FOREIGN PRESS REVIEW (FPR)

“This strategy is a statement of our fundamental values, highest priorities and orientation toward the future, but it is an action document as well,” said John D. Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence. “For U.S. national intelligence, the time for change is now.”

The document sets forth the framework for a more unified, coordinated and effective Intelligence Community and was written in consultation with the relevant departments. Its publication coincides with the six-month anniversary of the establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Outlining the document’s two types of strategic objectives – mission and enterprise – the strategy recognizes each Intelligence Community member’s strengths and competencies.

“At its core, this National Intelligence Strategy capitalizes on the extraordinary talents and patriotism of America’s diverse intelligence professionals, those serving today and those joining us tomorrow,” Negroponte said. “It relies on our nation’s tradition of teamwork and technological innovation to integrate the work of our distinct components into collaborative success.”

The National Intelligence Strategy will guide Intelligence Community policy, planning, collection, analysis, operations, programming, acquisition, budgeting, and execution. These activities will be overseen by the ODNI, but implemented through an integrated Intelligence Community effort to capitalize on the comparative advantages of constituent organizations.

Fiscal Year 2008 Planning, Programming, and Performance Guidance will reflect the mission and enterprise objectives. Ongoing program and budget activities for Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007 will adjust to these objectives to the maximum extent possible.

Mission Objectives

As detailed in this strategy, mission objectives relate to those efforts to predict, penetrate, and pre-empt threats to our national security and assist all who make and implement U.S. national security policy, fight our wars, protect our nation, and enforce our laws. Missions objectives outlined in the National Intelligence Strategy are:

• Defeat terrorists at home and abroad by disarming their operational capabilities, and seizing the initiative from them by promoting the growth of freedom and democracy.

• Prevent and counter the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

• Bolster the growth of democracy and sustain peaceful democratic states.

• Develop innovative ways to penetrate and analyze the most difficult targets.

• Anticipate developments of strategic concern and identify opportunities as well as vulnerabilities for decision-makers.

Enterprise Objectives

Enterprise objectives relate to our ability to transform faster than threats emerge, protect what needs to be protected, and perform our duties according to the law. Enterprise objectives in the National Intelligence Strategy are:

• Build an integrated intelligence capability to address threats to the homeland, consistent with U.S. laws and the protection of privacy and civil liberties.

• Strengthen analytic expertise, methods, and practices; tap expertise wherever it resides; and, explore alternative analytic views.

• Rebalance, integrate, and optimize collection capabilities to meet current and future customer and analytic priorities.

• Attract, engage, and unify an innovative and results-focused Intelligence Community workforce.

• Ensure that Intelligence Community members and customers can access the intelligence they need when they need it.

• Establish new and strengthen existing foreign intelligence relationships to help us meet global security challenges.

• Create clear, uniform security practices and rules that allow us to work together, protect our nation’s secrets, and enable aggressive counterintelligence activities.

• Exploit path-breaking scientific and research advances that will enable us to maintain and extend our intelligence advantages against emerging threats.

• Learn from our successes and mistakes to anticipate and be ready for new challenges.

• Eliminate redundancy and programs that add little or no value and re-direct savings to existing and emerging national security priorities.

In country after country in the former Soviet Union, people angered by rigged elections have toppled a string of entrenched, corrupt leaders. While their actions boosted prospects for democracy, Azerbaijan should not see this as a model to emulate when it goes to the polls in November.

Instead, Azerbaijan, that oil-rich country tucked in the southern Caucasus, should seize the opportunity to prove it can become a real democracy without revolution.

Revolutions are destructive. They may open the way for democratic reform but provide no guarantee. The popular uprisings in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan marked one step towards democratisation in those countries. But after the revolutionary euphoria dissipated, the politicians faced the arduous task of building democracy from scratch. ...

Azerbaijan can choose to avoid this fate. In a poor country blessed by natural wealth, the government already has moved to establish an oil fund to help ensure that citizens benefit from these resources. By doing so, the government signalled its apparent willingness to be accountable ...

So far such steps have failed to allay popular discontent fuelled by persistent poverty and limits on basic liberties. And as the election campaign gets under way, some believe that Azerbaijan will be the next country in the Caucasus and central Asia to don the mantle of revolution. Segments of the opposition and ruling elite seem to be spoiling for a fight. But it is time to set in motion a process that renders revolution unnecessary. ...

The government must lift a ban on foreign funding of local election observers. It must also give citizens their right to protest. There remain key legal provisions and unofficial levers that enable the ruling New Azerbaijan Party to sway the elections. The party and its satellites dominate the central and local election committees; and some evidence suggests the government is using state resources to back favourites.

Another pillar of power for Mr Aliev's regime is the media. Most of Azerbaijan's 8m citizens get their information from state-controlled television. Not surprisingly, coverage brazenly favours pro-government candidates. ...

The playing field cannot be levelled overnight. But the government should take steps now - and after the elections - to make sure this happens. Azerbaijan's civil society clearly faces many obstacles. To progress, it must heal ­bitter internal divisions. With parliament potentially the keystone of democratic reform, civil society should work on voter education and encourage turn-out. The current controversy over exit polls in Azerbaijan underscores how crucial they are in delivering an ­accurate result.

Civil society must not be crippled by its own rancour. In tiny Azerbaijan, more than a dozen civil society coalitions vie for funds to work on the elections. ...

Outside actors - the US and the European Union - must deliver a tough message that Azerbaijan cannot get away with stealing the vote. Many believe the country was given a pass on the dirty 2003 poll because of its abundant oil reserves. The Council of Europe, which admitted Azerbaijan despite the blatant fraud of the 2000 elections, has failed to press for democratic reform. Azerbaijan has won kudos for pledging to uphold government transparency with its oil funds, but it means nothing if the elections are a sham.

New York'taki BM Milenyum Zirvesi'ne katılan Türk heyetinin ana gündem maddelerinden biri hiç kuşkusuz PKK'ydı. Daha zirve başlamadan, Amerikan Başkanı George W. Bush, Başbakan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan'a "Irak Cumhurbaşkanı Celal Talabani'ye PKK konusunda bir şeyler yapmalısın" dediğini aktararak gönlünü almak istedi. Kimileri, bir şekilde medyaya yansıyan bu sözleri, "Ankara'nın başarısının kanıtı" olarak görürken, bazıları da "Washington topu Irak'a atıyor. Demek ki bir şey olmayacak" diye olumsuz yorumladı.
Başbakan Erdoğan, Dışişleri Bakanı Abdullah Gül ve kurmayları, Talabani ve Irak Başbakanı İbrahim Caferi ile aynı gün ama ayrı ayrı görüştü. AKP'li bir kurmay, görüşmeleri "Duymak istediğimiz her şeyi söylediler" diye değerlendirdi. "Peki ne yapmalarını bekliyorsunuz?" diye sorduğumuzdaysa "Tabii ki yapamayacakları şeyler var, ama yapabilecekleri şeyler de var" karşılığını verdi.

Lider kadroya operasyon
Peki Iraklılar ne yapabilir? PKK'yı topraklarından söküp atmaları mümkün değil. Hatta ABD'den bile böyle topyekun bir askeri operasyon beklenmiyor. ABD Dışişleri Bakanlığı Irak Koordinatörü James Jeffrey, PKK'ya sıranın ancak Irak'taki direniş kırıldıktan sonra gelebileceğini biz Türk gazetecilere on gün önce verdiği brifingte açıkça dile getirmişti.
Jeffrey de Bush gibi, PKK ile mücadelede topu "Irak hükümeti" ne atmıştı. Iraklılar'ın elinde PKK liderlerinin listesinin olduğunu, bunların bir şekilde ele geçmesi durumunda "gereğinin yapılacağını" söylemişti.
Bu "liste" ilk kez Başbakan Erdoğan'ın Haziran ayındaki Beyaz Saray ziyareti sırasında, muhtemelen Türk askeri kaynaklar tarafından medyaya sızdırılmıştı. Aslında "Amerikan ordusu özel kuvvetleri hiç olmazsa örgütün lider kadrosuna karşı nokta operasyonları düzenlesin!" şeklinde özetlenebilecek bir öneri yaklaşık bir yıldır seslendiriliyor ve ara bir çözüm olarak taraftar topluyor. Bu görüşü ilk olarak Washington Enstitüsü'nün Türkiye programı yöneticisi Dr. Soner Çağaptay'ın savunduğuna tanık olmuş ve bunu haberleştirmiştim.
Fikir ilginç ve uygulanabilir gibiydi ama onca zamanda herhangi bir somut adım atılmadı. Bu arada 3 Ekim'in yaklaşmasını fırsat bilen PKK, Abdullah Öcalan'ı serbest bıraktırmak için yeniden silahlı eylemlere başladı. Karadeniz'e de açılmaya çalıştı. Dahası büyük şehirler ve turizm bölgelerinde sivilleri hedef alan "kör terör" saldırıları düzenledi. Bunların peşinden büyük kitle gösterileri gelince, Türkiye belki de ilk kez "Türk-Kürt çatışması" tehlikesinin eşiğine geldi.

