Persecution of a Democrat

The Washington Post
Saturday, March 4, 2006; A16

IN CAIRO last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she had spoken "candidly" in her meetings about the imprisonment of liberal democratic reformer Ayman Nour, which she called a "setback." Apparently President Hosni Mubarak wasn't impressed. Within days of Ms. Rice's visit, prosecutors summoned Mr. Nour from prison to interrogate him on a host of new charges.

These are even more ludicrous than the bogus forgery rap that the regime used in December to sentence Mr. Nour to five years at hard labor. Among the 17 new "crimes" prosecutors raised during a six-hour session Monday was Mr. Nour's financing of a statue of a famous Egyptian composer, which his accusers labeled an insult to Islam. Mr. Nour's wife, journalist Gameela Ismail, was also summoned by prosecutors: Incredibly, she was accused of assaulting some of the security thugs sent to disrupt demonstrations by Mr. Nour's supporters.

A year ago, under pressure from the Bush administration, Mr. Mubarak announced that he would allow opposition candidates to challenge him for reelection, and he released Mr. Nour, the 41-year-old founder of the Tomorrow Party, from prison to run against him. Now, sensing that Mr. Bush's democracy agenda is flagging, Mr. Mubarak is ruthlessly stamping out any semblance of moderate, secular opposition to his autocracy, so that the only alternative in Egypt will be Islamic fundamentalism. Mr. Nour's Tomorrow Party has been destroyed and other moderate parties refused legal registration, even as the Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to seat 88 of its members in parliament. Last month three senior civil judges who have been pressing for reforms, and who had publicly denounced fraud in last year's voting, were stripped of immunity and threatened with criminal charges.

Mr. Mubarak has meanwhile relentlessly pursued his persecution of Mr. Nour, who received 8 percent of the vote in the presidential election and is the greatest secular rival of Gamal Mubarak, who is being groomed to succeed his father. Lawyers for Mr. Nour have appealed his December conviction to Egypt's highest court, which in previous political cases has overruled the security court judges who act at Mr. Mubarak's bidding. There are plenty of grounds for a ruling in the democrats' favor: Among many other things, the trial judge ignored the fact that one of Mr. Nour's principal accusers recanted in court, testifying that he had been pressured into lying by the secret police. The supreme court ruling is expected within the next couple of weeks; thus the sudden appearance of a raft of new charges that could allow Mr. Mubarak to keep his adversary in prison even if his conviction is overturned.

What's striking about this single-minded campaign is that Mr. Mubarak presses it even though the Bush administration has made clear that it will damage U.S.-Egyptian relations. Mr. Nour's imprisonment already prompted the suspension of free-trade negotiations. Evidently the 77-year-old Mr. Mubarak believes the elimination of a moderate and pro-Western challenger to his son is more important than good relations with an American president in his second term. He also calculates that Mr. Bush's support for Mr. Nour and democracy in Egypt isn't shared by Congress, which soon will consider whether to continue $1.8 billion in annual aid to Egypt.

Congress should prove him wrong. Rather than continuing to subsidize Mr. Mubarak's corrupt regime, legislators should insist that any U.S. aid be channeled to civil society groups and democratic reformers such as Mr. Nour. America's support should go to those in the Middle East who are fighting for the cause of liberal democracy and not to autocrats who blatantly persecute them.

U.S. Unleashing 'Spooky' To Haunt Iraqi Insurgents

By Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press
Houston Chronicle
March 4, 2006

AN AIR BASE IN IRAQ - The U.S. Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes — the lethal "flying gunships" of the Vietnam War — to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance, the Associated Press has learned.

An AP reporter saw the first of the turboprop-driven aircraft — nicknamed "Spooky" — after it landed at the airfield this week. Four are expected.

The Iraq-based special forces command controlling the AC-130s, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, said it would have no comment on the deployment. But the plan's general outline was confirmed by other Air Force officers, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Military officials warned that disclosing the location of the aircraft's new base would violate rules on media access.

The gunships, whose base is Hurlburt Field in Florida, have operated over Iraq before.

In November 2004, air-to-ground fire from AC-130s supported the U.S. attackn that tookthe city of Fallujah. from insurgents. Basing the planes inside Iraq will cut hours off their flight time to suspected targets.

The use of AC-130s against urban targets has been criticized by human rights groups.

"It's got tons of guns, and it's got all kinds of stuff on it that can be applied to the problems you have," said Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc.

In Deal With India, Bush Has Eye On China

By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer
News Analysis
Los Angeles Times
March 4, 2006

WASHINGTON — A key factor behind the nuclear cooperation agreement reached this week between the United States and India was a simple trade-off: The White House was willing to risk losing ground in the worldwide campaign to limit the spread of nuclear weapons for a deal with India that could help it counter the rising power of China.

Despite widespread criticism that the pact sets back global nuclear nonproliferation efforts, Bush administration officials praise the deal for its promise of better ties with a thriving democracy and reduced competition for world oil.

But administration officials also know well that an India that is more prosperous, and well armed, represents a hedge against Chinese military ambitions. With China's intentions unclear, such a counter is an important component of U.S. strategy.

Counterbalancing China "is an under-the-surface issue that only rarely pokes its head up," said Jon Wolfsthal, a former Energy Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "But it's very much there."

The Bush administration has made nonproliferation one of its top priorities, and is trying to limit the nuclear ambitions of Iran. But the pact with India could hurt that goal. Many experts think the U.S.-India agreement is likely to convince nonnuclear nations that they can proceed with bomb-building programs in the face of international disapproval, and eventually win back American support.

In the past, the administration has stressed the importance of the U.S.-Japanese strategic relationship to ensure it has a close and capable ally on China's southeastern flank. The deal with India reflects a desire to build an alliance on China's southwestern boundary. The agreement, which requires congressional approval, would lift a moratorium on civilian nuclear cooperation and allow for India's continued work on nuclear arms.

U.S. officials didn't mention China as they presented details of the accord. But several senior administration officials have said the United States must strengthen India to offset China.

Ashley J. Tellis, a senior State Department official and a key architect of the new strategic policy on India, has argued that a buildup of India's nuclear arsenal is not only in New Delhi's interest, but Washington's. It will cause Beijing to worry more about India and less about the United States, Tellis says.

U.S. officials contend that neither they nor the Indians consider China an enemy or a force that needs to be "contained," as the United States once sought to do with the Soviet Union. Experts said it was more accurate to describe the strategy as an effort to offset one rising power by building up another — one that is considered closer in values and outlook to the United States.

"This is an effort to counterbalance the rise of China, but I wouldn't go so far as to say to contain China or to be antagonistic toward it," said L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation in Washington. "We obviously have an interest in a large, democratic, multiethnic society as a counterbalance to the Chinese in the region."

India and China say they don't want to compete with each other militarily. In 2003, they signed an agreement to build a "long-term constructive and cooperative partnership" based on "peaceful coexistence." Indeed, their relations have improved in recent years, as seen in the settlement of border disputes and an agreement aimed at reducing competition for oil.

Yet some experts warn that India and China are also taking steps that could lead to confrontation. China, for example, is helping Pakistan build a submarine base at Gwadar, in Baluchistan province, where Pakistan accuses India of backing insurgents to destabilize the area.

India, meanwhile, is engaged in a massive arms-buying spree, including an expansion of its naval forces, which eventually could lead to regional competition with China.

Under Thursday's deal, India retained the right to deny United Nations inspectors access to a "fast-breeder" reactor suitable for producing weapons-grade fissile material. Since India refused to agree to a cap, there is no limit on the expansion of its nuclear arsenal — a fact that critics say could provoke a regional arms race.

At the beginning of President Bush's first term, dealing with China's growing power was a top priority of many policymakers, beginning with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The need to meet the challenge of China was a central tenet of the neoconservative creed associated with Bush's inner circle.

But China lost priority after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, policymakers have placed more emphasis on cooperation with Beijing along with an increased emphasis on terrorism, the North Korean nuclear threat and other issues.

Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell boasted that relations with China were the best they had ever been. And even Rumsfeld made moves to begin restoring the military relationship with China.

Yet officials acknowledge that national security experts still debate how to counterbalance Beijing. Discussions now frequently center on what would be the most productive way to influence China's development.

Although China was a key factor in the deal with India, it is not the administration's only motive. Officials want to build up India as a democratic model for other countries. They believe that it is environmentally desirable to expand the civilian nuclear power capability of India, which is both energy-poor and a large producer of greenhouse gases.

And officials believe that a stronger alliance with India can boost U.S. business with the country, which has already grown from $14 billion to $30 billion in the last five years — an impressive gain but only a fraction of the United States' $300-billion annual trade with China.

Speaking to students in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on Friday, Bush said the deal would relieve pressure on oil prices. "When a fast-growing country like India consumes more fossil fuels, it causes the price of fossil fuels to go up not only in India, but around the world," he said.

Some analysts said the deal could have unhappy consequences for the United States by encouraging the Chinese to undertake a similar deal with Pakistan. U.S. officials would be irked at the idea that unstable Pakistan's arsenal was growing, they said.

"The Chinese are practical, so they might go along" with the deal, said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. diplomat at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

In Pakistan, military analyst Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha said the United States was interested in "cozying up to India primarily because it sees it as a force that could be used to neutralize China's military power." But she warned that the move could undermine Bush's efforts to rein in terrorism because it weakens a key ally, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who lacks a similar prize to show for his cooperation with the United States against Muslim militants.

