will help Turkey and Armenia move forward. Rather, today's vote is the triumph of diaspora politics over serious foreign policy.

More soon.

Update: I have pasted the official Turkish Government Statement on H.R. 252 below the fold. I have asked for a statement from the Armenian Embassy and will post if it becomes available.

(Photo Credit: White House Photostream)

This is a guest note by Fadi Elsalameen, Executive Director of The Palestine Note, the website where this post originally appeared.

I have been in the West Bank for the past two weeks meeting with several members of the Palestinian leadership about the peace process, Palestinian state-building, and the role of the United States in moving both peace and independence forward. My conversations with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, PM Salam Fayyad, Ahmad Qurei, and Mohammad Dahlan were very illuminating.

President Abbas is taking negotiation setbacks in stride. Upon asking the president, "How are you?" he dryly replied: "Not very, very, very bad - just very bad."

Abbas continues to wait for a response from US President Barack Obama. President Abbas says he wants to hear about "[Obama's] vision for our talks with the Israelis. We would like to have more clarity from the Americans on what it is they will support [in our] negotiating with the Israelis. [PA Prime Minister Salam] Fayyad and I have been building Palestinian institutions; I have fulfilled all our obligations for the road map." By the look on his face, it's clear Abbas is disappointed by Washington's inaction.

Hurtles to the peace process - settlement expansion, the Heritage Trail row - demonstrate a considerable challenge, but Abbas made it plain that with all the uncertainties about the future of Palestinian-Israeli peace, one thing is certain: "I will not allow violence, I am committed to peace with Israel."

Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala), former PA chief negotiator, is not as optimistic. Said Qurei: "I am for negotiations, but over what exactly? Over settlements?... Over Jerusalem? How can we [move forward] if the Israelis are building [settlements] as we negotiate? How can we [talk] if Israel is taking more land and building on what we would be negotiating over with them?"

Senior Fatah official Mohammad Dahlan reiterates the need for America to voice clear expectations and parameters for the peace process. "Americans have to give us a clear sense of what it is they can support in negotiations with Israel. We can't just jump into negotiations without knowing what it is we are going to negotiate over. Obama should present something like the Clinton Parameters or the Road Map."

Prime Minister Fayyad looks to the challenges beyond negotiations: "Even if we were to gain political independence, we need to be ready as a state. The political track is important, but it is not the only [avenue we need to focus on]." But the PA's achievements have been many, and Fayyad does not forget to count them: "We completed 1,000 projects in the past year. By 2011, we will complete 2,000 more projects. We are building hospitals, roads, schools, juridical system, forcing rule of law, et cetera... In 2011, we will be ready for a Palestinian state, whether the political track is [set] or not." Fayyad has been lauded as a "technocrat's technocrat" for his focus on statecraft over rhetoric, getting even the Israelis behind him when he spoke at the Herzilya conference. Now all he needs is Obama.

It is crucial that the Obama administration propose its vision for a Palestinian state consistent with Fayyad's game plan as soon as possible, and the US needs to articulate to Israelis and Palestinians the kind of state it will endorse. Obama's public support of Fayyad's road map to statehood will also likely further the peace process, giving both Abbas and Netanyahu a reason to come back to the negotiating table without getting mired in the settlement freeze row.

Obama's endorsement could be the best solution to the deadlock.

-- Fadi Elsalameen

This is a guest note by Sean Kay. Kay is Chair of International Studies and Professor at Ohio Wesleyan University. He is also the author of NATO and the Future of European Security and Global Security in the Twenty-first Century: The Quest for Power and the Search for Peace.

This post was originally published at Stephen Walt's blog at Foreign Policy.

Recently in Washington, D.C., a group of experts met as part of an ongoing review to develop a new "strategic concept" for the NATO allies to approve at a heads-of-state summit to be held in late 2010. Key speeches were presented by the NATO Secretary General Fogh Rassmussen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The result, however, has been an exercise in NATO "group think" with little relevance to real strategic thinking about America and its core national security interest.

This NATO review process is failing to account for three fundamental contradictions.

First, NATO Secretary General Rassmussen stated that: "We must face new challenges. Terrorism, proliferation, cyber security or even climate change will oblige us to seek new ways of operating. And in a time of financial and budget constraints, we need to maximize our efficiency within limited resources." However, all of these issues are challenges far better suited for the European Union (EU) and a special US-EU relationship to manage rather than NATO.

Second, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that: "This Alliance has endured because of the skill of our diplomats, the strength of our soldiers, and - most importantly - the power of its founding principles." Yet, one of NATO's core founding principles was to create a circumstance in which Europe could stand on its own two feet. This is, effectively, NATO's last unfulfilled mission after the Cold War and it is now hindered by an institutional framework allowing Europeans to free-ride on American security provision.