ABD neden hevesli değil?
BM Zirvesi, PKK'ya karşı "polisiye operasyon" beklentilerini iyice tırmandırdı. Her an bir PKK yöneticisinin öldürüldüğünü veya yakalandığını duyabiliriz. Ama akla birçok soru geliyor.
*"Teröre karşı savaş" diyen Washington, terörist olarak gördüğü PKK'ya karşı neden "polisiye" mücadeleye bile hevesli görünmüyor?
*Irak Kürtleri, gerek genel kamuoyu, gerek yöneticiler olarak gerçekten PKK'nın tasfiyesini istiyorlar mı?
*Polisiye operasyonun sınırını kim, nasıl çizecek?
*Kimler hedef alınacak? Gerçekten örgütün beyinleri mi, yoksa etkisi kalmamış, hatta PKK'dan ayrılmış bazı meşhurlar mı?
*Bu formüle karşı PKK ne gibi tedbirler ve cevaplar hazırlamış olabilir?
*Örgütün muhtemel misillemelerine Türkiye ve Irak tam olarak hazır mı?
*Operasyonların ardından PKK'nın dağılması mı öngörülüyor?
*PKK yok olursa boşluğunu kim ya da kimler dolduracak?
Bu iş polisiye operasyonla olsaydı, Kürt sorununun 15 Şubat 1999'da çözülmüş olması gerekirdi.

I've never been a big fan of the Iraqi constitution project. Issues such as federalism and the role of Islam are simply too large and fundamental to be decided this early in Iraq's democratic evolution. It is more appropriately the work of years as Iraqis learn accommodation and tolerance and the other habits of self-government.

I wrote two months ago that forcing a resolution of Iraq's cosmic dilemmas by some arbitrary date could serve only to exacerbate existing divisions. This has indeed happened. Nonetheless, the Iraqi constitution project is a fact. It has produced a document. It goes to referendum on Oct. 15. And all the lamentations and rending of garments over the text are highly overblown.

The idea that it creates an Islamic theocracy is simply false. Its Islamist influence is relatively mild. Chapter One, Article One: "The Republic of Iraq is . . . a democratic, federal, representative [parliamentary] republic." The word Islamic is deliberately and importantly omitted.

More specifically, the rule of sharia is significantly constrained. All constitutions have their "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots." In America, the Constitution proper says what the government can and should do. The Bill of Rights says what the government cannot and must not do -- impose religion, force confessions, search and seize. It is the "thou shalt nots" that are your protection from tyranny.

The constitution writers in Iraq finessed the question of Islam by posing it as a thou-shalt-not. No law may contradict Islam. But it also says that no law may contradict democratic principles and that the constitution accepts all human rights conventions.

This means that there are two gatekeepers for the passing of any law. Insofar as the constitution is adhered to -- a heretofore dubious assumption in that part of the world -- democratic rights are protected from the imposition of sharia. Establishing a double roadblock to new legislation is an excellent way to launch Iraq's first experiment with limited government.

In any case, the real Gordian issue was never Islam but federalism. The Sunnis object to devolving power away from Baghdad because they happen not to be sitting on oil and have spent the past century plundering everybody else's and turning villages such as Tikrit into monstrous treasure cities with the proceeds. With this constitution, that is going to stop. As it should. The only problematic proposal was for the Shiites to have the right to create a nine-province super-region as autonomous as Kurdistan.

That might establish de facto self-governing entities within the shell of a weak Iraqi central government. So what? The only major objection is that neighboring countries would vigorously reject a fully sovereign Kurdistan or Shiite "south Iraq." However, maintaining the shell of Iraqi sovereignty might mollify the Turks and Saudis and others who would resist outright independence. It might even turn out to be the best possible solution for Iraq's deep religious and ethnic divisions. After all, as one wag said, Iraq was created not by God but by Winston Churchill. And it was not one of his most blessed creations.

Moreover, a Basra-based Shiite super-region was not enshrined in the constitution. It is permitted, but not required. That question will be left to future parliaments. As it should be. Again, the cosmic problems of identity and the distribution of power should be deferred to legitimately elected parliaments as they develop the habits of democracy over time.

In the end, the Sunni representatives walked out. It would have been nice if the Shiites and Kurds had been more accommodating, though to expect such niceness from a majority population that had suffered for 30 years at the hands of a Tikriti gangster regime, rooted in the Sunni minority, is perhaps to expect too much.

Nor have the Sunnis acted in a way that might encourage such niceness. First they boycott the elections that would have given them a real say in the constitution-writing process. Then they support a murderous insurgency that is killing dozens of Shiites and Kurds every day, to say nothing of coalition troops. Then they demand a veto on the proposed constitution. Chutzpah.

We went into Iraq knowing that we were going to overturn the political order. The introduction of democracy would inevitably take power away from the former ruling community -- the 20 percent of the population that ruled with uncommon brutality -- and transfer it to the other 80 percent. That the previously victimized 80 percent should not wish to be held hostage to the political demands of their former oppressors should hardly be a surprise. Nonetheless, they still managed to produce a perfectly reasonable constitutional document that deserves far more respect than it has received from the knee-jerk critics here at home.

Irak’taki gelişmeler, belki orta ancak büyük olasılıkla uzun vadede, Kürtlerin Kuzey Irak’ta bağımsız veya konfederal bir devlet kurma şanslarının arttığını gösteriyor. Şimdiden buna hazırlıklı olmakta yarar var. Zira korkunun ecele faydası yok...

Belki bazılarımız olayın önemini ve vehametini görüyor, ancak Türk toplumunun büyük çoğunluğu, önümüzdeki yıllarda en çok Kuzey Irak’taki gelişmeleri tartışacağının farkında değil.

Hepimizin gündemi, kısa orta ve uzun vadede sadece Kuzey Irak Kürdistanı olacak.

Kuzey Irak Kürtleri müthiş planlama güçleriyle mi, yoksa konjonktür sayesinde yakaladıkları rüzgar ile mi bilinmez, tarihlerinin en büyük fırsatını yakaladılar.

Herşey, 1 inci Körfez savaşından (1991) bu yana onların istedikleri gibi gelişiyor. Programlasalar dahi bu kadarını elde edemezlerdi.

Şans yüzlerine güldü.

Doğrusu, onlar da durumun hemen farkına vardılar ve eski küçük hesaplarını bir kenara bıraktılar. Talabani ve Barzani kabile kavgalarını andıran ve dışarıya tamamen, kim hangi gümrük kapısından ne kadar rüşvet alacak kavgası izlenimini veren silahlı çatışmalarından vazgeçtiler. Birbirlerinden belki hala nefret ediyor olabilirler, ancak bir uzlaşı kültürü sergilediler.

Silahları bıraktılar... Birbirlerini öldürmekten vazgeçtiler ve uzlaştılar. İlerde birgün, farklı şekilde, birbirleri üzerinde üstünlük kurabilmek için tekrar mücadele edebilirler, ancak bugün son derece akıllı şekilde ortak hedeflerine doğru emin adımlarla ilerliyorlar.

Hedefleri de bağımsızlık.

Belki 10, belki 20, belki 30 yıl sonra olabilir, ancak sonunda ya bağımsız veya konfederal Irak’ın bir parçası olacaklar.

ŞANSLARI NE?

Irak’taki gelişmeler, Kuzey Irak kürtlerinin lehine.

Kısa vadede Amerikalılar Irak’ın bölünmesini kabul edemeyecekleri için, Kürtlerin bu aşamada büyük bir şansları yok. Anayasa taslağında da istediklerini elde edemediler. Ancak herşey yine de onların istediği gibi gelişiyor.

1. Şiiler, hem kendi aralarında, hem de Sunni’lerle boğaz boğazalar. Öylesine küçük düşünüyorlar, öylesine kişisel çıkarları için mücadele ediyorlar ki, sonunda büyük resmi göremeyecekler ve Irak’ın bölünmesine neden olacaklar.

2. Şii’ler ve Sunni’ler Amerikalılara karşı mücadelelerini sürdürecekler ve ABD sonunda Irak’ı kontrolünde tutabilmek için, Kuzey’e yerleşecek. Kürtler, Amerikalıların koruması altına girecek, en önemli müttefiği konumuna gelecek.

Özetle, Kürtler kazanacaklar...

Bunu da, daha çok Şii ve Sunni’lerin hesapsızlıklarından ve konjonktür sayesinde elde edecekler.

Görünen köy klavuz istemez.

Bu senaryo tam tersine de dönebilir.

Şii’ler kendi aralarında anlaşır ve uzun vadeli düşünüp hareket ederler. Konjonktür ters döner ve Irak’ı parçalamalarının uzun vadeli çıkarlarına zarar vereceğini görürler. İşte o zaman durum değişebilir.

Şii’ler henüz bu noktaya gelebileceklerini gösterecek bir işaret vermediler.

TÜRKİYE NE YAPABİLİR?

Türkiye bu durumda ne yapabilir?

Şii’lere akıl verebilir, ancak tüm grupları etkileyebilecek gücü yok. Her ne kadar Sunni’ler dahil herkese ulaşabiliyor olsak dahi, oradaki hesaplaşma çok farklı. Gelecek yıllarda Irak’ın kimler tarafından yönetileceğinden tutun da, Şii cemaati arasında kimin hakim olacağına kadar büyük bir hesaplaşma söz konusu. Kimsenin kimseyi dinleyecek hali yok.

Böyle bir durumda –özellikle uzun vadeli düşünürsek- Ankara kartlarını sizce nasıl oynamalı?

Şii’lerin kendi aralarındaki kavgaya mı müdahele etmeli?

Nasıl yapmalı?

Sunni’lerle mi yakınlaşmalı?

Yoksa kürtlerle ilişkilerine farklı bir bakış mı getirmeli?