Although analysts in China have also interpreted the deal as a sign of U.S. interest in building a counterweight to Beijing, officials there have so far offered little reaction to the deal.

Dong Manyuan, a research fellow with the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing, said he didn't expect a strong official response. "So far the Chinese government doesn't seem upset," he said.

U.S. Plans To Modernize Nuclear Arsenal

By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer
Washington Post
March 4, 2006

The Bush administration is developing plans to design and deploy refurbished or replacement warheads for the nuclear stockpile, and by 2030 to modernize the production complex so that, if required, it could produce new generations of weapons with different or modified capabilities.

Referring to goals established two years ago, Ambassador Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), told the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces Wednesday that "we will revitalize our weapons design community to meet the challenge of being able to adapt an existing weapon within 18 months, and design, develop and begin production of a new design within three to four years of a decision to enter engineering development."

A study by NNSA for restructuring the aging weapons complex, which includes dealing with facilities that dismantle retired weapons, should be sent to Congress this spring, Brooks said. Although there is some updating and modernizing of the present complex, "full infrastructure changes . . . will take a couple of decades," Brooks said.

The first step in the long-range plan is focused around the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program that was approved last year. That program contemplates designing new components for previously tested nuclear packages that would make the resulting bombs and warheads safer and more reliable over the long term than older stockpiled weapons that are being refurbished.

The RRW warheads would create, Brooks said, a "reduced chance we will ever need to resort to nuclear testing." In addition, he said, "Once we demonstrate we can produce warheads on a time scale in which geopolitical threats could emerge, we would no longer need to retain extra warheads to hedge against unexpected geopolitical changes."

Under current plans, the number of deployed U.S. warheads on submarines, missiles and bombers would be reduced to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012. There would be an additional number, said to exceed 2,000, that would remain in a strategic reserve, and it would be the latter that could be further reduced under the RRW program.

However, Brooks told the subcommittee that he believes more funds will be needed to prepare for a new multibillion-dollar facility to produce "pits," plutonium triggers for thermonuclear weapons. There is controversy over how reliable the plutonium pits are as they age because of radioactive decay. Brooks told the panel the current belief is they are reliable for 45 to 60 years, but uncertainties have developed.

A small facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has been established to build pits, but its capacity will be 30 to 40 pits a year beginning in 2012, which Brooks described as "insufficient to meet our assessed long-term pit production needs" created by the RRW warheads.

Brooks's description of the U.S. plan for nuclear weapons production came one day before President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced their agreement for sharing nuclear technology, while permitting India to continue production of weapons-grade materials at one-third of their reactors. It also came one day after testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee by Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described how India and other nations are moving forward with their own nuclear programs.

"We believe that India and Pakistan . . . continue expanding and modernizing their nuclear weapon stockpiles," Maples said, adding, "Pakistan has also developed the capability to produce plutonium for potential weapons use."

He also reported that North Korea is continuing to produce plutonium for its nuclear program, and that China "is likely" to increase the number of its nuclear-armed theater and strategic weapons and "has sufficient fissile material to support this growth."

Nuclear Deal With India A Sign Of New U.S. Focus

By Roger Cohen
International Herald Tribune
March 4, 2006

The cementing through nuclear cooperation of a "strategic partnership" between the United States and India represents a gamble typical of President George W. Bush and a shift in American foreign policy priorities of enormous significance.

Whether the gamble proves bold or reckless remains to be seen. What is already clear is that, beyond Iraq, American diplomatic energy is no longer focused on Europe, its central concern for the second half of the 20th century, but on the explosive growth of Asia driven by the emergence of India and China.

Confronted by this twin challenge, the United States has now made clear it is prepared to make an exception of India in order to draw it closer. Bush has ended the nuclear pariah status of India despite the fact the country is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In a proliferation- plagued world, that is an extraordinary step.

It will not have been lost on China. R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, said in a telephone interview: "We have never seen India as a counter to China. It stands on its own and we do not draw that linkage."

India has its own fast-developing economic relationship with China and does not want to be seen as a pawn in a Washington-Beijing game. Burns's message will be well received in New Delhi.

Still, Bush's push to transform the relationship between the world's most powerful and most populous democracies into a strategic alliance locked in by intense military, nuclear, scientific and agricultural cooperation amounts to an overarching response to the expansion of Chinese influence in Asia.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, responded to the agreement between Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India by saying that any pact "must meet the requirements and provisions of the nuclear nonproliferation regime and the obligations undertaken by all countries concerned."

That's Chinese grumpiness dressed up in formal demands. The fact is the nuclear nonproliferation regime has been transformed - many would say devalued - by the agreement allowing India to buy nuclear fuel and reactor components from the United States and other countries in return for separating its civilian and military nuclear facilities and permitting international inspection of the former.

Therein lies the heart of Bush's gamble: He has wagered that it is worth undermining the nuclear treaty, even as the West tries to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons program, in order to secure Indian help in increasing "mutual security against the common threats posed by intolerance, terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction," as a joint statement put it.

That looks contradictory. How can emptying the nuclear treaty of meaning help stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction? But the treaty and reality have long been at odds - nobody has any illusions about Israeli nuclear weapons - and Bush has clearly taken a hard look at the facts.

India has been a known nuclear power for more than three decades, ever since it conducted a nuclear explosion in 1974, a move followed by a test of atomic weapons in 1998. Over that period it has never, unlike Pakistan, been a source of proliferation, nor has there been any international access to a program run by the much revered "nuclear maharajahs" of the Indian Department of Atomic Energy.

Now, India has agreed to classify 14 of its nuclear power reactors as civilian facilities, opening them up to inspection. The others, and a fast-breeder reactor in development, will remain closed military facilities. That India will go on making nuclear weapons is clear.

"Our conclusion was that India should be an exception," Burns said. "It has not been a proliferator of nuclear technology. For 30 years, we've had zero transparency. Now we will have well over half open to supervision and safeguard."

But of course having 65 percent of a program opened to international oversight still leaves 35 percent without it. The heart of the American calculation is not reining India in; it is bringing an ever more powerful India alongside.

The economic and strategic benefits could indeed be enormous. Bush still needs the approval of Congress, where opposition will be stiff, and the agreement will also require the nod of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, the international body that regulates the transfer of nuclear technology.

These are significant hurdles. But if they can be overcome, the provision to an energy-hungry India of civilian nuclear energy would open a large and lucrative market. It could also, as President Jacques Chirac of France has recognized, reduce the Indian appetite for oil and offer environmental benefits.

That is important but not the heart of the matter. Bush will now count on India to support his nonproliferation efforts, including in Iran, where India has influence.

He will be looking to India for intelligence and even military support in the war against terrorism. He will be counting on America's fastest- growing export market becoming a strategic partner in the full sense of that term.

Unless he gets all this, his gamble may prove expensive. China is not happy. Pakistan will have to be reassured in the form of unstinting American support. Domestic critics will argue a dangerous precedent has been set by legitimizing India as a nuclear power outside the nonproliferation treaty.

But the foundations of a powerful and effective American-Indian alliance are strong: democratic values within multiethnic states, entrepreneurial cultures, the English language, the presence of more Indian students in the United States than any other nationality, more than two million Indian-Americans, huge investments and a growing web of business, scientific and technological interests.

Bush to India is not quite Nixon to China, but this agreement marks a turning-point. The long Cold War frostiness of Indian-American relations was an anomaly. The thaw began under President Bill Clinton. Through Bush's deal with India, made at the cost of the formal weakening of the nuclear treaty, Bush has turned a thaw into an embrace that will serve America, India and democracy well.

Evangelized foreign policy?

By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor
March 02, 2006

WASHINGTON - When President Bush recently used a public forum to announce his support for a more robust international intervention in Sudan's Darfur region - catching even some of his senior aides off guard - it was yet another milestone for the rising interest of Christian evangelicals in US foreign policy.

In just a few years, conservative Christian churches and organizations have broadened their political activism from a near-exclusive domestic focus to an emphasis on foreign issues.

As Mr. Bush gave his attention to Darfur, one of the world's most high-profile humanitarian crises, he was almost certainly cheered not just by a coterie of evangelical advisers, but also the sizable Christian right constituency. But his focus on a forlorn region of Africa suggests deeper shifts in the forces influencing US foreign policy.

Even as many in Washington trumpet the return of realism to US foreign policy and the decline of the neoconservative hawks, the staying power of the evangelicals is likely to blunt what might otherwise have been a steep decline in Wilsonian ideals.

Indeed, the aftermath of Iraq has some historians predicting a bout of American isolationism similar to what occurred after Vietnam. But other analysts say that with so many conservative Christians now convinced of activism in foreign affairs, old patterns of periodic introspection have been broken.

"Without a determined constituency pressuring for engagement in international affairs, it would be likely that - given the difficulties in Iraq - you would have had the administration hunkering down a bit, and the American people with them," says Allen Hertzke, an expert and noted author on religion in US foreign policy at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. "But instead, you have these substantial forces pushing on human rights causes and demanding intervention."

Some note that because the evangelicals' foreign-policy interests are motivated by religious convictions and not a temporary cause, the movement has deeper roots. "These people are not flavor-of-the-month types," says Mark Palmer, a former diplomat focused on democratization and now vice chairman of Freedom House in Washington. "The fact they are so involved now will be a factor in us not becoming isolationist."

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center, which periodically gauges public views on America's place in the world, finds an upswing in the percentage of Americans who agree that the "US should mind its own business internationally." But the trend would be even stronger without the evangelical conversion to global involvement, some experts believe.