Third, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated: "The demilitarization of Europe - where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it - has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st." The demilitarization of Europe, however, means that NATO has succeeded in its fundamental mission - that Europe no longer fights wars is a good thing. Moreover, Europe has no incentive to contribute to global security missions so long as America takes the lead. Europe has every incentive to free-ride on American power and NATO perpetuates that.

Secretary Gates did provide his audience with a dose of realism, noting that: "Right now, the alliance faces very serious, long-term, systemic problems." What he fails to appreciate, however, is that these problems are not going to be solved by berating European allies for pursuing obvious benefit to their national interests. Rather, the solution is to change the strategic dynamic by beginning to reduce American military commitments overseas and realigning - including cutting - defense spending to reflect new security realities.

Recently, Secretary of State Clinton testified to Congress that: We have to address this deficit and the debt of the U.S. as a matter of national security, not only as a matter of economics." Indeed, the most serious threat to America's geostrategic position in the world is its $12 trillion national debt. Yet, the United States has increased its commitment to Afghanistan, seems unlikely to be able to disengage from Iraq anytime soon, faces a growing confrontation with Iran, and is simultaneously increasing its defense spending. Meanwhile, the American public is in its most isolationist mood in decades. It is in this context that NATO's "group of experts" seeks to add missions to the alliance, rather than rethink the role of the alliance itself.

The Department of Defense recently published its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) which states rightly that the United States must "increasingly cooperate with key allies and partners if it is to sustain peace and security" (interestingly in a December 2009 draft version of the QDR, the language read "rely" on key allies). Yet the QDR and the new defense budget both show a United States seeking to hold onto a primacy in global security that is no longer sustainable. The QDR notes that the US seeks to prevent and deter conflict by: "Extending a global defense posture comprised of joint, ready forces forward stationed and rotationally deployed to prevail across all domains, prepositioned equipment and overseas facilities, and international agreements." This is not a strategy that reflects wise prioritization by a country $12 trillion in debt.

The QDR typically emphasizes NATO as part of this global presence - and understandably points to Afghanistan as an essential component of this global partnership in a transformed alliance. While it is increasingly said that Afghanistan is a crucial test for NATO - the reality is that NATO has already failed in Afghanistan. In his assessment from summer 2009, General Stanley McChrystal noted that the operational culture of the NATO mission in Afghanistan would have to be fundamentally transformed. This critical step, however, is not happening. While the Europeans are contributing, there is nothing inherent in the ISAF command structure that requires it to be a NATO-engaged coalition. In fact, Brussels currently has very little to do with operations in Afghanistan and Europeans might contribute more if their reputation in Afghanistan was more closely linked to the future of the European Union.

A strategic concept for NATO need not be very complicated. There are basically two missions left for the alliance.

First, NATO should be kept as a reserve capacity built around the traditional Article 5 mission of territorial collective defense as a hedge against future geopolitical rivalry at the global or regional level. This, however, need not require costly new initiatives to keep NATO busy, but rather should be seen as a reserve fund of alliance power - political in nature with operational doctrines available on the shelf. NATO should continue its process of reaching out to engage Russia and abandon its provocative and self-defeating discussion of further enlargement or "global NATO" operations which are not realistic or sustainable but which create strategic costs in the US-Russian relationship.

Second, NATO's staff should be given a clear mandate to work themselves out of a job - with their final mission being to hand over full lead responsibility for regional security to the European Union. The most fundamental missions of NATO are achieved - Europe is integrated, whole, and free. The challenge now is to ensure that this is sustained via the European Union. By jealously hanging onto an irrelevant dominance over European security policy, the United States hinders effective EU security integration and ironically damages America's own interests. If the United States can't hand over lead authority in Europe where can it?

Before committing to a strategic concept driven by NATO groupthink, President Obama should convene a policy review that brings into the process a broader range of strategic thinking than a self-motivated Washington-Brussels network which habitually seeks new missions, new budgets, and continues to drain the United States of scarce resources. Europe is not yet capable of standing alone - and these strategic shifts will not happen overnight. However, they certainly will never happen if the United States does not make the building of the European Union, not NATO, its primary strategic goal in the transatlantic security architecture. A fundamental and lasting alignment of the transatlantic security dynamic can be a vital legacy for President Obama - but it will require a much greater application of realism to the role of NATO than is currently being considered.

-- Sean Kay

(Photo by Anya Landau French, of a Havana art fair where private Cuban entrepreneurs can earn hard currency income selling to foreign tourists)

Anya Landau French directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative.This post originally appeared at The Havana Note.

