The most significant military genius of our times has been appointed to the most significant command in the world, as Army General David Petraeus was picked today by the President to head up CENTCOM. This is more than just a change of the brass on the shelf. This is the beginning of a new era of American war fighting in the toughest region of the world.

Petraeus is a figure of change because he is our American Pompey. Pompey was the Roman general who used a surge of resources and political will to win a tough war in the 60s BC not only by fighting better, but by winning the peace.

Pompey brought down an epidemic of piracy in the Mediterranean that made al-Qaeda look like the Falun Gong; his keys to victory were a phenomenal aptitude for organizing despite lean forces and a willingness to exercise amnesty over violence.

Petraeus has introduced the same to the American war in Iraq: He had to struggle as hard against a threadbare and mercenary Pentagon to get his Division, the 101st, into place in Iraq for the invasion as he did against Saddam’s forces, a conflict well recorded by Rick Atkinson’s “In The Company of Soldiers.”

Petraeus then took a page from Pompey’s book when, as Commander of Coalition Forces in Iraq, he masterminded and executed the “Sunni Uprising” - or, as it could objectively be called, the bribery and persuasion of our chief insurgent enemy to switch sides. Just like Pompey’s follow-up to the pirate campaign found him marching against the Greek King, Mithridates, buying off bandits and persuading towns to fly Rome’s banner in exchange for political agency, Petraeus offered the same to the Sunni provincial leaders. Often this demanded he undercut the Iraqi government in Baghdad, and even fly in the face of stated Bush administration policy.

In fact, if Petraeus, like his predecessors, had complied with Bush’s oath that we “do not negotiate with terrorists” and refused to recognize the militias as the dominant political forces on the ground, we would not have any measure of what success we have today. He cut deals with local leaders, feeding them funds long stymied by the corrupt Maliki regime set on starving them out. He worked out a backroom cease fire with Moktada al-Sadr, in direct defiance of Maliki. This has led to an unparalleled amount of public works in Iraq that actually stick. And, most importantly to the American military enterprise against its dogged enemies, it has allowed him to systematically focus on those opposed to our interests - first, al-Qaeda, and now, al-Sadr.

So what will Petraeus bring to the total command over Africa and the Middle East that comes from CENTCOM leadership? The same ingenuity and defiant dedication to success that Pompey brought to his total command of forces in the same region:

He will opportunistically circumvent stale, stubborn administration policies preventing him from talking to our enemies. He will focus on the core objective of counter-insurgency - eliminating the public support for the bandits - by whatever means necessary, including armistices and foreign aid. And he will continue to show a brilliance for organization - for making do with little and retaining the initiative against an adversary that is, by definition, unpredictable.

Pompey’s adventures were cunning above all else, and never let the stupidity of his government obscure his mission. His actions led to an era of domination that was the foundation of the future “Pax Romana” - the Roman epoch of prosperity, influence and military supremacy.

Petraeus, our Pompey, has the cards stacked against him too: A callow political leadership, a redoubtable enemy and awful terrain.

From what he has shown so far, his achievements will be no less legendary.

Last week’s much-derided attempt by Jimmy Carter to stir some substance into the Middle East peace process has resulted in a tasty morsel rising: HAMAS has announced it will offer a 10-year truce to Israel if Israel withdraws from the lands it seized in 1967.

Is this a cure-all? Not by a long shot. Is it something new? No again - HAMAS has been repeatedly offering versions of this land-for-peace swap. The reason why this is significant is that it brings up the possibility of peace talks with HAMAS, defying a public perception that they’re fringe zealots hellbent on the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. They may be zealots, but they are not fringe, nor are they adamant against a peace process. They depend on it, and it on them.

HAMAS rose to power among the Palestinians more because of its public works than its extremism. Palestinians who wanted feisty, anti-Semitic, fight-to-the-end rhetoric could look to the PLO’s “Al Aqsa Brigade” or to HAMAS; their loathsome hate speech isn’t what distinguished these groups. The distinction has become that one gets nothing done, is corrupt, cannot control its militias and sucks up to the US and Israel, and the other is HAMAS.

This isn’t just to point out why Palestinians are trending toward HAMAS, and thereby explain their dogged support for it even during this agonizing siege. It is also to explain why HAMAS matters to the peace process, contrary to Secretary Rice’s efforts to turn her nose up and sniff at them.

HAMAS can get things done. It’s seen as having integrity, it can actually enforce a truce that it declares and it has a functional alternative public infrastructure going in the Gaza streets - the kind of soup-kitchen and free-clinic set-up that helped them rise. To ignore them is to only prolong the process as is - which could be the wisest course for IDF strategy anyway, if not in the long-term for Israel and the Palestinians - by ignoring the only player with enough “street cred” to cut a deal with.

In short, HAMAS is a flock of scary dudes, but they have graduated from the level of a local gang, they’re the only player with integrity, and so they have to be worked with. Relying on the PLO just pours aid money into Abbas’ pocket indefinitely, and nobody really trusts them to keep their side of any bargain, anyway.

With Carter putting HAMAS back at the headlines, at further expense to his reputation and in defiance of the indolent and out-of-touch US State Department, we can see that the peace process can be budged. And we’re reminded who peace deals are really struck between: Between enemies.

The moment that nation at large has been ignoring is drawing nigh - signs of the Petraeus strategies fractures are now showing, as violence in Iraq flares anticipating the end of the Surge. That this would happen was not, for those in the know, in doubt. The Surge’s most critical objective - the establishment of an enduring, functional government in Baghdad - wasn’t even given a ghost of an effort by the Green Zone aristocracy currently taking up space in the Iraqi parliament. Without that base of support intact, it is inevitable that the house of cards is going to fall once there aren’t enough American hands to hold it up. And, just as the strategists all feared, now that the clock has run out on the Surge, every Iraqi with a gripe is hitting the streets to ensure a hot summer comes in spring.