Ambassador Palmer says some White House political strategists contend that the Christian right makes up at least one-third of the electorate. "Whether that's true or not, the number is large," he says.

Behind the most recent evidence of evangelical influence in US foreign policy - the renewed calls for stronger intervention in Darfur - stands Michael Gerson, who is a Bush policy adviser and speechwriter (and who helped coin the "axis of evil" phrase). The former journalist, who is also a member of an evangelical Episcopal church in suburban Virginia, is seen as one of the driving forces behind Bush's emphasis on a global spread of what the president sees as God-given rights.

So far Bush's call for a considerably larger foreign peacekeeping presence in Darfur - under the United Nations and with beefed-up involvement by NATO - has not been answered by the international community. The effort endured a setback this week when the month-long American presidency of the UN Security Council expired Tuesday without Council action.

The government of Sudan is lobbying against a UN force on its soil, arguing it would constitute a recolonization of the country, according to UN officials.

But Darfur is hardly the first foreign rallying cause for evangelical Christians. In fact, their awakening to foreign-policy issues began well before the Bush White House, analysts note.

"One place it started was during the efforts to open up the former Soviet Union" in the 1980s, says John O'Sullivan, a foreign-policy analyst and editor at large of National Review. "They looked at the success of the Jewish community in helping the Soviet Jews and said, 'We have done nothing to help our co-religionists in Africa and Korea and other parts.' "

From there came a string of diplomatic initiatives bearing the stamp of evangelical influence - and largely engineered through the halls of Congress, notes Mr. Hertzke. Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, which makes freedom of religion and conscience a "core objective" of US foreign policy. It also established an office and an annual international religious-freedom report that grades countries on rights.

Subsequent initiatives include legislation in 2000 that targets human trafficking and sex trafficking; the Sudan Peace Act of 2002, which among other things established a certification process for periodic review of Sudan's peace efforts; and the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004. The influence of evangelical Christians is also seen in the Bush administration's focus on AIDS in Africa, as well as in attacks on international family-planning activities, experts say.

But it was the North Korea initiative that first prompted foreign-policy analysts to take notice. Michael Horowitz, a prominent protagonist of the involvement of conservative faith-based organizations in foreign policy, called the North Korea act a "miracle" wrought by evangelicals. But some experts pointed to the large number of Korean-American Christians and their activist pastors as a larger factor in the act's passage.

The faith-based community's influence appeared to deepen when Bush last year named Jay Lefkowitz, a former White House aide and Horowitz associate, to the post of "special envoy for North Korea human rights," as called for in the act. That appointment prompted worried blog entries on the "Christian conservative agenda" for US foreign policy.

Still, some experts express skepticism about the evangelicals' impact, arguing that their key triumphs - such as the Sudan and North Korea legislation - have done little to change the course of what are drawn-out conflicts.

Others say a swing back to domestic issues in recent months may be pulling the Christian right away from foreign-policy concerns. "The culture wars of the last year, the uproar over gay marriage and so forth, have diverted some attention from the international focus," says Hertzke.

The staying power of evangelical influence will also depend on the ability to expand their influence by creating coalitions, according to others. "They won't have continued success unless they make the right alliances," says Mr. O'Sullivan of National Review.

Yet with his new book, "Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights," Hertzke argues that such a broadening is already taking place. It's happening, he says, through links between the Jewish community and Christian organizations, as well as on college campuses and in traditional religious and secular human rights organizations - which have long been interested in such foreign causes.

Hertzke adds that the impact of the "unlikely" movement, still being gauged in terms of Darfur, has already "altered the trajectory of history" in southern Sudan, where the government and rebel groups signed a peace accord in January 2005.

"A 20-year civil war actually ended in large part due to the activism of evangelicals and their alliance with others, including Jewish groups," he says. "It's an unheralded story, but it's also a historical fact."

U.S. Studies Lebanon's Military

Assessment is part of process to help nation's democratic forces
By Christine Spolar, Tribune foreign correspondent
Chicago Tribune
March 2, 2006

CAIRO -- U.S. military officials have been quietly assessing Lebanon's military capability, making a general inventory of its army, air and naval forces, and suggesting reforms following a request last year from top Lebanese government officials.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a top military planner, confirmed the review this week but would not elaborate on recommended reforms. The review was initiated after a request was made directly through the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, military and political sources said, and is part of a continuing process to help democratic forces in Lebanon.

"We're looking for stability," said Kimmitt, deputy director for strategy and plans at U.S. Central Command. "An unstable Lebanon is a danger to itself, to its immediate neighbors and the region. This is part of our overall strategy."

About a dozen U.S. military officers traveled to Beirut in November and December for the review, military sources said, and visited bases to produce three reports. The inventory was described as a comprehensive assessment of the condition of U.S.-made equipment in the Lebanon armed forces.

The U.S. inventory was a separate but coordinated effort with other Western embassies contacted by the Lebanese. Britain and France were asked to assess policy and policing needs. Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan, also were contacted and are engaged, sources said.

The Bush administration has been intent on shoring up democratic efforts in the region, and the military assessment was described as part of a drive to bolster Lebanon, coping in the past year with political assassinations, car and truck bombings, and popular demonstrations in support of a Lebanon free of Syrian involvement.

Neighboring Syria, which has long dominated Lebanese politics, was suspected in much of the violence, including a bombing that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. That assassination touched off huge protests in Beirut. As international outrage spiraled, Syria withdrew thousands of troops from Lebanon after 30 years of occupation.

A United Nations investigation last year implicated senior Syrian security officials in the Hariri killing. Syria has denied the findings, but an inquiry continues.

A subsequent UN report last year further fueled concern over Lebanon's security. That report concluded that Lebanon was facing an "increasing influx of weaponry and personnel from Syria" for Palestinian military groups operating within its border. The situation remains volatile, according to the report, and illegal border traffic of arms and people, as well as terrorist acts, were "worrying developments affecting the stability of Lebanon."

Lebanon's integrity has been elevated as a priority for the Bush administration, as demonstrated by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's surprise visit to Beirut last week. Rice snubbed Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, while finding time to meet with some leading political opponents.

Military help to Lebanon advances two U.S. national security aims: the spread of democracy in the Middle East and the application of pressure on Syria, which has long been considered a state sponsor of terror.

Three decades ago, as Lebanon fell into messy and deadly civil war, Syria was seen as one of the provocateurs in the regional conflict. Efforts by the Reagan administration to calm the situation effectively withered after 1983 when truck bombs hit the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and a U.S. Marine barracks, leaving more than 300 people dead.

Syria later emerged as a guarantor to an Arab-crafted peace deal that gave it broad influence over Lebanese affairs. Syria has allowed groups to operate inside Lebanon that are labeled terrorist by the U.S.--most notably Hezbollah, an Islamist organization that now has representatives in Lebanon's parliament.

The recent military assessment in Lebanon began after elections were held last year and Lebanese officials sought guidance on the readiness of the country's armed forces. The U.S. review found inadequacies in equipment and personnel, but some involved in the process said the equipment was in better shape than expected, sources said.

Sources described the assessment as a significant overall study because about 85 percent of the existing Lebanese inventory is of U.S. origin. Equipment surveys by the U.S. military, when requested, are not unusual, and the sizes of the teams sent were typical.

But the timing and the speed of the effort in Lebanon indicated sensitivity, sources said.

U.S. teams were detailed to suggest whether equipment should be repaired, upgraded or thrown out. Three U.S. teams were involved: teams assessing aviation and naval equipment spent a week, and the team assessing army equipment took two weeks.

U.S. defense officials are now considering whether to suggest additional foreign aid for modernization. British experts made a preliminary trip to Lebanon to pursue discussions on Lebanon's strategic policy. French experts were asked to assess police and security forces. It is unclear how far either of those reviews progressed.

The United States has had military assistance programs in Lebanon since the 1950s, but a coordinated effort with other Western embassies could give momentum to improving and refashioning the small but strategically significant military.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, the Lebanese armed forces were long crippled by infighting and internal upheaval. After Israel invaded in 1982, the Lebanese government sought a military overhaul. The U.S. responded then with a modernization plan designed to span several years. Jordan quickly donated equipment for a tank battalion; the U.S. transferred about 1,000 vehicles, including armored personnel carriers, within the first year, GlobalSecurity.org reports.

The Lebanese aspired to a force of 60,000 but could recruit only 22,000 by late 1982. Conscripts were then called up and accounted for two-thirds of troop strength. U.S. military advisers provided support and training in the first couple of years; hundreds of millions of dollars were spent until Lebanon's army was routed by militias as civil war spiraled in 1983 and 1984.

In 1988, Syrian troops moved into Beirut, and the military foundered. Only after 1991, as peace held, could the Lebanese rebuild the army again to 60,000 standing troops, according to GlobalSecurity.org. The U.S. was supportive of the peace accord and provided equipment in the rebuilding.

Lebanon still faced challenges. Israel maintained troops in southern Lebanon until 2000. As late as 2003, Syria had 20,000 troops in Lebanon. Hezbollah continues to have thousands of troops near the southern border with Israel.

Questions about Lebanon's military strategy were central to the effort recently completed by the U.S. assessment teams, said Kimmitt, the U.S. military planner.

"The larger question is: Who is their enemy? Are they looking at Israel? Al Qaeda? Syria? . . . In our minds, this is the army that sooner or later will have to stand up to the armed branch of Hezbollah. . . . And right now, it's a military [whose equipment] may be too large and too heavily armored for the threats around them," Kimmitt said.