Last Friday, The Washington Post editorial board questioned the value of engaging Cuba, following the death of a hunger-striking Cuban prisoner of conscience last week. In light of Orlando Zapata Tamayo's tragic death, the Post asked advocates of greater contact with Cuba how the ongoing "thaw" with the island nation is working out.

I offered my thoughts to The Washington Post, which published them today:

Why U.S. policy isn't affecting Cuba

The death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo was an avoidable tragedy, one for which the Cuban government alone is accountable.

Yet the Feb. 26 editorial overlooked many Cuban dissidents' views that that U.S. sanctions harm the people, not the government, of Cuba. Even if Congress eases travel and food export restrictions on Cuba, the larger trade embargo will remain among our toughest restrictions against any other country in the world.

The effort to remove U.S. restrictions on travel and food exports to Cuba is not driven by love for Fidel or Raúl Castro but instead by three ideas: the fundamental right of Americans to travel freely without our government's interference, advancing the national interest at a time when America needs job growth and export opportunities, and a belief that we can do far more good in Cuba by reaching out to rather than isolating the people.

Another reader wrote to echo the Post's earlier viewpoint, and called President Obama's "Castro-friendly" approach naïve. But what exactly has been so friendly? Other than easing restrictions on private humanitarian donations and families' travel, allowing U.S. communications providers to try to service the Cuban population, and resuming migration talks held by Presidents Reagan, Clinton and G.W. Bush, what, exactly, has been so friendly toward Castro? (And besides, isn't our policy supposed to be about the Cuban people? The U.S. laser-like focus on the two Castro brothers always seems to come at the expense of 11 million Cubans.)

One year into this Administration, U.S. policy is still far cooler toward Cuba after than anyone expected. (In 2004, Barack Obama called for lifting the entire embargo because, he reasoned, it was harming the innocents in Cuba.)

The President who as a candidate called U.S. policy a failure and said he would be willing to meet Raul Castro is largely running the same Cuba policies he inherited from President Bush. The vast majorities of Americans are still not free to visit Cuba when they wish - and draconian restrictions remain on educational, cultural and professional travel that we encouraged fully a decade ago. And, the United States continues to hamstring food sales to the island in nearly every way imaginable, despite real hardship on the island (does it matter who inflicted it?) and despite a 38% drop in American farm income last year. This more aptly dubbed "South Florida-friendly" policy hardly constitutes tearing down the wall between our two countries.

Those of us who advocate freer contact with the Cuban people do so because we believe it will be good for us and good for the Cuban people. But the fact is, if you can't see measurable results for U.S. engagement with Cuba, that's because it hasn't happened yet. Until we really try engaging Cuba, there's nothing to judge.

-- Anya Landau French

This is a guest note by journalist and Middle East and Islamic issues expert Nir Rosen.

On Sunday, February 28th the New York Times published an outrageous oped by Efraim Karsh full of lies, distortions and mistakes.

Karsh describes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an urgent foreign policy matter for the United States.

It doesn't appear to be urgent. One more American administration has prostrated itself before Israeli arrogance and expansionism. Karsh mentions some sort of "100-year war between Arabs and Jews." There is no 100 year war between Arabs and Jews. There is a 100 year colonial struggle between Zionist Jews and the Palestinian people (and briefly the Lebanese as well).

He hopes that the "Islamic nation can make peace with the idea of Jewish statehood in the House of Islam." Its not about Jewish statehood in the house of Islam.

Its about Zionist Jewish settlers dispossessing the Palestinians and occupying Palestinian land. And killing Palestinians. Its not a religious conflict. Its a territorial one, an anti-colonial one, a national liberation struggle, even if the discourse used these days to describe it is often religious.

"Muslim states threaten Israel's existence not so much out of concern for the Palestinians, but rather as part of a holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the House of Islam," he says. He is lying. Who is he talking about? Iran?

Even if that was a real threat and not merely grandstanding, who else is there? the Saudis, the Turks, the Egyptians, the Jordanians and others all collaborate with Israel. Syria?

Hardly a threat and eager for peace as long as it can regain the occupied Golan heights. And the Israeli police force could conquer Syria in a few hours. Hizballah? Not a state and not trying to destroy Israel but merely protect Lebanese territory.

Hizballah threatens a bloody revenge if Israel attacks Lebanon, but that's it. And he is also lying when he says that Muslim states believe in some kind of holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the house of Islam. Which Muslim state? Nobody talks like this or says these things.

Most Muslim states either collaborate with Israel or just don't care (like Iraq today).

Karsh is a third rate academic who clearly has not visited much of the "Muslim World" about which he writes with generalizations, clichés, racism, Orientalism and a right wing pro Israeli agenda.

He falsely claims that Arabs consider themselves superior to all other Muslims. And he falsely claims that Hijazis regard themselves as the only true Arabs.