Yarın bu konuya yanıt getirmeye çalışacağım...

Mideast Course At the Mercy of Local Factions

For all the attention and resources the Bush administration has poured into the Middle East, the outcome of its two most critical initiatives is increasingly vulnerable to the sectarian passions, tumultuous history and political priorities of the local players, say U.S. officials and regional experts.

Two developments over the past week marked major movement for the U.S. agenda: Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, a critical step in the creation of a Palestinian state and regional peace. And Iraq submitted a constitution to its national assembly, offering the legal foundation for a new Iraqi state.

...  But the actual implementation of Iraq's constitution and the viability of Gaza will now depend largely on forces beyond Washington's control -- and both face mounting challenges.

"The theme in this region is the reality of a foreign military power that comes in with great determination and overwhelming force, defeats people, subjugates a nation and then gets completely lost in the local maelstrom of interests and the irresistible force of indigenous identity -- religious, ethnic, sectarian, national. People act in a maniacal way when they assert these identities, which includes nurturing and protecting them," said Rami Khouri, a U.S.-educated Arab analyst and editor of Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper.

"Every single foreign power that has been in this region since Alexander the Great -- through the Romans, Greeks, Ottomans, British, French and now Americans -- has learned the same lesson," Khouri said.

.... Shiite parties did not quickly or fully appease Sunni concerns -- and Iraq missed its deadline for a third time on Thursday.

"The U.S. is shackled by the very forces that it liberated," said Robert Malley, the International Crisis Group's Middle East program director and a former Clinton administration National Security Council staff member.

"All those forces silenced during Saddam Hussein's rule are using a period of transition, when Iraq is remaking itself, to express themselves or gain advantage. Even though the United States is the dominant force, it is increasingly finding itself a bystander as Iraqis vie for power and to define what a future Iraq is going to be," Malley said.

The administration acknowledged yesterday that political transformations take time and often do not unfold evenly -- and that the outcome is far from guaranteed.

"If the Sunnis do vote for it and approve the constitution, if the constitution is not stopped, then it will be a national contract and it will help with the counter-insurgency strategy," Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "If they don't, then it will be a problem."

Bush also acknowledged the split among Iraqis, which he described as a right of free individuals living in a free society. "We recognize that there is a split amongst the Sunnis, for example, in Iraq. And I suspect that when you get down to it, you'll find a Shiite in disagreement with a Shiite who supports the constitution, and perhaps some Kurds are concerned about the constitution," Bush said. "We're watching a political process unfold."

But rivalries over shaping that future in a free environment have also sparked tensions, even within sectarian factions. Despite the presence of more than 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, clashes erupted last week between two Shiite militias: Troops loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr fought the Badr Organization of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Militia wings of Iraq's political parties are "looking out for their own future" and will continue to "act in ways that strengthen them, politically and militarily," said Edward Walker, president of the Middle East Institute and former ambassador to Egypt and Israel. "They see themselves winning [over other groups] and now they're fighting to see who gets the biggest piece of the action. That puts the U.S. in a different position."

On Gaza, U.S. goals are likely to be heavily influenced over the next year by internal Israeli and Palestinian politics. Both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon face significant political foes -- and critical elections.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which already has a substantial base of support in Gaza, is increasingly challenging Abbas's authority. The competition between secular and religious parties will play out when Hamas runs for the first time in legislative elections in January.

Despite Israel's insistence, Abbas has refused to disarm Hamas's militia wing -- and is unlikely to take that unpopular move before the January voting. That, in turn, will hurt U.S. efforts to solidify security arrangements and then move forward on the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the roadmap.

Sharon is facing a revolt in his Likud Party over his controversial decision to withdraw from Gaza, with one poll showing him 17 percentage points behind former finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu among party supporters. Netanyahu quit the Sharon cabinet earlier this month in opposition to the Gaza decision. Elections are expected by November 2006.

As the Gaza withdrawal neared, Sharon moved to placate his right-wing base by pushing forward with construction of a security fence, slicing through Palestinian farmland, to encircle and protect the largest settlement on the West Bank. The move infuriated Palestinians and could undercut support for Abbas.

The administration deserved credit for working hard to make the Gaza withdrawal a success, said Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution, but "now it's clear everyone had not fully thought about the morning after." There is now a "huge gap in expectations," with the Israelis expecting a breather after last week's wrenching settler evictions from Gaza and the Palestinians expecting accelerated peace talks.

"Both sides are wrapped up in their own political dynamics," Telhami said. The Bush administration faces the challenge of "helping Sharon without hurting Abbas and helping Abbas without hurting Sharon."

Local economic and security priorities may also complicate the U.S. agenda. In creating a viable Gaza for 1.3 million Palestinians, the Palestinian focus is on building an economy that includes free flow of goods and people across the borders with Israel and Egypt. But Israel's primary focus is on security guarantees to ensure that extremists are unable to cross into Israel. ...

For the past year or so, President Bush has firmly opposed all talk of withdrawing troops from Iraq or even of setting a timetable for withdrawal, arguing that such plans would only encourage the insurgents to hold tight and wait for our departure.

Now, all of a sudden, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, are openly speaking of "fairly substantial reductions" in the spring and summer of 2006.

What's happening?

First, there are the obvious factors. Domestic opposition to the war is rising; the latest polls show 55 percent of the American public thinks it's a bad idea and, further, has doubts we can win. It's a fair guess that top Republicans have approached the president or his henchmen to say they'd prefer that the war not be an issue in the 2006 congressional elections—and that it be off the table entirely by 2008.

It should also be clear, to all but the most rosy-eyed cheerleaders, that things are not going well in Iraq. When Vice President Dick Cheney harrumphed that the insurgents were in their "last throes," everyone—even his old pal, Rummy—had to cough and backpedal. It's a fair debate whether America's military presence is weakening the insurgency or swelling its ranks. (My own guess is both.)

Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have said repeatedly—as have many critics of the war—that U.S. troops can't leave until the Iraqi security forces are sufficiently trained and equipped to fight off the insurgents and keep order.

This recent talk of withdrawal may have been sparked by the realization that almost no progress has been made in training Iraq's new soldiers—and that this is the case, in part, because the Iraqi government doesn't want them to be trained.

Last February, the Bush administration asked Congress for an $81.9 billion supplemental budget to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Buried deep inside this 97-page document was a request of $5.7 billion for the "Iraq Security Fund." In justifying this sum, the document noted that the Iraqi government had created a security force of 90 battalions, adding:

All but one of these 90 battalions, however, are lightly equipped and armed, and have very limited mobility and sustainment capabilities.

In other words, by the administration's admission, only one Iraqi battalion was able to engage in a prolonged firefight.

Half a year later, the story has barely changed. A report to Congress by Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concludes that only "a small number" of Iraqi forces are capable of "taking on the insurgents and terrorists by themselves." By some estimates, this "small number" is as little as 5,000—only slightly more than the single battalion that could do the job last February.

For months, the administration has denied and disputed claims by Democratic critics—most notably Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan—that training was moving too slowly. It could well be that the evidence is now too obvious to ignore.

Lieut. Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. officer in charge of training the Iraqi forces, was transferred this month to take over the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Petraeus, commander of the 101^st Airborne Division during the early phases of the war, is widely viewed as one of the Army's most creative and competent generals. It's not yet clear whether the transfer stems from Petraeus' frustration with the job or from Rumsfeld's dissatisfaction with his handling of it.

Either way, some of Petraeus' aides, if not the general himself, have recently learned of rumors that Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari doesn't want his army to be well-trained. A leading Shiite, Jaafari reportedly fears that if the U.S. troops leave Iraq, the insurgents will crush all resistance and hoist the Sunnis back to power. Since the Americans have said they will leave once the Iraqi security forces are self-sufficient, Jaafari figures it's best to keep that day at bay. This could explain why many Iraqi units lack such basic materials as reliable weapons, ammunition, and sufficient food and bedding gear.

One of Petraeus' aides hit the roof when he heard this rumor of Jaafari's recalcitrance a few weeks ago. This may be why Rumsfeld seemed more perturbed than usual after his meeting with Jaafari in Baghdad this week. It may be why, for the first time, he brought up the subject of eventually pulling out.

This is, in fact, the best reason for declaring a timetable—to force the Iraqi government to start taking their sovereignty seriously.

The withdrawal clock can't—and shouldn't—start ticking until after this December's election, when the Iraqis vote for a new government. (They voted in January for an interim government, which would draft a constitution. The constitution is supposed to be completed in August and ratified in October. This is another reason for Rumsfeld's agitation: Fundamental differences among Iraq's religious factions are threatening to push back the deadline, which would push back the next elections, which would delay—for who knows how long—the U.S. withdrawal.)

At that point, it may take another 18 months for the Iraqi security forces to be equipped and trained—assuming that, this time, the new government cooperates. So, under this scenario, the United States can start pulling out of Iraq, as Gen. Casey projected, by the spring or summer of 2006—and be out entirely by mid-2007.

This schedule would fit well with Republican election plans—and it's unlikely the Democrats would strenuously oppose the plan. (Do they want to bill themselves as the party in favor of prolonging the war?) It also has the virtue of being a good idea. If the Iraqi assembly hammers out a constitution, if the elections take place, if Sunnis take part and win a proportionate share of seats, then enough citizens may be sufficiently satisfied with the arrangement to undermine the insurgents' base of support and legitimacy—which is the key to all successful insurgencies.