Military aid to the Middle East plays a key role in U.S. foreign policy, and additional aid to Lebanon would fit into a familiar pattern. Egypt and Israel have received billions of dollars of military aid in the past decade; Beirut in fiscal 2006 received less than $1 million in military aid. Under the Bush administration's request for 2007, Lebanon would receive nearly $5 million in military aid.

Israeli Found Spy's Data Irresistible

By Steven Erlanger
New York Times
March 3, 2006

JERUSALEM, March 2 — The Israeli intelligence handler of Jonathan Pollard, the American convicted of spying for Israel, says in an interview that Mr. Pollard provided such good information that he could not face stopping the operation even though it was aimed at Israel's closest ally, the United States.

The handler, Rafi Eitan, told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, "I couldn't resist the temptation and order a stop to the operation."

Mr. Eitan spoke about the Pollard case for the first time to Ronen Bergman of the newspaper, which is publishing the comments on Friday.

Mr. Eitan said that Mr. Pollard never exposed American agents in the Soviet Union or elsewhere.

Mr. Eitan also said he believed that the American double agent Aldrich Ames, who was spying for the Soviet Union, tried to blame Mr. Pollard for exposing the American agents to clear himself of suspicion.

"I have no doubt that had Pollard been tried today, in light of what is known about Ames and other agents who were exposed, he would have received a much lighter sentence," Mr. Eitan said.

Mr. Pollard, who worked for the Navy as an intelligence officer, began spying for Israel after he approached an Israeli officer in 1984. Mr. Eitan said that Mr. Pollard provided "information of such high quality and accuracy, so good and so important to the country's security" that "my desire, my appetite to get more and more material overcame me."

In the event of another war with Arab countries, Mr. Eitan said, Mr. Pollard's information would have made a great difference.

He called Mr. Pollard, who came to Israel twice to meet him, a man "with high intelligence, a phenomenal memory and broad education, but also with an extreme and unstable personality that brought him even as a teenager to declare that he 'worked for the Mossad.' "

Mr. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison, and American presidents have refused Israeli requests to commute his sentence.

The Big Question

By Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times
March 3, 2006

Since the start of the Iraq war, it's been clear that "victory" rested on the answer to one Big Question: Was Iraq the way Iraq was because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was — a country congenitally divided among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that can be held together only by an iron fist.

Unfortunately, to answer this big question — even Iraqis didn't know — the U.S. had to provide a minimum degree of security for all Iraqis, so people could feel relaxed enough to think beyond their most narrow tribal or religious identities. We didn't do that, because of President Bush's decision to approach the Iraq invasion with the Rumsfeld Doctrine, which calls for just enough troops to fail, rather than the proven Powell Doctrine, which calls for overwhelming force to win.

What happened in the absence of an overwhelming U.S. force was the looting of government buildings and ammo dumps, open borders for infiltrators, and then widespread insecurity, which naturally prompted Iraqis to fall back on tribal loyalties and militias, rather than trusting the Iraqi Army or the police. People are very good at figuring out who will protect them in a crisis, and too many Iraqis opted for local militias.

Yes, we are now better at training an Iraqi Army and have held national elections. But the failure to provide security after the invasion means we are trying to build these national institutions in competition with the insurgents, Qaeda terrorists, Shiite death squads and sectarian Iraqi militias that sprouted in the security vacuum.

One thing that covering the Lebanese civil war taught me was this: once sectarian militias take root, they develop their own interests and are very hard to uproot. "Militias are the infrastructure of civil war, and the basis of warlordism," the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, told The Washington Post.

This did not have to be. The Bush team repeatedly declared that it had enough troops in Iraq and that no one on the ground was asking for more. Totally untrue. As Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian administration in Iraq, reveals in his new book, "My Year in Iraq," he repeatedly asked for more troops, but was ignored.

Mr. Bremer confesses in his book: "Coalition forces were spread too thin on the ground. During my morning intelligence briefings, I would sometimes picture an understrength fire crew racing from one blaze to another." He writes that he told Condoleezza Rice in 2003, "The coalition's got about half the number of soldiers we need here, and we run a real risk of having this thing go south on us."

Mr. Bremer describes this in 2004: "On May 18, I gave Rice a heads-up that I intended to send Secretary Rumsfeld a very private message suggesting that the coalition needed more troops. ... That afternoon I sent my message. ... I noted that the deterioration of the security situation since April had made it clear, to me at least, that we were trying to cover too many fronts with too few resources." But, Mr. Bremer writes of Mr. Rumsfeld, "I did not hear back from him."

Because the U.S. never deployed enough troops, America alone cannot establish order in Iraq today. We don't have a way to do that. And Iraq's Army, no matter how well trained, will never have enough will — without a broad political consensus. So we're down to the last hope, and it's a mighty thin reed. The only people who can produce a decent outcome now are Iraq's new leaders — by coming together, burying their hatchets, forging a real national unity government and getting their followers to follow.

This is the season of decision. We have an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi-written constitution. Either the elected Iraqi leaders will heroically come together and forge a national unity government — and save Iraq — or they will divide Iraq. Our job was to help them decide in a reasonably secure environment, not in a shooting gallery. We failed in that task, but they will have to decide nevertheless.

It is Iraqis who will now tell Americans whether they should stay or go. A majority of Americans, in a gut way, always understood the value of trying to produce a democratizing government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. That is why there has been no big antiwar movement. Americans should, and will, stick with Iraq if they sense that Iraqis are on a pathway to building a decent, stable government. But Americans will not, and should not, baby-sit an Iraqi civil war. The minute they sense that's what's happening, you will see the bottom fall out of U.S. public support for this war.

Next Step

By William Buckley Jr.
Washington Times
March 3, 2006

There are military historians who can list for you battles in recorded time in which one of the contending parties knew ahead that his side was doomed. In such cases it was sometimes necessary to fight on, because there was no alternative. Genghis Khan offered zero inducements to surrender. Whether the opponent would die from the enemy's sword or his own was worth reflection, but none of it was given over to life or death: There would be death in any case.

In ensuing centuries, wars became less than final events for many soldiers, and terms of engagement changed. Robert E. Lee did not reasonably expect to be executed if he surrendered. Nor did General Lee expect, after General Sherman's march, that the South would win the war. But he fought on.

By what was he driven? Contemporary concepts of honor? It was something other than reason — he was too skilled to have misjudged, at that point, the outcome of the war.

Had Hitler known in June, 1941, what would befall the German army — and him — in four years, he would not have invaded Russia. Four years! In four years we marched from Pearl Harbor to the heart of what was left of Tokyo and Berlin. In three years we can't yet take a cab from Baghdad to its airport without an armed guard.

Princes and generals do not communicate to the troops what are the high command's private reckonings. The matter of morale is with us in victory, and sometimes even begets victory. It also sanctifies defeat. To have died on behalf of your cause makes possible the mystic conviction that your sacrifice was the marginal contribution. To be dead at defeat permits mourning for gallantry and for faith—My country, do or die.

President Bush will be seen commanding his troops to march on. He will speak of victory. One's guess is that there will be attenuation in the definition of victory. Three years ago (March, 2003) I wrote in this space, "What Mr. Bush proposes to do is to unseat Saddam Hussein and to eliminate his investments in aggressive weaponry. We can devoutly hope that internecine tribal antagonisms will be subsumed in the fresh air of a despot removed, and that the restoration of freedom will be productive. But these concomitant developments can't be either foreseen by the United States, or implemented by us. What Mr. Bush can accomplish is the removal of a regime and its infrastructure. The Iraqi people will have to take it from there."

The special challengeMr. Bush now faces is political. How to pull away leaving the sense of mission accomplished? He has presided over a great deal. The deposition of Saddam, his imprisonment and (never-ending) prosecution; the institution of the working rudiments of democracy. A government. And a continuing effort to train natives to take over policing the rebaptized state.

All of this is marred by shortcomings. Some observers believe them critical, enough so to conclude that the war to change Iraq’s society has not been won, and cannot be won without in investment of time and resources we are not willing to make in Iraq. Other challenges loom, in North Korea and in Iran, which will tax us contingently, on a larger scale than the Saddam/Iraq war. These will need to take precedence.

Mr. Bush is entitled to maintain, doggedly and persuasively, that he took the right steps—up through the overthrow of Saddam and the exposure of an armory without weapons of mass destruction. From that point on, the challenge required more than his deployable resources. His political reputation will rest on his success in making that point and ceding realistically to realities we are not going to cope with, and ought not to attempt to cope with.

William F. Buckley Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Surviving Members of "Stern Gang" Reject Comparisons with Hamas

Murray Richtel
(Daily Camera-Boulder, CO)
March 3, 2006

The Stern Gang, derisively named by the British for its founder, Abraham Stern, called themselves LEHI, the Hebrew acronym for the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel. One of their underground leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, went on to become Israel's prime minister. Some analysts draw a parallel between Hamas and LEHI, yet the old fighters I interviewed were outraged at the comparison. They insist that the perceived parallel ignores the most critical and morally significant distinction between the two groups: Only Hamas uses indiscriminate terror against women and children as a regular instrument of war, and encourages its followers to commit acts of martyrdom to aid its cause.

Amos, now 92, told me: "We didn't blow up cinemas in London. We could have, but we didn't want innocents to die. We never willingly killed the innocent." Irit, now 76, explained: "We never touched the families of high officers and we knew exactly where they were. It simply never entered our minds. It was important to hit only those who continued British policies, stopping us from establishing our nation." Eyal, 83, insisted that many LEHI operations were canceled when there was a risk to innocent civilians.