Now all that remains to be seen is how the different factions here in America will spin it. But before we hold our noses and check out what either side is likely to shovel onto us in the weeks to come, let’s look at the facts on the ground:

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The world is, indeed, a many splendored place, as wonders and puzzles like the seventies, the daily content of fark.com and most of Japanese culture often reminds us. Today was rife with celebrity curiosities that made the front pages:

A seven thousand year old city was discovered, Jerusalem was smothered in snow, Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post endorsed Obama and Hillary Clinton threw a party for herself in honor of being the winner of a primary only she competed in after promising not to compete.

The first - the city in the desert - reminds us that the mysteries of the past will never cease to reveal themselves. As we develop from the past, our perspective transforms. And as we gain new eyes, we look back to discover new things, and change yet again. Most fascinating about this archaelogical marvel is that it may involve cultural elements that far post-date its original founding - Greek and Roman elements, meaning that it was likely in use, part of the known world from the dawn of civilization, for thousands of years, before it vanished.

“An electromagnetic survey revealed the existence in the Karanis region of a network of walls and roads similar to those constructed during the Greco-Roman period,” the council’s chief Zahi Hawwas said.

The remnants of the city are “still buried beneath the sand and the details of this discovery will be revealed in due course,” Hawwas said.

The remains date back to the Neolithic period between 5,200 and 4,500 BC.

Jerusalem, a place of extreme strive and extreme beauty, was blessed with snow. Snow in the desert may be explanable as one of the freak weather patterns climate change is inspiring, but on the objective face of it, it is a miracle of sorts in such profusion. For the temperate climb to be so plunged into winter has provided not only a rare pause in the bustle of the magical city of Solomon, but a touch of loveliness to the contested capital of the three faiths of the Book.

Men in long Arab robes pelted each other with snowballs in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian government, came to a standstill.

“I’m originally from Gaza where snow never falls,” said Bothaina Smairi, 28, who was out in Ramallah taking photographs. “The white snow is covering the old world and I feel like I am in a new world where everything is white, clean, and beautiful.”

Jerusalem’s Old City was coated in white. A few ultra-Orthodox Jews, wearing plastic bags over their hats to keep them dry, prayed at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.

Another note for unity and hope despite the grim, poisonous past few years was struck as Barack Obama received an edorsement from the NY Post - former flagship newspaper of Rupert “FOX News” Murdoch. For me, this represents a rare altruism on the part of the paper, assuming it is sincere; a media outlet more dedicated to removing the contentious tone from public life rather than stoking it. Contrary to the obscenely impartial or provocatively biased coverage we’ve become accustomed to, the best journalism might be the most responsible kind, and the Post’s editorial seems to echo that long-lost sentiment:

Obama represents a fresh start.

His opponent, and her husband, stand for déjà vu all over again - a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency.

Does America really want to go through all that once again?

It will - if Sen. Clinton becomes president.

That much has become painfully apparent.

More painful in its clarity is that Clinton will not just be a repeat of the years before the Bush years, but of the Bush years as well. This is evidenced in her attempt to steal the election, a perfidious scheme far beyond just shutting the doors to caucus sites half an hour ahead of their closing time or dispensing lies about Barack Obama being a Muslim terrorist over e-mail that she celebrated last night. After swearing not to campaign in Florida, Clinton did, won the state, and is now trying to force the Democratic National Convention to recognize the delegates from that election.

It was a perfect reproduction of an actual victory speech, delivered at a perfectly ersatz celebration at a perfectly pretend location: a faux Italianate palace with lion sculptures, indoor fountains and a commanding view of Interstate 595. The Signature Grand (”Elegant Weddings and Grand Social Occasions”) was also holding receptions Tuesday night for a pediatric practice and for a group of optometry students, but the Clinton campaign was the biggest draw: It filled the Silver Palm Room, the Golden Palm Room and the Emerald Palm Room.

…Even some of the faithful in the hall doubted that the big margin for Clinton, flashed on a projection screen, was an accurate gauge of the race here. “Probably not,” said Eleanor Forte, on the outer rim of the celebration. “If they had campaigned here, it probably would have come out differently.”

That was a nuance the Clinton campaign was hoping to overlook as it sought retroactively to give weight to the Florida primary. “I am a gutter-ball bowler,” Clinton said as she campaigned Sunday night in the state in which she had pledged not to campaign. The remark, overheard by a Miami Herald reporter, was no doubt meant literally; she was standing outside Lucky Strike Lanes in Miami Beach. But in politics, too, Clinton has recently been putting some questionable rotation on the ball.

First came the South Carolina primary, in which she and her husband tried unsuccessfully to morph Barack Obama into Jesse Jackson. Then came word Sunday that she would fly here to celebrate her “victory” in the Florida primary — even though she and the other Democratic candidates long ago declared it null and void. She said she wanted restoration of the stripped delegates from disobedient Florida and Michigan (where Clinton, the only major candidate on the ballot, beat “uncommitted,” 55 percent to 40 percent).

In my opinion, breaking her promise not to run in those states should have had her tarred and feathered by the press for being a cheater. In my opinion, demanding that the delegates from those states should be recognized should result in her being ejected from any consideration as the nominee. In my opinion, any Democrat who refuses to see that this smacks of the kind of voter manipulation the Bush team was suspected of pulling in 2000 is morally vacant.

And thankfully, the world being a many splendored place, there may still be a chance for those many endorsements, these many stories of infamous deeds and the character of America’s virtue to be brought into play, and to spare us another four years of cynicism.

New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist and global resident genius, Thomas Friedman, wrote a recent column detailing what the intercepted National Intelligence Estimate of Iran might look like. While tongue in cheek, the piece has some truly brilliant insights.

“Yes, our last I.N.I.E. in 1990 concluded that after the collapse of communism, America was on track to become the world’s sole superpower and most compelling role model for Muslim youth — including our own. We were wrong. We now have “high confidence” that America is on a path of self-destruction.”