This is just not true. There is always the occasional chauvenist but he wouldn't be typical of the views of most "Arabs" or Hijazis.

Karsh claims that Muslims view themselves as part of the House of Islam and the rest of the world as part of the House of War.

I have worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Kenya, Bosnia, Turkey, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Qatar. I have attended hundreds of sermons in mosques and I watch Arabic satellite television regularly. In the last seven years of working in the Muslim world I have never heard anybody use these terms.

You have to go to obscure websites to find these terms used today. There may be a theological basis for these terms of course but just like most Christians, for most Muslims, religion is but a small part of their identity, and often not the most important part, and Islam is not the main guide to their daily actions.

House of Islam and House of war are not common household terms in the Muslim world and not an honest description of the way the vast majority of Muslims view the world.

These references to Saladin and other early Muslim rulers have very little to do with the lives of most modern Muslims

He falsely claims that Muslim and Arab rulers vilify "infidels." This is also a lie.

Notice Karsh provides no examples. Most Muslim and Arab rulers do not "villify" the "infidels," in fact they cooperate with them regularly and most Muslim and Arab countries are thoroughly integrated with the rest of the world.

While many of their people might resent the West for a variety of reasons, with only a few exceptions, most Muslim and Arab dictators collaborate closely with the West and even often with Israel.

They do not view the world as divided between Muslims and infidels any more than most Christian rulers do. And certainly bringing up Nasser as an example is silly, since he would have been the last Arab ruler to think in these terms. Opposing Western Imperialism is not the same as opposing infidels.

Karsh wants the United States, and (notice he says "us") to take a harder line with Iran.

There is a trend lately of New York Times oped contributors calling for more wars against Muslims. Whether against Iran or most recently calling for less concern over civilian Afghan casualties.

And of course Thomas Friedman has never met a war he didn't support.

Karsh assures us that most Muslim states would not support Iran if more sanctions are imposed or if the United States attacked Iran. So therefore we shouldn't be afraid of going to war. Except that there is also no solid evidence presented that Iran even wants nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile most Muslims and Arabs are probably more concerned about the one nuclear state in the Middle East that does regularly initiate wars of aggression -- Israel.

Karsh refers to "the customary lip service about Western imperialism and "Crusaderism."" He is trapped in the past.

What Muslim government uses these terms? Karsh is taking the statements of extremists like Bin Ladin and claiming that they are made by Muslim rulers. But talk of Crusaders is far removed from the Muslim mainstream.

Karsh reduces everything to religion.

Imagine if all Muslims believed that Pat Robertson or other insane Christian extremists were typical of all Americans and that we all believe that Haitians made a pact with the devil.

Another mistake he makes is conflating the leaders of Muslim countries with the people. Despite the hatred that many Sunni Muslim dictators feel for Iran, their people may have a very different attitude.

Iran and particularly its leadership remain very popular throughout the Muslim and Arab world, among the PEOPLE. Of course they would be helpless to intervene should the United States attack Iran because they are ruled by pro American dictators.

Karsh welcomes what he claims are the "latest changes in the Obama administration's Middle Eastern policy, which combine a tougher stance on Iran's nuclear subterfuge with a less imperious approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict." So far there is no evidence of Iran's nuclear subterfuge and most experts actually dismiss concerns that Iran is seeking to gain nuclear weapons.

And what American administration ever had an "imperious approach to the Arab Israeli conflict"? and given that we are subsidizing and arming the Israelis don't we have the right to make demands of them? Instead Prime Minister Netanyahu humiliated Obama's envoy Mitchell and we just accepted it. Bush, Clinton, Obama, all cravenly bow to Israeli extremism.

"A military strike must remain a serious option: there is no peaceful way to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, stemming as they do from its imperialist brand of national-Islamism." If Iran is imperialist where has it expanded? It is America and its ally Israel that engage in Imperialism.

Khomeini may have dismissed nationalism, as Karsh says, but it was only rhetorically. Iranians remain extremely nationalistic, even chauvenistic and the regime has had to make many concessions to 'Persian' nationalism and 'Persian' traditions and the regime acts strategically to further its own interests, not those of the Muslim world, so their anti nationalism is nonsense and quoting

Khomeini from nearly 30 years ago is irresponsible when describing the regime of today. Karsh jumps from a minor dispute over whether to go by the "Persian Gulf" to the "Arabian Gulf" into discussing religious conflict, hatred of infidels and support for a war against Iran.