Yasmine, 78, recounted that by age 17, she had pasted forbidden LEHI posters on Jerusalem billboards, smuggled arms past British sentries, traced the movement of His Majesty's soldiers through Jerusalem streets, and ridden troop trains throughout Mandatory Palestine, recording their timing and movements in an effort to assist the sabotage campaign against the railroads. But "we didn't kill even one child," she told me.

Hamas has carried out dozens of bus and restaurant bombings in Jerusalem and all over Israel, targeting not soldiers and policemen, but families out to dinner or kids going home from school. The writer was a district court judge in Boulder from 1977 to 1996.

Pointless Trip to Pakistan

Editorial
The New York Times
March 3, 2006

At this moment in time, there is no more meaningful a place than Pakistan to illustrate the state of America's relations with the Muslim world. The country is ground zero in the fight against global terror. Anyone needing a fresh illustration need look no further than yesterday's bombing outside the American consulate in Karachi, which killed four people. Beyond the hunt for Osama bin Laden on the Afghan-Pakistan border, Pakistan is where radical fundamentalism is increasingly taking the moderate Islamic world hostage.

That's why President Bush's trip today to Islamabad could have been a chance to try to bridge this stretch of the chasm between Muslims and Westerners. Unfortunately, everything sets it up to be just the opposite, starting with the fact that it is being overshadowed by Mr. Bush's misbegotten nuclear pact with Pakistan's blood enemy, India.

Since Mr. Bush agreed to share civilian nuclear technology with India despite its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Pakistanis have been demanding similar treatment. The Pakistanis won't get that deal, and any time spent discussing the issue is wasted time that could be spent on other ways in which America should be developing its relationship with the Pakistani people.

Mr. Bush's visit comes just as Pakistan is getting past deadly riots over Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. They came on the heels of American airstrikes that killed 18 Pakistani civilians in January — strikes legitimately aimed at Qaeda leaders that tragically killed innocents.

Clearly, this is the perfect time for the American president to do some nurturing. Too bad the nurturing that seems to interest Mr. Bush is with Pakistan's military dictator, President Pervez Musharraf. General Musharraf has yet to permit the democratic elections he has repeatedly promised since his coup more than six years ago, but the Bush administration, which says it wants democracy in the Muslim world, has put little pressure on him for reform.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush is receiving little pressure from Mr. Musharraf to grant the one thing that could tangibly bind America to Pakistan in a way that no number of summit meetings or sales of F-16 fighter jets could ever manage: a free trade agreement.

An agreement like the one the United States has granted Jordan and Morocco and a host of other countries would mean more jobs in textile factories in Pakistan. It would mean fewer unemployed people on the street with nothing to do but listen to the exhortations of mad mullahs. It would cement the economic well-being of the average Pakistani to the well-being of the United States.

Alas, don't expect to see anything close to that coming out of this trip. The Bush-Musharraf summit meeting is one between two leaders far more interested in guns than butter.

Stumbling in Afghanistan

EDITORIAL
Los Angeles Times
March 3, 2006

IT WAS HARDLY A SURPRISE that President Bush made a brief stop in Afghanistan on Wednesday, and not just because word of the "unexpected" trip leaked to the media beforehand. With Iraq ever more messy and his administration on the defensive on multiple fronts, Bush undoubtedly wanted to evoke that sweet moment of victory in November 2001 when U.S. forces ended the Taliban's rule.

Yet Afghanistan is not such a simple story. Democratic elections brought a reasonable government into office, but it remains weak and ineffective outside of Kabul. Over the last year, the Taliban has made a strong revival, drug trafficking is up and the number of suicide bombings has steadily climbed. Bush's advisors said his visit was so brief because it was hard to guarantee security.

Back in Washington, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Maples, testified before Congress on Tuesday that attacks by Taliban and other insurgents increased by 20% last year, and they are expected to intensify this spring. Aid workers report that villagers across the south of Afghanistan tell them not to visit anymore because Taliban forces punish anyone who accepts Western help.

Lest anyone forget, the Taliban was target No. 2 in the U.S. war against terrorists provoked by the 9/11 attacks. Target No. 1 was Osama bin Laden — Bush wanted him "dead or alive" — and he is still at large. Bush promised in Afghanistan that the leader of Al Qaeda would eventually be brought to justice. At this point, we are not holding our collective breath. Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the mountainous region straddling Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, spooning out taped messages to the West, but there has been little sign of progress in the hunt for him.

Like too many administration projects, the situation in Afghanistan appears to be the victim of a lack of follow-through. After the invasion of 2001, Bush promised to rebuild Afghanistan, ravaged by years of civil war and horrific destruction at the hands of the Taliban. There are 18,000 soldiers in the country, and in 2004 the United States and other donors pledged or spent $3.6 billion on humanitarian aid and reconstruction.

Yet once the war in Iraq was launched, Washington's attention went there, as did most of its troops. The political will to bring security and basic services to Afghanistan clearly fizzled. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld likes to argue that the United States is capable of fighting two wars at once, but the evidence from Afghanistan and Iraq suggests that it may not be capable of fighting two wars well.

The United States is not the first world power to stumble in Afghanistan. The British and the Russians each failed to subdue the warlords who roamed the nation's treacherous terrain. Yet the U.S. efforts that began there with great promise in 2001 remain, as yet, unfulfilled.

Shah's Son Urges Aid to Resistance

Reza Pahlavi says Iran won't yield in talks and military action could strengthen Tehran's hand. He pushes unity of opposition groups.
By Nick Timiraos
Los Angeles Times
March 2, 2006

WASHINGTON — The son of the late shah of Iran warned Wednesday that diplomatic efforts over the country's nuclear ambitions were unlikely to succeed, but said he opposed military action against his estranged nation.

Instead, the former crown prince of the U.S.-backed monarchy that was deposed in 1979 urged the international community to help support and unify opposition groups inside and outside Iran to increase pressure on the nation's ruling Islamic clerics.

Reza Pahlavi, 45, said military strikes would only rally support for Iran's hard-line rulers and that continued diplomacy and negotiations would give Tehran time to pursue nuclear weapons.

"The problem with these negotiations all along was the false assumption that the other side wants a solution to avert a crisis. Quite the contrary," Pahlavi said in a speech at the National Press Club. "Increasingly unpopular, the Islamic Republic needs an atmosphere of crisis to justify its increased militarization."

Pahlavi also opposes punitive measures such as economic sanctions, instead urging steps such as freezing assets and restricting travel for the ruling clerics.

Pahlavi is the son of the late Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. In 1953, a CIA-backed coup toppled the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. The shah, who had fled the country, was returned to power within days and ruled until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, in which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini set up the theocracy that runs Iran today.

Unpopular in much of the West, the shah accepted former President Carter's offer to come to the United States for medical treatment, prompting the seizure of U.S. diplomats in Tehran. The shah died in Egypt in 1980.

The younger Pahlavi, a father of three who lives in suburban Washington, said his chief objective was a secular, democratic government in Iran.

Asked about his role in such a government, Pahlavi said, "That's for my compatriots to decide." But he expressed a preference for constitutional monarchy and pointed to Japan, Sweden and Spain as successful examples.

Pahlavi spoke at the invitation of the National Press Club as international pressure mounts on Tehran to clarify its nuclear ambitions.

Iran says its atomic research is intended for peaceful purposes, but the Bush administration contends that Tehran is seeking to develop a nuclear bomb. The governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to hold another session on the issue Monday in Vienna.

U.S. officials have touted steps toward democracy across the Middle East as a way to contain the influence of Iran. But Pahlavi said Iran's growing clout is in part a consequence of the spread of democracy. "In Lebanon, if Hezbollah can spend more money than the government building schools, mosques and hospitals — thanks to generous Iranian contributions — don't be surprised if they win elections," he said.

Pahlavi's call for international support of resistance groups followed last month's State Department pledge of $85 million for anti-Tehran propaganda and aid to Iranian opposition groups, up from $10 million last year. He said more must be done to unite the "thousand circles of localized dissent and opposition" inside and outside the country.

Pahlavi said he had "very strong" political capital within Iran, but analysts offered mixed assessments of that claim.

"There's a lot of nostalgia … in Iran," said Patrick Clawson, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "

Other analysts said that prominent exiles such as Pahlavi might have less clout with the White House because of the widespread belief that U.S. officials relied too heavily on Iraqi exiles to make their case for military action against Saddam Hussein.

Egypt rejects political conditions for US free trade deal

Agence France Presse
Thu Mar 2, 2006

Egypt said talks on a free trade agreement with the United States can be launched only if Washington stops attaching political strings to the deal.

"Trade relations should not be tied to any other circumstances, political or otherwise," Foreign Trade Minister Rashid Mohammed Rashid said after talks with visiting US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

"We are not prepared today to enter a trade agreement tied to any other conditions other than those related to trade and investment," Rashid told reporters at a joint news conference with the US official.

Washington said last month it was delaying the launch of talks on a free trade agreement (FTA) with Egypt, a key US ally in the region, over concerns about Cairo's commitment to democratic reforms.

The move came after Cairo decided to delay by two years the holding of municipal elections and followed the jailing last December for forgery of prominent opposition leader Ayman Nur.

Gutierrez refused to say if his government's decision to postpone the launch of talks on the FTA was directly related to the political climate in Egypt.

