Mullen worries about troop withdrawal timeline
1 hour, 6 minutes ago
The Pentagon's top military officer said Sunday a specific time frame for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq could jeopardize political and economic progress, leading to "dangerous consequences."

Adm. Mike Mullen said the agreement between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to set a "general time horizon" for bringing more troops home from the war was a sign of "healthy negotiations for a burgeoning democracy."

"I think the strategic goals of having time horizons are ones that we all seek because eventually we would like to see U.S. forces draw down and eventually all come home," the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said. "This right now doesn't speak to either time lines or timetables, based on my understanding of where we are."

The best way to determine troops levels, he said, is to assess the conditions on the ground and to consult with American commanders — the mission Bush has given him.

"Should that mission change, and we get a new president, and should those conditions be conditions that get generated or required in order to advise a future president, I would do so accordingly," Mullen said. "Based on my time in and out of Iraq in recent months, I think the conditions-based assessments are the way to go and they're very solid. We're making progress and we can move forward accordingly based on those conditions."

Al-Maliki was quoted by a German magazine over the weekend as saying U.S. troops should leave "as soon as possible" and he called Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's suggestion of 16 months "the right timeframe for a withdrawal." Later, his chief spokesman said in a statement that the prime minister's comments were "not conveyed accurately."

Mullen, asked about the possibility of withdrawing all combat troops within two years, said, "I think the consequences could be very dangerous."

"It hard to say exactly what would happen. I'd worry about any kind of rapid movement out and creating instability where we have stability. We're engaged very much right now with the Iraqi people. The Iraqi leadership is starting to generate the kind of political progress that we need to make. The economy is starting to move in the right direction. So all those things are moving in the right direction," Mullen said.

The military buildup in Iraq that began more than 18 months ago has ended. In recent days, the last of the five additional combat brigades sent in by Bush last year has left the country.

"The day is coming when American forces will step back more and more from combat roles," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "The day is coming when will be doing more in the way of training and less in the way of fighting. Those goals are being achieved now. ... And so, it's not at all unusual to start to think that there is a horizon out there, in the not too distant future, in which the roles and responsibilities of the U.S. forces are going to change dramatically and those of the Iraqi forces are going to become dominant."

Mullen said if conditions keep improving, "I would look to be able to make recommendations to President Bush in the fall to continue those reductions." Asked if more troops might depart before Bush leaves office in January, Mullen said, "Certainly there are assumptions which you could make which would make that possible."

Turning attention to Afghanistan, where violence is on the rise from Taliban attacks, Mullen expressed concern about "a joining, a syndication, of various extremists and terrorist groups which provides for a much more intense threat, internal to Pakistan as well as the ability to flow — greater freedom to flow forces across that porous border."

The top U.S. commander in Iraq said in an Associated Press interview Saturday that after intense U.S. assaults, al-Qaida may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus said there are signs that foreign fighters recruited by al-Qaida to do battle in Iraq are being diverted to the largely ungoverned areas in Pakistan from which the fighters can cross into Afghanistan.

Mullen cited "mixed progress" in Afghanistan, but added, "I would not say in any way, shape or form that we're losing in Afghanistan."

Noting U.S. participation in international talks Saturday with Iran over its nuclear program, Mullen said he was encouraged. "A few weeks ago I wouldn't have thought those were possible."

But he said he supports continued economic, financial, diplomatic and political pressure on Iran.

"I fundamentally believe that they're on a path to achieve nuclear weapons some time in the future. I think that's a very destabilizing possibility in that part of the world. I don't need — we don't need — any more instability in that part of the world," Mullen said.

Rice said she believes pressure is growing on Iran "to do the right thing." But, she added, while the U.S. is committed to a diplomatic solution, Bush is keeping all options open.

Mullen, meanwhile, discussed the fallout from a potential attack against Tehran by either the U.S. or Israel. "Right now I'm fighting two wars and I don't need a third one."