Several years ago I was invited to take part in a conference sponsored by the Department of Defense's Central Command entitled "Rethinking the War on Terror: Developing a Strategy to Counter Extremist Ideologies." The proposed issues to be discussed were: Radical Islamist Ideologies; House of Islam v. House of War; Koran and Jihad; Sectarianism in Islam and the Politicization of Sectarian Identity; Cult of Martyrdom; Temporal Goals (e.g., destruction of Israel, United States out of Iraq, topple Saudi Government, etc.); Countering the Radicals' Arguments, Tools, and Attraction; Individual liberties and the Sharia mindset; Understanding popular grievances and terrorist/insurgent objectives; Engaging failed or failing states to deny sanctuaries to terrorists and non-state actor organizations.

Karsh's silly article reminded me of this conference. At the time I explained that I viewed the entire approach as all wrong.

People don't mind when you tell them that they're wrong about the facts, but when you tell them their very approach is wrong they can get upset. But the very approach these people were using to conceptualize the issues was wrong, and not a single non Orientalist middle east studies academic would agree with these culturalist assumptions.

I didn't even know how to talk to these people because the barrier between us began at the epistemological stage, in the way we approached acquiring knowledge about the middle east.

Their obsession with things like 'dar al islam/dar al harb' and terms like 'jihad' and 'cult of martyrdom' showed how they focused on the exterior shell and fetishized this Orientalist idea of 'Muslim culture.'

They assumed that there was some kind of microchip that makes Muslims tick and once you learn the cultural script, you could understand these people. This stems from the idea of 'varying rationalities,' that Muslims do not think in the same way we do, that you need to understand their own form of rationality and you do that through learning the language, the 'culture' and then you can decode them. But why are 'Muslims' a group to begin with?

This obsession with a term like 'dar al harb,' (house of war) keeps on coming up.

Sometimes I think that more Americans than Muslims know what it means. They assume that a medieval term somehow trickled into the 'Muslim' mentality and decides how they see the world. This assumes that all Muslims understand such a term in the same way, and that the term acts in a specific way not contingent on historic and contemporary conditions, both of which are untrue

This is Orientalism, America is never studied in this way, do we read the Bible to understand American 'culture'?

And this 'cult of martyrdom' business, based on the assumption that Muslims have some kind of reptilian brain, thinking in pre-destined cultural scripts.

People were anti-American when they were secular and nationalistic, they were resisting America as Marxists, and are now resisting it as Islamists, the fight creates the cult, not the other way around, fetishizing it and obsessing with it is just a way to obscure the real grievances. And what is the 'Sharia mindset'?

There is no such thing as Shari`a. It is a very broad term, it means Islamic law, but only one of its schools, Maliki fiqh, alone consists of tens of thousands of pages and interpretation. It is not an 'object' that people can just assimilate

There is this American racist right-wing obsession with the idea of Muslims spreading Sharia in the West. Then people like Karsh or the organizers of the conference I went to pick up these catch-phrases and make them into an object of scientific inquiry

There is no such one thing called Sharia, or Islamic law, it gets interpreted in many different ways, for Saudis it is the religious police, for Iranians it is banks and women driving, for others it is no banks. Sharia can be a political slogan, especially in Egypt, as a sign that separates Muslim from non-muslim rule. It varies greatly and cannot be simplified, it has no clear content.

-- Nir Rosen

I am not a single issue guy -- and despite my differences with Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) on health care and his general applause for the next and next next wars America chooses, he did a great thing by introducing legislation today to repeal the embedded bigotry in our national military forces of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Hopefully some of the Joe Lieberman magic on this issue will pull back Senator McCain to his previous enlightened position. Thank you Senator Lieberman.

Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) is taking respect for American norms and human rights a step further by a powerful reading tonight of the "torture memos" at the Georgtown University Law Center. The meeting is at 7 pm EST and will stream live here. The organizers are the American Civil Liberties Union, PEN American Center, and Georgetown Law's Human Rights Institute and Center on National Security and Law. Thank you Representative Ellison.

Finally, Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) has announced today that he is not seeking reelection. His stated reason is that he has had a cancer recurrence and wants to enjoy the last phase of his life. I have the greatest respect and admiration for Massa, who was first introduced to me a few years ago by General Wesley Clark. I recently saw Eric Massa at the massive J Street policy conference in Washington, DC -- where he was showing his strong support along with many dozens of other US Congressman for the work of the new organization. Thank you Representative Massa for all you have been doing and hopefully will continue to do in the private sector.

-- Steve Clemons

(Photo Credit: Stewf's Photostream)

This post, which originally appeared at The Havana Note, is a guest note by Tom Garofalo, a consultant for the New America Foundation/U.S-Cuba Policy Initiative.

Israel's controversial Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested a not-so-novel approach to the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions recently. He wants to apply what he calls the Cuban model, in which "the United States alone can do everything in order to stop this (Iranian) program."