"The environment has to be right. We don't have a list of criteria, but it's a matter of judgment. It's a matter of judging and evaluating and deciding when the time will be right," he said.

While both Gutierrez and Rashid agreed that the current conditions did not favor the launch of the talks, they disagreed on the definition of those conditions.

"The view we have is that the FTA is not a gift or something that the US is giving to Egypt because Egypt is doing or not doing something," said Rashid.

"Until we reach a stage where we are both convinced enough that this is really in the interest of our companies, in the interest of our economies... and not necessarily linked to any other ups and downs in any part of the relationship, that's the right time we start," he added.

"When we have an agreement, we want to win, we want to get it through, we want to succeed," Gutierrez said. "We want to avoid a situation whereby the environment doesn't enable the agreement to succeed."

Despite the apparent gap, both officials said they wanted to see closer and stronger trade ties between their countries.

"In the meantime, we encourage Egyptian government leaders to move forward on reforms that will further liberalize the economy and create an attractive business and investment climate," said Gutierrez.

"At a time where trade is so important, unfortunately there are some protectionist tendencies. We have to ensure that we can convince people that this is not the time for protectionism... On our side we have to convince a lot of people," he added.

In 2004, Egypt's exports to the United States reached 1.1 billion dollars while imports topped three billion dollars.

Last year, exports to the US rose to around 1.8 billion dollars and the volume of bilateral trade reached some five billion dollars, a 16-percent increase compared to the 2004 figures, according to Rashid.

Gutierrez and Rashid signed a memorandum of understanding to reconstitute the US-Egypt Business Council, a body established to promote economic ties and trade between the two countries.

"I believe that today we have signed not only a memorandum of understanding, but we have initiated a new era in economic relations between the US and Egypt," the US official said.

Receiving about two billion dollars a year, Egypt is the second largest recipient of US foreign aid after Israel.

The US commerce secretary, who also held talks with Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, arrived in Cairo on Wednesday on the last leg of an eight-nation Middle East tour to encourage economic reform and promote trade.

Released Britons say they were tortured in Egypt

Thu Mar 2, 2006

LONDON (Reuters) - Three Britons jailed in Egypt for spreading propaganda for an Islamist group said they were tortured for their political beliefs and forced to sign false confessions.

The Britons -- Reza Pankhurst, Maajid Nawaz and Ian Nisbett -- were deported to London on Wednesday after serving almost four years of a five-year sentence.

They were among a group of 26 men jailed for between one and five years for spreading propaganda of the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party).

"During our imprisonment we were tortured and electrocuted, we and our families were threatened and we were forced to sign a confession we neither agreed with nor sanctioned," Nisbett said in a prepared statement given to reporters on their return home.

"We experienced, witnessed and met people who were tortured in the most grotesque and obscene ways for belonging to peaceful opposition parties. Some of them had their genitalia electrocuted and some were put in solitary confinement in the dark with no human contact for nine years," he said.

The Egyptian authorities say they investigate all complaints of torture in detention. The human rights pressure group Amnesty International had labeled the trial unfair.

The Egyptian Interior Ministry agreed to set them free because they had served three quarters of their sentence. Including the time spent awaiting trial, they had been in jail since early 2002.

After flying in to London's Heathrow airport on Wednesday, the three men were detained and questioned for more than three hours by British intelligence officers before an emotional reunion with their families.

Voicing his anger over their treatment on return, Nisbett said Special Branch officers took their DNA, their fingerprints and "interrogated us again about our political beliefs."

Nisbett went on to launch a scathing attack on British Prime Minister Tony Blair for choosing Egypt as a holiday destination.

"We were held by an evil and brutal regime, a regime which is supported and funded by western governments, a regime which routinely tortures, murders and terrorizes its citizens," he said.

"So imagine our feelings when we heard that Tony Blair was holidaying in the same country where a few miles away British citizens were being tortured and held without evidence," he added.

Terrorist Growth Overtakes U.S. Efforts

Pentagon deputy warns of decades-long war
By Sharon Behn
Washington Times
March 2, 2006

Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism.

"We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Gen. Caslen told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, warning that the war could take decades to resolve.

Gen. Caslen said that two years ago the Department of Defense had not settled on a clear definition of the nature of the war. Moreover, because each government department had its own perspective, "we all had different strategies," he said.

The Defense Department now has defined the nature of the war, he said. The enemy, he said, is "a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks and individuals that use violence and terrorism as a means to promote their end." It is not a global insurgency, the general said.

"We do not go as far as to say it is a global insurgency, because it lacks a centralized command and control," he said.

Groups such as al Qaeda, though, are constantly trying to increase their capabilities, and in some cases are outstripping the United States, Gen. Caslen said.

"We in the Pentagon are behind our adversaries in the use of communications -- either to recruit or train," he said. Compared with historical jihads, or enduring Muslim wars, this one "is accelerated because of its capability in communications."

The Pentagon official said Muslim thought ranges from secular and mainstream to extremist and intolerant.

The takfir (infidel) view of the world that falls under the Salafist teachings of the Sunni sect -- such as al Qaeda in Iraq -- is an example of the extremist view that condones violence to accomplish ideological ends, he said.

The general said the extremists' goal is to remove U.S. troops from Iraq and establish a radical state under Shariah, or Islamic law, remove what they consider the apostate governments of Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, and destroy Israel.

But the enemy has vulnerabilities.

"The ideology is not popular among most, even Muslims," he said. "We need to undermine support by amplifying the moderate forces and undermining the enemy's repressive and corrupt behavior."

Gen. Caslen said the government and military are working to integrate their strategies and plans, and that a national strategic presidential directive and homeland security presidential directive are being drafted to face the terrorist threat.

Leading the war on terrorism is Special Operations Command based in Tampa, Fla. The command is writing a military global campaign strategy with a specific plan to deal with each terrorist organization.

Gen. Caslen said a governmentwide plan to assign tasks and responsibilities to all U.S. government departments and the military also is being created.

U.S. Military Targets Blogs To Shape Opinions On Iraq, Afghanistan Operations

Jason Sherman
InsideDefense.com
March 1, 2006

In a bid to find new ways to influence public opinion about U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a small media affairs team in Tampa has burrowed into the mushrooming cyber world of blogs and persuaded hundreds of Web sites -- which then link to thousands of other sites -- to post content prepared by military public affairs officials.

Since last July, the Florida-based U.S. Central Command’s public affairs staff -- in an effort recently praised by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for its innovation -- has been initiating contact with editors of Web sites that cover operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, offering the same news releases and stories written by military officials that are made available to journalists affiliated with traditional media outlets.

In addition, this CENTCOM “electronic media engagement team” encourages these blogs to post a direct link -- along with the command’s insignia -- back to CENTCOM’s main Web site.

To date, more than 300 blogs have posted links to the command’s public affairs page, which have directed millions of viewers to CENTCOM’s site, command officials say. The blogs with direct links to CENTCOM’s site are linked to another 9,300 blogs. This second band of Web sites then link to another 270,000 blogs, providing a potentially exponential reach.

“It’s an incredible way to communicate with the public,” said Lt. Col. Richard McNorton, a CENTCOM spokesman, who oversees a team of two young, enlisted staff members who work full time on the blogs.

It has generated new traffic to the CENTCOM Web site, he said, and paved a new path for pushing content to the public that bypasses traditional print and broadcast media outlets.

CENTCOM’s Web site now gets more visitors through these linked blogs than it does from search engines like Google and Yahoo. Since the outreach effort began, online subscriptions to the command’s weekly newsletter have tripled, and the command has observed that items it sends to bloggers ripple across the Internet, directly reaching thousands of viewers, McNorton said.

These results have attracted high-level attention.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a speech last month to the Council on Foreign Relations on the need for the government to improve its strategic communications capabilities, highlighted CENTCOM’s project as an example of an innovative outreach effort.

McNorton, the CENTCOM spokesman, said the command has reached out to blogs edited by people who support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as to those who oppose it. To date, the vast majority of the blogs that regularly post CENTCOM content and provide a direct link are run by what he calls “supporters.”

“They will pretty much post anything,” he said. “The problem with that is the readers are already pro-military. It’s almost like we’re preaching to the choir.”

Fewer than 10 blogs written by those who oppose U.S. operations, which CENTCOM calls “determined detractors,” have established links, he said.

Along with these two categories, the public affairs team targets two other blog categories, McNorton said: Those run by pundits like Bill Bennett, who on occasion has posted CENTCOM content, and sites that are focused on current affairs.

Based on its experience with blogs, the command is laying plans to revamp its main Web site to provide more varied content that could be easily exported for use on blogs, he added. CENTCOM officials are looking to take advantage of new multimedia tools to provide video clips and podcasts -- individual sound files -- of speeches by senior command leaders like commander Gen. John Abizaid, he said.

All CENTCOM-generated content provided to blogs is in English. A real counter-propaganda campaign, McNorton said, would require engaging in other languages, particularly Arabic and Farsi.

“Right now our mission is to provide information to the public,” he said. “This is just another method of engaging directly.”

While military leaders may consider the blog outreach effort pioneering, McNorton noted that U.S. adversaries are demonstrating effective uses of this new medium.

“The enemy is so good at using Web sites and blogs to communicate and to recruit. They even have virtual Caliphates. We were so far behind the curve,” he said.