And if none of these things happen, it will be time to ask whether the American troops in Iraq are serving any purpose, whether it makes any difference if they're back here or over there—and, if it makes no difference, to ask why they can't just come home.

... (Başbakan Erdoğan) Genelkurmay'ın geçen hafta ortaya attığı 1999'dan sonra PKK'ya katılan ve teröre bulaşmamış gençlere yönelik yeni bir af ya da pişmanlık yasasına sıcak bakmıyor. Daha önceki pişmanlık yasalarının bir sonuç getirmediğini anlatıyor. Yine Genelkurmay brifinginde gündeme gelen yeni bir terörle mücadele koordinasyon merkezi kurulmasına da karşı . "İlle de kurul oluşturmak şart değil. Biz mevcut mekanizmaları işletmekten yanayız. Ayrıca bilimsel bir çalışma başlattık. Terörün nedenleri ve çözüm yolları üzerine" diyor. ...

In today's global economy, any job can be performed anywhere. In order to compete in a global labour market, all students in advanced industrial countries need to be highly trained in science and mathematics. In order to compete in the global economy, the advanced industrial nations must downsize generous welfare states.

The above represents something like the conventional wisdom about the global economy, the future job market and the welfare state. There is only one problem: every assertion in the preceding paragraph is wrong.

Let us start with the first assertion: "In today's global economy, any job can be performed anywhere." This is false or, at best, only a half-truth. All economies, even very open ones, have both a traded sector that is exposed to foreign competition and a non-traded sector that is insulated from it. Manufacturing and agriculture tend to be in the traded sector. A growing number of services, from accounting to telephone operations, have been outsourced as well. But according to a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, only about 11 per cent of the world's service sector jobs can be performed remotely. Most services, such as home construction and hospital care, must by their very nature be provided by workers in the same location as their customers.

In advanced industrial economies, the number of workers in the traded sector exposed to foreign competition tends to diminish over time. When an industry in the traded sector outsources, unemployed workers tend to get new jobs in the non-traded domestic service sector. Workers in the non-traded service sector, such as nurses, may face competition from immigrants for jobs in the national labour market but they are not competing with foreign workers in a global labour market.

This brings us to the second misconception: "In order to compete in a global labour market, all students in advanced industrial countries need to be highly trained in science and mathematics." This, too, is false.

According to the US labour department, the 10 fastest-growing occupations in the US in 2002-2012 are the following: "medical assistants; networks systems and data communications analysts; physician assistants; social and human service assistants; home health aides; medical records and health information technicians; physical therapist aides; computer software engineers, applications; computer software engineers, systems software; physical therapist assistants." The future job outlook in other industrial democracies with service economies and ageing populations is similar.

It is true that four out of 10 of the fastest-growing occupations require proficiency with computers. But many of these jobs are vulnerable either to outsourcing or advances in automation. By contrast, the work of medical assistants, home health aides and physical therapists cannot be outsourced or performed by machines, barring radical advances in robotics. In the foreseeable future, nurses will outnumber computer technicians in the US and similar countries. It is absurd to tell the nurses of tomorrow that, in addition to being literate and numerate, they need to study trigonometry in order to compete with Indian and Chinese rivals.

If particular nations can benefit disproportionately from technological progress, then it may be wise for governments to promote education and employment in scientific and technical fields. But scientists and engineers will never be more than a minority of the workforce in any country, and it is highly misleading to suggest otherwise.

The third misconception about global competitiveness is this: "In order to compete in the global economy, the advanced industrial nations must downsize generous welfare states." The premise is that generous welfare states prevent high-wage countries from competing with low-wage countries such as China and India in traded-sector industries. But scaling back or abolishing the welfare state would do nothing to make the workers in a rich nation's traded sector better able to compete with labour costs in the developing world, unless workers were willing to work for Indian or Chinese wages.

Far from being handicapped by big government, the countries with the world's biggest welfare states are flourishing in the global economy. According to the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report, the most competitive economies in the world are, in order, Finland, the US, Sweden, Taiwan, Denmark and Norway. Government consumes around half of gross domestic product in all of these countries, apart from Taiwan and the US, where the combined federal-state share of GDP is slightly more than 30 per cent. (The US government share of GDP is much higher when tax deductions and exemptions for public purposes are counted.) What is more, on a per capita basis from 1990 to 2002, Sweden and Finland had the same 2 per cent growth rate as the US.

The truth is that the scale and scope of national welfare states is far less constrained by the global economy than many believe. Whether a country has a generous or stingy welfare state depends chiefly on its internal politics and traditions.

It is time, then, to replace the conventional wisdom. In the 21st century, most workers in advanced industrial nations will work in the non-traded domestic service sector. Most will not compete with workers in other countries. And a generous welfare state need not be a hindrance to competitiveness. These statements are not as familiar as the platitudes that make up the conventional wisdom. But they happen to be true.

The writer is Whitehead senior fellow at the New America Foundation

As a young nun in the 1960s I was not allowed to have any opinions. During our first week in the convent our mistress told us that many ideas and practices of the order would seem incomprehensible - even perverse at first - because we were spiritually immature and still tainted by secular values. As we progressed in the religious life we would find that these things gradually made sense. For now we should suspend our judgment.

I threw myself into this discipline because I was so eager to become wise and saintly. Before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, nuns and priests were often trained systematically to distrust their own minds. Our views were of no value. A fellow novice was publicly lambasted for remarking that if Jesus had lived in our day he would have played the guitar. Our novice mistress believed he would have preferred Gregorian chant. I spent a week writing an essay proving the historicity of the resurrection. "But mother, it isn't true, is it?" I protested when it was handed back cum laude. "No, sister, it isn't true," our kindly teacher sighed, "but please - don't tell the others."

The trouble with this kind of training is that if you consistently deflect your mind from its bias towards truth you can damage it irrevocably. When potentially subversive ideas emerged I stamped on them so ruthlessly that after a while they ceased to come at all. After leaving the convent I studied at Oxford, only to find to my dismay that I was unable to think for myself. I marvelled at my fellow students, who could cry "I think!" with such confidence during an argument.

I have plenty of opinions now. But I have become increasingly wary of the assurance with which people express their views. We live in a highly opinionated society. The media bombards us with information, much of it superficial, and the internet makes available a plethora of facts, which are difficult to assess adequately. But we are encouraged to air our views, and are probably exposed to more opinions than at any time in history. Some sound plausible - unless you know a little about the subject.

This became clear to me after 9/11, when I spent a great deal of time discussing Islam and fundamentalism in Europe and the US. I found repeatedly that people took isolated remarks from articles, news reports and talk shows and from these fragments concocted absurd fantasies about "Islam" that bore no relation to the complex reality but to which they were resolutely committed. As they struggled with their fear and confusion they created dogmas that did not help them appraise the situation objectively.

People sometimes identify with their views so deeply that these become part of their sense of self and therefore sacred. My experience of studying and talking about religion has made me cautious of all orthodoxies. Liberal-minded atheists can be just as strident as fundamentalists if their idea of faith is challenged in any way, even if they know next to nothing about religious history or theology. Their opinions seem to have a psychological importance that renders accurate information irrelevant and obscurely threatening.

We need to strike a balance between the kind of repression that I experienced in my convent and the intellectual idolatry that makes ephemeral and ill-founded opinion absolute. People have a right to their views, but some ideas are more valuable than others. In a world where we are facing new dangers, we need clear heads that are not cluttered by dogmatic adherence to beliefs that are often indistinguishable from prejudice.

Opinions change with each generation, but we like to cast our views in stone. It gives us a sense of security in a changing and frightening world. Secular dogmas are no different from religious doctrines. The articles of the creeds were originally personal, subjective opinions about matters that were inexpressible, but because they were essential to the spiritual survival of an influential elite they became obligatory. The Qur'an calls compulsory theology zannah - self-indulgent guesswork about questions that are not verifiable, but which have split the faithful into warring sects.

The best way of countering the clashing dogmatisms of our time is to be suspicious of any idée fixe - including our own. Socrates made it his life's work to compel people to question their most fundamental assumptions. True knowledge was acquired only after an agonising struggle that involved your whole self.

The people who conversed with Socrates usually thought they knew what they were talking about, but by the end of the conversation he had exposed the flaws at the heart of each firmly held opinion. Some of our religious and political leaders could benefit from this dialectical process. Socrates' aim was to make his interlocutors admit that there were no easy answers. When you realised the depths of your confusion your philosophical quest could begin.

Ignorance is an essential part of the way humans experience the world: there is always something that eludes our understanding. We used to imagine science would answer all our questions, but modern physics and biology make clear that life is more mystifying than we ever imagined. Mystics have also pitted themselves against the dark world of uncreated reality and discovered a state of "unknowing" that could only be expressed by silence. The Chinese sages called any kind of orthodoxy one-sided "obsession" and insisted that unassailable conviction was a sign of immaturity.

To acknowledge our partiality and confusion is therefore more realistic than rigid adherence to a particular point of view. We have seen too much certainty - religious and secular - recently. We went to war because of a misplaced opinion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. As we enter the uncharted political world of the 21st century, a humble recognition of the limits of our knowledge would seem to be the best policy.

· Karen Armstrong is the author of The Spiral Staircase, a Memoir

Last month, Baghdad's mayor threatened to resign over funding shortfalls, citing the city's unreliable water supply. Insurgents had damaged a water main, leaving 2 million residents without clean water. Like its water supply, Iraq's economy and infrastructure rehabilitation effort remains shaky. So, too, is the security situation and political transition.

