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Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Major terror attack in Mumbai, India
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CNN reporting 78 dead, violence ongoing, perpetrated by multiple gunmen, hostages reportedly held.
UPDATE: Westerners apparently targeted. Here’s an English-language blog from Mumbai in real time.
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Obama governing style takes form
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In his morning press conference today, Barack Obama had a telling and important response to criticism that his appointees may not reflect the agenda of change championed in his campaign.
I don’t have his direct quote yet, but in general, Obama pointed out that “the change begins with me.” He made it clear that he intends to be the one who sets policy, and he is appointing competent people who can carry it out. It’s an assertion of authority and quite a change from the more hands-off style practiced by the current president.
UPDATE: Here’s the direct quote:
“”What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me. That’s my job.”
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Obama gets a break in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Michael Yon, the conservatives’ favorite war blogger and a guy who deserves a lot of credit for his work in Iraq, has a piece in the New York Post headlined “Iraq’s New Dawn: Victory Across the Board.”
That’s a little broad and premature by my reading. Nonetheless, Yon’s overall assessment seems accurate. By his and other first-hand accounts, Iraq has turned an important corner.
Veteran NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins, for example, said the following back in September in an email interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic.
“The progress here is remarkable. I came back to Iraq after being away for nearly two years, and honestly, parts of it are difficult for me to recognize. The park out in front of the house where I live — on the Tigris River — was a dead, dying, spooky place. It’s now filled with people — families with children, women walking alone, even at night. That was inconceivable in 2006. The Iraqis who are out there walking in the parks were making their own judgments that it is safe enough for them to go out for a walk. They’re voting with their feet. It’s a wonderful thing to see.”
But as Yon and Filkins both note in various ways, the future is uncertain. The Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis still have very different ideas for the future of Iraq, as do individuals within those groups, and their buy-in to democracy as a way of resolving those conflicting ideas is shallow. They also have a lot of guns and a tendency to use them.
“It’s pretty clear that the calm is very fragile,” says Filkins. “The calm is built on a series of arrangements that are not self-sustaining; indeed, some of which, like the Sunni Awakening, are showing signs of coming apart. So the genie is back in the bottle, but I’m not sure for how long.”
Personally, I will be very pleasantly shocked if the democratic structure we see in place in Iraq is still there five years from now. But for the moment, let’s accept the progress for what it is. A lot has been written about the immense challenges facing Barack Obama as he assumes the presidency, and it’s justified. But on Iraq, he’s gotten a break. Events there have broken in such a way as to allow him to pursue the withdrawal he has long advocated under conditions more positive than most people thought likely.
He’s also putting together a defense/foreign policy team as pragmatic, experienced and sober as his economics team. Clinton at State, Gates at Defense, Marine Gen. Jim Jones (ret.) as national security adviser. This is not the wild-eyed, Marxist/socialist administration that the Republicans depicted in the campaign — quite the opposite. But nobody who paid honest attention to Obama’s statements should be surprised by the fact that the GOP’s caricature was so inaccurate.
On Iraq, Obama’s Cabinet picks would be quite comfortable carrying out the policies laid out by the president-elect in the campaign, and it’s unlikely to be controversial. In effect, the fate of Iraq can increasingly be left in the hands of the Iraqis, where it belonged in the first place. We’ve got other things to worry about.
UPDATE:
I just got off the phone with Michael Yon, who’s embedded with a unit in southern Afghanistan. He wanted to explain that he too thought the headline in his New York Post piece was a little too broad and premature. He is indeed optimistic about the direction things are headed in Iraq, he said, but “Victory Across the Board” is far too sweeping a statement.
He wished me a Happy Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t help thinking that mine will be a lot more comfortable than his will.
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