War On Terror Needs More Humanitarian Efforts

Direct help for those in need will do much to undermine a terrorist's call for recruits.
By Kenneth Ballen
Christian Science Monitor
March 2, 2006

WASHINGTON – It is time we heed what America's military leaders are telling us about the war on terror. Pentagon officials involved in writing the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently released counterterrorism strategy have acknowledged that "the American military's efforts to aid [2004] tsunami victims in Indonesia and to assist victims of Pakistan's [2005] earthquake did more to counter terrorist ideology than any attack mission."

Indeed, according to the Navy's commanding officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, the change of Muslim public opinion as a result of American aid is nothing less than "one of the defining moments of this new century." Admiral Mullen concluded: "Shame on us if, even through benign neglect, we allow those same opinions to turn against our best intentions again."

The statements of our military's leaders point to a dramatic reconsideration of the means necessary to prevail against global terrorists. Fortunately, recent history shows us exactly how we can help people who need help, and just as important, how to change public opinion favorably toward the United States, and against terrorists such as Osama bin Laden.

This means a commitment to following the path the US successfully forged last year in response to the tsunami that struck Indonesia and the earthquake that ravaged Pakistan. American assistance was direct, extensive, effective, and well-publicized on Indonesian and Pakistani TV.

For the first time since 9/11, both the Indonesian and Pakistani people - the largest and second-largest Muslim populations in the world - expressed a favorable opinion of the US, and at the same time, turned against support for Mr. bin Laden and terrorist attacks. It seems that if American efforts are focused on positive rebuilding and vision for the future, the foot soldiers for bin Laden and radical Islam will desert. Islamist extremism can indeed be effectively defeated in Muslim hearts and minds.

In fact, the number of Pakistanis who have a favorable opinion of the US doubled from 23 percent in May 2005 to more than 46 percent after American earthquake aid was received. According to a poll conducted by the nonpartisan not-for-profit, Terror Free Tomorrow, with fieldwork by ACNielsen Pakistan, for the first time since 9/11, more Pakistanis are favorable to the US than unfavorable.

At the same time, the number of Pakistanis who disapproved of bin Laden doubled at almost the exact same percentage as those who became favorable to the US.

The effects of American aid in response to the earthquake were clear: 78 percent of Pakistanis said that American aid to earthquake victims has made them favorable to the US - a figure that held even among bin Laden supporters.

The data from Pakistan is buttressed by similar findings from Indonesia. After the tsunami, 65 percent of Indonesians had a favorable opinion of the US as a direct result of American assistance, while support for terrorism declined in tandem.

Yet the most surprising finding is that this dramatic shift in Muslim public opinion has been and can be sustained over a long period of time. A nationwide poll by Terror Free Tomorrow just completed in Indonesia shows that one year after American tsunami assistance began, and despite the reports on Koran desecration and the eruption of violence over Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, Muslim public opinion has not only remained favorable to the US, but has increased as a direct result of American humanitarian assistance to the Indonesian people. Indeed, for the first time since 9/11, more Indonesians are favorable to the US than not.

The fact that even a year after receiving American help Indonesians continue to appreciate America's role is stunning proof of the sustained power of positive and substantial assistance to radically change Muslim public opinion.

No wonder "The National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism" released earlier this month by the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that American humanitarian assistance is "often key to ... countering ideological support for terrorism [which is] the enemy's center of gravity."

While disasters on the scale of the tsunami and earthquake create unique problems and solutions, they also suggest a model for future American foreign assistance: aid based on positive humanitarian needs and delivered directly to people in need.

It is time we listen to our foremost military experts on what is truly required to win the war on terror. American humanitarian leadership is the proven path to winning Muslim hearts and minds. As the Navy's top officer Admiral Mullen said, "shame on us" if we fail to heed this message.

Kenneth Ballen served as counsel to the House Iran-Contra Committee, chief counsel to the Senate Special Committee on Investigations and the Speaker of the House, and is president of Terror Free Tomorrow.

Embracing a Lethal Tar Baby

by Michael Scheuer
Antiwar.com
February 27, 2006

America's Sunni Islamist opponents must be ever more strongly sensing that Allah truly is on their side. Currently, this perception is due not only to the recent victory of the Islamist party Hamas in Palestine's parliamentary elections, but more especially because of the U.S. reaction to that success. That reaction probably has polished off any remaining belief in the Muslim world – assuming there was any – that the United States is sincere about building democracy in the Middle East. The reaction likewise has validated Osama bin Laden's repeated warning that the hypocritical West supports democracy only if elections further its plans to dominate and secularize the Islamic world.

The Palestinian election could have been the break in the Middle East that America has needed, but so far Washington's bipartisan governing elite has kicked that gift horse squarely in the chops. The from-all-reports fair and democratic election of Hamas should have been a U.S. propaganda triumph, as well as a chance for Washington to exit the morass of Palestinian-Israeli affairs. An aged, incompetent, and putridly corrupt PLO was democratically defeated by Hamas, an organization well-versed in delivering many government services. In this scenario, the United States had a golden opportunity to show respect for a culturally compatible democratic process in the Muslim world and to detach itself from the snare of an endless war in which it has no interest. After 30-plus years of America exposing itself to steadily increasing danger and expense because of the infantile inability of Israelis and Palestinians to live together, we had a chance to walk away and let the cards fall where they may. True, it surely would not have been fair to both sides to do so; after all, the Israelis have a conventional army and a large, undocumented array of weapons of mass destruction, while the Palestinians have AK-47s, the less-than-mighty Qassim missiles, and a steady supply of martyrs and rocks. Life is always tough, however, and the elimination of one or both sides would have no discernible impact on life in North America.

Sadly, the opportunity went a-glimmering because of the three standby myths that dominate what passes for thought among America's bipartisan foreign policy, academic, and governing elites. The first holds that the survival of Israel and/or a Palestinian state is a central national-security interest for the United States. The second argues that all states have a "right" to exist. The third is that no state is "legitimate" if it refuses to accept the existence of a second state or argues that the second state should be destroyed. The three myths amount to a comprehensive attack on the common sense of the average American, as well as on U.S. national interests.

The first myth is insupportable in terms of the correct definition of national interests: that is, issues that are matters of life-and-death for a nation. If our elites' favorite analytic frameworks of saintly-or-evil Israelis, or saintly-or-evil Palestinians, is avoided, and an effort is made to write down a list of the genuine U.S. national interests – not emotional, religious, or ethnic interests – that are at stake in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the result would be a completely blank sheet of paper. This little exercise simply shows that if both the Palestinians and the Israelis erased each other from the face of the earth tomorrow, it would have no notable impact on America. Indeed, that result would save a lot of U.S. money and get a lot of Americans out of harm's way.

The second myth is goofier than the first. No state – Palestine, Israel, America, or Belgium – has any sort of a God- or man-given right to "exist." States exist because they can defend themselves against predators, produce a viable economy, and prevent terminal, internal societal rot. If every state had a "right" to exist, the West would have kept the Soviet Union alive and would be working feverishly to resuscitate such long-gone states as Siam, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, Sparta, and the Italian city states of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa.

The third myth is an absurdity of more recent vintage: A government is only legitimate, and can only be dealt with, if it renounces violence and recognizes the right of all states to exist. In practice, this means that Palestine's new Hamas government must unilaterally disarm in the face of a demonstrably brutal enemy – backed by the unqualified support of the world's only superpower – and willingly turn its back on a duty (jihad) that it believes derives from God's word. In commonsense terms, this sort of voluntary national suicide and mass apostasy seems a bit much to ask and, even more, to realistically expect to achieve.

For the United States, moreover, these demands are nothing short of nonsense in terms of our nation's historical experience. What American, for example, has not seen the film of a premier of the Soviet Union pounding his desk with a shoe and stridently vowing that the USSR would ultimately "bury" the United States? As if this denial of America's right to exist was not clear enough, all Americans knew that that particular Soviet leader – as well as his predecessors and successors – believed in the "science" of Marxism-Leninism, which long-ago determined that America and all capitalist states would be annihilated. Faced with such a foe, as I recall, America did not demand that the Soviets unilaterally disarm, renounce their Marxist-Leninist faith, and avow America's right to exist and flourish. Instead, we accepted the reality of the USSR's existence as a mortal foe, armed to the teeth, and dealt with Moscow in a way that protected U.S. national interests and led eventually to the demise of the Soviet Union.

As U.S. history shows, we are seeking to impose on Israel's foe unachievable conditions that we have never sought to impose on our own enemies. Insistence on these unattainable conditions – along with demands based on the other two myths – will only serve to prolong the conflict and involve America ever more deeply in what is, for the United States, the distinctly peripheral Israeli-Palestinian issue. It also will eventually elevate Hamas to what it has not been and is not now – a threat to the United States.

Mubarak says Egypt won over Rice on democracy

Reuters
Wed Mar 1, 2006

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Egypt had won over U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to its views on democracy in the Arab world and quoted her as saying it would take a generation for democracy to take hold.

"She was very polite as she was listening to Egyptian opinions and points of view. She didn't bring up difficult issues or ask to change anything or to intervene in political reform, as some people say," he told newspaper editors.

Mubarak, who met Rice in Cairo last Wednesday, was speaking on Monday on his way back from a trip to the Gulf. His remarks were published in the government newspaper al-Gomhuria.

"She was convinced by the way that political reform and the implementation of democracy is being done in Egypt ... She said that democracy in the Arab countries needed a generation," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

In public in Cairo, Rice said she had talked candidly with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit about what she called setbacks and disappointments in Egyptian domestic politics during 2005, including the jailing of liberal opposition leader Ayman Nour.