Military conflict has two dimensions: winning wars and winning the peace. We excel in the first, but without an equal focus on the second, combat victories can be lost. Since 1993, the United States has undertaken six major nation-building operations. There were successes and failures, but one result was a contentious debate about U.S. involvement in such missions.

Sept. 11 transformed the debate. No longer are failing states and faraway conflicts viewed simply as a humanitarian concern. As President Bush said, "Weak states like Afghanistan can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states." Despite this recognition, the stark reality is that the United States does not have the right structural capability to stabilize and rebuild nations. Responsibility is diffuse and authority is uncertain. The proper roles of the military and civilian agencies have not been articulated. And civilian players desperately need a "unified command" structure to align policies, programs and resources.

The magnitude of the Iraq mission may be unique, but the need for prepared military and civilian personnel is not. Failing states and those emerging from conflict will remain part of the landscape, as will demand for U.S. involvement. So if we know the problem, what is the solution? The Council on Foreign Relations recently convened a task force to explore this question, leading to some suggestions:

· At the highest level, clear lines of authority must be drawn, especially to manage the often contradictory roles of the military and civilian agencies. The National Security Council is best suited for this task via a new directorate for post-conflict reconstruction.

· We must realize that no matter how experienced civilians may be, the military always will have the main responsibility for security in an immediate post-combat setting. Since Vietnam, the military has resisted an expanded stabilization and reconstruction role. The focus on high-intensity conflict means that the United States is winning wars faster and with fewer forces and casualties. But that "transformation" has had an unintended consequence. Rapid victory collapses the enemy but does not destroy it. Adversaries can go underground to regroup, creating a need for more troops for longer periods of time after combat ends. The United States needs a general-purpose force of sufficient size and skill to win the peace. This message must come unambiguously from the top. The secretary of defense should designate stabilization and reconstruction operations as core military tasks, with attendant changes in the training and preparation of U.S. forces. As a start, the temporary increase in troop levels should be made permanent.

· The civilian picture is in need of overhaul. Critical gaps in capability remain unfilled; elsewhere, mandates overlap. Until real authority is established, true accountability will remain elusive. As a first step, the State Department should be empowered to oversee all civilian stabilization and reconstruction activities, with the U.S. Agency for International Development responsible for daily operations. The new State Department coordinator for stabilization and reconstruction should be elevated to undersecretary status, backed up by a replenishing fund of $500 million that can be deployed quickly, easing reliance on supplemental appropriations for crises. A primary focus must be filling major gaps, including civilian police, judicial resources and demobilization and reintegration.

· To address the unacceptable time lags that hamper initial reconstruction efforts, the United States should push to create a $1 billion trust fund under the auspices of the Group of Eight to be initialized for top priority, year-one projects.

· Not every mission is or should be Iraq or Afghanistan. In many cases, U.N.-led operations are the most effective means of international community involvement. The $4 billion annual cost of all 17 U.N.-led deployments is a relative national security bargain. But multilateral peacekeeping is straining at the seams too. The Security Council continues to authorize peacekeeping missions at a rate that outpaces the United Nations' capacity. Member states are disinclined to contribute necessary troops and equipment, while failed states spiral into chaos and mass killings go unanswered.

Among other steps, the United Nations should focus more on interoperability of national forces that can be deployed in a multilateral setting. Further, new missions should not be authorized until the necessary resources are identified.

The United States needs an effective United Nations. Reform will require more attention and resources from key contributors such as America and its allies. By getting our own house in order, the United States will be in a stronger position to persuade others to change.

Former national security advisers Samuel R. Berger and Brent Scowcroft chair an independent Council on Foreign Relations task force on improving U.S. post-conflict capabilities.

Iraq's spiral of deadly sectarian violence has been between Arab Sunnis and Arab Shi'a. But if Iraq fragments, it will be along ethnic lines that pit Arabs against Kurds. The Kurds seek a secular republic with Kirkuk as the capitol of a federal Iraqi state called Kurdistan. If the constitution addresses their core demands, the Kurds might be flexible on other issues that threaten to break consensus during current negotiations on Iraq's permanent constitution.

Most Iraqis agree that the best way to balance the competing demands for democracy and unity is through a federal structure that assigns specific authorities to the national government while decentralizing control to regional and local governments.

As envisioned, powers would be reserved for federal Iraqi states unless they are specifically allocated to the national government. Federalism is a contract between equal groups; it is preferable to autonomy, which is bestowed by the national government to a lesser party and can be more easily revoked.

Although federal Iraqi states should be composed using geographic criteria, they should also take into account regional interests and cultural affinities. Saddam Hussein's policy of "ethnic correction" reapportioned territories within several northern provinces including Kirkuk. Consistent with Article 58 of the interim constitution, a system of property claims and compensation should be established so that displaced persons have the right to return to their homes before the Iraqi government conducts a census and organizes a popular referendum allowing them to determine their federal Iraqi state affiliations.

Other northerners — Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrians — are nervous about domination by Kurds in a federal Iraqi Kurdistan. Though federalism goes hand in hand with minority rights, the best way to guarantee their group rights is through a robust bill of individual rights enshrined in the Iraq Constitution. Given Iraq's history of ethno-religious conflict, the constitution should go even further by including explicit provisions protecting groups from discrimination, promoting equality and enabling them to preserve their unique identities.

The role of religion in Iraqi governance is another potential deal-breaker. The Kurds, who are staunchly secular and pro-Western, strongly resist efforts by clerics to apply Islamic law nationwide without restraint. Yet Islam is a powerful force shaping Iraqi society.

The circle can be squared by making Islam the official religion of Iraq and requiring that national legislation be consistent with Islamic law. The constitution should not, however, require the application of Islamic law to family matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Consistent with the principle of decentralization, family law should be left to federal Iraqi states, which may enact any law they see fit, subject to the requirement that the law does not violate the rights of equal protection in the constitution. The Quran is subject to interpretation; conservative clerics must not push too hard.

If the constitution guarantees federalism and secularism, Kurdish leaders would be flexible on other contentious issues. For example, the Kurds may surrender exclusive control of the rich Kirkuk oil fields and allow the national government to control Iraq's national oil wealth, provided that revenues were distributed to federal Iraqi states based on their percentage of the total population.

Kurdish fighters — called peshmarga ("those who walk before death") — enjoy a revered position in Kurdish society for protecting Kurds from Saddam's genocidal campaigns and from the intrusion of Turkish troops. Though Kurdish leaders are likely to resist demobilizing and disarming the peshmarga, they might allow the whole units to be co-opted in the Iraqi national army, join federal Iraqi state civilian defense forces, perform local police functions or retire with a pension.

Compromise and consent will not be easy. If Iraqis fail to use negotiations of the permanent constitution as a tool of national reconciliation, violence could worsen and start to fragment. In this event, it would be in the United States national interest to withdraw its forces to Kurdistan, secure the Kirkuk oil fields, and protect the last bastion of democracy in Iraq. A moral dimension also exists: It would be wrong for the U.S. to sell out the Kurds as it did in 1974 and 1991.

David L. Phillips is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "Losing Iraq."

Locked in a decade-old conflict over Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been increasing their military expenditures over the last few years. Lately this trend seems to have accelerated dramatically. The competition has launched an informal arms race in the South Caucasus that could easily lead to the further militarization of the entire region.

Previous estimates predicted that Azerbaijan's military expenditures in 2009 would reach $350 million -- seven times more than Georgia ($50 million) and almost three times more than Armenia ($120 million). However, Azerbaijan's defense budget is expected to reach $300 million this year, while Armenia's military expenditures are already well above $120 million. In fact, the military gap between Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia in the coming years will be even more dramatic.

The unannounced arms race in the Caucasus started in 1994, when Armenia and Azerbaijan reached a cease-fire in their war over the Karabakh region. Despite the fact that both states have signed the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which set certain limitations on the number of troops and weapons stationed in Armenia and Azerbaijan, they have both occasionally violated the treaty's terms. Both states have purchased new military hardware and increased the size of their troop strength. In 1996-97 Russia supplied Armenia with over $1 billion in weaponry. In addition, Armenia transferred some of its military hardware to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, in order to bypass its quota under the CFE treaty.

In 2002, Armenia spent more on defense in GDP terms than the rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States member countries. According data by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, the Armenian government allocated $162 million, 6.4% of Armenia's GDP, for its military needs. In 2001, this number was around $135 million. Azerbaijan and Georgia spent 3.3% and 1.7% respectively.

Last year, the Armenian parliament proposed increasing Armenia's official military expenditures by another 12% ($106 million) in 2005, meaning a 13% share of the state budget. Subsequently, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliev announced that Azerbaijan is planning to boost its defense spending by 25-30 percent in 2005. In 2004, Azerbaijan's military budget was estimated at around $150 million.

Several factors have intensified the arms race between Armenia and Azerbaijan in recent months. The opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which Azerbaijan views as a major source of future income, has seriously threatened the position of official Yerevan.

For Azerbaijan, more oil exports mean more revenues and that, in turn, means more spending on the military. President Aliev has repeatedly stated that Azerbaijan will use its economic potential to solve "all its problems," including the Karabakh conflict. Starting from last year, Azerbaijani defense officials have begun attending military exhibitions in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar with plans to purchase foreign military hardware in the future.