He added, "I worry about the instability in that part of the world and, in fact, the possible unintended consequences of a strike like that and, in fact, having an impact throughout the region that would be difficult to both predict exactly what it would be and then the actions that we would have to take to contain it."

Mullen appeared on "Fox News Sunday," while Rice's interview with CNN's "Late Edition" was taped Friday and aired Sunday.

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Globalizations means fewer wars, less death
Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 07/18/2008 - 12:23. By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, Scripps Howard News Service editorials and opinion
Two new reports about our world reiterate the overwhelmingly positive impact of globalization upon our planet, making it more peaceful and more just.

The "Human Security Brief 2007," compiled by Canada's Simon Fraser University, details the continuing overall decline in global conflict that began with globalization's rapid expansion around the planet in recent years, to include the complete absence of classic state-on-state war since 2003.

As a result, total deaths from conflicts are now lower than the world has ever seen. For anyone looking for a "new world order" after the Cold War, this is it: far fewer wars and much less death from them.

Better yet, when Iraq's bloody civil war is factored out of the equation, deaths from terrorism have declined globally since 9/11 by roughly 40 percent.

Hold Bush-Cheney accountable for botching the occupation and unleashing that violence, but make no mistake, while the sectarian strife briefly fueled al Qaeda's "cause celebre," toppling Saddam did not trigger an upsurge in global terrorism. That long war hasn't made the world more dangerous in the long run.

According to the brief's data, intrastate wars kill -- on average -- far fewer people than interstate wars, even when they are internationalized. Since 1950, the average interstate war killed approximately 35,000 people, while the average intrastate conflict killed less than 3,000, jumping to almost 9,000 when conflict spilled across borders and/or outsiders intervened.

Some look at those statistics and say, "This means we should never bother intervening in civil conflicts and instead should simply let 'em burn." But I spot the essential payoff of that implied new world order: the basic conflict America faces today is -- at worst -- one-quarter the size of death and destruction of those we routinely encountered in decades past -- all dangerous proliferation of technologies notwithstanding.

And no, that's not just a result of the death of superpower rivalry, but rather a series of signals that America has sent the global community since 1990 through our leadership of international coalitions to address regional crisis situations -- Iraq included. The more willing we are to move "down" the conflict spectrum from big wars to civil strife, the more safe we make the world by signaling our commitment to its system management. That doesn't mean America must take on all crises, just that we're trying -- in conjunction with other great powers -- to push "down" the very definition of crisis over time to lower thresholds.

The third statistic worth noting is the profound decrease in civil strife in Africa over the past few years. This is clearly tied to globalization's rapid spread, as rising Asia's huge up-tick in demand for natural resources has benefited Africa plenty, to include a substantial flow of foreign direct investment designed to pull African economics into globalization's network chains of supply and production.

But all of these positive trends constitute mere ripples before the tsunami of structural change globalization now fosters in the emergence of a "world middle class" of unprecedented size and proportion. Most estimates of today's global middle class peg it at a bit more than one-quarter of the world's population. But as investment firm Goldman Sachs argues in a paper entitled, "The Expanding Middle," globalization should add two billion new consumers to that category over the next two decades, essentially doubling the global share.

This is the essential link: regional conflicts had to be progressively eradicated to allow for globalization to expand and take deep root. The cause-and-effect dynamic that we begin to recognize on a global scale mirrors the Bush administration's success in Iraq with the improved counterinsurgency approach.

Two essential take-aways: 1) we do not live in a more dangerous world and globalization's stunning spread both reflects and feeds that happy reality; and 2) the wars we'll need to manage to protect globalization's advance are getting smaller with time.

So be unafraid -- be very unafraid!

(Thomas P.M. Barnett (tom@thomaspmbarnett.com) is a distinguished strategist at the Oak Ridge Associated Universities and author of the forthcoming book "Great Powers: America and the World After Bush.")

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

Oil Cash May Prove A Shaky Crutch for Iran's Ahmadinejad
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 30, 2008; A01

TEHRAN -- Faced with rapid inflation and growing international concern about his country's nuclear ambitions, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is relying on huge increases in oil and gas revenue to insulate his government from internal and external pressures.