Political analysts say the U.S. campaign for democracy in the Arab world, which began in earnest as an explanation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, has lost steam in recent months.

Egypt held its first multi-candidate presidential election last year. Mubarak won with 89 percent of the vote but monitors said that irregularities were widespread.

The opposition says tough terms on candidacy strip the system of presidential elections of any meaning. The ruling party is currently the only group which meets the conditions to field a candidate for president.

In parliamentary elections in November and December, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is hostile to U.S. policies, increased its number of seats fivefold while the secular opposition favoured by the United States fared badly.

Mubarak said that at their first meeting Rice told him she knew nothing about the Middle East. But after listening to the Egyptians, "she understood the truth about the situation in the Arab region," he added.

Very interesting interview with Youssef Chahine

The interview was published in a German newspaper and was translated into English.
March 02, 2006

Youssef Chahine sits in his office in Cairo surrounded by a clutter covered in dust, chain smoking, exuding glory. He is the old master of Arabic film. But to his fellow Egyptians he is ambiguous (a conflict). A lot of his films are too honest, too autobiographical, too sexual - "Alexandria Why?" or "Destiny". Otherwise he would have been a national icon. He turns 80 years today.

SZ: You express yourself politically not only in your films?

Chahine: They don't like me on television as I refuse to discuss anything unless we are live. Otherwise they only air the parts they like. Even in newspapers they edit all my quotes because I! insult the Minister of the Interior. He is a son of a bitch. I am also not happy with our President. He doesn't like intellectuals.

SZ: You joined the "Kefaya" movement...

Chahine: No, because they don't even have a program. They asked me to join their demonstrations, but I am not stupid. They were 40 protesters surrounded by 3,000 riot policemen with batons and tear gas. This repression is unthinkable. The mafia that is ruling our country is so powerful. They have the police, the intelligence, and the army and when they need it, the U.S. army, on their side.

SZ: Is protest growing?

Chahine: To a certain extent, but it is not enough. We have been living under extraordinary circumstances for 23 years. In the U.S. this is called the "Patriot Act". It is the same crap as here, but we are a developing country so we have more of it. I wanted to make a gift to the University of large batons since when the students demonstrate they are only armed! with their books. I wish we can smack them.

SZ: Are the U.S. and France supporting the opposition movements?

Chahine: No. The U.S. only helps Mr. Mubarak. They are the ones that put him in power. He blackmails them as he tells them it's either me or the Islamists. They therefore prefer him.

SZ: In the beginning you were more drawn to the U.S.

Chahine: I was crazy about American culture. I studied in Pasadena. But there was a rupture as I couldn't take what they were doing anymore. Not only in Iraq, but with me also. In my last film, I wanted to take parts of the musicals of Sinatra to put in my films and they asked me for 2 million dollars. I told them this will be a tribute to american cinema, but they didn't care. They just wanted the money.

SZ: Do you think Egypt will be a freer nation in the near future?

Chahine: Not in the near or distant future. People are too exhausted to demonstrate.

SZ: Don't the youth give you hope?

Chahine: Not because they are young. I see them standing in line in front of the German and French consulates, all of them wanting to emigrate. In the past I used to tell them not to do this as we need them. I was old-fashioned; I could only see the beauty in my country. Now I say leave because here there is no opportunity.

SZ: All your films are autobiographical. How do you see the past?

Chahine: To some extent with some joy. I used to like Nasser. He was sincere. We never used to hear that his children are making business deals. Mubarak's son is infamous for his deals. Corruption is everywhere. If you needed an official stamp on any document, the government employee would open his drawer and say "Oops, I forgot the stamp at home. Come back in three weeks." If you put money in the drawer you get your document stamped straight away. If we really have free elections, the Islamists would win. They are less corrupt, but what would they change for the intellectuals? I don't know their program. They would probably increase censorship, I don't know.

SZ: Would you leave Egypt?

Chahine: In America, people used to tell me to stay at university. I was poor and was offered a job. I would have been close to Hollywood. But there you have the producer, the studio owner, the bank manager ... too many bosses.

SZ: Do you see yourself more independent in Egypt in spite of the censor?

Chahine: Right now yes, because it is hard for them to throw me in jail. The people in power are afraid of the international press so they try to pamper. Mubarak gave me a national award although I had it from Nasser. I told Mubarak I have the award in reverse, where shall I put yours? Here? (Points to his behind).

SZ: An attempted reconciliation.

Chahine: They even offered me the job of minister of Culture, so I told them do you t! hink I am an idiot? I don't want to have anything to do with this mafia. Sometimes it is useless to get into any discussion with the censor. If someone is going to cut up my film I would want to talk with them as this is not right.

SZ: Which directors inspire you?

Chahine: All the good ones. I love Fassbinder's works during his heyday. There have always been great directors in America.

SZ: Is it difficult to find actors?

Chahine: No. I find them in Parliament. When they meet there is great applause. If I need a crowd for an opera scene, I will wait until Parliament is off so that I can get these professional applauders.

SZ: What are you working on now?

Chahine: I am currently working on a film and trying to censor myself. It is a Faustus theme, a comedy, that takes place in hell.

SZ: What does hell look like?

Chahine: More or less like Egypt.

We Can't Force Democracy

Creating Normality Is the Real Mideast Challenge
By Robert D. Kaplan
The Washington Post
Thursday, March 2, 2006; A21

The whiff of incipient anarchy in Iraq in recent days has provided a prospect so terrifying as to concentrate the minds of Republicans and Democrats, Iraq's sectarian political factions, and even the media. Staring over the abyss, only the irresponsible few appear distracted by partisan advantage. In that sense alone, the bombing of the golden dome in Samarra may serve a useful purpose. For the fundamental nightmare of the new century is the breakdown of order, something that the American experience offers precious little wisdom in dealing with.

President Bush has posited that the American experience with democracy is urgently useful to the wider world. True, but there is another side of the coin: that America basically inherited its institutions from the Anglo-Saxon tradition and thus its experience over 230 years has been about limiting despotic power rather than creating power from scratch. Because order is something we've taken for granted, anarchy is not something we've feared. But in many parts of the world, the experience has been the opposite, and so is the challenge: how to create legitimate, functioning institutions in utterly barren landscapes.

"[B]efore the names of Just and Unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power," Thomas Hobbes wrote in "Leviathan." Without something or somebody to monopolize the use of force and decide right from wrong, no man is safe from another and there can be no freedom for anyone. Physical security remains the primary human freedom. And so the fact that a state is despotic does not necessarily make it immoral. That is the essential fact of the Middle East that those intent on enforcing democracy abroad forget.

For the average person who just wants to walk the streets without being brutalized or blown up by criminal gangs, a despotic state that can protect him is more moral and far more useful than a democratic one that cannot. Monarchy was the preferred political ideal for centuries, writes the late University of Chicago scholar Marshall Hodgson, precisely because the monarch's legitimacy -- coming as it did from God -- was seen as so beyond reproach that he could afford to be benevolent, while still monopolizing the use of force. To wit, the most moderate and enlightened states in the Middle East in recent decades have tended to be those ruled by royal families whose longevity has conferred legitimacy: Morocco, Jordan, the Gulf emirates and even Egypt, if one accepts that Hosni Mubarak is merely the latest in a line of Nasserite pharaohs.

Imperfect these rulers clearly are, but to think that who would follow them would necessarily be as stable, or as enlightened, is to engage in the kind of speculation that leads to irresponsible foreign policy. Recall that those who cheered in 1979 at the demise of the shah of Iran got something worse in return. The Saudi Arabian royal family may be the most reactionary group to run that country, except for any other that might replace it. It is unclear what, if anything, besides the monarchy could hold such a geographically ill-defined country together.

In the case of Iraq, the state under Saddam Hussein was so cruel and oppressive it bore little relationship to all these other dictatorships. Because under Hussein anybody could and in fact did disappear in the middle of the night and was tortured in the most horrific manner, the Baathist state constituted a form of anarchy masquerading as tyranny. The decision to remove him was defensible, while not providential. The portrait of Iraq that has emerged since his fall reveals him as the Hobbesian nemesis who may have kept in check an even greater anarchy than the kind that obtained under his rule.

The lesson to take away is that where it involves other despotic regimes in the region -- none of which is nearly as despotic as Hussein's -- the last thing we should do is actively precipitate their demise. The more organically they evolve and dissolve, the less likely it is that blood will flow. That goes especially for Syria and Pakistan, both of which could be Muslim Yugoslavias in the making, with regionally based ethnic groups that have a history of dislike for each other. The neoconservative yearning to topple Bashar al-Assad, and the liberal one to undermine Pervez Musharraf, are equally adventurous.

Afghanistan falls into none of these categories. We toppled a movement in Afghanistan, the Taliban, but we did not topple a state, because none had really existed there. Even at the high-water mark of central control in Afghanistan in the mid-20th century, the state barely functioned beyond the major cities and the ring road connecting them. The governing self-sufficiency of Afghan villages has been a factor helping President Hamid Karzai establish a legitimate, noncoercive order.

Globalization and other dynamic forces will continue to rid the world of dictatorships. Political change is nothing we need to force upon people; it's something that will happen anyway. What we have to work toward -- for which peoples with historical experiences different from ours will be grateful -- is not democracy but normality. Stabilizing newly democratic regimes, and easing the development path of undemocratic ones, should be the goal for our military and diplomatic establishments. The more cautious we are in a world already in the throes of tumultuous upheaval, the more we'll achieve.

The writer is a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and author of "The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War."