Another issue is the recent transfer of Russian military hardware from Russian bases in Georgia to Armenia. Armenian Defense Minister Serge Sarkisian has spoken out in favor of redeployment and said that Armenia is "in favor of strengthening the Russian military bases in Armenia and increasing their weapon reserves."

On June 25, speaking at the graduation ceremony for Azerbaijan's military school, Aliev announced a 70% increase in military spending -- expanding the budget to $300 million this year, up from $175 million in 2004. Aliev particularly mentioned concerns over the planned relocation of Russian military hardware from Georgia to Armenia.

With the promise of oil money and with half of its population still young, Azerbaijan's chances of becoming a strong military power in the South Caucasus seem great. Within several years, Azerbaijan's military budget could be equal to the entire budget of Armenia, and official Yerevan realizes this danger.

In May, referring to Azerbaijan's growing budget and increasing military expenditures, Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Margarian stated, "[Armenia] will draw the appropriate conclusions and will increase expenditures for defense accordingly." However, he also added that an increase in the Armenian military budget would be implemented as far as Armenia's financial capabilities and possibilities allow it.

It is not clear how long the arms race between Armenia and Azerbaijan could last. Yet, there is no doubt that, with the unresolved Karabakh conflict and the increasing presence of Russian troops in Armenia, the arms race will intensify even more.

THERE ARE NOT many places in Iraq where the locals want to celebrate American Independence Day. But, in Iraq's self-governing Kurdistan region, the newly elected government decided to host a Fourth of July party for their American allies. Top coalition officers were invited along with US civilians, food and drinks ordered (the secular Kurds serve and drink alcohol), and the Kurdistan prime minister had prepared his speech. Then America's top diplomat in the region delivered an ultimatum: She would not attend unless the Kurds flew Iraq's flag at the party. The Kurds refused and canceled the party.

The current Iraqi flag was chosen by Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party to signify the unity of Arab lands. For the non-Arab Kurds the flag is not only a symbol of their second class status but they also associate it with the atrocities-- including use of poison gas-- of the former regime. Many of Iraq's Arab leaders have been sensitive to Kurdish concerns. When they visit the region, they do not make a fuss over the flag.

For Iraq's Kurds, the flag episode epitomizes America's ingratitude for their role as an ally in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein and as the strongest supporter of US postwar policies. They note that American diplomats have no qualms about calling on Shi'ite politicians who display portraits of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini and that the United States has pushed for the inclusion of Sunni Arabs, many former Ba'athists, in the constitution drafting committee. Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafaari was warmly received at the White House even though his party, Dawa, was on the State Department terrorist list until a few years ago for the 1982 suicide bombing of the US embassy in Kuwait.

US indifference to Kurdish sensibilities could have far reaching consequences. The Kurds are engaged in a struggle with the Shi'ite majority of Iraq's constitution drafting committee over the principles that will guide the new Iraq.

The majority draft would make Iraq a ''federal Islamic republic." Rights of women would be sharply restricted as Islamic law replaces Iraq's relatively progressive civil code on matters of inheritance, divorce, and child custody. The document is anti-Jewish, denying Iraqi Jews rights granted other Iraqis. The Shi'ite majority is even proposing to incorporate the ''marjah" -- Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric -- into the constitution, a step that could give the Ayatollah Sistani powers similar to those Khomeini exercised in the first decade of Iran's Islamic Republic.

The Kurds oppose all these measures. They are secular and insist that any reference to the Islamic character of Iraq be balanced by a declaration that no law can violate fundamental human rights. They are proud of the progress that women have made in the 14 years of Kurdish self-rule in the north of Iraq and do not want it rolled back. They share none of the antipathy Arab Iraqis feel toward the Jews.

With a population almost unanimously in favor of independence, Kurdistan leaders insist that Iraq have a federal structure that will allow them to retain their secular, Western-oriented political system even if the rest of Iraq falls under the sway of the religious parties. They are alarmed by growing Iranian influence in Baghdad and in the Shi'ite south, and see a strong, self-governing Kurdistan as a barrier to enlarging Iran's influence.

No constitution can be approved unless the Kurds go along, and the Kurds want to be in the position to walk away from a constitution that is illiberal and too centralized. But, instead of support from the Bush administration, they feel intense pressure to make compromises so as to meet the Aug. 15 deadline.

While the Bush administration professes a hands-off policy toward constitutional deliberations, it has been lobbying hard against a provision that would give Iraq's regions control over natural resources. Having been dependent on payments from Baghdad in the past, the Kurds know that meaningful self-government requires control over their own petroleum. The Bush administration apparently believes a Shi'ite region in the south would be less favorable toward US oil companies than the Shi'ite-run Oil Ministry in Baghdad, but in reality there is unlikely to be a difference. To the dismay of the Kurds, there has been no similar American engagement with regard to the anti-Jewish or antiwoman provisions of the proposed constitution.

The United States should take a genuine hands-off approach toward the new constitution. The content is far more important than meeting the deadline for its completion, and the Bush administration should not punish America's best friends in Iraq if they walk away from a document that blatantly contradicts the democratic values President Bush now says are the reason for our continued presence in the country.

Peter W. Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia, is senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

As we have seen this week in the historic agreement between the U.S. and India on civil nuclear cooperation, diplomacy is flourishing once more at the State Department.

Condoleezza Rice is driving this return to diplomacy, and the deal with New Delhi reflects the extraordinary U.S. diplomatic activism that has characterized her brief time in office: a commitment to ease the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, where she has just spent two days; intense efforts to promote a successful Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; a systematic strategy to increase international support for Iraq; a renewed diplomatic presence in Asia through a series of bilateral visits to the region by the secretary and her senior colleagues; a resumption of the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program; full support for the EU-3 attempt to persuade Iran to cease its acquisition of nuclear weapons; improvement in the Transatlantic relationship; and so forth.

Diplomacy is the effort to influence the policies of other governments through negotiation, whether unilaterally or with coalitions. This can be by persuasion, threat, or coercion short of force. Such effective American diplomacy requires at least five elements.

• First, there must be a trusting relationship between the president and the secretary of state, an instinctive agreement regarding the objectives and methods of U.S. foreign policy. They must have the same strategic DNA. This was true during each of the post-1945 surges of historic statecraft: Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and George Shultz, George H.W. Bush and James Baker. The president must never wonder if the secretary of state has a separate agenda, or is half-hearted in carrying out the administration's goals while winking and nodding at foreign counterparts -- or those in Congress -- who disagree with U.S. policy. Acheson wrote that, "The most important aspect of the relationship between the president and the secretary of state is that they both understand who is president."
 

The secretary must also decisively demonstrate that the State Department is an instrument to accomplish the president's goals, and not a continual obstacle to them. This requires that the secretary force the president's agenda on the department, not the other way around. And other governments must be confident that the secretary always speaks for the president and can deliver on commitments. Ms. Rice more than satisfies all these requirements.

• Second, the celebrated secretaries of state knew what they wanted to accomplish (under presidential guidance) over the longer term, and how they intended to do it. Mr. Baker stressed, "Never let the other fellow set the agenda." And Mr. Shultz said this of Reagan, "He had a strong and constructive agenda, much of it labeled impossible and unattainable in the early years of his presidency. He challenged the conventional wisdom. . . " Or Mr. Kissinger: "Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision."
 

As Washington debates this president's "great vision" toward the Greater Middle East, it is useful to remember that all four of the presidents and secretaries of state I mention above -- the giants, with Cordell Hull, of U.S. diplomacy in the 20th century -- departed from commonplace foreign policy ideas. These statesmen set out to alter the world in fundamental, and beneficial, ways. And they succeeded.

Nietzsche thought that "Man's most enduring stupidity is forgetting what he is trying to do." The consummate secretaries of state remember every morning what they are trying to achieve over an extended timeline. Mr. Kissinger points out that secretaries must come to the post with those strategic ideas already fully developed, because the office "consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it."

A quick perusal of Ms. Rice's recent public statements shows that she knows very well what she is trying to accomplish on behalf of the American people and the president, and that her mission is not primarily measured in days, weeks or months. In public pronouncements, she persistently returns to historic themes, as she did in her recent speech at Cairo University, because she seeks to shape the world as deeply as did her most illustrious forerunners.

• Third, the secretary must be a skilful diplomat. This does not mean always being the essence of congeniality, and it cannot be manifested mostly inside the Beltway or by telephone. Recall that Mr. Baker, in his first few weeks in office, went to every NATO capital to see their politicians on their home turf. Mr. Kissinger was on the road so much that there was a magazine cover with the flash, "Kissinger Visits America." They wanted to smell the domestic politics that their counterparts had to deal with and they knew that Ma Bell was not the answer.

Messrs. Kissinger and Baker understood that diplomacy depends on establishing close personal relationships as well as on power, and that attending periodic large international meetings was not the same as visiting their foreign colleagues in their capitals. Mr. Shultz has observed that "listening is an underrated way to acquire knowledge." The best place to do such listening (and convincing) is in their setting, not ours. With a personality that can range from cashmere to kryptonite, Ms. Rice has been constantly abroad since she has been in office, and has already visited dozens of countries. This is a calculated strategy, and it exhibits her command of this tool of diplomacy. (And she never has to worry that frequent foreign travel will weaken her influence with the president.)