The brilliance of Friedman - for those who haven’t read any of his work to have it summarized for them - is that the man thinks not in political terms, but in the ready, clean machinery of economic terms. There is no notion of the idealistic to his argument; power matters, the market matters, even values only have worth so far as they are a commodity. In fact, his observations on what role “values” - as defined by the political dialogue here in America - have are apt as well:

“…at a time when America’s bridges, roads, airports and Internet bandwidth have fallen behind other industrial powers, including China, we believe that the U.S. opposition to higher taxes — and the fact that the primary campaigns have focused largely on gay marriage, flag-burning and whether the Christian Bible is the literal truth — means it is “highly unlikely” that America will arrest its decline…

Our intel analysts are baffled that the leading Democrat, Mrs. Clinton, no longer believes in globalization and the leading Republican, Mr. Huckabee, never believed in evolution.”

Satire is often regarded as the most offensive form of criticism. This is, perhaps, because it is the most unvarnished truth - even the veneer of respect is not afforded to its target. That Mrs. Clinton might run a better “horse race” by dint of her debating tempo or consistency of empty message is not something to be admired, or even considered tolerable; Mr. Huckabee’s mythology is not regarded as quaint. The harm of those attitudes is starkly evident.

As an overall assessment of what the real threats and challenges are, the article is a more clarid assessment than any sober soundbite regurgitated by a network telecast talking head. Here, seen through our enemy’s eyes, the stakes are made clear, the rules defined, and, though a good laugh is the only sure result of reading this article, the call to action is raised loud enough to drown out the sea of useless blathering.

New revelations on the September 6th bombing of a target in Syria by the Israeli Air Force make it increasingly unlikely that my assumption that it was solely an exercise against Iran was true. Photos of the bombed site, analyzed by strategic think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, indicate that the site’s wreckage resembles that of a North Korean style nuclear reactor.

“If the facility is confirmed as the site of the attack, the photos provide a potential explanation for Israel’s middle-of-the-night bombing raid.

The facility is located seven miles north of the desert village of At Tibnah, in the Dayr az Zawr region, and about 90 miles from the Iraqi border, according to the ISIS report to be released today. [David] Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, said the size of the structures suggested that Syria might have been building a gas-graphite reactor of about 20 to 25 megawatts of heat, similar to the reactor North Korea built at Yongbyon.

“I’m pretty convinced that Syria was trying to build a nuclear reactor,” Albright said in an interview. He said the project would represent a significant departure from past policies. ISIS, a nonprofit research group, tracks nuclear weapons and stockpiles around the world.”

There’s all the reason in the world for Syria to acquire nukes, as I’ve noted before. With Israel armed with nukes and Iran moving toward some manner of nuclear power, simply relying on its extensive chemical weapons program would make Syria seem like it was bringing a knife to a gunfight. On the other hand, it invites more incidents like those on the 6th of September.

In closing about this follow-up, it bears noting that I disagree with the comments of Mohammed El Baradei, head of the IAEA, when he said:

“ElBaradei also said an airstrike could endanger efforts to contain nuclear proliferation.

“When the Israelis destroyed Saddam Hussein’s research nuclear reactor in 1981, the consequence was that Saddam Hussein pursued his program secretly. He began to establish a huge military nuclear program underground,” he said. “The use of force can set things back, but it does not deal with the roots of the problem.”

And indeed, it doesn’t deal with the roots of the problem, but it is an effective measure. And, furthermore, as for it incentivizing secrecy, secrecy is already thoroughly incentivized - hence this site in Syria being a possibility, not a certainty, and hence Syria having been so shady abouts its construction. Yes, it will mean Syria will have to be even more secretive, but if they’re not going to be upfront about things in the first place, there’s little call to support the IAEA’s argument that the Israeli strike somehow steered Syria away from a path to full disclosure about their unsafe, unstable, clearly-weapon-oriented nuclear site.

While we wait for the Turkish Army to actually cross the border, another kind of Turkey attack plagues a United States consumed by the tragic but exceedingly boring news of the California wild fires:

On a recent afternoon, Kettly Jean-Felix parked her car on Beacon Street in Brookline, fed the parking meter, wheeled around to go to the optician and came face to face with a wild turkey.

The turkey eyed Jean-Felix. Jean-Felix eyed the turkey. It gobbled. She gasped. Then the turkey proceeded to follow the Dorchester woman over the Green Line train tracks, across the street, through traffic, and all the way down the block, pecking at her backside as she went.

“This is so scary,” Jean-Felix said, finally taking refuge inside Cambridge Eye Doctors in Brookline’s bustling Washington Square. “I cannot explain it.” {emphasis mine}

Yes, apparently the turkey population of Massachusetts is on the counterattack. No longer content to be the butt of jokes or the pride of the Thanksgiving table, Turkeys have crossed the concrete border into our suburbs and have taken the fight to our streets. Now these inveterately idiotic birds will be throwing their swollen weight at the backsides of soccer moms all over the exurbs. It seems the marauding gobblers have no decency, even considering the most vulnerable of the civilian population a viable target:

“…they’re afraid of the turkeys around their children. They don’t know what they’ll do.”

My advice? Yell really loud. Turkeys are actually stupid and tender enough to perish from fright at that. You can wipe out a whole empty-noggined mob with a good yell, as even the turkeys not floored by your bellow will drop dead from the horror of seeing their companions keeling over. Failing this, kick the bejeesus out of the bird. This too may frighten it.

More problematic is the invasion of Iraq by Turkey, which seems inevitable. Kurdish terrorists just yesterday grabbed eight Turkish soldiers, and shot up a whole unit the day before, killing twelve. This, after the Prime Minister, the parliament /and/ the military have all said they’re going to go. At this point, it really has become the military equivalent of “the Minnesota long goodbye” - that miasmal ten to sixty minute period of time between when Minnesotans rise to leave and when they actually part company, usually spent talking about the good time just had and the good times to come in the most pallid language.

Then again, if Iraq has shown us anything, it is that you can’t rush a quality invasion. Turkey is amassing no less than an Army Corps to put the big boot to the PKK pests. That takes no small amount of time to assemble, and is not likely to back down when it’s arrived.

And yet, then again, again, if this news week has shown us anything, it’s that the only thing you can truly expect is weirdness.

