My (Foreign Policy) Man Crush Finally Shows Some Leg

Gregory Djerejian, author of the Belgravia Dispatch, has stopped playing hard to get long enough to pen another gem of a piece on foreign policy; in this case, his foreign policy prescriptions for the Obama Administration. It's a lengthy piece (10 pages when cut and pasted into MS Word - Tahoma size 10 - so you may want to print it), but worth the time and effort to read and digest.

On effectively resuscitating the Middle East peace process:

What is nonetheless clear, however, as much as some would like to wish it away, is that the Arab-Israeli conflict acts as a toxin materially hampering forward progress in the wider region—while radicalizing tens of thousands, such as Mohamed Atta, to take one prominent example. Meantime the outgoing Bush Administration’s obsession (born of insecurity) to follow ‘ABC’ (“Anything But [Bill] Clinton”, e.g. no robust peace-making), isolate Arafat, forsake more of an ‘honest-broker’ role—while simultaneously airily obsessing about ‘free’ elections—all helped usher in Hamas’ rise to greater power in Palestine, with such radicalization further fanned by the war in Iraq.

On why the "good" war in Afghanistan should be re-evaluated:

Here’s why it’s not such a no-brainer to march tens of thousands of reinforcements into the wilds of Afghanistan ... Why? First off, it’s a losing battle. The presence of foreign troops (like it or not, they are widely viewed as occupiers) only serves to further radicalize local Afghans (have the experiences of the Soviets, and before them, the British—thought us nothing?). Second, al-Qaeda is mostly scattered in parts Pakistan, rather than portions of Afghanistan where Marines are operating. And, even if not, or they move too freely back and forth, query: what was it about the 9/11 hijackers, say, that made it so critical that they’d enjoyed a safe-haven in Afghanistan? Was this safe haven needed to allow some of the hijackers to attend flight school in Florida, say, as former UK diplomat Rory Stewart has quipped? Can one only learn the finer usages of box-cutters—or more ambitious chemical and biological schemes for that matter—in far-away Afghanistan (to the contrary, one might argue it’s much harder in such parts, rather than in more advanced societies with easier access to the relevant technologies etc.)?

The full article can be found here.

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

Satellite pic of the inauguration. Dem is people, not ants. Click here for larger version.

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The new Wii Fit Ad:

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