• Fourth, a successful secretary of state must put together an all-star team. This Ms. Rice has done, recruiting the best talent at State in decades. Bob Zoellick has long been recognized as a premier public policy intellectual and practitioner. He may be the most talented number two at State since Acheson. Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nick Burns is the most gifted Foreign Service Officer of his generation. Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security Bob Joseph is a non-proliferation master. Undersecretary Designate for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes is magisterial in her command of public persuasion. Undersecretary designate for Economic Affairs Josette Shiner is a canny Washington insider. Counselor Philip Zelikow is smarter than almost anybody. And her assistant secretaries are brainy and battle-tested.

 
• Fifth, the secretary must be an eloquent public voice of U.S. foreign policy. During her short time in office, Ms. Rice has delivered many speeches, had dozens of press conferences, and given innumerable media interviews. She believes that explaining the administration's foreign policy is a crucial dimension of her job -- and clearly has more than a knack for it.
 

All this is not necessarily to say that Ms. Rice will one day be seen as a great secretary of state. Challenges abound: Iraq remains tough; the EU-3 negotiations with Tehran are likely to collapse this year; North Korea may spark an upheaval in Northeast Asia; the Middle East peace process will probably be in serious trouble after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, if not before; U.S.-Russia relations deteriorate; Chinese power is ever more prominent in Asia; Latin America throbs with leftist uncertainty. And, as Mr. Kissinger has said, "Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem."

The foremost secretaries of state encountered such a catalogue of challenges, but perhaps only James Baker, with German unification and the end of the Soviet Union, had as many opportunities as does this secretary. Freedom is marching forward, including in the Greater Middle East. Authoritarianism is on the defensive. Building on American primacy, there is reason and evidence for strategic and moral optimism. Ms. Rice has all the requisites to make her tenure at the State Department as consequential as those of her most eminent predecessors in the past century. History awaits her performance.

Mr. Blackwill is president of Barbour Griffith & Rogers International, a Republican lobbying and consulting firm. He was U.S. ambassador to India from 2001-2003, and deputy national security adviser for strategic planning in 2003-2004.'

The first signs that America's top officials in Iraq were revising their thinking about what they might accomplish in Iraq came a year ago. As Iraq resumed its sovereignty after the period of American occupation, the new American team that arrived then, headed by Ambassador John D. Negroponte, had a withering term for the optimistic approach of their predecessors, led by L. Paul Bremer III.

The new team called the departing Americans "the illusionists," for their conviction that America could create a Jeffersonian democracy on the ruins of Saddam Hussein's medieval brutalism. One American military commander began his first encounter with American reporters by asking, "Well, gentlemen, tell me: Do you think that events here afford us the luxury of hope?"

It seemed clear then that the administration, for all its public optimism, had begun substituting more modest goals for the idealists' conception of Iraq. How much more modest has become clearer in the 12 months since.

From the moment American troops crossed the border 28 months ago, the specter hanging over the American enterprise here has been that Iraq, freed from Mr. Hussein's tyranny, might prove to be so fractured - by politics and religion, by culture and geography, and by the suspicion and enmity sown by Mr. Hussein's years of repression - that it would spiral inexorably into civil war.

If it did, opponents of the American-led invasion had warned, American troops could get caught in the crossfire between Sunnis and Shiites, Kurds and Turkmen, secularists and believers - reduced, in the grimmest circumstances, to the common target of a host of contending militias.

Now, events are pointing more than ever to the possibility that the nightmare could come true. Recent weeks have seen the insurgency reach new heights of sustained brutality. The violence is ever more centered on sectarian killings, with Sunni insurgents targeting hundreds of Shiite and Kurdish civilians in suicide bombings. There are reports of Shiite death squads, some with links to the interior ministry, retaliating by abducting and killing Sunni clerics and community leaders.

The past 10 days have seen such a quickening of these killings, particularly by the insurgents, that many Iraqis are saying that the civil war has already begun.

That at least some senior officials in Washington understand the gravity of the situation seems clear from remarks made at the Foreign Press Center in Washington two weeks ago by Zalmay Khalilzad, who arrives in Baghdad this week to begin as Mr. Negroponte's successor. In his remarks, Mr. Khalilzad abandoned a convention that had bound senior American officials when speaking of Iraq - to talk of civil war only if reporters raised it first, and then only to dismiss it as a beyond-the-fringe possibility. Using the term twice in one paragraph, he spoke of civil war as something America must do everything to avoid.

"Iraq is poised at the crossroads between two starkly different visions," he said. "The foreign terrorists and hardline Baathist insurgents want Iraq to fall into a civil war."

The new ambassador struck a positive chord, to be sure, saying "Iraqis of all communities and sects, like people everywhere, want to establish peace and create prosperity." Still, his coda remained one of caution: "I do not underestimate the difficulty of the present situation."

One measure of the doubts afflicting American officials here has been a hedging in the upbeat military assessments that generals usually offer, coupled with a resort to statistics carefully groomed to show progress in curbing the insurgents that seems divorced from realities on the ground. One example of the new "metrics" has been a rush of figures on the buildup of Iraq's army and police force - a program known to many reporters who have been embedded on joint operations as one beset by inadequate training, poor leadership, inadequate weaponry and poor morale.

Officers involved in running the program offer impressive-sounding figures - including the fact that, by mid-June, the Iraqi forces had been given 306 million rounds of ammunition, roughly 12 bullets for each of Iraq's 25 million people. But when one senior American officer involved was asked whether the Americans might end up arming the Iraqis for a civil war, he paused for a moment, then nodded. "Maybe," he said.

The war's wider pattern has always held the seeds of an all-out sectarian conflict, of the kind that largely destroyed Lebanon. The insurgency has been rooted in the Sunni Arab minority dispossessed by the toppling of Mr. Hussein, and most of its victims have been Shiites, the majority community who have been the main political beneficiaries of Mr. Hussein's demise. Shiites have died in countless hundreds at their mosques and their marketplaces, victims of insurgent ambushes and bombs, their deaths celebrated on Islamic Web sites by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, who has called Shiites "monkeys" and their religion an affront to God.

Last weekend, it was the turn of the small town of Mussayib, where at least 71 people died when a suicide bomber blew himself up under a fuel tanker outside the main mosque. Hitherto, Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had urged Shiites not to retaliate, but to focus instead on the American-sponsored electoral process, which brought Shiite parties victory in January and is likely to do so again in voting for a full, five-year government in December.

But this time, the ayatollah, his patience spent, demanded that the transitional government, which is led by Shiites, "defend the country against mass annihilation."

If that was a call for tougher military action against the insurgents, it played into a situation made all the more volatile in recent months by signs that hard-line Shiites have begun to strike back. There have been persistent reports, mostly in Baghdad, of Shiite death squads in police uniforms abducting, torturing and killing Sunni Arab clerics, community leaders and others. In Baghdad, a police commando unit composed mainly of Shiites raided a hospital two weekends ago and abducted 13 Sunni men accused of being insurgents. Sixteen hours later, the bodies of 10 were delivered to a morgue, the victims of suffocation in a locked metal-topped police van in a temperature nearing 120 degrees.

Even the new Iraqi forces, hailed by the Bush administration as the key to an eventual American troop withdrawal, seem as likely to provoke a civil war as to prevent one. The 170,000 men already trained are dominated by Shiites and Kurds, in a proportion even higher than the 80 percent those groups represent in the population. Though there are thousands of Sunni Arabs in the forces, including some generals, Iraqi units that are sent to the worst hot spots are often dominated by Shiites and Kurds, some recruited from sectarian militias deeply hostile to Sunni Arabs.

The contempt this provokes was voiced by Dhari al-Bedri, a Baghdad University professor with a home in Samarra, a Sunni town. "The Iraqi army in Samarra is Badr, Dawa and Pesh Merga," he said, citing the militias of the two largest Shiite political parties, and of the Kurds. "The people feel that the army does not come to serve them, but to punish them. The people hate them."

The American hope is that the political process under way will succeed, eventually, in forging a broad enough consensus that hard-liners on all sides will be isolated. The odds on that, though slim, seemed to rise a bit with an agreement this month that added 15 Sunni Arabs to the 55-member parliamentary committee charged with drawing up the constitution. But when two of the Sunni men involved in that process were gunned down in Baghdad last week, some other Sunni members pointed to Shiites as the killers, and said the killings showed that Shiite hard-liners wanted no compromise.

Despite these gloomy trends, American commanders have continued to hint at the possibility of at least an initial reduction of the 140,000 American troops stationed here by next summer, contingent on progress in creating effective Iraqi units. Some senior officers have said privately that there is a chance that the pullback will be ordered regardless of what is happening in the war, and that the rationale will be that Iraq - its politicians and its warriors - will ultimately have to find ways of overcoming their divides on their own.

America, these officers seem to be saying, can do only so much, and if Iraqis are hellbent on settling matters violently - at the worst, by civil war - that, in the end, would be their sovereign choice.

Kurdish leaders have requested that the new Iraqi constitution guarantee the Kurdish minority the right to vote on independence in eight years, a Kurdish member of the constitutional committee said Friday.

The call for a referendum on secession from Iraq is the Kurds' most overt push toward independence since the fall of president Saddam Hussein.

Saadi Barzanchani, a Kurdish member of the national committee drafting the constitution, said Kurds would probably vote to remain part of Iraq if the country became the democracy that Iraqi and U.S. leaders have promised. "Eight years will be sufficient time to see," he said in an interview.

Barzanchani said Kurdistan's regional parliament made the decision to push for a guaranteed right to vote in the new constitution, which the committee is trying to piece together by Aug. 15.

Many Sunni Arabs, a minority group that had ruled the country for eight decades, oppose Kurdish independence and a drive for autonomy by some Shiite Arabs in the southern part of the country. Shiites make up the majority of Iraq's population.