As an update on the edgey events in the broader Middle East, it has come out that Israel really was after nuclear materials in Syria. September 6th was a busy day for Israel, who both flew a raid over Syrian airspace with a live munition drop on the Syrian border /and/ dispatched commandos that destroyed a North Korean-fostered Syrian nuclear facility. This once again proves that Israel is at the top of their game for multi-tasking regional conflicts.

According to “high level sources”, the raid was a less-than-tidy affair:

Diplomats in North Korea and China believe a number of North Koreans were killed in the strike, based on reports reaching Asian governments about conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials.

This likely means a significant setback for Syria’s plutonium-related plans; President Assad will have to wait on taking out that reverse mortgage on the Golan Heights. And this is an unqualified good thing, as Syria - like North Korea but unlike Iran - is truly an unstable state ruled by a crackpot junta that has far too many terrorist irons in the global fire to do itself any good. Syria has a much better chance of getting its act together than North Korea, but it is still a long way from being a responsible regional leader.

At this point, it is becoming increasingly evident that the broader Middle East - Iran to Israel - is gearing up for war. Every major party is flashing their guns and talking loud. And with the situation in Iraq continuing to circle the drain - thanks in no small part to Iran’s intervention there - the value to the West of winning back some strategic cred by putting a thermobaric boot to Iran’s nuclear program is climbing.

It has been an interesting waltz to say the least. While it had been fomenting for awhile, tracking the events of this September alone shows how each side is using the actions of the other to escalate, all the while speaking as though they want only peace.

The month began with an ill-timed olive branch - a gesture by the ailing Ahmadinajad government to suggest it isn’t the vitriolic monstrosity that the West and its own inflammatory rhetoric has suggested it to be: They announced the opening of a Jewish center in Tehran. As with Bush’s AIDS relief entitlement, nobody abroad really noticed this sign of compassion, and most of those that did considered it fake. Multi-culti Mullahs are hard to swallow, I admit. Then again, we create the future we decide to believe in.

Keeping that same principle in mind, it was vocally announced that the Pentagon had drafted up a warplan to comprehensively annihilate Iran’s major military installations in a “three day blitz.” The plan itself isn’t nearly as significant as the announcement of it. We draw up plans to powderize our adversaries quite often. Rarely do we make sure everyone in the world knows. And, as with the build-up to war with Iraq, we heard from a familiar cast of characters:

First, the IAEA, whose measured and conservative reports of improvement seem just tailored to offend the five-minute-news, shock-scare-drunk sensibilities of American audiences:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power

And from the Achmed Chalabi du jour: “Resistance fighters” who, though they have likely not been back to their country since cellphones weighted eight pounds, claim their intelligence is most accurate:

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”

What isn’t mentioned is that these sleuths-in-exile are listed by us as a Foreign Terrorist Organization - an inconvenient classification when you’re using them as a public justification for possible military action.

Iran’s response was to announce that they’re not the only ones with WMD in the region, pointing their finger squarely at Israel.

He indicated that countries like Syria, Lebanon and Egypt have been reluctant to join the Organisation of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mainly due to the Israeli stance. Israel has signed the Chemical Weapons Convention but has not ratified it yet.

Again, this attitude may sound like more Zionist-bashing, but when dealing with the actions of other nations, it’s best to consider things from their perspective. The score board reads clear to Iran:

Attacks on Iran - 2
Attacks by Iran (publicly) - 0
Wars started by Israel - 4
Wars won by Israel - 5

So, if you were faced with that kind of an opponent, maybe you wouldn’t be so far off the mark by declaring they’re dangerous. But the US’ strategic interests aren’t seen as being furthered by having a balance of WMD power in the Middle East, and so everybody outside the Arab world ignored this and bit their nails about the amount of centrifuges Iran has - which is, according to some sources, quite a bit.

No more than a day later, Israeli jets slashed through Syrian airspace to the Iranian border, dropped munitions and withdrew. The world journalistic community is still scratching its head as to what this meant. Some have theorized that it was to deter the Syrians from enhancing their WMD arsenal, particularly with nuclear assistance from North Korea, who was spotted delivering materials to them. The most likely explanation, however, is the most obvious: Israel was testing to see how a bombing run against Iran would work out.

“Of course Israel wants to let the Americans do that,” said Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

“But if we are left alone, the Israeli army is preparing to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat - if the political level allows it to - and this could have been a part of that.”

Nothing was done to quell the tensions surrounding this technical act of war. Instead, the rest of the West stepped to the fore to flex its might against Iran. France, which has a firm financial stake in Iran but which also has a fairly anti-Muslim leader, directly threatened force from its highest office if Iran didn’t demonstrate full compliance with international bodies in regulating its nuclear program. Sarkozy himself issued the statements, and they were more for the sake of the US and Israel than any Gallic agitation with Iran:

Sarkozy’s comments might well have been intended to alert Tehran that the leaders of US and Israel regard the so-called US-Iran nuclear standoff as an international problem that requires urgent solution.

Furthermore, US intelligence stated that Hizballah would likely launch an offensive against the US if Iran or its interests threatened. Mind you that this is the same group that the White House was, not long ago, immediately afraid of obtaining a nuclear device to use against us. And again, the significance of this isn’t the report itself, but the release of the report. In military diplomacy, statements are part of the arsenal. Specifically, they’re the trigger.

Iran mulled this over for awhile. France was the only one really keeping the rhetoric high, largely because Sarkozy wants to restore its military and diplomatic prestige. Then Iran issued a statement that, if Israel attacked it, it would respond with bombing.

“We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime (Israel) makes a silly mistake,” Iran’s deputy air force commander, Gen. Mohammad Alavi, said in an interview with the semiofficial Fars news agency.

Trusting that the American public had forgotten about the Israeli jets breaking into Syrian airspace and bombing on Iran’s border - or simply did not care - the US issued a counter statement calling Iran’s comments “unprovoked” and “almost provocative”, “bellicose and hateful language“, and so forth. They also said, in the same breath, that the US is not taking military options off of the table when considering how to deal with Iran.