There are a few immediate contradictions. For starters, Lieberman believes that the Cuban model works best if it includes an international aspect, such that the United States would "shun foreign firms that continue to do business with Iran." That extraterritorial component was added to our Cuban Embargo in 1996 with the passage of the Helms Burton act. But, perhaps unbeknownst to Lieberman, it has been dutifully waived every six months since, at the behest of our allies.

Mr. Lieberman may also be surprised to know that one of the first countries to suffer the consequences of such a shunning would be Israel, a leading investor in Cuban agriculture. The USDA reports that Israeli capital has driven a reinvigoration of Cuba's citrus sector, to such an extent that an Israeli-Cuban joint venture now produces a third of the total citrus grown on the island. (Well, if they can make the desert bloom, why not Cuba?)

Fortunately, few policy makers -- even among Cuban embargo supporters -- are interested in repeating the fifty-year Cuba embargo experiment in the Middle East. In fact, irony of ironies, the example of Lieberman's own Israel is instructive on this point: When President Bush was doing his best to isolate Syria, the Israelis were conducting talks with them under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the hope of reaching a peace agreement.

Like Israel, the United States did come around to a different view of things in Syria. As David Broder points out in Congressional Quarterly this week:

By the end of Bush's presidency, it became clear to many in Washington -- both on and off Capiol Hill -- that his policy of isolating Syria had failed. Jeffrey D. Feltman, the assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, notes that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was openly engaging the Syrians, as were the Saudis. Even the Israelis were talking unofficially to the Syrians. "So you ended up at a point when it was no longer Syria being isolated; it was the United States that was being isolated," Feltman told a Washington audience at the conservative Hudson Institute in January.

Last month President Obama named career diplomat Robert Ford to be the first U.S. ambassador in Damascus since 2005, bringing a relatively swift end to an abject policy failure. But at least it is a failure that we learned from, without fifty years of trying it in different ways.

To be sure, our new engagement of Syria has not solved our problems: The previous US ambassador in Syria, Margaret Scobey, was withdrawn after former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in an operation presumed to have been set in motion in Damascus. Today, blame for that act has still not been officially assigned. And Syria and Israel are unlikely to come to a peace agreement (which would necessarily involve Israel's returning part or all of the Golan Heights) with the kind of right wing government in place that would have the likes of Lieberman in the position of foreign minister.

But even if engagement with Syria won't achieve all our policy goals in the region, there are concrete advantages to sending an ambassador to Damascus. As a Middle East expert points out in the CQ story, Ambassador Ford is now engaged in high-level contact with the Syrian government, which will give us insight into the country that we've lacked. And the fact that our policy is no longer all stick and no carrot can only help us in our effort to be more informed about all the other issues at play there, from Turkey to Afghanistan and beyond.

Lieberman's invocation of Cuba is instructive, though not in the way he probably hoped: it points out the futility of unilateral sanctions, wherever they unfortunately are deployed.

-- Tom Garofalo

Politico's Ben Smith has one of those "Wow, I can't believe this" scoops.

The only problem is that I actually can believe it. I just don't want to.

Smith has just written about and produced a copy of an RNC fundraising document and powerpoint set (pdf) that denigrates RNC donors -- suggesting that the way to move them is by through fear, pugnacious nationalism, personal ego, and tchochkes.

The caricatures of various classifications of RNC donors in the document that Smith was trying to get reaction to have the RNC itself now running scared.

According to Smith, the RNC has been calling donors to beware inquiries from an intrepid reporter.

Smith writes:

The RNC reacted with alarm to a question about it Thursday, emailing major donors to warn them of a reporter's question, and distancing Steele from its contents.

"The document was used for a fundraising presentation Chairman Steele
did not attend, nor had he seen the document," RNC Communications
Director Doug Heye said in an email. "Fundraising documents are often
controversial.

"Obviously, the Chairman disagrees with the language and finds the use
of such imagery to be unacceptable. It will not be used by the
Republican National Committee - in any capacity - in the future," Heye
said.

The most unusual section of the presentation is a set of six slides
headed "RNC Marketing 101." The presentation divides fundraising into
two traditional categories, direct marketing and major donors, and
lays out the details of how to approach each group.

The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described
under the heading "Visceral Giving." Their motivations are listed as
"fear;" "Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;"
and "Reactionary."

Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed "Calculated Giving."
Their motivations include: "Peer to Peer Pressure"; "access"; and "Ego-Driven."

The slide also allows that donors may have more honorable motives,
including "Patriotic Duty."

A major Republican donor described the state of the RNC's relationship
with major donors as "disastrous," with veteran givers beginning to
abandon the committee, which is becoming increasingly reliant on small
donors.

Good old-fashioned reporting by Politico.

Unbelievable behavior by the Republican National Committee's finance team.