Some of the same Western countries taking steps to compel Iran to stop uranium enrichment are also the biggest consumers of its oil and gas. The European Union said last week that it would freeze the assets of Bank Melli, Iran's largest, in keeping with U.N. sanctions. The E.U. is also the leading global consumer of Iranian oil and gas.

Oil wealth, which funds 60 percent of the national budget, has allowed Iran's government to exercise its power to cut interest rates and ignore warnings from the country's Central Bank that overspending will worsen inflation.

Iran earned $80 billion from oil and gas sales in the fiscal year that ended March 20, up from $35 billion three years ago. But the increasing oil revenue is causing a widening gap between rich and poor, as some businesspeople prosper while inflation eats away at consumers' purchasing power. These developments jeopardize Ahmadinejad's populist appeal and could hurt his campaign for reelection in 2009.

Since 2005, when Ahmadinejad came to power, the annual rate of inflation has risen from 12.1 percent to 19.2 percent, according to Central Bank figures. The rate reached 25.2 percent in May, the bank said.

Ahmadinejad has long tussled with economic officials, who say the government has lacked expertise. Indeed, Central Bank governor Tahmasb Mazaheri has straightforward advice for Iran's leaders: "They should decrease the budget deficit, limit spending money and refrain from using oil revenues."

Ahmadinejad announced last week that he would implement unspecified changes in Iran's banking, taxation and import systems and blamed their leaders for being "ineffective." He also conceded that inflation was a "big problem."

Ahmad Zeidabadi, an Iranian political analyst who writes for several anti-government media outlets, said that increased oil revenue had "given the government lots of self-confidence in many fields."

"When you have plenty of money you can solve many problems," Zeidabadi said. But he also noted the danger of intertwining the country's economic fate with the fluctuating price of oil. "If the price suddenly would drop, they will not be able to provide the country with necessary imports. The oil money is this government's lifeline."

A small coterie of developers, oil traders and businesspeople with lucrative government contracts are profiting from the oil boom. Shiny new BMWs crowd the streets of northern Tehran, where real estate prices have doubled or tripled and where luxury developments can command $2,000 per square foot.

But the majority of Iranians have suffered from the inflation that analysts say is partly the result of government spending. Asgar Eskandiary, 32, a teacher, said he thanked God for the health insurance he bought years ago because it paid for a sinus operation. Otherwise, he and his wife would have had to spend rent money on the operation and "we would have lost our apartment for sure," he said, drinking a warm Coke at a fast-food restaurant where a blackout to save energy had deterred other customers.

Every visit to the supermarket brings unpleasant surprises, he said. The price of milk powder, which the couple needs for their infant son, increased from the equivalent of $3 to about $4.30 in just over a year's time. He makes the equivalent of about $540 a month and "can barely cope," he said. "We spend all we have for our small baby."

The teacher said he saw only one solution. "I want to write a letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He needs to bring back the experts, people who know about economy. The government doesn't know what they are doing."

During an interview conducted by one of his close aides on state television, Ahmadinejad acknowledged last Monday that mostly the rich were benefiting from the subsidies that Iran provides for gas, water, energy, wheat and rice. He announced the establishment of national bank accounts in which the poor would receive their subsidies directly.

But analysts feared that the move would lead to more economic problems. "Yet another direct injection of money into the society will create more inflation," Zeidabadi said.

The private sector, which makes up only 15 percent of the Iranian economy, could help with providing jobs. But businesspeople say they have been particularly hurt by sanctions that target international banking.

"We simply can't transfer money, which means that we can't buy spare parts for our factories," said Bodagh Khanbodagi, honorary president of the private Iranian-German business chamber. German export credits backing trade with Iran totaled about $730 million last year, about half the value of German export credits in 2006 and one-fifth that in 2004, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service released this month.

"Nobody's coming over, and I don't see any minister visiting here in the near future," he said, sipping tea in an office decorated with pictures of himself with German and Iranian dignitaries.