And, all across America, worried citizens came home from their 9-to-5, glanced at the one-minute spot about Iran’s latest bluster and the grim response from the US, and lost a bit more hair or sleep.

Things have only become more tense. Analysts are now talking about how Syria’s considering the Golan Heights to be a militarily viable target. More speculation about North Korean involvement in the region bubbles about. And the visit of Iran’s President to the UN in the near future has politicians here snarling. He’s even been called “Iran’s Hitler” - actually a bit of an apt analogy, but important in this context primarily due to the fact that Saddam was compared to Hitler as well.

Just today, Israel showed the world that it’s at the ready, scrambling its jets for the press to ponder about and the radars of its regional enemies to marvel at.

Further evidence that it’s going to be a hot time in Tehran this winter can be found at this excellent article: 10 Indications That The U.S. Is Planning Military Action Against Iran.

It’s hard not to think that Armageddon is just a news cycle away in the Middle East when you read news of Syria loading a chemical warhead onto a SCUD missile. And while there’re no assurances it’s not, I can at least note that it is very unlikely.

For instance, Israel has a tendency to neutralize threats against it very effectively before they materialize. They started four out of the five last wars, and technically won all five; a good batting average. They tend not to be inhibited by little things like international law. So if it came to the point where Syria wanted to turn Tel Aviv into a sarin sauna, Damascus’ assets would already be wreckage on the runway.

But most importantly, it’s just unlikely that things would go so far at all. And this is the aspect of WMD use that people so readily lose sight of: People need a very good reason to use them.

During the build-up to the Iraq War, fear over that rosy world-ender of a mushroom cloud was stoked to a fever pitch. The unreliability of rogue states seemed to have everyone biting their nails, as pundits were marched out to talk about the batty excesses and anecdotal barbarisms of leaders like Saddam. Instead of seeing things in terms of a horror movie script, people should have been trying to apply the rigors of their own minds to the situation. Logic defuses the fear of the WMD just as handily as it governs its use.

Foremost in the logical considerations is that having something doesn’t necessarily mean using it. Just because you own a firearm does not mean you are going to go on a shooting spree. Just because you own a pool doesn’t mean you swim daily, or even frequently. The US has an enormous nuclear stockpile, as does Russia. Neither state has used those assets, despite several bloody, protracted wars. And believe me, Russia’s war in Chechnya is hardly a pulled punch.

“Then what good are they if you never use them?” You might wonder. The answer comes with a bit more consideration. First off, they’re scary. No one wants to push a nation with that kind of firepower around too much; a WMD arsenal says, “If I’m going out, you’re all going out with me.” That means that they are a deterrent. How much of one?

Well, chemical and bio weapons are only so scary. They require extremely controlled circumstances to use effectively, as environmental factors tend to diffuse them. Imagine, if you will, trying to hit someone with smoke. Hard to aim, right? Even on a day without high winds, or rain, or any of the other things that foul up chem and bio weapons. Now try to hit more than 1,000 people. Even if you had a whole lot of gas, you’d still be working with a very random weapon. Consequently, our nation might’ve been terrified of Saddam’s supposed arsenal of WMD, but our military was sure that it could handle it by staying spread out and moving fast.

That leaves nukes. Nuclear weapons truly are terrifying. Popping off tons of sarin might inflict a few hundred casualties, maybe a few thousand, but that’s nothing compared to nukes. Their menace towards potential attackers is significant. And, after the Iraq War, they have taken on a much greater value.

The War was supposed to “show” rogue nations that they could not have WMD programs or they would be “held accountable” and attacked. Instead, it did the exact opposite. Just look at what happened: We attacked Saddam, who had a pathetic WMD program, but gave money and deals to North Korea and Libya, who have robust WMD programs that include nukes.

Now - let’s say you’re a “crazy dictator” of a bona fide US-approved “rogue state”. Listen to all the talk coming out of Washington and Main Street USA about how, post-9/11, America is all about bringing the whoop-ass to any potential threats. Then look at what happened to Saddam, and then at what happened to Kim Jong Il and Brother Khaddafi.

And tell me whether you can afford NOT to have a strong WMD program.

Therefore, the likelihood is that even “borderline” nations like Syria and Egypt will be drifting towards getting more and more powerful WMD. Yet we have to bear in mind that this does not mean they will use them. If anyone ever “wiped Israel off the map”, they would not be around long enough to establish the caliphate in al Quds - they would be vapor, courtesy of our nuclear arsenal. They know it, and so won’t use it. The only nation that poses a real WMD threat to us is the only nation that planned to “beat” us in a nuclear war, Russia. And they spent nearly half a century with this capability, yet did nothing.

So all the incentives are to have WMD and not use them. We can embargo and sanction and even run black ops to try to halt the build-up of WMD, but until we alter those incentives, it’s only slowing the inevitable.

Iran is grumbling about rising tensions in the Middle East inspired by a promised package of US aid and US arms sales to Saudi Arabia in particular, Israel and Egypt as well. Considering how tense the Middle East is, the last thing we want is rising tensions, right? Actually, no.

Arming our allies to spite Iran is just what to do in the “little Cold War” dynamic of the Middle East today. Iran is right that it increases tensions - as I noted in a recent article, when a strong nation arms itself further, this encourages that nation’s neighbors to similarly arm and consider warfare. In this instance, with Iran suffering under the economic isolation of recent sanctions yet incapable of gaining from a conventional war, it forces Iran’s government to hurt all the more for its aggression and nuclear program.

There are times when complaints about rising tensions are justified. Considering the military adventurism of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union - a legacy Vladimir Putin proudly pronounces he is the inheritor of - continuing to pour certain weapons like the flawed ABM system into states rival to Russia is likely unwise. But Iran is not the half-mad Russian bear, who would counter any measure to stifle its nuclear option with a rush of its copious oil wealth into an augmentation of its already unmanageable arsenal. Iran’s wealth is in jeopardy, its people - from high advisors to students - are demonstrably unhappy about it, and it can ill afford the further chill on its economy of being forced into a little Cold War.