-- Steve Clemons

(An anti-gay, anti-Dem mailer from 2004 election that TWN first publicized)

My occasional blogging heads partner David Frum may have coined the "Axis of Evil" for George Bush to have an easy way to denigrate Iran, Iraq and North Korea -- and thus undermining the possibility of a strategic pivot then in US-Iran relations, but how about an "Axis of Love" given what is happening this week in Washington, DC and Mexico City.

Ottawa has been way ahead on such NAFTA-respecting possibilities.*

Both Washington, DC and Mexico City -- each the capital cities of their respective nations -- will allow same sex marriages to start this week, on succeeding days.

This is progress and great news. I can't remember the last time that some abusive legal provision or pet peeve of a Member of Congress wasn't deployed to prevent progress in the District of Columbia. I refused to celebrate the possibility that same sex marriage might in fact happen - until it happened.

But remarkably, we seem to be there -- and so to in Mexico City, which I now plan to visit much more often. I already go to Ottawa a lot.

I want to commend David Brooks for his New York Times piece long ago and for joining other conservatives such as Andrew Sullivan, David Boaz, Jonathan Rauch, James Pinkerton and others for calling for an end to bigotry on the right. In retrospect, Brooks' work and the writing of these others did make a difference.

-- Steve Clemons

(* Note that I originally noted that same sex marriages were not allowed in Ottawa. This was in error. Not sure why I made this mistake as I once considered going to Canada for such a marriage. Count it a jet lag issue. Thanks for those who sent corrective notes and for your patience!)

Former Washington Post "White House Watch" maven and current DC Huffington Post Bureau Chief Dan Froomkin powerfully deconstructs and pops the Rahm Emanuel bubble that the Washington Post has been puffing up.

The first puff came in a widely read Dana Milbank column. The second appeared on the Post's front page today under the authorship of former New York Observer journalist Jason Horowitz.

I have some points of friendly disagreement with Froomkin who paints Emanuel as an effective anti-idealist manipulator in an increasingly soulless and unprincipled, pragmatic Obama White House. As a former executive director of a public policy center named after Richard Nixon, pragmatic realism appeals -- but it only matters if goals are reached and deals are sealed that move the nation's welfare and circumstances forward. Rahm Emanuel's Machiavellianism, if one can call it that, is a pale, unsuccessful, ineffective version.

That aside, Dan Froomkin's depiction of Rahm Emanuel's role in widening the gap between Obama the candidate and Obama the President is brilliantly scripted and needs to be read in its entirety.

But here is a considerable chunk:

The latest toxic meme to spread across the pages of my once-beloved Washington Post is that President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is the one reasonable man in the White House.

First came perpetually disgruntled columnist Dana Milbank, suddenly a little ray of sunshine on the subject of the terribly underappreciated chief of staff: "Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters," Milbank wrote. "Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter."

According to Milbank, Emanuel is the antidote to "Valerie Jarrett and Robert Gibbs, and, to a lesser extent, David Axelrod" who "are part of the Cult of Obama. In love with the president, they believe he is a transformational figure who needn't dirty his hands in politics."

Then came a front-page "news" story this morning by Jason Horowitz fully subscribing to the "contrarian narrative" that is "emerging" -- that "Emanuel is a force of political reason within the White House and could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: health-care reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts."

Horowitz cavalierly dismisses criticism of Emanuel as being the inevitable result of his "outsize image" -- and, like Milbank, casts Axelrod as a hopeless naïf:

"Axelrod has a strong view of the historic character Obama is supposed to be," said an early Obama supporter who is close to the president and spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a frank assessment of frustration with the White House. The source blamed Obama's charmed political life for creating a self-confidence and trust in principle that led to an "indifference to doing the small, marginal things a White House could do to mitigate the problems on the Hill. Rahm knows the geography better."

But Emanuel is not the would-be savior of this presidency. For one thing, there really isn't that much daylight between him and his boss, or between him and his top White House colleagues.

Had things gone even more his way, it's possible that he would have squelched a few more of what few bursts of idealism and principle survived Inauguration. But people looking for the reasons why the Obama presidency has not lived up to its promise won't find the answer amid the minor rifts between key players. Nor will they find the answer in how well or poorly this White House has played the game of politics. The fact is that after a campaign that appealed so successfully to idealism, Obama hired a bunch of saboteurs of hope and change.

Rahm was simply their chief of staff. And now, this hypercompetitive bantam rooster is attempting to blame others for what went wrong. That's evidently so important to him that he's trying to take a victory lap around the wreckage of what was once such a promising presidency.

And Froomkin's kicker reminds of Edward R. Murrow:

Indeed, the most remarkable spectacle here is the ease with which Emanuel has been able to find reliable vessels to carry his water. Oh, to see his media speed-dial, and its collection of nattering process junkies, smug contrarians, split-the-difference stenographers, center-worshipping priests of High Broderism and corporatist cocktail-partiers who enable Emanuel's brand of soulless political gamesmanship.