Even if European companies want to deal with Iran, the financial obstacles imposed by Western countries have made payment nearly impossible, he said. "When an Iranian entrepreneur wants to purchase an engine part in Germany, he will find himself in a situation where he simply can't pay through a bank, since almost all big international banks have stopped working with Iran. What should this person do? Fly to Frankfurt carrying a briefcase holding 5 million euros? He will be arrested at the airport," Khanbodagi said.

"We are now looking towards the East," he said. "Almost everything we need we can get there. It just takes longer and some of the quality is less."

The Iranian government has been increasing ties with non-Western countries, mainly China, but relations with several South American and certain African nations have also expanded.

"Because money doesn't matter, the government has started buying many products from abroad. But this has been hurting production inside Iran and has basically made us more dependent on foreign states," said Zeidabadi, who has been imprisoned several times for his writings.

"If oil prices would have been lower, the government would have had to change its internal and foreign policies," Zeidabadi said. "Ahmadinejad now fully depends on a high oil price. They got used to the high income. But they are depending on something that they cannot control. That is a dangerous game."

Mazaheri, the Central Bank governor, is regarded as the last remaining technocrat to hold a powerful position in the Iranian executive branch, which is now mostly run by partisan supporters of Ahmadinejad. "We ask all of the policymakers, including the government, to adhere to the economic principles and not to compromise them," he said in a recent interview.

Ahmadinejad recently overruled the governor's opposition to further decreasing interest rates, which have been cut from 24 percent in 2005 to the current rate of 10 percent. "The government believes that by decreasing the interest rate they can lower the inflation rate," Mazaheri said.

If the government doesn't change its policies, he said, "inflation will increase, just as we faced higher inflation rates last year."

Mazaheri, who sports the three-day stubble that Iranian civil servants wear to honor Islam, said that when he goes shopping for groceries with his wife, she complains about the high prices.

"My wife and many Iranian people are suffering from the inflation," he said. "The rich benefit from it -- their assets increase in price and, in the absence of a fair tax and efficient tax system, their income will be more. But the majority of the people in the middle and lower class suffer."

July 18, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Coming Activist Age

By DAVID BROOKS
We’re entering an era of epic legislation. There are at least five large problems that will compel the federal government to act in gigantic ways over the next few years.

First, there is the erosion of the social contract. Private sector firms are less likely to provide health benefits, producing a desperate need for health care reform. Second, there is the energy shortage. Rising Asian demand strains worldwide supply, threatening industry and consumers, and producing calls for a bold energy initiative. Third, there is the stagnation in human capital. During the 20th century, Americans were better educated than the citizens of any other power. Since 1970, that lead has been forfeited, producing inequality and wage stagnation. To compete, the U.S. will require a series of human capital initiatives.

Fourth, there’s financial market reform. In an intricately connected world, even Republican administrations cannot allow big institutions to fail. If government is going to guarantee against failure, then it is inevitably going to get more involved in regulating how businesses are run. Fifth, there’s infrastructure reform. The U.S. transportation system is in shambles and will require major new projects.

All of this means that the next few years will be an age of government activism. You may think, therefore, that this situation is ripe for Democratic dominance. The Democrats are the natural party of federal vigor. Voters prefer Democratic approaches to issues like health care and education by as much as 25 percentage points.

Yet, historically, periods of great governmental change have often been periods of conservative rule. It’s as if voters understand that they need big changes, but they want those changes planned and enacted by leaders who will restrain the pace of change and prevent radical excess.

Two of the most prominent conservative reformers were Benjamin Disraeli and Theodore Roosevelt. Both reframed the political debate so that it was not change versus the status quo, it was unfamiliar change versus cautious, patriotic change designed to preserve the traditional virtues of the nation.

Disraeli inherited a British Conservative Party that was a political club for the landowning class. He created One Nation Conservatism, a reminder that Britain was one community, with a sense of mutual responsibility across classes. Then, at the pinnacle of his career, he embraced reform, expanding the franchise to the socially conservative working class.