It puts Iran into the hard position we want it in - increasingly looking the poor partner as its chances at regional hegemony slip away the longer it holds onto its nuclear power. And in reply to its cries over peaked tensions, it fires back, “So what are you going to do now? So what?” Are you going to attack somebody, even though you know you’ll unite the Middle East against you and lose whatever short gains you have to Western nation firepower? Are you going to continue developing the bomb despite the public support and prosperity you’re sending down the drain? Or are you going to behave?

Iran is running out of options, and these recent actions help wall them off. Its people understand this. Many of its leaders to as well. Let’s hope that Iran’s clerics apply as flexible criteria for summary removal to Achmedinajad as they did to liberal parliament members.

Prime Minister Maliki has announced that US troops can leave “any time they want”, and in essence added that we could also not let the door hit us on the ass on the way out.

Is this a show of confidence? Unlikely. More likely, considering the wealth of criticism of US actions he heaped on us, he expects that the US’ plan is dashing his dreams of arming Shiite militias through the Iraqi Army we finance, and crushing the Sunni militias as soon as the US, exhausted of war, departs. For now we have a more effective and balanced military strategy. Now we have - at least rhetorical - emphasis on the primacy of a political solution. Now we have accountability leveled against his government.

And so now Maliki fears that we are on to his vision of a state-sponsored Shiite insurgency. If not “on to him”, at least that we are canny enough to know that arming Sunni extremists puts a check on Shiite extremists. He doubtless fears the outcome that we have suggested the Surge strategy could enable - armed Sunnis, armed Shi’a, and an Iraqi Parliament forced by the presence of a high-level US delegation to enact effective reconciliation, or at least to be held more accountable. He must be reading my blog.

Or he sees the writing on the wall. Either way, he knows that we’re now taking a subversive approach towards Sunni opposition, and that deflates the Shi’a predominance of the Iraqi state’s struggle against the militias. He also must suspect that while we work to focus on al-Qaeda with all Nationalist forces we can muster to our cause, we will also not tolerate the blatant intervention of another foreign agency - Iran. That Maliki’s announcement came merely a day after we hit a Shiite police station suspected of being a nexus of collaboration with Iran’s “Delta Force”, the “Quds Force”, and attacked the financial assets of that force, is no coincidence.

Now Maliki has given the White House a poison pill to swallow in reply. The Administration’s options to respond are severely limited. His critics, even moderate Republicans among them, will surely say, “You are being told by the American people to leave. Now the Iraq people have said you can leave. Do you think you know better than the American people and the Iraqi people?”

And, of course, we do know better - we know that Maliki is not an ally, has never been an ally, but is an adversary. He is an extension of the will to Shiite dominance that has in its factious ranks such other charming characters as Mukhtada al-Sadr. By further extension, he is connected by a singularity of vision to Iran.

I have sometimes felt Iraq could be well-served by simply acknowledging that it is a Shi’a dominated state. The Shi’a are the leading force in the political structure we endorsed - a democratic structure. If we, too, have been forthright in our stated aims for the Iraqi government’s formation, we would abide by their wishes and leave.

But if we are to be honest with ourselves, we need to recognize that in Prime Minister Maliki we do not face a mere difference of opinion over the course of the Surge, but a hostile regime of our own creation.

The mixed report on the progress of the Iraq situation coming out of the White House this week has been reviewed by both supporters and critics of the President’s policy with too general a perspective. Detractors have been quick to seize on the eight of eighteen grades that the Iraqi government has been found making unsatisfactory progress in. The White House and its advocates have fixed on the eight satisfactory grades. But an objective observation finds a definite divide in the report that again underscores the point this blog and other defense analysts have noted - that in Iraq, there is a distinct party that is now making the grade and a distinct party that is failing.

The US military and the sectarian groups it has coaxed to join in its security efforts are passing the grade. The Surge, while not entirely successful, has begun to isolate the greatest threat to current objectives for stability - al-Qaeda’s coalition. It has done this tactically, by securing neighborhoods with an enduring presence and by changing the mission objective from clearing the enemy to fixing, surrounding and eliminating it. And it has done this strategically, by enabling the ire of Nationalist militias against the al-Qaeda interlopers who endanger their own ploys for control. In the once-lethal Anbar province, in the south and in the areas around Mosul, regions that were once meat-grinders for Americans now have local militias striving to drive out al-Qaeda. This is progress. It is not final, nor will it endure without real reconciliation, but it is real. It should be appreciated.

Conversely, the Iraqi government has failed. While the bodies of American soldiers and their Iraqi comrades provide the scar tissue, the infectious political factionalism is still being allowed to fester. Giving militias more ability to control their neighborhoods makes them better enemies to al-Qaeda, not better allies of a unity government. The measures of true reconciliation and power sharing - provincial rule; even-handed enforcement of the law; oil revenue sharing; the reverse of de-Baathification - all are stalled and no one with power in Baghdad has their shoulder to the wheel to force them to move. There is no incentive for them. The common people throughout Iraq want better lives; the politicians in Baghdad want to fire up their base for what most see as an inevitable all-out civil war.

One grade on the checklist, militia disarmament, seems ludicrous in its inclusion. Is the Iraq government really expected to disarm militias? How can this be when the US is actively arming the overtly sectarian Sunni militias while by extension arming the Shiites who dominate the legitimate security force structure? The notion is absurd - it asks the Iraqis to take away the very guns we are giving the militias. Then again, absurdity never got in the way of a war: just today a significant assault intended to disarm Shiite militias with likely connections with Iran enflamed public hatred and disgust of America’s forces.

But many of the “benchmarks” are not absurd. They are clear and concrete measures necessary to achieving unity. The problem with them is, as we’ve observed consistently, that no one is advocating or acting on them with the same sense of duty and sacrifice as they are the military aspects of the Iraq strategy. The White House has sent a sustained, innovative and forceful troop presence into the conflict, but not a diplomatic presence. It has allowed commanders to sit down with former enemies in the Sunni Nationalist brigades until some kind of alliance is reached, but has not demanded that the Iraqi government similarly sit down with high-level American politicians until an alliance is reached. It feels at liberty to lock entire townships like Baqouba and Sadr City in a vice grip of troops, but has not locked in the only people who can truly enact an end to sectarian strife with legislation - the Iraqi parliament.