To Emanuel, victory is the only thing, and rather than recognize the error of his ways and recalibrate, he is publicly declaring that the now widely-recognized enfeeblement of his boss's presidency is not his failure, but his vindication. Hail Emanuel triumphant.

Rahm Emanuel has many talents and deserves a place in Obama Land, but he has mismanaged the helm of the operation and failed to hit the targets he and the President needed.

Rather than waging a substantial campaign to save his own skin and to skewer others that are in and out of the Oval Office nearly as much as he is, he needs to help champion a sensible transition to a more effective team.

If we saw Emanuel fix Obama's current problems by demoting himself and constructing a believable restart, then I might believe more of the Milbank and Jason Horowitz columns about Emanuel's talents and leadership.

-- Steve Clemons

Editor's Note: For important installments in this debate about the Obama presidency's inner circle, read this by Edward Luce, this by Steve Clemons, this by Jane Hamsher, and this by Leslie Gelb.

I attended a media briefing at the Turkish Embassy yesterday, during which a group of visiting Turkish Foreign Affairs Committee members urged the U.S. House of Representatives not to pass H.R. 252 - which accuses Turkey of committing genocide against Armenians in 1915 and is scheduled to be voted on by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.

In addition to reiterating Turkey's long-held position that the events of 1915 do not constitute genocide, the delegates warned that the resolution could imperil Turkey's ongoing and unprecedented efforts to normalize relations with Armenia.

Over at Foreign Policy Passport, Joshua Keating concludes that Turkey's warnings suggest that it is not genuinely committed to the negotiations with Armenia and may only be taking part due to U.S. pressure.

With all due respect, I don't think Keating's analysis is a correct interpretation of Turkey's perspective on this issue.

Here is what Keating says in his post:

It seems a bit contradictory to me that the Turkish government on the one hand says it sees the Armenian rapprochement as vital to its own national interest, but on the other hand says the U.S. resolution will imperil it.

Sensing that there was some misunderstanding in the room, I asked one of the panelists - AK Party Deputy of External Affairs Suat Kiniklioglu - to explain the domestic political dynamics within Turkey and why the resolution would make it more difficult to reach an agreement with Armenia.

Kiniklioglu's response was that passing the resolution would likely strengthen radical, nationalist elements in both Turkey and Armenia who oppose the accords and who would use the resolution to push their own agendas.

It appears that the White House, which has not taken a formal position on this week's vote, understands these sensitivities as well.

Here is what White House spokesman Mike Hammer said, when asked about the resolution:

Our interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts. We continue to believe that the best way to advance that goal is for the Armenian and Turkish people to address the facts of the past as a part of their ongoing efforts to normalize relations.

Reading between the lines, Hammer seems to be implicitly acknowledging the Turkish position, which is that the resolution would complicate the current effort by Turkey and Armenia to conduct a joint historical review of the facts.

Notwithstanding my own serious doubts about whether Turkey and Armenia will successfully normalize their relations, it is not difficult to understand how H.R. 252 might make that task more difficult.

-- Ben Katcher

The arrests last week in Turkey of 51 past and present military chiefs must be understood in the context of the divide between the ruling (moderately Islamist) Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the traditionally politically powerful and staunchly secular military establishment.

Since 2007, the AKP government has been conducting a series of investigations into a variety of illegal activities by current and former military officials - including plots to overthrow the government.

On the surface, last week's arrests appear to be an escalation of Turkey's historical conflict between the religiously oriented government and the secular establishment. However, there is another possibility.

That is that recent events present an historical opportunity for the government to use the arrests as leverage to reach a broad accommodation with the military that would allow the government to move forward with difficult reforms. The government's decision on Thursday to release two of the most senior officials it arrested earlier in the week offered evidence to support this sanguine interpretation.

STRATFOR Founder George Friedman expresses this optimistic view in the clip above. Friedman notes that Turkish President Abdullah Gul (who is part of the religious AKP party) convened a meeting yesterday of his AKP counterpart Turkey Prime Minister Erdogan and Turkey Army Chief of Staff General Ilker Basbug.

I tend to agree with World Politics Review Editor Judah Grunstien, who observes that the arrests are "something of a Rorschach test for analysts and observers."

Friedman is on the record as very bullish on Turkey - and he underscores his perspective in the clip above when he notes that Turkey's rising economic strength and diplomatic clout may make it strong enough to prosper without membership in the European Union.

While I am also optimistic about Turkey's long-term prospects, I think that Friedman may be under-emphasizing both Turkey's deeply rooted internal problems and the European Union's capacity to alleviate those problems and solidify its liberal reforms.

-- Ben Katcher