Disraeli saw this change as a way to restore ancient glories. Or, as he put it: “In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.”

Like Disraeli, Roosevelt was a romantic nationalist. While the more progressive reformers spoke the international language of modernization, Roosevelt spoke the language of highly charged Americanism.

He believed private property was the basis of American greatness. He built his persona around the classic American icons: the cowboy, fighter and pioneer.

He defended his initiatives as the way to maintain the economic and social order. People had enough change in their lives; they were looking for government that could preserve the way things already were. If the trusts threatened the traditional small businessman, he would take on the trusts. If industrialism threatened the natural landscape, he would become a preservationist.

His formula was like Disraeli’s: political innovation to restore traditional national morality. He had an image of an American hero — thrifty, hard-working, vigorous and righteous — and sought to create a Square Deal for that sort of person. “The true function of the state as it interferes in social life,” Roosevelt wrote, “should be to make the chances of competition more even, not to abolish them.”

John McCain’s challenge is to recreate this model. He will never get as many cheers in Germany as Barack Obama, but for a century his family has embodied American heroism. He will never seem as young and forward-leaning as his opponent, but he did have his values formed in an age that people now look back to with respect.

The high point of his campaign, so far, has been his energy policy, which is comprehensive and bold, but does not try to turn us into a nation of bicyclists. It does not view America’s energy-intense economy as a sign of sinfulness.

If McCain is going to win this election, it will because he can communicate an essential truth — that people in a great and successful nation do not want change for its own sake. But they do realize that it’s only through careful reform that they can preserve what they and their ancestors have so laboriously built.

OPINION
The New Reality in Iraq
By FREDERICK W. KAGAN , KIMBERLY KAGAN AND JACK KEANE
July 16, 2008; Page A17
All of the most important objectives of the surge have been accomplished in Iraq. The sectarian civil war is ended; al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has been dealt a devastating blow; and the Sadrist militia and other Iranian-backed militant groups have been disrupted.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government has accomplished almost all of the legislative benchmarks set by the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration. More important, it is gaining wider legitimacy among the population. The attention of Iraqis across the country is focused on the upcoming provincial elections, which will be a pivotal moment in Iraq's development.

AP
A boy enjoys a ride at a park in Baghdad, Wednesday, July 9.
The result is that we have an extraordinary – but fleeting – opportunity to advance America's security and the stability of a vital region of the world.

As far as the civil war is concerned, there have been virtually no sectarian killings recorded for the past 10 weeks. Violence is still perpetrated by organized groups, but AQI, the remnant Sunni insurgents and Shiite fighters are now focused on attacking their own members who have defected to our side. This is a measure of their weakness. The Iraqi population is increasingly mobilizing against the perpetrators of violence, flooding American and Iraqi forces with tips about the locations of weapons caches and key militant leaders – Sunnis turning in Sunnis and Shia turning in Shia.

The fighters have not simply hidden their weapons and gone to ground to await the next opportunity to kill each other. The Sunni insurgency, as well as AQI, has been severely disrupted. Coalition and Iraqi forces have killed or detained many key leaders, driven the militants out of every one of Iraq's major cities (including Mosul), and are pursuing the remnants vigorously in rural areas and the desert.

The Shiite militias have also been broken apart, sending thousands of their leaders scurrying for safety in Iran. Iraqi forces continue to hammer Iranian-backed Special Groups and elements of the Sadrist Jaysh al Mahdi that have been fighting with them in Sadr City, Maysan Province and elsewhere. At this time, none of these networks can conduct operations that could seriously destabilize the Iraqi government. But both al Qaeda and the Iranians are working hard to refit their networks.

The larger strategic meaning of these military and political advances must be kept clearly in mind. Iraq remains a critical front in al Qaeda's war against the U.S.

Discussions in the American media about whether AQI is "really" al Qaeda are puerile. AQI's leadership, largely foreign, is part of the global al Qaeda network operating in support of Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden and his lieutenants in Pakistan and around the world send support (including foreign fighters) to Iraq and closely follow the situation there, as their repeated public pronouncements show no less than their actions. Al Qaeda's central leadership is not prepared to lose in Iraq, and has been seeking ways to regain lost ground.