It must. There will be no enduring peace without its framework being laid now, and laid strong. In order to achieve this, the White House has to abandon its position of isolating itself from responsibility for Iraq’s political attitude and has to adopt a stance like Eisenhower when he said of the Korean conflict in ‘52, “I will go to Korea”.

Go to Iraq, President Bush. If you will not send yourself, send someone with true muscle and significance, such as Vice-President Cheney or Secretary Rice. Send them to some air-conditioned complex in the heart of the Green Zone now declared “satisfactory” in its safety, lock the doors, and do not come out until legislation is drafted and enacted - until Iraq has as substantial a foundation for peace as it does for security.

We noted in last post that as far as foreign entanglements go, Iraq is a thicket of razor wire. We’re doing a good job driving the main insurgent activity into Diyala and out of Baghdad’s immediate environs, but this only serves to give the political factions in the capital the latitude to improve the infrastructure there, and those factions are doing no more than fighting over how best to be factious. Even that latitude is jeopardized by insufficiencies in the Iraqi led and comprised security forces committed to protecting the Green Zone, as an attack this last hour suggests.

So we are investing critical billions - is there any other kind? - into creating a fragile shell for power players who use it as an arena. And why should they do otherwise? The Shia expect Civil War to be an inevitability if they wait long enough, just as they consider their victory in it to be similarly inevitable. The Sunni expect no less from the Shia, and spend their time waving for help with one hand while hoarding weaponry with the other - those that aren’t already formal or informal members of the insurgency. And the Kurds realize they’re running their own show. They profit from the current situation because it means the other two factions are ignoring them. But meanwhile, their house of cards risks tipping into the quagmire as the Turkish Army, some 140,000 strong, stomps their feet and prepares to invade in order to prevent terror cells from striking them from within Iraq’s borders.

That - more so than the July 15th assessment, from which we can only expect more tongue-clucking - is the real Sword of Damocles in this scenario. If the Turks invade Iraq, it will effectively bring a whole different level of conflict to the ailing state, with not a simple two but three major parties involved. It forces the Coalition of the Willing to either defend Iraq from the Turks, defend the Turks from Iraq, or somehow work out an accomodation.

And yet, we have heard nothing from the White House but a bland statement of “concern” from Tony Snow. Not exactly hard words that demand action, nor give the potential crisis it’s due priority - just like the factional disputes in Iraq are shrugged off as someone else’s responsibility. It has to be realized that it’s not a matter of whether the Iraqis can or cannot “stand up” on their own - it is that they have very little incentive to do so. US withdrawal is not a stick that the Shia militias - Prime Minister Maliki’s Dawa party included - are especially concerned about. They have to be made to care, one way or another, otherwise we are acting inadequately and in vain.

So why do we continue to fight? Why sacrifice for a cause that is not only not our own, but directed by people uninterested in having us?

The answer is succinctly put by Colin Powell: “You break it, you buy it.”

This is our mess, whether we want to lay down lives on it or not. When we wrested control of Iraq from the Hussein government, we had to have the means to control the country ourselves. We didn’t. But the necessity still has not gone away, and abandoning Iraq because it’s unstable only means we enable that instability - enable it and will have to suffer the consequences when it afflicts neighbors we won’t so readily abandon, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.

I’m not echoing the line about the terrorists following us home. It is not a matter of “fight them there or fight them here”. That’s not the way terrorists operate. Iraq has been a financial sinkhole for al-Qaeda in many ways, but it doesn’t prevent international terrorism from striking directly at the nations of the West. If anything, our presence in Iraq increases the recruitment of organizations like al-Qaeda by making membership in its ranks seem to Muslims like valid forms of resistance against an occupier. Remove us from Iraq and the conflict becomes one between Mesopotamian nations, not between a Muslim resistor and a non-Muslim occupier. Even if resentment against American doesn’t decline, the actual motivating factor of the ongoing resistance will be removed. Internationally, membership in al-Qaeda will suffer.

No, al-Qaeda will do as it always has - strike us however best it can. But, as the war’s detractors have long insisted, Iraq is not about al-Qaeda. The consequences of abandoning it aren’t either.

They are about Turkey, invading to protect itself from a lawless neighborhood harboring terrorists, now without the protection of the US. They are about Iran fostering the rise of a Shia puppet state and stirring the pot of ethnic conflict. They are about Saudi Arabia quietly financing Sunni nationalists to counter Iran. In sum, they are about complete regional upheaval. Doomsday scenarios of an enormous caliphate under Iran’s control are unlikely. More likely are skyrocketing gas prices, a spike in regional terrorist attacks, and a dire risk to American allies.

They are about having to go back, under yet worse circumstances, for yet more unclear objectives.

The political solution does not readily present itself. So far, surprisingly, we have been far more readily disposed to scrap our relatively-successful military operations than we are to scrapping the far more flawed, more important political exercise of the Iraqi government. This seems absurd. We are talking about dismantling the military authority in Iraq avidly enough, when what /really/ is the issue is that political authority needs to be built up - even if it’s from the ground up.

British Raj style of governance may be unappealing. But we need to consider if failure to save Iraq and its surrounding nations from a catastrophe we caused and the likelihood of having to return is even less appealing.

In anticipation of the July 15th briefing I here encapsulate the developing events in Iraq. Partly this is to compile a list of significant events in order to figure whether progress is being made in the slightest. But before we begin to measure, it’s worthwhile to figure out how to measure.

[Ed. Note: Thanks to REM for correction on the Churchill quote.]

Despite their convenience, body counts have never been a good indicator of how a war’s going - ours or theirs. Measuring the enemy’s body count certainly doesn’t work, as Vietnam well proved. A staggering amount of Vietnamese were killed in the latter phases of the war, even after Nixon’s victory resulted in a shift from troop level increases to withdrawal, and still it did nothing to shatter the enemy’s resolve. Similarly, going on the basis of our own casualties is again a bad indicator.