"Iraq is a united country. I call on patriots to stand against this brutal campaign and insist that Iraq should be one country, one land and one rule," Mahmoud Sumaidaie, a Sunni cleric, said in a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque in Baghdad. "We don't want the separation. Iraq will be the homeland of the Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and other minorities."

Countries that border Iraq have long opposed statehood for the estimated 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds, who represent a fraction of the approximately 20 million Kurds living in a region that stretches from Turkey through the former Soviet Union to Iran. Iraq's neighbors fear that allowing independence for Iraqi Kurds would fuel separatist drives in their own countries.

U.S. officials have consistently opposed the secession hopes of their Iraqi Kurdish allies, saying a landlocked Kurdistan, surrounded by hostile neighbors, would not be viable.

Barzanchani said secession was "the legitimate right of each part of Iraq." He argued that granting all regions the right to break away if the central government neglected them was "one of the strongest guarantees of unity" for Iraq.

Kurds make up 15 to 20 percent of Iraq's population. In the 1980s, Hussein unleashed a campaign of violence against the Kurds that killed more than 100,000 in northern Iraq, according to international human rights groups. Hussein also crushed a Kurdish revolt following the Persian Gulf War. U.S. forces later enforced a no-fly zone that gave Kurds enough protection to declare autonomy.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has said he wants the Kurdish region to remain part of Iraq. But separatist sentiment pervades his homeland.

More than 90 percent of voters questioned in Kurdistan during January's national elections said they wanted independence, according to a frequently cited survey conducted at polling places.

The debate over how much autonomy to give Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south, and Sunnis in the center and west of the country has become one of the most difficult issues to be settled before Iraq can draft a constitution.

Kurdish leaders have been audacious in pushing their claims. This week, they unveiled a map -- which they wanted appended to the new constitution -- that lays claim to hundreds of miles of territory extending south of Baghdad. The territory includes the disputed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Another Kurdish official, Mullah Bakhtiyar, later told the Associated Press that the extended boundary was a "red line" for Kurds and that they were committed to it.

A Western diplomat on Friday urged members of the constitutional committee to maintain "flexibility and realism."

The diplomat, speaking to reporters in Baghdad under the agreement that he not be named, also appealed to the constitution's framers to stick to the Aug. 15 deadline for having a draft constitution approved by the National Assembly. The charter would then go before Iraqi voters.

"You kick this down the road six months, it's going to look like the whole process is blocked," the diplomat said.

The diplomat also said a draft he saw Friday had removed a stipulation that family matters such as divorce and inheritance be governed by the laws of an individual's religious sect. Some Iraqis had feared that religious law under the rule could be used to limit the rights of women. The official stressed, however, that the wording of the constitution was changing daily.

... '

Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu of the Chinese People's Liberation Army caused quite a stir last week when he threatened to nuke "hundreds" of American cities if the U.S. dared to interfere with a Chinese attempt to conquer Taiwan.

This saber-rattling comes while China is building a lot of sabers. Although its defense budget, estimated to be as much as $90 billion, remains a fraction of the United States', it is enough to make China the world's third-biggest weapons buyer (behind Russia) and the biggest in Asia. Moreover, China's spending has been increasing rapidly, and it is investing in the kind of systems — especially missiles and submarines — needed to challenge U.S. naval power in the Pacific.

The Pentagon on Tuesday released a study of Chinese military capabilities. In a preview, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Singapore audience last month that China's arms buildup was an "area of concern." It should be. But we shouldn't get overly fixated on such traditional indices of military power as ships and bombs — not even atomic bombs. Chinese strategists, in the best tradition of Sun Tzu, are working on craftier schemes to topple the American hegemon.

In 1998, an official People's Liberation Army publishing house brought out a treatise called "Unrestricted Warfare," written by two senior army colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. This book, which is available in English translation, is well known to the U.S. national security establishment but remains practically unheard of among the general public.

"Unrestricted Warfare" recognizes that it is practically impossible to challenge the U.S. on its own terms. No one else can afford to build mega-expensive weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost more than $200 billion to develop. "The way to extricate oneself from this predicament," the authors write, "is to develop a different approach."

Their different approaches include financial warfare (subverting banking systems and stock markets), drug warfare (attacking the fabric of society by flooding it with illicit drugs), psychological and media warfare (manipulating perceptions to break down enemy will), international law warfare (blocking enemy actions using multinational organizations), resource warfare (seizing control of vital natural resources), even ecological warfare (creating man-made earthquakes or other natural disasters).

Cols. Qiao and Wang write approvingly of Al Qaeda, Colombian drug lords and computer hackers who operate outside the "bandwidths understood by the American military." They envision a scenario in which a "network attack against the enemy" — clearly a red, white and blue enemy — would be carried out "so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network and mass media network are completely paralyzed," leading to "social panic, street riots and a political crisis." Only then would conventional military force be deployed "until the enemy is forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty."

This isn't just loose talk. There are signs of this strategy being implemented. The anti-Japanese riots that swept China in April? That would be psychological warfare against a major Asian rival. The stage-managed protests in 1999, after the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, fall into the same category.

The bid by the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Co., to acquire Unocal? Resource warfare. Attempts by China's spy apparatus to infiltrate U.S. high-tech firms and defense contractors? Technological warfare. China siding against the U.S. in the U.N. Security Council over the invasion of Iraq? International law warfare. Gen. Zhu's threat to nuke the U.S.? Media warfare.

And so on. Once you know what to look for, the pieces fall into place with disturbing ease. Of course, most of these events have alternative, more benign explanations: Maybe Gen. Zhu is an eccentric old coot who's seen "Dr. Strangelove" a few too many times.

The deliberate ambiguity makes it hard to craft a response to "unrestricted warfare." If Beijing sticks to building nuclear weapons, we know how to deal with that — use the deterrence doctrine that worked against the Soviets. But how do we respond to what may or may not be indirect aggression by a major trading partner? Battling terrorist groups like Al Qaeda seems like a cinch by comparison.

This is not a challenge the Pentagon is set up to address, but it's an urgent issue for the years ahead.

... Four steps are now urgently needed. First, the Bush administration must declare that the United States will not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. Its refusal to do so has aroused Iraqi suspicions that we seek long-term domination of their country. Second, we should declare some sort of time frame (but not a rigid deadline) by which we think we can withdraw militarily—if Iraqi groups that are supporting or tolerating the violence will instead help build the new political order. Third, we need to talk directly to the (largely Sunni) political groups connected to the insurgency, some of which have been seeking to talk to the United States for more than a year now. Fourth, we need an honest broker to help mediate these discussions and build confidence in the process. This role could be played by a small international contact group consisting of a high-level representative of the United Nations and perhaps one or two of the European ambassadors now resident in Baghdad.

... Failure in Iraq would be characterized by any of the following disaster scenarios:

1.      Iraqis' rejection of their democracy.

2.      Democratic institutions scrapped by a strongman ("Saddam lite") or an Islamist radical.

3.      Leaders drastically thrown off their political schedule.

4.      Security training thwarted by intimidation of recruits.

5.     A nation inflamed in civil war.

None of these have occurred. ...

11 Eylül'den sonraki gelişmeler İslam dünyasında Amerika'ya karşı büyük bir husumetin doğmasına yol açtı. Müslüman kitleler El Kaide terörünün ardında Amerika'yı aramak gibi bir paranoya içine girdiler. Amerika'nın İslam dünyasını yıkmak amacını taşıdığına inanmaya başladılar. Bu durum sürdükçe ne terörizm engellenebilir ne de İslam dünyası demokratikleşebilir.
Türkiye için sorunun başka vahim yönleri de var.
1 Mart tezkere olayından sonra Türk-Amerikan ilişkileri hâlâ düzeltilemeyen bir bozulma sürecine girdi. Amerika, özellikle Kuzey Irak'ta Türkmen hakları, Kerkük ve PKK konularında Türkiye'yi cezalandırma yoluna gitti. Türkiye'nin uyarılarına ve verdiği sözlere rağmen, Kuzey Irak'ta Kandil Dağı'nda üslenen PKK'nın varlığına göz yumdu. Kendisinin de terörist saydığı örgütün silahsızlandırılmasına dahi çalışmadı.
Bugün yarısı Türkiye'ye geçen PKK terör eylemlerine yine başladı. Demiryollarını mayınlıyor, ülkenin batısında bombalar patlatarak turizmi baltalıyor. Sol ve etnik milliyetçilik karışımı faşist ve nihilist (yani kendisine ve başkasına zarar vermekten başka gerçek hedefi olmayan) bir grup Kürt siyasetçisi, Öcalan'ın emriyle federalizmi savunuyor. Kuzey Irak'ta kurulacak Kürt federe devletiyle ileride birleşip bağımsız devlet kurmayı amaçlıyor. Türkiye'nin AB aşkı dolayısıyla OHAL ilan edemeyeceğini ve bu taleplere baş eğeceğini umuyor. Amerika'nın PKK'yı koruyacağından emin, Kuzey Irak'ta Türkiye'yi Amerika ile karşı karşıya getirme hesabını yapıyor.
PKK'nın Kandil'deki varlığını korumak ile küresel düzlemde terörizmle mücadele arasındaki inanılmaz çelişkiyi bir yana bırakalım. PKK'nın Türkiye'de öldürdüğü her kişi Türk halkı tarafından Amerika'nın sorumluluğu