Within Iraq, AQI operatives are still seeking aggressively to re-establish bases from which they can launch more substantial operations in the future. They are failing because of the continuous pressure American and Iraqi forces are putting on them from Baghdad to Mosul. If that pressure is relaxed, they will begin to succeed again.

The Iranian leaders responsible for Iranian policy in Iraq – principally Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Brigadier General Qassim Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force – also remain determined. They are retraining and re-equipping thousands of fighters who fled the most recent Iraqi and Coalition operations in Basra, Baghdad, and Maysan Provinces.

Past patterns suggest those fighters will return to Iraq and attempt to restart attacks against Coalition Forces in time to disrupt Iraqi elections and to affect America's voting. Their attacks are likely to be more spectacular, but less effective at disrupting Iraqi government and society.

If America remains firm in its commitment to success in Iraq, success is very likely. The AQI and Shiite militias at present do not have the capacity to drive Iraq off course – unless both the U.S. and the Iraqi government make a number of serious mistakes.

The most serious error would be to withdraw American forces too rapidly. That would strengthen the resolve of both al Qaeda and Iran to persevere in their efforts to disrupt the young Iraqi state and weaken the resolve of those Iraqis, particularly in the Iraqi Security Forces, who are betting their lives on continued American assistance.

The blunt fact is this. In Iraq, al Qaeda is on the ropes, and the Shiite militias are badly off-balance. Now is exactly the time to continue the pressure to keep them from regaining their equilibrium. It need not, and probably will not, require large numbers of American casualties to keep this pressure on. But it will require a considerable number of American troops through 2009.

Recent suggestions in Washington that reductions could begin sooner or proceed more rapidly are premature. The current force levels will be needed through the Iraqi provincial elections later this year, and consideration of force reductions makes sense only after those elections are over and the incoming commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, has evaluated the new situation.

The benefits to the U.S. from seeing the fight through to the end far outweigh the likely costs. For one thing, Iraqis have shown their determination to increase their oil output, currently averaging 2.5 million barrels a day, as fast as they can – something that can only happen if their country is secure.

Far more important is the opportunity in our hands today to work with a Muslim country in the heart of the Arab world to inflict the most visible and humiliating defeat possible on al Qaeda. Success in Iraq also makes it possible to establish a strategic partnership with a legitimate, democratic majority-Shia state that is aligned with the U.S. against Iran.

Recent comments by some Iraqi leaders about the current negotiations for a status-of-force agreement – made in the context of an increasingly heated election season in Iraq, and with the desire to improve Iraq's bargaining position in the negotiations – do not call the U.S. partnership into question. As we recently found in Baghdad, even the most outspoken advocates of rapid American force reductions strongly insist on a strategic partnership with America that helps Iraq stand up to Iran. Most of Iraq's military leaders are unequivocal about the need for a continued U.S. force presence.

The Iraqi government and people – whose surging anti-Persian feeling is more obvious every day – have already shown their willingness to push back against Iranian intervention. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attack on Iranian-backed forces in Basra, followed by Iraqi-led operations in Baghdad, central Iraq and Maysan, is proof of Baghdad's willingness. Helping Iraq to succeed is our best hope of finding a way of resolving our differences with Iran over the long term without coming to blows.

It is time for Americans to recognize it's a whole new ballgame in Iraq. The civil war is over, American troops are not an "irritant" fueling the unrest, and far from becoming dependent upon us, the Iraqi government and the army show more determination every day to run their country and to protect it. But they continue to want and need our assistance.

While victory in war is never certain until the war is over, the odds are strongly with us for once – provided we do the right thing. That is to stand by our best ally in the war against al Qaeda, and the struggle to contain Iran.

Mr. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Ms. Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War. Mr. Keane is a former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army. All have just returned from their most recent visit to Iraq.

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.