There are two reasons for this, and while neither has much to do with the basis of anti-war advocates’ arguments, both strike against the foremost reason they have been gaining in strength of late - namely, the mounting number of American dead “despite” the Surge. What people must realize is that the mounting dead are not an unexpected byproduct of the Surge, but in many ways the result of it.

The first reason for this is that more troops means more contact with the enemy, and more contact means more death. Sometimes this is more death all around, but in a counter-insurgency like Iraq, it could mean just against the occupier. The purpose of this is not purely suicidal, however - the intent is always to use those troops to hold more ground, either to secure against the enemy or to encircle and destroy them.

The second reason is that it is usually when a side is pressured by its adversary that it throws more forces into the fray with more determined and cunning tactics. This has been the case in almost every major war of late - World War I had the German Spring Offensive in response to the United States entering the war, World War II had the notorious Battle of the Bulge as well as similar offensives in the south and in the east, Korea had Pork Chop Hill, Vietnam had the Tet Offensive and the Gulf War had the Battle of 73 Easting. In each instance, the enemy makes a resolute effort to inflict harm so that they’re not overwhelmed fatally. I cannot emphasize enough how high the carnage climbs in the last phases of successful wars - especially our last successful example of nation building from that list, World War II.

One could easily look at that list and say, “Yes, but we lost in Vietnam and didn’t achieve much in Korea”. The critical difference in success is not the body counts, nor when in the process of the war they occurred, but in the political strategy and aims, and in the resolve to see the war through.

World War II was massively expensive in its final phases, in both men and treasure. Body counts soared on all sides, and the US teetered near bankruptcy considering its war debt. So in the end it was moral resolve that saw that conflict through to a successful end as much - if not more so - than any other factor. Considering the resolve shown by the enemy, who truly fought to the last as we occupied their homeland with devastating force, it could have been a very near thing.

We lost in Vietnam because we chose to pull out. Tet was a horrible, even crippling blow to many of the North Vietnamese forces, particularly their irregulars, the Viet Cong. But rather than exploit this, we kept pressure on them at consistent levels and then, a year later, switched to a strategy of withdrawal.

That having been said, pulling out is not always a bad thing. In Vietnam it was arguably the right thing, because what it would have taken to win at that late phase would have been a strategy too aggressive for the American psyche and American coffers to endure - essentially an invasion and occupation of the North. Korea was a similar situation, wherein we had neither the resources nor the raw manpower to invade our real adversary above the contested 38th Parallel - the People’s Republic of China. So even though political strategy and the will to see it out is the critical factor in turning the late phase bloodbath into grounds for a victory parade or for decades of hand-wringing, people need to be honest about what the cost of victory will be. There is no doubt that America, with its awesome resources, can pay it. The question is whether it wants to.

Right now, the manpower and capital of the Surge is being poured into a single strategic purpose. It is not the annihilation of the al-Qaeda elements in Iraq, even though that’s part of it. It is not securing all of Baghdad or the contested areas either, though providing a more permanent security presence in critical areas can, is, and should be going on. It is giving the Iraqi Parliament and the areas of the country that they need to apply their political will to in order to create an infrastructure some protection.

In order to judge our success in Iraq, we must not look at the body counts. The “suicidal surge” is an accurate characterization. That is the nature of war. It is always suicide. We may wrap it in flags and anthems and endless reels of action films but in the end result, no matter what is written on the note there is still a body on the floor. In Iraq’s case, 3,600 American bodies. But in order to judge the success of that sacrifice, we need to judge not the sacrifice itself but the end it was made for.

We need to judge the political progress being made.

And, sadly, though our troops have been committed to the fight in record numbers and our ethics, possibly our ultimate security, have been compromised as we arm both Shiite and Sunni militants - as we give every indication tactically that we will defeat the hard line insurgents at any cost - there has been no such political commitment. The surge has us putting our troops in terrific risk, both in conventional battles and by essentially massing up so that insurgents can bomb us more effectively, and yet both our political leadership and the Iraqis have shown no such embrace of risk, no such devotion to victory. This is the truly sickening and sad thing about Iraq. We’re demanding that our sons and daughters step in front of bullets and bombs so that partisan strife can continue. Eight Americans died while Bush was hosting Putin for two days of fun in the sun in Kennebunkport.

That is not oversimplifying or over dramatizing. There is no doubt the ABM quarrel with Russia is a matter of grand significance, but can any American think there is a more pressing issue than Iraq? And since we can, objectively, set aside the bearing the casualties of the Surge have as a measure of the war’s outcome, can we all subjectively agree that it seems the political solution those casualties are being sacrificed for is under served by both sides?

Bush has done extremely little as regards dealing with the Iraq parliament this year. Granted, it is the Iraqis in parliament themselves who need to reconcile and share power, and it is they who’re dragging their feet, but then we must consider why we’re loath to force them to move. Why are we content to perpetuate this seemingly ceaseless cycle of butchery in order to prop up a government that is not just practically but willfully dysfunctional?

Just like in the last phases of World War II and of Vietnam - of our proudest war and our most shameful - we are scraping the bottom of the war chest. The expense to our treasury is enormous, and the term “war economy”, spoken with an ominous and despair tone, is becoming increasingly familiar. The expense in terms of damage to the minds and bodies of our service people is also crippling on a mass scale, as the Walter Reed, VA compensation and recruiting failures have shown. Things are breaking down. The same holds true for the strongholds of al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia. But to what end are we stacking up the bodies in record amounts? Bush seems to be evading the Iraq issue rather than tackling it with all he has. Certainly the Congress has been fixated on it of late. But both sides talk merely of the military aspect. It is the political failures of the Iraqi parliament that must be at the center of each argument.

And, just as only direct, sustained force can win tactically, only direct, sustained political intervention is going to get things moving in the halls of power in Baghdad. Until then, we can pile our corpses as high as we’d like to buttress those walls. Without providing a strong center with political will, it lets the universal chaos of war drift across the fine line between success and simple suicide.